I’ve been thinking a lot about the things that separate me from other people lately. About the masks I wear and why I wear them. And about the fundamental similarities, and differences.

Truth is, I’m very different. I’m not ‘normal,’ whatever that is. I’m normal in the sense that everyone is unique. But I don’t easily fit in with the day to day crowd. I don’t blend well. I tend to cling to that differentness a little. I hold it close and wear it like a cloak. Being different is a safe place for me. If I’m not the same as everyone else, then I can’t be judged by their standards. Their judgment has no meaning to me, because I’m outside their understanding of the world.

It’s a bit of a crutch. It was a way of letting myself negate the judgments of those around me. The problem, is that no matter how different I am, there will be those to whom I’m not strange. The sense of ‘other’ that I wrap around myself only frees me from the judgment of people not in my world. As I’ve grown in my ‘otherness’ I’ve attracted lots of people to me. Most of whom are also ‘other.’ And yet again, I’ve found myself judged. I put myself in this place of judgment, of allowing it. And I’ve grown to realize that I have to reject it out of hand.

I do not exist to be judged by others. I can not hide behind separation as a reason to deny their judgment validity. Their judgment is invalid because nobody has the right to judge me, not because I’m not part of their world.

That’s not really where I wanted to go with this post though. Just a small aside really. In truth, I wanted to focus in on a specific difference that I’ve been noticing a lot lately. I have a lot of things that separate me from most people. I’m gay. I’m pagan. I’m a nerd. I live communally. I believe in chosen family. I’m realizing though, the more I study it, how important my particular patterns are in defining who I am in a healthy way.

I was thinking about Magic this afternoon. About the energy I feel when I work magic, and the energy I feel when those around me work it. I’m becoming aware of how my pattern does not fit with the patterns I’ve been given to model. I’m male. I identify as male, and have no desire to be otherwise. But my magic is not truly the magic of Fire. My magic is not summoned by a spark. It does not burn through the world leaving a changed path where it’s been. As I am not an extrovert, I am also not Fire. I am not talking about elemental fire here. It is not that my force is not active, or even that my force is not masculine (although it feels like an androgynous force to me).

My magic is a symphony. It is a poem. It is a work larger than the striking of a match, and it builds slowly. My magic moves through time. It is like the tide. It is like weather. It does not happen instantly. There is no sudden tornado that comes out of nowhere. It builds slowly. Hundreds of small actions contribute to it. It is hard to predict, but when it comes, it can not be stopped.

I am not a bonfire, or a ray of light. I am not a vision, or a planetary convergence. My power is not a sword or spear, not a chalice, not a stone. My life is not part of a symbolic structure, it is not a codified pattern of forces. My art is just that. It is art.

I have felt judged lately. Felt pushed to turn my art into something formulaic. To somehow bind it to the pattern that the people around me want to see. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do that. What I see, and what I hope the world can learn to see, is that an artist can follow the dictum’s of a media. He can obey the rules and create art inside a structure. But he can only do so when the structure fits the art. Starry Night could not have been expressed in realism. Falling Water could never have been a colonial dwelling.

My art, My magic, My life, will never be subject to the will of any muse but my own. While my smaller magics may fit beautifully inside the containers the world likes to see, the work of my life will never conform. You can not command the tide to rise at your will, and you can not demand the spring rain to fall only in one place.

If I am to be a force of nature, than I shall be the storm. Nourishing and destructive. The end and beginning of the cycle joined in the sacred dance.

Let my poetry be sung in this world, and the rest.