Our life becomes charmless when we convince ourselves that the dots we know and the shapes we have learned to draw are all there is. Society has worked its hypnosis on us, worn us down. Fairies snap us awake. Fairies are anarchists of the soul.
We can let them teach us to look at the world in radically different ways. When your web gets boring and predictable, you can change it. Money is every bit as absurd as fairies, or if you like, fairies are no more absurd than money. It is an immensely liberating discovery, and for that, a little unnerving.
The fact that even today, even after the triumph of grid maps, fairies are still seen – and that they take ridiculous forms that no one in their right mind could consider ‘realistic’, such as smartly dressed aliens – shows us that social realities are paper tigers: as long as they hold together, they are formidable, but when the smallest tear appears, they come undone very quickly. The most precious gift a good fairy leaves us is not a belief in her existence, but a radical doubt in the existence of everything else. We can create, to an extent, a different reality. We do not have to please and we do not have to comply. It is radical mojo.
It is the mojo that we are going to learn in the last two steps of our journey.
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I once saw something. Not exactly a fairy, I don’t think so, but not a ghost either, and certainly not an alien. Was it a hallucination? I am not sure any more what that word means. I would say it was almost a monk.
For a long time, I did not think about the almost-monk, until Paola, in our early days together, asked me if I had ever seen anything that was not of this world. We were in a pub in Edinburgh, a city we both love, one with a real sense of strangeness and mystery (in the Old Town especially). ‘No,’ I answered. And then it dawned on me. ‘Except for the monk,’ I added.
It had been a cold February afternoon, just after Candlemas. My father had taken me to my family’s small holiday house, in a fishing village not far from the town where we spent the winter. He was still welclass="underline" there was no reason to believe that in just a few years his mind would be gone. I might have been seven or eight, no older than that, and, like most children of that age, I expected that nothing would ever change. Like fortunate children, I didn’t want them to.
My father would go to the small house in the fishing village regularly throughout the winter months, to tend to the garden, and more often than not I would go with him. I loved the silence that reigned at that time of year, and the memories of summer that haunted the place.
That afternoon, while my father was busy with various chores, I wandered around the garden. The sun was high in the sky.
It was then that I saw the almost-monk.
I call him the almost-monk because I do not have a better word than monk, but I don’t think it was a monk at all. It wore a monk’s brown habit, its head was covered by a large, pointed hood, and its arms were folded. Its hands, if it had hands at all, were buried deep within the sleeves. It was moving, not walking, but sliding.
I saw it clearly. It was sliding in front of me, just a couple of yards away from me, as clearly visible as everything else in the stark early afternoon light. It slid until it reached the wall dividing our house from our neighbours’, and there it disappeared from view.
More than afraid, I was awestruck. I didn’t call out to my father (I don’t know why: that is another question for you) and I never thought of the almost-monk again until that day in Edinburgh. But I remember some words that came into my mind when I saw it. I thought, it’s him again.
This is my memory: make of it what you will. I don’t remember having seen the almost-monk before, or since, and I wouldn’t know where that ‘it’s him again’ came from. The almost-monk’s appearance was cartoonish, and the way it slid almost comical. If it was a ghost, it was a very badly drawn one. It might be a memory I made up, it might be a dream that I confused with a waking experience, it might be a figment of my imagination, which was as overactive then as it is today. It might be a spirit. It might be many things.
All of them make my reality flimsier. All of them make me doubt my senses, the shapes I have been trained, like a monkey in a sideshow, to draw. They make me think that although life may be tough, and that it breaks our illusions far too early, it never lacks magic.
For that, I am grateful.
THE WORKOUT
1. The Paranoid Universe
The universe has a message for you, which it is trying to communicate to you through small signs: articles in the newspaper, birds visiting your garden, coincidences. For ten days, pretend that you believe that the universe has such a message, and be ready to receive signs. Note down in your Book of Wonder all the possible signs you discern: for example, if you hear on the radio a snatch of a song that reminds you of a friend from school, the message might have to do with that friend, or with something connecting you both. Try to understand what the message is.
2. The Fairy Gambit
For a month, act as if you believe in fairies. You might find it difficult at first, but it will get easier after the first week. Consciously look for signs of fairy presence around you. Things you glimpse out of the corner of your eye; an otherworldly tune coming from afar; a voice in the wind; a shiver when it is not cold. Let go of all scepticism, and act as if you believe in fairies, completely and utterly. Note down in your Book of Wonder all the fairy signs you spot. After a month, look at your notes. Is there a discernible pattern?
Is it possible that you will keep on believing? Or was it just a game?
If you already believe in fairies, reverse the exercise. For a month, act as if no fairies exist, and go out of your way to demonstrate it.
3. The Encounter with a Spirit
For a week or more, go back to the tree that you got to know for the workout for the Fourth Key. If that tree had a spirit, what spirit would it be? Would it be female, male, or somewhere else on the spectrum – or would it be something else altogether? How would it look? If you can draw, draw it. What would its voice sound like? And what would it say? Don’t be too shy to address the tree as you would a person, and listen to its answers.
4. The Journey to Faerie
Take a walk in the woods, or in a stretch of countryside close to where you live. Before starting the walk, pour a libation of milk – a traditional offering for the Good Neighbours – and ask the Good Neighbours to meet you during the walk, in friendship and with no harm done. When you take the walk, look for signs and patterns. Are you still walking in our world? Are you in Faerie? Or a place in between?
The Sixth Key
The Story
We need to escape
The Sultan Shahryar had a younger brother with a smaller kingdom. They got along welclass="underline" a smaller kingdom is still a kingdom, and the younger brother was content with it. The two of them had beautiful wives and loyal subjects. Life was sweet, for a while.
One day the sultan sent his vizier to his brother, with an invitation to come and spend some time with him, if the brother so wished: it was two years since they had last met. The brother thought it an excellent idea, and asked the vizier to camp out of town while he got ready for the journey.