UNDERNEATH JACK AND JILL

Charlie Peacock plunges beneath the surface of "Jack and Jill" in his book NEW WAY TO BE HUMAN and sees things under the obvious that most of us wouldn't:

"What if 'Jack and Jill' is about

1. the partnership of male and female in the day-to-day needs of life?
2. the admission of human need (water), and how, in this world, meeting needs is often very difficult, dangerous work?
3. the topography of life where there are hills and valleys, and sometimes you climb a hill just to fall back down again?
4. the fact that human actions with the best of intentions for the purest of needs can still end in tragedy?
5. the ineptitude of men, and how they drag women down with them? (Just kidding, I think.)

What if 'Jack and Jill' is about all this (and more), and it is about two people traveling to get water and having an accident?"

ANd this has me thinking. What if the tales on the evening news - wars, robberies, dogs up for adoption, city council meetings - have a layer of meaning I'm not seeing as well? What if under the every day dramas and muted minutia tell us something about each other, life together, who we are and what we want and need and we're just not seeing it, not reading deeply enough, not squinting hard enough at what's underneath it all? What if?

And I'm wondering as I read Charlie's words again with you about how it is that some (like Charlie Peacock and English teachers in general) are able to see the layers of meaning in familiar words and experiences that many of the rest of us just don't even catch a hint of. How is it that Jack and Jill's fumbling antics on an imaginary hillside can communicate so many somethings other than the obvious to one person and be nothing but a child's rhyme to the masses? How do we, you and I, get under the skin of everyday conversations, songs, books, people and experiences to see the bones and muscles of meaning underneath? Is that even worth doing?