Remembering the Magic

Autumn has arrived complete with blazing orange leaves and sharp cold and even the occasional blue sky.  I like it. The contrast is breathtaking. It's not at that place where you curse when you touch a metal object with your bare skin or scrunch up your toes in your boots to keep the blood from freezing, but it's slowly getting there.  Winter is always on the horizon.

I loved Halloween as a kid, and a few days later, if you were in the UK, Guy Fawkes night. In my memories the nights were brisk with cold, dark with a scattering of stars and our breath suspended in the air while the darkness became illuminated by fireworks and bonfires.

One of my earliest memories, harks back to when I was about three years old, sitting on a step in the back garden of the old tenement flats where we lived, with Slow Sandra, a little girl my own age who was mentally impaired. I didn't know it at the time, though.  We rode tricycles together and played with dolls. Then I grew up while she stayed a child.  Slow Sandra had a much older brother who would set off fireworks for us to watch while we sat in our winter coats and clapped.

Nowadays, all I clap for is people falling over on ice and when someone offers to refill my wine glass.  Where is the magic now? Do we just grow up, grow old and nothing is special any more?

I spent some time in the desert, fairly recently. The wonder of the colours, the heat, the vast, open expanse of hot, sandy nothing and the clear blue skies, made me feel alive. It made me remember the magic and I realized that it is, in fact, still present, you just have to know where YOUR magic lies.

And that's the corniest thing I've said in a long time.