a magic plot

Everyone should have a magic plot.

Everyone should have a magic plot, one in which are feed a couple of unknowns and there suddenly before you are a few mysteries of life you have longed for, say the never-before-measured space between two molecules, or equations for planetary orbits, or the distance between two moles on your lover's back and all of these come breaking suddenly to the surface and are revealed to you, and if oh, for ever so briefly, these unknowns reveal themselves like the flash of a hummingbird past the window, the narrow dive of a Cooper's Hawk, or a glimpse of Gemini on a clear February night, then you will quietly say to yourself, How could I have not noticed them before?

But before, before this day, you did not have a magic plot.

Yes, everyone should have a magic plot, whereby one inputs two or three as yet unsolved questions and there, yes there in the upper right-hand quadrant where the lines intersect are your children, and they are smiling, not because the day is sunny, which it is, but because you have arrived, just as you said you would, and bearing presents which you have not said that you would, but they know you well and have come to expect such things as surprises wrapped in love and brown paper and soon, very soon everyone will be playing in the sand and the sea and someone will be heard to say, Now, isn't this a grand occasion?

Everyone should have a magic plot, re-discovered after many years in storage, and having been lifted again into the light of day reveals the smell of peppers roasting, or of a spongy, spring loam turned before most have realized that yes, yes, yes spring is almost here.

Everyone should have a magic plot. One that tells here! is where the snow falls, and here! it is but ice, and then again here! is where the two mix and the curve ahead, yes this one, this curve, this life, this love that you are moving toward should not be taken lightly, so brake gently into the fog but do not come to a complete stop for there is nothing so sad as the mist which never touches the dew.

Everyone should have a magic plot. A round one with funny swiggles that must be explained in great detail, the story teased slowly from the data, and turning this plot in every possible direction, you discover again, with great certainy, more than is generally possible in the hard realm that your life mostly treads is that the most significant finding you've been able to conclude in all your years of probing is that love is laughter drawn through the lens of a microscope.

But before, before this day, you did not have a magic plot. And now that you do have one, you will carry it in your pocket, close enough so that you can feel it through your clothes when you walk, and fearful of showing it to anyone, to everyone, but hoping the chance arises to do so, and then you will produce the magic plot with a great flourish and explain it in great detail to all who will listen, even complete strangers who view you skeptically, until the plot becomes soiled and a bit ragged at the edges from all the viewings and you will tell everyone, Here. Look here. A magic plot.

Sources:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 2007, Miramax Films. directed by Julian Schnabel.

Sangster, W.E., and E. Jagler, 1985: The (7WG,8WT) Magic Chart. CR Technical Attachment 85-1, DOC/NOAA/NWS Central Region, Kansas City, MO, 5pp.