Deleted

It took me some time to discover that some

emails intended for me sometimes arrive

straight into a folder called ‘Deleted’. I

hadn’t deleted them. They contain

important information. Stuff that I need.

Like where I’ve got to be. And when. And

yet they’re in ‘Deleted’. Who decided that

I shouldn’t know where I should be. And

when. For some time people had been saying

to me, ‘I sent you the information the other

day.’ And I would say, ‘No, it didn’t come in.’

And we would say, ‘Hah! Email, eh?’ like

these emails had disappeared into a space

we couldn’t describe, a dimension that doesn’t

exist a square-root-of-minus-one dimenions

or, there is a vacuum cleaner in California that

hoovers up emails. ‘Hah! Cyberspace!’ we said,

like we were saying something that had any

meaning. And then, I don’t know why, one day

I peeped into this place called ‘Deleted’ (if it is

a place) and there was an email full of

information about where I was supposed

to be. It was hard not to feel for a moment that

a hidden hand had intervened in my life, saying:

‘Hey you, I don’t want you to read this!’ but then,

I thought it was kinda worse to think of it as odder

than that: machines randomly ranging across

humankind, deleting millions of messages under

the pretence of doing us a favour. Like even at

the moment of creating instant worldwide

conversations, it prevents them happening too.

And I thought how yesterday I forgot a thing that

I had only just remembered. It was as if I had

sent it from one part of my brain to the other

and then deleted it without asking for my permission.

But, hey, at least I did that. I think.