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Monday 6.6.05: Do You Have a Magic Place?
The writer Paul Bowles was immediately attracted to north Africa and wound up settling in Morocco, to write under its spell.
Straightway I felt a great excitement; much excited; it was as if some interior mechanism had been set in motion by the sight of the approaching land. Always without formulating the concept, I had based my sense of being in the world partly on an unreasoned conviction that certain areas of the earth's surface contained more magic that others. Had anyone asked me what I meant by magic, I would probably have defined the word by calling it a secret connection between the world of nature and the consciousness of man, a hidden but direct passage which bypassed the mind...
Like any Romantic, I had always been vaguely certain that sometime during my life I should come into a magic place which in disclosing its secrets would give me wisdom and ecstasy -- perhaps even death... [quoted by Hibbard, from Bowles autobiography Without Stopping]
Temptation: run off to Morocco and soak up some magic.
But wait.
Isn't the sense of magic personal? Haven't we all found our own places that set off vibrations?
Don't you have places that stick in your mind? Places that felt right - like you belonged there - and yet had an emotional charge, where you were also in touch with something new and different?
Think about it, but not too hard. Could be as big as a country or as small as a room. There are lots of places that should have been magic, but weren't. What you decide are the truly magic places in your life might surprise you.
Tell me.
NOTES
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