The Journey to Magic

On 23 August 2026, I wandered out on a long journey because I wished to grasp magic. Along the way I passed the old elementary school where, on my previous visit, I had encountered the Child. Yet this time something strange occurred, and I only became aware of it after I had already passed the school: I had hardly acknowledged his existence, yet he still existed. I had spoken with him the last time I came. But now I walked beside the building as though it were something I passed every day. It occurred to me that perhaps this is what happens to a married couple who have lived together since time immemorial. What once appeared astonishing and separate eventually becomes so intimate that its presence is almost mundane. What do old married couples do? The married one has seen his wife a million times, and she has seen him a million times.

He tends his garden while she looks at him from the kitchen window. Neither is amazed by the other's existence anymore. Yet they continue living. Oh, what is time to him who tends his garden, I guess this happens only when one grows old, only when he has had enough of man and their disgusting temperament, only when his feet have shaken the dust of all places and lands, and his creative force that wants to take, pursue, possess, conquer and demolish ultimately decays, am I he who had enough of men? The married one? As far as I know, the last time I came here, the Child had been something I have really met. I spoke to him as though we were separate, yet today it seems to me that I passed his house without even greeting him. Oh, poor little one, he might have taken it to heart. Have I taken it to heart?

Wait.

If I have taken it to heart, then who is the little one I pity? Have I divided myself only so that I may speak to myself with cleverer words? Or did something in me first divide, and only afterward did I call one half the Child and the other myself?

It appears as if it's so completely separate from essence yet it still was through my essence. If I speak to him and he answers me, who has spoken first? If I know his answer before he gives it, then perhaps I have created him. But if I do not know it until he speaks, then what in me has known before I did?

My God, this is confusing, yet utterly laughable. How strange that I stand before my own theater and cannot tell whether I am the actor, the author, or merely the one who arrived late and took a seat. If I am the one speaking these words, and also the one speaking the words to the Child, and also the one receiving the words from the Child, then who is "I"? It appears to me that "I" could be either conscious or unconscious. If I am merely consciously doing all of this, then could it still be that some primordial force is pushing me toward the act? And if that force is pushing me, then I am already unconscious of what truly moves me. So even in the act I call conscious, something may already stand behind me. And if something stands behind me, then perhaps I am not the author at all, but only the place through which authorship passes. I am neither the creator nor the one that has been created. I simply am.

Yet something had become of my life. This I could not deny. Things which once stood impossibly far from me had somehow come near; what had once appeared as fantasy had hardened into ordinary fact. Men would perhaps call these things successes. But success seems too poor a word for something that has altered the one who receives it. I had not merely acquired things. Something had become.

And here I remembered the Magician. Long before, when I pressed him for an answer, he had refused me. "I do not know," he said. "That is your task. And please, do not expect an answer from me."