NO PHOTO — nobody took shots at the fair.
In order to understand the phrase, “You’ve been around the block a billion times, and you’re still here to tell the tale”, you need a much bigger memory footprint than just one single lifetime or, more commonly, scattered random bits & pieces of unrecognized and unacknowledged memories, mostly semi-vivid recollections of events that took place in Safeway Supermarkets, Starbuck’s Drive-Throughs and assorted family events and birthday parties, although by no means all of them, your own included.
You’d have a very hard time constructing an abbreviated daily diary of last week, let alone the whole of your life. As a matter of fact, I’ll bet dollars to donuts that you can’t reconstruct your activites on a year-by-year basis from the time you were 3 years old (more than enough time to notice your environment) to the present time.
I’ve done it as an exercise, but it took serious reconstruction and I’ll give easy money to anyone who says that I’m bound to get a few things wrong. Not only can I get them wrong, but the act of memory reconstruction changes the memory.
Slippery little devils, those memories. They do change with examination, according to the Schroedinger’s Cat Theory, observation of a thing changes the thing…tree in forest, see?
Of course, not everything is Quantum. Just the real stuff. All else is phantom, depending on and springing from object, get it? Builders will understand. All others can enroll in builder’s class if they can find out how. Damned if I’m going to put a single hot link in here for the stupid or lazy; they eliminate themselves by their own limitations, which is all to the good. Sleep is comforting, and those who wish sleep should be left in sleep.
So what’s the deal? How do you trigger PLMs?
It’s not a single, simple answer. It’s a course, and it takes 30 lessons to get it right. How much is the course? $15 per 2-hour semi-private lesson, class size limit is 6 students. And it’s not how you trigger PLMs — it’s which PLMs you trigger.
How to see and recognize a PLM?
I was in New York City for the first time in over 20 years, and although I was a seasoned native New Yorker, I had only twice gone to Carnegie Hall, where our group used to give Sacred Dance performances. There, in spite of all the odds, was an empty cab, right in the middle of Times Square.
I hailed him half-heartedly, fully expecting the usual jamming ass idiot jumping into the cab just as I’ve opened the passenger door, apparently for him, because he closes it quickly behind himself and grins out the window, leering like the MAD comics kid.
“Hey, buddy,” I half-shouted through the glass screen behind the driver, Mike O’Donner, a smooth-shaven fellow, height, 5′ 9 1/2″; weight 182 lbs.; hair, brown; eyes, brown; no scars or other distinguishing marks, no known violations, “do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?”
“Sure,” he grinned back through the glass protective barrier, “practice, practice, practice.”
And that’s my answer for just about everything, and the more subtle the subject, the more practice will, in my estimation and experience, be needed, and the greater the need, the more readily the practice will be put into good effect.
In short, don’t just do it for yourself.
You need to raise the level of necessity in order to get the effect you want, and that doesn’t mean that YOU want it MORE, it means more than you wants it, see?
Did I say “want”??? Sorry, I of course meant “need”.
One interesting sidelight from yesterday’s experience at the Celtic Festival in Grass Valley is that I decided to use the rare opportunity to walk through a large crowd at a fair type event to test Dr. Paul’s theory of Target Selection.
I wore my wonderful handmade jester hat, which I had not taken out of its box for over 30 years, grabbed a set of linking rings and a magic half-dollar, and walked amongst them, as it were.
I was able to predict who would be receptive to a short little magic show on the main drag of the festival. I could call them off as positive or negative receptors from about 60 feet away, and I was able to approach a few groups in this way as well.
Basically, 99% of the crowd was totally unaware of any jester approaching with magic linking rings, even for the hope of free short-attention-span busker-style entertainment.
You’ll note that I refrained from banging a hand-painted Tramp Stamp Tambourine (which I had in the booth) and yelling “Hey, folks! Something incredible is just about to happen right here, come on over!!!” or any of the usual busker tricks to get attention.
I just fiddled with the rings and watched their reaction. Mostly, they turned their heads and kept them turned away from me until they’d passed me, when they returned to frontal view. Not sure why they avoid the scan completely, but they do.
If you start the trick in front of someone who doesn’t want to see you, they just bust right on through you, sweeping you away with a hand, elbow or shoulder.
You don’t have to let them do that.
Start walking backwards in front of them, like a noob street mime. I did that several times and narrowly avoided the swings and punches of outrageous fortune; in short, if you’re not an experienced street performer or hustler, I don’t recommend the practice of walking backwards in front of strangers, especially if you try what I did — a leftover from my New York busking days — I imitated them.
They hate it if they know it’s them.
If they don’t recognize themselves in what you do, they’ll laugh and maybe stop and watch your magic trick. That’s what two couples did yesterday, but I forgot to ask them for money, so they walked away in some confusion.
I started asking for money, looking very humble and needy. This, of course, did not work.
I then pulled myself up to my full senior height, about two inches shy of where I was when I was in Military School, and fairly exuded confidence and disdain, and collected some $20 in less than half an hour. Why bother with a booth?
I’ll be talking more about my latest invention, the Designer Tramp Stamp, at the morning meeting today.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby