The Time of Your Life
Day 3: One Month of Magic
Yesterday my family and I were driving on vacation, and I was listening to Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day as I watched the sun glint through the pines. As Billy Joel sang, “For what it’s worth it was worth all the while,” I thought, this is it, right here, this is the magic. These tiny moments. When you are staring out the window, watching life pass by, thinking about how blessed you are.
To invoke magic you often need to access a time where things felt magical.
Prewriting: Listen to Good Riddance (below)—once watching the video and another time with your eyes closed. As you close your eyes, allow yourself to be guided by the lyrics. Think about all the times you had the time of your life.
Prompt: Write about a magical time in your life. It could be yesterday or two years ago. Include what you saw, smelled, tasted, touched, heard. Where was the magic present? Can you slow down that moment?
Announcement: While I did have this magical moment, I have also been very sick and fighting a multiple-day fever while traveling in two different locations. I will be pausing 7/4-7/7 to try and recover. I will add a prompt about what during the meantime. Happy writing.
One Month of Magic guidelines:
For the month of July, post a daily prompt to inspire magical thinking.
Read and respond to the prompt by writing for seven, seventeen, or seventy-seven minutes—whatever you like—exploring what it stirs inside you. That’s it. It’s easy and breezy and designed to make you consider things deeper to search for sparkle.
After you write, post your response in the comments section of that day's post (only available to paid subscribers). Offer feedback to at least two people. Celebrate and clarify what is magical about one another’s work. How it deepened your own awareness and awe.
Posts will NOT be emailed—don’t want to spam people—but they will be posted on chat. So, if you want a daily magical ping, turn the chat feature and notifications on. You can find how in your settings.
You say "magic," and I'm back in Egypt like it was this morning.
--
July 2017
That beige of sand everywhere.
Palm trees. Dates. Guavas. Peeling
grape leaves off each other for mahshi.
--
Heat, the incredible heat, sweat
the only story you can tell, the only story
anyone will believe. The blessed coolness of
--
tile mosque floors. Red Ahmad tea with
whole sprays of mint sticking out. Lines
curving into domes, minarets, letters: the
--
best of these is ع, the one I can’t pronounce,
the one beginning my best friend’s name.
She who makes loneliness impossible.
--
Lions guarding a Nile bridge. Diving in
knowing crocodiles are kept above the dam.
Panicking when fear, deeper than knowledge,
--
surfaces. Drying in minutes in Saharan sun.
Lanterns in Khan el-Khalili bazaar. Blue scarab
bracelet. An Uber driver flossing his teeth with a 20-pound note.
--
The fine night air, café tables embraced
by friends’ faces. No Egyptian has ever
called someone "stranger."
--
The impossible lime of molokhia soup.
The impossible blue of the Sea.
The impossible layering of history upon history.
And him.
My just-turned-ten-year-old niece thinks I hung the moon. She always has. I love her siblings in different ways, but this is the way I love her. It's a burden. It's unimaginably beautiful. To find her crying because her older sister hurt her feelings, and to sit with her and listen to her and to let her words--"I'm the one in the family who is least loved"--tear at my soul. Because I felt like that when I was a child. To be told she'd been counting the days until my visit. She apologized for letting me down when the waterpark we were planning to go to closed for the day due to 30 mph winds. She is magic--but every single poem I've written about her has fallen flat