Thanks
Greg Ulmer

“Like many ancient cultures, the Egyptians believed that the world emerged from primeval waters. The Egyptians personified these waters as the god, Nun. The pool often symbolized these waters of the First Time. The young sun god was often depicted rising from a pool of water that represented Nun.

“The pool was also related to the Afterlife, as seen in the image to the right. As water was greatly needed for survival in Egypt’s harsh desert climate, the deceased was often shown drinking from a pool of water. Often a fruit-laden palm tree is shown growing from the pool. These images were very common in Egyptian tombs, and they were often accompanied by wishes for the deceased to “walk according to your desire on the beautiful edge of your pool.” “
- http://www.egyptianmyths.net/pool.htm

I was initially skeptical of, and even a bit worried about, the accuracy of the signifier I chose and the subsequent construction of the emblem and logo. There was a secondary signifier which I found repeated across my work, though somewhat more obscurely: “mouth,” specifically as the unnamed or indirectly referred to signifier for recurrent themes of literal and figurative consumption (mouth of the bay, eating cake, the vicious ‘meat-eaters’). I did not choose to use this because seemed less like an object signifier and much more of a theme.

The fact that the pool-mouth symbols seemed to mesh at times (the threat of consumption), and end up on sort of the same trajectory gave me faith in the process as leading to consistent results, and in revealing patterns that are indeed really there, full of revealing potential. As Professor Ulmer told me in an earlier e-mail this semester, his experimentation with the mystory format has shown him that “all roads lead to Rome.”

Furthermore, I was surprised to find that my logo had the same popcycle placements as Professor Ulmer’s example, as I was expecting to struggle with locating their emblematic positions. Soon, though, I realized that my discourses fit snugly in their respective slots.

I really enjoyed the challenging, creative task of constructing the mystory.

What I learned about myself? I am a pessimist and a bit of a paranoid neurotic, but I keep returning, however hesitantly, to root for humanity’s escape from that doomed expedition and be lifted from that consuming pool.

On a more positive note, Word Press recently updated their interface, which greatly improved previously long-winded periods to upload and revise my posts.

I found it an interesting coincidence, too, that I am now volunteering in the archives of the oral history program that Proctor established here at the University of Florida.

It’s funny that St.Pete/Tampa local history and our own silently disagree or ‘fight’ about the landing site, and thus the ownership of this history, when it is largely unremarkable. But what investment the community has in this story, and others, of the passing-through pillager, is not always immediately apparent.

I took this story of Narvaez, in being so unequivocally doomed, as the representative of those early Spanish explorations to Florida, many of which specifically began at and passed through the Charlotte Harbor (to the best of some scholarly knowledge at least).

I have lived on a channel of the Peace River, which feeds into the harbor, from the time that I was 2 until I left home at 18. I crossed over the harbor on the I-75 Bridge every day on my way to middle and high school.

I have watched those waters, and I’m told great men came to them ‘once upon a time’. But the truth of what they found is often unremarkable and their real journeys are little more than a footnote on the page of a popular memory eager to attend to romantic ideals of Gold, Glory, and God in “New World” conquests. The truth is, they had to leave. There was no gold. Again and again these efforts were abandoned, and they left in their wake little more than the bodies of their Indian guides and enemies.