Detail of a mosaic from the Maison de la Nouvelle Chasse, Bulla Regia, Tunisia
"Nothing ever actually disappears but just changes places …"

The Muse and I have been a long time going but then we intend to be an even longer time gone. Sleep has insisted upon chasing us around the Master Bedroom until we're exhausted each evening but hasn't been staying around long enough to encourage us to wake refreshed. We move like zombies but only because we feel more undead than alive. Only the promise of someday SettlingInto seems to keep us moving ever nearer the edge of leaving, though we have not yet toppled over any precipices. Perhaps today brings respite. Maybe tomorrow, instead.

Nothing ever actually ends in a flash or flourish. Endings come like New Beginnings, shrouded in numbing preparation, not just with the snap of some magician's fingers. Making a tiger or a pigeon seem to disappear is never the same as either animal actually disappearing. Mass seems to preserve itself and so does any presence and nobody ever actually violates any of the immutable laws of physics, not even for their own entertainment. Short memories might improve the quality of an illusion, but it remains delusional to believe that magic ever happens. Time helps both hinder and improve intended results. Patience grows impatient with preparation and the infinite irresolution beforehand. Great magicians never manage to fool themselves but they do know how to create believable illusions others perceive as real. If you want to believe in magic, promise not to tell. Here I am telling.

SettlingInto seems such a romantic notion, but it's not simply a notion for The Muse and I now. It's become an imperative, a necessary objective, no longer simply a nice idea or even the choice it once seemed. Whether we decided to pursue this objective or it chose us to chase after it no longer matters. We're on the stage and the audience expects a performance. We've become our own audience! I left my cape in one of these steamer trunks. I cannot remember which one. It seems as though we should have developed more expertise, as many practice performances as we've convened, but we haven't. We engage with all the panache pretentious five year olds exhibit when working way past their bedtime. When we proclaim, "Ta-da!", show us too much appreciation and maybe we'll go away to open up the evening for adult conversation. We're disappearing. We promise. Really! Hopefully. …

Change remains a mythical beast until after it's over. Likewise, aspiration remains at best believable fiction until later. Both only become real after they're over, only here when they've gone. Both feature over-long tails on either end of them, a long time coming and often an even longer time gone. The point somewhere in the middle, that place where the dream comes true, seems unworthy of pursuit, only illusion. We might dress our dreams in sharp tuxedos or organdy gowns but they wear worn jeans beneath their stage costumes. Make no mistake, their presence remains just as illusory as their so-called magic. Everything seems to reduce to fiction. Belief remains both optional and absolutely necessary. Don't dare ever enter any theater without belief. Do not even think of ever leaving without at some point suspending disbelief so that you might find the performance believable. Nothing ever actually disappears but just changes places, here to there or there to here. We're actively suspending our disbelief that we'll ever actually disappear from here and into SettlingInto, still attempting our much-anticipated DisappearingAct. Ta-Da!

©2021 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #SettlingInto, #PureSchmaltz