Magic or Metaphor
The subtle art of looking beyond
Magic or Metaphor
I started the car this morning and the radio instantly blared out the traffic report. Not in the mood, I reached over to depress the knob and turn it off. Don’t go woo-woo on me, but I had the thought that after it was off, for all I could tell, radio didn’t exist. I mean I couldn’t see radio waves that traveled through thin air. I couldn’t touch them, smell them, taste them, and now I couldn’t hear them.
In fact, I never could hear the waves, or the “bundle of electric rays” as the inventor of radio, Guglielmo Marconi, called them. The only sound of radio waves came from the receiver technology that Marconi invented 125 years ago. Yet I know the waves are there, because I have always been told they were.
Today a popular term for things that cannot be measured by the five senses is Paranormal. Growing up many people have used the term, “sixth sense” to describe things they know happen but cannot prove or recreate in the human spectrum of the five senses. In fact, people with these sensations mostly make little effort to prove anything, rather they are comfortable with a “knowingness” that it, in fact, happens.
The word paranormal is a catchall term, but specific descriptions to describe these phenomena abound. In the 1960s the Russians made headlines with people that could bend a spoon without touching it. Other published events were conducted at SRI (Stanford Research Center) where a person sat in a room in California and could describe the contends in a draw located across the Atlantic Ocean. Terms like telekinesis, and telepathy were deemed descriptive for findings like these.
My current novel, Eight Pieces of Eight, employs a plot tool to move the story along and create tension in this treasure hunt for Spanish gold and silver coins. It’s a map. But not an ordinary map. It’s one imbibed with magic. Okay, you say. Here we go with the “woo, woo” stuff. Let’s explore ‘magic.’ Remember that wedding you went to a few years ago when the stars were twinkling, the moon was full, a warm breeze bathed the beautiful bride and groom in hope and love. It was a magical night! Not “woo, woo,” but magic!! But I digress.
This map has the strange habit of moving its directional lines around, but only for a chosen person, who happens to be Bev Dahl, the main character, whose story of coming of age is told in the book. The trouble comes when she confronts her greedy cousin, desperate for the treasure. Bev knows nothing about paranormal, telepathy or any of the rest. She only knows that the lines light up and move.
A map is like a spreadsheet or a grocery list or any list you have. It is written down, and fixed. However, picture in your mind driving down the road following a map and running into random road work that forces a redirection. Your map, for all practical purposes, changes. Are you staring at a magic map? Of course not. You changed course because you had to, and the map effectively re-writes itself.
What if the magic map, as a plot device, is more than magic? What if its meaning and utility rises above paranormal? What if it is a metaphor for a journey through life? What if the directional lines of this map change like those in the life of a young, naïve girl poking out of the parental safety net that protected fanciful and almost whimsical notions of life before leaving the cocoon? What if Bev’s struggles and trials lead her to an understanding of the world around her and her place in it? What if readers of this book let the magic be more than magic? What if readers accept what they cannot see, in order to be what they can, in fact, be?
Okay, that’s enough of that. Now get busy, concentrate fully, and bend a couple spoons. After that join my Premium Reader Club at RickGlaze.com
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