The Face Magic Gives You

The face I make when I watch magic is the face of an old man who has seen it all, the face shared by those rowboat men from the Pixar short “Luna”, over-set in their ways. It’s the wrinkled forehead in front of too many minds I've made up. It’s the stare of judges. There was once a child behind new eyes. Now, I watch the impossible with a serious expression- a game face locked in by a mindset. Per Hemmingway, if the wonders written are bad, I’ll hate them. If they are good, I’ll hate them all the more out of envy. Magic keeps people young, but it has made me grow old, and frankly tired, of the same tacky entertainment. A magic show is like a dated amusement park. I want to see something real. Wonder is beyond intellectual puzzles and technical moves, mindless jokes or man-made gimmicks. These days, my squinted eyes seek the kind of soulful magic created by the lights of skylines. I smile at the sight of patterns; big pictures revealed; footsteps taken on a resolved Way toward places unseen and the mysteries therein. The beautiful unknown: that is what Magic is. It’s what’s beyond the same old illusory acts we’ve been fooling ourselves with, the effect of which fades gracefully with the passage of time.