POOF!
Since I seriously injured my blog last week, I have been thinking about the impermanence of the things that surround us. I considered first writing this reflection on an actual sheet of paper, something I could keep, hold, protect, wad, rip....whatever the contents deserved. And then I laughed at my notion of permanence; since when did paper get such a great reputation for durability? It burns, tears, degrades; it really is a fickle medium, when you think about it.
So maybe I need a chisel and a rock tablet. Wait!! That’s a LOT of work! My words would have to be extra special to warrant all that labor. I don’t think I’ve ever composed anything worthy of literally being written in stone.
So maybe that’s an important attraction of something like a blog. It is so quick and easy (most of the time!) that thoughts can fly. Words can live and die effortlessly...no blisters, no writer’s cramp. No ink stains on a left-hander’s pinky. No overflowing trash cans spilling over with paper snowballs.
So I’m not writing on paper, and I’m not carving in stone. However, I am composing this reflection in Microsoft Word, on my computer’s version of a sheet of paper. There is a comforting reassurance to its appearance and its behavior. If I get disgusted with this draft, I can virtually wad it up and throw it in the recycle bin. Then, if I experience regret at my hasty act of destruction, I can retrieve it and restore it to its original state. It will not have vanished into thin air, like the contents of my previous blog. This may be a new practice for me, at least until I recover from my case of Deletion fear.
Since I seriously injured my blog last week, I have been thinking about the impermanence of the things that surround us. I considered first writing this reflection on an actual sheet of paper, something I could keep, hold, protect, wad, rip....whatever the contents deserved. And then I laughed at my notion of permanence; since when did paper get such a great reputation for durability? It burns, tears, degrades; it really is a fickle medium, when you think about it.
So maybe I need a chisel and a rock tablet. Wait!! That’s a LOT of work! My words would have to be extra special to warrant all that labor. I don’t think I’ve ever composed anything worthy of literally being written in stone.
So maybe that’s an important attraction of something like a blog. It is so quick and easy (most of the time!) that thoughts can fly. Words can live and die effortlessly...no blisters, no writer’s cramp. No ink stains on a left-hander’s pinky. No overflowing trash cans spilling over with paper snowballs.
So I’m not writing on paper, and I’m not carving in stone. However, I am composing this reflection in Microsoft Word, on my computer’s version of a sheet of paper. There is a comforting reassurance to its appearance and its behavior. If I get disgusted with this draft, I can virtually wad it up and throw it in the recycle bin. Then, if I experience regret at my hasty act of destruction, I can retrieve it and restore it to its original state. It will not have vanished into thin air, like the contents of my previous blog. This may be a new practice for me, at least until I recover from my case of Deletion fear.
posted by Mary | 11:33 AM
1 Comments:
This is an interesting notion we should explore further. I remember my father, an English professor, talking with me when computers were just beginning to be used more extensively by professors. He was concerned that we were losing our ability to learn about the writing process of great authors. We couldn't go back and look at multiple drafts of the same document because they'd been digitally erased. I remember for years saving consecutive drafts of things I was working on--not so anyone else could learn from them, but so that I could return to them for brilliant ideas I was afraid of losing. That used up huge amounts of hard drive quickly (which was a bigger problem then than now). With any tool you gain something and lose something. Do you think technology use could reflect personal values?
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