M
• "This is a magic mirror. I know. You've probably heard of a magic mirror
before. There was a magic mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Let
me see if I can remember the magic words to say to the magic mirror. Mirror,
mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? That's right. Well,
this isn't the same mirror, it's better. Here are the magic words to say to
this mirror: Mirror, mirror in my hand, show me evil in the land." -- Lisa
Bany-Winters, "The Snow Queen," On Stage (1997)
Misin Nipso Puppy Yakie
Common Magician's Applications: Production.
In Literature:
• "'Misin Nipso Puppy Yakie!' she said. All sorts of things appeared. A sock. A
glove. A pair of eye glasses. But no little dog." -- Susan Meddaugh, Lulu's
Hat (2002)
Mississippi
There is magic in running water. Who does not know it and
feel it?
-- Ernest Thompson Seton, Wild Animals I Have Known (1898)
"On to the Tigris! On to the Euphrates! The Mississippi! The
Hanging Gardens of Babylon!" His magic words drove them
on, frightened and giggling.
-- Joyce Carol Oates, Them (1969)
Mystique: "If there is magic on the planet," said naturalist and philosopher
Loren Eisley, "it is contained in the water." Mississippi is a fluid word rich
with magical connotations. It's a word that meanders, gathering strength as
it channels the mighty energy of converging rivers.
"A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the
very earth itself -- for it is from the soil, both from its depth and from its surface,
that a river has its beginning." Sir George Sitwell praised "the magic
of water, an element which owing to its changefulness of form and mood
and color and to the vast range of its effects is ever the principal source of
landscape beauty, and has like music a mysterious influence over the mind."
Weaving their perennial spell, "Rivers run through our history and folklore,
and link us as a people,"27 says veteran journalist Charles Kuralt.
25 Laura Gilpin, The Rio Grande (1949)
On the Making of Gardens (1909)
27 "The Magic of Rivers" (date unknown)
