Wednesday, November 29, 2006

29: some thoughts on falling

Is it deceitful to delete posts? I think it is, a little; it's very totalitarian, very 1984, erasing small bits of personal history that I had let slip through the radar. It is also completely justifiable and necessary. My self control falters when I have not slept; I can be prone to a despairing sort of drama that borders on martyrdom. It's a habit I am trying to break. And it isn't as if blogging is objective, anyway. Rewriting history is perfectly permissible on the internet, to a degree, because we are all doing it to begin with: editing and pruning and rearranging and interpreting our lives in a very subjective, very audience-oriented manner.

This NaBloPoMo experiment has filled me with despair over how dull I am. I can't think of a single thing to follow that up with. Except, perhaps, for this terrifying story:

On Monday night I dropped my laptop down a flight of stairs.

Do you understand the horror of this? I will repeat it, with emphasis, and you can imagine me shuddering and cringing and weeping my way through the sentence: On Monday night I dropped my laptop down a flight of stairs. I was carrying it from the upstairs TV room back down to my lair when I tripped over a pile of my brother's shoes. Instinct took hold: I let go of the computer and grabbed at railings to keep myself from falling. It's curious how poetic falls are, how definitely time seems to slow and sharpen, every movement yawning and dramatic. It's something I notice whenever I fall down -- which is, I'm afraid, rather ridiculously often -- and it was curious to find the phenomenon as present in the falling of things as with bodies. I remember thinking that as I listened to the awful cracks it made as it hit the stairs: how odd that time would elongate for a machine.

It survived with no damage, as far as I can tell, which is miraculous, but I am no less traumatized for this piece of luck. I dropped my computer down the stairs. Just thinking it makes me feel dizzy and ill.

2 comments:

Mrs. Chili said...

Okay, a couple of comments about this post:

One - you are NOT dull. Hell, I've linked you, at LEAST twice, and I'm a tough critic. So stop with the self-deprication and just keep writing.

Two - I'm not sure that deleting posts is being honest to oneself. I did it once, and regretted the hell out of it. Of course, that's ME - you may feel differently and, well, you are the Goddess of your site and can do whatever the hell you please with it.

Three - I LITERALLY gasped when I read that you'd dropped your computer down a flight of stairs. Literally - the breath caught in my throat - I reacted viscerally to that statement. My LIFE is in my laptop; I sometimes feel I'm more careful with it than I am with my own children. I'm SO glad it survived the fall. So, SO glad.

Impelled said...

I think these things develop their own logic of what readers can and can't count on. You shape that, and it shapes your relationship with your readers. Whatever that integrity is, it takes on its significance from its centrality to whatever you're communicating.

Thanks for visiting the other day.