"It's a name for a girl, it's also a thought that changed the world..."

My inner strangeness could mostly be owed to my curiosity and love for eccentricity; finding the normal in the abnormal and the extraordinary in the ordinary. A sort of leveling I suppose—an even trade of beauty and substance till you find it in all things. Not that all things are wholly good or even beautiful, but everything has a tinge of beauty in it. And it takes a carefully trained eye to find it—or maybe just a person at peace with their own mix of darkness and light. But even that is a tad too self-flattering, perhaps it merely takes a person with a vague awareness of it, or, simpler still: faith—a wishing to see it so you do. Like magic. Yes, it’s like magic—so very absurd and other that the determination of fact or fiction marks the eye of the beholder in such a permanent and powerful way that it divides, distinguishing Believer from the Non. It can be alarming at times—like a house of mirrors, distorting and reshaping things you were sure had fixed form. It can unravel a rose’s beauty till you are simply awed by the nature of its thorn and make a crippled man strong, straight and true. It leaves you appreciating different things—things you never thought mattered or were integral because you weren’t looking as close or far away as needed to see it in its element. It’s strange, alarming, overwhelmingly simple yet complex. Dirty. Clean. Regenerating. Quiet. Flexible, dangerous and lovely. It’s Grace.