Because I like to ascribe meaning to all the doings of birds, I’m counting this secret clutch of chicken eggs I just discovered as a powerful omen of good magic afoot.
It’s the time of year for magic (if there is a time). The harsh cries of crows in the pine boughs weave a rough incantation. The air is tinged with smoke and leaf-mould. I tossed and turned last night, jolted upright over and over again by phrases–not complete sentences even–just snips and threads–of a story insisting on appearing. A story of sisters, and magic.
I’m sure it was inspired in large part by watching Practical Magic for the first time a couple of days ago. Now I need to read the novel. The story is gorgeously magical, irreverently and wildly and joyfully so. Sometimes darkly. Always powerfully. It’s a kind of magic I think we could all use. But there’s something very upper-crust about that magic, too–about women in lovely clothes inhabiting huge houses bursting with everything anyone could possibly want or imagine.
I love that kind of magic, but I want the blue-collar magic, too–the working-class, trailer-park magic. The magic that pools in the hollows of Appalachian valleys where the sun only shines at midday. So there is a story now clamoring at my thoughts, coloring the way I see the woods today from the inside out.
Tell me about your magic. What kind do you need?
Brenna Layne 
I hear you, sister! I am clamouring for the magic of right livelihood — what it means for me and how to get there (efficiently, I hope).
That is a wondrous phrase–“the magic of right livelihood.” There’s got to be some magic in those words alone. I am cheering you on, and clamoring for that alongside you. Here’s to a magical efficiency!
Wait. First, I love this. Second, YOU HADN’T EVER SEEN PRACTICAL MAGIC?!
Strange but true. My film education has been lamentably spotty.
“The magic that pools in the hollows of Appalachian valleys where the sun only shines at midday.” What beautiful language – I want to just read and read this, wrap it around myself like a warm blanket…..
For me the best magic is The Magic of Found Things. Whether it’s a book that sort of jumps off the shelf at me and proves to be the very thing I needed to read at that moment, or the finding of a hawk feather along a path on a glorious Fall Equinox morning when there was a need not quite articulated but seemingly answered by that finding.
Thanks, Peggy! I hold that image in my mind whenever I walk in the woods. I love what you say about The Magic of Found Things–beautiful. I found a hawk’s feather this morning and thought of you.