Charlier

Not a sleight, but a cool-looking one-handed cut that I'm practising at the moment: the Charlier cut

Edit: to add some context, perhaps, or maybe in fact a counterpoint to this photo - being as it's of something mechanical, even though not a sleight.

This morning I did a trick with a woman at work, who'd been asking to see some magic. At the end of the day she was talking about how hard and generally unpleasant her day had been - and then she brightened right up and said that the highlight of her day had been that trick. The thing is, the trick - mechanically as it were - is ridiculously simple. There's really almost nothing to it. That (and a conversation a little later with a nurse who used to be a magical clown...) really brought home that magic is not about clever flourishes, and fancy sleights, and a magician showing the clever things they can do: magic consists in the interaction with the person or people the magician engages with ("spectator" really isn't the right term, being as it's completely passive).

I started learning magic because it's neat and fun, and I wanted to learn to do clever cool things with cards. Now however, I see that the important thing is not me being clever, but the engagement, and pleasure of people I can perform with (better than "for").