The Magician Who Disappeared

What is it about us Christians. Loony. Loony is what the rest of humanity thinks. Fishy smelling birds. Birds that dive and swim so well, they might actually be part fish, part bird. Caught somewhere between the air and water. Swimming about in both. And land as well. Let us not forget the land. Land on which we flap and flip about as best we can.

I think what it is, is the odd God we have. Part of it anyway. Tripart of it. The fourpart of it would be ourselves, but that’s another story. Another tale for another day. In a manner of speaking.

The three in one. Magic. The hat in which one finds, quite oddly. With no magician apparent. With the magician himself being nowhere in sight. Nowhere reliably and obviously in sight. Sloshing about in the hat, what one will often surrealistically find is. Well. A bird, a fish, an egg.

A top hat, let us say. To elaborate the metaphor. A black top hat. Quite formal. Quite unfashionable today. Quite stiff and smooth and black. All color is the color black. In which resides a bird, a fish, an egg. A hat that is uncomfortable on the head. That appears to perch, in a sense, upon one’s head. Elegant in a time of inelegance. Out of place, one must say. Way out of place and time, lurching here on our noggins. On our pates. Our thinking caps, if you will. A hat fit for a society ball that when removed and turned over and looked into. Uh-hem. That also embarrassingly contains these. Well. These odd creatures.

A bird, a multicolored bird. A huge new species with wings. Oh. Infinitely long wings. A wingspan that goes forever. And every color in it. Every one. But separated. Unlike the hat. A bird in which the fiery colors predominate. Proliferate. Instantiate.

A fish, a silvery, goldy, blindingly bright fish. A fish that seems to carry its own light, as though it were lit from the inside and outside both. A fish with an elliptical shape. That appears and disappears depending upon its aspect. Its angle to the observer.

An egg, an infinitely smooth, perfectly shaped egg one wants to hold and run one’s fingers over and over. So smooth and perfect in its shape, one wants to hold it. Well. For as long as one’s allowed. Forever, maybe. What’s inside. Who knows. Perhaps someday it’ll hatch. Then we’ll know. Meanwhile, however, we keep it safe. We hold it and hold it and hold it some more, caressing it with hands and cheek.

And so, here we are. Odd people in their odd hats. Walking about. Walking all about in public. Looking silly as we may. Yodeling like loons. Periodically removing the ridiculous hats and pointing inside. Saying, here. Look here, will you. Take a look at this. Take a look at these. These three living things inside here.

Saying these things to perfect strangers. Who are. Well. Taken aback. But sometimes they’ll look anyway. Sometimes their own gullibility gets the better of them, and they’ll look in. Sometimes they’ll see them there and sometimes they won’t. A fish. A bird. An egg.

Who knows why. Who knows why sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.

Who knows why the creatures. Who knows who put them there. And why three. Why three of them. And why in this silly looking hat. I have no idea.

It’s mystical. Mystical shmystical. Is what I think. Is what I think I know. This tripartite biology of the hat. This old fashioned magician’s hat. These fabulous creatures of the hat. The magician who by all appearances, in some respects, has disappeared. Or not. Who knows. Who knows where he is and why and when and how and what will happen next, is what I’m thinking.