Sunday, December 30, 2007

birds, stars, dreams and all things that fly or hang in the sky... this is true magic

My favorite question is "why?". Almost always this question represents a thirst for knowledge, instead of a request for justification, as why can sometimes sound. Often why really means "How does that work?" or "How did it come to be this way?" or "What are the origins of the whozit & whachamacallit?"

One of my favorite topics for why is the natural world. And I find the more I understand the more there is to understand, which I find to be magical. The concept of infinity, the ever present yet subtle pressure of natural selection, the miniscule details of an individual insect's life, the theorized nothingness beyond our universe, the realization that everything we know is theory and can't be proven beyond any imaginable doubt... it is all so intoxicating. What I love about this curiosity the most, I think, is the fact that knowing more and more doesn't take away from the feeling that all the world / universe is magical in it's ability to operate  the way it does.

birds stars dreams

I wouldn't have guessed this to be true. If I was an entity asked to theorize about the human experience I would have guessed that knowing how a thing works would suck it dry of mystery.  When I don't know how a thing works my imagination assigns a generic sense of banal magic... a magic that is flat and vague and just simply accomplishes something. When I find out, for example that this is what Whelk (sea snails) eggs look like, so many other questions unfold in my mind. The magic, just then, is realizing just how complex the world is... that amidst all of the things I have learned over the years there are still so many things I've never seen or heard before... that the known world and everything beyond it are infinitely so complex it's hard to fathom how it all works together with enough organization to allow ecosystems and societies to exist.

I am forever in awe of what I don't know and so greatly thankful for the real magic of finding it out.

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