Fairy Princess Roadkill

The heat was already shimmering over the pavement as I smoked my last pre-flight cigarette in front of the Delta terminal. That's when she caught my eye.

Discarded by a careless child or a heartless caretaker, Fairy Princess lay face down in traffic. Though her dress and wings were still remarkably well preserved, her stiff legs jutted upwards in the rigid contortion of death. All fairy magic had clearly left her petite body.

I looked around me at the harried faces rushing to and from flights. No one else seemed to notice the microscopic tragedy in the pick-up/drop-off lane. I probably wouldn't have either if I hadn't arrived with an hour to spare. As it was, I found myself morbidly transfixed. I know that my mother managed to instill a greater-than-normal animistic sense of sympathy towards inanimate objects ("Tell the door you're sorry you kicked it.") which in some way influenced me to stride into traffic and document the sad fate of Fairy Princess Roadkill.

I'd already committed myself to looking like a deranged psychopath harmless eccentric by crouching in front of oncoming taxis to photograph a child's toy, so I wondered if I should give closure to the onlooking TSA agents by burying her in a planter or some other act equally unlikely to elicit a battery of difficult-to-answer questions at the security checkpoint. Didn't Fairy Princess at least deserve a decent burial? No. And you know why?


Because fairy princesses aren't like other road kill. Though all fairy magic and wish-granting powers had clearly abandoned her inert plastic corpse, this was not necessarily a permanent state of morbidity. Unlike, say, an armadillo, the fairy's sun-baked form could be instantly resurrected and restored to her former status as glittering companion by any passing child. Shit, I was almost tempted to scoop her up and chuck her at the next passing toddler to ensure her reanimation, but we live in a post-9/11 world and people aren't so pleased by the hurled gifts of strangers at the airport, even if the gift is a magical fairy.

My role was merely to document, like a National Geographic photographer observing as cheetah kittens are stalked by hyenas. The fate of Fairy Princess Roadkill was not mine to decide. It falls to a caring child, or a big-hearted caretaker. Or an oncoming Suburban.

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Year In Review

So it's been a little while, hasn't it? Over a year has passed since the last post, so I'd say we have a little catching up to do. The following have occurred since then, in no particular order:

i. I took a massive hit to my self-confidence after having to leave my job as a wilderness counselor for medical reasons. The demoralizing process of leaping through workman's comp hoops, physical therapy, MRIs, steroid injections, weird medications, and finding a new job all combined to create an insidiously corrosive effect. This effectively wiped me out on all projects, clients, and magical activities for large swaths of last year.

ii. I got better. Not where I want to be, by a long shot, but at least I've picked myself back up and am back on the damn Path. Now I need to pick up the pieces and figure out how to make them into something better. Solve et Coagula and all that.

iii. My new job has required me to travel all over the country: Philadelphia, Chicago, LA, San Fran, Denver, Boulder, Memphis, Tombstone, New York, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Seattle, Dallas, and more podunk towns in the middle of god-forsaken-nowhere than I care to count. I've visited dozens of bodegas, botanicas, creepy Chinese apothecaries, and occult bookstores along the way, amassing a ridiculous supply of herbs, incenses, candles, grimoires, and sundries. I'm technically traveling as a researcher, but for everything but the couple of hours spent actually interviewing people, I'm a jet set sorcerer.

iv. The Middle-East caught on fire, exactly as I predicted. Remember?

v. I made a few t-shirts on a print-on-demand site. The plan is to have all 72 demons of the Goetia represented on American Apparel products by fourth quarter. Go check it out.

vi. Lady Gaga has succeeded in convincing the pop culture world that being weird can be incredibly profitable, and now we have songs in the Top 40 about having sex with aliens. Well done, Illuminati. Well done.

vii. I met a young person who reminded me of what it was like to first start studying and practicing magic: challenging, strange, incredibly exciting.
For the record, it's a lot like this:
The Klaxons - Magick

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