Magic – 6

At the start of this year, I announced my intention to make this my “year of magic.” That can mean many things, of course. This post is about a very particular kind of magic.

Long ago and far away, I taught film classes and I hit upon the idea of centering the class around different science fiction films (any excuse to introduce students to Metropolis, I say. Trust me, if you’ve ever seen a movie involving flying cars or robots – not to mention Futurama or Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video, you owe a debt to Fritz Lang). To this day, I cherish those classes. At any rate, one item I taught was the notion that the students needed to be acquainted with “The Big Three” of science fiction writing – Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. Arthur C. Clarke famously posited that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” 

At first, it just sounds clever. Then, when you start to think about it, it takes on a deeper meaning.

Over the past few weeks, my household has had some upheavals and uncertainty due to magic, I mean advanced technology. My Beloved’s heart fell out of a healthy rhythm and, when a pacemaker couldn’t fix the problem, a small implanted defibrillator literally kicked in. The device wirelessly sent data on the “episode” (what a polite word for waking up screaming) to trained professionals who examined the data and made arrangements for a battery of tests. The final one was a heart catheterization.

Think about this for a minute or two.

• You are given a magic potion that renders you alert and able to respond to questions, but wipes your memory and erases pain.
• A puncture is made in an artery in your wrist and a flexible tube is guided through your blood vessels into your beating heart, while the magician watches the progress of the tube on a video screen.
• With the tube in the chambers of the heart, the magician and her assistants can examine the interior of blood vessels, inject a dye to study the blood flow, and even open a blocked artery.
• When they are finished, you are bandaged up and within an hour, you’re eating a turkey sandwich.

Magic. All of it.

It’s the full moon tonight – this one is often called the “Sturgeon Moon,” as many Native tribes around the Great Lakes found the fish easy to catch during this time of year.

As for me, I’ll privately be referring to it as the “Surgeon Moon” to honor some incredibly gifted and dedicated professionals who spent years of their lives studying the miracles of the human body and kept my Beloved safe.

All hail magic. And science. And the blurry space between.