Cellini

I got a phone call from my old friend and mentor, Cellini, this morning. I hadn't talked to him since before he moved back to Switzerland a year or so ago. It was great to hear his voice. What a trip life is and how time flies. It was 22 years ago that he took me under his wing in the French Quarter of New Orleans and schooled me in a lifestyle of the magical arts. Strange to think now I'm almost as old as he was when that went down. As an impressionable 19 year old, I was far from green even at that point in my life. I had already spent a year in New York City working the streets and had been financially self sufficient from the age if 15 when I worked Kings Island Amusement Park performing 6 shows a day.

He refined my approach and taught me more than tricks. He taught me how to live a magical life and how to explore the avenues of human interaction that would take me on the most fantastic Maliniesque adventures of my life.

We talked about our memories of New Orleans in 1984. It was fun to reminisce about the many mornings we ate breakfast at the Artist Cafe down the street from Jackson Square. Rockmore the artist (a strange, brooding but brilliant painter), Cellini, Sebastiano (the Sicilian balloon man) and myself would meet at 7:30 or 8:00AM. In my minds eye I can taste the texture of the eggs and grits, smell the coffee, cigarettes and cigar smoke the rose from our table and hear the mindless chit chat that seemed so relevant so many year ago.

Cellini, is booked to work FISM this year. He'll perform and lecture to an international audience of fuck heads. I asked him about that. When I met him, he hated magicians. I asked him about his more recent years of lecturing for magicians and if his feelings had changed much. I guess they had and they hadn't . An means to an end, perhaps.

I asked him about his health and that seemed questionable. He's had some problems with his feet and legs and said he can't stand for much more than an hour at a time.

Before we ended a lengthy phone call, I told him that I loved him and could never really show him the thanks that I felt in my heart. If you can keep your head when those around you are losing theirs. . . If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you. . . I'm a little man. . . He's a great man. I should have been a pair ragged claws scuttling across silent seas. . . . .