Magic wands are made of jet stone (azabache). They have silvery tips and are perfectly cylindrical and suave, with a texture of polished ivory. They are not too long and are very light, like elegant Chinese chopsticks. They are always activated by magic words which are solemnly pronounced upon touching the objects you want to transform, or pointing to the places, where the enchantment would befall.

Yesterday, I was walking in my world of dreams, on the forest by the beach. Pensive, looking down to the path, as it appeared before my eyes -pondering on the fears, the insecurities of the times, the so many words and opinions, on the weather and the economy, on terrorism and bigotry, on so many complaints by all, including myself. Pondering on all of this, I looked down to the ground and its usual dusty contexts; pebbles, weeds, busy insects and other creatures, the latter running, crawling and flying around, with unknown purposes and destinations, each to their own.

Then I saw it, on the ground by the side of the path. Despite it being dusty, it was still attractive. It was like a foot long and it was crowned by a silvery tip. A magic wand!

I picked it up and it felt strange. I cleaned it against my clothes and the jet stone shone. Suddenly, my thoughts and worries were suspended, while I admired the beautiful magic wand. The only one I had ever held in my hands. Yes, I had seen images before and imagined them in fables, but I had never held a magic wand.

Spellbound, I moved it in the air and pretended to do magic, like a conductor-illusionist performing in a theater. It felt so ethereal in my hands and yet so tangible. I imagined all sorts of spells and pronounced them gravely, as I pointed my magic wand in all directions, trying to change the world where I was moving, for another one unknown. ¨I said “Abracadabra, aleofra, shazam, elohim, maktub, dageram” –- and then I laughed at my temporary insanity, as I forgot my angst for some time.

After a while, I realized that no new worlds emerged from the stones pointed by the wand, that the coleopteran insects did not become helicopters, or worms transform into carriages of silver and gold. I said to myself “it is just like everything else, I have the instrument, but do not know the music, I am missing the app to operate the wand”.

So I left it by the wayside, hoping that another wayfarer might find it, and maybe pronounce the right sortilege to make it work. And I started to walk back home in my world of thoughts. Suddenly, I realized that I was surrounded by green giants that observed me in silence, their towering hands rising to heaven in praise of the sun. And I felt the fire of the sun on my cheeks, on my skin. And it was so far away! Yet its light dazzled everything.

My feet were moving in coordination. My mind was thinking, my heart beating and feeling, overtaken with emotion. Songbirds were singing all kinds of calls, nesting in the gardens of my brain. They came through my ears, in sound and multiplied echoes. The breeze was caressing my skin, like the golden sun, and she was taking my hand with its soft passing by, as if I were a child. Colors peeked into my eyes like rainbows, and poured inside like rivers, through those discerning windows that separate reds from greens, and lead to perception of endless hues of light.

The essence of wild fluorescence carried by the breeze, filtered through my nostrils and inebriated my thoughts, with subtle fragrances of rose and jasmine and woods. It was a concert of light and molecules. Butterflies and dragon flies, like winged fairies escorted my passing by, and the sonorous soft wind gave voice to the silent trees, like a continuous purring of ocean murmur.

Everything around me was magic and poetry. My angst, for the irreconcilable complaints of others and my own, became gratitude for these moments eternal. And my dreams became real dreams. I stopped differentiating the dead from the living, for everything and everyone was present in the concert at the same time.

Unaware, time and path passed, and I reached home; opened the door and walked into my life. All my moments and self-definitions were sitting there, those within me and those outside in the others, waiting for me. Anxious because they felt I had abandoned them; my limitations, my complexes, the differences of opinion, the forebodings of future, the regrets of the past, all the intricate contents of that unkempt closet within myself. They ran towards me unbridled and invaded me again. Once more, I was saturated with me and with the others –separated by surrounding walls, with doors to come in and out. Everything again was process and sequence.

Yet, I greeted everyone with a smile, based in the memory of that breeze that took my hand and walked me through the eternal. And I thought, as the channels of the objective and immediate were turning on, “it seems that the magic wand worked after all”.