"Click...Click...Click...."
The music had hushed, Elliott Smith was quiet.
iTunes was working, but not working.
The time marker crept along, keeping time, but
no there was no sound except the underwhelming whirring
of the fan in the CPU and the slow, eerie,
"...Click...Click...Click...Click..."
which I had never heard before.
"Some thing's wrong." I said, grabbing the mouse
and selecting pause on the play options menu.
Quickly I selected
Start/Shutdown/LogOff
"Please wait while..."
I waited for a long minute before deciding
something was definitely wrong and used my index finger
to quicken the shut-down process.
The clicking ceased, the whirring quieted, and
another long minute passed.
A hopeful index finger depressed the power button and
the familiar high whistle of the fan blew again,
the motherboard chittered and chattered to life,
gears and gadgets creaked and clanged, and
the computer came to life, much like when any
man or woman wakes from a black sleep,
stretches and twists the body, preparing him bones and flesh
for the working day ahead. And though all these start-up sounds were familiar,
one sound stood out like a jewel in the sand, or
a dark spot stained against a flood of light.
"Click...Click...Click...Click...Click...Click...Click..."
"Fuck." was the preferred expletive.
LogOn/Start/MyComputer/
"What the fuck is 'Drive F?'" It was not the drive I was looking for.
The drive I was looking for was not there.
I was looking for Drive H: Seagate
At least the clicking had stopped.
I unplugged the hard drive from it's mount and "Bum bum..."
the cheerful and dismissive sound of disconnecting a unit from it's port
chimed loudly out of my studio monitor speakers.
"At least it's being recognized..." I thought.
Carefully, I plugged the drive back into the slot, docking the unit to the CPU.
A cheerful and welcoming "Bum bum!" was pronounced along with a haunting
"Click...Click...Click..." from the little black drive.
I was starting to get scared.
"BZZZZZZ BZZZZZZ" shook my phone, and a blue light indicating a text glowed on and off.
"It's over... It's done..." I quietly announced.
My Mother busy with her crochet needles and yarn sat quietly on my bed,
her ears tightly cupped inside a pair of my headphones, listening to a YouTube program
streaming to her phone.
"10 years..." I thought.
"10 years of my work, my memories, my time, all erased; lost."
I thought about all the times I had fantasized about this happening,
losing my work, that is,
what I would do, how I would feel.
It was nothing like I had thought it would be.
I was painfully calm.
I didn't scream, I didn't cry, I didn't punch holes in the walls, I didn't
brag about it on Facebook,
instead, I accepted it.
Tracing the footsteps of my memories,
I traveled down many hallways to doors that had long been shut.
Pictures and art from high school; gone.
Pictures from the road trip with my estranged Father; gone.
Pictures of my lovers; gone.
All the late nights, every minutes, every hour, every trace of anything I've ever produced; gone.
My writing; gone.
All the music I stole; gone.
My memories; gone.
My time; arguably wasted.
Still, I did not scream. I did not suffer from any inverted orgasm.
I did not writhe. I did not quiver.
Instead, I responded to the blue flashing light and
joked about about how not all hope was lost, just "most of my stuff."
