The Mundane and the Magical

Yes, it’s true: I do things the hard way. I have no other choice! When I want a cup of coffee, I get up and make it. Sometimes I grind the beans and other times I use pre-ground ones that I’ve traded for. Either way, they end up in my coffeemaker. What’s that? Oh, it’s a little device I made—it’s not magical, it just saves a little time. Yes, while I do things the hard way, I sometimes think of workarounds and shortcuts. Things to make life a little less labor-intensive. Sure, it’d be easier to mumble a few words, make some subtle hand gestures and conjure a kobold or summon a minor demon and have them make my coffee. It’d be a cinch to make a golem or bind a faery and have them do my bidding instead of crafting tools and inventing machinery, but I can’t! Unlike everyone else, I have no magical abilities whatsoever.

I was born this way, so it’s hard for me to imagine any other mode of being. For most of my childhood the teachers thought I was being lazy or brazenly disobedient. Later it was assumed I had some magnificent and rare power that had yet to reveal itself. You know how some people are better with plant magic and others can work with fire really well, or people who can master incantations and hold dominion over all sorts of fey creatures? They thought maybe I was some new thing, perhaps on a planetary scale. That I could be entirely without magic was bizarre and without precedent. I could breath, and walk, and talk—truly, to be alive had always meant to be full of magic. I’m not an animal.

And yet.

And still.

I’ve lived alone for a very long time, but I do receive a steady supply of visitors. I don’t mind them, and they have been quite helpful. I don’t want to have to rely on anyone, but the hard way can be very tough on a body. And I’m not young anymore! When I want to eat something, I have to make it unless someone brings me gifts. I have my pride though and don’t like to take handouts. So my visitors often trade services. They like to buy my artwork, though I keep telling them there’s nothing artistic about a barrel meant for catching rainwater or a sharpened stick that’s skewered a squirrel. If I want meat, I can’t just invite it into my stove! The presents have been helpful though, I won’t deny it…even if they don’t all function as intended. For some reason, magical potions have no effect on me. I’ve been offered plenty: transformational and enyoungenings, luckers and lovers—there’s something about me that negates them. It may be that I’m not just without magic, but anti-magic.

I live pretty close to the land. I have a mundane garden and a magical tree. The tree was a very kindly boon bestowed upon me by a necromancer, of all people. He enjoyed talking to someone outside of the arcane politics of the realm. We mostly talked about our dreams—the sleeping kind. He had some particularly intense nightmares, but out of respect I won’t repeat them. The tree was an unusual piece of magic, I’m told. The necromancer came from a long line of dark sorcerers and I got the impression he didn’t have a true passion for it. The tree was more along the lines of the magic he would’ve preferred to have been doing. It’s in bloom all four seasons, or however many there might be due to local whimsy. In each season, it produces a different fruit or vegetable. In nineteen years, its never repeated itself. There’s never a bad one in the bunch and insects never bother them. The food is delicious, though they are as mundane as I am. Those onions in the bowl on the counter are from this season.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that magic hasn’t been part of my life, even if it’s never come from me directly. Am I bitter? Not at all. Childhood was...unfortunate, but from what I understand that’s a pretty common experience for everybody. There were good times and bad times. My parents loved me. They visit me sometimes, but they’re still crazy kids and I’m an old man now. I think they ended up in some kind of battle against that necromancer actually. I stayed out of it, of course. I never had kids, but I’ve had my fair share of lovers. Don’t be so surprised! Even now I see someone on the semi-regular. Not anyone from this plane, though I’ve been with regular magic folk too. For some I think it’s the thrill of it. In certain circles I’m a kind of minor celebrity, though curiosity is more like it. A freak at worst. I suspect the theory that I’m magical in some unknown and incredible way is still alive and well. I think some of the women hoped I’d help produce some kind of magical wunderkind, but none of them have ever conceived. Whatever takes place in that singular moment just doesn’t happen when I’m involved…it just fizzles.

Sometimes I think of my tools and machines as a kind of mundane magic. Anyone could make them, but then again, no one else has to. There’s something to it though...having an idea and testing it out, making something with your hands and then tweaking it until it gets better and better. You get dirt under your fingernails, and then you gotta scrub them clean without calling on a bunch of sprites to nibble, lick, and polish. When it’s time for me to go to sleep, I’m usually exhausted from a day of hard labor or entertaining. Either way, when I sleep it’s deep and my dreams are always pleasant and peaceful. Usually I dream of nothing more than cloudless skies—bright stars in the heavens swirling into random patterns and shapes, meaningless glyphs and gibberish incantations I let drift away upon waking and starting another workday.

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About Jerry White Jr. 

Jerry is a filmmaker, musician, writer. He began making films as a teenager through home movies and public access television in Metro Detroit, later studied at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and has continued to move across film, writing, music, and collaborative creative communities.

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About TANGENTS

TANGENTS is a new recurring literary section for flash fiction, short prose, and fragments that move outside fixed categories, published by STRATUM. It is a dedicated space for compressed narratives, strange turns, and writing that sits ambiguously between fiction, memory, humor, unease, and dream logic.

Edited By Yuyang Hu