I've started my novel.
On my first trip to the city, I was eighteen, I saw two birds in an alleyway pecking at a mid-sized hump of vomit that looked a few hours old, but it didn’t shock me, not at the time, it was like - when you see your own blood, it’s okay, but others, it’s not - and I associated this vomit with myself, like it was mine, like it belonged to me, and it was because of what I'd done, what I was doing here, my trip to the city, with what I’d gotten myself into, and I forgave myself for it, gave in, in a way, I guess, acquiesced, said to myself this is what’s it’s like, this is who you are, this is what you've chosen - so the vomit was mine, the situation was mine, and I had to handle it, and I looked at this, at the birds, too, and I didn’t gag.
Typically, people use magic to attempt to explain things that science has not yet explained, or to attempt to control things that science cannot. The classic example is of the collapsing roof, described in E. E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Magic, and Oracles Among the Azande, in which the Azande claimed that a roof fell on a particular person because of a magical spell cast by another person. The Azande did understand a scientific explanation for the collapsing room (that termites had eaten through the supporting posts), but pointed out that this scientific explanation could not explain why the roof happened to collapse at precisely the same moment that the particular man was resting beneath it. Thus, from the point of view of the practitioners, magic explains what scientists would call "coincidences" or "contingency". From the point of view of outside observers, magic is a way of making coincidences meaningful in social terms. Carl Jung coined the word synchronicity for experiences of this type.
Typically, people use magic to attempt to explain things that science has not yet explained, or to attempt to control things that science cannot. The classic example is of the collapsing roof, described in E. E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Magic, and Oracles Among the Azande, in which the Azande claimed that a roof fell on a particular person because of a magical spell cast by another person. The Azande did understand a scientific explanation for the collapsing room (that termites had eaten through the supporting posts), but pointed out that this scientific explanation could not explain why the roof happened to collapse at precisely the same moment that the particular man was resting beneath it. Thus, from the point of view of the practitioners, magic explains what scientists would call "coincidences" or "contingency". From the point of view of outside observers, magic is a way of making coincidences meaningful in social terms. Carl Jung coined the word synchronicity for experiences of this type.