Where the Magic is...

Angel,

There are many different kinds of magic. There is the kind of magic that belongs to a place. You can feel the hum of it through your feet when you stand on the earth. You can feel it swirling around you through an open window when you stand in the kitchen of a house with beautiful bones. You can feel it and know that in this place, anything might happen. Whatever ghosts or history you may have brought with you into this place, will soon be dispelled.. In this magical place, a new life is possible...

There is also the kind of magic that people possess - and the truly magical do not wield their magic. It simply spills out and follows them around as if they have filled their pockets full of sand. It will trail behind and cloud around them and change the world as they move through it - settling on everything they touch.

We have stood in such places and felt the presence of the magical people who inhabited the place. We have been lifted and seen the world through other eyes with wonder. We have layed on a bed where light bent and splinted into colours, landing on objects familiar and strange. We breathed in the swirling dust of magic and felt the hum and music. And we learned in that magical place that there is a strength in our hearts that surprised us.

Sometimes those places are lost to us and we fear that the magic is dispelled and dispersed. But magical people always seem to find magical places - an internal divining rod... There is a place of magic that feels like home though it isn't. There is a place where only happiness can bubble up - and an ease of being exactly where you are... Like all such places, there is order and there is chaos. There is smooth and rough. There is dazzling light and dark so black you cannot see. And there is great beauty.

Though you were not there, I took your hand and walked with you up the path toward the hardwood hills. We walked among the tall straight trees and through meadows, waist high in wild flowers and ferns. We stood by the ruins of the original homestead and felt the ghost of those who lived their lives there - toiling and laughing through joy and hardship. The earth holds their memory and we trod the same paths. Later, in a night so black that I could not see, I lay in a bed where we had once made love. I could feel the memory of you beside me in the dark. This place would be a place of love for us, I have no doubt. The magic is not lost to us - it has changed a little - but it would swirl around us, familiar as a scent. I will try to bring some back, filled in a pocket...

Just me.