Magic is real. Most people don’t believe it because they can’t analyze it under a microscope or measure it by volume. Most don’t see it at all. Take, for example, the story of Oyo Didirod. Oyo was so lonely that a bolt of lightning sprung from his heart and turned a piece of coal into a diamond photograph. Most people never saw it or even noticed any difference created by the magic.
Oyo was lonely because his soulmate was born at the wrong time. I would tell you why she was born at the wrong time, a thousand years too late, but many people would want me dead and this more important story would go untold. Either way, she was born at the wrong time. As a result, Oyo was lonely. He was so lonely that he created lightning.
He became lonely when he met the soul sister of his soulmate. His soulmate’s sister – rather, the woman who would have been his soulmate’s sister – was born at the right time. So even though Oyo never met his soulmate, he did meet her sister. It was then that his heart swelled so full of loneliness that he could hardly breathe. He could barely even think. Every part of him ached.
He went for a long walk to try and think. With every woman he passed, his heart wondered, “is she the one?” In such desperate loneliness, he could only find one solution: sail out to sea.
The next morning, before the sun came up, he set sail. After two weeks on the Atlantic Ocean, heading in no particular direction, Oyo came to an island. Tired and hungry, but mostly lonely, he pulled his boat onto the shore.
In the middle of the island, there was a mountain. In his loneliness, he could think of nothing else but to climb the mountain. So he climbed.
He climbed, first, through a forest of palm and coconut and banana trees. A warm breeze shuffled through the leaves and branches, and stirred an air that smelled as fresh as a fruit smoothie. He ate his fill of the soft bananas and the snow white coconut flesh, and he didn’t let a single drop of the sweet coconut water go to waste.
After he climbed through the forest of palm and coconut and banana trees, he came into a forest of beech trees. Their tall trunks and wide canopies reminded him of a book about trees that he’d read some years prior.
Many people believe oaks are the mightiest trees, he remembered, but beeches can dominate oaks in a forest because beeches feed their young. The tallest beeches feed the smallest beeches through their roots. The young oaks, on the other hand, receive little nourishment from the roots of their ancestors, and they receive no sunlight because the taller trees crowd them out, and so the small young oaks starve while the small young beeches become big old beeches.
When he had climbed the whole way through the beech forest, the land cleared away and the sky became wide. He kept climbing. Now he climbed not through forests but over boulders of many shapes. Most of them were the size of polar bear skulls, but some were as big as humpback whales, and some were as small as chubby woodchucks.
During the rocky part of his climb, he was distracted by the sight of an eagle picking at a dead pelican. It caused him to miss his step and he lodged his left foot between two of the boulders. His foot swelled and he was stuck in that spot for six days. Finally, a powerful gale blew in and brought with it a sleet storm. The sleet stung when it hit Oyo’s head and back, but the cold brought down the swelling in his foot, and the wet made the rocks slippery enough that he could finally writhe himself free.
From there, he limped to the edge of a cliff at the top of the mountain. He looked out over the ocean and beheld the scene: the flowing, waving sea; seagulls hovering over, and occasionally diving into, a school of fish that glistened like foil; the untinged sky; and a pod of dolphins weaving above and below the water’s surface.
For a moment, he was lost in the beauty of it all. Then his heart burst. Or so he thought. What really happened was, he felt the weight of true beauty and he felt it all by himself. And the weight of true beauty is far too heavy for any one person to carry alone. With all its force, the beauty struck his heart like lighting. Without anyone there holding his hand, that same bolt boiled up inside him and then struck from his heart.
It generated so much energy, so much electricity, so much light, that it caused a chemical reaction which embedded a photographic image on a nearby piece of coal and turned it into diamond.
An old woman, a witch doctor who lived on the island, was the only one who saw the bolt of lightning and its product. She wondered, at first, if she was seeing things, if she had mistaken the direction of the lightning.
“Maybe,” she thought, “it came from the sky and struck the man.”
But when she walked out to get a closer look, the man was standing there unharmed, untouched, without a single singed hair on his head.
The old woman, the witch doctor, found the diamond photograph on the ground. She picked it up and showed it to Oyo. Then she listened to his story, the reason he sailed the Atlantic and climbed the island mountain. She understood his loneliness and assured him that his soulmate was out there somewhere; maybe in another place, maybe in another time, but she was out there. And, now, a small piece of his beautiful moment atop the mountain was captured in the diamond photograph. She promised him that one day, by way of the photograph, his soulmate would be with him in that moment. From that day forward, Oyo wasn’t lonely.
The witch doctor lived until she was one hundred years old. Before she died, she passed the diamond photograph onto her granddaughter. In turn, her granddaughter lived to one hundred years old and she passed the photograph onto her granddaughter. The photograph was passed through the generations of witch doctors for a thousand years.
On the thousandth year, the witch doctor’s very great, great granddaughter met Dori Didoyo, the loneliest woman she’d ever known. Dori was born lonely. Her mother and father had abandoned her right after she was born. Passed from foster home to orphanage to foster home to orphanage, she grew. Nobody seemed to want her. She didn’t fit in. They said she was born for a different time.
She suffered much. She had tremendous wounds on her heart. But she was also wise, and over time, she turned every wound into a strength. That was good because she needed strength. She needed it for her journey to her new home, the island in the middle of the Atlantic.
She didn’t aim for the island. She set sail upon the sea in no particular direction. Just like Oyo, Dori was so lonely that it just felt right. Setting out to sea was the only thing she could do.
She was starving by the time she arrived at the island, but since the only other living person on the island was the very great, great granddaughter witch doctor, there was an abundance of coconuts, mangos, pineapples, bananas, and fish from the ocean. Dori didn’t care so much for the fish because they were full of bones, but sometimes she needed a break from fruit.
When she needed a spoon, she used a little seashell. When she needed a cup or a bowl, she used a big seashell. When it rained, she built herself a delightful little house just above the high-water mark.
The island wasn’t huge, but it also wasn’t tiny. Dori had lived there for three happy, albeit lonely, years before she came across the very great, great granddaughter witch doctor. They soon became friends. This surprised and delighted Dori. She wasn’t used to people wanting her around.
One day, not long after they’d first met, the witch doctor invited Dori over for supper. After she and the witch doctor ate and had some tea from the witch doctor’s own chamomile flowers, Dori went back to her own hut to sleep.
It was then that the witch doctor realized that the diamond photograph, which now sat on top of a bookshelf in the witch doctor’s bedroom, was glowing like the moon.
Right then, the witch doctor knew that Dori was the loneliest woman on the planet. She was happy about this because she knew that her purpose, and her mother’s purpose, and her grandmother’s purpose, and her great grandmother’s purpose, and so on, would soon be fulfilled. Her mission would soon be complete.
But she was also afraid. She knew her home, along with her island, would disappear. It would be devoured by a flood and sink back into the Atlantic. But she also knew this was her destiny. So, yes, it scared her, but at the same time it made each moment of the rest of her life more precious.
In a deeper way than ever before, the witch doctor was able to savor the birds that chirped outside of her bedroom window each morning and the salty breeze that wrapped its warm arms around her every evening. Every little thing, even a passing cloud, was now rich with meaning and filled the witch doctor with tremendous joy.
She took a month to prepare herself and to enjoy her island for just a little bit longer. Then she said to Dori, “I know why you’re so lonely.”
Dori was surprised by this statement. She wondered how someone she had known for only a month could see so deeply into her heart. “How does she know I feel so lonely?”
“This diamond photograph,” the witch doctor held it close to her chest, “has been passed to me through many generations. From your soulmate. His heart cried out to you through all these years of time. He cried out with such passion that he created a burst of lightning which imprinted a piece of his most beautiful moment onto a piece of coal and turned it into diamond.”
Still embracing the photograph, she continued, “if you behold this photograph, you will share that beautiful moment with him. You will be with him. If not, you will be lonely for the rest of your life, and your soul will not be whole until your body turns back to dust.”
The witch doctor looked off into the distance and said, “but giving you this photograph will result in a flood that sinks our island back into the Atlantic…forever.”
A dizziness came over Dori. It lifted her up and dropped her down like an ocean wave. “But the island is your home,” she said, “and now…it’s my home too. Where will you go?”
“I do not know where I will go,” the witch doctor said, “but I am confident that, wherever I go, it will be the right place.”
Something about the witch doctor made Dori trust her, made her trust that if the island really did sink into the Atlantic, it would be okay. After reflecting on it for some time, she told the witch doctor that she was ready to behold the diamond photograph.
They enjoyed one final meal together. Then, the witch doctor held out the diamond photograph toward Dori and said, “a piece of a moment, a piece of a soul, a piece, but only a piece is yours to behold. But maybe a piece contains the whole.”
Dori beheld it. In that moment, the witch doctor became a deep blue vapor that rose into the sky, spread out over the entire island, and then poured down like a thick rain.
Just as the witch doctor had predicted, the island flooded. When the rain stopped, it was gone.
All that was left was Dori, her memory of the witch doctor, and her sail boat. She sailed back across the Atlantic Ocean and back in time one thousand years. When she arrived, she was never lonely again.
What splendid magic! The soulmates, despite human failings, were brought together after all. You see it, don’t you? Most people miss the magic entirely. Only the rain saw lightning strike from Oyo Didirod’s heart, but it happened alright, and that was magic. It exists.
It’s there where a cliff overlooks the ocean. It’s there in the connection between soulmates. It’s there in a photograph that enables distant lovers to share the beauty of a fleeting moment.