Delete, delete, undo.

Here I was thinking, following my ideas yesterday about no so much, not being but never having been; a Tipp-Exed existence only, the deletion so meticulous that is renders itself invisible.

And, from that the question as to whether I have written enough to reproduce myself – say, at some future date, when the Cryonic engines are in full-swing, is there enough content in the words I have produced to re-create me?

Well,

I suspect what would render is a generic me.

Aspirin rather and Anadin.

Lacking colour, texture and detail.

You will have many of the ideas, some memories, values and aspirations. The essence would be lacking; that is, the specific names of people and places, the reflections that I have chosen to keep private – conversations, hopes, fears.

So, a regenerated mini-me, kind of.

It would be interesting to see it in action.

As to whether I would be pleased or not, by the Frankenstein-Rod who is to know, I might come across as a charming, affable rogue, or something entirely different.

Seeing yourself as other see you was a theme of Robert Burns and other poets and philosophers over the ages. Seeing myself as I see myself, now, how would that be, how would that stand-up?

And with this, why stop with me?

Surely if the technology exists to extract thought and image from black and white lines of writing, the same can apply to video and voice; all my phone conversations which sit, hidden in the miasmatic cloud could be extracted, coalesced into a stream of consciousness, a thought-bubble stretching from the 70’s until today.

Intriguing.

Laying-out end to end all the people I have known, all those with whom I have communed, maintained eye contact or laughed.

This is expression and experience combined.

When the Messiah comes, so say the Jews, the dead will rise from their graves and return to their families.

As to how that will pan-out I can’t envisage.

Everyone and everything are also supposed to become vegetarian which is easier to conceive but harder to reconcile when you get down to the nitty-gritty.

Interrogate the database.

Extract everything.

Every word, phrase, idea, reflection, emotion.

This is mainstream candy-crush

This is convolution.

Or, is this too simplistic?

Is it impossible?

What is gone is gone; those dead, for although they live-on in the lives of their loved-ones, become mere echoes of the past when translated second or third-hand.

My memory of my mum’s mum’s mum.

Where does this begin or end?

My thoughts, as do the black and white photographs stop with this third generation. I have somewhere a photo of my great-grandfathers, but, as to their parents and parents’ parent’s, nothing.

How grand to be part of the gentry who can point to the portrait of an ancestor and trace the hair-line or eye colour; this truly approximating immortality although not quite.

And with this notion the skein of inner-self, the who I am, my is-ness, you might call it essence; Tandem in Eastern culture. Where does that sit?

For although I am the first of my line to have the time, capacity and electronic gadgetry to sit on a Saturday morning and write, there was a person the same age as me going-back generations with similar aspirations. And what of them?

All this trying to unravel, to discover what was, becomes more difficult with each iteration.

Like unwinding wet tissue; the sheets stick together and become one.

And this, all really a pointless exercise, as, we have what is here.

No more.

And, for the time-being, I will hold-on to myself and not let go.