Two Parts Magic
After a period of scattered motion, mounting pressure, and small moments that didn’t belong to any of it, a note on the necessary counterbalance of magic.
Anyone else have days or weeks that just don’t resolve into any kind of coherence? Like marbles rolling in every direction toward the edges of a table and you’re just scrambling to contain the chaos?
Yep, that’s about how it is over here this week. All the projects continue unfolding, expanding even, but that movement feels like it’s traveling on diverging roads to points east, west, north, and south, all at the same time.
Meanwhile, gardening season is arriving whether I’m ready or not, and that has also felt a little like attempting to manage multiple controlled burns. Keeping seedlings under grow-lights longer than intended thanks to this weather. Trying to figure out how hardening off is going to work this year and how to get beds in place before the day arrives. Knowing there’s compost to haul, prep still to do, sunflowers still to start. Not exactly behind, but not settled either.
In other words, it has felt, more often than not, like I’m scrambling. And yet, there have been a few small counterpoints to that energy.
One morning the weather was spectacular, and I went out into the yard and started gathering dandelions to dry for tea. It wasn’t planned, and it certainly did not put out any fires. But it was complete in itself. The dogs had a grand time rolling around and chasing each other in the grass. The sunlight was good. It felt like time spent for the sake of it. It did not need to justify itself, or lead anywhere in particular.
“In the midst of too much, too fast, these kinds of experiences slow things down. They add in quality without regard for quantity. They turn what seems reasonable on its head and rely instead on something closer to instinct, or even a kind of deliberate absurdity.”
Later in the week, I brought a small plant to a friend. Years ago, we bought one together and split it into two (both dubbed “Larry”) to use in a kind of creative-magic ritual. Mine eventually grew large enough that this year I had to break it apart again, starting two new plants from it. This was an offshoot of one of those, passed back the other way. Son of Larry, delivered.
These moments don’t organize the past couple weeks into anything remotely coherent. I still feel like one person attempting to wrangle a forest fire.
They do something else, however. It’s difficult to name, because whatever that something is, it doesn’t follow the usual rules of logic or order. It doesn’t respond to planning, sequencing, effort, or the laws of physics in any predictable way. It operates more like a kind of quiet magic.
Not enough time or energy? Simple! Spend several hours sitting in the grass with dogs. Pause your productivity and populate the world with more trailing Larry plants.
In the midst of too much, too fast, these kinds of experiences slow things down. They add in quality without regard for quantity. They turn what seems reasonable on its head and rely instead on something closer to instinct, or even a kind of deliberate absurdity.
They also remind me that in the middle of chaos, there’s still a thread.Its trajectory just isn’t always visible from ground level, amid all the flaming trees. Life and studio work are still unfolding, just not in the linear way I keep expecting.
No surprise—that seems to be the theme that keeps showing up these days.
