Let's say you're driving down a highway. You're passing all of these road signs. You're passing mile markers, green signs with the name of some city or other lettered in white, billboards for something-or-other. Let's call the city you're approaching Houston, and let's say the billboards say things like "Central Houston Real Estate," "Houston Texas Real Estate," "Houston Real Estate." (It wasn't, but good enough.)

Let's say something's happened. Not just now, not terribly recently, but recently enough that it still stings. It's not really important what it is. It's something that burned. And driving to this city, Houston, and driving past these billboards advertising Houston homes for rent, it tears again at the poorly-closed wound.

You're driving. You're not thinking about it. You could be driving anywhere until "Houston Memorial Real Estate" flashes by in chunky blue letters. Then it's bitter again, then it's new. These ads thrown up by Houston realtors aren't advertising, not to you. They're little nipping insects. They're bright and colorful and not to be ignored, but the associations have decontextualized them and robbed them of their purpose. You can't close your eyes to shut them out because, well, you're driving. So by the time you pass the next sign you're gritting your teeth, and you can't even make out the words "Houston Medical Center Real Estate" on the next through the blur of what we'll pretend aren't tears.

It's remarkable how an advertisement can become, not an advertisement, but a catapult that hurls you into a memory or a feeling. Something that's meant to have a very specific, singular association does indeed have one, but it's completely different from what it's supposed to be. For how many fictional people who have driven this fictional highway to Houston with any regularity do the words Houston Heights Real Estate, in curly red print, conjure up visions of the actual Houston condos they're supposed to evoke?

Something as specifically, uniquely visual as all that is more likely to jerk you back to a strong mood you felt once while driving past, or send a tune you once listened to on that stretch of road singing through your head. How bizarre is that? The intensity of meaning is preserved, but it's completely transferred. The billboards still have meaning. It's just that the meaning isn't the meaning the people who had them erected intended to infuse them with.