Semi-detached

Just sent what I wrote Friday night, as either the phone or electric has been out since then. Couldn't write yesterday, I was staff at the museum, working Sara's day so she and Clay could go to Columbus and celebrate 45 years together. Last night listened to some music at the pub, got home late, still no phone, this morning the electric was out again, so when it started getting hot, I went to the museum again, to read in the AC. Home at 4, to beat the rains, and everything is on. All day thinking about signs. Reading sign, reading signs. Complex business. When you can no longer read the signs, or never learned, they no longer carry meaning, beyond being physically what they are. There's a sign, at our end of the alley, on the other side, the west side, facing east. Gets hit with a lot of sun and is so faded it can't be read. There's barely any background color left. We know what the sign says because the one on our wall can still be read. DO NOT ENTER. The alley is one-way from the other direction. This is a sign that should be highly visible and, instead, it's virtually invisible. Then there's the issue of censorship through intimidation, which was yesterday's topic of thought, the whole interconnected police state that's developed, and all the groovy liturgy that's grown around that. Impossible to have zero signature in the modern world. Almost impossible. We probably all know people who aren't who they say they are. I've known a few. Most rare is knowing someone who knows. A thorny issue, knowing yourself, classically a blind spot. You have to look at where you are, what you think about it, and how you ended up there. A litany of failures or a string of good fortune, whatever. You have to look at yourself to identify who you are. And it's often painful, for me it is: all the years I missed with my daughters; a house I was afraid to build; one last book that I'll probably never write. Three things make a list. Two priests come into a bar. One of them says he'll have a Murphy's back, and I really didn't see anything. Or they're protecting something. The secret lies. Cargill recalled 35 million pounds of ground turkey. Apple has more cash reserves than the US treasury. The world in which you live in. Master Paul. Sir. Something rubs me the wrong way, his careless disregard of commas, the way he looked, or maybe just his inflection. Harmony is more than the sum of its parts. Change ringing or Sacred Heart. Bach, for god's sake, knew more in his plinking than we'll ever understand. Consider just the word sublime. Endlessly falling, not unlike that time you took a dare and waded into the surf, despite the undertow and several large sharks we could track by their fins breaking the surface. One place as good as another. Ah, here we are, I thought so. The brink of failure. I love when we talk dirty.