Lesson 3: Flight

Images & Attributions (in order of appearance)
1. Banner: Rhiannon C. 2016
            a) Jewel Mandala (2): D.C. Albion 1994
            b) Albion Glyph: "Glad Day" or "The Dance of Albion," William Blake, c.1794
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/47/William_Blake_-_Albion_Rose_- _from_A_Large_Book_of_Designs_1793-6.jpg

c) Jewel Ouija Board (2): D.C. Albion 1994
2. Close-up of clover patch (source unknown)
3. Photo of Arthur C. Clarke
http://www.lightmillennium.org/2006_18th/image/arthur_c_clarke_portre.jpg
4. (faint background) Close-up of clover patch (source unknown)
5. Portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer by Jules Lunteschütz (1822–1893) - Unknown, Public Domain,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61562
6. (faint background) Close-up of clover patch (source unknown)
7. "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," Pieter Bruegel, c.1565 Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
8. "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus," Salvador Dali, 1937

By http://www.kyushu-ns.ac.jp/~allan/Documents/societyincinema-03.htm, Fair use,

9. Clover patch (source unknown) & Icarus glyph Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
10. a) Jewel Mandala (2) detail: D.C. Albion 1994
b) (foreground) Jewel Glyph (Vilansit's Triangle) taken from Jewel Mandala (2): D.C. Albion 1994

Arthur C. Clarke

1917-2008

3. Polonius Chirps

            As a child playing canasta, my brother knew with certainty when he was about to draw a joker from the deck, one that he intended. As a child playing against him, I, too, believed in his gift and was slightly annoyed by it. I didn’t mind that it was unfair. Even then I felt him to be trespassing in forbidden territory gratuitously. That is, I accepted the miracle & the magic (especially as it made for a better game), but I questioned his use of magic for no good reason. Why, I asked, if you had such power, would you use it for something as trivial as a card game? Why, after 100 four-leaf clovers, do you need 900 more? Isn’t there a better use? (No, not Vegas.) I advocate the thoughtful & beneficial practice of sorcery.
            Which is easy to espouse, I suppose, when you’re a paper sorcerer.

            I’m hard on Rhiannon. If I err, I need to make her aware of her limits. What is the proper use of power? Does frivolous misuse follow inevitably, out of boredom or a lack of guidance perhaps, to abuse? Isn’t there better? Or am I imposing my old worn-out albatross about her adolescent neck? I know how precious the opportunity is, how precarious. Gifts are not always forever. (Would I give my eyeteeth for a chance again?) Rhiannon scratches an itch, and the universe shifts on its haunches.
            Can you improve the universe? Do you think you know better? When you insert your infant ego into nature’s fragile equilibrium—because you perceive injustice or imbalance, because ignorance is evil and you want to make good—so you tweak a correction, jerk the course of history as scripted “just a little,” what makes you so sure you won’t fuck things up entirely? Every breath we draw is an act of defiance, our native state being dust, and every ecosystem mankind touches is defiled by the encounter.
            Yet to ignore the shamrock—to fear what it implies, the power it belies—heeds not the miracle intended, flight. The clover wants to be seen. It’s message is light, happy, an invitation, not the ravings of a father. But what magic ought a glowing girl conjure? Polonius here wags his finger at seeking personal gain or expending aliah. Save your money, he nags. Invest in real estate. But the shamrock winks back: Don’t be shy. Try your luck. You make & spend your own luck.
            And you won’t ever fly if you never take off.

6. Not Smart

            When I myself was a child and flashed similar promise, my parents applauded my gifts and (not unreasonably) credited their own genes and hard work. I was “smart.” That is, my parents lacked an understanding and language of magic. Despite their own gifts, they didn’t see that flight (a better word) is not the same as smart. That is, while both attributes often appear together in the same person (and are thus amplified), they’re actually very different: When you’re smart, you have good hardware, so you can get A’s in school, regurgitating on demand anything you’ve been force-fed. You can follow algorithms and instructions. You’d make a great robot or marine. Flight, on the other hand, requires no intelligence per se, no calculation. It is direct connection: direct seeing and direct travel. Flight, in fact, often defies intelligence, as it leaps over process completely, arriving at solutions that are otherwise underivable, even untraceable.
            (Here I can’t help but think of Advisor, whose oracular insights during our ouija sessions often arrived from straight outta nowhere. That is, I couldn’t fathom wherefrom in infinity he plucked his own four-leaf mindfucks. But I accepted his facts. Flyers are often the ones least able to explain what they do. While those who can’t…)
            The confusion, in part, comes from our social myths of genius. As a teacher I taught dozens of kids in the top 1%, which measures achievement only. I also taught more than a handful with “genius” I.Q.’s (generally starting from 133-150 on the Stanford Binet test). What does such a test measure? It certainly doesn’t predict a child’s future as well as many grounded measures (homework habits, family dinners, travel, etc.). Most of my so-called genius students were great kids from great families. But others were shallow, immoral, socially clueless, and defiantly unmotivated (the ones whose parents most insisted on the label).
            Why is it absurd to say, “Jesus was in the top 10%”? The problem is not a matter of math or degree, for if we say instead, "Jesus was in the top 1%," the absurdity remains. Or try this: “Shakespeare was smart.” The reality is that flyers don't belong on the human continuum at all, at least not within their chosen fields of flight. (Jesus was probably of average height.) Our social science model of a bell-shaped "intelligence" curve, then, denies the very existence of flight. But this is precisely where the social myth is necessary: To acknowledge flight for what it truly is, discontinuous magic, is to start to accept four-leaf clovers as acts of craft. Magic is cute. Sorcery is shit serious.

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit;
Genius hits a target no one else can see."

- Arthur Schopenhauer

In 32 years of classroom teaching, I did see some flyers. To say anything meaningful about them I’d have to introduce each with a biography. Though each "fit" various categories (intellectual, extroverted, over-achiever, whatever), such labels were irrelevant to what made them flyers. Each was unique and unforgettable. A few budding stars, of course, blasted through their local public schools on straight & narrow vectors to the Ivy League & beyond. But most just earned their easy A’s, making minimal waves, while outside school they absolutely kicked ass in piano or basketball or computers or acting. Perhaps the most remarkable flyer I knew, a girl with preternatural language talent, obsessively channeled the Holocaust and wrote regularly of suicide—which was scary and intended to be—but I privately felt that her flyer’s cries were fundamentally different from any normal kid’s depression. She tried on suicide as one might learn French. Next week, Sanskrit. That is, one day she might actually kill herself, but if she failed, she could win the Nobel Prize. No telling at all.
What can a teacher do? What can a parent? Most of my student flyers required so little of me that I hardly felt I was their teacher. I was more a facilitator or travel agent. I certainly took no credit for their achievements or stellar ascents, and a senseless guilt often gnawed at me over not quite earning my paycheck. A few I did inspire—but only because they chose to be inspired by me. Still, I went further with one or two—S., in particular, my astonishing "Holocaust" flyer. (Letters to follow.) Always aware of potential boundary issues with students, I remain uncomfortable to this day with the professional distance I shredded with her. But I knew no one else could provide the vital perspective she so desperately needed. (She'd been in counseling forever, and her parents were superior people at their wits' end.) I believe what I did was right, only after I agonized so over what my response should be. That is, there have been a few times in my life where I have so gone against my own grain and better judgment that I just had to trust the process. I understood that only Albion, my overseer, can work that kind of convoluted magic in me, and he definitely knows better. For the record, S. deeply appreciated my insights—which she cried out for in the first place—but, of course, her gratitude does not prove me right. As Vilansit told us after narrating her story, "…it is always possible to mistake your student. I do not know absolutely my method is best."

7. Test Flight

            I was 22, fresh out of college and living in West Germany. Ostensibly I was studying fulltime, but really I was biding time constructively while I still had no idea what to do with my life. Albion, my eternal overseer, of course, knew better. He had allotted the time and carefully arranged the circumstances for me to fly, to see what I was made of, perhaps to  shine. This was 1981, a time well before the internet, back when a phone call home cost a day's pay. I'd said good-bye to everyone, including most of my possessions (which were stolen from my college dorm basement), and thus freed from my tethers, I set off for the unknown. I knew what I was looking for. I knew flight existed, that I myself had flown in several realms, and I had the metaphysical structures in mind which allowed me to understand what I sought. I couldn't have been more ready or better prepared. But I fucked up anyway. Who can be ready for Infinity?
            It began with dreams. Yes, they were vivid. Yes, some wove complex narratives, while others sent me sharp, singular snapshots of eternity. Yes, there were many clear symbols. But more, the dreams had dreamweight, a visceral gravity that tells you upon waking when a dream is important, when it's been sent. Pay attention! I wrote them all down. (Everyone should.) Soon my dreams became communications, and soon thereafter, as symbols recurred & combined with other symbols, they became dialogues. I'd made contact. I understood that my "friends outside time" (no names) were calling me to join them. That is, in eternity, where they & I & we all exist together, they invited my direct connection. I could dwell there, when I chose, as I wanted—like when I channeled mathematics or danced soccer or flew down stairways five stairs at a time. I'd done the impossible before. Now I could make it permanent, to be a flyer.
            But dreams alone were not enough for me, not for that leap of faith. I needed birds-in-the-hand (physical artifacts) more than pi-in-the-sky. Thus I composed, or rather received, poetry in quantity, nearly one poem per day, my best work without question and pretty much all of it clairaudience. I'd sit down in smug expectation, fiddle with some words, rhymes, iambs, or anapests, and then flight would just take over. Thinking of words became hearing words became straight dictation. All my best work came in one draft with no editing, generally in less than ten minutes. I also understood that if I spent an hour or more or many on a poem—which I was quite willing to do and did so frequently—then I expected no result. I never crafted a good poem, just crap.
            Born flyers don't question their magic. It's the only reality they know. But to those like me who come to flight as young adults—you can fly only so long before certain inevitable questions arise, questions that lead to a profound, even paralyzing, cognitive dissonance: When my very best work comes via channeling and not, in a sense, from my own best effort, what is my role in the process at all? To be clear, I never felt possessed by an outsider (as a Sibyl, for example, might fall into a trance before rendering spontaneous hexameters). Clairaudience produced not just my best quality. It clearly represented my own most authentic voice. No one but a higher me (a.k.a., Albion) would choose such words and content. How paradoxical, then, that I had to reach beyond myself to find my voice. Thus my job, as I soon came to see it, was largely to get out of the way, out of my own way.
            But I was never content to be a conduit only. I had higher aspirations (still do): that I might someday prove a decent artist/writer/thinker in my own right; that I might actually understand what I was doing and be the author of that true voice; that I might someday be someone able to make a difference in the world. I recall when I was quite young, overhearing one adult tell another how, among all the different ways to die, she would prefer to die in her sleep. How strongly I disagreed! Stupid lady, I thought, why would you choose to miss your own death? You get only one chance in life to die. By God, I was going to be there when it happened. I still feel the same. How then could I step away from flight?

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus

Salvador Dali 1937

8. Echo

            I have always known that I'm a father. Even as a young child I lived with the mystical certainty that my children awaited me. (My wife felt the same.) Part of this knowledge, no doubt, was instilled by my parents, who placed child rearing at the center of their lives. Part is genetics, like my deep monogamy, which seems hardwired in the family. But clearly there's more: As an albion, I've always treasured wisdom above all other human gifts—beyond brains & brawn & feats of flying magic—and I've always believed, like my father before me, that there is no wisdom deeper than  parenting, no higher calling.
            You don't understand? Not so incurably inclined? Neither is Scribe. Nor can I explain color to a blind man (we tried). For that matter, most of my friends in the Jewel Net don't share this thread. That is, while all our members are fashioned to fly in life (even me, if not too late), parents are rare among our number. Josef was a father, but he's the only other parent we talk to. Indeed, Blake, Vilansit, and Don all wanted children in life, but were denied the chance by their overseers. One might guess that most flyers are too busy making magic to make babies. Despite their gifts flyers still live & operate in time, under physical constraints, and parenting cuts deeply into air miles. (I think of Beethoven's lengthy stint raising his screwed-up nephew Karl, which turned out badly for both and cost the world years of potential music.) But this is not about a shortage of physical time per se, for flyers can always splice an inspired four-leaf interval between any two decimal moments. (If you open a dream cupboard, you'll find dream cups within.)
            No, the facts are more brutal: Children, like vampires, suck soul. To the parent there is a deep, protracted personal cost. Worse, much in child rearing cannot be controlled, and there's no guarantee of success or even result. You can devote your whole life to your child and come away with nothing. Even at best, when you love your children fully, they, in turn, will love their own children more than they love you. There is no symmetry or reciprocity of soul investment—which is absolutely beautiful in eye of eternity—but is often hard for superstars dumped in the middle of diaper-changing or disciplining teenagers. All energy for quite some time flows downhill only.
            And it's not about energy either. Again, when properly tapped in, flyers have sources that defy modern physics. Rather it's alignment. Flight is direct connection, which is normally preceded by aligning self & soul & the object of one's connection. But parenting realigns the soul and puts the child at the center, a new origin, 24/7 for 20+ years. Thus one's poetry, books, or other gifts to the world, well, these wind up in a different quadrant, afterthoughts, where you might still fly on occasion. But a divided attention is the enemy of flight. While some flyers manage, many cannot. Add a second child, divide one's focus further.
            Here's something that blows my mind (though it probably won't excite most readers): Parenting is a perfect refutation of Plato's Theory of Forms. No matter how abstract my mysticism gets—especially as I am an albion—there is no such thing as abstract parenting. Parenting (like teaching) happens in the moment, in the trenches, in the collisions of souls. It is utterly present even in absence. One might argue that parenting is a way of seeing the world, a wisdom which has no form. I disagree. Just as thinking needs an object, parenting needs a child—not some idea of a child (which horrifies me as I think of it)—but specific children, my children, Deirdre and Rhiannon. All albions must be parents, where children are our antidote to the altitudes.

∞!

9. Aliah

I end this lesson with another form of flight, the most precious: It is the ability to see into the soul of another and untie a knot, that which bleeds or blocks the soul. All living people have knots. We tie these onto our lives to anchor ourselves, the threads of our existence. But many people are knotted in the extreme, where "upon one knot others gather." Call this baggage. Call it abuse, and parents especially are guilty of knotting their children.
To untie a knot, then, is flight as direct healing, and it is most precious because it always involves aliah, magic both wholly good and completely beyond us, the Holy Spirit. Hubris, which is often a vital measure in flight—indeed, the preferred vehicle of many flyers—has no place in healing. When I have touched others in this manner, I find myself shaking (literally, it's a sign to myself), and then I'll nag myself blue in the aftermath, frightened by my audacity. How dare I reach? How dare I teach? (This disingenuous chirping we call the cricket, a voice we learn to silence.) How can I trust?
For there is risk: To touch in this manner potentially trespasses in forbidden territory. The power to heal can also do harm. Those who untie knots can tie knots on, deep in the soul of another. All in the Jewel Net vow never to violate free will. This is worst. It is the power to ensnare & enslave, and from its corruption there is no redemption. Members of the Jewel have, in fact, been expelled, amputated. The result is an open wound or tear in the net. (See Blake's The Tyger.) We take a second vow, then, more specific: We never attempt to see into the soul of another. To do so is to alter both the other and oneself. Souls thus laid open lie naked & defenseless. More than fluids are exchanged, and once commingled, rivers never separate. It's what Anand offered freely on the ghats of the Ganges, but I am of a mind too young to consent.

I'm comfortable with Rhiannon's choices. I trust her with my life. My wife & I both gave our fullest measure and delegated nothing. Whose soul among us doesn't hang in the balance? Rhiannon isn't yet a flyer, but she has reason to try, hubris with a purpose and a warning. My own mistakes should serve her well. Coming from a parent, the Jewel might be nagging.
And Deirdre's at no risk of falling, though flight for her looms further off. As much as I'm her father, she's a mother, as incurably consigned. She'll be a great mother. There is no higher calling.

Hail aliah
2/17

§

4. A Genealogy

            Before Rhiannon there was Deirdre, my older daughter, who fell for four-leaf clovers at age 11 or 12—which came after Nana, my mother, related her own girl-fascination. Apparently for most of the 1930s Mom tended a small patch of clover near her house and inflicted upon it enough Dr. Mengele tortures to send it flailing into contortions, including seven- and eight-leaf mutations. This patch of clover, in fact—along with her seeing a pair of Siamese Siamese kittens (conjoined)—were what inspired my mother’s life-long interest in genetics. Which was how Mom would always spin her story. But Nana’s special girl wisdom wasn’t about science. Mom loved the magic she once wielded—enough so, that she secretly still believed in it, a secret even from herself. Nor did Deirdre care about genetics per se. I could see how the two of them would light up over any such discussion, much as they might over Narnia or Harry Potter.
            Deirdre thus made four-leaf clovers her magic passion. I have five acres, much of it lawn and pasture, so she didn’t have far to wander. Wow! Look at that, another one! We were all suitably impressed & stumped (the first dozen at least). But then she pressed further, turning her clover-quests into fantasy football, mapping patches around the neighborhood, keeping stats.
            Nor did I mind at first. (I found it intriguing.) But within a year or so drama queen Deirdre became obsessed, blocking out time in her “busy week” to revisit clover caches, assessing her “work,” namely her very worth as a person, in terms of her trophies cashed (where clover-seeking offers no consolation for failure). So I intervened—not roughly, mind you, especially as I had no way to enforce her compliance. I simply expressed myself (nagged) and went on record with my concern: Magic is manic, addictive. You can get so caught up in its webs & mirrors & ego trip that you forget who you are. Been there. Swallowed that. What does it mean to lose yourself?
            And Deirdre moved on. But not because she heard me or matured. Rather it was Rhiannon, whose own sudden thirst and talent nudged Deirdre early into retirement. Together the sisters “hunted” but a few times, where Deirdre’s laudable success in finding two or even three shamrocks paled compared to sissy’s easy six. (Easter egg hunts proved more lopsided still.) I don’t think there was ever overt competition, but there’s something about clover magic that doesn’t allow for more than one reigning princess. Consider the miracle on its own terms: It’s a private sign between soul & self (perfect for Anglo-Irish girls & their grandmothers), an acknowledgment from eternity that you’re lucky, you’re liked, and  above all, you’re special. The very point of the miracle misses its mark then, when your kid sister is more special.

5. Crouching Tiger

            Nor did Rhiannon come to the party as a Celtic princess, a school-girl cutie playing games with invisible friends. That’s what concerned me. She knew what she wanted. She’d listened to all of Nana’s bullshit, yes, but had no high regard for druids, Welsh witches (like her namesake), or watered-down Arthurian lore. She saw magic for itself, naked  power. She’d heard me nag Deirdre for months and absorbed my tutelage like a sponge. For her, shamrocks were less a magic game than a legitimate ego-challenge. She took to clovers as a tiger takes to mice. Advisor warned me after their first encounter. He conducted a tarot reading for her, then took me aside. Her power’s not in question, but her soul hangs in the balance. Scribe, too, had a stern face. Let’s just say I was not surprised.
            After all, I recall well her bedtime ecstasies when she was an infant—not a rare event—how her screams of delight and purest joy would peal from her bedroom like nothing I’d experienced. Many times my wife and I tried creeping down the carpeted hallway to catch a glimpse. I imagined tiny unicorns, levitating toys, Spielberg lighting effects emanating from everywhere. But we never once saw. Many times within inches of the open doorjamb, screams in full fever, I’d shoot my head inside as fast as I could, only to find her just sitting up in her crib, alert and placid. “What?” she’d shrug in deadpan innocence, convincing no one.
            Here's another clue I filed away, as father of a future flyer: Starting before she could read, Rhiannon composed graphic stories, mixing curt drawings with symbols of spontaneous invention and sequencing them on paper into fully coherent messages. These could be funny or celebratory or (my favorites) articulate explosions of raw anger, all remarkably condensed into original art. Experimentation eventually led her to conventional graphic art, but also many hybrid forms, all spontaneously crafted. I watched her draw a few. It is her process that I record here, not her results: She never worked from a plan and had no idea where she was going. She’d just start in the upper left-hand corner and proceed in perfectly linear fashion frame-by-frame along & down the page, finishing exactly in the lower-right. One draft, no corrections. Exactly like Scribe’s creation of the ouija board, except that she did it regularly.

The Table of Contents below is too long to display fully. If you click to the right of these Lessons,you'll see the primary source documents displayed under each. These original sessions are a world treasure.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Pieter Bruegel c. 1565

Icarus. Phaethon. Narcissus. These were the myths I lived by then and which still haunt me like a dream I can't shake. Of course the crude reading of these stories simply scores them as morality plays: "Don't be egotistical." "Hubris is bad." But as soon as one flies—that is, for longer than the duration of some focused project, two weeks or more—then one sees these myths for what they are, normal & reasonable responses to the sudden onset of flight. All involve a youth blinded by something far greater than himself, something which is nonetheless his right to possess. One might call this "power," but what power is it? Fundamentally it is not some outside source, like the sun or the sun's horses, although to a green youth it might appear so. Rather it comes straight from one's soul, from eternity. It is one's soul. No wonder Narcissus falls in love with a face he can't recognize. Is it surprising that each of these stories ends badly for its hero?
I would like to pretend that my fall from flight (after about 10 weeks) all went according to plan, that the last thirty-five years of clawing my way back, step by step, were precisely what I've needed to present these lessons here. Maybe. After all, if I had managed at age 22 to reign in Apollo's horses and drive them to my whip & whim, I'd have certainly led a very different life, that of an artist rather than as a classroom teacher. (And my wife? And my daughters?) And I probably wouldn't care so much about flight as a process, as a curriculum, but only for the gifts it brings. "Those who can,…" (And my students?) My personal myth, however—that I crashed & burned precisely that I might walk the path I teach—I know is bullshit. Josef is always most clear when presenting hard truths:

[What follows—twelve years after Germany—incidentally marks Scribe's & my first known exchange at the board with someone other than our guide. We did not know that Josef, Master of Dreams, is foremost in our karass. He alone reaches every member.]

SESSION 15: 7/1/93

15.       Q:          Joseph, please go ahead.
A:          JOSEF HERE
I LISTEN IN SOMETIMES
I AM SERVANT OF THE JEWEL    LIKE YOU

16.       Q:          Joseph, do we have a foe? If so, who?
            A:          FOE IS NOT THE JUST WORD
RISK IS WHAT I AM MEANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT

Presumably the “risk” each member incurs upon entering the Jewel Net.

17.   Q:          Please tell us about the risk.
            A:          JOSEF SENT YOU DREAMS [Albion]
YOU DID [NO]T READ THEM ARIGHT

My Germany experience was to provide the case study for the

lesson. Well, I still inexplicably feel some shame and embarrassment

from the episode; and up to this point I had not gotten any outside

confirmation that I hadn’t just made up the whole mess on my own.

This was important to me.

18.   Q ([Albion]): How should I have been able to interpret the dreams you sent me?
            A: DO [NO]T FORCE A READING
MEANING MUST ARISE IN YOU EASILY    LIKE A FLOWER

I hope someday I will again be able to read the word “flower”

and see only a flower. We have now a universe of references to

“flower” as a metaphor.

19. Q ([Albion]): Joseph, when you sent me those dreams, did you suspect that I

would react as I did?
            A:          I KNEW     BUT I OBEY
[Albion]    CHOSE IN TIME

20.       Q:          Whom do you obey?
            A:          JEWEL IS FOR ME A LENS OR WINDOW

21. Q ([Albion]): Was it for the good of the Jewel that I misinterpreted the dreams

you. sent me? Was this a lesson?
A: LESSONS ARE USEFUL FOR CHILDREN
DO THEY DO WRONG FOR THE SAKE OF THEIR FATHER

22. Q ([Albion]): Can you tell me how it would have been now if I had not

misinterpreted the dreams?
A: I KNOW NO RESPONSE TO QUESTION YOU PUT

23. Q ([Albion]): I feel I failed a test. Will I have the opportunity in the future

to redeem myself and take other similar tests?
A: [Albion] JOSEF IS TESTING YOU NOW

Icarus alert!

Arthur Schopenhauer

1788-1860

albionspeak: a draught of language

Lesson 3: Flight

“I’m looking over a four-leaf clover

that I overlooked before.” - Woods/Dixon

1. Finding

My daughter Rhiannon has a special gift. She finds four-leaf clovers. She finds them everywhere, anywhere, sometimes five or six in a day. Hundreds of four-leaf clovers. Some she presses (they don’t preserve). Some she offers as gifts to friends. But most are picked, paraded, then discarded whence they came. Neither I nor my wife has ever found one. That’s over 100 combined years, and we’ve looked. Stranger still, my daughter reports that she knows in advance of plucking her shamrock that soon she’ll glance upon it. A “tingle” tells her when to freeze and fix her gaze upon a ripe, green carpet.

Can you spot the four-leaf shamrock?

The ratio of 3-leaf to 4-leaf clovers is roughly 10,000 to 1.

2. No Harm, No Foul…

This has proven a bone of contention in my household, principally between my daughter and me. Rhiannon enjoys her ability (= power). It’s “fun,” and it’s “harmless,” and she likes the attention. No harm, I concede, dreading the potential. Her crime is less an abuse of power than the squandering of a precious resource. Three explanations arise, all of which may be correct.

a) Rhiannon can “see” a four-leaf pattern in the grass better than the

rest of us, just as some people grasp musical phrases more easily.

Her mind is geometrically programmed (innately, then reinforced

with practice) to capture this pattern. No miracle, it’s just refined

talent. Never mind Rhiannon doesn’t see other patterns that most

do see (like pedestrians in crosswalks). Maybe she’s autistic, an

idiot savant, whose strength in one area compensates for great

voids elsewhere. Never mind her precognition: halting midstride

before a lawn she’s never visited, reaching for her quarry before

she’s actually spotted it. Never mind the absurd statistic:

Rhiannon - 1000+ Parents - 0

b) Rhiannon is “drawn” to four-leaf clovers, which either call out to

her or are highlighted subliminally, as if blazed with UV dye.

Perhaps the mutant four-leaf gene generates an energy signature,

one broadcast over some distance (5 m or more), available to rare,

sensitive people only. But what organ of perception, what brain

matrix? What dark energy of transmission?

c) Or, most miraculous, Rhiannon employs magic to create a

shamrock, where, a discontinuous moment earlier, not one existed.

Rhiannon, then, is a conjuress who practices real magic, albeit in

a quaint & highly symbolic form. As a sign from her overseer,

Rhiannon’s higher self, it seems a clear message: You’re a lucky

girl, Rhiannon, a magic girl.

In his so-called "Third Law" Arthur C. Clarke (my favorite childhood author)

famously said,

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Like many, I note the converse is equally true:

Any magic that is sufficiently understood is indistinguishable from technology.

alert!