Sunday, November 16, 2008

What is a Renaissance Faerie you ask?

We hear quite a bit of talk of Renaissance men and women. For instance, Barack Obama strikes my little elven heart as a Renaissance man. As does Elton John. Bono. And even Charlton Heston. They enjoy success in discernible, worldly feats and typically across a broad range of endeavors. We all know, for example, Mr. Heston was a mighty actor, and one helluva shot with a high powered rifle, but perhaps you didn't know he also was a little whiz in the kitchen. He was well know in tighter circles for throwing long European style lunches in which he adorned guests with everything from delicate and very original finger foods, to his unforgiving shellfish and invariably finishing the meal with his infamous Baked Alaskan. Or Bono, the man who can shame angels with his voice (hence the his original name "Vox Bono" or good voice in Latin) but did you also know he loves watercolors? Or that he can basically drink 12 hours straight with little or no effect? These are Renaissance men. A Renaissance man or woman might speak two languages, though one is purely decorative.


So in light of these attributes, what then is a Renaissance faerie?

We are small in size but huge in sight. We can see and move everywhere. Like with most beings, our biggest strength is also our Achilles heal. We sense and feel almost everything. When we rejoice, it is at great scale, and when we mourn it is deeply and often. And almost with a tinge of regret, we cannot spend countless hours numbing our minds watching reality TV, major or minor sporting events, blogging, im'ing, facebooking or whatever other contemporary placebo is au currant. Our mandate is to not only live but to coax life out of others, those hopelessly asleep to our world's great possibilities.

You've heard the expression "faerie or pixie dust" undoubtedly. It is that tiny piece of magic that we use to bring delight into every day life. It is that dash of color that we spread across another's smile to make sure it doesn't go unnoticed or that piece of calm that unexpectedly arrives with a clean breath of wind in tow. Or the bird that flutters by your windowsill and sits gazing at you with eyes keener and more knowing than your 6th grade science teacher. This is the faerie dust, the tiny myths that quietly explode around us everyday, moving through each hour of the day like this massive kinetic chain reaction with the underlying thunderous soundtrack removed but felt all the same. It's what we think makes all this worth it, when the power goes out, the computer screens fade and the TV screens twitch in the final throws of electronic death. These myths stay with you well past everything else's due date.


But as Renaissance faeries, we don't have wings or live in trees, we walk walk walk the earth.

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