Even as I use technology in many aspects of my life, and appreciate fully well how it has made certain things easier to do, I still don't like technological progress in many ways, and digitalisation the least of all. And yet, as so many of us now do, I have so much personal information saved in the digital format that it would fill up half my room were it all on paper.
And then, one day, my hard disk crashed. As it happened, I had been in the process of shifting etc, and hence my usual back up sources were not quite updated. And having shown my hard disk around a few places now, I have resigned myself to having lost all of its contents. For ever.
This resignation towards this sense of loss of personal symbols of my past has been almost cathartic. It has been a great loss. Twelve years of writing, almost entirely lost save a few bits here and there. And of course, all the electronic communication outside of email from the one who shall not be named but is a constant presence in my mind. Vanished, to never be read again. Her poems too, zany, so full of love and hate, humbling. Eight years of photographs, which included almost all my travelling outside of school days. And of course, all the memories that they could remind me of. All those happy times and even some of the sad ones. The mind gets lazy when it has photographs to help recall the past. It starts to get hazy about the details and forgetful of entire incidents.
Now it is all gone, without leaving behind the faintest trace except the dead weight of a useless hard disk. I was furious at first, and then, at some point, I realised I was doing what that other character in Hocus Pocus kept saying he did but never actually did: I was laughing like hell. I know now that it didn't make me feel any better, but it didn't make me feel any worse either.
Instead of trying to recall everything I have lost of my writing, I am working from scratch to fill up my hard disk anew. Photographs will come in their own time. Photographs of and writing from her, however, will not be coming back since she has no desire to be in my hard disk any more.
Making a break with the past is difficult in more ways than one, I realise. It is not easy to make the break yourself, and if it gets made for you by circumstance, it is not the easiest thing to accept. And once you accept it, you take a step closer towards being Buddha. But it is a giant step, and I am still in mid-stride. Sigh.
And then, one day, my hard disk crashed. As it happened, I had been in the process of shifting etc, and hence my usual back up sources were not quite updated. And having shown my hard disk around a few places now, I have resigned myself to having lost all of its contents. For ever.
This resignation towards this sense of loss of personal symbols of my past has been almost cathartic. It has been a great loss. Twelve years of writing, almost entirely lost save a few bits here and there. And of course, all the electronic communication outside of email from the one who shall not be named but is a constant presence in my mind. Vanished, to never be read again. Her poems too, zany, so full of love and hate, humbling. Eight years of photographs, which included almost all my travelling outside of school days. And of course, all the memories that they could remind me of. All those happy times and even some of the sad ones. The mind gets lazy when it has photographs to help recall the past. It starts to get hazy about the details and forgetful of entire incidents.
Now it is all gone, without leaving behind the faintest trace except the dead weight of a useless hard disk. I was furious at first, and then, at some point, I realised I was doing what that other character in Hocus Pocus kept saying he did but never actually did: I was laughing like hell. I know now that it didn't make me feel any better, but it didn't make me feel any worse either.
Instead of trying to recall everything I have lost of my writing, I am working from scratch to fill up my hard disk anew. Photographs will come in their own time. Photographs of and writing from her, however, will not be coming back since she has no desire to be in my hard disk any more.
Making a break with the past is difficult in more ways than one, I realise. It is not easy to make the break yourself, and if it gets made for you by circumstance, it is not the easiest thing to accept. And once you accept it, you take a step closer towards being Buddha. But it is a giant step, and I am still in mid-stride. Sigh.
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