A golden apple

 

You are welcome to share this apple with me. WARNING: Afterward, in the rearview mirror, 

objects and events may appear larger and more significant than they really are.

After yet another night with little or no sleep, I showed up at work on the morning of Friday, March 4, laden with what I hoped were mind-blowing photos. I intended to show them to John to gauge his reaction. Perhaps credulity, fueled by insomniac exhaustion, had led me to project significance onto them that they really didn't possess. And would John be honest with me or merely indulgent? I told myself to observe carefully the look on his face. It would be more significant than any words he might say.

So just before the start of work, I lugged my satchel—like Mr. Piper's bag of tricks, I chuckled to myself—over to John's desk and proceeded to bring him up to speed. One by one, I pulled out the exhibits, explaining as I went. The 1967 photo of Keith he'd already seen many times, but it was worth showing it first, because THAT resemblance was a lock, a ringer whose potency would colour whatever followed.

"What's up, Pete?"

"Well, you know this Monica thing is getting a little spooky, with the Roethke poem and everything." Slightly breathless, still. I produced the photo of Keith with the band, from April 1967.

"Oh, yeah." The swift, nodding assent. John had been privy to many of my synchronistic musings since way back in 1985. He knew something was coming.

His eyes widened a bit when I brought out the wedding photo of Keith and April, but then I produced the Renaissance album cover with the two shots of Jane Relf standing beside her Jesus-bearded brother Keith.

"Whoo, there's trouble," John muttered. Then shaking his head a little, as if to clear it. Then after a quiet moment, "Looks like there's a bit of a wrinkle in the universe."

"Something like that, yeah. Hey, I'm sorry about that stupid phone call last night. Dunno why I expected you to be able to explain that line on a moment's notice." I'd called him after dinner about the last line of Roethke's signature poem.

"I measure time by how a body sways. What can that mean, John?" I'd been punch-drunk from a week of insomnia, so the obvious answer was beyond my reach—or perhaps too close for it.

"No problem. I just don't think there's anything all that mysterious about it."

"Well, how about this? I was reading another poem of his after I stumbled on these pictures—Keith with his sister, Keith with his wife—and look what I found."  I pulled out my library copy of Words for the Wind, bookmarked to a page of "The Sententious Man," and pointed to what had already become for me an utterly magical couplet:

An exultation takes us outside life. . . 

I taste my sister when I kiss my wife.

"I taste my sister when I kiss my wife, John. Emphasis mine."

"Yes, I'm, um, following your drift."

Whereupon I retreated to my desk to start working. A half hour later, John passed by on his way to the coffee room.

"Genesis, Pete. It's Genesis. Emphasis mine."

He was gone before I could ask what he meant.

Now, THAT was mysterious.

When I arrived in the coffee room at coffee time, I walked up to Monica, who was at the counter preparing something. I noticed she was wearing a shirt that was, amazingly, the same bright, cerulean blue as mine. I thought about punning on the Yardbirds title "The Nazz Are Blue" but balked when I realized how long it would take to explain.

Just then Laurie stopped by to fill her mug. Perhaps deciding to be mischievous, she bumped my shoulder and said, "Pete. You should tell Monica about the Yardbirds."

"The what, now?" Monica asked. I did the best I could, starting off, confusingly I'm sure, with the Nazz and our blue shirts, the Yardbirds and the blues and the psychedelia, the Eastern modalities, the mysterious Keith. Mentioning a few of their biggest hits. A three-minute Fantastic Voyage.

"Ah, the Sixties. Before my time. I've never heard of them."

"They started out with Eric Clapton as their guitarist."

"Him I've heard of."

"And they ended up with Jimmy Page, who went on to form Led Zeppelin."

"Led . . . Zeppelin . . ."

"Stairway to Heaven."

"Bingo. Now we're getting somewhere. Still a long time ago, no?"

"I used to think so. Lately, a long time ago seems closer than it used to."

"Hmm. Have to think about that one. Would you like half my apple?"

I nodded, and she proceeded to split her Golden Delicious in half, then into quarters. We parted, with my promise to tell her more about Stairway to Heaven soon.

Still munching on my second piece of apple, I passed by the table where John was sitting, having watched the whole thing.

"Genesis, Pete. Genesis."

The apple, of course. "Hmm-umm. I get it now. Food for thought."

Wasn't sure why I'd said that, but it fit. Would this apple be a sort of sacrament for me, the Word made Flesh? (Also suddenly thinking, wow, I'm a long fucking way from home here . . .) If the original apple had brought the Fall from Grace into Knowledge, would this one bring about the reverse, from Knowledge into Grace? That would be a helluva New Deal.

And so on. Remember, I hadn't slept in a while.

As was happening so often lately, my ideas began to crowd together into a senseless jumble. In another few hours I was going to make another (I was assuming) fateful pilgrimage to U of C. Whether I was going to find the dark-haired Kari or not, I needed some better words, some sort of mantra to keep me bobbing safely aloft above the whitewater rapids of my insomnomaniac thoughts.

Ted came to the rescue. I had to consult my Words for the Wind to make sure of the wording, but I grabbed on to a couplet from his "Four for Sir John Davies":

Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall;

The word outleaps the world, and light is all.

Quitting time, 12:45 p.m. Once again, the C-Train beckoned. When I disembarked on campus, what sort of light would be waiting for me?

Next Stop: A YELLOW FLOWER