I am getting excited about this trip to Ireland. Particularly seeing the North. Even though I say I want to look into Ireland's future, I'm nevertheless thrilled at the prospect of seeing old Christian and pre-Christian sites. Especially Emhain Macha.
Oregon is just as old as Ireland. Our soil and our rocks are as ancient, our hills as dignified. And in some ways it's so beautiful that Ireland can scarcely compare.
Fall is brilliant this year. In these rolling costal mountains, the maples are like golden spheres nestled in green velvet hills. Vistas change by the day, as colors become more mottled, and slowly start to fade. Like any living thing. The vineyard across the way is dusted with brilliant yellow across the tops of the vines, but the sheltered underparts are still green.
What Ireland has is tangible evidence of thousands of years of human aspiration and strife. Forts build to repel Vikings, Norman, and William of Orange. Old market towns and grand walled cities. But there are almost no old forests there: you might find a forest park on an old estate, or a new timber plantation. In Oregon, even the "new" forests are a hundred years old, and they're complicated, mossy and beautiful. Especially at this time of year-- breathtaking.
What Ireland has are people, and a march of human history that is stunning in its scope and often-terrible beauty.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
The Once and Future Ireland
I’m planning a trip to Ireland. Or wishing I could plan. I might make some plans, but inevitably there would come along a shutdown or a slowdown or an overbooking or a bank holiday weekend. Whatever logistical masterpiece had been concocted stateside would unravel in the face of Ireland’s joyful chaos. It’s inevitable; if you ask directions of one of the 50% of Irish who are young—under 25—you will surely find yourself in impenetrable Gaeltacht. Even if you started out in Dublin! Nothing you trust at home works here: not your plans, and not even the once-mighty American dollar.
The Irish appreciate irony and other literary furbelows, and so they must particularly chuckle that the Americans – those starry-eyed tourists who propped up the economy for decades --are these days irrelevant. Actually, at worst, they’re irritating: their stingy bottoms take up a pub stool where natives and repatriates with fat pocketbooks could otherwise sit.
It true what they say: Ireland (a developing nation when I last visited six years ago) has become the richest country in Europe. It’s a silly time for a penniless Zen girl to visit, but my curiosity is piqued. Are the country roads still narrow and unstriped? The towns still sleepy? The teens still aching for someplace exciting to expend their youthful energies? Of course that undeveloped stodgy charm is what brought the tourists, possibly a rapidly-vanishing phenomenon in our right.
We wanted those tiny roads, with stone walls that flashed by scant inches from our car’s tender side panels. We wanted those picture-postcard views of thatched cottages; those sheep crossing the road; those crinkly-eyed old men in tweed. Even Dublin, with its swank boutiques and up-and-coming restaurants, was a destination because visitors were drawn to the history: the Georgian buildings; the cathedrals; the gracious parks and avenues that kept the Anglo-Irish from feeling homesick during long centuries of occupation. And all those antiquities and oddities were there, compliantly waiting to part us from our dollars. The “Leprechaun” shops along the Ring of Kerry. The Aran sweaters handknit for you by a certain Mrs. Kelly. The tourist trade was done well, and it had to be: whole towns and regions would have crumbled otherwise.
And so they came to Ireland. We did. As if by magnetism, returning. Even if we weren’t full-blooded, had lost our kin, and didn’t know exactly which county or region was ours. That mysterious yet totally bankable feeling of returning home is shared by full- and diluted-blood Irish alike. Nostalgia for the ould sod kisses the cheek of New World quadroon and octoroon, too. Ireland, our native soil, calls to us, a shimmering green jewel in a sea of magic….
Of course the reality of that long-ago life was anything but romantic for those who left their homes. Only the full force of Victoriana, an undiluted syrup forcefully applied in contradiction of all fact, could make life in old Ireland out to be a pleasant thing. The charmingly-huge families crammed into dirt-floored cottages. The soul-killing work. Religious violence and oppression. Poorly-conceived rebellion and brutal retribution. And the famine that obliterated millions, while others fled, and landed in America as refugees, there to enjoy the quaint benefits of hatred and discrimination.
To this day, the Irish national and personal psyche seems marred by that past. Go back to Ireland, listen carefully, and you will begin to see the dark side of this heritage. After a round or three at the pub, having been charmed to pieces by the legendary friendliness of the Irish, it may suddenly strike you that although you’ve told your life story to the fellow on the next barstool, you don’t know a single thing about him. Or that the girl who drew your pint had a funny bruise on her cheek. That the old people glued to their stools along the bar are there because they can’t or won’t go elsewhere. Come to think of it, there’s an awful lot of drinking going on for “nothing being the matter”.
This is the tough hide of the soul, the wounded determination to survive, to hide, to smile when it’s time and celebrate while you can. There and here, the Irish have been tenacious, faithful, and dogged. The alcoholic norm, and the friendliness that conceals rather reveals, are outdated but once tragically-useful means of coping with a pretty depressing set of circumstances. They may not know it themselves, but the Irish have been wiser and tougher than they let on.
Lest this sound simplistic or judgemental: you who are abroad, take a moment to reflect on America’s cowboy past. And notice all the ways the Wild West still marks our behaviour, as individuals and as a nation. To Americans this influence is largely unseen, precisely because it is so fundamental to the national psyche.
So here are the Irish, themselves still, but richer than before, moving forward. Ireland’s long stasis is over. As the money flows, it touches every aspect of life. Slowly the high cobbled city streets, the green hills dotted with cottages, are being crowded out by new construction.
If you don’t like change, and few do, there’s something sad about a picturesque countryside decorated with gigantic new houses for modern “small” families -- only three or four children. Whatever the baggage might be, it now has economic power behind it; prosperity has arrived, with all the promises and betrayals of what money can buy. Whatever depression, shame or inferiority moves undetected below the surface now navigates a bright, uncertain future.
It’s this future that I want to find out about. Accepting that everything changes, that the tiny towns and quiet roads may be gone, that the old people with their shocking innocence will die out, I come instead to see what Ireland will bloom into. Whatever has happened is gone, but it is all a preparation for what is to come.
The future involves everything about the past, every hidden possibility and pitfall, every bright potential in the human heart. The future is where Ireland faces the possibility of becoming a freeway-riddled post-industrial wasteland. It’s where she succeeds or fails in finding a way to skilfully address abuses of—and also by—an exploding immigrant population. The future is where the old ways, the wholesome and infuriating old ways, silently fade, leaving only an imprint of uncertain origin.
This is a switch, from rural to industrial, that Japan did not do well. In the space of a few decades, an agrarian country was brutally transformed into a wasteland. For centuries, isolation and poverty bred a beautiful practical simplicity. Now, lush hillsides have been obliterated, thanks to too much cronyism and too little regulation. Some Japanese really do see this sad destruction as “progress”, a triumph over the wild, the unspoiled, and the mundane.
Even if you can’t plan the specifics, it is possible to meet the future with open eyes. Now–while the past is still strong, while people remember, and the old ways still move the blood—now is the time to think and talk about what Ireland will become. And that’s why I’m going this time. To take part in that conversation.
The Irish appreciate irony and other literary furbelows, and so they must particularly chuckle that the Americans – those starry-eyed tourists who propped up the economy for decades --are these days irrelevant. Actually, at worst, they’re irritating: their stingy bottoms take up a pub stool where natives and repatriates with fat pocketbooks could otherwise sit.
It true what they say: Ireland (a developing nation when I last visited six years ago) has become the richest country in Europe. It’s a silly time for a penniless Zen girl to visit, but my curiosity is piqued. Are the country roads still narrow and unstriped? The towns still sleepy? The teens still aching for someplace exciting to expend their youthful energies? Of course that undeveloped stodgy charm is what brought the tourists, possibly a rapidly-vanishing phenomenon in our right.
We wanted those tiny roads, with stone walls that flashed by scant inches from our car’s tender side panels. We wanted those picture-postcard views of thatched cottages; those sheep crossing the road; those crinkly-eyed old men in tweed. Even Dublin, with its swank boutiques and up-and-coming restaurants, was a destination because visitors were drawn to the history: the Georgian buildings; the cathedrals; the gracious parks and avenues that kept the Anglo-Irish from feeling homesick during long centuries of occupation. And all those antiquities and oddities were there, compliantly waiting to part us from our dollars. The “Leprechaun” shops along the Ring of Kerry. The Aran sweaters handknit for you by a certain Mrs. Kelly. The tourist trade was done well, and it had to be: whole towns and regions would have crumbled otherwise.
And so they came to Ireland. We did. As if by magnetism, returning. Even if we weren’t full-blooded, had lost our kin, and didn’t know exactly which county or region was ours. That mysterious yet totally bankable feeling of returning home is shared by full- and diluted-blood Irish alike. Nostalgia for the ould sod kisses the cheek of New World quadroon and octoroon, too. Ireland, our native soil, calls to us, a shimmering green jewel in a sea of magic….
Of course the reality of that long-ago life was anything but romantic for those who left their homes. Only the full force of Victoriana, an undiluted syrup forcefully applied in contradiction of all fact, could make life in old Ireland out to be a pleasant thing. The charmingly-huge families crammed into dirt-floored cottages. The soul-killing work. Religious violence and oppression. Poorly-conceived rebellion and brutal retribution. And the famine that obliterated millions, while others fled, and landed in America as refugees, there to enjoy the quaint benefits of hatred and discrimination.
To this day, the Irish national and personal psyche seems marred by that past. Go back to Ireland, listen carefully, and you will begin to see the dark side of this heritage. After a round or three at the pub, having been charmed to pieces by the legendary friendliness of the Irish, it may suddenly strike you that although you’ve told your life story to the fellow on the next barstool, you don’t know a single thing about him. Or that the girl who drew your pint had a funny bruise on her cheek. That the old people glued to their stools along the bar are there because they can’t or won’t go elsewhere. Come to think of it, there’s an awful lot of drinking going on for “nothing being the matter”.
This is the tough hide of the soul, the wounded determination to survive, to hide, to smile when it’s time and celebrate while you can. There and here, the Irish have been tenacious, faithful, and dogged. The alcoholic norm, and the friendliness that conceals rather reveals, are outdated but once tragically-useful means of coping with a pretty depressing set of circumstances. They may not know it themselves, but the Irish have been wiser and tougher than they let on.
Lest this sound simplistic or judgemental: you who are abroad, take a moment to reflect on America’s cowboy past. And notice all the ways the Wild West still marks our behaviour, as individuals and as a nation. To Americans this influence is largely unseen, precisely because it is so fundamental to the national psyche.
So here are the Irish, themselves still, but richer than before, moving forward. Ireland’s long stasis is over. As the money flows, it touches every aspect of life. Slowly the high cobbled city streets, the green hills dotted with cottages, are being crowded out by new construction.
If you don’t like change, and few do, there’s something sad about a picturesque countryside decorated with gigantic new houses for modern “small” families -- only three or four children. Whatever the baggage might be, it now has economic power behind it; prosperity has arrived, with all the promises and betrayals of what money can buy. Whatever depression, shame or inferiority moves undetected below the surface now navigates a bright, uncertain future.
It’s this future that I want to find out about. Accepting that everything changes, that the tiny towns and quiet roads may be gone, that the old people with their shocking innocence will die out, I come instead to see what Ireland will bloom into. Whatever has happened is gone, but it is all a preparation for what is to come.
The future involves everything about the past, every hidden possibility and pitfall, every bright potential in the human heart. The future is where Ireland faces the possibility of becoming a freeway-riddled post-industrial wasteland. It’s where she succeeds or fails in finding a way to skilfully address abuses of—and also by—an exploding immigrant population. The future is where the old ways, the wholesome and infuriating old ways, silently fade, leaving only an imprint of uncertain origin.
This is a switch, from rural to industrial, that Japan did not do well. In the space of a few decades, an agrarian country was brutally transformed into a wasteland. For centuries, isolation and poverty bred a beautiful practical simplicity. Now, lush hillsides have been obliterated, thanks to too much cronyism and too little regulation. Some Japanese really do see this sad destruction as “progress”, a triumph over the wild, the unspoiled, and the mundane.
Even if you can’t plan the specifics, it is possible to meet the future with open eyes. Now–while the past is still strong, while people remember, and the old ways still move the blood—now is the time to think and talk about what Ireland will become. And that’s why I’m going this time. To take part in that conversation.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Knowledge of Self
"We cannot truly know ourselves without others to serve as our mirrors." -Daisen Takamitsu
(thanks to Matthew Combs for this)
(thanks to Matthew Combs for this)
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Mistrust in Mind
Inside a Master's Magical Mind
Monday, October 17, 2005
TOM HALLMAN Jr.
ALBANY -- A blanket of ivy hides one side of the 100-year-old house not far from Albany's old downtown. Peeling stucco on one corner reveals a crumbling foundation. Sheets of plastic and old curtains block the windows, some shaped like keyholes. From the street, the place looks abandoned.
The only way into the house is through the back door, where a doorbell produces alien tones that summon the man of the house. With a great flourish, Jerry Andrus waves his arms toward the dark unheated interior.
"Welcome," the 87-year-old says in a gravelly voice, "to the Castle of Chaos."
The man one of the world's best-known magicians calls "the Thomas Edison of magic" has been up since dawn, puttering around the workshop he set up decades ago. The room is jammed floor to 10-foot ceiling with tools, electronic equipment, cords, switches, pieces of metal and gizmos that look as if they're from the set of a 1950s science-fiction movie.
No more than three people can fit in what once was the dining room of the house Andrus has lived in since childhood. Even then, they must walk single file along a 2-foot-wide trail worn into the hardwood floor. The path ends in a small clearing surrounded by mountains of debris. Buried somewhere is a manual typewriter Andrus last saw about 1970. Years ago, junk filled the living room of the house and blocked the front door, which hasn't been opened since the Kennedy administration.
Like a CD player on random shuffle, his mind bounces from one subject to the next. He makes up words and nonexistent medical conditions, writes them down and files them -- he has more than 79 pages' worth so far. But mostly he obsesses about inventions, magic tricks, illusions, songs, poetry, prose and, above all, the complex nature of the human mind and the ways he can fool it.
Trying to explain him to the uninitiated is like trying to describe the color blue
He never attended college. Yet he's lectured at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Stanford. He's most comfortable in his workshop. Yet he's performed across the United States as well as in England, Spain, Chile, Germany, Japan, Finland, Belgium, France, Holland and Denmark.
For the past 30 years, Andrus has recorded his thoughts, sometimes minute by minute, on a tape player he carries in his pocket, and the total now amounts to more than 2 million words, many collected in four thick volumes titled "Some of the Scribulations of Jerry Andrus." He printed them on the press he used to keep upstairs, in his bedroom. The remainder are on the laptop he bolted to a treadmill in the middle of his kitchen. Andrus wraps a thick fabric belt around his middle to steady himself, turns on the treadmill and walks at a fair clip while pecking at the keyboard.
Always tinkering
Andrus steps over the treadmill and leads the way to his workshop. With his thick white wavy hair and metal-framed glasses that make his brown eyes appear large and intense, Andrus looks like what you might imagine when you think of an inventor working out of his house. He wears brown pants and a long-sleeve white shirt with four pens in the front pocket. His 1980s digital watch includes a 20-button calculator. "I haven't used the calculator in years," he says. "Somewhere around here, I have the owner's manual."
He worked as a lineman for a power company and retired at 53. A lifelong bachelor, he's devoted himself to creating and inventing. He can't leave well enough alone. Using his thumbs just to hit the space bar on his computer seemed inefficient. So Andrus rigged up separate keys that allow his thumbs to capitalize letters and make changes to the computer's programs.
He tore apart his lawn mower, moved the motor and installed a small bike wheel on the front and two more on the back so he could easily maneuver around trees. He devised a welder's helmet with a series of levers that allowed the operator to raise and lower the protective lenses by opening and closing his mouth.
On one wall in his workshop is a massive electric organ Andrus built from a kit. He outfitted it with dozens of switches and levers that allow him to play with his fingers, elbows and knees. He also installed an electric eye so he could play by moving his body through the beam.
An ex-soldier's dream
Andrus rummages under a table, looking for one of his optical illusions. He can't find it, of course. So he opens a battered briefcase and brings out a deck of cards. He shuffles while explaining that when he got out of the Army after World War II he wanted to join the Portland Society of Magicians. "To be admitted," he says, "I had to have a trick. I was shy and uncomfortable on the stage. I had three minutes with a 50-cent piece. Halfway through, I dropped the coin. I picked it up but was too embarrassed to proceed. A year later, I came back and did OK."
Andrus watched magicians perform card tricks, and he eventually learned the shuffles and sleights of hand passed down through generations. But Andrus, always tinkering, set out to invent new card manipulations. And then -- no longer the shy man on stage -- he began performing.
"I was at a convention," he says. "All the best magicians were there, and I did a trick. The effect is where the cards are all mixed up, some face up, others face down. Typically, you do a slop shuffle, talking and misdirecting and then spread the cards out, and they are all face up. I did it but with no pass, no slop shuffle or misdirection. They were floored."
Rick Killion, a California magician, says Andrus' sleight of hand is "from another planet."
"He can make cards do what no one else can," Killion says. "He'll put four aces in the deck upside down, and they appear on top, right-side up without the standard shuffle. He can make an entire deck vanish. He fools other magicians."
Andrus is the most senior member of the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians in Hollywood. A couple of times a year, Milt Larson, the owner, brings Andrus down to perform close-up magic and illusions. "He's an absolute genius," Larson says. "People consider him the last of the living legends. Most tricks are based on old principles. He does things that are difficult to explain. You've got to see them. He pulled off an optical illusion where a giant mask that was on the stage suddenly appeared over the audience and scared the hell out of everyone."
Mindful of fooling the mind
Andrus is the most senior member of the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians in Hollywood. A couple of times a year, Milt Larson, the owner, brings Andrus down to perform close-up magic and illusions. "He's an absolute genius," Larson says. "People consider him the last of the living legends. Most tricks are based on old principles. He does things that are difficult to explain. You've got to see them. He pulled off an optical illusion where a giant mask that was on the stage suddenly appeared over the audience and scared the hell out of everyone."
Jerry Andrus shoves the deck of cards back into his briefcase and sets it on the workshop floor. He roots around the room, looking for one of his optical illusions. He pulls out a massive wheel with a three-dimensional spiral he created on a metal lathe. He spins the wheel, telling a visitor to stare at the center and then quickly turn and look at a photograph on the back wall. The images undulate.
"I'm fascinated by the way the human mind works," he says. "The mind is the most intelligent thing in the universe. The reason we can fool it is because we're on autopilot."
A book of his illusions was published in Japan. Others have been featured in science magazines. In past years, he's lectured at colleges as well as at the Hewlett-Packard research lab in San Jose, Calif. His subject was the mind, vision and the way the brain functions. His audiences were made up of experts studying cognitive science -- how humans think. "Optical illusions violate the way the world works," he says. "In an optical illusion, the eye tells you one thing and the brain tells you another."
He pulls out other illusions he invented and explains them, one by one. Finally, he packs them away and leans back in his chair. He holds out his right hand. His thumb trembles. "Don't know how much longer I'll be able to do this," he says. "That tremor isn't going away. And my memory isn't as good as it used to be."
He glances around his beloved workshop.
"I've never thrown anything out," he says. "I got that tripod over there for next to nothing. Never know when I might need it."
He pulls a deck of cards out of his battered briefcase. He shuffles in silence, lost in thought.
"When I die," he finally says, "all this will be hauled off to the dump."
He wipes his eyes. A cold, he says as he briefly turns away. Just a cold. He clears his throat and holds out the deck.
"Take a card," he says. "Please, take a card."
Dear Mr Hallman,
I really enjoyed your profile of Jerry Andrus, published in yesterday's Oregonian. I haven't been able to get over the possibility that his creative legacy might very well end up in the dump when he dies. Surely there must be a better way to honor someone that special and well-regarded! Some university would surely love to have his papers, and the city of Albany should want to turn his house into a museum.
Such possibilities require both energy and funding, assuming Mr Andrus is at all interested in the first place. As the writer of this article, you may already know of well-qualified folks stepping forward to see if they can help out with such an effort.
If nobody else has the skills or impetus to help, I'm wondering if you could help me get in touch with Mr Andrus. I would very much like to see if I can help him preserve his work--or at least put him in touch with people who can.
I grew up in the Willamette Valley; I was trained as a research scientist; I've returned to the world from a few years living in two Zen monasteries, and have recently moved to Corvallis. I have plenty of energy, a fair amount of time, and a great respect for quirkiness and genius. I'm also not afraid to ask questions, get in touch with people, and generally pursue a project.
If journalistic protocol or your own standards preclude your putting me in touch with Mr Andrus, of course that's 100%_ OK_. I can always go to Albany and poke around on my own. Still, you might be able to tell me that others are already looking into this effort. And if it does make sense to try to help out, you could give me some idea for how to approach Mr Andrus. He seems like quite a character.
Many thanks,
Delia Garigan (aka "Shu")
Monday, October 17, 2005
TOM HALLMAN Jr.
ALBANY -- A blanket of ivy hides one side of the 100-year-old house not far from Albany's old downtown. Peeling stucco on one corner reveals a crumbling foundation. Sheets of plastic and old curtains block the windows, some shaped like keyholes. From the street, the place looks abandoned.
The only way into the house is through the back door, where a doorbell produces alien tones that summon the man of the house. With a great flourish, Jerry Andrus waves his arms toward the dark unheated interior.
"Welcome," the 87-year-old says in a gravelly voice, "to the Castle of Chaos."
The man one of the world's best-known magicians calls "the Thomas Edison of magic" has been up since dawn, puttering around the workshop he set up decades ago. The room is jammed floor to 10-foot ceiling with tools, electronic equipment, cords, switches, pieces of metal and gizmos that look as if they're from the set of a 1950s science-fiction movie.
No more than three people can fit in what once was the dining room of the house Andrus has lived in since childhood. Even then, they must walk single file along a 2-foot-wide trail worn into the hardwood floor. The path ends in a small clearing surrounded by mountains of debris. Buried somewhere is a manual typewriter Andrus last saw about 1970. Years ago, junk filled the living room of the house and blocked the front door, which hasn't been opened since the Kennedy administration.
Like a CD player on random shuffle, his mind bounces from one subject to the next. He makes up words and nonexistent medical conditions, writes them down and files them -- he has more than 79 pages' worth so far. But mostly he obsesses about inventions, magic tricks, illusions, songs, poetry, prose and, above all, the complex nature of the human mind and the ways he can fool it.
Trying to explain him to the uninitiated is like trying to describe the color blue
He never attended college. Yet he's lectured at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Stanford. He's most comfortable in his workshop. Yet he's performed across the United States as well as in England, Spain, Chile, Germany, Japan, Finland, Belgium, France, Holland and Denmark.
For the past 30 years, Andrus has recorded his thoughts, sometimes minute by minute, on a tape player he carries in his pocket, and the total now amounts to more than 2 million words, many collected in four thick volumes titled "Some of the Scribulations of Jerry Andrus." He printed them on the press he used to keep upstairs, in his bedroom. The remainder are on the laptop he bolted to a treadmill in the middle of his kitchen. Andrus wraps a thick fabric belt around his middle to steady himself, turns on the treadmill and walks at a fair clip while pecking at the keyboard.
Always tinkering
Andrus steps over the treadmill and leads the way to his workshop. With his thick white wavy hair and metal-framed glasses that make his brown eyes appear large and intense, Andrus looks like what you might imagine when you think of an inventor working out of his house. He wears brown pants and a long-sleeve white shirt with four pens in the front pocket. His 1980s digital watch includes a 20-button calculator. "I haven't used the calculator in years," he says. "Somewhere around here, I have the owner's manual."
He worked as a lineman for a power company and retired at 53. A lifelong bachelor, he's devoted himself to creating and inventing. He can't leave well enough alone. Using his thumbs just to hit the space bar on his computer seemed inefficient. So Andrus rigged up separate keys that allow his thumbs to capitalize letters and make changes to the computer's programs.
He tore apart his lawn mower, moved the motor and installed a small bike wheel on the front and two more on the back so he could easily maneuver around trees. He devised a welder's helmet with a series of levers that allowed the operator to raise and lower the protective lenses by opening and closing his mouth.
On one wall in his workshop is a massive electric organ Andrus built from a kit. He outfitted it with dozens of switches and levers that allow him to play with his fingers, elbows and knees. He also installed an electric eye so he could play by moving his body through the beam.
An ex-soldier's dream
Andrus rummages under a table, looking for one of his optical illusions. He can't find it, of course. So he opens a battered briefcase and brings out a deck of cards. He shuffles while explaining that when he got out of the Army after World War II he wanted to join the Portland Society of Magicians. "To be admitted," he says, "I had to have a trick. I was shy and uncomfortable on the stage. I had three minutes with a 50-cent piece. Halfway through, I dropped the coin. I picked it up but was too embarrassed to proceed. A year later, I came back and did OK."
Andrus watched magicians perform card tricks, and he eventually learned the shuffles and sleights of hand passed down through generations. But Andrus, always tinkering, set out to invent new card manipulations. And then -- no longer the shy man on stage -- he began performing.
"I was at a convention," he says. "All the best magicians were there, and I did a trick. The effect is where the cards are all mixed up, some face up, others face down. Typically, you do a slop shuffle, talking and misdirecting and then spread the cards out, and they are all face up. I did it but with no pass, no slop shuffle or misdirection. They were floored."
Rick Killion, a California magician, says Andrus' sleight of hand is "from another planet."
"He can make cards do what no one else can," Killion says. "He'll put four aces in the deck upside down, and they appear on top, right-side up without the standard shuffle. He can make an entire deck vanish. He fools other magicians."
Andrus is the most senior member of the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians in Hollywood. A couple of times a year, Milt Larson, the owner, brings Andrus down to perform close-up magic and illusions. "He's an absolute genius," Larson says. "People consider him the last of the living legends. Most tricks are based on old principles. He does things that are difficult to explain. You've got to see them. He pulled off an optical illusion where a giant mask that was on the stage suddenly appeared over the audience and scared the hell out of everyone."
Mindful of fooling the mind
Andrus is the most senior member of the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians in Hollywood. A couple of times a year, Milt Larson, the owner, brings Andrus down to perform close-up magic and illusions. "He's an absolute genius," Larson says. "People consider him the last of the living legends. Most tricks are based on old principles. He does things that are difficult to explain. You've got to see them. He pulled off an optical illusion where a giant mask that was on the stage suddenly appeared over the audience and scared the hell out of everyone."
Jerry Andrus shoves the deck of cards back into his briefcase and sets it on the workshop floor. He roots around the room, looking for one of his optical illusions. He pulls out a massive wheel with a three-dimensional spiral he created on a metal lathe. He spins the wheel, telling a visitor to stare at the center and then quickly turn and look at a photograph on the back wall. The images undulate.
"I'm fascinated by the way the human mind works," he says. "The mind is the most intelligent thing in the universe. The reason we can fool it is because we're on autopilot."
A book of his illusions was published in Japan. Others have been featured in science magazines. In past years, he's lectured at colleges as well as at the Hewlett-Packard research lab in San Jose, Calif. His subject was the mind, vision and the way the brain functions. His audiences were made up of experts studying cognitive science -- how humans think. "Optical illusions violate the way the world works," he says. "In an optical illusion, the eye tells you one thing and the brain tells you another."
He pulls out other illusions he invented and explains them, one by one. Finally, he packs them away and leans back in his chair. He holds out his right hand. His thumb trembles. "Don't know how much longer I'll be able to do this," he says. "That tremor isn't going away. And my memory isn't as good as it used to be."
He glances around his beloved workshop.
"I've never thrown anything out," he says. "I got that tripod over there for next to nothing. Never know when I might need it."
He pulls a deck of cards out of his battered briefcase. He shuffles in silence, lost in thought.
"When I die," he finally says, "all this will be hauled off to the dump."
He wipes his eyes. A cold, he says as he briefly turns away. Just a cold. He clears his throat and holds out the deck.
"Take a card," he says. "Please, take a card."
Dear Mr Hallman,
I really enjoyed your profile of Jerry Andrus, published in yesterday's Oregonian. I haven't been able to get over the possibility that his creative legacy might very well end up in the dump when he dies. Surely there must be a better way to honor someone that special and well-regarded! Some university would surely love to have his papers, and the city of Albany should want to turn his house into a museum.
Such possibilities require both energy and funding, assuming Mr Andrus is at all interested in the first place. As the writer of this article, you may already know of well-qualified folks stepping forward to see if they can help out with such an effort.
If nobody else has the skills or impetus to help, I'm wondering if you could help me get in touch with Mr Andrus. I would very much like to see if I can help him preserve his work--or at least put him in touch with people who can.
I grew up in the Willamette Valley; I was trained as a research scientist; I've returned to the world from a few years living in two Zen monasteries, and have recently moved to Corvallis. I have plenty of energy, a fair amount of time, and a great respect for quirkiness and genius. I'm also not afraid to ask questions, get in touch with people, and generally pursue a project.
If journalistic protocol or your own standards preclude your putting me in touch with Mr Andrus, of course that's 100%_ OK_. I can always go to Albany and poke around on my own. Still, you might be able to tell me that others are already looking into this effort. And if it does make sense to try to help out, you could give me some idea for how to approach Mr Andrus. He seems like quite a character.
Many thanks,
Delia Garigan (aka "Shu")
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Suzuki Shunryu Roshi on Monastic Life
"When I was at Eiheiji monastery in Japan, everyone was just doing what he should do. That is all. It is the same as waking up in the morning; we have to get up. At Eiheiji monastery, when we had to sit, we sat; when we had to bow to Buddha, we bowed to Buddha. That is all. And when we were practicing, we did not feel anything special. We did not even feel that we were leading a monastic life. For us, the monastic life was the usual life. But once I had left Eiheiji and been away for some time, coming back was different. I heard the various sounds of practice - the bells and the monks reciting the sutra - and I had a deep feeling. There were tears flowing out of my eyes.
It is the people who are outside of the monastery who feel its atmosphere. Those who are practicing actually do not feel anything. I think this is true for everything. When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all that they are doing. But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is."
It is the people who are outside of the monastery who feel its atmosphere. Those who are practicing actually do not feel anything. I think this is true for everything. When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all that they are doing. But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is."
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