Nonfiction, Memoir, and (mostly) Fabulist Fiction
“Children see magic because they look for it.” – Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Friend
When do we, as adults, lose our sense of magic in the world? When do we cease believing that the second star to the right will take us to Neverland? What makes us surrender the power to see magic in a rainbow, the arc of a fish as it rises from the water, the simple beauty of morning sunlight on a spiderweb, or the first snowflake?
Are we afraid of ridicule? Has being “grown up”–in truth, not a role I’ve ever aspired to in the usual sense–come to mean that we should look at the stars and remain unmoved? Are we so fearful of being viewed as someone different, eccentric, quirky? (Never mind that far too many of us walk around every day with an electronic bug in our ear, talking to thin air. That’s not strange at all … now that it’s commonplace.)
Writers can’t afford to relinquish the hold magic has in our lives. It’s where the words come from: PFM, Pure Fucking Magic. It gives us the what ifs and how comes, the why and wherefores and what abouts. Magic helps us to dream.
