I became a magician by accident. When I was nine years old, I learned 1 to make a coin disappear. I'd read The Lord of the Rings and went into the2 to look for a book about spells(符咒). Nine was a strange age when you were 3enough to think that you might find a book of real, actual magic in the library. But in fact, the book I 4 taught me something about magic, and I spent the next months practicing.
At first the magic wasn't any 5 . It wasn't even magic; it was only a trick-- a bad trick. I 6hours each day in the bathroom running through the secret moves in front of the mirror. I dropped the coin thousands of 7in a day, and after two weeks of this, my mom got a carpet and placed it under the mirror to lower the sound of the coin 8again and again.
I heard my dad play pieces of new music on the piano, 9 I knew how to practice -- slowly, going for precision(精确) rather than speed. One day I tried the magic in the mirror and the 10disappeared. It did not look like a magic trick. It 11like a miracle.
One of the lessons I learn very early as a magician is that the most 12 part of a trick has nothing to do with the secret. The secret is simple: a hidden piece of tape, a small mirror, a special playing card. In this case, the 13was a series of tricks to hide the coin behind my hand in the act of opening it, a dance of the fingers that I learned so 14 that I didn't even have to think. I would close my hand, then 15it, and the coin would disappear not by skill but by real magic.
