Magic

This is a true story…

A young man heads off on a journey to find out if magic still exists in the world, to know its wonder, and to see if it might save him when his own life is unexpectedly at stake.

In the Caribbean, he meets a Rastafarian Don Juan who teaches him about the 'natural mystic'. Fate propels his travels through the Americas and Europe to locate the source of this knowledge in Mother Africa, where his own emerging mastery of mysticism is tested by the Sahara desert. He is imprisoned in Nigeria, and tortured, and then sold as a slave.

Magic is an incredible journey, both physical and spiritual, that reverberates with the uniqueness of lived adventure and of a passionate heart and vision. Upon closing the last page of this book, we ache for the innocence to lose our way and travel deeper, to rediscover the savage but delicious nature of the miraculous in our own lives.

Jan Golembiew grew up in suburban Canberra and in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. He has a PhD in psychological aspects of architecture, and he runs his own architectural practice specialising in psychological aspects of design. Jan lives in Sydney with his wife, the novelist Bem Le Hunte and their children (Taliesin, Rishi and Kashi) and a revolving collection of friends.

Magic
Transit Lounge Publishing
Author: Jan Golembiew
ISBN: 9781925760071
RRP: $29.99

Interview with Jan Golembiew

Question: What inspired you to write Magic?

Jan Golembiew: Magic is a true story that challenges the normative expectations that we all grow up with - about who we are, and what we can expect for our lives. We go to high school and come out with a great big ATAR stamped on our foreheads and our whole lives take shape from that. A good score means we do medicine or law. A bad one means we take a trade or work in retail... but why? Are these destinations where we're most likely to thrive, according to statistics we all know, but nobody ever measured? Must we head like moths, for the bright lights and big-target futures alongside all our peers, just because that's where they're heading? To tie ourselves to the restrictions born of the successes and mistakes we made as children? I saw the future that had been carved out ahead of me as one completely lacking in imagination, and I wanted to plumb the limits of possibility (if there are limits at all) before I could make up my mind about how I should prepare for the future.

Leaving school, the tide was running, and I was wading the other way. I didn't want to discover who I was - I wanted to create who I would become, and Magic is that story. I wrote it to show that there's another way, so readers find the courage to seek out the improbable, to explore the possibiliionism: the limitless, swirling lava of existence, and to forge new selves.


Question: What message do you hope readers take from Magic?

Jan Golembiew: The most important message in Magic is about freedom. Freedom isn't something you're given, nor something that can be taken away from you. Freedom is something you have to steal. You steal it from society. You steal it from your family. Since you were born, you're burdened with restrictions. Restrictions on your future, restrictions on what you can do and how you are allowed to feel. As an Australian, I was given a passport that was the envy of the world - and one that I was meant to be proud of. A doccument that let me travel virtually anywhere. And great as it was, it was a restriction. It tied me to where I was born and it cleaved me from my African brothers and sisters whose passports didn't even allow them to travel to countries next door. So I took that Australian passport and I burned it. I didn't want its shackles - however guilded.

later, when I ended up in a series of jails and was tortured in cells ankle deep in human shit, and when I was forced to lug rocks in the Sahara sun, even then I felt my freedom. In fact, I felt it stronger than ever. Nobody and nothing could take my freedom from me. Even when I was even sold as a slave, I went happily. For me, freedom was in choosing to sit back and watch my life unfold as a terriffic story. A real-life page-turner. I had no idea what twists the next chapter would bring, but I was eager to keep living it, to keep turning those pages and trusting that the story would end up being one that glows with hope and promise.


Question: What did you learn from the experiences described in the book?

Jan Golembiew: The iconic Australian gap-year has the potential to be a rite of passage: a dangerous, yet essential tradition marking the death of childhood and the emergence of adulthood.

When I left Australia, I was an adult only by law - and then only barely. But really I was still chained to my childhood. To a bunch of redundant memories: to things I'd chosen to like or hate according to accidents of chance - I liked English (for example) because I'd had a couple of good English teachers. I despised maths because the priest who taught it was a pervert and made me feel creeped out. But how easily those choices could have been reversed?

Magic is the story of how I reforged my sense of self, returning from 2 years abroad, self-made, and unconcerned by the restrictions that still shackled my old school mates. I returned with no fear of responsibility, no fear of failure or fear of the future; in fact, fear no longer set my course at all. I was thus able to make 'adult' decisions about work, life and other commitments when I was still really young. For example, I got married when I was only 22 years old. And no regrets - my wife and I are still together and very happy, 27 years later. To this day, I feel I'm the person I want to be, living how I want to live - and that includes an unwavering commitment to our marriage.


Question: What was the most difficult component of reliving your experiences whilst writing Magic?

Jan Golembiew: The most difficult thing in writing Magic was in having to cut people and places out, in order to keep to a good story. In reality, life is messy. There are plots and subplots everywhere and they don't all resolve themselves by the end of a book. But I wanted to keep to message, and so I had to sacrifice a lot - whole stories (some fascinating ones), people and whole countries were scratched out. So the edit came with regrets. Some people in particular really belong in the book - yet aren't there. Some were real shits and others totally amazing people. But they had to be cut and pruned because I couldn't tie up their narratives without segueing into places the story didn't want to go. Instead of these people, I had to construct some 'armatures:' invented personalities that I could bounce off. But this doesn't make the story fictional - at least from my perspective. The story in Magic is a true one - and I'll vouch for what happened to me, but don't go taking the reportage of others' stories as totally reliable.


Question: What is natural mystic?

Jan Golembiew: In our lives, there's always potential for the miraculous because circumstances are constantly churning and flowing and things - both good and bad, may happen or may just pass-over over, like the plagues of Egypt passed over those who marked their doors with lamb's blood. Most people try to insulate themselves from the unexpected by creating buffers against turns of circumstance - imagining, perhaps that the direction of change is always bad. But the direction of change is anything but inevitable: it's plastic and moves with our fears, desires and projections of possibility. The 'Natural Mystic' is the constant creative impulse of nature, and is the unfolding of everything, including all that's banal and all that's miraculous. It's the story, waiting to be told, if you like. Only the 'Natural Mystic' isn't a distant and impartial beige force. It's positive, it's alive, it's good, it's totally flexible, and it's really responsive - especially to those who have stripped away their buffers and find themselves prone to whatever story develops. The 'Natural Mystic' is the force of magic, which sees that your desires and projections are met by the unfolding of happenstance. The 'Natural Mystic' will find minute cracks in your insulation and will take them. It'll create whole worlds from the most improbable of origins: at once as real and as ordinary as going to buy vegetables in the market – and at the same time as impossible as flapping your arms and flying. That's possibillionism: a series of vivid, wakeful and wholly embodied events that happen, in amazing synchronicity - as the unexpected and miraculous comes to pass.

Interview by Brooke Hunter

Magic
Transit Lounge Publishing
Author: Jan Golembiew
ISBN: 9781925760071
RRP: $29.99