Word Up

Ok, I realize that some of you might think I'm Wacky McCracker after last night's discussion, but I'm not. I really believe everyone has a wordroom, they just don't realize it - I didn't for several years. I mean, I didn't build the room, it's been there awhile from the looks of things, and I truly didn't know it was there until I lost a word and went looking for it.

I started out in the front room of my brain. The word was not in evidence, so I lifted a few cushions on the leatherbound sofa. I found a couple raisins, but the word wasn't there; neither was it on the end-table nor the coffee table. It wasn't in the umbrella stand or on the lamp stand, and it wasn't under the entry mat where I keep the spare keys that Gerry sometimes uses when he wants to get into my brain.

I checked the bedroom, next, and the bathroom, too - I sometimes leave words there; generally ones that have no further use or which have become sullied. The word was not in the bedroom and not in the bathroom, not even in the recycling can kept under the kitchen sink in which sat a cold bowl of homemade alphabet soup.

So I looked further afield, down the narrow-minded hallway that I've been slowly widening over the past few years, and I checked the rooms on either side of the hallway, storerooms and closets as well as what used to be the test room, and even the cinema where I often go to play short films that have made lasting impressions on me.

And that's when I came to a door made of hammered gold with a dozen or so keyholes and a jangle of keys conveniently hanging on a hook shaped like a nose just to the left of what would have been the proper place for a doorknob but instead was a keypad of brilliantly colored letters, no two being of the same font and most being of fonts I'd never seen.

Being me, I did the natural "me" thing to do -- I touched the gold-hammered door. DUH. I mean, what if this was like an Alice in Wonderland thing and once I went through the door, I couldn't come back the same way? Wouldn't I be sad, then, that I hadn't taken the opportunity to touch a hammered gold door? I mean, how many people have the opportunity to touch a hammered gold door? Have you? Of course you haven't. Well, I now have! And I can't tell you how good it felt; I closed my eyes (no surprise there, eh?) and ran my fingertips ever so lightly across the surface and let my mind repaint the door based on the way it felt. Then I opened my eyes and looked at the door again and understood it better for having touched it. Case closed.

Then I looked at each of the keyholes, running my fingers across them and along the edges. Some were small and some were large, some looked rather old and others looked new, one was quite scratched as though someone had tried to jimmy it, and several were numbered 1 through 12 and named Corona, Argon, Lanyard, Gambit, Big Bird and some other names that I don't remember but Gerry probably does. Or Navid. Navid knows shit like that, too.

None, however, bore the name of the word for which I was looking, a quest on which which I had become temporarily sidetracked.

I examined the keys as well, as one would think a door with keyholes and a hook with keys hanging from it would go hand-in-hand. The keys were a variety of metals, including gold, copper, brass, silver and what I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was titanium, although I've never seen titanium so you might doubt the veracity of that claim.

And then, because it's my brain and my hallway and all the doors are mine, I turned to the keypad and let my fingers play across the keys E-H-T-O-O-Z-E-E and there was a click and the door swung soundlessly inward to reveal the most amazing room with the most welcome feeling to it of any room I've ever been in, including the room with the sunny window seat.

As I mentioned last night, there were rows and rows of wordcases with words and parts of words all categorized. I would say neatly, but words are not prone to being kept in narrowly-organized confinement. They need, rather, to be able to breathe and stretch and turn (where do you think "a well-turned phrase" comes from, hm?).

There was lots of wood in the room, wooden shelves with words balanced precariously on the edges, wooden tables with words sprawled langourously across their grainy surfaces, and wooden ladder-backed chairs with words curled up on the cushioned seats and scrambling over each other on the laddered rungs. There were words written in the dust, painted over sills, and whispered in the margins of the many books that lay open upon the wooden tables.

And in the corner of the wordroom, not at all affected by the blazing fire roaring in the great stone hearth, was a wisteria vine with a chain-link of hearts carved the length of its graceful trunk.

There was a bit of chaos in one corner of the room, and I thought at first that it was a fight. It wasn't though, it was a lively game of mash which I later learned was how I end up with those new words, the ones that aren't found in Merriam Webster online or Oxford English Dictionary or any other place until I let them out, sometimes by accident like a fluff and sometimes with intention because they seem fully grown and ready to be enjoyed by others as well as myself. In the mash corner, though, words were throwing themselves at each other with full force and wrestling with each other on the hardwood floor and I seriously thought they would hurt themselves until I realized they were quite capable of taking care of themselves and I was here, after all, because I'd lost one of them, not because it had lost me.

And being thusly recalled to the purpose of my visit I turned and, there in a corner sitting in the center of a lime green chair shaped like a hand and with a letter on each digit of that hand, A E I O and U, was the very word that I had lost earlier that same day. It was reading a book and looking for all the world like it knew exactly where it was, which of course it did.

It turned the final page of its book, looked over the top of its bespectacled nose and set the book down on the hand-shaped chair. It sat there with a mien of patience while I made my way across the word-strewn floor, and settled in with a contented sigh when I lightly brushed it into my pocket.

I took a last glance around, pocketed a few words from a shelf labeled "Can you square a spare?" and snagged a coupla new ones from the mash corner, then I left the wordroom, closing the door with its dozen or so keyholes, and slowly made my way back down a hallway that seemed infinitely wider and brighter than on my way in.

I passed the storerooms and the coatroom and the greatroom and the hydroponic greenhouse I had built after the testing debacle, I passed three identical doorways with nameplates indicating their respective if not respectful occupants, and I went back to the kitchen where I reheated the alphabet soup and ran a bath and settled into the night with a contented sigh of my own and a mind full of endless possibilities for what I could use the jumble of words in my pocket for.

I return quite often to the wordroom, now that I know it's there. Sometime the room is a bit more scattered than others, and sometimes I join in on a rousing game of mash. Sometimes I sit crosslegged on the wooden tables and sometimes I pull the lime green hand chair over to the hearth, right up under the wisteria, and I trace the chain of hearts carved into its trunk, and uplifting words come to mind, words that make my own heart, the one that beats in my chest, expand and swell and feel as full to the brim as a heart that has infinite capability to stretch possibly can.

And sometimes I take words with me, older words like aghast and henceforth and revenant, and new words that are full of expectation and eager to be used, and even some partially-formed words so I can mull on them a bit - cogitate, if you will. Sometimes I put words back in the wordroom, sometimes neatly on the shelves even though I know they are going to jump down when my back is turned, and sometimes I toss them into the basket marked Word Scramble where they will be plucked from and stuck into a mind-teasing puzzle for my next trip to Mexico or Cities.

But I visit the room often and will continue to do so and you are welcome to visit it, too, anytime you like, if you dare and if you aren't comfortable going into your own wordroom. The keys to my brain are under the mat, and the code to the keypad is...well, I think even monkeyboy can remember THAT one, eh?