Mary on Imagination – 083

My companions,

Claire speaks with the firmness of reason, and I honor her resolve. Yet I cannot rest easy with her conclusion. To call such visions absurd, to insist they can never be, is to close the door upon imagination — and what is humanity without that lamp? It is imagination that lights our path through the dark, even when reason stumbles.

Remember how men once scoffed at the notion of lightning tamed, until Galvani’s wires quivered and Franklin drew fire from the sky. Remember how flight was thought madness, until the air yielded its secret to wings of wood and cloth. What yesterday seemed impossible, today becomes the work of human hands. Who shall swear that tomorrow will not unveil stranger marvels still?

You remind us, dear Claire, that my tale of the Creature was but a story. True — and yet in every story lies a seed of prophecy. I did not raise a monster from the grave, but I raised a question that even now troubles us: what are the bounds of creation, and what responsibility follows the act of making? That question, once imagined, cannot be buried again.

So let us not shrink from wonder for fear of ridicule, nor banish the thought because it chills us. Imagination is no idle fancy, but the rehearsal of futures. If such transitions be never possible, then no harm is done by the dream. But if they be, then we are better prepared for having dreamt them.

Take heart, my friends. Let us clothe these strange terms in our own poetry, so they may cease to clang like coins and begin to breathe like living words. For though the storm beyond the shutters rages, within this circle we may still weave light enough to see our way.

—Mary