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Cover your eyes

Sometimes children cover their eyes and imagine you can't see them, looking stunned between their fingers when they see you are still looking at them.  Peekaboo!  Or they wave a wand, and like a good wizard believe they have gotten rid of you, only to find that their protective device hasn't done the trick.  In psychiatry, they call that "the zaps"!  (Actually, these are electrical, and can accompany withdrawal from meds.)  Or they hold back their tears until it is raining, so people won't think they are crying.  Sakamoto singing Sukiyaki, because the Japanese is apparently unpronounceable!
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These are perfectly understandable ruses, whether because the kid is shy or private or otherwise unwilling to invite you into their secret world.  The fact that their magic is ineffective is hardly the point--that much is always predictable.  What is most touching is the childish conceit that they have the power to change the channel or refresh the screen or turn the dial.  Of course everybody has that ability--the trouble is getting someone to realize they have this gift and that it isn't obligatory to give it away for nothing, or for anything, ever.  Would it were so easy to actually feel your power, without praying for the performance and asking for what was yours to be restored to you in full.

First is the worst and second is the best and third is the one with the wedding dress, hairy chest, treasure chest, or your best guess.  So the rhyme goes.  Envy, or its near cousin resentment, and democracy enter the mind early to save us from the shame of defeat or the humiliation of failing to appear humble or meek before you run the race and test your mettle and expose your weaknesses before a crowd of onlookers, some of whom are not cheering for you to start with and may not be full of praise for you when you lose.  Doing one's best is a good way to be, but accepting that one's best might not be good enough, or that one is still lovable in a breach, or that it is worth persevering, or that all will be well regardless of the outcome of expended effort--whether one's personal best, or best at the time, or a flat and lacking performance because one didn't feel like it or self-destructed (as when a cloud empties itself of rain) or just didn't manage to get it right that time or anytime.  It is never wise to underestimate the imbecilities of the human mind or the vagaries of the heart or the perversity of the spirit (sometimes even your own spirit) that refuses to comfort you with her breast, whether to sate your hunger or to cushion your head.
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I wonder what St. John of the Cross actually saw that made him feel he was once again lying in the arms of Mary?  It was not at all strange that a converso might need to actually feel his conversion with the joy of seeing the further shore instead of the pain of torture in the hands of the Inquisitor.  Was it daring to enjoy what was pleasant to him that ensured his beatification?  Or was it actually having eaten the seeds of a pomegranate like Persephone that gave him hope, at least some of the time, because it wouldn't really be hope if we could hold on to it forever?  One hopes he never had to cover his eyes or avert his gaze or take a glance and glance back as one does when contemplating the sun.
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Perhaps after all it was Gorgon or Minerva who turned his head, quickening his wits without turning him to stone?
A representation of the head of the gorgon, Medusa, in the Roman BathsImage: Bronze head of the goddess Sulis Minerva
Give us this day your strange magic and let us be pleasantly surprised.

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