THE ROSE GARDEN

Not far from the Rose Garden is a small box, hidden and buried for years, containing a ring of keys. Children play nearby, picking blooms and scattering petals. The gray sky, clouds darkening, absorbs laughter like a damp sponge. Olly, Olly, Oxen Free!

All bets are off. Gravel crunches underfoot.

The keys have been waiting for just this, a subtle tinge of blue. There are mysteries to unlock. But the keys will not fit. Or so it was said, a hasty excuse since no locks were found.

Through the Garden scurries a breeze, throwing up red bits that clot into soldiers on parade, a tuba blatting – Olly! Olly! Damped in humid air. The dwindling cry, Oxen Free . . .

And finally silence . . .

How can this be? The play was endless, so it seemed. Dwindling light that called to endless adventures. There were keys, or so it was said. But now far off, time out of mind, only the crunch of gravel until eventually . . .

There is no gravel.

And that, folks

is the story.

         *** *** ***

Laughter is shared, and so experience becomes fact, provided -- anyone given the same conditions arrives at the same facts. This is scientific fun.

Such a fascinating business. A great storehouse of facts needs more and more room; facts, constantly reviewed, multiply like rabbits, becoming everywhere more useful – air travel, antibiotics, bigger bombs and TV screens. At the lobby entrance on the ground floor, in a display case, proudly sits the Standard Model.

Matter, energy, everything fits!

But who can know everything? What little I know for instance, illustrates how tight lipped language is. People laugh at different things.

All the fun laws are lined up in the Garden, kids ready to kick off on the Standard Model, hup! Logic at the kick off.. Reason for an end play. Violent disagreements are for fans in the sidelines. Facts are celebrated at the goal posts.

Though sometimes it gets out of hand. Fans storm onto the field, trampling down the posts just for the hell of it.

And worse. When the melee gets called to order no one listens. Wild eyed, the crowd looks for excuses and there, back in the stands, are the Unstandard ones. Unscientific ones with their anecdotal experiences, perhaps laughable, maybe even insane. Unrepeatable! No doubt some are delusional, self-deceived, psychopathic. The crowd howls, until reminded that some of these have managed to get fun credentials.

Outside the stadium ordinary people go about their business, some nourishing a glimmer that can make no claim to factual respectability. And it won't go quietly into that good night. Pulling the covers over doesn't dim it. Maybe best not to mention it around fun people.

Well, so maybe civilization is botched. The weight of centuries presses.

While waiting at a stop sign for nuclear torpedoes or the recall of tainted spinach, there is a glimmer that logic, with magical certainty, only goes so far. Something going on that ignores distance, passes through lead walls, ignores time. It eludes capture, just a rabbit's hop away.