I lost a few more boxes of files today courtesy of the latest water leak in my ghetto apartment. As I threw the files away, which included writings from the 70s, I hesitated. Maybe some of that stuff really mattered or would matter to someone in the future.
But there's nothing to be done with writings once they become water-logged, smelly, disgusting. So I just held my nose, dumped them into the garbage bin out front, and listened as the City carted them away.
It reminded me of the sound of bodies being cremated, but I do not wish to seem dramatic.
Maybe this is how stories die. Maybe this is how voices grow silent.
My landlord complained, when I told her of the new leak, about how much she had to pay in December, the last time water destroyed pieces of my past. That time the water heater burst, creating a hazardous situation here.
This time, an ancient pipe sprang a leak.
It's an old house. I like old places. The water pipes here occasionally fail, and my writings are the victims. So be it. Many of those stories were unpublishable back then, long before the age of the Internet. Who should care if they vanish now?
We live in an age where this sort of loss need not happen. Now every thought or idea or narrative can appear instantly in digital form.
No need for the old constraints of paper and pen.
As for me, I'm letting the past go. As flood after flood in this place claims my past writings, I am fine with knowing they have been claimed by history, rendered silent.
After all, I still have 20 more boxes or so of this crap to lose, after the past five or six leaks that took ten or so to their grave. But just sometimes, I wish I had someone to help me sort through my unpublished intellectual past, since such a tiny portion of it has ever been read by anyone but me, just in case there is something of value there.
There is no such helper. Thus I assume by the time I leave here it will all be gone.
That's okay. I am happy to erase work that was never meant to find an audience. It was just me, spinning out words and dreams, into the void. Somehow it seems fitting that it escapes my clutches back to where it came from.
-30-
1 comment:
No no no- you must find someone to help you sort through the boxes and save some of the material. Discard what you don't want- but save what you do! Don't allow anymore pieces to be drowned in leaks- because then it will be a random throwing away and who knows what precious material will end up in the garbage!! If only I lived closer - I would volunteer to do the sorting!
This line stuck out the most in this post-
Maybe this is how stories die. Maybe this is how voices grow silent.
Can you see your next book starting with these two sentences?? I swear, you have so many good 'lines' which could develop into entire novels!!
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