Of Science and Magic

Growing up I was surrounded by magic. It was all over the landscape. It was in my dreams and if flowed in great abundance at Yule time and other holidays.
I believed in ghosts and fae and all manner of other spirits.
I was also fairly confidant that if I just concentrated hard enough, one morning I'd wake up in the right body.

I stopped believing that in my early teens I think. Although a small glimmer of hope clung on for some time.
I'm not sure when I stopped believing in magic, but I became aware of it's loss sometime after moved to Seattle.

I love science.
 I think it's the most powerful tool we poses as humans. But science never quite managed to fill the hole where the magic had been.
I think as humans we need the transformative experience, it's where faith comes from.
It's where hope comes from.
I've spent a long time searching for that feeling, that magical possibility of change that promises everything. I've looked in the dusty pages of religious texts, in the even dustier writings of psychiatrists and philosophers and for a while I looked for it in just about every psychedelic substance I could lay my hands on.
But everywhere I looked, there was science, politely clearing it's throat as if to say "ahem, ah-bollocks".
After a while I started to really resent science and it's apparent refusal to let my find peace because goodness know I was desperate for a respite from myself.
Then last August everything changed.
After looking in every possible place for some way to bring back that sense of wonder I finally gave up fighting what I'd always know I needed.
And this time Science did't clear it's throat.
It held out it's hand.
Science is, in the most literal way possible, providing me with the tools for transformative change. In the last few months Wonder has returned and she dances beautifully around my world and trough my dreams.
Wonder wears a lab coat.