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“Wisdom
begins in wonder.”
-
Socrates
My
oldest son was a magician. He started as a young teenager practicing sleight of
hand tricks in front of a mirror. After joining a local group of adult
magicians, he learned many more tricks and perfected his patter as well as the
magician’s code of never telling how the tricks worked. He started performing
at birthday parties, meetings of different organizations and often went on his
own to nursing homes or pediatric wards at hospitals to perform. For his
birthdays and at Christmas, I gave him magic tricks I’d bought at magic stores
– in sealed packages, of course, so no one but the one opening it would find
the instructions for using them. He even performed his magic between chemo
therapy treatments at the Cleveland Clinic. Three days before he died at home,
he put on a magic show for the priest who said Mass at our house and some
family members there that day.
I
find so much else in the world quite magical to me even though I know there are
scientific explanations for all of them. Radio for instance. How is it that by
turning the dial just a tiny bit one can get different stations or any station?
It seems like magic that all those songs, news reports, etc. are there
completely invisible to the eye and the same song or interview is going not
only to my house, or car, but also other people everywhere. If it still seems
magical to me, imagine those people gathered around radios when they first
became available to them. Some people actually thought the radio was evil. I
can remember sitting on the stairs with my brother after we had gone to bed to
listen to scary shows until some sound gave us away and we were sent back
upstairs.
TV
is even more magical to my mind. Not only the words and music but pictures coming
through the air, in my case being captured by an antenna with prongs sticking
out in all directions from my roof. That same antenna has been capturing all
those shows for almost twenty-five years now. I was thirteen or fourteen when
my grandparents got a TV. It not only thrilled my siblings and cousins, but I
remember my grandmother, a little bit of a woman always in house dress with an
apron and cotton panty hose that sagged on her skinny legs showing us a can-can
dance she’d seen on the TV the night before. As kids, we all giggled and
laughed at the sight of her kicking up her heels and flipping her dress.
I
marvel at modern medicine and all the devices to see inside our bodies, to
probe, to save more lives than before. Then there are the computers, i-Phones
that can do just about anything, and GPS
that direct us to where we should go and recalculates when we ignore Nancy or
Rosemary or whoever that voice is coming from. Do you catch a bit of annoyance
in her voice when she tries to straighten us out when we think we know better
than she does? I could list so many other modern things like today’s cars,
microwaves that can cook meals so quickly, and sweepers that vacuum your house
on their own. No, I do not have one. I
don’t really understand how any of these things work, but I know it’s not
really as magical as it seems, but based on scientific engineering and
research.
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Even
more magical to me is the natural world. I’m thinking of the tiny hummingbirds
who manage to cross the Gulf of Mexico when migrating without stopping to rest
or eat. And there are the Monarch butterflies and their migration each year to
Mexico. The ones who go to that one place in Mexico are young ones who were
never there before. There is so much in nature to marvel at; so much that seems
magical to me.
If
I were to have all these magical things explained to me in scientific terms,
I’m not sure if they would lose their magical appeal to me whether its nature
or mechanical or I would still feel it’s magical.
As
children we believed in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. We
loved books of fantasy and fairy tales like Alice in Wonderland or Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs or talking animals. And as adults we still embrace the
magic in books and movies. Look at how popular the Harry Potter series became
with adults as well as children. The Lord
of the Rings and The Hobbit have
remained popular long after they were published. I don’t care for vampires or
zombies, but they are hugely popular as well as science fiction.
In
a way, we as mystery writers are creating magic, too, by allowing the reader to
become the character solving the crime. Allowing them the feeling of fear as
our main character is in danger, albeit safe in a comfortable chair or bed. We
can fudge details a little like my police chief having a good friend who can
speed up fingerprints and DNA, etc. For the most part, readers are willing to
suspend belief, just like as children we knew that some of those things were
unreal, but continued to believe. Hence the nightmares children have after
seeing scary movies no matter how often their parents reassure them that
vampires do not really exist. An evil stalker in a book we’re reading or a
movie we just watched, at night has us closing our drapes and listening for
noises even though we know the chances of a stalker being out there are very
minimal.
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My
son’s magic tricks are packed in boxes in the garage. Observing his magician’s
code of keeping his tricks secret, I have never tried to figure them out, not
even the magical three solid metal linking rings that he could separate. To
learn more about my son beyond his magic, I wrote about him in a previous blog,
Oct. 4, 2012 in the archives under “Life Changing Events.”
What
do you find magical?
What do I find magical? When a plot comes together, when characters' arcs peak in sync, when one gesture tells all, when the final sentence perfects the book and leaves the reader satisfied but wanting more. I prefer writing not only to mirror life, but also to validate our values. We want good to triumph, but if we can't get that, then at least justice can prevail.
ReplyDeleteJohn's understanding and hard work created magic--and not all magic is an illusion--it's physics, mechanics, chemistry, biology, and faith. Magic is rooted in understanding life.
I find nature magical and the scientific explanations only make it more so for me.
ReplyDelete~ Jim
Lovely post, Gloria. I agree with the magic of nature. I was just looking at pictures of icebergs. Incredible.
ReplyDeleteAs with a magic show, I don't need to understand how things work to appreciate that they do work.
Magic is in the power of paperwhite narcissus bulbs, producing eighteen inch stalks topped by spicy scented delicate white flowers. Fresh and alive, with the promise of daffodils in the garden still to bloom.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteElaine, I feel the same way when I'm writing with only a vague idea of where I want this chapter to go and all of a sudden it almost seems to write itself. My characters take over and say things I hadn't planned out ahead of time.
Jim, I so agree with you. It's one of the reasons I never feel comfortable living in a city. I want to be as close to the natural world as possible.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ramona. Icebergs are just one of the many things in nature that are incredible. I even find ants fascinating with their social structure - although not when they come inside.
Margaret, what a lovely vision. I wish I had saved some of those bulbs to plant inside to see. I do buy some primroses every winter to keep on my window sill to plant outside when spring comes.
I think the way tiny babies become toddlers and then small children is magical. They change from one day to the next increasing their physical, verbal and social skills. Truly Amazing.
ReplyDeleteI know we don't feel very kindly disposed to snow right now, but it think a snowfall is magical - the way it makes everything beautiful….
ReplyDeleteAnd aren't words on a page magical? Not just in the messages they convey or the worlds they create, but that every person who reads the same words conjures a different picture in their minds. Your Elizabeth Bennett and my Elizabeth Bennett may resemble Austen's description, but they are also our own.
I love that you're keeping your son's magical secrets, Gloria.
I'm in awe of the magical colors found in nature like rainbows and the Northern Lights.
ReplyDeleteTechnology can be magic. (It can also be really aggravating.)Recently, I had a three-way Skype call with a friend in London and another in Los Angeles. One of my friends talked on her wrist watch phone. How is this possible? How will we be communicating with each other in one hundred years? It's a mystery to me.
ReplyDeleteWarren, I agree how magical the growth from babies to toddlers and beyond happens.It's fun as they examine things to try to figure them out and the joy they feel when they master something, even those first steps.
Shari, I love the snow, too, but then enough is enough. Especially here where it's down below zero much of the time and even when it's above zero there's that wind chill.
And words on the page. I was at one of my book clubs today discussing a very good book that everyone liked, but what different opinions we had about some of the characters.
ReplyDeleteKara, as a former artist/painter, I love the colors found in nature like rainbows and the many different colors of flowers.
Technology can be aggravating. This morning when I tried to get online, my internet server was down and when I called the number to report it, it would ring once and then go dead. But in a miraculous 30 minutes it returned like magic. :-)
Gloria, I admire your strength and ability to persevere. You take life, the good and the bad, apply your creativity to it, and present it for the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteThat's magic!
What a haunting and touching post. I carried it with me all day and thought about what was magical.
ReplyDeleteI kept coming back to writing--especially powerful writing like this post. How magical that some writers can evoke such strong feelings with words that others use and come up with something flat.