ONE DAY, IF I’M LUCKY

One day, if I’m lucky, all my friends will be gone. 

Wait...what am I saying? Would that really be so lucky? Sure, I'd have lived the longest life, but…

I reflect on this now and then, like on a sultry summer night like this when I’m alone, deep in thought, sipping a nice tequila on the deck. Maybe it’s the booze, but in such moments I often yearn for that sweet, simple connection: calling to chat with a dear old friend. So I call. Usually, they answer.

             I hope there’s room left in the 
             loneliness for joy and gratitude.

Those chats nourish me, mind and spirit. They reaffirm who I’ve been, who I am, how lucky I am to be both alive and befriended so well. They also make quite clear how empty the former would be without the latter.

How fortunate I am to still have such friends!

But if I were indeed to be the last, I hope missing my old pals wouldn’t hurt too much. That there’s room left in the loneliness for joy and gratitude. That remem-
bering might feel just a bit like calling one of them from my deck. 

               

Living friends or not, I hope I’ll have kindled the kind of relationship with the rest of my world where that affection, too, might sustain me. That, for one thing, my companionship with Nature, with all her familiar ways, might feel like being with an old friend. Someone who cares, who shares their wisdom with me, who’s got my back. And, dare I wish it, laughs at my jokes.

HOCUS FOCUS – The Utter Reality of Magic

Now and then something happens in one’s life whose elegance, whose grace, whose aura just can’t be explained. It excedes the art of any individual; it’s more than matter, scale or place. 

You may think you can describe it, but often the emotional impact leaves you speechless but for a gasp or a breathy “Wow!” You end up apologizing: You had 
to be there. 

IMAGE: Greg Rakozy / Unsplash

Some folks are uncomfortable when they can’t quantify or explain things, but I rather like it. For one thing, it keeps me humble, reminding me just how limited even a writer’s vocabulary is—not to mention how infinitesimal my place in the Scheme of Things. 

And I’m more than okay with what turns out to be both the simplest and most impenetrable description of such awe: It’s magic.

        Magic, you see, is not just a quality 
        or an emotional state; it’s a connection.

A CONNECTION
Of course, that declaration bothers folks whose education, culture and world view all revolve around the tangible. Who believe everything needs a reason, and that if you can’t come up with one you’re either a brick short of a load or just not trying hard enough. 

PHOTO: Paramount Pictures / CBS

Well, there’s the catch. Some things, no matter how hard you try, you simply can’t make happen. Sometimes you have to stop trying altogether and let them happen. It’s that way for magic, and that, for many, is very hard indeed.

But that’s exactly where magic is brewed. In that moment when one abandons logic and opens oneself, body and soul, to wonder.

IMAGE: No attribution found

Magic, you see, is not just a quality or an emotional state; it’s a connection. It lies not just in the beguiling thing or event. But, like an electrical circuit, unless the power has someplace to go, it remains mere potential. Until, that is, you emanate your intention, that mystical signal that you are that place. 

    It’s what makes the Mona Lisa 
    seem illuminated from within.

CASES IN POINT
The kind of awe sparked by that cause-and-effect connection may come from something very big or very small, quite obvious or extremely subtle. Let me give you some examples of magic—a couple of them very personal:

• Magic is what makes Lionel Messi better than anyone in futbol (soccer). 

• 

  PHOTO: Kriangkrai Thitimakorn

  It’s what makes Starry Night’s sky-
  scape swirl and the Mona Lisa seem illuminated from within.
• It’s the spectacle of 10,000 herring surging back and forth as one.  
• It’s what lends the Taj Mahal its celebrated powers of seduction. 
• It’s why a 50-foot gray whale cow 
  swims under her 20-foot calf, lifts and carries it to my extended hand.

BELIEVE  
Magic is Creation’s sleight of hand. You’ll never figure out how it’s done. You can’t measure it. You can neither time it nor tame it. Most often you can’t even describe it.

Nonetheless, please believe in magic. It lives not just in exotic places; it’s present all around you and even in you. The key is to realize that looking for it usually fails. It will find you if you let it.

ILLUSTRATION: Matthew Burgess and Doug Salati

        "Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it." – ROUALD DAHL

IN A NEW LIGHT – Attached to the Moon

(With August nibbling away at our recent full moon (the buck moon,* July 29) I offer this reflection on the storied orb. May it move you to get outdoors and experience the wonder in a new light. By the way, this month's full moon, on August 29, will be a Sturgeon Moon.**)

Sun shadows fall heavy on the earth. Stark, stretched, hard-edged forms, so common we barely notice their attachment any more.

Moon, though, lays down her strokes gently, subtle shades of black 

on black. Now we feel the attachment more than know it.

* Buck Moon is the traditional name for the full moon that happens in July, referring to the time of year when male deer grow new antlers. 

** A Sturgeon Moon is a full moon occurring in August, named for the large lake sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, which indigenous peoples found easiest to catch these late-summer days.