nondefragmentation

As a child, I adored disk defragmentation. This was a part of a larger sense that computers were magic, a sense that even computer utilities were a kind of inspired play, the conversation between metal and sand and electricity. I watched defrag run for long minutes, tiny colored blocks shifting into place. It took hours, sometimes, and we'd defrag the drives overnight to make sure the computer would be ready whenever my parents needed it for... whatever it was that my parents wanted the computer to do.

Defragmentation is the process of moving data around a physical disk so that the reading tool (either a needle or a laser) can access related data with speed and accuracy. When a computer is new, defragmentation isn't necessary, because the limited data on the disk is all clumped together. But as software writes new data, things get placed in their nearest convenient location, and when things get deleted, gaps are created. Empty space is filled by new data and nothing is next to each other anymore. So you defragment, run the software, move the colored blocks.

I want to be able to defragment my mind, to place similar ideas next to each other, and more importantly, to remove some of the clutter that has cropped up out of nowhere.

Of course, the metaphor isn't a useful one, because computers and brains are not the same thing. The brain precedes the computer, designed and created the computer. Metaphorizing the brain in terms of the computer is akin to winding green and brown pipe cleaners together and announcing: "Trees are like this". Any truth to the statement is demonstrative only on the most basic level and carries no illustrative meaning beyond the power of crude facsimile.

Yet I still want the idea of defragmentation. I want to enjoy a novel without thinking about the craft of writing one. I want to be able to see the sunrise without thinking about dangerous wildfires. I want to eat hotdogs and watch fireworks without thinking about the deep scars of colonization.

I like to think we all want that: for our brains to be quiet for one second in a world that screams with light and color and politics and rage.

But I am not a machine. I refuse to defragment. I will let the wild thing in my skull make its own connections. I will sit in the smoke and the haze and the noise and I will decide, based on what I see everyday, that the world is beautiful despite the things that mar it. I will allow the sand and the metal and the electricity to speak and I will understand that tiny shifting blocks can mean something. ♥