My 2020 Year in Books

AngelaLeave a comment

Goodbye, adios, 再见, 2020! As we enter 2021, I’m fully aware that there are things that I cannot change. The Great Mask-Wearing Debacle rages on (despite the science that has proven again and again that masks! stop! the! spread! of! COVID-19!). The longest, most painful transition of power between US presidents ever, with every person political or otherwise calling foul on some front. The ever-dividing rift between Democrats and Republicans, worsened by Trump’s careless tweets and mishandling of nearly every issue under the sun (BLM, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, just to name a few).

But there are things that I am in control of. I can start new crafts. I can write more poems and maybe take a swing at getting into an MFA program again. I can exercise more and stretch often. I can learn to do more than just basic chord strums on the ukulele. I didn’t quite hit my reading goal for last year (40 books), but I can try to get there this year. I can continue to hope that things will heal and that our current state of events will get better. And I’m re-re-resurrecting this blog! Maybe this will be my only post of the year, maybe I’ll get into a new rhythm of posts, but either way, I’m here now!

For my first (and maybe only) post of 2020, I’m going to recount the books I have read in the past year, making special note of my top ten:

  1. N0S4A2- Joe Hill
  2. Where the Crawdads Sing- Delia Owens; Beautiful beautiful. Chances are you’ve heard of this one. This book has been a top book club book since it was released in 2018, and I had to wait over a month to get off my library’s waitlist. It’s worth the hype. Kya, the Marsh Girl, learns to fend for herself in the swamp, eventually overcoming the odds and prejudices people have of her. This book is gentle and rugged in all the right ways. As a book that so intimately deals with instinct and nature, it also reveals the tenderness and ruthlessness of the human spirit. So many lyrical lines that ring through the reader like bird song.
  3. Exhalation- Ted Chiang
  4. Americanah- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
  5. The Disappearing Spoon- Sam Kean
  6. Dune- Frank Herbert
  7. A Man Called Ove- Frederik Backman; For those who know me, it’s no surprise that the Backman book I read this year made it on my top ten. Beartown (also by him) is one of my favorite books ever. A Man Called Ove is funnier, but an emotional rollercoaster nonetheless. If ever there is a time where you forget that people can be kind: read a Backman book. Heart-swelling and eye-watering.
  8. The Glass Hotel- Emily St. John Mandel; Perhaps also skewed by my love for Station Eleven, this book by Mandel is another top pick for 2020. Mandel is a fantastic author. She pulls characters and timelines together with the strategy of a chess player but the deftness of a dancer. This story follows a Ponzi scheme and all the lives that topple as the scheme falls apart. The characters imagine a counterlife, how things would be different if they had made different choices. 2020 was a year of what-ifs, and this book embodies that feeling of haunted uncertainty.
  9. Before the Devil Breaks You- Libba Bray
  10. Run Away- Harlan Coben; Reflecting back on this book now, I’m reminded of how absolutely insane it is. Simon Greene’s daughter Paige is a drug addict. She’s homeless. She’s missing. Simon goes to incredible lengths to figure out what happened to her and bring her home safely. This novel moves at breakneck speed, so fast you can’t even question what you’ve read. I was wholly invested in Simon’s quest and the larger web of secrets he stumbles into. This is an action-centric thriller that builds and builds and builds and is almost impossible to put down.
  11. The Happy Prince and Other Tales- Oscar Wilde
  12. The Trials of Apollo- Rick Riordan
  13. The Sign of Four- Arthur Conan Doyle
  14. The Years of the Forest- Helen Hoover; This is a memoir about Hoover’s years living in Northern Minnesota. I’ve never read anything like this, and I’ve never really imagined what it would be like to live almost entirely self-sufficiently, secluded from everybody else. Spoiler alert: it ain’t easy. What I like most about this book is that it shows a way that people can live in harmony with nature. We can’t all go to the same lengths as Hoover and her husband, but we can make an effort to be conscious about our actions and how they impact the world around us. Is our right to the Earth any greater than the creatures around us?
  15. The Inside Game- Keith Law
  16. Les Miserables- Victor Hugo; I’m going to be an English major nerd for a hot sec and say that this is my favorite book of 2020. I had avoided reading it for a long time because the length terrified me. My advice to you: don’t let the length scare you away! Especially if you’ve watched the musical or movie or listened to the soundtrack, this is an extremely palatable read. Hugo doesn’t hide where his morals lie, and that makes this novel fairly accessible. This is a dramatic novel that touches on topics that will always be important to humankind: poverty, femininity, education, forgiveness, religion, love, revolution. When I had just finished reading this book, I didn’t think I would ever reread it, because it is an investment of time. But if somebody wanted to book club this masterpiece with me, I’d be all over that.
  17. Normal People- Sally Rooney
  18. Cat’s Cradle- Kurt Vonnegut
  19. Call Down the Hawk- Maggie Stiefvater
  20. A River Runs Through It- Norman Maclean
  21. Redhead by the Side of the Road- Anne Tyler
  22. The Tradition- Jericho Brown; Exactly the kind of emotional range that I want in a poetry collection. These poems are hopeful and despairing, careful and angry. The collection is about Blackness and queerness, but they’re not just personal to Brown, they’re not just written for other Black and queer folx. I truly think there’s something in these poems for everyone. All I can think to describe this collection is the slow glow of a hot coal, sometimes embering toward outrage and other times warming to love and hope.
  23. The Guest List- Lucy Foley
  24. Murder on the Orient Express- Agatha Christie
  25. Fathoms- Rebecca Giggs
  26. Ask Again, Yes- Mary Beth Keane; My favorite literary fiction read of the year. I’m a huge sucker for character studies, and this is a good one. This book is a reminder that healing takes time and that loving can be hard. There’s a tomorrow, and maybe it will be worse, or maybe it will be better in a way that you weren’t expecting.
  27. A Thousand Endings and Beginnings- ed. Ellen Oh
  28. Journey to the West- ed. Timothy Richard and Daniel Kane
  29. Migrations- Charlotte McConaghy
  30. When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities- Chen Chen; Delightful. For anybody who has reservations about poetry or thinks of it as boring– put this juicy line on your tongue: Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango. Absolutely delectable. This collection is youthful, absurd, honest. Some of the poems are soul-bearing and sad, but Chen’s words are never lethargic. This collection gave my heart the happy swims.
  31. Barkskins- Annie Proulx
  32. The City We Became- N. K. Jemisin; I’ve never read anything like this. The pure, imaginative prowess of Jemisin’s book should be enough to put this on your radars. Cities that tear through the multiverse to come alive? Baddies that are personified as white hysteria? POC coming together to kick butt? Some of the scenes had my heart racing, and I was seized by a cold terror that some horror novels don’t manage to pull off. Unlike a Stephen King novel, the evils of this book are real threats that could very well tear our actual nation apart. An important, spine-chilling book for novice fantasy readers like myself.
  33. Splinters Are Children of Wood- Leia Penina Wilson
  34. White Elephant- Trish Harnetieaux

And that’s a wrap on 2020! If you have any overlap with the titles on this list, I’m always looking for more bookish friends. What were your top reads of the past year? What books are you looking forward to digging into as 2021 begins? Will I continue making posts on this blog? Only time will tell!

03 The Trees in Riverdale Park- Karen Solie

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If I’m being perfectly honest, the reason Karen Solie’s “The Trees in Riverdale Park” jumped out to me at first is because the title had “Riverdale” in it. But unlike the TV show Riverdale, this poem is actually well-written and has much for me to unpack.

To summarize, I felt like this poem was about how reaccessing a memory and recording it automatically distorts the authenticity of the event. Simply by writing down her observations of Riverdale Park, she has already altered the truth. There are many psychology studies asserting the fact that eyewitness accounts are not completely valid. Additionally, simply the way a question is phrased i.e “how fast was the car going when it bumped into the other car?” and “how fast was the car going when it smashed into the other car?” can drastically alter the eyewitness testimonies to a car accident. Naturally, through writing, and poetry writing in particular, specific words are chosen to elicit a feeling. Because of this, all poetry is not necessarily “accurate.”

I do not believe that a poem can be purely factual, but it can be true.

The first thing that strikes me about Solie’s poem is the use of scientific language. In the very first line, she uses the word “quadrisect.” Later on, the theoretical language continues: logic, theorem, hypotheses. This genre of words, especially combined with the specific lists of details Solie employs (as in the specific species of trees and secret bars), gives a sense of concreteness and a desire to turn her observations into fact. For the most part, the poem is objective and relies on visuals. It reminds me of chemistry lab in a way, where reactions and materials must be carefully observed and recorded. I would have loved to see this played up even more, maybe through use of texture or color or quantifying something in the scene.

Nevertheless, the attempt to stick to the facts goes astray. Solie’s romanticism manages to slip into the poem. Perhaps even corrupted in the very first stanza with the metaphor “square acre/ white as the page in February,” I don’t view this as a failure or even a tension in the poem. It goes back to what I was saying before: this is the poet speaking her truth. Though less factual, this intimacy to her thoughts and comparison give Riverdale Park a greater authenticity and history. Still, it’s worth noting that there are few adjectives and flower-y language in the poem. Rather, the distortion comes from Solie’s use of curious use of nouns that transform the tangibility of the park into some theoretical headspace.

The stanzas and line breaks have no discernible pattern. They tend to end on strong words and there is minimal enjambment. She chooses instead to break lines at the end of clauses or phrases, which plays into the logic of the language she uses. However, there is a stanza that stands out to me: I’ve never understood what “starlit” means.

This line stands out for several reasons. Firstly, it’s the only single-line stanza, so it feels like an interruption or an interjection. Secondly, this is the first and only instance of the first-person pronoun “I.” There are several instances of the word “us” used previously, but it seems defamiliarized, as if speaking to humanity or a larger collective group. The usage of the “us” is not as intimate or startling as the sudden appearance of the “I.” Thirdly, this line is an abrupt admission of doubt or skepticism towards what the poet knows. She seems so firm in her knowledge in the previous stanzas, but this is the line where the poem really turns. The stars are not strong enough to pierce the darkness, and her poems cannot really illuminate the truth, but there is still beauty in knowing that there is a world to describe and capture.

Image result for park in snow

Rules for a poem:

1) Use a mundane, everyday scene or landscape. Use as many visuals and specific names as possible.
2) Take a field of science or another academic field. Create a word bank of vocabulary from this field and try to use as many of those words as possible in a poem.
3) Use only concrete, tangible metaphors.
4) Reference self in the poem as little as possible or not at all.

02 Stay

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Summer: the students have gone.
All that’s left is the baked asphalt,
freshly paved, fumes rising
in the always heat. The parking lot
so vacant, it’s timeless. At night, everything
is so quiet, so still, I will mistake it
for coolness. In the morning,
the tar is as ever as sin.
Again, the blue sky is stretched
like an apology. I am living
in a heat trap of bad, my blinds
licked shut, the air stale and silent
so the utility bill can be the same.
My window faces north.
There are no sunsets
or sunrises. Hours are simply
tickers of temperature, the hot
frustration of the afternoon, the dewy,
limp feel of regret. I run, just as the day
begins to bruise. I leave nothing
behind and keep chasing my punishment.
The walk sign blues over.
I go because it tells me it’s safe.
I only want to move when I know
what lies ahead.

///
Thanks for reading! Check out Adam Clay’s Only Child and then go check out my analysis of the poem in my previous blogpost. The rules I made for myself are only loosely followed this time, I’m afraid. But that’s the beauty of it! Starting with a prompt and seeing where your voice takes you.

02 Only Child- Adam Clay

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This week I’m looking at Only Child by Adam Clay. I like getting these daily poetry emails, because there’s a nice variety of contemporary poems. It’s cool to be able to get a sliver of the poetry scene every day and familiarize myself with some of today’s poets. And of course, I never feel like I have enough poetry.

I’ve had a really good day today, and my brain is buzzing in that way where it feels inspired, even though I haven’t actually done any creative writing today. The possibility of creation is there, if that makes sense. Hopefully it will linger for a few days.

Once again, I’m going to start my analysis by looking at the form. This one is quite different from the short couplet format of last week’s analysis. Though the individual lines are clipped, the poem is without stanza breaks and it gives the poem an anxious, claustrophobic feel to it, a cycle of thoughts that cannot be broken out of. The individual sentences spill over for several lines, like the speaker’s thoughts cannot be curtailed.

This feeling of entrapment is emphasized in several ways. Firstly, the opening line “Breakfast rained on again” sets the tone of the poem. I mean, just imagine a soggy breakfast! Not only does it conjure a feeling of discomfort and grossness, a rained on breakfast would understandably ruin the speaker’s whole day.

Secondly, Clay makes use of juxtaposition, pairing up opposite words to demonstrate the speaker’s lack of control over the situation. Some examples are “dark of the day,” “humid February,” and “I am/ drawing a self-portrait/ and trying to remove the self.” I really like how these images clash, but in a way that my mind is still able to understand what Clay means. The mismatch is jarring, but not incomprehensible. It’s sort of a consciousness of the randomness and unpredictability of life that we’re all subject to.

There is also an instance of repetition that I really like “I had always/ imagined a different type/ of fatherhood before/ fatherhood found me.” Repetition always intrigues me, because it has the potential to morph the connotation of the word in a minimal way. In this case, perhaps Clay’s idealist version of fatherhood has not been fulfilled in reality, or that he finds it impossible to achieve the caliber of fatherhood that he desires.

Because Only Child hinges on the concept of fatherhood, I really appreciate Clay’s attention to adhere to a domestic and internal perspective. The first third of the poem focuses on light/ dark and the way it morphs in the daughter’s bedroom. The darkness again creates a sense of pressurized closeness, but also a lack of certainty, as the speaker is unable to see ahead of him: I’m still/ trying to see in the room/ that’s gone power out. The weeds in the yard also overwhelm the speaker, and the pressure and responsibilities of fatherhood crowd out the speaker’s sense of identity.

Yet, despite all of this uncertainty, the speaker remains hopeful. He notes that looking back feels like looking forward, and he registers his effect on the world around him. Towards the end of the poem, the sentences become less relentless. They are shorter and more peaceful, and create a sense of calm and light that is still able to stem out of his doubt and anxiety.

instagram: a level-headed look at ‘shadowbanning’

Rules for a poem

1. Create the tone of the poem in the opening line of the poem with a strong, sensory image.
2. Play with opposites and juxtaposition, light/ dark, smooth/ rough, etc, and try to ground the poem with this central conflict.
3. Use repetition to reorient an idea or concept.
4. Vary sentence length and see what effect this has on the poem.

01 October

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The leaves shiver slick
from their branches, anxious 

as an empty hand. I knew your ochre
silhouette like a loon knows south.

We talked in switchbacks. I trailmarked
our days, counted each gooseberried sunrise.

That old bridge, swaying
like autumn— I walked towards you

without knowing the river, breaking
hard for the cliff’s edge,

throwing itself into a veil
of flight.

Check out the poem that inspired this poem here and check out the rules that I made for the poem here.

01 Buffalograss- Jake Skeets

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I’ve been in a writing funk since the beginning of this summer and a reading drought since the beginning of the month. This is partially due to my worrying about the future (the full-time job search is very draining) and also due to my inability to really sit down and focus and feel. I try to read or write, and maybe a feeling of inspiration will lance through me for a fleeting second, but I haven’t given myself the time to sit down and decipher exactly what the text means or analyze the precise contents of my feelings.

I’m hoping to change that.

I don’t know where inspiration comes from, but they say the more you read, the better you can get at writing. I’m challenging myself to read a poem closely, to decipher its meaning, its form, and all the elements that have elicited an emotional reaction from me. If all goes well, this will be a weekly thing. A poem or paragraph a week. Maybe that can jump start my creative juices.

In addition, I’m going to be giving myself some “rules” or elements (3-5) that can possibly be incorporated into a future poem inspired by the one I am analyzing. Maybe, if these inspired poems are deserving, they’ll pop up on this blog, too.

Most of the poems I will be selecting will probably come from the Academy of American Poets “Poem-A-Day,” which I have been subscribed to for the past several years. I recommend. Who doesn’t want to start off their day with a poem?

I will be starting with Jake Skeets Buffalograss, which was featured on September 12.

There are a couple things that strike me about this poem. First, is the form. Even before a word is read, the look of a poem on a page can create an emotional response or cause the reader to read the poem differently. For example, a reader will expect a different sort of movement if the poem is broken into couplets (as this poem is) versus one giant wall of text versus lines scattered with different alignments. One might expect a couplet to be balanced, with a methodical rhythm or rhyme scheme. However, this is not the case in Skeets’s poem. Instead the enjambment creates a sense of arrhythmia and tension in this nature-intensive scene.

The poem moves quickly from a domestic scene “Barely-morning pink curtains/ drape an open window” and immediately move outwards into the world. This already causes the poem to have a disorienting effect, to move from one side of the curtain to the other without a pause or stanza break. Outside, the “Roaches scatter,// the letter t vibrating in cottonwoods.”

I love the word vibrating there. It’s a strong and unusual verb in this context, and it gives the sense of something impermanent, as this elusive t will at some point stop moving and only the viewer’s memory will tell him that there is something in the grass.

The next couplet also uses strong tactile verbs: I siphon doubt from his throat/ for the buffalograss. Doubt becomes this tangible object that the speaker gets to handle intimately, ultimately deciding what becomes of it. This is a stanza of action, and it is made stronger by the full stop after the period. No enjambment here.

One of my favorite parts of this poem are the lines “His tongue a mosquito whispering/ its name a hymn on mesquite,// my cheek.” I love how this finite moment is stretched into something longer by bleeding into the next stanza. It’s also worth noting the sonic play of mesquite// my cheek. Again, this division creates an imbalance, as if part of the thought has spilled over to the next line. The animation of the tongue into a mosquito is also lovely, and the attention to the mosquito’s whispering makes the reader even more aware of the upcoming sound play.

Overall, this is a poem about desire. The urge to be together is natural, primal, but also desperate and consuming. The seeing and being with another is almost warlike. Everything that they are and say can collapse back to the earth.

Rules for a poem

  1. Take a scene from nature (the backyard, the Grand Canyon, the sunset over the ocean) and use this as a language pool for verbs and sounds to enhance the setting.
  2. Use an imbalanced couplet form. Figure out where line breaks can create the most tension.
  3. Move the poem from a smaller, enclosed space to someplace much more open.
  4. Play with space (3) and time. Speed up slow moments or slow down fast moments.
  5. Personify one part of the scene.

The Hatred of Poetry- Ben Lerner

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What does it mean to be a poet? What qualifies as poetry? These are just a sample of questions I’m left with after reading Ben Lerner’s essay, The Hatred of Poetry. I have yet to read any of Lerner’s actual poems or his book, 10:04, which several of my friends have read. Still, the essay makes it remarkably clear that Lerner has thought deeply and read widely about the topic of poetry.

He begins with a poem about poetry he had memorized for class that opens with the line: I, too, dislike it. I think every poet will assert that at least part of the reason they write is because poetry simply feels like it is alive in the universe. It is out there, begging to be understood and transformed into speech. Similarly, the hatred of poetry is just as universal. Everyone has had the feeling of a poem nibble on their insides, but more than likely, they’re more aware of their dislike for the genre.

I, too, dislike it.

Only five years ago, in my junior year of high school, we were assigned to read and analyze an American poet of our choosing. I knew nothing of poetry. I thought it was obtuse, vague, simply throwing a sequence of words on a page. Poetry was only a form for metaphors and symbols that I was too stupid to understand. Either that or poetry was intentionally evasive, all about misdirection, the poet purposefully hiding whatever they were trying to say. At the time, I would not have hesitated to say that I preferred the bluntness of prose.

Even now, when I am hesitantly claiming myself to be a poet, there are still highly-acclaimed poems that I just cannot get into. Though I may find myself lingering on an image or drumming a rhythm in my head, there are still so many poems that I read and wonder what part of it has eluded me.

As a poet, I have come across the hatred of poetry with more frequency than the average person. Sometimes it’s more polite, an admission with a shrug that they just don’t usually read poetry. Other times, the accusation is blatant: poetry is easy! So are you trying to just write poems as a job? Most recently, another intern and I were inventorying books at the University of Notre Dame Press. We were allowed to take any book of our choosing, a perk that I verged on abusing, and the other intern would be drawn to a particular cover or title, only to place it back on the shelf upon discovering that it was poetry. I was amused.

Inherently, poetry is a form of self-expression, of the world striking some sort of chord with you, whether that be beauty or anger or love, and it’s calming to feel so part of the universe. We have turned to poetry as a form of art and communication for so long that it almost seems as if the very genre is a part of us.

However, the hatred of poetry is equally as universal, and perhaps even more rampantly expressed and heard. Yet, we’re quick to chalk up every rhyme or unusual phrasing as “poetry.” (ie: I’m a poet, and I didn’t even know it!)

So which is it? Is poetry something that is inherently an aspect of humanity or is it something to be rejected?

I wish I had an answer to this paradox, but I do not. Nor do I feel confident in providing an answer as to what makes a poem a poem or what makes a person a poet.

But I think that may be one of the many thrills of writing poetry. No poem is perfect, but every poet is trying to speak a truth as honestly (though not always as straightforward) as possible. Perhaps we hate poetry, because in a sense, it has already failed us. There is no formula for a perfect poem, and we aren’t trying to figure out the alchemy for the creation of a flawless poem. Would I even like poetry if I feel like I know all of its secrets? Poetry is the symbol we communicate with, but in the end it’s a symbol, not the authentic world around us or the genuine wellspring of emotion we have inside of us. I think I like poetry because for a few brief, electrifying microseconds, the poem glances off the precise sentiment I am trying to express, skipping like an impulse or skimming like wind over the calm surface of a lake, and I feel bare and raw and so here in this world.

But other times, when the jagged lines are trying too hard, the stanzas a half-tone too sharp or flat, limp as an overly ripe fruit: I, too, dislike it.

Poetry Review: “alphabet” by Inger Christensen

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“apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist” This is the opening poem of Inger Christensen’s alphabet. There is nothing else on the page except for this ghostly sentence fragment that can be skimmed over so quickly it almost disappears before you finish reading it. If I had picked up this book a few years earlier, these opening lines alone would have deterred me from reading any further. I would have categorized this writing as nonsensical and pretentious. However, I was compelled to continue, if only because of the lack of ending punctuation—the second repetition of apricot trees dangling like a loose tooth.

The next page was similar. As the title may have suggested, the second poem affirmed the existence of several objects beginning with the letter “b,” but was broken up into two different lines. The subsequent page focused on the letter “c.” Upon reading the “d” poem, the algebraic formula of this careful masterpiece began to become evident: alphabet is not only alphabetized, but also follows the mathematic logic of the Fibonacci sequence in an attempt to impose order on the natural world.

I was excited to turn the page, excited to see how Christensen would origami bits of the alphabet back into the next poem, excited to witness the next chaotic extension of the Fibonacci sequence. Indeed, the phrase “apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist” would recur, but this time fastened into a world of other natural elements, becoming more concrete and losing its initial phantom-like characteristics.

As I was swiftly falling in love with this work of genius, I was aware that the person I was two years ago would have detested this piece of writing. I would not have taken the time to find the pattern, nor would I have understood the dissonance between the careful organization and the spiraling of the scene. Part of the reason I love this text so much is because it revealed to me how much I have grown as a person—as someone who is more open to give other voices an opportunity to explain themselves and someone who is truly appreciative of the flexibility of language.

Before entering college, I had never written poetry seriously. However, with the mentorship and advice of several professors, I was beginning to identify as a poet. I was not exactly sure what such a title entailed or if I had begun to make any noticeable progress as a poet until I read alphabet. It felt like I was holding my transformation in my own hands.

Further analysis of the text demonstrated that the book was written during the Cold War, and the poem began to have even more dimensionality. While the beginning few pages were playful and innovative, the lengthier poems, which alone are almost a thousand lines, began to have an air of desperate incantation. It was as if by asserting the existence of apricot trees that Christensen hoped to protect them from possible nuclear warfare.

I felt further transformed knowing that the methodic assemblage and feverish tempo were expressions of such a deep love for the world and for humanity. The delicate apricot trees, the specific species of birds, and the domestic descriptions of a kitchen are sharply contrasted with anxieties regarding atomic bombs. Writing seemed necessary, as if only words and thought were capable of capturing the world in all its glory, and the book alone would survive nuclear fallout.

With this in mind, the world became more magical. Part of nature will always strain against the form of human logic, as Christensen’s poetry grows ever longer and unwieldy. We simply are unable to recreate the masterpiece that we are living in. Unfortunately, we are able to destroy it, and so I began to think about what values and what snippets of the world were of utmost important to me that I would protect them against all odds. I doubt that I will be able to spin a spell as intricately as Christensen, but her poetry filled me with gratitude and awareness to love as often and as deeply as possible. We are all of this world, and that means all of us have magic within us.