When I was small I believed in magic. All kinds of magic, like fairies, spells, witches, dragons (which we know from the Game of Thrones are real), spirits and ghosts, pixies (but not the band). I believed there was more to life than met the eye, and with that adventures in faraway lands that were not yet mapped. I still hold true to those beliefs and have been readying myself for a journey to one of those lands that is not yet mapped. In order to tell this tale I think I need to go back and start with the purple frog first to make sense of nonsense.

When I was around six or seven years old I was very much focused on magic, not just the Disney stuff we saw on the World of Disney on Sunday nights but real magic. Real magic was what I wanted to acquire, some practical magic skill sets to help me be successful in life. Success at that age was making sure I could find my mother’s hiding spot for the “good” cookies, control of the TV for when The Mike Douglas Show or The Monkeys were on, and getting a horse of my own on our suburban quarter acre lot on Long Island. My logical progression for learning magic was creating something out of nothing, which lead to hundreds of hours of me trying to manifest a purple frog in my hand every time I sat on the toilet.

Yea I can hear you, “Really, the toilet? Do need to know about this?” No you don’t, but you don’t need to know about waist trainers and Kim Kardashian, which filters work best for what on Instagram, or the jingle for Nationwide Insurance commercial, but you do ….

The bathroom practice of prestidigitation was a necessity: I was not only practicing as I sat but the toilet was the touchstone (for lack of a better phrase) to try to make my purple frog appear. It was the small private space of the bathroom that mattered most for my work. Our house felt close: a jumble of arms and legs, mouths going, hair flipping and doors kicking people.  There were my three growing sisters, my parents, who held a certain amount of gravitas, and my generously proportioned grandmother; we can call her the anchor.  It was crowded. The bathroom was the only room that I did not share for any period of time, so it was a natural laboratory. As to the frog, green would have been good but for some reason my frog had to be purple. The rationale was to prove that the appearance and its purpleness were nothing short of spectacular magic of the highest order. Not that I was doing much magic at the lowest order or any for that matter. I thought that if you are going to pull a frog from thin air, it can’t be harder to make it purple. I still stand by that logic, really it is flawless.

I never did get my purple frog. The practice morphed and faded into other desires, other practices of the improbable and impractical over time. In junior high there was a stoner bully, yes an oxymoron but what can I tell you? Things played out in a junior high lunchroom where anything unappetizing and unlikely can thrive. This girl picked on me every time I was in there. She was tougher than me, which was not difficult: though I was tall, I was quiet and shy, not smart enough for a nerd just beige enough to stay out of the fray. I was safe until something about me made it through this chick’s lunchtime buzz and she started busting my chops, as we said in the day. At one point I got up my nerve and warned her off. She wanted to know why she shouldn’t mess with me, and before I knew it I told her I was a witch. Not only was she high, but she was not the sharpest knife in the cafeteria. I am also an excellent liar, or was in the day.  She was in awe and I gave her examples of all things witchy, which I garnered from every TV show and movie I ever saw (and there were many), not just beloved Bewitched but Bell Book and Candle and beyond. My white lie was enough to give me space to eat lunch, avoid attack and build an odd bond and alliance with a different crowd. It turns out telling people you have magic powers creates the end result of having magic powers. I didn’t get beat up or harassed which was what I wanted magic for.

Years later I lay in bed after an argument with my boyfriend, thinking he is a pain in my ass and I need to get out of NYC.  At the time I was fixing the first Mac’s from Apple, this little renegade computer company. I was sick of the city and I strongly wanted to be audacious and independent. My dream in that moment was to leave the city, work at the support center Apple had in North Carolina, and to buy myself a big-ass red truck. I smiled at that dream; it calmed me so I could fall asleep and promptly forgot all about it. I didn’t have a license or drive at the time; I had only been fixing computers for about six months. Women, especially Long Island girls, didn’t drive trucks in those days and I never lived anywhere but New York State. It was just the boldest thing I could conjure and it felt good, hence the sleep. The next day the boyfriend said nice things, I said nice things, and we dysfunctioned-junctioned down the road.

Flash forward five or six years later, when I remembered that dream, that audacious “I’ll show you” dream.  I was stunned, as I remembered it out of the blue. I was stunned because I was driving a big red truck on my way to work at Apple as a tech support engineer. I had not thought twice after the moment of inception that the perfect future of audacity would come to its fruition. I was not focused on making it happen; I merely was more approachable to my future as it sidled up to me.

The long road was that the boyfriend and I moved to California outside of Tahoe National Forest and built a cabin. Lions, tigers and bears, oh my, but those adventures are another story. I was still fighting with him after moving when I remembered a friend from the now-closed NC Apple Call Center, now moved to a new one in CA, said to call him if I ever wanted a job. I did, I got it, I needed to drive something, got a deal on a year-old/new red truck on the Nissan lot, and the rest is history. The bad boyfriend was there for the beginning of the move but long gone by the end. It seems I didn’t have to focus on or practice daily much less on the toilet for the magic of prestidigitation to work. To master manifestation, I just had to dance in the direction of the music. Dance on the edge, dance into the fear and the unknown.

As the years go by I have seen this over and over. I have done this over and over and almost always didn’t know what was at the end of the journey, the lands we cannot see with the eye and the parts of us that are unmapped. It is magic when we trust, we move forward and inward with a prayer on our lips, and smile in our hearts and fear nipping at our heels. So my view these days is at the last mapped land of these past nine years in San Diego, of Spirit Work, of Teaching, Coaching, Fitness and Health…. I feel a pull to parts unknown again, stronger and stronger over the past year or so… that doesn’t always mean moving but it does mean crazy change and transformation. Where I go next I do not know, I do know I am scared as usual, I am excited of course but the journey and lands unknown are calling and it’s time to dance.