I believe in magic. Not in the showy kind, of puffs of smoke, wizard's waving wands, nor curses that rob you of your luck, but simple small things that we take for granted everyday. You do magic too, but you might not realize it.
There are hundreds of little things...
Once in a while, when you're lonely, a friend you haven't heard from in ages might get in touch with you out of the blue.
Sometimes that souffle recipe works, the humidity and temperature, all conspire together, and you get a fluffy perfect desert, instead of a hollow eggy mess.
When you're having a bad time in your life, you might read a book that changes everything. Any sooner or later, and it wouldn't have made a difference.
The sun coming out after a long rainy day, so your walk home is dry.
It's there if you look for it. Call it coincidence, or convergence, if you will. I prefer magic.
I think creative people understand it best. There's a point when a painting, a poem, a sculpture... takes on a life of its own, when craft has reached its limit, and the piece becomes art, more than the summation of its parts. I read a story of a famous potter once. For him, the process is always the same. He can't say why some pieces turn out different than the others, why these pots end up in art galleries when others do not, but there is something special, unquantifiable, he can recognize. I think the act of pouring passion, intent, and sweat into something, can turn an ordinary thing into something more.
You're writers. You know the feeling. When a story you're writing takes you someplace unexpected, when the characters come to life in your mind, when an solution to a plot tangle comes out of nowhere. To me that's magic too.
And then there's love.
Just finding someone you can love, and be loved by, is already a miracle to me, but I'm not just talking about romantic love. Love can keep you going when there's nothing left, make things possible that you never dreamed of. Two people, five people, can do more than that many should be able to accomplish.
The heart is also perplexing thing. You can't divide it up into percentages: I love you with 15% or I love you more than the rest. Love is love, the heart is capable of an endless supply of it, and that love is always whole. That always irks the mathematician in me. I like pie charts! (Perhaps this is more in the realm of the quantum physicist) And its true, heart can break, but they keep on beating despite the pain. They're tougher than we think.
Magic / Miracles, to me they're the same thing. I live in a world full of it, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Do you see it?
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