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Hi, I’m Mike, and this is the story of this website.
The name “Meki” has a long and well-established past.
Or at least, a past.
ANY years ago in the midst of a great battle, still known by some as “middle school”, there was a brief period of relative calm. This lapse in notably productive academic education coincided with a particular third of the school year dedicated to developing residential skills; namely cooking, washing clothes, ironing, and oddly enough, constructing objects using cloth and thin twine.
For each of these stages of inquisition there were provided a choice of requirements.
The requirements for the cooking stage were generally bearable, considering that there was usually a product to be consumed soon after completing the test.
I don’t remember washing any clothes.
It’s probably safe to ignore ironing too.
The options available to complete the cloth object construction stage were slim. As well as I can remember, the objects available to assemble were:
A) a pillow shaped like a lightbulb
B) a pillow shaped like a football
C) a pillow shaped like a rectangle, or
D) a pillow shaped like any capital letter of the alphabet.
Sheesh.
I opted for D, imagining it to be the most difficult.
After purchasing a bolt of the finest fabric available as seconds, acquiring appropriately-colored fiber adhesive (a.k.a. ‘thread’) and the highest quality, synthetic, down, I began my quest to build an entire letter of the alphabet within the allotted half fortnight.
By the first afternoon it became obvious that the quest had been ill-aimed. It became painfully clear that I would soon be forced to take on “busy work” if I were to continue at my initial pace. Luckily the muses appeared with an alternative; “Make another letter.”
Woo!
Suddenly my problems were solved! I could appear to be learning for days, nay!, weeks by following this new direction!
Two letters! Three! FOUR LETTERS were built within the allotted time! Almost by random, these letters could be painstakingly organized to spell... “M-I-K-E” my name!
Having barely outwitted my almost inevitable failure, I had the great urge to display my absolutely unique creations.
So I put ’em on my dresser.
And they stayed there.
Almost.
For the considerable majority of the year there would be no notable, or even noticable change to the letters. But occasionally, usually during holidays and other large family gatherings, they would shift ever-so-slightly, just enough to become a name wrought many millenia ago:
“M-E-K-I”
Aieee!
For years that ancient word has echoed throughout my subconscious, exhuming visions of smiling cousins and occasionally a Muppet or two.
So of course when looking for an available World Wide Web domain name, the first options I explored were “mike.com”, “cow.com” and “QXyF3_g6H.com”, but those were already taken, so I opted to finally accept the name that’s been haunting me for so many years...
And “MEKI.COM” was born.
In the years since this website and domain became accessible, a number of actual Meki’s and actual Meki-relatives have written me, suggesting that it may be possible that eventually a Meki will find their hand crafted letters rearranged into the garbled charicature of a name, “MIKE".
Aieee!
Hmm. Perhaps you’d also like to know why there are Japanese calligraphic characters wandering around the site?
No? Okay.
Yes? Really? Well here it is...
While choosing a domain name, in May of 1998, it appeared odd to me that any four-letter domains were still available. Of course most of the three letter domains have been taken... “NBC”, “ABC”, “GOD”, “MOO” et c.
Since “MEKI" was still available, I felt compelled to search the World Wide Web for any indication that it might be an offensive word in any language. Most of the hits I received on “meki” were from servers in Sweden, which is obviously not Japan.
Well, okay, very few Japanese hits. I took the lack of response as positive and sent a brief e-mail off to hostmaster@internic.net and requested that the name “www.meki.com” point to one of the servers in the room adjacent to my Richmond Net web development alcove.
36 minutes later, I received an e-mail from InterNIC notifying me that being the only person to request “meki.com”, if I plunk a bit of currency into their bank I’ll have unlimited access to the name for at least two years. (Oh, 36 minutes is particularly speedy. Six months earlier [Ye Olde] `Internic was replying to requests within 72 to 150 hours...)
Having had in interest in the process of conveying ideas through ideograms, and having purchased the book “A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters”, I decided to check how “me-ki” literally translates into Japanese. After momentarily perusing the large selection of possible “me” and “ki” combinations, it became apparent that it would not translate into a pair or two of concise meanings, but would rather translate into dozens of powerfully interpretable ideas, some of which could be twisted to nearly match the descriptions already on the index page of meki.com. So I twisted.
The result of this is, I imagine, that the calligraphy on every link on the index page would be pronounced as “Me Ki” (or “me Ki”, or “Me ki”, or “me ki”, etc.) in Japanese, which when translated weakly into English provides the caption underneath each set of calligraphic characters.
The original descriptions are available here:
“The eye of I” — was called “Images and other creations”
(“me” = “Eye” + “ki” = “Me”)
“the bud of oddity” — was ‘Why meki.com’”
(“me” = “sprout, seedling, bud” + “ki” = “strange”)
“vaporous sprout” — was “KudzuCAM!” (it’s vaporous right now...) At this point it’s been changed to “BotaniCAM!” due to the complete lack of Kudzu.
(“me” = “sprout, seedling, bud” + “ki” = “vapor”)
“the pencil” — was “Write to me”
(“me” = “sprout, seedling, bud” + “ki” = “wood”)
And finally, for this section, the main Meki.com logo is composed of “me” = “eye” + “ki” = “sparkle”) — interpret it as you like.
Then finally, for this other section,
"Presumably unrelated 'MEKI's":
The place called Meki:
Meki has yams.
http://www.selfhelpintl.ie/selfhelp/Main/Meki.htm
...and Catholics! (Vicariate Apostolic of Meki)
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dmeki.html
http://www.meki.tk/
http://www.meki.ch/
http://plantsdatabase.com/go/804/
http://davesgarden.com/members/meki/
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