LOSS

Loss arrived last week and like the Joker card in a Tarot deck complete with stick and knapsack on back, decided to dump the contents he carried into my life. Loss of a confidant, loss of an intimate and a reminder of loss from the past. Loss. Everything and everyone who is no longer there. But also loss of the evidence of those associations, which was played out in cyberspace. The major hurdle, yet to be overcome, is that I have to provide to an organization evidence of an academic relationship I had four years ago. Difficult since all correspondence with the University, a Principal Supervisor and myself were conducted via email and the student I worked with sadly died. When my University abruptly cut me off from my email account four years ago I was upset since I'd lost contact details for many people I knew or had met, but no more upset than I am now, for who would know that one needed to keep safe every email conversation they had with everyone or better still to make hard copies of all correspondence in order not to be caught out in the future. I suppose this is going to be support for the materiality of life rather than the ever floating, disappearing, you can't hold it in your hand evidence of a life, rather than electronic information that can so easily be lost to the past and to the future past that comes. I've had to rely on memory of events and we all know that memory is flawed. Loss. I was already dealing with the fact that a person I knew had disappeared. No not dead, but surely never to cross my path since he would move in different circles and so the loss was akin to a death, if death means in one sense, never again to see or hear from. Strangely enough the ethereality of cyber interactions reminds me of the strange beauty and tenuous nature of our associations with people and brings home to me the fleeting nature of all things. With this knowledge in hand I wonder whether it is better to cling to these things or let each moment pass. Perhaps it is advisable to understand the fragility of moments and lock them away so that they an be successfully retrieved if need be. A lesson I've learnt late.