Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Two dreams about family

One

I am in a white Ford Taurus with my sister.  She is saying something.  I say something back.  There is music playing.  The music is vague, but I recall, now, that one of my earliest memories is of her driving our metallic blue Ford Falcon and singing along to "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog."

She drives on.  We are on Redwood Road--a broad road, with a flat open treeless expanse around us of random houses and strip malls.

I am adult me.  She morphs from her eighteen-year-old self to her middle age.

And then, suddenly, ahead, there is a parade.  The marching band owns our lane.

She accelerates.

The flag twirlers spot our car and, screaming, bustle to the roadside, flags dragging behind.

The band breaks before us in a cacophony of terror.  Trumpets and trombones fly into the air.

"They need to get out of the way!"  my sister exclaims, hitting the accelerator.

I think we clip one of the girls as we pass.  I try to turn my head.

Two

I am in the backyard with my brother.  He is throwing rocks at the house.  He is twelve, and has put one the pre-pubescent fat my siblings were all subjected to.  He wears a yellow plaid shirt.

I am shirtless and skinny and eight.

He throws a rock.  The rock hits our bathroom window.  It bounces off.

He picks up another rock and throws.  It bounces off.

He picks ups another.


I stand by the clematis vine that now, I know, was called "Western Virgin's Bower."


I look down at my feet and see a brick.  It is red and has the three holes that bricks have, but there is another broken brick attached to it by mortar.  The broken brick does not have three holes.  It is and old pioneer brick--solid and hard.

"Throw this brick!" I shout, my child voice ringing out.  My small hand goes down to pick it up.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Thursday, April 04, 2013

In the wilderness or I lost my damn keys

While I was sojourning the British Isles, the old URL for Signifying nothing (signifyingnothing.com) came up for renewal.  I knew that it was going to happen, but in my literal rush to get the hell out of town--I slept past my alarm on the day of my flight out after finishing up a rather taxing semester and came this close to missing my flight--I neglected to do so.

No worries, I thought, I'll do it when I get back.

More famous last italicized words, it would seem.

When I returned from the adventure in nearly mid January, after having spent a whirlwind trip in a dark, cold, yet absolutely enthralling Atlantic Archipelago, I rushed back into a new semester, and gave little thought to my little webby friend, and, having experienced the soul-crushing realization that exchanged rates suck, I wasn't about to plonk down one more Euro.  My previous domain name provider, you see, was based in France.  Not one red euro-cent shall I provide to the economy of Europe! I resolved.

Now, as the poet says, way goes on to way, and in between dealing with various crisis at my place of employment--a couple of weeks of trying to cover the demand of 30K students with 3 part-time employees due to a managerial fuck up (not on my part), and then helping 6 new folks learn the ropes, and then having the previous managerial fuck up rectified and being back to a more sustainable workforce, and then trying to write a speech that was giving me fits, and then just, you know, dealing with snow and winter and ice and realizing how much money one can really spend while traveling even if most of the places you stayed at were free--I neglected my pretty little domain so much that she went and run off on me.  signfiyingnothing.com is currently shacking up with something called HugeDomains.  To top that, said HugeDomains apparently wants $1,695.00 ransom or palimony or dowry or whatever to get little Siggy back into my arms.  Yeah, right.

The contents of the blog had not disappeared, of course, as they are safely stored by our friends at Google.  What had disappeared was my antediluvian URL.  Gone.  Gone.  Gone.

So I thought

.

But why not let it go?  I thought.  What's the point of it?  What's the point?  Meh.  It should go.  Leave it like a bad habit.  Leave it like a pair of worn out old socks.

And so I let it go.

Weeks passed and my mind kept tricking me back to writing posts--about my travels in Anglo-Celtic Isles, about the weird experience of Las Vegas and having my ex invite me to have dinner with her child, her husband, and her fruit trees (that will be a poem, some day), about my weird little finds on the  Internetic tubes.  But no.  I was done with it.  Done!  No reason to put anything on it, even though I can.  No.  Don't.  It is dead to you.  Dead.

And then, suddenly, I'm sitting there at my place of employ, listening to my most excellent colleague Hightouch Megastore, and I had a pang in my fingers to write.  Write.  Write and share it with others.

O signifyingnothing.com!  Where art thou?

So then I bought signifyingnothing.org on the cheap and all is well.

I mean the whole .com thing is so late 90's.  And like I was making any money off that cheating old domain anyway.  Good luck with that, HugeDomains.

So say hello to signifyingnothing.org.

Same old thing but new flashy clothes!

Issue 31.  12 years in the making. 

Next up:  adventures in the value-laden/value-free Isles!  (Maybe.)