tips from benjamin

And again, everything's in Thai on the blogger screen. I'm thankful for the little script at the bottom that shows the command for those buttons the mouse scurries over.

In addition to the internet, some fishy things have been happening with my computer recently. Just today, while I was charging my battery and trying to do too much at once on my computer, the power died and my computer overheated. Wouldn't turn on for a little while. Yesterday, I lost everything that I'd saved onto my non-administrator account. That is, Jack's account came up brand new--like my computer was trying to surprise me or something, but it doesn't know enough of the world to realize that it wouldn't be a nice surprise to find the majority of my photos, my documents, and quite a bit of my music (that I left on backup cds somewhere in the States) zapped from my hard-drive. How this happened in the first place is quite a mystery to me.

I was downloading an updated virus-protection, kerberos and mulberry software onto my computer via the administrator's account, and when I went back to the other--the one I usually use--it was gone. My admin. acct. is quite itself--with a slightly cleaner look, due to the new software and some spring/summer cleaning I'd done.

Alas for the loss. It's just stuff, though. Right? I mean, it's a good thing that I watched Fight Club recently. At least, I watched up to the part where "Jack" starts living with Tyler Durden, having first had a conversation about all of the things that got blown up in his apartment. "The things you own end up owning you," if I recall correctly. Now I don't have to think it was such a huge loss.

Keith Taylor once left a notebook full of poems on an airplane. Bye-bye, poetry. Hemingway's wife once left or lost or had stolen from her a whole suitcase of his writings on a train. At least, that's what I think I've heard. (Did you know there's a whole Wikipedia page devoted to records of famous writers' lost works? I've only just found it.). At least I'm not famous.

Besides, maybe there's still room to hope. Maybe I can still recover a lot of my work--who knows? Or maybe God will erase the memory of those things from my mind. Suppose I don't know if that would be better or worse. Black spots over part of my mind's life? Or a depressing memory of what I lost and no way of getting it back. Kind of like nostalgia, I suppose. I'd probably remember things as being much better than they ever were... Ha.

But in a list of of Thirteen Theses on "The Writer's Technique," (from Walter Benjamin's "One Way Street," translated by Edmund Jephcott), number 6 states:

"Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it."

That said, I wonder if some of my ideas from past writings could return to my memory--if not erased--and then come out more maturely in writing the second time around. It's worth wondering about, though not so worth forcing experimentation. I must let the thoughts arrive as they will--hopefully also heeding the advice of Thesis #5:

"Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens."

Benjamin, mind you, was a great Jewish, German Marxist philosopher, essayist, translator, literary critic, etc. who both lived and died during the Holocaust. One of his idols in life may as well have been writing and the record of thought as a means of obtaining and refining knowledge. From what little I've read of his, though, I sure am grateful for his work and perseverance--not to mention his tips. I think he believed that ideas are more than transient...

I'm also grateful to the internet, as being another place to save and back-up documents.

Peace.