I just deleted a post from this past weekend. I've never done that in all the time I've been writing here. You can crawl through the archives and still find me waxing rhapsodic about my deep love for a single mom and her adorable kid, or the misty water-colored memory of my ex-wife that managed to upset Tabbatha so much (and understandably so, in retrospect) it may have helped lead to our breakup, or those weird guest appearances from former girlfriend Katie, or me pitching a fit about stuff I frankly can't remember. All that is still here because...I'm not sure, really. I guess just to have some record of my life at any particular moment.
This piece, though, didn't quite say what I wanted it to say. It was abrupt and clumsy, and I couldn't fix it or make it better, so it went away, lost in the aether, never to be seen again.
Which got me to thinking about all the other things I've ever written that also went away. Reams and reams of short fiction, the victims of several moves. The published pieces that can't be accessed online, either because the publications no longer exist or have changed hands and refuse to make available any archives of their previous forms.
I could mourn their loss, but why? All things are impermanent, aren't they? We're here and we're gone, and the only real record of our existence lives in the memories of others, but soon enough, they are gone, too. Ultimately, we know our time here is finite, not just our individual lives, but the entire human race. The world will end eventually, along with the sum total of everything we've ever known or ever believed.
So why mourn? Why rejoice, or love, or cower in fear? Why do anything?
As happens so often, a fuzzy gray critter will provide the answer: Monika, perched on the chair beside my desk, front paws neatly folded under her chest, stares through me, like she knows something I don't. She's in her fifteenth year on the planet, elderly for a cat. Still, she bounces, she plays, she leaps and bounds all through the apartment, and clearly is happy with her life. She can't have more than, what? Five, six years left, tops? She has no concept of mortality, though. She lives for now.
