daemons. part one.

June 19, 2008

It has been awhile, old friend. But the keys feel familiar under the intentioned tap tap of my fingers.

I just finished the His Dark Materials series. The idea was to read the books so I could watch the movie without being completely lost, but instead I got completely and utterly sucked into Lyra’s universe. It has been some time since I’ve been sucked into a world other than my own, and it feels like home. I enjoy spending time in places where my soul is free and uninhibited by physical limitations. I’ve had a burning in my soul, burning, a real feeling in the pit of my being that screams something altogether unintelligible and spiritual.

I was riding in the car the other night, with a full moon and a feeling of detachment. I was elsewhere, somewhere flying with my soul, wherever it goes. The moon was nearly full and the neon lights were blazing enough to make tears well in my eyes. I cannot be happy when there is no real. I cannot see past the many-layered concrete city and the lights that pitifully pretend to be sunlight, moonlight, natural light; there’s nothing that can compare to the reality of the Earth-that-is. We cover it up and control it, put borders in and around and through it, till all we have is a bit of a reminder of what it was before we attempted to tame it.

I never thought of myself as an environmentalist. But the increasing urbanization of my home is enough to bring tears to my eyes. I feel the earth’s sadness, a dull, ancient sorrow that cries out to the depths of my soul that belong to it. I was once a part of it, and as long as I am not encased in some concrete casket or thrown into an asphalt sea, I will return to it. And it calls to us. Sometimes ever so faintly I hear something that does not belong to the buzz of the mechanical world. I am sick with the use of technology, not sick of it, but sick because of it. The food we eat, the water we drink, has all been tainted by the pollution that makes our lives more “convenient.” I am sometimes afraid to be part of this machine.

Back to the books. As I was reading them, mostly outside my work, various people mentioned the fact that I was reading a “children’s” book. A children’s book that made me cry, and think about a spirituality that I have pushed away, and to listen closely enough to hear the gentle heartbeat of the universe. I encourage everyone to read it, and to stop taking yourself seriously, so that you can take the books seriously. Not just this series, I’m not trying to advertise. I just have the feeling that when I take myself seriously, I lose all that is real about me. It’s like a bear trying to be a human and losing his fundamental bearness. Maybe we are some sort of universal joke- children wrapped up in a vast world, trying to be adults and failing miserably. Would John McCain read Harry Potter and enjoy it? Would Barack Obama read the Golden Compass and scoff, or would it pass over his head like a universal inside joke? Maybe we are all missing the point, a little bit. Maybe we are all lost.

I’ve been thinking about witchcraft lately as well. Not Wicca particularly, but I guess I should say paganism. Nature religions, ancient folklore, mythology, spiritual philosophy, druidism even. There was something real and true and powerful about the pseudo-religions of folks who lived simply, with the earth as their mother and its cycles their gods. I wish, for a moment, we could strip all modern religion down to what it was. Science is a religion that seeks to know, spirituality is whatever religion gets us to feel- what about what gets us to be? The Earth is the only thing that knows how to be without question, and nature follows its lead. The universe has a language that all animals, all rocks, all droplets of water, all plants, all stars know- but which humans have chosen to forget. If only I could remember, the words I knew while I was in the womb. Read The Alchemist.

More Later.