Friday, December 17, 2010

There is nothing better than fine.

I've been six days without my computer. It suddenly ceased working last Saturday (accompanied by unsettling and less than helpful messages), and I spent a good couple of hours trying to figure out what had happened before I finally decided I couldn't possibly fix it, and I'd have to take it in. I was confident that whatever had happened, it wasn't irreparable, and I knew exactly where I would take it for those repairs.

Six days and slightly over $200 later, I have my computer back. I have a new operating system, a new hard drive, and 2GB of memory. Technically, my system has been wiped clean, yet, as a courtesy (my ex always said I got what I wanted because I'm cute and small; I beg to differ, I can be a hardass when I need to), my documents were retained in a separate, accessible file. I didn't ask for this. I had asked for access to a 5 page document I hadn't had time (or the wherewithal) to save. The tech guy said, since he saw it was important to me, he would ensure it was saved. I thanked him.

That document, all six pages of it, was Chapter 8 of my current novel. Chapter 8, which had flowed out of me, like blood out of a wound, over the course of one day, which is not the norm. Chapter 8, which, once I had it down, I stumbled away from, feeling confused, elated, drained. I moved on to Chapter 9, and all it's difficulties, without even thinking of saving what I'd just brought into the world. And once my computer seized, I realized how stupid I'd been, and all I wanted was to recover what I hadn't saved...and was promised I wouldn't have to worry, it would be saved for me.

In the six days I have been without my computer, I have continued with my writing, longhand, which has always been my wont, and which has never failed me. Chapter 9 is proving as elusive as ever, but it's coming together. Chapter 8, as it was written, I would have had to consign to the ether, since I hadn't a single note on it, about it, and I'd have to rewrite it, hoping to reconstruct it, as best I could from memory. I laid awake at night, or lost myself in thought during the day, trying to put that chapter together from memory. I'm grateful I don't have to, because I knew, even as I was writing it, that it is...fine. I write from a very emotional place. I don't like to visit that place any more frequently than I have to. But when I know I have the emotional resonance down, I don't like to change it, and won't.

What interests me the most of what happened here, is that all I was concerned about was six pages of one document. Out of an entire computer. I could do without everything else. But those six pages? They mattered. I could have lost everything else...and figured I had. But out of all the flotsam and jetsam of our everyday lives, that all I really cared about was something so finely expressed as what I knew was contained in those six pages...that was money well spent.

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