Shadows of the past
The “good old days” means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for a writer it must include the anonymity that was once granted to our past doings and writings — embarassing, out of date, and no longer ours. Thanks to the internet (the medium, supposedly, that did away with permanence) nothing slips from the records. A simple search of my name in Google will (forever?) reveal that I once ran for UCLA’s student government as an anarchistic candidate. And a few pages in, you will find this gem from the upstart 15-year old writer who had Ayn Rand in one hand and a thesaurus in the other: “If establishments of public education are advocates of preconception and predilection, then their conductors should not declare words of condemnation and scorn to our country, they should avow words of fidelity and commitment to this nucleus of justice and opportunity.”
I figure it’s better to ask permission than to say sorry — and take the skeletons out of my closet, before someone with lesser sympathies arrives with a search warrant. Alec?
