Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Moon Stone Philosophy

I have two "moon stones" on my desk. We got them in Disneyworld this summer -- they were for sale in "Future World" -- or whatever they call it. For a few dollars, you could stuff a bag with as many of them as you were able. My son got about twenty of them.

They are smooth, ebony-black and flat and they're surprisingly powerful magnets. (They are just magnets, by the way, not objects from the moon, in case you are having "one of those days" and you believed that Disney is selling lunar chunks, now. [Though, I suppose in light of Disney's -- as Gulliver often said -- bigness, it is not beyond the realm of possibility].)

That night, in our hotel room, I was watching my son play with them and I grabbed a few. I found myself instantly comforted by them. First, because they had that smooth rock effect. Did you ever carry a smooth river rock when you were kid? -- to rub with a thumb as you walked? That sort of thing.

But the real comfort is the feeling of a very real and invisible force in the palm of my hand.

In what other realm than magnetics can we, the earthbound, feel an invisible force that is undeniable?


Gravity does not feel the same. I tried force a new perspective out of myself, raising and letting my foot drop. It just feels more like...well... falling than an invisible force pulling from the center of the Earth, even though we are told that's what it is. But the magnetic feeling -- it just feels like an invisible force in a way that nothing else really does.

So, sometimes I worry the "moon stones" in my hand as I think during the course of a day -- aware of the invisible push and pull of the force between them. It brings me a tactile comfort and it brings me a philosophical comfort -- a reassurance that all that is invisible is not necessarily unreal and that there exists a scientifically explainable phenomenon that looks and feels like a magic spell.

Does explanation have to turn magic into the mundane? Not with my moon stones. Not with me.

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