Everyday Enchantments Musing on Ordinary Magic & Daily Conjurings
Give a warm welcome to Maria DeBlassie, author of Everyday Enchantments Musings on Ordinary Magic and Daily Conjurings, just released October 26, 2018.
Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cauldron. Take your choice of a bat wing Chocolate Chip or Pumpkin, or Peanut Butter cookie from the plate, and let’s find out a little about Maria DeBlassie and Everyday Enchantments
What defines you as an author? As a person? Are they one in the same?
To me, being a writer and a woman are one in the same. We are all stories, in one way or another. We are all magic. We are all made up of conversations with the Universe and the dreams we dream. My pen and paper are an extension of this magic, committing each story to memory, so we can look back and see our profound capacity for conjuring our own bliss. As an author and person, I’m always looking for the silver lining, the hidden enchantment, and synchronous messages that come our way. Life is full of beauty, if only we take the time to look for it. For me, writing helps me do that.2.
What inspired this particular story?
Everyday Enchantments was inspired by my journey back to a happy, healthy, whole self. I was at a place in my life where I could finally explore what it meant to live, and not just survive. I’d finished school, gotten a job, and was finally setting down roots. Then came discovering what it meant to be a writer and a woman. I committed to a year of daily blogging on simple pleasures, everyday magic, and those quiet mystic moments inherent in our lives…that turned into a lifestyle, an ongoing blog, and this book!
What inspired you to write?
I love everyday life, corny as it sounds. The magic of a Monday, the quiet bliss of an afternoon cup of tea, the illicit joy of reading late into the night…these are the simple pleasures that make life wonderful. It’s easy to overlook them, get swept up in our to-do lists, but when we pause and take in the beauty around us, we remember to be more than that to-do list. We glean wisdom in the whispering trees and the synchronous happenings that punctuate our day. We remember to dream. And that kind of ordinary joy is pure magic.
What do you want your readers to take away from your books?
Everyday Enchantments is a love letter to the simple pleasures and subtle enchantments that make life delicious. I hope readers see my book as an invitation to pause, refresh, and open themselves to the magic inherent in daily life. We all have a little bit of witch in us. My book asks readers to tap into that magic and conjure their own bliss!
Tell us a little about Everyday Enchantments Musings on Ordinary Magic and Daily ConjuringsWe do. All it takes is the whispered wish for more everyday enchantment breathed onto a dandelion head. This collection of essays reminds us to escape into the ordinary, find beauty in a simple cup of tea or rereading a beloved novel—and joyfully let our world turn upside down when synchronicity strikes in the form of wrong turns down forgotten lanes and unexpected midnight conversations with the moon.
This book is a study in what it means to live deliciously, joyfully, and magically. And it’s an invitation to conjure your own bliss—-because let’s face it: we could all use a little more magic in our lives.
syllables. One state of being.
Enchantment is to see beyond the brick and mortar that make up your home and
into the magic infused within its frame. It is made up of stories and dried bay
leaves and dreams whispered into the heads of dandelions. Of bare feet on
carpeted floors and the smell of burning sage. Crystals—amethyst, citrine,
amazonite, smoky quartz—winding in and around your books; all the better to
magnify their magic. It is to peel back the layers of your day-to-day and
search for that elusive energy that winds its way up your spine and outward
into your life. Let the snake at your base wriggle free of its coil to climb up
to your shoulder blades and across your open back. There is no room for tightly
stacked discs here, just the taste of joy when the sun licks your skin.
it at the bottom of an empty teacup. Your future written in soggy leaves, or in
the whisper of trees, their leaves rustling and murmuring secrets only they can
understand. Sometimes they are kind enough to translate for you—if you listen
long enough. If you shower their roots with distilled love songs and feed them
the black earth from your compost. It’s there, too, when you run your tongue
along the grooves and ridges of a well-loved sentence. It’s everywhere. Even in
the spaces you think have lost hope, like the junk drawer where you keep your
faded dreams, stray screws, and half-forgotten heartbreaks along with wine
corks and a few rubber bands. They’re not lost, just resting like seeds in the
earth before they are ready to break open.
first syllable.
learn from Enchantment, to listen to Coyote’s call when he plays his tricks.
Coyote loves his tricks. And you should too. What delicious messages wrapped in
matted fur and a lolling tongue! All he wants is for you to take that leap of
faith when only you can see the soft earth on the other side of the cliff.
Don’t you know that you have wings? They are just rusty from disuse. Just
listen to Coyote’s long-winded stories (he does so admire himself) and watch
the flick of his tail. All he asks is for you to trust him, even if he can’t be
trusted; his les- son is real, hard as onyx in your palm, ephemeral as the
desert rain that you feel in your bones when all you see is a cloudless sky. No
weatherman can ever map the storms and sunshine work- ing their way across your
body.
room for logic, just the reason in his unreason.
perfect coincidences set in motion by the padding of his paws. You are raw
power, he says, a spark of the universe set in motion. And you must trust this
power that is you, that is the earth, that is the beating of your heart. A
rhythmic tattoo forever pounding out your path, however many times you try to
stray from it. All Enchantment asks is that you absorb the wisdom of the moon and
the stars, and the prophesying of the seeds burrowed deep in the dirt. Coyote
is there to make sure you listen, even when the rest of the world prefers your
ears stopped with cotton and your heart beating as slow as melting snow in
winter.
syllable? To conjure. Here you weave your spell with vowels and consonants and
beeswax candles. You seal them with pure starlight and a handful of chamomile.
Then you burn away the dry brush and the brittle ideas that don’t hold up
against the moonlight. There is no room here for literal…things or the people
who think them. Not if you want to create. Not if you want to believe that the
most important part of your everyday occurs in the moments others can too
easily overlook. (Seldom can you find a person strong enough to brave the
stillness or wade into the bottomless waters of imagination.) You make your life
here, in the infinite potential of seconds and minutes and hours unfurling into
vines and roots. Because when you are looking for everyday enchantment, it
finds you. Always. And if you let it, it will settle inside your skin and feed
your soul with dreams grown ripe under the sun’s caress. It drops you deep down
into the rich earth and forgotten caves buried between heartbeats—places that
many are too afraid to venture inside. For how can you absorb the marvelous, if
you do not recognize it reflected in yourself, feel it settle in your bones
like so much calcium?
Enchantment.
spell wrapped in a noun, planted in the earth and nourished with moon- light.
Let the roots stretch to the underworld and the leaves unfurl toward the
heavens. Walk across the star-kissed bridge made of hollyhock seeds and strong
will. There is your passage into the unseen universe.
It was wonderful having you with us today. Please feel free to stop by anytime. Good Luck with Everyday Enchantments Musings on Ordinary Magic and Daily Conjurings!
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged Everyday Enchantments Musing and Ordinary Magic and Daily Conjurings, Maria DeBlassie by Tena Stetler with 3 comments.
Thank you so much for having me on your blog! It was a pleasure to chat with you!
My pleasure. Sorry I’m late responding. The flu hit me like a mack truck.
I hope you are feeling better!