On my first visit to New Orleans, I found a key. Wandering the French Quarter, it's easy to believe in adventure and hard to believe in coincidence. The stately homes belie history, power, and influence, while the seedier taverns and alleys remind passersby of darker elements of society. An unknown key represents drama, mystery, intrigue, all heightened by its discovery in a troubled historic city. Picking up the key, I expected to be swept into a world of locked doors concealing dark family secrets, fantastic wealth, and troubled romance.
Of course, only in fiction will a key lying on the ground in a distant city ever open anything. Discoveries might feel like opportunity, even fate, but the universe never delivered me a grand plantation mansion with a shadowy back room that remained locked until my arrival with a mysterious key. (Because what was I doing there? How, exactly, would my slide into this world begin?)
Keys are one of the most symbolic objects in literature - they represent knowledge (or more often, the phallus). A key never shows up by mistake in a story. I chose to believe that life would imitate art, but out here in daily Midwestern life, it seems a key is just a key.
1 comment:
oooh! i like this. i rarely get to read something that you write in a more serious tone.
did you intentionally choose to not describe the key? because at first i pictured an exotic-ish looking key, but then i wondered if you didn't describe it because it was just a regular, ol' key.
"a key is just a key." yup. still like it.
Post a Comment