In the process of the slightly weird—perhaps,
convoluted—system I have of ensuring that I backup everything I work on, the
other day I managed to delete a document I had spent all the previous day writing.
To
be honest, I have done this before. Moving around the monstrous, damn near
organic thing that is my PhD Folder, between university hard drive and external
hard disk and my home laptop, occasionally means that accidents and
peculiarities occur. Although I like to think that technology is just having a
laugh at my expense (ever felt like your computer was watching you, taunting
you, just breaking down or shutting off to be pest?), when these accidents
occur, they are generally my fault. This is particularly because I am somewhat
OCD when it comes to deleting old versions of files/folders/documents. Thus,
the problem often rears its head when I delete older versions that actually, in
the end, through some dynamic twist of fate, are indeed the very things I had
been working on.
Fortunately,
in most cases, I am usually able to recuperate most of the work by pleadingly
looking into the Recycle Bin and gently coaxing free what I deleted the
previous day: because one does not make demands of the Recycle Bin, one asks
its permission to have one’s work back, and one is grateful for its benevolent
nature.
And even then, when the Recycle Bin has
failed me—and thus shows its true toxic self—I have never eliminated anything
that, after a few moments of self-rage, I knew I wouldn’t be able to reproduce
anyway.
Then
yesterday happened.
I
few blogs ago I wrote about losing my enthusiasm for my task; that the
theoretical muse—in the sense of it being figurative and me needing some muse to help me with theory—had wandered off
somewhere. On Monday it returned and it was all shiny and happy and probably
coked up, but full of ideas and piss and vinegar and, with its forceful,
slightly abrasive, blessing, I managed to produce the best work I have written
in nearly three months.
It
gave me structure. It gave me something I was happy to work with.
Then
I deleted it, tried to manipulate the Recycle Bin—which rebelled against my
disrespect … jerk paper-scrunch-sound-making-arsehole—and now it is gone,
disappeared into some vague abstract computerized space where deleted documents
go to dwell and sadly watch us desperately try to find them, as we scream,
‘why?’ Sure, they leave hints, like in the Open Recent directory in Word or
sometimes a random shortcut brought up by a random search, but these are only
ghosts, literally empty memories and signifiers with nothing behind them. The
name of the document is there, filling you with hope, but that is all it has
become: a name; a name you whisper over and again; which becomes a deranged
mutter; which becomes an angry cry; which becomes the unhinged laughter of wry
acceptance; which becomes silence.
You
can only ask yourself (or the computer): where has it gone?
It
is a question we will never know the answer to. Perhaps, it just evaporates
into what is truly nothing. Perhaps, it is transmitted to some other
megacomputer that stores all deleted files. Perhaps, there is a place in the
computer, beyond our reach, where deleted files all hang out, eating sausage rolls, having a dip, singing campfire
songs about being abandoned, but sort of being OK with it.
I
can say that I miss my document. It was honest and everything I wanted in a
full days work. The sad thing is that I cannot even remember now, two days
later, what it looked like: it was a flash of inspiration and of intense writing;
then, again, like a flash, it was gone.
A
disclaimer: I am, I think, blatantly romanticizing the lost document here. The
work was probably quite good, but that it is now gone means that I think it was
the next closest thing to Shakespeare—and we’ve all been guilty of this; of
taking the blasé (although what I had written was not blasé, it was reflective and smooth and OK) and imbuing it with
super powers when we’re not allowed to access it or be near it anymore. Indeed,
it is this phenomenon of stating the lost document’s transcendence simply
because it is lost that stops us just rewriting the damn thing (its certainly
stopping me at the moment), and I wonder if it, in watching us depressingly
from its inaccessible space in the computer or in lost document heaven—where it
goes when it goes away: a falsely sunny place of other deleted files, all
telling their stories about how they were lost, but together, freed of having to
be amended and corrected and edited, they are now found—slightly basks in the
hold it has over us, the stages of grief it puts us through, while looking at
itself and saying, ‘fuck, I look good. He’ll/she’ll never have it as good as
me.’
Therefore, when we are finally capable of
recognizing that perhaps we are able to rewrite it, make something better of
and from the fragments of its shape playing at the corners of memory, then it
ceases to have this elevated sense of importance, as if the fate of the world
lies in its creation and vanishing. Its staggering arrogance in its hidden
place is drawn to question and we begin again. Sometimes, the new version is
even better.
Speaking of which, I should probably start
again.
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