Do You Believe In Magic?

Saw Pan's Labyrinth tonight.

It was beautiful. Beautiful and terrifying, as many great works are.

I like to believe that there's magic in the world. And I don't necessarily mean spells and crazy ceremonies involving cool chalk drawings and baby's blood. The magic I like to believe in is far more prosaic, but all the more potent because of its ordinariness, its everydayness.

It is in the eyes of someone who loves you, in the way they touch you, in the shared glances and connections made and missed every day, between every person, in the daring to believe, to imagine, to aspire to whatever your heart desires.

There is magic there.

And it is frightening; of course it is, because there's no-one to catch you, no guarantees. Few can help you, and even fewer will understand you. There is only you and what you will dare, what you will risk, what and who you will turn your back on.

Imagination is painful because you must pay a price to hang onto it, and to follow it. Along your way there will be people who will delight in telling you how silly, how unrealistic, how childlike you are. There will be people, and they will be legion, who will tell you to put aside those things, to grow up. And many people do, and many people will. Perhaps they can be happy with that.

I hope I will never know.