 | Blogs > ladykitty22 > The Cat's Eye > Walkabout In The Worm-Hole |
|
As my Aussie friend Michelle would say, I’m officially “going walkabout”. Can’t tell you where, however. I’m afraid if I do, the people of that great U.S. state would hang my sorry ass. I have the privilege of working for a big international company that does all sorts of wonderful things across the world. I’m not being facetious; it really is a privilege and they really do wonderful things. I’m incredibly lucky to have satisfying work that occasionally ends up having a direct impact on humanity. My current project is to reopen an office complex, one that thrived through the ‘80s and was shut down in 2001, leaving a ghost town behind it. Bring it up to 2007 code; DS3s and routers and servers and switches. Get it ready to employ 400 people. Though my day job is in the technology sector, I am secretly a dreamer, a wordsmith; the soul is a poet’s which, out of practical necessity, is carefully hidden from my business peers. I thrive on the dichotomy; the two sides of Kitty: one who dearly loves the clean elegance of protocol label switching and optical networks and Big IP and SONET rings, and the other who gets lost in word pictures of crazy shade-shine dancing under blue oaks that shimmer on the golden hillside. What I love about my day job is that I get to experience people and concepts from a rich variety of sources: all of them feed my secret imagination. The place where I’m going next week is three plane rides and two and a half drive-time hours away from my California home. If not the Asshole of Nowhere, then it’s at least the Armpit. I knew I was in trouble when I went to book the trip and experienced several interesting moments when it appeared that You Can’t Get There From Here. Let me get that straight: in America, in the twenty-first century, we cannot find a path from Point A to Point B. OK, if there’s no airport, then what are our options? Worm-hole? Floo powder? Book The Flying Dutchman? Here was a savory dichotomy for Kitty’s imagination: we ostensibly built a technology complex there a mere thirty years ago, yet no Homo Sapiens walk upright in the vicinity. As it works out, the journey itself will take an entire day. It starts at 3:30 AM in Oakland and ends up somewhere in the Eastern time zone at 9:00 PM….and we’re still 2.5 hours away from our destination. I saw a piece on Iceland recently, where getting to the ruined village of Erik The Red was three helicopter rides and a day’s walk from civilization. I suppose that it’s only fitting that this place where we’re going to reconstruct the newest technology for a Big International Corporation is about as accessible as the spot that launched the discovery of America. We’ve been advised that when we finally arrive, cell phones will probably not work. Someone will meet us to escort us the last half-hour to the site. (I have an unwelcome vision of being led on a descent into the veritable Colon of the Universe by Pappy McGee, in dirty wifebeaters, scratching his fleas, his yellow, gap-toothed grin wrapping around a slobbery, pre-English patois.) In this place, we ostensibly will find a sprawling office complex, originally built in the ‘80s, when it was a bustling hive of activity, employing hundreds from the surrounding area. All folded and shut down in the early part of this century. Employees laid off. A town left to die. And it’s our proud duty (no facetiousness) to resurrect this building and get it ready to become, once more, a bustling hive, bringing employment to 400 individuals, and Hope to many more. I have visions of discovering Machu Picchu. Jurassic Park. Highway 66. Humvee rides through roads overgrown with vegetation. Raptor attacks. Civil War soldiers stumbling out of the mists. More people with no teeth prizing fat jugs of moonshine out of drunken hands. Echoes of fiddlers and gunshots. And then…..as everything goes fuzzy….a fairy ring. Hobbits with wild eyes dancing in the moonlight. Sword fights and horses neighing in the distance. Waking up twenty years later under an oak tree in the threads of my business suit, surrounded by broken jugs labeled ‘XX’, one battered high heel still dangling from my foot. Wish me luck, my friends. I am on the adventure of a lifetime. If you never see me again, contact the authorities at Area 51 and request a search party. I’ll be willing to bet that when I see you again, it will be on the battlefield at Culloden – or maybe in Ile de la Cité, with Jacques de Molay in flames in front of us. With a splitting poteen headache. |
 |
 |
 |
| Become a member to comment on this blog | ||
 |
