I want to tell you a story.
When I was a senior in high school, I took a ceramics class with a couple of my friends. It was a third period class, early in the day, and afterward we would all have to go our separate ways again to our fourth period classes. Usually, one of these friends would walk with me partway before our paths split.
One day, this friend—who had a sometimes unusual, but always entertaining, sense of humor—was once again poking fun at my anxious hurry to get to class on time. As we parted ways, he called after me: “Hurry to class, and watch out for the giant…purple…giraffe behind you.”
It was definitely one of his weirder comments, one of those times when I just had no idea how to respond to him, so I brushed it off with a confused, “Yeah, okay, thanks!” before continuing on.
But as I walked to class, I had an idea. For a much-needed stretching of the “imagination muscle” (or brain, whatever), I decided to picture a purple, baby giraffe walking behind me on the way to class. I smiled secretly to myself as it followed me across campus. I imagined it so clearly, I could swear I felt it trailing behind me as I walked up the ramp and through the door to my next class; in my mind’s eye, I could see it clomping after me down the aisle of desks like a lost puppy. It was my boost of serotonin for the day; I loved my new giant, purple giraffe friend.
When I reached my desk at the front of the room, and began to shrug out of my backpack, I heard one of the girls behind me gasp.
“Oh my god, is that a giraffe?”
I whirled, no doubt looking like a mad woman with my eyes wide and my mouth twisted with a suppressed cry of shock, expecting to see my entire class gazing up in awe at a purple giraffe standing in the middle of the room—and instead saw the tiny, glazed, ceramic giraffe sitting on the desk behind me.
You see, one of the boys from my ceramics class also had fourth period with me, and had just retrieved one of his projects from the kiln.
So far, the “giraffe incident” has been the best coincidence I have ever experienced in my entire life, and is probably the best personal story I have to tell.
I’m not sure how many people I’ve told that story to, if I’ve even told anyone at all before now—but I know I would have mentioned a few more details in person. Like how I’m convinced I had a tiny, but legitimate, heart attack right before I turned around. Or how I later assumed that my friend must have seen the giraffe as we were exiting class, and that’s what put the idea in his head. Or that, for the tiniest fraction of a second, I thought I had literally performed magic.
But I don’t think I have told anybody this:
In the same split-second I believed, without a doubt, in magic, I felt the entire universe collapse inward around me and then expand again, like it was simultaneously microscopic and immense, and I was at its center; I thought to myself, I can do anything; this changes everything. And I was all at once so very powerful, and so very scared of what having that power meant.
That fraction of a second is one of the most beautiful moments of my life.
I’m telling you this story because, as I was reliving that memory this morning, I realized something. That feeling, that the universe is both microscopic and immense, the power of being able to do anything, and knowing the great amount of responsibility that comes with it—that feeling comes to me (in significantly smaller doses, of course) whenever I’m creating. Whenever I step into my story, or think about my characters, or tweak a plot outline. That feeling is there, coursing through my body like an electric current, every time I write. Because, on a smaller scale, it is magic. It is creating something from nothing; it is collapsing the wider universe into a smaller, more manageable size; and it’s taking something small—like a simple feeling or a picture in my head—and making it immense.
And it is awesome. It is so awesome, and so fulfilling, and is yet another reason why I write. Another reason why I do this, and why I wouldn’t want to do anything else.
Night Owls, tell me about your magic. When does it hit you the most? When do you first remember feeling it?