Moving signs

After immersing myself in student drafts for the past three days, I finally emerged from the maelstrom, sent out my final suggestions, and fled up to the top floor of the library to clear my head. Sometimes I like to lie on my back in the middle of the floor up there and gaze up at the dome, where a big yellow light fixture hovers like the sun blazing in the midsummer sky. (I'm allowed to wax poetic--and you can too, provided you're willing to pay your fees and wait in those long lines at the Poetic License Bureau.)

But today I couldn't assume the proper contemplative posture because there's a table in the way, and I couldn't lie down on the table because a photograph was sitting on it alongside some explanatory signage. I'm generally willing to lie down on the job but not, as a rule, on explanatory signage. (Where would I get a license for that? The Explanatory Signage Bureau? I've never been able to find the place.)

So instead I wandered around and read some new explanatory signage, which has been popping up like mushrooms all over the building, including a sign informing me that on a particular date in a particular meeting "a motion was moved." It strikes me that it is in the nature of motions to be moved, and if the motion had done something other than being moved then that would surely be worthy of signage ("an irresistible motion met an immoveable force," for instance), but this particular instance of signage failed to inform me of what had happened to the motion that was moved, to wit: was it seconded, discussed, and voted upon? Or was it simply moved and left in limbo until the end of time?

That's too much information to expect from such a small smidgen of signage, so I abandoned the upper floor and returned to my office, a space still relatively free of signage. I have a meeting in an hour and some work to do, but I think I'll lie down on the floor and gaze up at the ceiling tiles and wait for the maelstrom of student prose to wash down the drain.