pending

A folder on my desktop is labeled “research.” It is a kind of quarry. It keeps growing, albeit slowly, note by note, draft by draft. Most of the stuff in there will probably never get anywhere, but I still try not to delete anything–no matter how poorly thought out or badly written it may seem at first glance. I have lost far too many archives for all sorts of stupid reasons.
The folder is like a set of Russian dolls. It houses at least a dozen folders of drafts, sketches, and raw materials, carefully organized by literary genre and subject (psychoanalysis, anthropology, philosophy, religion, wine) waiting for me to return to them. It is a fine collection of mistakes, half-baked ideas, and just plain wrong reasoning–a map, if you will. Looked at carefully, it provides valuable guidance: what to avoid, where to look, where to return, where have I left the keys to promising doors.
Walter Benjamin famously wrote that “hell is the province of those who are not allowed to finish what they have started.” That may be true, but this folder and its contents are not threatening, diabolical, or haunting–not at all. The things I keep in it have their own way of reminding me that they are essentially already done: each time I work on them, I just get to know them better.