Unseen Beauty: A Journal

Magic of the Moment

There is still magic in our world. We miss it, caught up and swept along in the linear stream of time in which we organize our existence. So busy caught up in the unyielding march from then to now to tomorrow, we fail to look at the gaps in the mesh of existence, the tiny spaces between the concrete realities where the wonder slips into our world, keeping it a place in which it is worth living. Those tiny spaces, those moments, house all the magic we can imagine, compacted, as befits magic, into an impossibly small space. It is up to us to reach beyond the riptide of reality and seize those moments, the tiny building blocks of existence, to savor them, wringing from them every last bit of wonder, and to realize the magic that we already have, the magic that makes up our being.

Perhaps that is easiest in moments of art and of epiphany, those moments that carry us out of ourselves into a place that is usually lost in the mists of memory and childhood. Closing my eyes, I can trace a thousand of those moments in memory: sitting on the steps of Versailles, listening to the hum of the tourists and hearing the echoes of silk and smelling the scent of powder; feeling the press of souls in Notre Dame at twilight; feeling the floor of the stadium bounce beneath my feet as the entire crowd moved with the music at a concert. But that magic is not just in those places, those once-in-a-lifetime moments of epiphany. It is within every response to art, every moment when we let ourselves go, giving ourselves over into the arms of unrestrained anticipation and wonder.

I touched that magic today at the theater. My husband and I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia. It was the earliest showing – 10:05 a.m. – and the film was in one of the smaller screens nearer the back of the theatre. We got there early, as is our wont, and settled in, popcorn and smuggled candy bars in hand. The theatre was nothing special – industrial blue-grey walls, standard squeaky-springed theater seating, and the musty stale-popcorn smell inherent in every movie theatre in existence. The pre-show was mundane; the previews ranged from interesting to abysmal, and the people in the row behind us kept kicking the seats.

And then the lights dimmed, and the curtains at the side of the screen rolled back. And there, for one shimmering moment, the magic was tangible. I know that the darkness lasted only a few seconds, the blink of an eye as the screen began to fill with the smoky blues of the production company logo and the music began to lift me into a new place. But that moment was otherworldly, a universe of magic packed into a split second.

For that moment represented the opening of the door, the cracking of the borders between what is and what might be that hold us so tightly within the walls of existence. I knew what was coming – the glorious gestamkunstwerk of cinematic art, marrying sound and image to tell a story that carries us into the world of possibility. All art thins the borders between magic and reality; that explains, in part, my passion for the arts. But more than the art itself, I love the possibility, the moment when the walls of reality flicker and fade. It is the spiritual equivalent of that second when the car pauses at the top of the roller coaster hill, the breathless moment before the rush of sound and adrenaline. It is the moment when life holds its breath, and one has a chance to realize what is about to happen. In that moment, the moment before it all begins, the wonder swells within us, reminding us that we are alive, and, indeed what it means to be alive. Therein lies an infinity of magic – if only we have the sense to hold our breath for that instant, let go of our burdens and our fears and simply be.