Quarantine: where time decides to ignore all of its own rules of propriety. How odd it has been, I must tell you. I've found myself doing normal activities and not being able to remember the actions I'm doing as I'm doing them. What separates one moment from the next anymore? Your own decision to make this second now and the next, later. So in this gulf that names itself quarantine, it's all apparently one single moment - seconds fall into more seconds, minutes fall into hours, and soon seconds fall into weeks, and I wake up not knowing when the clocks hands moved from one number to the next. So, one minute I'll be washing my hands, and in the next, or maybe in the same minute, or perhaps in the previous minute, I'll be outside the next day, on a walk. It appears I am powerless to time's effects. As numbers climb, in this second that's passed since this all started (or one year, I am no longer sure), I've been left to thoughts that know no time either. I find myself in constant disorder, being confused, much like time, by rules of living I cultivated for myself. Example: I'm a collection of existing, breathing parts. But I'm also a collation of people's perceptions of my those parts, dreamt into a version of me that I have never met. Conclusively I'm left alone in my own hull of a body, in a position where I have to truly stare myself in the face and ask, who are you? What makes you do as you do? The issue is I never reply. Nuisance. I knew my introversion would catch up with me at some point. So, amidst all the turmoil, I searched for some sort of salvation from my own petulance and pouting, and discovered a reprieve. The only answer for me, was to do magic, as I'm doing now. You may know it as creating. You see, creating is real magic. I don't mean the kind you find hidden in wands and cauldrons. That magic is finite and clearly fictional. Creativity is real life magic. It's the type of magic that's like being alive with animation so vicious, it's as though you have ambrosia for blood. It's the way fire is constantly dancing in spite of everything. It's the old emotions forgotten under your bed, rediscovered on a rainy day. It's the way we're all connected by the empty space that separates us. It's built into citadels, condensed into paint tubes, translated into words on a page. It's everywhere, boundless and undeniable. So I create, and I create, and I create, and sometimes I sit stunted, with worlds at my fingertips, and I can feel them stirring, opening their eyes, and all I need to figure out is how to summon them, but the magic is there. In this, I have discovered a state of being where I can calm my thoughts when they become disquieting, and the news becomes evermore, hellish. Magic is quite the magnificent tool. A marvelous outlet. Thus, I compose for you a poem, comprised of my griefs and perfidious thoughts, magicked into something beautiful as an example, because it's the only way I know how to quell my loquacious whelp of a think-tank. Title: A Glass Filled With The Universe. What do you feel when you look up at the stars? Look at the endless expanse that encompasses you more than you've ever thought to think about? Is it hurt? Do you ache with longing for this thing you've never known? Do you feel its absence? Or are you already acquainted with Andromeda, and Taurus, and it is in fact yourself you are unfamiliar with And what you feel is rather a painless awakeness An awakeness so urgently present and real, you wonder when you'd ever gone to sleep In which pain is so lacking, you find it mystifying that you've been living a life where every breath had some aspect of woe or affliction Or perhaps it's quietness you feel, synonymous with candlelight Unlike silence, the deafening, deceitful creature A quietness that hasn't ever existed to us human beings who fill the earth with such copious amounts of clamor and entitled whining Noise, that midnight soul you peer into now, once knew to be without Or maybe it's not the stars at all you seek Maybe what you feel is restless moon-drunk wondering as to why that cratered rock has never loved you back We are fickle beings, faithless and forever erratically changing But the inexplicable tightening in your chest never strays when you tilt your head back does it? You haven't noticed it have you? Nonetheless the jamais vu whispers to you And your dreams are filled with them too, you can't deny To conclude, friend, this piece of writing is in shambles, but such is the world, and I am a mirror that cannot help but reflect. The point is to tell you, even if you are at the depths of the pit of these trialing times, or of the canyon of the ‘undiscovered you', create where you can. Sing into the void, paint coloured lights, create portals with your words. Magic is a victor over the lives of the weighted. It will fill you with a lightness, even if the day leaves you brittle.