I’ve been thinking about magic, real magic. Now, a lot of the world is stage magic, illusion, and misdirection — not real magic at all. Don’t get me wrong: stage magic can be pure essence of cool. I appreciate Mr. Copperfield’s drawing my attention away from where the Statue of Liberty once stood, since a fixed stare into that void shows the entire illusion and thus destroys all the fun.

(Moreover, knowing that “stage magic” and misdirection permeate our lives can be good for you. Think of all the self-righteous hoohaw about smoking — especially secondhand smoke, which is far less dangerous to the average citizen than jaywalking. Think about the Draconian rules to deal therewith, and all the announcements that imply (hell, come damn near to saying right out) that all carcinoma is self-inflicted. Now, compare all this strident misdirection with the reports that are coming out about the real dangers, the environmental pollutants that can kill you quicker than 10 million puffs of secondhand smoke, including radon and high-voltage electromagnetic fields, and imagine your government urging you to “Pay no attention to the life threat behind the curtain!” Would focusing on a minor danger misdirect your attention from a major danger? Could this be of direct financial benefit to anyone? Might gratitude for such misdirection be expressed in some tangible way? Yes. That is what I mean by stage magic.)

Magic — real magic, is all around us. Our planet, Earth teems with life. It is the only planet that we know of that does, though we don’t really know too many. Think of what genuine magic life is! And it pretty much feeds on itself and its remains; only the simplest forms of life draw their sustenance from the elements. And all life seems to be related — most DNA is pretty much alike.

The basic building block of our corner of the Universe is the carbon atom. In fact, carbon appears to be one of the most common elements in the entire Universe, right up their with hydrogen and helium. There’s nothing magic about carbon atoms, whether you think of them as diamonds, soot, coal, the bubbles in your soda, your little pet Spot, or your great-uncle Ernest. There it is. Astronomers read its “signature” from all over the known universe. It’s really no big deal.

So some of these clumps of carbon atoms — not the diamonds, but Spot or your great-uncle Ernest — are suddenly found to be generating energy internally via chemical oxidation. They form ever-larger clumps, to release more and more energy. If we can know nothing else of them with any certainty, it is that they are driven by a need to release energy. Does anyone have a problem with that? How about you physics majors? Anyone who has studied physics knows that the entire non-living universe goes with absolute inevitability from hot to cold. It appears that it is only what we call life that does not follow that rule.

The literal truth of any faith’s story of beginnings doesn’t matter, whether it’s Izanagi and Izanami, Adam and Eve, or Apu-Punchau and Mama Quilla. The truth lies in the wonder — mechanical explanations of how we came to be, after all, crashed against the stone walls of the Second Law of Thermodynamics years and years ago.

Did the fearful faithful even notice that, as Sir James Jean once remarked, the Universe is looking more and more like a thought than a machine? Or have we been forever scarred by the idea first propounded by the Age of Reason and today an axiom of faith, that everything in the world can be explained? According to this mindset, there is no magic at all, and everything has a rational explanation: Jesus used faith healing, hypnotism, and trickery; Stonehenge was built by some really smart engineers; it is impossible to walk on hot coals and not get burnt. According to this mindset, there is always a rational explanation for everything, even if we have no idea what it might be. In the cases where Occam’s Razor slices away every rational explanation and leaves only the mystical — well, there just must be something wrong with Occam’s Razor!

There’s been a lot of science since the 19th century. Back then, they saw the universe as a set of layered spheres, like onions. Even the human mind was seen pretty much as an onion, with the Superego as the outermost layer and the Id way down in the core. Did you really believe your Deity so small that he/she could be mastered by people who saw in a Vidalia onion a metaphor for all of existence?

Look at the Hubble pictures. Glue yourself to NASA missions on cable. There’s a lot of Nothing out there. Most of it seems to be going pretty much by the rules, too . . . except here. There’s magic here, a whole lot of things we don’t have a pat answer for — and a whole aspect of human existence is based solely on facing the sheer wonder of it all.

I preach no one’s gospel here save the good news that it really is all magic, it really is all a miracle. Look in the mirror for today’s miracle: how and why are you, anyway? What are those funny aurora-like lights that show up over the Peninsula and Tampa Bay, every few years? And just what is the deal with tree frogs, anyway?

There are questions great and small, questions for every intellect, mostly unanswered, often unasked. People who are trying to sell you on the idea that they have all the answers have a great deal to lose if you know that the whole of our existence remains pretty much one big question.

Though we’ve all learned a bit in our growth — learning to feed ourselves and such — most of life remains a mystery. And ain’t it grand? The only thing between the way you are now and the wonder you felt as a small child is just the result of someone else’s misdirection.

It is a miracle that you read this, or that you or I exist at all. Treasure this. Treasure all the sights, all the sounds, all the thoughts. You stand in defiance of the entire known universe, a living being, defying physical law by your very existence.

In the Wisdom Dude’s world, the glass is always half full, never half empty — and, say! who ever thought of glasses anyway? Wasn’t that a cool idea?

In a thousand years, something you concocted offhandedly one day might be everyone’s commonplace, a zipper or a paper clip. Isn’t magic great?