Where’s the Awe

I wake up intermittently through the night because every turn of the body ignites pain in my collarbone. At least by waking I’m able to prevent further damage to myself. Still, sleep is a chore.

I’m at least finding some mobility returning. I’m putting on button-up shirts more easily, flossing, and nearly tying shoelaces. They are all things that I couldn’t do last week.

I’m finishing a book that I decided to revisit: The Damnation Game by Clive Barker. It’s a favorite from college. I was curious whether the book would enrapture me like it did years ago.

Parts of the book were equally as page-turning, such as the wild and macabre introduction. However, I also struggled to find an off-switch for my inner critic.

This section has too much dialogue, and all of the dialogue is exposition, I’d think.

This section’s character motivation is questionable.

Needless to say, some of the magic was lost. Often in place of story immersion was skepticism. A mind searching for flaws replaced a mind that dared to wonder.

I recognized this inner critic and managed to barricade it for the book’s final section. For a few hours, I was again attuned to my inner dreamer.

What is it about age that causes us to increasingly kill the magic around us?

At times, the industrialization of the mind seems as inevitable as the industrialization of the environment.

It’s as though the process of adulting wrought enough grim realities to shock the inner dreamer into submission. Survival and magic are mutually exclusive. Life is work, politics, and a steady and horrifying debilitation of one’s own body. Where is there time for awe?

Sometimes finding that sense of awe can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s there though, if you allow it to be. Just open a book from your youth and make the choice to see it.