Imagination, and Steampunky implications...

A travel supplies catalog.  I won't say which one it was I looked at today, but, well, *really.*  It seemed to my eyes to be full of gear for the anxious and paranoid traveller.  Heaven's sake, if you *really* think you are that menaced by leaving home--then don't go!  Hire someone to go for you with all the money you would have spent on theft-proof luggage, bacteria-killing lamps, poop-deodorizers and wearable air filters and water-cleaners.  (But golly now, all, all of it IS *portable.*  I'll admit I'm a mild sucker for miniaturization.) 

What really put the cap on it all for me was when I found the special case to keep all your credit cards, that would block--I wasn't quite clear on this part--either high-tech super thieves from stealing information off your cards, or would keep a chip in your card from broadcasting, uhm, stuff.  I went all steampunky there for a moment and decided that the most fiendishly diabolical way to thwart today's super-thieves and their cutting edge naughtiness is to go as low-tech as possible.

At the Magic Castle this week I was fortunate enough to see a particularly solid ole' trouper who knows his business as a performing magician better than plenty of people.  His act was a complete pleasure, being a compendium of classic effects presented superbly.  I was wildly privileged to chat with some of the audience members after the show, and listen to their complete bafflement over what they had seen.

Now these were reasonable adults, not too drunk or anything of the like.  They had never seen most of what the magician presented, and spun out somewhat plausible, invariably high-tech ways for the tricks to have been done.  I nodded and listened and intuited that I really didn't need to instruct their imaginations/be a sanctimonious jerk about any of this.

I was intensely fascinated by it all.  I see often enough people unconsideredly assume a magician is presenting all-original material, and, they don't really consider that there may be certain principles at play that are the same since the disputed images were painted in Egyptian tombs.  For *me,* this makes it all the more magical.  This may not be the same for everyone.  What strange power and possibility lies in being able to function outside the ordinary bounds of some peoples' imaginations.  I'm not quite sure how to phrase that....