Allegretto

Jeff wants to know, again, where his wallet and keys are.

The trick is, I know where they were, this morning--on the table in the kitchen between the monkey chairs--but that was this morning. If I’d seen them since I would have made another indelible mental note, knowing the question would come up. But he managed to reposition them, and I have not yet happened upon their new, random, situation.

He likes the feel of the keys in his pocket--heavy, poky, inclined to make worn spots in jeans pockets--though they serve no purpose there. Except for the mini versa-tool which pops out every so often to assist in the opening of a box, but must stay home when he visits Colorado, lest the BWI security guy be gifted with another sharp and disallowed implement.

There are people, evidently, who come into the world grasping immediately that it is a place where beauty and tragedy entwine in an ironic pas de deux. They are the brilliant writers of farce and satire who can hit the ground running with efficiency enough to carve a career. Then, there are those--present company included--who assumed they must be inhabiting a nice, linear narrative in a book with neat binding...until--many, many years later--they notice there is no binding. There is no book. There may not, in fact, be an alphabet involved at all. Maybe this isn’t even a graphic novel, by gum. Once I thought I understood the words to a particular phrase of Jellicle Cats, and I’d sing along...Can you ride on a broomstick to places far distant?...Familiar with candle, with book, and with bell?...Were you Whittington's friend? The Pied Piper's assistant?...Have you been in the love-nest of heaven and hell?

And guess what? That’s not how the last part goes. It’s: Have you been an alumnus of heaven or hell? And this probably makes good sense in the context of what T.S. Eliot meant for the poem to convey. But still, my mangled, misheard version holds special significance for me. Because there is one of those love-nests, and I have been in it, and so have a lot of other people. There are no linear narratives spawned in this love-nest. But there is plenty of irony, beauty and tragedy...and not just a pas de deux, but a continual, nonsensical, sensical, discordant, syncopated, messed-up, harmonious, sometimes-boring, sometimes nifty, unfinished opus.

But I doubt if anyone would publish it.