It’s 2:30 AM. My fists are clenched. My mind paces like a confined animal. I have a fervent wish to go back to sleep, but I keep going back and back and back to the missing notes. Days’ worth of notes. Meticulously organized, cited, vanished.
Ah, Microsoft Excel, how I trusted you. I came to you a
supplicant. Reams of notes needed to be cited, they needed to be organized
chapter by chapter. My head was heavy with information. An orchestra of ideas squawked
aimless and out of tune. You promised to take up the stick and get the unruly
band into marching formation. Sure enough, with the help of your firm
administration, I mustered information into columns. Section by section, the
mob became a legion, matching colors, a uniform purpose. There were plenty of
unruly folk, still some cuts to be made, and plenty of additions to the ensemble.
What mattered most is that we were moving together.
And yet, by the end, you were the Pied Piper. You led the march
to the precipice.
I won’t recount the dry language you used to describe the
loss. This would be less maddening if you had said something along the lines of
“I screwed up” or “I got bored, so I torched everything you were working on.”
Well, libraries burn all the time. I would not be the first
laborer to pile up fruits, only to watch them molder and go to the flies. Bodies
and Microsoft files succumb to corrupt inputs. This is the way of our world.
I resent the lost hours, however. I am entitled to that
selfishness. It has been a long battle making music out of noise: the noise of
doubt, the noise of distraction, the noise of other obligations. Right now, the
lattice of order has fallen. The clatter reverberates through the halls of my
mind.
I’m about to turn back over and try for sleep. Some other
day, I may wrangle that cacophony and teach it to play sweet music. For now, I
will settle for silence.
