magic is mostly tubes

You’ve likely heard that wizards partake in astrology and the study of how the stars influence the world around us. And while that’s all well and good, the true heart of all the wizardric tradition is in the tube.
There are a variety of lenses through which us wizards look at the waking world, and for many of them we use some kind of silly tube. And though one might assume it is the things we are looking at that we’re noting, moreso we’re noting the factors of the tube through which we are observing it!
You see I can turn my telescope to see the north star bright and clear. But the thing that interests me about the north star is not so much it’s fantastically useful directional properties, but rather how that particular light looks through this particular lens.
Most things wizards do are simply to see things in different ways, and most of them involve tubes of some kind. Test tubes, magic wands, staffs of power, microscopes and telescopes to name a few. And what is an orb but a tube with no ends?

THE, UH, THE STARS

THE STARS MOVE AT NIGHT, HAVE YOU NOTICED? NOT LIKE THE NORMAL MOVEMENT. LIKE THERE’S A NORMAL AMOUNT OF STAR MOVEMENT THAT’S NORMAL BUT LIKE ONCE YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE YOU’D NOTICE THAT RECENTLY THEY’VE BEEN MOVING SOMETIMES.
JUST LITTLE DETOURS LEFT AND RIGHT, VISITING FRIENDS AND FAMILY, PUTTING GAS IN THEIR CARS AND LIVING ENTIRE LITTLE LIVES.
SOME WIZARDS THINK IT’S NOT LIVES I’M OBSERVING, BUT THE NATURAL PATH OF THE PLANETS THROUGH THE SOLAR SYSTEM. BUT EVERY TIME I TELL THEM THAT I KNOW WHAT THE NORMAL PATHS OF THE STARS AND PLANETS LOOK LIKE, BUT IT’S BEEN DIFFERENT LATELY!
AND SO I ASK THEM, HAVE YOU CHECKED ON THE STARS RECENTLY? AND INEVITABLY THEY’LL SAY NO CUZ WIZARDS ONLY CARE ABOUT TUBES OR SOMETHING, AND I’LL SAY THEN LOOK RIGHT NOW THE STARS ARE MOVING AND LIVING OUT WHOLE LIVES. AND THEY’LL SAY WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING, ARE YOU GOING TO VEZYK’S PARTY LATER? AND THEN I SAY NO HE NEVER INVITES ME AND THEY’LL SAY OH SHOOT REALLY? DO YOU GUYS HAVE LIKE A THING? AND I’LL SAY NO WE JUST DON’T REALLY CROSS PATHS MUCH AND THEN THEY SAY WELL I DON’T THINK IT’D BE WEIRD IF YOU CAME AND I’LL SAY!!! YES!!! IT WOULD!!!!
BUT THE STARS HAVE BEEN MOVING MORE THAN NORMAL AND ONE NIGHT THEY SPELT OUT “WE CAN SEE YOU WATCHING US” AND I WAS LIKE NO WAY ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT ME AND THEN THEY SAID “YES YOU” AND SO BASICALLY I’VE BEEN A LITTLE ON EDGE LATELY.
WHAT’S NEW WITH YOU?

Hey kid

“You know I’ve sometimes found myself spending weeks on end unable to leave my tower and part with my work. And every now and again when the thrill of the study wanes for even a moment I find myself feeling so indefinite.”
“Just a sad old man spinning his wheels on problems no one will likely ever hear about. Unless my treatise on the movement of the planets affecting the tensile strength of my telescope happens to be useful to a wizard involved on a real adventure,”
“But sometimes I think; how do you even define something like that? A ‘real’ adventure? Who’s being ‘really’ useful? And what does that make everyone else?”
“There’s definitely a problem with how society teaches us to value human lives when if you can say ‘most people don’t matter, won’t ever matter, and couldn’t possibly ever hope to matter’ and have most people agree with it. Like that’s ridiculous! The way we’re defining what matters and not must be what the problem is! But of course the problem with critiquing society is that you’re still INSIDE society so like yeah it’s true my life has value even though I’m not a literal king but I still have to grapple with the existential disappointment. The grappling is real,”
“Wizards think about this more than most people. It’s an important part of the job, our work sometimes taking up decades of our life and every hour of our days. The central idea of wizardry is to dedicate your life to that which you know to be worthwhile.”
“But sometimes you’re sweating in a hot tower and your stomach has given up asking for food and is only sending faint notes of betrayal to the brain. Your grip on the pen you were writing with slips and you notice your hands are trembling. Sometimes you think about the years that you’ve put between you and the bright eyed kid that used to dream about being a mountain climber. And you remember you’ve never climbed a mountain and at your age you probably never will.”
“Sometimes in the life of a sentient being all you can do is look backwards and regret. And then you take a deep breath. You think about what was on the other side of all of those choices you regretted and try to come to terms with the fact that sometimes you don’t actually regret anything except the fact that you live in a world in which you can’t live every life you’d like to because they take lifetimes to lead,”
“So you center yourself, you look in the present and you remember you’ve been alive this whole time. That the life you’re leading right now isn’t over. And then for the first time in a while you think hard about all the things you want out of the rest of your life. And you think about all the steps you could take that could get you there.”
“Then you make a sandwich and, if you’re a wizard, you pick the wackiest step that leads to the coolest powers and do that in the morning,”