The Ten-Turn Key

The Ten-Turn Key

Before we begin: This is my story of which I'm telling. So, since I'm the teller, I might address you, the reader, directly. My story, my choice. Got that? Comprende? Capishe Italiane? Okay? I kid. I don't.

And, so ...

It's just a key. Imagine this key, though. Rather simply designed. A typical classic plain thumb piece, a long slender shaft, a gear, and a furnial. Not your usual key, for sure! That furnial bit thingy shaped in this particular case like a outy-notched circle with a raised arrow/pointer on its circumference; said circle being in diameter exactly to match the diameter of the gear.

What's it for?

Ah, you asked the right question.

But, first, let's see how that key works. As you well know, any key needs a lock. That Yin and Yang business is everywhere, haven't you noticed. Trains going into tunnels. Farmers plowing the fields. Hot dogs in buns. [I'll have the latter "Detroit Lafayette Coney Island Style": with lots of Cuminy Chili, chopped Onions, and Yellow Mustard.]

Looking very closely we see an opening in the lock exactly circular to fit the diameter of the circular elements on the key. But, exactly. Close, close tolerance. Micro millimeter precision. And, yes, don't forget the notched furnial. Yes there's a corresponding notch in the lock box. Notches, really.

Next up, the key being inserted to a short full stop, then it must be rotated enough for the arrow/pointer on the furnial to fit just enough into a second corresponding female cut. Sort of like putting just the tip in. Yin and Yang, once again! Push just enough to clear an opening and the key moves in a short, short step to engage with a gear set. You turn the gear set slowly and feelingly until the arrow/pointer marries with yet another female receiver; not necessarily in the same position as the number one and number two pass throughs.

On and on like that, through ten steps in all. Then, voilà! Open sesame!

This quite clearly is not a lock you should be in a hurry to open. In fact, it's a sort of elemental combination vault lock maze gauntlet. You would be there forever trying to get the just right set of permutations to negotiate that gauntlet of openings, connections and gearings. In fact, the lock is set up unforgivingly; so much so that just one wrong move and the lock will seize and virtually swallow the key. The lock, however, is designed to still be openable, even if you screw up and get your key "cancelled". Don't ask how they did that. I don't have a clue. I'm just reporting the facts.

Not like there are lots of keys just laying around so as if you lose one, you just grab another. No! You lose a key like that ... you're out of there, buddy. You must be worthy to even put your hand on such a key. Worthy ... after rigorous training in every mini-millimeter minutia of steps to get that dern lock to open. There's no user manual. All handed down, oral instruction. The consequences for attempting to formulate the procedure down onto paper are not something you would want me to give you even a hint about. As if, I know, anyway. Which I don't. Nuf said. It's big day black bad. Millennial. Worse than ... C'mon Man! You cook up in your own imagination what would be the worst possible fate. I'd say mine, but it would chill you out and I'd have to spend too many words just getting a hint of it across.

Okay. So what's such the big deal with all this fuss about opening that lock, with all the fuss just to learn how to do it?

Oh, did I mention the apprenticeship? You start at the beginning. Building a fire what to melt the alloys to be poured into a handmade form for the key. Every dern step of the way. Mastery of every step is, of course, a given. The real thing to pass onto the next step is to be surrendered enough at any given step, so much so that you don't after all is said and done give a dern about even getting to the next step. You proceed up the ladder by invitation. It is given. Not earned. Imagine setting out to achieve a goal and the lesson to the goal is not to care about the goal. Wha ... ?

And, now, that's where the story begins to unfold.

I think you'll recall we went through the actual steps of pushing and turning, and pushing and turning the key those ten times — and getting each step dead nuts right to boot! — until it hits the button with an explosive, ecstatic rush of satisfaction. Okay, you can insert a sexual image there, if you want. Yin/Yang, once more. [Is there ever enough?]

Oh, did I mention the door. Every lock has to have a door. Maybe not a door in every case; but, even on a case, it acts like a door you open. Never mind. You wouldn't understand anyway.

This particular door is important not for how it looks, but where it is located. It's the janitor closet just at the end wall of the men's room at the New York City Pennsylvania Station. If you think going through all the trouble to make the key and then learn how to use it is a bitch, you've never been to the men's room at Penn Station. Plus the indignity of having to deal with propositioning being all bent over working on that lock which you should know was set on the door about a foot from floor level. If you've ever dropped your soap in a Greek shower, you know what I'm talking about.

Alright, alright. Here's what you have when you open that door.

You find yourself in a light filled space, sunlight brilliant. Pure white. So fulsome is this light that you don't have a sense of any spacial dimension to register, or anything that might be there. Like some other doors. Which, let me give you a spoiler alert: there are. Other doors.

Presumably after the soul purifying steps you've taken just to get there, you are chastened enough to trust your stepping forward into this light filled ... Whathaveyou.

As you go you notice things. You're in a hallway, wide; with walls on either side. And, doors. No locks. Thank Got in Himmel. So many doors. An eternity of doors, in fact.

Where are you? You're in the Akashic Records. The repository of everything ever ... past, present, and future. Not only everything ever, but every potential and possibility of everything ever. And, even after all that ... and then some.

Poem for Judgment Day

We did it. We did it all. We did it all. We made it all happen. And that ... and that ... and that ... and.

Now, for the clincher. You could look at every last friggin' item in the Akashic Records, copy every bit of it down, transcribe it, and put it into books printed with all the ink that could be carried in the space of a thousand world oceans ... 

And ...

Then ...

There you are! Here you are! Hi, buddy.