Now You See It, Now You Don’t

There is a very specific tone people use when you say you’re about to perform a magic trick with nachos. Not excitement. Certainty.

“You’re going to eat them.”

And for a long time, that was fair.

But this one is different.

I set the plate down and let everyone look. Fully loaded, nothing hidden. I want them comfortable. Once people decide something is obvious, they stop paying attention.

Getting here took years. Not practice. Erosion. Time goes first, then sleep, then anything that doesn’t help you get it right. There are methods you don’t explain and tradeoffs you stop questioning.

At some point you realize you’re not learning a trick. You’re reviving something.

The performance is almost nothing. A small shift, a change in timing, and a blink.

They see the nachos.

They blink.

And the plate is empty.

Not disturbed. Just empty in a way that doesn’t make sense. That’s when the room changes. No laughter. Just confusion.

Because something did happen.

Just not to the nachos.

I moved the audience. All of them.

Not far. Just sideways, into a mirror version of this place where everything is the same except for one detail.

Nachos don’t exist there.

Not the food, not the idea, not even the possibility of them. They’ll remember seeing them. That’s the part that stays. A memory that has nowhere to land.

It took time to get it clean. Early attempts weren’t. People half-there. Conversations dropping voices. Once the plate went with them, which defeats the point.

You fix that.

You make it precise.

Back here, nothing changed.

The plate is still full.

And after everything it took to send them somewhere that empty,

I finally get to eat in peace.