FOR THE HARVEST
FULL MOON
Do I believe in magic? Yes. I always have. I see real magic every day in my life, in my love, and in the agonizing lessons I have parlayed into art. Years ago, my psyche found its most dangerous, comforting mirror in a series called The Magicians. Quentin Coldwater was my quintessential reflection: a deeply sad protagonist who was flawed, heartbreaking, and suicidal. He was obsessed with the unseen. He desperately wanted to enter a hidden world of magic, leaving behind his one anchor—his angry, beautiful best friend with the raspy voice. When he got into the magical academy and she didn't, it triggered their inevitable, agonizing separation.
Quentin spent his entire existence running both away from his feelings and directly into them. He was a good friend, a bad friend, and ultimately, a profoundly broken friend.
I live with a Ninth House Moon that directly opposes my Second House Sun. This axis is the ultimate, defining struggle of my life. The Ninth House is the realm of the horizon, the belief system, and the search for cosmic meaning. With my Moon here, my emotional safety is tethered to the infinite. I need to believe in magic just to breathe. But my Sun sits directly opposite in the Second House—the house of tangible reality, concrete resources, and material self-worth. My Sun demands that I build something solid on the earth, while my Moon demands that I escape into the clouds.
For years, I used my belief in magic exactly the way Quentin did: as a beautiful, tragic shield against my own emotional tide. When the weight of my unsaid emotions and my fears of unworthiness became too heavy, my Ninth House Moon would look out the window and try to fly away. I romanticized my sadness, transforming my isolation into a poetic quest for a higher meaning that didn't exist in the room. I was running away from the stark reality of my physical life, using spiritual concepts and esoteric texts as a distraction so I didn't have to face the wreckage on my own floor. I am done hiding behind the narrative of a TV magician to justify my own emotional escapism.
Quentin’s ultimate tragedy was that he thought magic would finally cure his broken heart. It didn't. When he finally dies, sacrificing himself to save the universe, he enters the underworld and watches his friends mourn him from afar. He turns to the guide and asks the question that has haunted the innermost corners of my own mind: “Did I do something brave, or did I finally just find a way to kill myself?”
That is the question I am forcing myself to answer in this room. Has my obsession with the unseen, my hoarding of histories, and my perpetual waiting for the perfect creative wave been an act of artistic patience—or has it just been a slow, poetic suicide of my own potential?
Quentin didn't save the world with a grand, cosmic spell. He saved it using the minor magic. The basic, physical card tricks he spent years practicing alone in his room. That is the verdict of my Second House Sun. True magic is not an escape hatch out of the body or a portal to a safer dimension. It is the raw, terrifying responsibility of holding the physical matter right in front of you and forcing it to bend to your will.
My Ninth House Moon does not need to destroy my Second House Sun. I am anchoring the magic directly into the stone walls of my reality. I am opening my clenched hands and allowing my belief in the unseen to fuel the actual, material films I shoot, the photos I take, and the prose I write. The magic isn't out there on the horizon, waiting to rescue me from my history. The magic is the unshakeable trust that I can sit in my own room, look out the window into absolute acceptance, and know that my unedited, physical presence is the only universe I ever needed to save.
That is the question I am forcing myself to answer in this room. Has my obsession with the unseen, my hoarding of histories, and my perpetual waiting for the perfect creative wave been an act of artistic patience—or has it just been a slow, poetic suicide of my own potential?
Quentin didn't save the world with a grand, cosmic spell. He saved it using the minor magic. The basic, physical card tricks he spent years practicing alone in his room. That is the verdict of my Second House Sun. True magic is not an escape hatch out of the body or a portal to a safer dimension. It is the raw, terrifying responsibility of holding the physical matter right in front of you and forcing it to bend to your will.
My Ninth House Moon does not need to destroy my Second House Sun. I am anchoring the magic directly into the stone walls of my reality. I am opening my clenched hands and allowing my belief in the unseen to fuel the actual, material films I shoot, the photos I take, and the prose I write. The magic isn't out there on the horizon, waiting to rescue me from my history. The magic is the unshakeable trust that I can sit in my own room, look out the window into absolute acceptance, and know that my unedited, physical presence is the only universe I ever needed to save.