ARTHOUSE: No Need For Pixie Dust

A poetic reading to remind you of the importance of imagiantion

Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning!
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You can hear my poetry reading below. If this moved you, I share the full audio and more behind-the-scenes for paid subscribers at the end of the post.

Yours truly, mid-flight, taken by the talented Ava Rymer

Press play for magic Maverick.

“No Need for Pixie Dust” by Maverick L. Malone

I am sitting in an office and all of these other people are typing away furiously on their keyboards, eyes glued to glowing squares that speak in a foreign tongue of pings and beeps as inbox numbers climb like skyscrapers that know no limits. The energy is frantic and frazzled, stifling even. It peels at my soul like a sunburn from an unsettling dark moon. And there I am, the outlaw desk on the end facing Wendy’s nursery window overlooking some type of Neverland that always was. This mystical place of towering waterfalls in a cascade of brilliance, illuminated mermaid lagoons with flashes of shimmering scales, gardens spurting fountains of flowers from the evergreen ground. And I whip my head around in disbelief to glimpse the others beside me, but no one else sees. I begin to question things. The question is always fated as the beginning.

I am the only one that believes in its existence here, and I find myself caught between consciousness. My mind is the persistent child, continually straying from words that cut the corners of my mouth, sharp things like “focus” “productivity” “responsibility” – at least the kind fostered in a place encompassed by four white walls and rows and rows of desks; the kind of place that eventually makes a mess of oneself if you stay long enough. “Conformity,” it says. “Constriction,” I whisper.

I unhinge the top of my head, let the imagination lead instead, and press against the cool glass of the window until it swings open by the weight of my body. I let my feet dangle precariously over the edge, dance a little with fate and faith in the moment as the others don’t even cast a single glance my way, too absorbed in their work. I too am absorbed: by a new vision, by a new dream, by a new reckoning. I, too, want to throw myself from the window into my work, into the work of a soul made anew, into the work of poetry inscribed in the brightest blue, into the insatiable devouring of knowledge and truth.

There is no net. The ledge is high. All I see is sea and sky.

I hold my breath and jump.

I fly.

In keeping with this week’s theme of Peter Pan and imagination, I wanted to share a prose piece that embodies that spirit. I wrote this piece somewhere circa 2023 and like last week’s ARTHOUSE, it was also written at work.

I write so often during breaks at my admin day job because I daydream. Honestly, I’m always daydreaming. I can’t not daydream. It happens autonomously, and when a beautiful thought flies into my head, I follow it because creativity and insight would be a terrible thing to waste.

Introspection will always lead to, as Hook’s Smee would say, “apostrophes.”

I remember sitting at my desk, staring wistfully out the window as if it were Wendy’s nursery. Beyond it, the parking lot dissolved. In its place, I glimpsed the lush and shimmering world I long for, one of magic and beauty, where anything is possible. It’s what my internal world looks and feels like to me, this place of wonder that overlays itself onto my present, ordinary existence and makes it extraordinary. My imagination transforms my physical reality before my very eyes because I have ceased to see with them. I look only with the heart now, only with the spirit.

Learning to believe in beautiful things, beyond what we physically, tangibly see, has been a large part of my soul’s curriculum. While I’ve always had a natural inclination for the magical, the mystical and the mysterious, my stubborn, logical brain at times still thinks it’s running this show; that it can lead the way as long as it can see the road before us and take calculated steps to get there. It thinks Neverland is accessible by following a path everyone else has taken because it has been proven.

But I know the truth: belief must precede proof.

If I want to fly, I must first imagine myself as the pilot; it’s the magic that makes flight. It doesn’t just lead the way; it is the way.

For as much as I may still fear the unknown, it’s creative work like this that reminds me why I do what I do because I’m not meant for a conventional life. It urges me, for the 655th time, to trust the process and believe wholeheartedly in the invisible map of my soul, which speaks often through my pen.

It knows the course, and with a little bit of faith, trust and a whole lot of heart, our greatest destination then becomes not only possible, but inevitable.

No pixie dust needed.

With love & hope always,