Muddling Magic

something a little weird

I’m away from my usual place and usual routine and so what follows is also a little out of place and not at all routine but hopefully you find it interesting all the same.

Photo by Lluvia Morales on Unsplash

I like to think that, behind the many and mysterious locked doors of this Airbnb, sit tiny, treasure-laden shrines. Not mounds of extra toilet paper or spare sundry linens, but those photos of beloved family members deemed too precious for casual eyes.

I want these doors to conceal not some haggard stairwell leading to a dusty attic but a small table atop which sits the old candle sticks from a wedding long forgotten, fragile, cold and waxy, yearning still for even the smallest of flames.

These doors are locked, and why? Because the bones of a curious creature—one native to these parts, the kind of beast with big sappy eyes and long, woven hair and a tail that belongs on the other side of myth and magic—are stored cautiously in an old wooden box.

I want those bones to rattle with each passing step, each creaking of these uneven floorboards, and I want that rattling to summon other creatures, others like the one—the one that befriended the people who built this house, who protected them against the darkness, who sat watching, waiting, even when they moved away, who died a slow death not of wounds but of wonder—wondering, would anyone remember? Would anyone return?

I want these doors to be portals to that kind of magic, a testament to a different sort of world, a shrine that pierces the veil between what we know and what we hope for, a shrine that demands you fall on your knees in prayer and peer through the gaps in these shabby walls, that you stare long and hard at the curling wallpaper until—quite suddenly—you cry out: “There! Yes! I see it now.”

A shrine that keeps the embers hot and the incense rising even though we were told by way of a determined and insistent note that no flames should be lit within this house. And while our best guess is that even the smallest hint of fire will send the whole place up in flames—and the surrounding farmland with it—I want those doors to burst open to reveal that even the tiniest of spark will summon the Old Ones back, the ones trapped in the frames, the ones haunting the candlesticks, the ones the creature of myth and legend died yearning for.

I want to meet them, I think. I want to hear their secrets. I want to know where they’ve been.

I want these stubborn doors to open, to reveal the holy and sacred nooks for what they really are. But maybe if they do, maybe if all I see are unused rolls of paper towels and unopened cartons of Folgers coffee and a pile of rags and a bucket full of dust and a spare mop and extra sheets and some moth-ridden blankets and maybe a pillow—what, then?

A shrine, still, I suppose. A shrine to the ordinary demands of welcoming nosy strangers into a humble dwelling, a welcome that will allow them—us? me?—to stumble on through the demands of their lives. A muddling magic, perhaps. A magic muddled with the mundane and humdrum and mysterious. A magic through which we all muddle onward.

And another thing:

• Thanks to the great

  John Dougherty
  for inviting me to reflect on an important book from an important moment in my life for his excellent series “Art & Hard Times” over at
  Roll Credits with John Dougherty
  . You can read that here.

• I’ve mentioned in last week’s reflection that I attended a really powerful prayer experience—a Mass for the Preservation of Peace and Justice—at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen here in Baltimore. I spent a little more time writing about that experience this week. Read that here.