I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long... -- Walt Whitman
Here, have another cup and forget about the dime
Keep it as a souvenir, from Big Joe and Phantom 309. - Red Sovine
After a nice visit with My Dear Sweet Ma, I'm on my way to Chicago, having caught a ride with my friend Paul H. He makes a weekly run up to Bloomingdale, which is about 27 miles from the Ogilvie Transportation Center
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-- where I'm meeting someone else who will help get me to Mount Carroll late Monday night.
Once I'm back in Mount Carroll, I plan on visiting some friends, finding some way to build up the Travel Fund*, and get my Southbound excursion planned. By the time I get there, or soon thereafter, a copy of birth certificate will arrive at my as of yet un-relinquished P.O. Box address there, and I will be able to trade in my recently arrived OFFICIAL TEMPORARY DRIVER'S LICENSE (that, according to the large type double bold capitalized notification at the top of the page... just below the Official State of Illinois page header... IS NOT VALID FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES) for an actual photo identification.
I can drive right now... but I don't have a car, having signed (somewhat happily, somewhat sadly) the blue station wagon... the appearance of which, I believe, foretold my soon to be divorce. So I will have an ID with the moniker My Dear Sweet Ma bestowed upon me during that blizzard in the Year of Our Lord 1973.
Several people -- friends, family -- have asked me about my name changes on various social networking sites. I have tried explaining. I have had to explain the reference to Ozymandias. And here... for you all, Dear Readers, to see... it is:
Here, have another cup and forget about the dime
Keep it as a souvenir, from Big Joe and Phantom 309. - Red Sovine
After a nice visit with My Dear Sweet Ma, I'm on my way to Chicago, having caught a ride with my friend Paul H. He makes a weekly run up to Bloomingdale, which is about 27 miles from the Ogilvie Transportation Center
View Larger Map
-- where I'm meeting someone else who will help get me to Mount Carroll late Monday night.
Once I'm back in Mount Carroll, I plan on visiting some friends, finding some way to build up the Travel Fund*, and get my Southbound excursion planned. By the time I get there, or soon thereafter, a copy of birth certificate will arrive at my as of yet un-relinquished P.O. Box address there, and I will be able to trade in my recently arrived OFFICIAL TEMPORARY DRIVER'S LICENSE (that, according to the large type double bold capitalized notification at the top of the page... just below the Official State of Illinois page header... IS NOT VALID FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES) for an actual photo identification.
I can drive right now... but I don't have a car, having signed (somewhat happily, somewhat sadly) the blue station wagon... the appearance of which, I believe, foretold my soon to be divorce. So I will have an ID with the moniker My Dear Sweet Ma bestowed upon me during that blizzard in the Year of Our Lord 1973.
Several people -- friends, family -- have asked me about my name changes on various social networking sites. I have tried explaining. I have had to explain the reference to Ozymandias. And here... for you all, Dear Readers, to see... it is:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
Percy Bysshe Shelley (published 1818)
There. Now you know. It's one of my favorite poems. It's always made me smile, just a little.
My reasons for getting another state sanctioned official (for the purposes of Identification) ID are two fold: I want to be able drink when some child working in a bar or restaurant would otherwise deny me booze without some proof that I'm nearly twice his or her age; and I want to be able get a passport for next year's anticipated European Jaunt.
I'm still not sure what's in a name. Echoes of the father, the grandfather. The obligations of a son. The identity attached to that name by The State, by marketeers, by the various institutions that have been digging into us from the moment we're even let out of the house to get on a school bus. Once you start unraveling and tearing off the cultural appliques, you begin to realize that most of the reductive nouns people use to self-identify ... cultural, ethnic, political, religious, spiritual, philosophical... and all the ontological delusions begin to crumble and you begin a journey through the world without the apparatus that binds you to those self same rotting institutions that nothing more than the crumbling visage of some megalomaniac with a bank roll and a need for psychotherapy.