Its not that I'm completely against order and organization. Its not even that I'm particularly lazy, unwilling to put in the effort to achieve a degree of order. But for some reason I can't stand filing, an act most synonymous with order and organization. It's like an itch. A hard bit of popcorn shell in my gums. But that isn't a proper analog to my feeling on the matter. That bit of shell actually is bothersome and uncomfortable. Stacks of paper and drawers of folders can hardly make one physically uncomfortable. Unless of course one were underneath a stack or stuffed in a drawer. And while that may be a metaphorical approach to my discomfort with the thing, its only representative of a small piece. A metaphorical hard bit of popcorn, stuffed between the gums. The problem is that, in this metaphor, I may be the hard bit, and the gums. The stack and the drawer.
The paper doesn't affront me. That stack of re-purposed plant fibers. That simian organization of a natural order. Imprinted with inks of similar origin. It's presence is not offending in the slightest...okay...maybe a bit. But the intention. That is the scrape. A massive, relatively massive, collection of...what? I guess thoughts, surely numbers, but for me, nothing?
Today, outside my office, I searched among the fallen leaves of a small oak tree. I found huge acorns beneath them. I had been watching one acorn grow for months. But I hadn't looked recently. When I did search, I found that the single massive acorn I had been looking at for weeks had fallen. As had many that I hadn't seen, or even conceived. These acorns not only grew without my involvement, they fell at a precise time. The tree somehow chose to live without my regard. I wasn't there for that decisive moment. But the tree, the acorns, the world functioned without me. I picked out the largest, cracked the shell and ate half.
Why the fuck can't these collections of wood fiber, bleached white, function without me? Why can't these words of thought percolate and diffuse into the world without my hand? Instead of wondering about my originality? About my meaning? These are questions I beat myself against.
But why should I be so bothered? There isn't an obvious depth of meaning to how things choose to be ordered. Nothing chooses to be ordered. Nothing stacks on purpose. Not by itself. As fall comes upon the deciduous trees their leaves stiffen, changer color, and fall. They fall according to a specific order, an organization, that wasn't created with intent. First leaf fallen beneath every leaf after, eldest first. All the trees, regardless of species agree to this order. The silts of a mighty sea slowly settle, great upheavals of volcanism explode, forming stones, that lay as they settle formed by sequence, but never intent. And so our soil is built. Without a damn word from me or anyone else. And that makes acorns. And all this functions just fine without any intervention.
But isn't that our way? To observe. To watch, hands weaving like a dirty fly's, in expectation. In expectation of an understanding of the order we are a part of, in order to subvert it? I'm sure it is my way. The cold calculation of it. That way which we would love to attribute to all of creation. That it is completely calculating. Cold and passionless. But creation, the universe, all of it doesn't fucking care, and could never know passion. Energy, in it's myriad forms is just as good as all encompassing entropy. It already has it figured out. It doesn't calculate. It does not plan. These things. These shortsighted things don't even matter to the whole. All of it is here, and there. All of it is then, now, and soon. And somehow the leaves that fall, and the silts that gather, have completely encompassed anything mankind has ever created. Without even trying they have included all of our shortsighted victories. Our fist raised heights. And our blood drenched depths. And the uncomfortable quiet in between.
But yet I stack and file these collections of papers. These historically meaningless words. These hopeless collections of wood fiber. Cut from lifeforms that had a greater potential than nearly anything that could be written upon them. And I realize that my problem with filing is the conceit. The absolute collective hubris. We watch, we see, we mimic. But we fall so short.
And that hubris turns upon us. We use this mimicry of natural order to slowly compartmentalize everything we know. To put everything in its intended place. Plants, animals, earth and, most especially, people. And we are finite in our organization. Finite in actuality. And that is the greatest failing. People base their experience off the small vignette of their conscious years. Combined with an ever changing future and nearly incomprehensible past, we decide where everything belongs right now. What is valuable. What is neutral. And what must be destroyed.
And we classify all things this way. All things and all people. This one good. That one bad. That one doesn't even matter. She is expected to live this way, to expect this, and we will teach her so. He is expected to live this way, to expect this, and we will teach him so. This person doesn't conform, this person doesn't fit. That means they aren't a person. That means they will be ignored. Or destroyed. They don't fit in the drawer. They cannot be filed. They do not belong. They are not needed. Shred them. To fall and stack. In the order that they fell. Like leaves. Or pieces of paper. Lost words on their face. A hard bit, between the gums.
I fucking hate filing.
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