I need to drop a few notes about today. My wife, daughter and cousin-in-law decided to try an outing to a local crystal and gem shop and I was left with a miasma of gloom regarding a few things.
A little background: Thanks to changing my work commute route and later this whole pandemic I haven’t been to the downtown core of the city in ages. Just, maybe a couple years now. Especially in the last few months given working from home and now unemployment.
I was looking forward to maybe picking up a few enchantment-related items and also to just getting back out, despite all the pandemic anxieties. It’s also just something to be out in your old haunts now as a parent, with a little child taking in the sights with you.
Getting ahead of myself.
There’s a palpable gloom over the city. Unemployment is at record numbers, the pandemic has noticeably ground people down. You could feel it. Driving into the core, the masks hiding uncomfortable grimaces and glances. A whole family waiting at the door of one of the shelters, parents with masks and little infant sneaking his hand into the dirt of a planter.
Moreover, the day was grey, cold, overcast, and the wildfire smoke is starting to make its presence known.
Just the same, we went down to the crystal shop and I had every intention of following through and finding an object or two to take home.
Not to be.
How do I put this? It was all so clinical and lacked any story. Magic, when I have felt it at its most potent is drenched in meaning and story. Endless bins and glass cases of stones and gem objects but I felt nothing calling to me whatsoever. I mean if there are altar objects or items related to my desire to dive deeper into a practice they have little to do with New Age crystal correspondences that I do not put much stock in anymore (the stones and objects I have collected over the years differ, as again they are drenched in my stories… but therein is the difference).
I also just wandered through looking at the incense and objects of eastern tradition essentially stripped of their cultural context.
Again, left me so cold. No enchantment here, not for me anyway.
I caught a conversation that left me with a bad taste as well. A woman just emanating grief and panic under the surface asking about stones for someone with heart troubles and issues with the nervous system. There was probably much more to her story but I just sensed such desperation from her and a sort of again, clinical store-bought response from the person at the till. I caught green-heart chakra correspondences but, nothing asking are you okay?
My daughter started getting antsy and I decided to head back out onto those streets I used to spend hours on. We watched the caw-caws (crows), cars, buses, trucks and sounds and this had more enchanting power than any of the objects in those bins.
Just holding onto things in this darkness.
That Star Over There 