OK. I am weird. In order to distract myself from a relatively unpleasant dental procedure yesterday, I largely wrote the following piece in my head. I was reflecting on the fact that I have been a patient in that particular practice for 25 years, and how fast time now seems to be flashing by... even time in a dentist's chair. It dawned on me that I have been back living and working in south Belfast for 10 years, and that 10 years ago I had a particularly frustrating computer disaster caused by random power surge which took out, not only the internal memory but all the peripherals including my external hard-drive, which was my primary backup and the place where I stored all my digital photographs, suitably indexed and annotated for future reference. I thought everything was also backed up to a remote server, but I was soon to discover that a missed tick box meant that the photos on my external drive were not. So, approximately 10 years of family photos disappeared in blue flash. But what has become more painful is the reflection that for those ten years various choices and commitments meant that I was not as present in moment as I should have been, which given that they were key years in the lives of those closest to me, leaves me with significant regret.
In C.S. Lewis’ "Out of the Silent Planet", a member of the Martian/Malacandrian species Hrossa, called Hyoi tells the Earthman Ransom:
"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered."
But for it to be remembered it has to be savoured in the first place... embedded in a network of neurons, and not just consigned to an assortment of ones and zeroes that magically coalesce into a digital image on a screen.
A decade gone in a flash -
A surge of power purging
the memory of all images.
What followed was a wave
What followed was a wave
of regret and recrimination.
Why? Why not? What now?
Ten years on with a few photos
retrieved from discarded discs -
files shared with family and friends.
Yet now I regret not the loss but
wonder why I viewed so much
of those key years through a lens?
A watcher and recorder rather than
a fully fledged participant
in my own life.
Ten years on with a few photos
retrieved from discarded discs -
files shared with family and friends.
Yet now I regret not the loss but
wonder why I viewed so much
of those key years through a lens?
A watcher and recorder rather than
a fully fledged participant
in my own life.
Selah
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