Enchantment Is Here
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Autotelic, (n, adj.) A person who is motivated by the deeper rewards of creativity, immersion, and flow.
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Facts are odd things: They so often don’t work within a narrative, and things need to work, to move. A fact [facts] before the eyes of a writer begin to look better, a bit more agile if they are viewed as if they were a friend to whom one is beginning to become attracted. Heights and widths and intentions and colors change. A love develops. So does a style.
~ Tennessee Williams
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An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed by beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person. Enchantment may be a state of rapture and ecstasy in which the soul comes to the foreground, and the literal concerns of survival and daily preoccupation at least momentarily fade into the background.
The soul has an absolute, unforgiving need for regular excursions into enchantment. It requires them like the body needs food and the mind needs thought. Yet our culture often takes pride in disproving and exploding the sources of enchantment, explaining away one mystery after another and overturning precious shrines, dissolving the family farm that has…
