As a dreamy teen, I probably had four or five Harley shirts. I would watch my the-official-history-of-the-Harley-Davidson-Motorcycle VHS cassette religiously. I even had a leather jacket and would put Vaseline in my foppish hair to style it into a pompadour.  I was never not listening to early Sun Studios Elvis or other rockabilly troopers. Old habits of the heart die hard.

As I approach a milestone birthday next month, I have decided to do what I have wanted to do most of my life: learn to ride a motorcycle. I have signed up for a three-day seminar, and come my birthday, I think that I may treat myself to a Hog. Though Mississippi drivers are in love with death and may be among the worst in the nation (according to my non-scientific, emotionally-based study), I look forward to riding the highways (the more desolate, the better), eating bugs, stopping to take photos of places that remind me of the futility of effort or of love lost (sigh–redundant), and finding abandoned places outside city lights that allow me to chart the stars with a flask of bourbon.

Of course, you, my dear readers, will be invited to join me. I plan to post what I discover–and, as an amateur semiotician, I will claim that there are signs everywhere, just waiting to be recognized, named, and processed.

Here is to fifteen year old me: