Morning! There is a certain delay in things this morning. It is a common thing these days. You know, National History, Public Health, Climate, Cold & Warmth and Continuing Emergencies. That sort of stuff. All of them in strange confluence.

Before I could even get to that I had a problem of transportation. Not the kind I could address with a tank of gas or a full charge on the EV. Nor with public transportation, which I have been meaning to learn not to eschew. I could probably have enticed the United States Postal System to help out, though that would entail actual physical movement and some minor increased costs and systemic delays incurred in the trip to town to locate the brick-and-mortar facility that would enable the physical transport of invisible past digital information in this physical present.

Well, invisible to me anyway. I suppose it is kinetic enough in the old way, since it was created non-digitally some forty years ago. With actual photos and stuff. You know- the images that used to come on slick-surfaced rectangles of paper. I added the digital words much later. But the problem was I had to get the information to a place in the Pacific Standard Timezone, which had actually been the kinetic and allegedly “real place” that the filmed images had originated.

This is the only image that would transmit, the first of nineteen such digital compilations of what had been a sort of strange reality:

The images were intended to convey a story that occurred in a segment in time in a place far away. Naturally, they were too big for the little dish in the side yard to transmit to the satellite in near-earth geosynchronous orbit, bounce off it, and received by a digital device fronting on Point Loma (the place, not the SH author) near the bounding Pacific Ocean.

The other pictures were interesting enough, if you had an interest in everyday life on a non-everyday place that moved all around by itself. I had fun labeling things like the Air Wing FIVE fly-in to Perth, Western Australia, or that bizarre night train ride from Mombasa, Kenya, to the capital of Nairobi. At the time, I had sworn to leave a note posted to the tree in the garden of the New Stanley Hotel. It is the oldest hotel in the city, having been established in 1902 by a Brit lady named Mayence Bent in honor of the famed explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. He was best known for his explorations of central Africa, and some guy named “Livingstone.” It was an appropriate situation, as I understand it.

Since then, The Stanley has played host to assorted members of royalty, politicians, movie stars, and authors. It is still used for national business conferences and tourism concerns. I don’t know if the note is still there, though unlikely, and I forget to whom it was addressed. But that shows the dynamics of trying to fit context into only 19 slides and a couple hundred images.

I think I might have found a means to transmit the whole package by posting it to a digital address in an unknown location. It seemed like the safe way to handle the matter, given the number of emergencies to deal with this morning. So, you get the one slide, and I hope the rest of the digits all slide down to the West Coast in their good time and good order. If they can find them.

In the meantime, if you find yourself at the New Stanley, the note is waiting for you there. You will be interested to see what is in it. I wouldn’t trust that to digits.

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
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