I remember, back in the middle ‘90s, when my poems in Weber Studies appeared on the Internet, and suddenly I became real.

Before that, all the things I had written and published were relegated to shelves and sometimes card catalogs. I was hard to find, even for me.

The Internet is going back, as fast as it can, to find, recapture, and include the earlier world, so people can say with greater confidence, “It’s on the Internet. The Internet has everything. You want to know something, what is and was and how to, it’s there.”

So, gradually, I’ll become better known. Resurrected. My words will have their intended effect.

As technology improves, we’ll know so much more about what we knew, and it can become common knowledge.

The future, now, I’m not so sure about. Our technology so far has not found a way to leap ahead, other than to predict. For now, that’s still the province of science fiction, the stuff of novels and movies.

But the past, that’s already happened, and was a presence at the time. So my mind (yes, raised on science fiction) sees the Internet go back to ferret out what otherwise would be forgotten.

I’ll be able to go back before a book was written and experience the world that produced it.

I’ll go back to the Continental Congress (thank you, Ken Burns) and hear the Founders arguing the words.

I’ll go back to the Library of Alexandria before it burned. I’ll take down a book (or scroll) or manuscript and read the text that otherwise only survives in referenced remarks.

Yes, this is science fiction too, but it’s recapturing what existed, had a presence, not like the future which doesn’t yet exist in the same way, and, in many variations, never will.

Science fantasy and fact interact in my own life.

I saw, in my presence, the present past decay. The race to save what still exists as archivists scramble to transcribe, transfer to a more secure medium and include it in the cloud.

KPFK, that iconic Radio Station, active daughter to the Mother Station KPFA in the Bay Area, held the archives. Shirley and I were given the tour. A double door airlock sealed for climate control, shelves and shelves of audio tapes, segregated by those preserved and those not yet. Shelves of the past, still being worked on, as one by one as fast as possible, the decaying tapes were rescued and transferred.

And money, always money, short for such an enterprise, entered the picture as salaries were cut, technicians left to find a job with a living wage.

We were personal friends of the Master Archivist, Department Head who gave us the tour. We sat in his office as friends.

I cobbled together some words around his name, and sang them to immediate relevance.

I dreamed I saw _____ last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I, “But (___) you’re ten years dead”
“I never died “says he,
“I never died,” says he….
Says (___), “What they can never kill
went on to organize”…
“I never died,” says he.
“I never died,” says he.

Our friend looked at me and said, “Joe Hill?”

I said, “Yes.”

Our friend had discovered, re-mastered, saved from the brink of extinction, a hitherto unknown speech of Martin Luther King Jr. which he delivered in London on his way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

Our friend was being flown to Washington D.C. where the re-mastered tape would be added to the National Archives.

This was a Big Deal. An episode that strikes my own heart, as I see the past decay into oblivion and we race to save it. We need to know who we were so we can know who we are, and plan our better future with foreknowledge.

So, before my past is thrown upon the dust heap of history, I may be found and resurrected.

The things I wrote may be rediscovered, or discovered for the first time, and do some good.

Meanwhile, much is available in my book, For Lo These Many. Some pretty good stuff. Worth a read.

And, meanwhile, the blog, my blog, this blog. A mix of old and new, still growing, preserved on the web and the cloud, available at the flip of a switch and the press of a button.

I know, I know, as big as the world is, it’s only one small planet, and one day entropy will claim it as the web it has constructed will collapse upon itself.

But that’s the future where science fiction reigns.

Meanwhile, in the here-and-now, I’m re-reading myself.

You can too.