Confessions from the corner

 

I have often been accused of being an “armchair magician.” The accusation always misses its target though. Because to me, it sounds like an absolute ideal. Actually, it’s an ideal that I strive for daily.

I am a magician. I have an armchair. The only problem (sorry, “challenge”) is that I’m not as fully situated in the armchair as I want to be. Yet.

Where critics create the metaphor to indicate someone who’s not out there in the “real” world, I would reverse it and state publicly that the greatest accomplishment for me would be to direct all the magical forces straight from my lovely chair. That is the ultimate reality.

My armchair comes from IKEA but looks “retro”/vintage in its design. It has a floral pattern and is situated in one corner of our library. The walls are covered from floor to ceiling with books that inspire me daily, and very tangibly so. I get my ideas here. I read here. I write here. I snooze and fantasise here.

Actual “temple” or ritual work is but an extension of the magical labor and formulations stemming from the armchair. Ritual is mostly necessary as an “intellectual decompression,” a temporary discharge of a continual charge.

To my right is my library desk. To my left is my wife’s armchair. Absolutely straight ahead is a door leading to the outside. Being positioned in a corner in my own armchair gives me the best vantage point I could ever think of; my own bookish Shambala.

I ingest the accusations and, on a good day, wish that the critics will one day find their own four-legged chariot. There’s so much magic in the library. I strive to become an ever more actively present part of it, as a real, solid, bona fide armchair magician.