HOCUS FOCUS – The Utter Reality of Magic

Now and then something happens in one’s life whose elegance, whose grace, whose aura just can’t be explained. It excedes the art of any individual; it’s more than matter, scale or place. 

You may think you can describe it, but often the emotional impact leaves you speechless but for a gasp or a breathy “Wow!” You end up apologizing: You had 
to be there. 

IMAGE: Greg Rakozy / Unsplash

Some folks are uncomfortable when they can’t quantify or explain things, but I rather like it. For one thing, it keeps me humble, reminding me just how limited even a writer’s vocabulary is—not to mention how infinitesimal my place in the Scheme of Things. 

And I’m more than okay with what turns out to be both the simplest and most impenetrable description of such awe: It’s magic.

        Magic, you see, is not just a quality 
        or an emotional state; it’s a connection.

A CONNECTION
Of course, that declaration bothers folks whose education, culture and world view all revolve around the tangible. Who believe everything needs a reason, and that if you can’t come up with one you’re either a brick short of a load or just not trying hard enough. 

PHOTO: Paramount Pictures / CBS

Well, there’s the catch. Some things, no matter how hard you try, you simply can’t make happen. Sometimes you have to stop trying altogether and let them happen. It’s that way for magic, and that, for many, is very hard indeed.

But that’s exactly where magic is brewed. In that moment when one abandons logic and opens oneself, body and soul, to wonder.

IMAGE: No attribution found

Magic, you see, is not just a quality or an emotional state; it’s a connection. It lies not just in the beguiling thing or event. But, like an electrical circuit, unless the power has someplace to go, it remains mere potential. Until, that is, you emanate your intention, that mystical signal that you are that place. 

    It’s what makes the Mona Lisa 
    seem illuminated from within.

CASES IN POINT
The kind of awe sparked by that cause-and-effect connection may come from something very big or very small, quite obvious or extremely subtle. Let me give you some examples of magic—a couple of them very personal:

• Magic is what makes Lionel Messi better than anyone in futbol (soccer). 

• 

  PHOTO: Kriangkrai Thitimakorn

  It’s what makes Starry Night’s sky-
  scape swirl and the Mona Lisa seem illuminated from within.
• It’s the spectacle of 10,000 herring surging back and forth as one.  
• It’s what lends the Taj Mahal its celebrated powers of seduction. 
• It’s why a 50-foot gray whale cow 
  swims under her 20-foot calf, lifts and carries it to my extended hand.

BELIEVE  
Magic is Creation’s sleight of hand. You’ll never figure out how it’s done. You can’t measure it. You can neither time it nor tame it. Most often you can’t even describe it.

Nonetheless, please believe in magic. It lives not just in exotic places; it’s present all around you and even in you. The key is to realize that looking for it usually fails. It will find you if you let it.

ILLUSTRATION: Matthew Burgess and Doug Salati

        "Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it." – ROUALD DAHL

ANIMAL MAGNETISM – A Dream to Remember

How often do you dream? If it’s frequently, you’re lucky. Me, I very seldom dream—or should I say, remember my dreams. So when I do remember one it’s likely to be a beaut…like the one I had last week:

I was taking a nap in the living room. As I awoke, I noticed Charlie, an old friend who’d been visiting me from Boston, standing next to me. He was about to leave and head back home. Without as much as sitting up, I gave him a sort of awkward handshake, and he walked toward the door with his small carry-on bag.

A few steps behind Charlie tottered a very young horse, a winsome, long-legged, still-slightly-gangly  chestnut foal. Charlie opened the door, turned and beckoned his young friend to leave with him. Instead the animal stopped beside my day bed, glanced down at me, and lay down…right on top of me.

Not the slightest bit alarmed, I put my arms around the beautiful animal, marveling at its smell. It wasn’t that I’d expected it to smell bad, but I thought it would at least smell like a horse. It didn’t; it smelled even better, a sweet, warm-nutty scent something like the way your skin smells after you lie in sun for while.

You’d think having a horse of any size lying on top of you would, if not crush
you, at least squeeze the wind out of you. But this foal was nearly weightless.
I felt nothing but its smooth, still-soft coat, its warmth, the slow ebb and flow
of its breath.

It nuzzled with me.

       The big cat licked my face and then 
       nestled its head in the crook of my neck.

WITHOUT A WORD
Charlie had left without a word, and I lay there overcome with wonder at this sweet animal’s affection for me; with what seemed like the opening of a clear channel of silent communication between us. It was as if our spirits flowed together into one. I closed my eyes and, basking in this magical moment, drifted off to sleep.

Later, when I opened my eyes, the foal had somehow morphed into a stunningly beautiful cat. Again, it was not the kind of cat you'd expect to be sleeping with—it was a cougar. It was looking right into my eyes, deeply, as if this was as extraordinary an experience for it as for me.
 

I studied every hair on the cougar’s face, the meld from fawn to white around its eyes and mouth, the little black spot at the root of each whisker. I could feel that
the animal shared my admiration and wonder.

The big cat licked my face and then nestled its head in the crook of my neck.
I did not lick it back.

When I awoke from my dream, I lay in bed for the longest time basking in the rapture of that transcendent experience. I felt a guest in a paradise of possibility, though, try as I might, I could not go back again and conjure up my enchanting new friends.

      Whatever life may throw at us, the only thing 
      we have to fear is failing to understand its
      place in that sacred reality.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
I've shared my dream with my wife and several friends. Inevitably, we traded hypotheses about its meaning. I guessed it might have been inspired by my recent visit with my grandchildren, and our snuggling at bedtime.

My wife thinks that’s too literal, and that the animals and their calming, positive energy were more likely a manifestation of my father, come back to reassure me during a time of extraordinary stress and anxiety in my life.

One friend has an even more literal take on it than I do: that my close encounter with such improbable creatures was merely a playing out of the mystical connection I already feel with all living things. It arises from my deep conviction that every single organism, every rock, every cloud, every drop of water, even the vast emptiness of deep space, is part of a single, universal whole.

And that, when we come face to face with whatever life may throw at us, the only thing we have to fear is failing to understand its place in that sacred reality.

THE HARDER YOU TRY – Some Things You Can't Make Happen

Life's design is often so much more elegant than our own.

I’ve lived long enough to have had a few misty, fleeting glimpses of ideas that felt like they had something to do with the true meaning of life. While most have proven pretty elusive, one I’m quite sure of is that, no matter how hard you may try, you can’t always make things happen. Some things happen only when you learn how to let them happen.

This concept was captured well in an Esquire magazine illustration I saw and clipped many years ago. It was in two frames. In the first, a man’s head is tightly wrapped in chains. The coarse links seem to bite into his forehead. Gritting his teeth, sweat pouring down his puffy, red face, he strains to break free of his torment.

In the second image, the man’s expression has unclenched. He’s relaxed, serene. The veins in his neck no longer stick out. He’s completely surrendered himself to his situation. And the chain is disintegrating, flying off in jagged pieces.

           Some things happen only when 
           you learn how to let them happen.

The idea was also articulated well in the best-selling The Inner Game of Tennis and its sequels about other sports by Tim Gallwey in the 1970s and 80s. Gallwey said that athletes are born with the capacity for the perfect natural swing, delivery, or whatever the key movement of his or her sport. All you have to do is watch someone who's really good at it, and your brain will capture and subconsciously program those mechanics into its interface with your body.

According to this model, the aspiring athlete's traditional mantras of "Okay, now, keep your eye on the ball; step into your swing; keep the racket head up; and a dozen others can only corrupt that program, that perfect channeling of perfect motion. Trying: no; making: no; letting: yes.

The murky depths of memory

This is certainly the case with memory. How often have you delved, in vain, the murky depths of your brain for some factoid only to have it pop to the surface just after you've given up looking for it? It happens to me all the time, suggesting that the unconscious mind is better able to navigate memory's nooks and crannies than the conscious one.

            Not only is such control overrated; 
            it is an utter illusion.

With each day of this grand adventure of being, I'm learning that this "inner game" of consciousness  serves me pretty well in most aspects of my life—who I am, what I do and how I interact with myself, other people and Nature. Every time I catch myself expecting to be in control, some muse deep within counsels me that not only is such control overrated; it is an utter illusion.

Can you think of times when the harder you’ve tried to make something happen, the less likely it would?

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."

   LAO TZU