Don’t Touch the Butterfly, or How To Disappear
This year the elementary school variety show is going virtual. Instead of piling into the school auditorium as we did before the pandemic, parents may submit videos of their children performing, and the videos will be edited together by helpful parent volunteers into a single recording. One benefit of a virtual variety show is that it eliminates a lot of the anxiety and stage fright that attend live performances, especially for children. “If you mess up, you can just delete the recording and start again!”
–That was the pitch I gave William to convince him to do the variety show. (Arthur is also participating in the show, but you don’t exactly need to twist Arthur’s arm to get him to appear before an audience.) Lately William has been getting into magic–card tricks, mainly–and he’s really good! But he can also be shy, so I figured a virtual show would be a gentle introduction into performing magic for people besides his mother. William decided on three tricks, one with a deck of cards and two involving making coins appear and disappear using simple props he made himself. Zac filmed us at the picnic table in the backyard; my role was to pick a card out of the deck, show it to the camera (but not to William!) and then, when William guessed which card I had drawn, turn to face the camera with an expression of surprise and delight. William nailed all three tricks on the first take.
I absolutely love magic. When watching magic, I enter a state of concentrated, willful suspension of thought. It’s easy, when watching someone perform a magic trick, to think, How did they do that? So I have to very consciously and emphatically reject the impulse to ask. Instead I try to hold my mind open and take in the trick as it appears before me without even admitting the idea of explanation–not merely not asking the question, but not conceiving of the question as a thing that could be asked. This state is sometimes difficult to maintain but absolutely revelatory. It also makes me an excellent magic show audience member, as my surprise and delight are simple and total, unmixed with frustration or confusion or the smug satisfaction of a know-it-all. I don’t know anything and I don’t want to know; I’m just happy to be here.
Sometimes William has no choice but to admit me into the secrets of his art (someone has to help him glue the false bottom onto the empty wine glass, after all) but as much as possible, I avoid seeing how he constructs his tricks. William himself vacillates between wanting to guard his secrets and wanting to show them off. Sometimes after a particularly brilliant success, he’ll ask me, “Do you want me to show you how I did that?” And I tell him no, I see how hard he’s working and I admire how much concentration and ingenuity it takes, but as far as I’m concerned, his tricks are magic, the material effect of an immaterial cause. His trick is turning his will into coins. My trick is turning my will into nothing.
Every spring I order a Cup of Caterpillars from a company actually called Insect Lore and the kids watch them turn into butterflies and then release them. When butterflies first emerge from their chrysalises they are crumpled and wet; they need to perch somewhere for an hour or more until their wings unfold and dry off enough to allow them to fly away. The spring after William turned three he was particularly enamored of the butterflies. The day we released them, I warned him not to touch butterflies while their wings were drying. And so for almost an hour, William crouched beside a drying butterfly, his outstretched finger a mere inches away from its body, repeating quietly to himself over and over, “Don’t touch the butterfly, don’t touch the butterfly.”
Sometimes during the excitement of butterfly release day, a butterfly will alight on a child’s open palm. Every time that happens, they have the impulse to quickly close their hand—and of course doing that would crush the butterfly. So, I tell them, keep your palm open, stretch it open as wide as you can, and every time you feel the urge to close it on the butterfly, stretch it open a little wider instead.
Every time I am tempted to close in on how a trick is done, to apprehend it, I try to stretch my mind open a little wider instead, to stay suspended in delight and surprise, and let the magic just perch there, trembling, until it decides to fly away.
What I Should Be Doing
Reading Paradise Lost, writing about Paradise Lost, thinking about Paradise Lost
What I’m Actually Doing
Starting tomato seedlings, gearing up for a new season of Little League, learning how to play gin rummy, taking Beatrice to see a live recording of Welcome to Night Vale, and most importantly GOING TO TRANSWORLD, the world’s only professional trade show and convention for the Halloween industry!
Also I'm Very Excited About
How To with John Wilson; the return of Joe Pera Talks With You; these amazing cookies; 818s and Heartbreak, the preeminent podcast about the San Fernando Valley
The Fine Print
I have a Ko-Fi page that allows readers to send me small payments to support this newsletter and my writing in general. Remember, every dollar you send is A Vote For Halloween.