He sits in his transparent Plexiglas box, suspended forty feet above London. He has grown a beard in his twenty-eight days hanging above the milling crowds on the edge of the River Thames. He is a hero to some—an object of ridicule to others. To most, David Blaine is simply a human sitting in a see-through crate, just two-and-a-half feet wide and six feet four inches tall—for no apparent reason. They don’t know what all the fuss is about, but they want to see what’s going on. They don’t want to miss the spectacle.

People line the famous blue railings of Tower Bridge and queue up to have their bags searched before entering the fenced-in enclosure directly beneath the Plexiglas rectangle. Another queue trails off to the side of the Mister Softee ice cream truck. Five porta-potties have been set up at the edge of the park. The grass has been trampled down to dirt. The people craning their necks upward are of every age and represent different cultures and different countries. Signs attached to the fence announce that if you are in the area, you are giving your tacit permission to be portrayed in a film about David Blaine’s glass box confinement.

Blaine, a thirty-year-old New York illusionist and magician famous for stunts such as being buried under Times Square for a week, being entombed in a block of ice for three days, and standing on top of a narrow eighty-three-foot pillar in Manhattan for thirty-six hours, is currently in the middle of his first big European stunt and his longest-lasting feat of endurance to date. He plans to remain confined in the box for a total of forty-four days, eating nothing and drinking only plain water. He has no books, television, or radio in the pod with him. His only entertainments are his journal, the people outside, and his (probably increasingly delusional) thoughts.

Blaine has announced no specific motivation for the stunt, nor any specific inspiration. He did say, before he ascended into the box: "We are all stronger and more resourceful than we know, and we can endure much more than we think we can,…it’ll be triumphant for a human being to survive this."

So, is it worth it?

Today, I am joining the rubberneckers. I can see the hanging box through the trees as I walk toward the Thames. I mingle into the edges of the crowd.

David Blaine stands up and waves to the crowd spread out below. Some return the wave—some even scream his name—but the majority of the people simply stare back. A heckler in a red sweatshirt starts speaking into a megaphone—something about how he pays his council taxes, while David just rots up there, not paying anything. But I can’t make out the rest of his words, because a large group of supporters—mostly teenagers with multiple piercings—rush toward him, shouting to drown him out.

Policemen uncross their arms and run forward to intervene in case there is any violence. But there is only shouting. The heckler continues, but his words are inaudible with forty or more people chanting: "Boring, boring, boring," and the sing-song "We’re Not Listening!"

No tomatoes or eggs are being chucked at David anymore. He still has his detractors—one friend told me she was refusing to go see him on principle. How could one man starve himself for no apparent reason when so many in the world are without food?

But I get the feeling that there were more supporters standing underneath than critics. On day twenty-eight, people are starting to feel some respect for the man suspended by a crane and guy wires, eating nothing.

Some preteen girls begin shouting David’s name. He turns toward them, waves, and makes a peace sign. They scream to David and to each other. "He waved at me! Did you see?" I must admit, it seemed a little silly to me. A wave from David Blaine. Yee-ha.

But a little later, standing at the edge of the crowd, I lift up my hand to give David a wave myself. I don’t smile. I just wave my arm. I am saying: "I think you’re crazy. You’re sitting up there like an animal in a cage, but worst of all you are starving yourself. All for no apparent reason. Nothing more than a publicity stunt that means everyone will know your name and you’ll get a lucrative book and movie deal out of it. It’s ridiculous. But hey—it can’t be easy. I could never do it. Good luck up there."

And he waves back. He waves to me. David Blaine looks down from his tiny box to the crowd that surrounds him day after day and on this particular day at this particular time he sees a girl at the edge of the crowd carrying a green bag, waving her arm, and he waves back.

Then I know how the girls felt. Maybe David is just trying to pull off a stupid stunt. Or maybe it’s a bit of history, and I am part of it. Or maybe it’s both.

Either way, it is good theatre.

But though Blaine is certainly testing the limits of human endurance, his stunt is still disappointing. It isn’t Ernest Shackleton rowing hundreds of miles through an icy Antarctic ocean in a tiny boat to save his stranded crew. It isn’t a brave World War II medic carrying wounded men to safety through the heat of enemy fire. It isn’t even the man who completed the London Marathon wearing a 130-pound diving suit, earning thousands for charity. What is the point? What is Blaine accomplishing?

Instead of earning money for charity, they say that when he comes down, the Metropolitan Police are going to pass him the £100,000 bill for all the extra policing costs associated with the stunt.

If he comes down. In the final phases of starvation, Blaine’s body may begin to shut down. His brain could be damaged from the lack of glucose and his internal organs could begin to digest themselves. His kidneys may not be able to filter the high levels of acidic waste in his blood and could fail. In addition, the weather has turned colder and Blaine’s box has no heating or temperature controls. In the starvation mode it has entered, his body is particularly susceptible to hypothermia.

Blaine has said he feels the risks are worth taking. "I think it is worth it for my art even if I drop dead," he said.

Have you ever thought about how long forty-four days actually is? Most people claim they are "starving" if they miss lunch.

Blaine isn’t the first one to go on an extended fast. Moses fasted for forty days on Mt. Sinai when he received the tablets of stone from the hand of God. Elijah—after eating two cakes baked by an angel—fasted for forty days in the wilderness. And Jesus, after being baptized by John, fasted for forty days and forty nights. Afterward, the Bible says, he was "an hungered." In this weakened state, he was tempted to turn the stones into bread.

But Moses, Elijah, and Jesus all communed with God in solitude. Moses was listening to God’s rules about how the Israelites should live their daily lives, while the people themselves were preparing to worship a golden calf.

Elijah was running away from Queen Jezebel’s death threats; he was discouraged until God came to him in a still small voice.

And Jesus was meditating on his heavenly Father and how he would conduct his ministry among the (still) obstinate and fractious Israelites.

Those three biblical giants had no glass box. But it’s pretty certain that people thought they were crazy, too. And though we can watch a weakening David Blaine day after day in his see-through box, live on webcam and on the TV news, his motives are not transparent.

"He’s looking for something," a close friend of Blaine’s told an interviewer. "Whatever that is, no one else knows. It’s his own personal journey."

Blaine emerged from the box on Sunday evening, October 19, exhausted and weeping. He was immediately transported to a local hospital, where he is being gradually reintroduced to food under strict medical supervision. It is not yet known whether he will suffer any lasting physical damage. Blaine lost approximately fifty-six pounds during his six-week fast, but told the thousands of waiting fans that "this has been one of the most important experiences of my life."

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