Closures

Usually, when I see the word "closure" or hear it somewhere, the face or voice attached to it speaks about the end of a relationship, at a funeral service or refering to a personal relationship. Seeing a body at a wake or a coffin being lowered into the ground brings what we call "closure" to friends and family who have lost someone they love, it is the closing of a life. Or when a couple go their separate ways, there is usually pain, emotional wounds and as one confronts the change and comes to accept it over time or begins a new relationship, the wounds literaly heal, bringing "closure" and an end to the affair.

I guess there is also a "closing" when a house sells, when the title changes hands and money goes from buyer to seller. Or better put, the money goes from a buyer to a seller's community of debtors hovering nearby, had you asked me. For some subliminal reason, I often mix the words "opening" with "closing." I don't know. You may close the deal, but you open up a new relationship at the same time? There is probably something worth mining in my malapropism.

I have yet another definition of the word, from the garment manufacturing world where a closure is synonymous to the onomatopoetic zipper. Zippppppppp! It's closed. Zippppppp! It's open. Alledgedly, it comes from an executive in sales at Goodrich saying "Zip 'er up!" Button manfacturers played upon this universal sound as reason to avoid spec-ing zippers into combat gear. The sound of a soldier opening his fly to take a slash might give his whereabouts away and be his final 'out.' Quite the worse, if a zipper failed, a soldier's pants would fall down to his ankles, and he might have to hopscotch in a hostile environment, dodging lead. Zippers were too unreliable, once upon a time, or so the button people claimed.

Quite a few years ago I purchased millions of dollars of "closures, slide fasterner, coil..." for a company where I worked. I learned much more about them a few years later, when I worked with an expert team in a serious effort to reinvent the zipper, bringing together the major manufacturers, engineers and technicians in the business. We solved many of the known problems, earning a score of 99 out of one hundred for our efforts, but the government agency lacked funding at the time. Eventually, few years later, the proposal spawned several small contracts. My partner neglected to mention obtaining them after the initial effort stalled, I never asked him why, but through the vicissitudes of life, the matter resurfaced on the table, and I found myself writing a synopsis of the innovative research, summarizing the state of the art in the closure business one more time. Apparently it is open season on closures these days, a matter that will not stay closed. The new zipper makes no noise. Erica Jong, in her novel Fear of Flying, would have tossed it off as just another "zipless fuck."