Zoltan Speaks
August 4, 2003
7:02 a.m.
Do you believe in signs? Signs, like when you're trying to make a decision and you don't know what to do for breakfast and you look skyward and ask the powers that be to tell you what to do. Dear God, just give me a sign. And the wind blows open the paper to a headline that says something about a big-name baseball player who ate their Wheaties. I am not a big "signs" person. Yes, it's fun when odd coincidences line up, but on the whole I don't really believe in them.   We've been on vacation for the past two weeks. It was a car trip, with stops at Huntsville's Space Camp, the Everglades, the Keys, Cocoa Beach and the Kennedy Space Center, savannah, and Gatlinburg before coming home. It was a nice time, though perhaps a bit crowded on events and long on driving. Of the two space centers, I'll take Kennedy over Huntsville these days. I spent a lot of time at Kennedy back when I was working for the government and traveling down in that area of the country, but it's been awhile, and things do change. We toured the back area and saw the main shuttle launch pads. We sat through the old launch control room exhibit where they model a full launch, complete with rattling windows and all that. Then we looked through their display of Apollo hardware, which is much nicer than Huntsville's because it's all in this big indoor hangar, whereas Huntsville's is laid outside where the sun beats down on it and washes out all the paint. This adds an underlying junkyard feel to the Huntsville display that isn't there at Kennedy. The Everglades is an interesting place, but I suppose you shouldn't expect a moody fourteen-year-old girl who's not too keen on bugs to have a good time there. So there's a clue for you as to how that went. The entire reason for the trip was to visit my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and their daughter in the Keys. As such, this was our longest stay--four days in one spot. We had a great time. Greg, my brother-in-law, took me out fishing on the ocean. We were out for several hours, and at no time did I think of Gilligan, the Skipper, or the Minnow. I did, however, see a porpoise and catch a tuna. It is a tough life I live. Let me tell you, that fishing stuff is hard work. We spent only a single night in Savannah. Lisa wanted to see the city after reading "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Seems like an interesting place, but with less that twenty-four hours there, it's a little hard to say much about it. Lots of interesting buildings, though. Which leads me to Gatlinburg. Gatlinburg is a little town in the Tennessee mountains, just south of Knoxville and Pigeon Forge (which is home to the infamous Dollywood). It consists primarily of a single shop-lined street and ten stoplights that are numbered so that you know where you are. Actually, there are only nine stop lights, but they skip one (#4, I think), which leads me to believe that someone probably felt the place actually needed more trinket shops and probably filled in an open hole in the buildings at one point--thereby rendering the stoplight obsolete. Either that or they sold it to a tourist. Various attractions are wedged in between the shops. Lots of go kart tracks, and a few odd museums. We did the aquarium, which I should say is really pretty danged cool. They have an underground tank filled with sharks and rays and lots of interesting fish that is really spectacular. Don't miss it if you get the chance. And we did the "Guiness Book of Records" place, which is where I met Zoltan. If you have seen the movie Big, you know that the Tom Hanks character slips a coin into a carnival show wizard and wishes to be big. This results in the kid growing up to be Tom Hanks and getting to go to bed with Elizabeth Perkins and lots of other stuff. I'm pretty sure the wizard in this film was named Zoltan, too. This Zoltan did not grant wishes or tell fortunes, however. Instead, this one made its living by dispensing horoscopes. And in the light of "you get what you pay for," this one was working for free. You picked up a telephone, and pushed a button beside your zodiac sign, and then you heard the melodic voice of Zoltan the great tell you what things were right for you. I saw Lisa and Brigid pick up the phone, and ignored it to peer at something else -- probably the model of the lady with a gazillion tattoos or something like that. Then Brigid and Lisa moved on into the next little room, and I went to follow. On a last minute hunch, I grabbed the phone and punched "Taurus." Zoltan's voice began to whisper into my ear. The time is right for you to go back to something you did before. Maybe an old hobby. Reading is good, but it should be exciting fiction rather than anything else... Zoltan probably didn't know I haven't written anything in a month or more. He probably didn't know that I've found it really easy to not write at all during that time period. And he probably didn't know that I was debating the value of taking even more time off--like, maybe an indefinite hiatus. But then again, maybe he did. And who knows, maybe this "sign" stuff has something to it. All I can really say is that I sat down at the keyboard this morning and wrote the first three pages of a short story. Just in case, you know?  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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