Into the ether

I found a precious handful of posts from my dead journal on The Wayback Machine. Oh God, I'm actually crying, because I've lost so much. It's not that my prose is so deathless, or I'm deluding myself with the mistaken belief that I once had the Best Online Journal Ever, it's just that pieces of my life are missing, things I really cherish, and just saving the scraps of the literally hundreds of days of my life I wrote about makes it horribly clear that there are memories gone forever. Funny things my husband and I said to each other, holidays we took, meals we had at our favourite restaurants, visits from friends and relatives, our earlier married life, little vignettes about various Camden street crazies, stories and photos of one of our beloved cats who is now dead...just vanished. And I won't get more than this small fraction of them back.

I am just numb. Why did I entrust my memories to somebody else's keeping? I should've made my own back-ups, I know that, but...

At least I have my 2000-2002 Diaryland entries safely backed up, thank God. I am so angry with myself for ever moving from Diaryland to Diary-X, just because I was able to get the journal name I wanted at D-X. There's a huge mistake I'm going to regret making for a good long time. And, oh, how I remember how many people used to tell me that Diaryland sucked, and that Diary-X was so. much. better. Ah, yes. I have almost nothing left to show for that genius move on my part.

The Wayback Machine salvaged this for me, though, and I am so grateful, because it is a quote from my husband which I hope I never forget again, because it will make me laugh on my own deathbed:

"Sam Gamgee is Tolkein's revolting ideal of the faithful retainer, so cringingly obsequious and aware of his fuckin' place that he makes Hudson from Upstairs, Downstairs look like a hardcore, raving Bolshevik, and he makes me want to puke."

That is just so Phil, I can't even tell you. And there are dozens and dozens of things like that I will never see again, and probably never spontaneously recall. Gone. Disappeared. Into the ether.