Unknown, After Jean Restout: Saint Hymer in Solitude
(c. 1735)

" … whether or not it accomplishes anything else."

Restarting my machine has become the first step when producing another story. This amounts to ritual now, in that it reassures more than guarantees anything. If I don't Restart first, I might increase the risk of my machine crashing before I've finished, and then have to recreate lost parts. Writing to post involves using five or six different applications combined with plenty of cutting and pasting. I accomplish all this on my thirteen-inch MacBook Air. The small screen means I cannot just grab and drop most copyings. I need to switch displays to change applications. I save before switching between any two applications, so I'm also continually saving in addition to the constant cutting and pasting. I'm uncertain which of these operations will eventually result in crashing my machine. Usually, my blog application crashes first. I try to save something in it, and it doesn't respond. I pull up the ever-useful ForceQuit display, which usually indicates that RapidWeaver's frozen again. Then, I can ForceQuit that application and either reopen it or choose to execute another full Restart. The full Restart takes a few minutes, as each application needs to reopen. Sometimes, depending upon where the crash finds me in the process, I have to copy the contents of something like a Facebook post over and into Pages for safekeeping during the subsequent Restarting; otherwise, I'll lose whatever I've started there.

In these ways, my writing has become an exercise in paranoia. I cannot simply let myself go when writing because some shred of consciousness must remain on the defensive, plotting and aware of where I am in what was supposed to have been an open-minded process. I'm most likely to lose something when I lose that hyper-awareness of my location within the process. This amounts to a Catch-22 because such awareness renders it more difficult for me to finish my assignment. Surveillance does not encourage creative writing but undermines it. The bulk of most writing must occur preconsciously. I do not mean to suggest that it must then happen unknowingly. It often draws from prior knowledge. It's how it draws from that knowledge that must remain unconscious and mysterious. I can get the flowing process started, but beyond that, my scrutinizing presence is not only not needed, it's inhibiting. Before slipping into my writing coma, I deeply consider what I intend to write, returning to edit only after the initial drafting. Editing always seems to be the most challenging part because it requires the same consciousness that work requires, unlike writing, which inhabits the same space as all preconscious playfulness. Until writing's numb, it's often best left undone.

A more powerful machine might not require such frequent restarting, though I have no evidence proving that presumption. I do not know whether Restarting reduces the likelihood of crashing. I maintain the ritual as an article of faith. Sometimes the machine stalls anyway. It usually doesn't. I don't always remember to Restart the machine, and it doesn't always stall. When it does stall, it's seldom immediately after I've Restarted. The necessity to Restart will never become more provable than that. I suspect many of my rituals are similarly steeped in belief rather than fact. This might be the human condition intact. We do not always or even often insist upon knowing facts before jumping into action. We have our rituals to guide our interventions. We might even maintain decent intentions, but we presume most premises before engaging, and mostly only tacitly presume. I often awaken having, for some unknown reason, already engaged. My presumptions frequently enslave me.

Restarting accomplishes something other than merely resetting my machine. It focuses my attention on the space where my attention might take a rest. I'm on the defensive these days, seemingly always looking for dangerous intrusions. Over the last hundred days, our world has become exponentially more dangerous. It seems now to be ruled mainly by folly. The most outrageous notions attempt to become enforceable, threatening every one of our seven immutable freedoms. Our world could use a Reset right now. It needs nothing more urgently than to have its caches emptied and its pointers realigned. It desperately needs somebody to remember its password and to expel the latest viruses encumbering its operation. It needs the moneylenders to be rudely ejected from the temple and the priests from the government. It needs to reset the number of open windows to zero. It could use a time of utter mindlessness, where hyper-consciousness can't be allowed, where life flows as if it already knows the story it’s writing. Too many cliffhangers have poisoned my storytime. Restarting refreshes context, whether or not it accomplishes anything else.

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