Sign

The word for today is SIGN.

Today I saw a sign in a Kinko's window "SIGNS MEAN BUSINESS."

In just about two weeks I will start a part-time, temporary job working for the US Census. How did you think of doing that, somebody asked. I was at the Civic Center getting my 2009 parking permit and I read the SIGN. The SIGN stated there would be a test for people who wanted to work for the Census, it gave the date, it gave the time, it gave the location; I showed up.

So maybe this post is about showing up, or showing up and reading the signs. Long ago, when I lived in Maine, I dated a man who rented a room in a boarding house. When I first met him I thought he drove a Volvo and worked for a graphic arts firm. The Volvo was a friend's car and the graphic arts job an unpaid internship. He had three teenage daughters who came to visit him on the weekend, they all slept in the same room on air mattresses and in sleeping bags. He owed back child support, he smoked a lot of pot. He was a very sweet and lovely man, gentle and kind--an addict. Every time I left his house I saw a SIGN as I pulled out of the driveway--Dead End it said. I dated this man for three years.

A friend of mine recently failed her written driver's license test. They had all these questions about signs she told me. The test asked her to identify road signs by their shapes alone without any words or pictures. I've been driving for over thirty years, she said, but I've never seen some of these signs. I guess I better read the book before I take the test again.

When we're on the road, they--the government--wants us to read the signs. They want us to be so familiar with the signs that we know them just by their shape. We know a stop SIGN by instinct, the curve SIGN on a steep hill when we can't see around the bend. The more we know
the better for us, the better for everyone else on the road.

We know the signs of a troubled person, someone unkempt, bedraggled, sitting on a street corner or standing at a busy intersection--with a SIGN, Please Help, Will Work for Food. Do we know the signs of some one trying to hide their troubles. Do we notice our cohorts with one too many worries than they can handle, trying to look as though everything is fine even as tears fall from their eyes? I see more and more people like this every day. In the past, I have been one of these people.

I was walking by the lake with a friend this afternoon and a man passed by on a bicycle. That's stringy haired Harry, said my friend, he's a photographer, he's out of work. How do you know, I asked wondering if my friend interpreted being outside at 2 pm as a SIGN. He told me, said my friend, he told me the last time I saw him.

Listening is one way to know something, so is looking, so is feeling. I've been feeling tired, ornery, off, crabby, short-tempered, lonely, dissatisfied. I took these feelings as a SIGN, a STOP SIGN. I needed to stop noticing the signs of trouble in everybody else's life and start paying attention to my own life's signs. I don't need to wait until I can read all the letters or see the symbols, the shape of the SIGN is enough for me to know--pay attention Amy, something is wrong, or at least not quite right. I don't need to wait until I am so tired that I am velcroed to my bed.

The SIGN I saw right after "SIGNS MEAN BUSINESS" said "Information and Assistance." Now that's a good SIGN.