"So," I said, "when does the enchantment start?" We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains. "It started when the earth was born." Her eyes were closed. Her face was golden in the setting sun. "It never stops. It is, always. It's just here."
-Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl: a voice who's seen an enchanted place
Have you ever been nothing? Have you ever been not there, just erased, just part of the world? It's like your a rock. Not present, but existing. Your breath is the worlds breath, and you can sense the world's every tingle. Everyone in the world walking, you can feel their feet pounding.
"I imagine a big pink soft soap eraser, and it's going back and forth,
back and forth, and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, and
there they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my
ankles. But that's the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-
my eyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain.
My thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That's the hardest,
erasing my thoughts." She chuckled faintly. "My pumpkin. And then, if
I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the world
is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl."
- Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl
I doubt very many have ever felt that. Just becoming nothing. An eraser taking you from existence so that you stand apart from it, and can see all of it. It'd be like if the Mona Lisa peeled herself away, got up, and looked back at her painting. She'd be looking back at the world without her covering the image. She'd see what was past her. And just moving herself from the picture, that would be simple, but that wouldn't be the end of it. She would make herself truly not a part of it.
Her senses would leave her. The Mona Lisa would not just be erased from the image. She would stop being part of it. She would not be a part of the world behind the paint. She would stand outside it, she'd look at the painting. Her eyes would stop seeing the world in front of her, the world we can't see from outside. Instead she would see what was behind her, what she wouldn't see before. She would no longer hear the gentle breeze whistle by her ears. Instead she would hear the true silence of her reality. Her nose. She wouldn't smell the outdoors anymore. She would smell the paints that had brought her landscape, her reality, to being.
Funny, isn't it? We're all so terrified of losing our minds, but that's exactly what we need to do. We need to escape our minds. We need to stand apart from it, take an eraser, and erase our minds. Don't be you any longer. Stop reflecting on your thoughts and your memories and your voices in your head. You have to stop thinking. It's hard to absolutely clear your head. To let reality just flow. For you to be a part of the flow, just another drop of reality floating around us. It's a little odd being part of the stream of always instead of watching it rush past you.
You do it everyday though. When you wake up, when your in your half-awake-half-asleep-state. You aren't awake. You aren't conscience, not really. You're sleeping. But you v\can hear think and feel time passing. You are more aware than you ever have been. It's like that, I suppose.
Enchanted places are everywhere. They're everywhere you don't expect. They are a point in a space time by which reality leaks through. When your there, standing in the full of the gushing flow, you allow it to engulf you. You can step back, be nothing, be everything.
Do you believe in enchanted places?
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