Winston

They have finished renovating the lily ponds in Volunteer Park...They're quite attractive.

I met a magician next to one.

Sort of a clown magician. Or harlequin, possibly. With a grotesque Medieval nose strapped to his face, and a Satanic black beard, below white-painted cheeks. He wore a black vest, with shapes--a heart, perhaps a diamond--roughly stitched to it. He had false cuffs, which he wore on his wrists like bracelets. His name was Winston, and he wanted to show us (myself, two other walkers) a trick.

He showed me his deck of cards. Indifferent cards; he was insistent on this, repeating it often. The cards didn't care; they had no feelings. He flipped through the deck, until I told him to stop. I pulled a card out, the four of hearts, and showed it to the others. I slid it back into the pack; he raised and lowered the deck three times, perhaps, rocking back on his heel, and pulled the top card. Was this it, he asked? It wasn't; it was the five of clubs. He pulled off his hat; inside was the four of hearts. He'd spotted that I was watching his hands and cuffs particularly...But his finale has me stumped. He said it was an example of mass hypnosis. He distracted us with more talk of indifferent cards while he prepared; someone had once told him that there was one card that wasn't indifferent, the Queen of Hearts...He said he could only do this once, that he didn't know what we would see...Then he flipped through the deck again, so we could see each card in turn, for a split second.

They were all the four of hearts.

I believe he was there as part of Bubble Rally '03, a deeply surreal event I'll describe tomorrow...

There were so many bubbles.

Posted by aloysius at August 03, 2003 11:48 PM | TrackBack |