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Some things just cant be explained

Point & Click

Last Friday night, I found myself sitting in an underground theater in Reno, Nev., watching a live magic show. I was in Reno for a business seminar, and on the last night, after walking around the Truckee River Riverwalk Park, a couple of colleagues and I came across Magic Underground, an aptly-named below-ground theater featuring a married magician couple and a few assistants. Televised magic shows are easy to explain away. Watch David Copperfield make a skyscraper disappear and its not that impressive, since cameras and editing equipment can be used to make stuff appear and disappear all the time. Check out Bewitched reruns. But to see a woman in this case, Jinger Leigh, the female half of the married couple levitate, get sliced in half, and get impaled with metal spikes and remain unscathed well, geez, it kind of makes you wonder.I think we want answers all the time, to everything. We are brought up to believe in the scientific method that everything has an explanation, that everything can be understood, figured out, explained away. Theres nothing wrong with that. Inquiring minds want to know, you know.Thats until you see a magic show like the one I saw in Reno. At first, watching the close-up deck-of-cards magic tricks before the show began, I watched the magicians hands as close as I could. It didnt work. I still couldnt figure out how the folded-up $10 bill that a guy in the bar signed got into the middle of a kiwi. It defied explanation. And thats before I saw the classic swords-in-the-box trick between Mark Kalin (the male half of the married couple) and his wife. Yep, Mark jammed those big swords into the box that Jinger was chained inside, but after it was all over, out she popped, intact and smiling. At intermission, I asked my friends how they thought certain tricks were done, and noticed how much I expected everything explained away. Kristin, one of my colleagues, looked at me and smiled. I dont want to know, she said. I just like watching this.I realized then how locked in I can be to having an answer for everything. Maybe its good to know a lot of how things work, but sometimes, its OK, too, not to know, and to just let things be as they are without a lot of explanation. The second half of the show, I started just enjoying the show, without trying to figure it all out. I still was able to figure out a trick linking rings together (old habits die hard). But I couldnt tell you how it worked when Mark asked a woman in the audience to think of a deceased person everyone would know, but to keep the name to herself. Following that, the words, Will you be my neighbor? showed up on a chalk board behind a curtain, and low and behold, when Mark asked the woman in the audience who she was thinking of, she said, Mr. Rogers. I dont know, although I have a hunch. Still, I think Ill just wonder a little more about it, and not really know after all. Carrie Click is the editor of The Citizen Telegram in Rifle. She wonders about a lot of stuff she cant explain. Carrie can be reached at 625-3245, ext. 101, cclick@postindependent.com.


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