Temps Perdu

Here’s a new wrinkle:  I set a five o’clock deadline for today’s allocation of versical work and finished up at 10:30.  I have no idea what I ought to do with the remainder of the day, but a bit of blogging certainly seems to be in order.  I’m mildly obsessed with time today; I’m also tangled up in thoughts about loss, hence the subject line.  That’s about as close to truth in advertising as you’ll ever get around here.

I’ve been doing a little self-inflicted editing of late, which has taken three forms.  Revision of the manuscript has been paramount, as you might expect, and the ‘09 edition of my poetical self has been wooing and walloping earlier versions every day.  I also made the very important stride of installing my backup hard drive, a precaution I figured it was high time for me to take.  I had a semi-meltdown in February, and if $100 will buy me a bajigglebyte of memory (fine, a terabyte, but make-believe units of measurement are far more entertaining) and oodles of peace of mind, I’d be a fool not to fork out the dough and plug in the cable.

The other editing I’ve been up to, however, involves a greater degree of circumspection.  If you’ve been paying unnervingly close attention, you may have noticed posts of the past mysteriously disappearing. The same holds true for MySpace and Twitter, although Twitter began and will likely end as a halfhearted experiment, one I only entered into at the behest of an old friend.  While I think some of my posts may in fact be illuminating, even useful, quite a few others involve nothing more than noodling and navel-gazing, the likes of which don’t really warrant preservation.  There’s a bit of funhouse-mirror tomfoolery involved–the selves I’ve committed to pixels look a bit warped and distorted, even though they walked the earth not long ago–and I find myself in the thick of a revisionist twitch with an armful of throwin’ stones.  When it comes to judgment, who better to punish past transgressions but the self?

It’s too early to tell if a full-scale reinvention is in the offing, but I wouldn’t put it past me.  I think I have stumbled upon some strong motives for change, and right now I’ve got world enough and time to build a better Bill.