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Real Change in the Real World

Reader, I'm casting a spell as you read this.

That's how word-magic works.

Every post's a spell.

Why do I blog?

Easily told: to bring about change, real change in the real world.

Not only to bring about change in consciousness, as odious old Uncle Al would have it—though certainly it begins there—but real change in the real world.

Ye gods, how grandiose is that?

Word-magic only works when someone is listening.

Therefore, in order to work word-magic, you have to make them want to listen.

You have to give them something.

You have to make what you're saying worth listening to.

In other words, you have to establish a connection.

Before hitting the “Publish” button, I always stop and ask myself first: is what I'm saying here likely to bring about the kind of change that I want to see? i.e. have I said what I'm saying in such a way as to open the reader to Posch and his ideas? Or am I just blowing off steam?

If the answer is B—as it not infrequently is, especially when I'm writing about matters that I care too much about—then I don't publish.

Well, mostly not.

A word to would-be workers of word-magic: alienate your reader, and he'll stop reading. Alienate your listener, and she'll stop listening.

Then your spell has failed from the outset, and the change that you want to see, won't come about.

Finding Spell

A friend of mine has a family spell that's been passed down for who knows how long, a spell of finding.

It always works.

My friend is from Italy originally, from a little town in the mountains north of Rome. When she was little, anything in town that went missing always got referred to her grandmother, the keeper of the spell.

She always managed to find it.

“Teach me the spell, nona,” my friend pleaded repeatedly, but she wouldn't do it. The spell has a catch, you see.

The spell only works for one person at a time. As soon as you teach it to someone else, it stops working for you.

The servant serves only one master at a time.

The decades went by. My friend emigrated to the US. Nona died. Whether or nor she passed the spell along to anyone first, my friend doesn't know.

Like a burning glass concentrating the rays of the Sun to a single burning point, magic works by the targeted application of focused power. Structuring a spell in such a way that it only works for one person at a time is about as focused as it gets.