Jettie knew I was pumped to see the owl. We’d met it before, deep inside the Oklahoma Trail exhibit—an area designed for nocturnal creatures like bats, armadillos, and the rest of the night shift. Even then, I’d felt the owl’s gaze like a searchlight—steady, unblinking, a silent challenge. Jett and I had talked about how it could see into us.
I didn’t know a staring contest was to ensue this time, but who am I to refuse an owl?
We found it in its enclosure, perched like a heavyweight champion in its corner. People wandered past, oblivious, but the owl locked eyes on me—like it remembered.
The air changed. The rest of the zoo melted away. For two minutes (I counted), we stared into each other’s essence. Neither one of us blinked. My training in Magick—the real kind, the kind that teaches the Will through the absurd—had led me to this ring.
The owl’s feathers twitched, but its gaze never wavered. Ali vs. Frazier, but with feathers. A title fight of consciousness.
Then, at the two-minute mark, the owl blinked. A slow, deliberate blink, as if to acknowledge its defeat. Maybe it was just clearing dust from its eye, but in my mind, it was a nod—a tilt of the hat to the champion.
I felt the thrill of victory—a ridiculous, wonderful victory. I turned to Mary and said I was going to put this on LinkedIn. “Defeated owl in staring contest. 2025.” She laughed. I laughed too, the grin splitting the solemnity of the ring. Even in triumph, the absurdity couldn’t be denied.
After the owl’s defeat, Jettie’s eyes were wide with wonder. She’d seen me talk about this owl before—how its gaze cut through the nonsense and saw the raw stuff of who we were. I could feel her excitement: “Daddy, did you win?” she asked, half-believing, half-joking.
“Of course,” I said. “He blinked.”
That was enough for her. And that was enough for me.
I couldn’t help but think back to my own Magick training years earlier—long before Jettie was born. I’d spent months practicing not blinking, not just as a party trick but as a way to train the Will. Magick with a k. Crowley’s kind. The kind that teaches that the world bends to your Will—or else it breaks you.
Back then, I’d stand in front of a mirror or an unsuspecting friend and hold my gaze until I felt my consciousness tremble. I’d learned that what starts as a physical practice—don’t blink, hold the gaze—becomes a test of the mind itself. Every muscle in the face wants to flinch. The mind wants to wander. The body rebels. But the Will—if you let it—becomes a force that holds everything steady.
And now here I was, passing on that training to Jettie in the middle of the Oklahoma Trail exhibit. An absurd but perfect place to train the next generation of Magickians.
I imagined the ring announcer’s voice echoing through the zoo:
“Ladies and gentlemen! In the left corner, weighing in at one blink per minute, the undefeated champion of the Oklahoma Trail—THE OWL! And in the right corner, armed with years of Will training and a LinkedIn profile ready to be updated—Z! DAVIS! ROBISON!”
The crowd roared in my mind. The owl shuffled its feathers. And the battle commenced.
The owl’s eyes were deep, unflinching. Like a black hole, they pulled me in. This wasn’t just about blinking anymore. This was a staring contest with the Abyss itself—a mirror that revealed every doubt, every moment of weakness, every second I’d spent wondering if I was enough.
But that’s the thing about Will: it’s forged in those moments. You hold the line. You don’t blink.
When the owl finally relented, I felt the ridiculous triumph of a prizefighter raising his gloves in the ring. Mary laughed. I laughed. Even the owl seemed to give a knowing nod.
And in that absurdity, I found the real Magick: the power of taking the ridiculous seriously enough to discover something true.
As we left the owl enclosure, I couldn’t resist. I opened LinkedIn on my phone and typed with the straightest face I could manage:
“Just defeated an owl in a staring contest. #WillTraining #Magick #ProfessionalDevelopment.”
I showed it to Mary, and we both cracked up, tears rolling down our faces. Because that’s the absurd beauty of it all: in a world obsessed with resumes, achievements, and self-promotion, there’s something deliciously subversive about celebrating a staring contest with an owl.
But here’s the thing—there was something real in that moment. In the ring of consciousness, where Will meets resistance, even the smallest victories matter. Training the Will isn’t just for high rituals or secret societies—it’s for everyday moments. A Magick that turns a zoo visit into a prizefight, a blinking owl into a challenger, and a child’s wide-eyed wonder into the spark of her own future power.
Because in the end, every staring contest—whether with an owl or with yourself—teaches the same lesson: Don’t blink. Hold your gaze. Stay present. That’s where the real Magick happens.