Perfect Magic

There is a boundary between the worlds. I know, because I have been there. Crossed it. Danced at its edge. Sang it songs. Breathed in the fire.

Approaching magic can be a little like approaching a wild animal. Breathe too quickly, too loudly, and it coyly disappears into the mists, trailing its song behind it. But if you’re too wary, too uncertain, too unlike yourself, it vanishes entirely. Approaching magic has to be done with, well, magic. Magic attracts magic.

1 + 1 = 3.

I know all this because I have been there. The wet wild woods of the Olympic Peninsula enveloped me in its embrace, leaving me gasping with shared delight. Mountain and forest gave way to wood-strewn pebbly beach and then ocean: a vast plain of undulating waters marked by towering tree-topped sea cliffs and rocks that jutted jaggedly into the enfolding, flowing wet of the waves.

For three days we breathed. In and in. We sipped red wine and talked about everything — all that mattered — in front of the fire while the endless surf pounded outside. We walked down the beach in the cold winter wind and stood watching a pair of sea lions playing in the cove at the far end. I imagined they were lovers. We ate and laughed and played. We discovered and delighted. We drank in the essence of our creation.

Shh, I have a secret: my lover is magic.

I am being courted by magic. I first knew this as a child when I immersed myself in worlds drawn with words, my rainy autumn Saturdays spent in the company of cats and paperbacks. I have felt magic in the closing of a door, a seemingly random event that exploded my reality, knowing at once that forever the world — my world — had changed in that one moment, and that everything to follow would be different as a result. I have felt magic in my breath, my disintegration, my transcendence. I have made magic for others, long years spent creating worlds that others could walk in. Fly in. I have loved magic since I learned what breathing was. I have chosen to live in a world where it exists, and magic loves me back, just as passionately, just as perfectly.

1 + 1 = 3.