Despite the Magic Sometimes the Monsters Come Anyway

So, let's talk about Clarke's Law, little boys and the monsters that drag you away.

Clarke's Law is a law of cultural inequality and it explains a lot of history. It states that "any technology sufficiently advanced will look like magic to less-advanced observer".

This is how Cortez and Pizzaro were able to defeat civilizations outnumbering their soldiers by millions to one. If you think you're dealing with gods and magic then you've put yourself at a disadvantage that may not be recoverable.

That idea of magic is in my life today. Since losing Eckart I've prepared for the moment when his son will ask why his father smoked while in the knowledge it would hurt him - and what does that mean about how his father felt about those around him?

It will be a slightly magical answer - I won't know it, won't understand it.

It is slightly bad magic - the mystery of why he smoked (and we all have things like that in our lives - more on mine in a moment) is part of a bad magic that took him away.

It is countered by good magic - the love and connection that we all shared - still share, though our experience of Eckart is different now - is something we don't understand and can't explain.

So I call it Magic. Like all good stories there is good and bad and sometimes people can learn to harness it and use it in both ways. It's a choice. That's not magic - I hope it's not. It's a choice.

Sometimes my own bad magic takes me over. I get sudden, overwhelming panic attacks sometimes, especially when I'm dancing with friends. With strangers, no problem (mostly I'm nervous about perceived wardrobe malfunctions).

Most of the time I just accept that that's what's going on in my heart and head, I go for a walk, cry it out, sit and breathe or just stand at look at the stars and it passes.

Most of my friends understand and accept it, give me space and still love me. Some people I know try to take advantage of it - I just watch them bluster and don't expect them to be there in any real way.

And often I'd go to chat with Eckart about it. Sometimes for sympathy, mostly just to acknowledge that I'm wired that way and it's the price, I think, for my creativity.

But tonight the bad magic came. I realized, as I sat in my apartment, just up from Maine Ballroom dance, where I'd just left after a record fast 90 second appearance, I realized that he wasn't there to talk there anymore.

That's a different magic than just losing him, a real blow. It was baking a loaf of bread and having no place to set it to cool, no one to share it with.

So I took a breath and headed back to dance with my friends. Good magic.

I think I'm ready if that young boy wants to talk about his dad now. We are all mysteries in some ways - we don't know what's going on and since we don't have explanations we have to depend on magic in certain ways.

In many others we're very clear and engaged in the science of our lives.

But sometimes it all comes down to magic.