Maybe I was born yesterday or just simply naïve and don’t realize it! There are a few offbeat things in my life that turn my crank like a catchphrase that can’t be rid of. One is current and the other occurred centuries in the past but is still relevant today.
An ambition of mine is to appreciate the mastery of performing magic tricks. There is something mystical about them, always able to captivate the imagination. Magicians have a unique authority to magnetize an audience with their panache and demonstrations. No wonder we can’t resist being fans of those who can fool our eyes right in front of us, even when determined to the nth degree not to be fooled. Some of the subtle movements, seeming motionless, are so dumbfounding that I am left shaking my head afterwards, not able to sleep at night, instead, wishing I too could earn the admiration and respect of the neighbourhood like the ‘Gran Mago’.
The Gran Mago resides just down the road but offers me no hints at what he considers his intellectual property alone. I pester him about how he executes that perplexing stuff; whether it’s after his show or on the street but he dodges me at every move. When I do witness how a coin can disappear and reappear in someone’s ear or an egg slipped through an impossibly small hole, then I’m more eager to sway him to take me on as an unpaid apprentice, whether up front with him or somewhat concealed at the back of the stage. I’d even be his guinea pig or the one to be made disappear, just to gain some insight! I am compelled to have a piece of the action no matter how insignificant: I’m as malleable as the rabbit in his black hat.
At the next show he had a volunteer shuffle a deck of cards and choose only one of them. When the magician identified the card, I stood up and shouted to everyone, “Help me convince the magician that he needs a fall-guy like me!” But my distraction was ignored, and he continued with the most popular trick of all — to randomly distribute a card to various people in the audience and later ask each person to stand, then identify the exact card each held. As he reached the part of the part of the program where the sudden appearance of a small bird from a handkerchief and a coin plucked surreptitiously from someone’s ear, the audience rose to their feet in applause, but I only felt the remorse of rejection.
There is another person I have high esteem for, a different era from the magician but the two have much in common. The shocking prediction of, “The End of the World as we know it is looming on the horizon for 2019,” came from the man who had foretold the rise of Adolf Hitler and was no other than Nostradamus. A famed 16th century French prophet, he warned nearly 500 years ago that humanity is facing global doom, not in one swift cataclysm, instead from great natural disasters, deadly asteroids as well as the horror and destruction of World War 3. This uncanny information was published ……wait for it ….. in his book of prophesies in 1555. How could one human possibly look into the ‘glass darkly’ and foresee the future of the world up until its last gasp of existence? Without precedent, he also forecast the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the Death of Henry II of France in 1559, although Henry could have already been on his death bed with little time left to give. Theorists have also set their eyes on the far East where the United States and North Korea have been caught up in a tense deadlock over the latter’s rogue nuclear arsenal. The warning given centuries ago was that: ‘The East will weaken the West’.
I believe both the magician and the prophesier were both ahead of their times. Obviously, Nostradamus was, since it was centuries ago that he predicted events that occurred in even our own lifetime. The magician was too. While holding us in the palm of his hand, he performed surreal, almost impossible feats, as well as did the psychic. One was born in France, one lived in La Passe. One dealt in catastrophes, the other in enlightenment. So much in common, these two, and so influential in our walks of life.
Both of them viewed in wonder, especially by myself. I may never portend the future like Nostradamus but at least there might be hope for the Gran Mago’s change of heart so that we can blend as two sunflowers in a yellow room. If that isn’t an omen, I do know where he lives!
