the lost man chronicles
the daily chronicle


the lost world (of words)

I want my words back.

Like tracks in the pit of an addict’s arm, the virtual words I published for the last five years were proof of my passion. Now, cold-turkey, they are no more. Erased. Wiped out. Nada. Nothing. Rien.

Fuck. Phuck. Fuck!

Gone. Even, if only for but what will surely be forgotten as a mere moment, a thousand bits of my verse and musings are no longer accessible from the outside.

It feels as if I have been abandoned somehow, as if I had walked home from grade school and after cutting across the lawn and coming up onto the stoop, I suddenly realize that all the windows are boarded up with criss-cross planks. After pressing a ring into my thumb after pressing the silent doorbell repeatedly, as well as rapping my knuckles furiously upon the foreclosure notice, I’d call out at least ten times—“Mom. Mom? Mom!” Hearing nothing but the hard-edged thump of my heart echo in reply, I’d try to take a peek inside through the sliver-prone gaps, discovering with heart-wrenching shock that all the rooms were utterly empty, with nothing but dust dancing in the streams of sunlight.

As of 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon my website(s) have seemingly been wiped out. Suddenly and without warning or explanation. As far as I know, the bills have been paid and there were no notices of account-term changes.

I checked the file manager on the account and instead of finding my thousand files, I discovered that five years of work have literally just disappeared.

I’d like to think that should things not be restored-resolved-resurrected, that i could survive with an indifferent “oh, well” and with a whistle to move onward, resigning to the notion that sometimes “shit happens.” I’d console myself further by inverting the cruelty of circumstance into a chance to start anew.

Well, I didn’t lose any sleep over it, but admittedly there were points in the afternoon yesterday when I felt an uncomfortable pall come over me. I kept comparing this in my mind to the unexpected sudden loss of life. Surely no comparison, but I think I pushed myself to feel something, token sentiment really, if only in anticipation of the bad news bears. Roar.

As of noon today I’ve yet to hear anything from my service provider. Every five minutes or so I type in my URL hoping for something less than a miracle, for surely this is simply a minor human error, and with the realignment of some code, all will be cured.

On occasion, every 5 seconds or so, I imagine the stages of denial, depression, anger, rage and apathy I am bound to go through if I am ultimately to be a writer bereft of his words, lamenting like a virtual being who has suddenly lost his home.

Perhaps most frustrating is the state of ignorance I’ve succumbed to in the wake of this incidence. Since everything is by e-mail these days, there’s no customer service rep to talk to, to complain to, to be pacified and patronized by—to repeatedly call and yell at and eventually grit my teeth at as I ultimately ask to “speak to the manager.”

And so now, all I can do is wait. Yes, perhaps it is a test. For great things come to those who wait. Noah waited. Job tolerated. Moses waited for forty days. Please don’t make me wait 40 days. 7 days maybe, but just not 40.

Dag nabbit. I want my words back.




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