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A quote: “I am a great admirer of mystery and magic. Look at this life – all mystery and magic.” ~~ Harry Houdini
I’ll start with a story …
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She left the office to calm down intending to turn east on 14th where sat her coffee stop – full of caffeine and no annoying HR drone … turning west instead.
A bookshop! She stepped in, letting her hand trail along spines as she strolled. Opening one book randomly, she found a note “Don’t go back to the office.”
What?
She opened another “Really. Don’t.Go.Back.”
She looked around. No. No one at all. She hurried home to bed, covers up, sleeping for 48. Then waking to news of her missed meeting with HR creep – who had blown himself up.
In her office.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license.
Donald Weiss says: Wonderful start 🙂
Lewis says: I found the tiny book when my last auntie died. It wasn’t exactly hidden on the bookshelf, but not really openly placed. I’ve had it now for 57 years, took me some 20 years to figure it out! I plan to keep using it to last the same long years my aunties had! The last line sustains me in times of trouble, written in the exact cursive of their generation… stay the course and be ready for our advice. They are still coming on a regular schedule to instruct me, I love to see them and eagerly await each year’s anniversary. The cousins are all very ill, and will not accept my help, so be it! I’m not showing them the book, some mysteries must just be believed outright!
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with magic. I read so much about it that the adults in my life started taking great pains to impress upon me that magic was just make-believe.
There was a sorta kinda exception for stage magic, in the sense that these were actual people rather than fictional characters — but what they were doing was all stagecraft, creating illusions for our amusement. But at least I could watch them on TV without having to deal with adult authority interrupting my enjoyment to make sure I knew what was real and what wasn’t.
So I watched Doug Henning and David Copperfield, all the big names. I studied their patter and their stage presence, and read every book on stage magic that I could find.
My earliest efforts were pretty pathetic, especially when I was using homemade equipment. Even the magic kits I bought from ads in the backs of comic books didn’t do a whole lot better. Things only started changing when I found a theater supply catalog at my aunt’s place and used my birthday money to order some professional-grade equipment.
For the first time, the tricks actually worked like the books said they should. I wasn’t going to be a big-name performer with TV specials or a show in Vegas, but pretty soon I was good enough that I had a nice little side hustle doing kids’ birthday parties, school assemblies, stuff like that.
And then new catalogs began to appear in my mailbox. Equipment that had just a little more, a certain something just on the edge of my perception.
So here I am, having driven to the distant city on the return address on all those catalogs. This shop isn’t much to look at, a storefront in an old building, a room of shelves piled high with boxes and bowls and urns. But somewhere here lies a wondrous secret. The only question now is whether it will reveal itself to me, or if the proprietor and I will chat a bit and I will leave, perhaps with a few new items to add to my routine, or perhaps found wanting and dismissed altogether.
Which will it be?
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