Sleight of Hand – Storytelling and impossible objects..
My Amtrak train ride was a trick. I avoided the smog swaddling cloth of the Pacific Coast highway, yet I stood before a vessel reminiscent of “James and the Giant Peach,” a tin can with the label peeled off. A gust of wind lifted my scarf and covered my eyes for a moment, giving me an uncanny sense of foreboding: I saw my name in a sea of fine print, invisible in the back corner of a bankrupt San Diego newspaper, a statistic of an Amtrak train crash. The next gust of Santa Ana winds would send the last paper copy into the sewer. As we boarded the train, not a single passenger on the platform had lifted their eyes from their cell phones.
There were no assigned seats. I must have looked terrified because a woman moved her giant handbag and beckoned me to take its place. My eyes darted between the woman and a man at a four-top in a top hat, shuffling cards like they were floating. He wore a lion ring on his right hand. When he looked up at me, I was met with cloudy blue eyes and tufts of blonde hair that were coming out from under his top hat.
“You can sit here if you’d like.” He placed the cards in a neat pile. “But I’m not playing with a full deck.”
Eric Stevens, magician, author and speaker introduced himself and said he was on his way to Los Angeles to visit The Magic Castle—a private clubhouse for magicians. He promptly delved into a card trick that seemed impossible. (As Stevens later explained, “If it were impossible, I couldn’t do it.”) Read more..