'Turned out I couldn't rent a car in Saloniki, so I took my flabbergast and bags to lurch across town to a hostel. Six p.m.: I tumbled into the first bed that looked relatively vacant in the women's dorm. A pink blanket and towel slung across the bunk above me turned out to be pure kidology. Three a.m.: I wake up to the snoring of five soccer players. Male futbolistas -- to be absolutely clear.
Ha ha, Goddess.
I must confess, the first hint had already arrived on the flight from Munich to Thessa. On a six-seat row, I found myself surrounded by a quintet of German athletes in the middle of tying on their mid-afternoon Trinkgelage, and who clearly weren't going to let a little thing like an overcrowded flight get in their way. Lucky me.
I am still a bit mystified by that last-minute addition; not entirely sure Five Men needs attention from me right now. But it sits right there (and under the infinitesimal layer of electrons of this screen), humming to itself.
Being fond of threes as well as fives, let's see if a third quintaiety declares itself (besides the Everabsence of my son, of course). I may yet be persuaded. . .
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March 1, 2017
Mesologue
After I posted the 2/28 blog above, I discovered my website 'Humandala.org' had been deleted - on that very day.
My webhost had tried to reach me on Valentine's Day, but I was in travel-mode and didn't see the warning. Unbeknowst to me, the host had new rules in place, which included a "use-by or automatic delete" policy. I called before the end of the deadline date, but alas, it was already offloaded. The UI, which was clean and simple, didn't have an app for downloading the website content, and I haven't had the brainspace to go seek one out otherwise. So. Gone meant truly and really -- 95% gone. There were a few strays picked up by the WayBackMachine, but I had most pages password-protected - which meant no web-archive.
Eleven years of active work. Including quite a bit of the Oneirocriticon, the Boundaries practices, Meeting the Girl in the Bone Bikini and a half-dozen other deep dives. Not to mention 25 years of references: my CVs, list of publications and links to those - which include some screen shots of publications that are longer in business.
A flurry of phone calls to close friends helped me contemplate this disaster on Tuesday night - and at 4 a.m. I finally succumbed to sleep, asking --actually, demanding-- to understand where this put me in relation to my creative work.
In the dreamworld I found a 7-foot rattlesnake draped over a jewelry box, hanging out in my bedroom. Fear flooded me, of course, but in the end I decided to step around it and get to the French doors that led to my balcony. As I moved, the glorious creature rose up and began to sound. "Here it comes..." I thought, then decided to just lie down for the strike. I sat, then rolled to the floor, as the rattling crescendo'ed and went quiet. I felt the animal move toward me, then it slithered up my body, stretching out over me. I controlled my fear, reminding myself how important it is to die in a state of clarity; and the serpent draped itself on my hip and belly, sliding up to a shoulder as if to demonstrate its weight and sovereignty. We lay like that until I was no longer afraid, then the creature withdrew - letting me know it had better things to do than destroy me. It went back to its box near the dresser, and I stood up, aware that something -- a pettiness or obscurity in me-- was gone. I stepped into the dreamlight of the balcony, relieved of some indefinable lump, as if a squab or homunculus had been removed from my flesh.
If you listen just so, it's funny how the rattling of the cascara sounds like paper.
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March 2, 2017
Epilogue: The Fourth Shoe?
A friend (intuitively) queried with this phrase in an email a few hours ago, and indeed there has dropped a 'fourth shoe':
Just before sunset yesterday, I received a series of links from my former web-host. Some 40% of the website had been recuperated, and I was able to scrape some of the text loose. This didn't preserve any of the architecture, of course, which is half the value of such a space. I have spent years exploring its depths, creating coves, nodes, link-backs to ideas & images that were supposed to have found their way into print. But the website itself? Gone.
Cutting away all of what I am compelled to think of as 'undergrowth' did allow a clearer view of my 2017 writing, and how best to approach it. And that, my gentles, falls under the heading of For Writing Out Loud.
Down to it!
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