A Departure

You know that feeling?  That feeling where you lost something that you just had in your hands.  And you’re wandering all over the place wondering where in the WORLD you put it?  You just had it!  All you can think about is: I just had it!  It was here.  Where is it now?  It can’t have gone anywhere! I haven’t gone anywhere. You’re wandering around, pacing from one idea to the next, one hiding spot to the next, turning over cushions you’ve already turned over three times, with no method other than your madness–your all-consuming madness.  You exhaust yourself in the search. Your obsessed mind, confused by this lapse finds no rest until it shuts down from exhaustion.  You’ve looked literally everywhere you can think of, but because of your confusion you can’t think of everywhere.  You think you have, but you haven’t.  You finally throw yourself onto the couch in despair.  You turn on the TV, but you’re not thinking about the Olympics.  You don’t care about Olympic figure-skating, you only care about that DAMN THING that you misplaced. But where is it where is it WHERE IS IT?

What can I do?! I want it back! How could I have lost it! I just had it!

(The cycle continues.  A similar frenzied search proceeds.)

But now you’re actually worn out from fruitless search.  You collapse on the couch again, this time resigned to your fate of NEVER finding it EVER again.  You would shed a tear, but that would mean giving up hope.  You finally decide to put on some beautiful music, the beauty of which is so universally acclaimed that you will naturally be immersed by it wholly and utterly—how could you be otherwise when confronted with such a masterpiece that encapsulates so much of humanity in the sometimes cunning, sometimes subtle, sometimes heart-felt-and-heart-rending array of musical notes and poetry.  This is it, you tell yourself, the cure to my having lost that thing.  I will listen to this music—the best music there is, the most beautiful—and I will realize that the whatever it is doesn’t matter.  Only the music.  Only beauty and life.

The music starts.  The volume is turned up loud, but the song starts quiet.  Yep, this is just the thing.  Listen to how beautiful it is; it is the best.  It’s not for nothing they call it the best. I truly believe it.  How could you not?  I wonder where that damn thing—no wait, stop.  Listen to the music.  Wow. So good.

You lean back, recline, close your eyes, the better to appreciate the song’s beauty…and sweetly, imperceptibly drift off to sleep.

You don’t awake with a start.  In fact, the reverse.  You wake up slowly.  It’s light outside. You feel fully rested and newly confident.  Your back doesn’t even ache from having slept so long on the couch. The music is long over by now, and you think to yourself, somewhat wryly, “Yeah. The most beautiful.”  You place your hands on either side of your body to push yourself up off the couch, when you feel by the tip of your little finger the shape of something that doesn’t belong on the couch wrapped up in one blanket under another blanket: the familiar shape of whatever it is. 

You smile to yourself.  Of course that’s where it was.