i don't have so much time to go into this but i would just like to say that this time last year i was reading the goldbug variations and there was this long long passage about dna and i thought to myself wow what a beautiful thing human life is and how magnificent that we all are born and grow up and walk around with personalities and red/blonde/brown/black hair. forever and ever human beings have constructed these stories to explain who/what/why human beings, and in the end the truth of it is so much more beautiful than the fiction.

this time this year i've had a similar realization, hopefully one more lasting (i was only reminded of that thought because of my new thought and am sad that it didn't stick with as much glue as it deserved) about our big world and why we run around asking it to have a magic it may not have when it's such a magnificent thing. when "the thing in itself," as they say, is so amazing.

not that i'm not a fan of magic. i still keep a jar of faerie dust next to my bed, just in case. i still empty the jar out, set it next to me, and tell it, now jar, now you keep a dragon, now you keep a small boy on a swing kicking higher, now you have a star all bottled up in you, and i believe it, i love the jar and the dragon and the boy and the star. but then maybe now, at least i hope, i will stop asking a star to empty out, to kick higher, to grow wings