Dec. 11: No good deed goes unpunished

 I had to drive up to Ottawa to do a magic show today. There was a blizzard. It took me longer to get to Ottawa than expected. The lights were against me too. It seemed that the universe had conspired to make me late for my show.

About 15 minutes away to the venue, I'm stopped three cards back behind a red light, trying to make a left turn. On the meridian to my left appears a beggar. He (or she) has a dirty blue backpack and an empty Tim Hortons cup, which he (or she) is using to solicit funds. I had nothing I could give and I was in a foul mood anyway, because I don't like being late for magic shows.

Then the person in the car in front of me rolled down their window and gave the beggar a $20 bill.

The beggar was happy. Not overjoyed, but happy. He (or she) had probably grown accustomed to the occasional $20 bill. It's rare but no so out of the ordinary that it makes you want to happy dance.

The light turned green and the car in front of me drove into the intersection, skidded a little, and then managed to get back into the turning lane. I said a prayer for that driver. 

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Flashback to October of 1992 when I am a theatre student at Mount Royal College. We are mounting a production of Goldberg Street, a series of short plays by David Mamet, and I am one of the characters in a play called Yes, but so what. My character goes home and finds that a plate - a family heirloom plate, as a matte of fact - has broken. The maid broke it. That is the official explanation. But my character wants to examine it more metaphysically. He is married but just recently, he was lusting after some young woman he met in a restaurant. He wonders if his lustful thoughts somehow caused that plate to break, like God is punishing him for cheating in his heart.

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Another playwright, Christopher Durang, wrote a play called The Nature and Purpose of the Universe. Its central character, Elaine, has a husband who hates her and three sons - one a criminal, one a homosexual, and the other one lost his genitals in a lawnmower accident. There are two angels in the play, Ronald and Eleanor, who conspire to make Elaine's life as miserable as possible. 

Offensive? Yes. Blasphemous? Sure. But Mr. Durang said it's a modern retelling of the book of Job.

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Job is the oldest book in the Bible. It was written before Genesis. Here is the story of Job in a nutshell: Job is a rich family man who loves God. Satan tells God that Job only loves him because he is blessed. God gives Satan permission to mess with Job's good fortune. Satan takes away everything Job has, kills his family, then makes him extremely sick. Job remains devout. God gives stuff back to Job and Satan feels stupid.

My favourite part of Job is when he asks God why he took all the stuff away from him and God treats him to a monologue of rhetorical questions that highlight Job's ignorance. Here is a part of that monologue:

“Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook
    or tie down its tongue with a rope?
² Can you put a cord through its nose
    or pierce its jaw with a hook?
³ Will it keep begging you for mercy?
    Will it speak to you with gentle words?
⁴ Will it make an agreement with you
    for you to take it as your slave for life?
⁵ Can you make a pet of it like a bird
    or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?
⁶ Will traders barter for it?
    Will they divide it up among the merchants?
⁷ Can you fill its hide with harpoons
    or its head with fishing spears?
⁸ If you lay a hand on it,
    you will remember the struggle and never do it again!
⁹ Any hope of subduing it is false;
    the mere sight of it is overpowering.
¹⁰ No one is fierce enough to rouse it.
    Who then is able to stand against me?
¹¹ Who has a claim against me that I must pay?
    Everything under heaven belongs to me.

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We read in the New Testament that we can't redeem ourselves by doing good deeds. This makes sense to me. If I wanted to be a bank robber, for instance, I don't think I could redeem myself by giving money to charity now and then, reading to sick kids at the hospital, or serving spaghetti at the church's seniors' night. You kind of have to commit yourself to doing good and you have to hate what's evil.

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I have spent much of this past weekend doing card tricks for complete strangers. Whenever I perform, I think of something my teachers told me when I was a teenager: "Always remember that most people don't have emotional connections to playing cards the way magicians do. What you have to do first is get them to care."

This was an impossible mission at first. In his essay, Black as the Ace of Spades, David Mamet says that playing cards are the symbols of the universe (which helps explain the durability of the Tarot.) That was a clue. Make the cards symbols of something.

So no more take a card and I will find it. Now it's what are you constantly losing around the house? Your cell phone? Well, this three of clubs, that you freely chose, will represent your cell phone.

And so we are brought back to human things again.

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Last night, I did a strolling magic show with my friend, Chris Pilsworth. Here is a picture of us at the end of the evening:

Before the gig started, I had a brief email exchange with Shawn Farquhar, a BC-based magician who gave me the title of this note. Assuming that he had a show that evening, I said "good luck tonight." His reply was that there was no need for luck. He told me I had no need for luck either. "You got this."

Yes, I did have it, and it has been pointed out to me several times that Lady Luck tends to sit with those of us who are diligent about practising our craft.

As Chris and I debriefed outside the Adam Room at Chateau Laurier, where the party was being held, one of the partygoers took some time to thank us and tell us that we helped make the evening more "magical."

I was giddy and happy and high on life and if it was 10 or 15 years ago, I might have gone to a nearby pub and watched a hockey game and do magic for free for the patrons in the bar.

Instead, I drove home to be with my nine-year-old son, who missed his daddy. As he snuggled into me and fell asleep, I wondered if what I did in the final hour of the day was more important than the card tricks.

You know what they say? No good deed goes unpunished.