I cooked nothing for two days. I tore through cold, old pizza with my teeth or warmed up aging soup. I spent 26 hours – ten each Monday and Tuesday and six on Wednesday – scouring my computer. I went through badly labeled old files and folders, searching for half-edited versions of blog posts from the last two years. I accidentally deleted my tumblr account on Sunday night. I was doing too many things at once. I wasn’t paying attention and I clicked one too many times before the hot panic in my toes told me I’d gone too far. I typed eatdrinkdie.tumblr.com into the white of the URL hole and a huge colorful screen passed me a clear message. The work I’d done no longer exists. The stories I told were gone. Tears welled up in my eyes when I understood the damage I’d done was permanent. What I’d lost wasn’t coming back. The world I created had died and I killed it. I wasn’t deleted, but rather I deleted myself. I spent the next three days searching, capturing bits of this and scraps of that, photos and text, to revive my blog, to breathe old air into it and make new life. Like cleaning out the fridge and throwing together anything, old wilting lettuce and wobbly rubber celery to make a meal, to stretch things beyond their own limits, ignoring the mold and slime. Sometimes it works and sometimes you go too far and end up with something terrible, beyond endurance. Sometimes you make yourself sick. I lost nearly 70 pieces of original writing. What my blog was it is no longer. I have no followers and I follow no one. What was lush now feels thin and squalid. Images of my family and myself I’d created through anguish and sorrow were gone. Dreams and hopes turned like ash to the wind. I remember what they felt like, some of those pieces drifting up in the air over the oceans and jungles and mountains, in outer space. I remember sentences and sensations, some that drove me to tears and made me wonder where they’d come from. They no longer exist. I poured myself a whiskey and rattled with anger. I looked for someone to blame. I reached out to friends who might understand. I held hands with Nina and moved through the rises and falls that feel very much like grief.
[Painting: Death and the Maiden by Austrian painter Egon Schiele, 1915]
How could you not follow Eat Drink Die after that?
So, do it, and then release all claims on permanence!
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ayearofsoup reblogged this from eatdrinkdie and added:
How could you not follow Eat Drink Die after that? So, do it, and then release all claims on permanence!
eatdrinkdie posted this