A Little Magic

Do you ever do this—think of a specific pen or pencil or notebook and then go on a mini-rampage to track it down? It doesn’t matter that you have plenty of OTHER pens, pencils, or notebooks—you suddenly need THAT ONE. You rack your brain, make exasperated huffing sounds, and keep looking in dumb places until the needle is found in the haystack. Ah, relief. Until next time.

I recently went through this angsty exercise with my small collection of Koh-I-Noor Magic pencils. I knew I had them. Somewhere. Hadn’t used them in years, but suddenly needed to do so. In my brain, this was a Magic Pencil emergency. Hold all my calls!

After much pacing, and digging through storage containers in the basement, I found them in one of those CW Pencil Enterprises envelopes that I loved receiving back when the shop was open and their monthly subscriptions were a thing. This is one of life’s better feelings—miraculously unearthing the thing that you’ve stored so well it’s virtually unfindable.

The pencils are fat and gorgeously swirled (or glittery), with multicolor cores that cry out to be used. Which I never really did, beyond a scribble or two, until last week. Last Tuesday’s journaling prompt in The Book of Alchemy was called “Doodling In the Margins” and asked us to do just that. I kind of froze up, overthinking the simple directions, which is my standard M.O. Then I noticed those pencils lined up on my desk and felt my absurd “fear of doodling” fall away. Trees. I doodled Magic Pencil trees.

Super simple. Super fun. Kind of magical, if you define magical as “beautiful and delightful.” Just sketch and see what happens; what colors show up with each stroke, with each slight turn of the pencil.

The other day I was journaling about silence and felt the urge to draw another tree. A multi-colored pine this time.

Magic Pencils lost. Magic Pencils found. With each serendipitously colorful stroke, I’m less of a scaredy cat about my sketching abilities, less of a perfectionist. That feels like magic. The fun is in the randomness, the surprise, the whimsy. That’s a bit of magic, too.