by Paul Auster
The problem is the thirty-three steps. It’s one thing to tell Yolanda I can teach her son to fly, but once we got past that hurdle, what about the rest? Even I’m sickened by the thought of it. Having gone through all that cruelty and torture myself, how could I bear to inflict it on someone else? They don’t make men like Master Yehudi anymore, and they don’t make boys like me either: stupid, susceptible, stubborn. We lived in a different world back then, and the things the master and I did together wouldn’t be possible today. People wouldn’t stand for it. They’d call in the cops, they’d write their congressman, they’d consult their family physician. We’re not as tough as we used to be, and maybe the world’s a better place because of it, I don’t know. But I do know that you can’t get something for nothing, and the bigger the thing you want, the more you’re going to have to pay for it.
Still, when I think back to my dreadful initiation in Cibola, I can’t help wondering if Master Yehudi’s methods weren’t too harsh. When I finally got off the ground for the first time, it wasn’t because of anything he’d taught me. I did it by myself on the cold kitchen floor, and it came after a long siege of sobbing and despair, when my soul began to rush out of my body and I was no longer conscious of who I was. Maybe the despair was the only thing that really mattered. In that case, the physical ordeals he put me through were no more than a sham, a diversion to trick me into thinking I was getting somewhere—when in fact I was never anywhere until I found myself lying face-down on that kitchen floor. What if there were no steps in the process? What if it all came down to one moment—one leap—one lightning instant of transformation? Master Yehudi had been trained in the old school, and he was a wizard at getting me to believe in his hocus-pocus and high-flown talk. But what if his way wasn’t the only way? What if there was a simpler, more direct method, an approach that began from the inside and bypassed the body altogether? What then?
Deep down, I don’t believe it takes any special talent for a person to lift himself off the ground and hover in the air. We all have it in us—every man, woman, and child—and with enough hard work and concentration, every human being is capable of duplicating the feats I accomplished as Walt the Wonder Boy. You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground.
Like so.
