Two things:

1. As I mentioned in my post last week, I’m between houses at the moment. I actually just got approved for a new apartment today, though, so I’m almost finished with my career as a part-time vagabond. Still don’t really have access to most of my stuff, especially my books and journals.
2. My father is a computer programmer, and I grew up around a lot of the things we read about for this class: tapes, discs, hard drives. I used to play with memory boards as a child. (Their markings reminded me of city maps. I need hardly mention that I’m an only child.)

These are wholly unrelated topics but for the fact that they led me to think of this week’s signment in a particular way. There has been a lot of non-writing time lately while I’ve been getting my life in order, but I wouldn’t call it dead time, and I’m second-guessing even my choice to call it “non-writing.” If it’s possible to read almost anything (a meter for gas or electricity, a situation, a face), then can’t I write those too? A hard drive organizes information in a random but specific way; so do I.

So that’s the digression that got me here. I wanted to write my document in a way that reflected the week I’ve been having, and I was going to do it without any of the materials that are personally precious to me (not that you’d really want to have to read my journals anyway). I wanted to write without words, even, or a tool – just my hands.

The result doesn’t communicate all of this, of course. I’m pretty sure that it’ll seem cheesy, actually. But isn’t that a kind of definition of preciousness? Of value to someone, multifaceted, never wholly accessible or inaccessible.

Relevant: Merriam-Webster’s definition of the verb “to gild.”