A Dream Story

Normally it would not likely occur to a simpleton that the philosopher’s stone, by which one can become adept in experiencing Mystery, is not a stone but a formula.  Not discovered or derived, but revealed, as in a dream.  Lately I have been dreaming whole novels and long lectures on scholarly works I’ve never read, even works in a foreign language—no doubt in preparation for the mystery I dreamt last night. 

 Like a dance, a mystery becomes reality in performance.  This requires a theater and an audience.  And, of course, a performer-guru who must prove the formula.  The dreamer is the intended audience, the honored guest among friends who take seats in the hall, where the dreamer is maneuvered into the director’s chair located on the stage where he sits, albeit detached, in medias res.  From the dreamer’s vantage-point the audience seems relegated to his attendants. 

 At center stage a handsome actor reminiscent of a teenage David Copperfield concentrates on his performance with the intensity of an obsessed magician: at no time does he make eye contact with anyone, at no moment does he deviate from focus on his work.  He begins with some card tricks, which are mystifying for both the impossibility of the outcome and the dexterity of the sleight of hand evident in the execution.  Effortlessly he solves a game of fiddlesticks, the puzzle of picking up the helter-skelter sticks more complicated than any known Rubik’s Cube. 

Straightway the performer demonstrates a principle of triangulation by solving the famous twelve-lot cannonball problem—which is to find the odd cannonball in three weighs on a scale.  He divides a 12-lot of miniature metal balls into 9 and 3; then producing a scale and nine normal cannonballs he weighs them against the original 9-lot and finds the scales unbalanced; he then divides the original 9-lot into three groups of three and weighs two of the 3-lots against each other; in the third weigh he weighs two particular cannonballs and the problem is solved!  The performer twirls around and starts the problem over with 12 new balls.  This time after the first weigh the scale is seen to be balanced; so the performer then weighs two balls of the original 3-lot against two normal balls; in the third weigh he weighs two particular balls and the problem is solved.

During the finale the dreamer senses an ambient change: the actor seems more like a Pythian devotee engaged in a ritual not unlike the throwing of the I-Ching.  He demands of the audience an offering of old silver coins, which he places in a basket.  In silent ritual he throws the coins several times and draws on a blackboard a chart of rectangles vertically and horizontally.  At the ritual’s conclusion he takes a single dime from the basket and holds it before the dreamer’s eyes.  The dreamer sees as through a magnifying glass the engravings on the dime tinged in relief by thin lines of purest gold.

BIO

Thomas Penn Johnson was born on August 22nd, 1943 in Greensboro, North Carolina. In 1966 he received the B.A. in Classical Studies from Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He also holds an M.A. in English from UNC-G and M.A. from history at Wake Forest University.