Working on the premise that everyone has magic ... what's your own magic? Can you define it?

-- Catherine (catherine@cmjcom.com), November 18, 1999

Answers

Eagerness.

Eagerness is my magic, my bodyguard, my failing. I am so clumsily overeager that people too often have to smile and forgive my faults...

Yet I consider my magic a curse rather than a blessing. As nearly everyone expects the eagerness to be just a preface to the real treat, be it loyalty, love or research... It is not. It is everything I am...

-- Aet Tunissoo (tonissoo@ra.gov.ee), November 18, 1999.

My magic is being able to fade into the background, to be unnoticed, and just *observe* people and things.

-- Tree (pmanzella@hotmail.com), November 18, 1999.

A few things come to mind, which makes me think I don't have a good grip on it, but I'm in that rambling-all-over-the-map kind of place today, so here I go anyway.

Resilient courageousness - I seem to keep coming back to face [difficult] things, to embrace them for healing and growth.

Accepting what is, with loving-kindness.

And these days I feel the stirrings of a deep joyfulness and celebration. I think it will take a while for that to be a part of my magic, though.

Shimon

-- Shimon Walner (usemyfirstname@technologist.com), November 18, 1999.

Paying close attention to people or things.

-- Chris (chris@clatimer.freeserve.co.uk), November 18, 1999.

Magic - the use of charms to contol events; the art of illusion. What's my charm, then? How do I spin the everyday into gold? I have no clue. The thing I like most about myself is that I try - I wade in, I worry a problem like a dog with a bone, I wrestle it into submission - I fall back and pant and get revived and try again. I slog, I plod - I don't give up until I'm damn good and ready. Doesn't feel very magical, though.

-- Catherine (hinesc@mindspring.com), November 18, 1999.

~AWARENESS~Being able to go beyond the everyday dribble.The ability to survive based on my own personal belief system set up by that very awareness, that this is not all that is and everything is possible.I am blessed with the ability to see through the eyes of an artist,hear with the ears of a musician,smell with the scent of a coonhound,play guitar with the hands of my ancestors,and speak with the honesty of a child.On a heightened day I travel worlds beyond this one and all those senses merge into one hell of a spiritual experience. Over all, "MAGIC is my MAGIC!"

-- Donna Carter (DeeJaye53@hotmail.com), November 18, 1999.

-- hunger for knowledge.

an extreme curiousity, to learn, to meet, to understand something other than the norm. this leads to a dedication, motivation.

-- a grasp on the "inner child".

the curiousity is, i've been told, almost child-like at the same time. i've also been told that because of it, it's hard to refuse me anything and hard to despise me for it. =)

-- El (eparkins@mail.coin.missouri.edu), November 18, 1999.

The ability when I write -- when I *really* write instead of jot -- to tune in to something bigger. Witness last night's magic: I was really pushing, pulling, coaxing, stroking it ... waiting ... trying ... to say something worthwhile and wah la! Synchronicity.

If that ain't magic, I don't know what is.

Nancy

-- Nancy Birnes (turret@mediaone.net), November 18, 1999.

My magic, I think, is comfort. I can sit quietly with those in pain. I know if someone needs an old soft blanket, a dirty joke, or a listening ear. I know how to change the feel of a sad or angry room. My spells are filled with candles, wind, cats, strong coffee, homemade soups, books and cinnamon. They are dusty but strong old spells, and I hear them weaved into Catherine's writings and that makes me smile. I wish at times I had a wild, intense magic! I can't sing or dance, and I don't turn mens heads when I walk down the street...but thats okay. I think my magic element is earth.

-- Eloise (tiss57@hotmail.com), November 18, 1999.

My magic/gift is being able to see people for who they really are, not how they present themselves. Being given insights and glimpses of someone's innermost parts.... To be able to unravel someone's puzzles and subsequently feel deep empathy for the person who is underneath it all...

-- special k (specialk@asarian-host.org), November 19, 1999.

Creation is my magic. Whether the fathering of children to imagining worlds, creation is king.

Al, who is alive and well and at Nova Notes.

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), November 19, 1999.

i've been thinking about this, over and over again, since you posted the questions. i can't see my magic. i have this deeprooted disbelief that it exists. sure, there are moments when i feel like the queen of the world, spinning around, stirring people up with crazy ideas and open eyes.

maybe it's just that i'm too dazzled by the magic of others, the magic all around me.

-- heyoka (katie@heyoka.com), November 19, 1999.

My magic is a secret world I spin around myself. Gossamer silk that encloses a places, captures many ideas, impassions creativity and lets me be who I am outside the give and take of ordinary life. Secret thoughts, secret visits, secret writing...even a very few secret people. If everything we have is an open book, then there is no place to retire to when the weight of the day grows too heavy. My secret world is also my Achilles heel, because when things go wrong within this private place I can't tell anyone, can't even express my distress to those around me. Like most magic, secrets cut both ways.

-- Michele (michele@excerpta.org), November 19, 1999.

Occasionally (far from usually), I just... *shine*. People are attracted to me on sight. Sometimes sexually, more often just curious to know me better. But it's not a glow, or a sparkle - we're talking 200W incandescent lightbulb here. S'been a curse as often as a blessing. And it only happens occasionally. I think it's related to the manic part of my SADD, though not directly related. Anyway.

-- marianne aldrich (marseillaise@hotmail.com), November 20, 1999.

Heyoka said: "maybe it's just that i'm too dazzled by the magic of others, the magic all around me."

But I say, that IS your magic, Heyoka! That you are AWARE of all that beauty, grandeur, quiet simplicity, and so forth! THIS is what I claim too, as my magic. The awareness of the magic, both within those private moments with self, when I am simply awed for beauty's sake, and in communion with others. That I can capture just a small part of this in my creations gives me joy.

-- Joan Lansberry (gallae@casagrande.com), November 21, 1999.