...thoughts redacted...

…on what i can’t tell you…

“My life needs editing.”

-Mort Sahl-

---

---

*editor’s note* - “…i edited this audio version of this edit for your ears…”

---

It is 3:33PM.  Bumper to bumper, we amuse ourselves with the traffic headed onto the bridge by choosing which cars have the best color.  My mind says banana yellow, but I know that is just an attraction trick taxis play to help me pay better attention to them.  My cell phone rings.  I’ve had it set to duck quack tone for months now so to be better amused at the start of any call.

*quack quack*

*quack quack*

On the other end of my feather-winged flipper phone is one of my partners in creativity.  

We work together helping [redacted] create [redacted] called [file not found 404].  It is an emergency.  We have to remove [unavailable] immediately.  [Unknown] is compromised because [can’t discuss] and [pseudonym] didn’t like [topic removal] happening in public.

I hurry past a chocolate and cream colored van that reminds me of crystal shoe hippies smoking up in shag carpet filled makeout machines. I head to my [anonymous] and delete [deleted].  A [nothing] has been averted.  [Empty] will never see [missing] again.

I am a professional editor. 

Of the many ways I try to make a living in this world, I find most of my working hours filled with removal.  I edit audio, I edit video, I edit writing.  I even edit edits, unediting and reediting edited or unedited editings.  I wasn’t sure if it was worth it to share the above story with you.  All thoughts considered, it seemed rather inconsiderate to share a story so unshareable.  What is the point of saying [no info] if I can’t explain why [information unretrievable]. 

My air is edited. My house is filled with filters.  Every room has a box holding carbon fibers designed to remove the dusty air spiders that allergically web up my nose.  I breathe better this way.  Alternatively my memory, the creativity of coming soon, and the grounded now of now, all weave through my mind.  Every moment is a drip coffee blend of fair trade information from my life field.  

…drip…drip…

…lived in experiences…

…drip…drip…

…stories I’ve read or been told…

…drip…drip…

…my dreams and other worlds of existence…

The warm tastes different every time.  It might be pitch black or a watery transparent styrofoam cup of convenient caffeine keeping me up as I travel from now to later.  The ideas I share, the words I choose, are just oily roasted beans cut to pieces, soaked in hot water, and steamed in mugs to protect the hands of your mind before I burn your tongue a little.  A mouthful of my raw beans would taste like [blank].  But carefully sourced, thoughtfully prepared, delicately brewed, artfully poured, I hope that blend might bring you back tomorrow.  I need it to be good enough that you might leave me a tip or even take home a bag of [absent] to make for yourself later.

And that is why I edit.  

Our raw beans (being) aren’t meant for consumption.  But planted, harvested, processed, dried, rested, milled, graded, sorted, exported, roasted, grinded, brewed and quality tested, our expressive being (beans) becomes something to yelp about.  We might taste so good people would buy our swag, wear us on their t-shirts, and take their mom here on a lunch break.

Editing is creation by removal.  It is the act of adding nothing to something to change it, generally done with the explicit goal of improvement.  I edit to live, to make better, to refine, define and be fine. Which is why, when earlier today, staring at a fraggle orange flatbed truck and considering the quality of its hue, I was confused when [unreleased] asked for [censored] to be [deleted] from [omitted].  I am a champion of the edit, a decades trained barista, and being asked to [withheld] [obfuscation] of [omitted] left me feeling like [classified] was a mistake. 

The missing can be an enhancement of what is there. By leaving out [sustained beeping noise] I might hear instead [chirping crickets cricking].  So what if the missing might also be its own enhancement?  I have no doubt that the best of me is in front of me, but what I leave behind has value too? The deletions can improve me and my communique.  They share my aspirations.  My unedited is messy.  It might be dangerous. I mean if I let you read this [deleted paragraph] what would you think of me? 

One time I [untold story] and it was one of the most [undecided] decisions I ever made.  Well that and the time I [confidential].  I was thinking [removed for content restrictions] but what i really want to say is [information no longer available]. My past is [redacted] so that the future might be [redacted in the future].  

Is the redaction my truth, my shadow, or both?  What is it about the hidden that is better left unseen and unknown?  What are we afraid of others knowing? 

Honesty is messy.  Existence is chaos.  Redacted I become beautiful divinable unknowable structurable definable refinable exemplable unseenable able[bleblebleble].

Right now is filtered. 

Faces fluffed on pixelated portals, lips plumped, images enhanced. 

Right now is edited. 

Carefully chosen words, thoughts laid out in deliberate sequence. 

Right now is screened. 

Images, ideas, realities reflected off one lens onto another. 

Right now is [indecipherable noise].

Right now is [thoughts redacted].

---

“We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship.”

-George Wald-

---

Thanks to

Jeff Giesea

for your editing, your [message obscured] and the quote you shared with me "We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us" by Marshall McLuhan.

I [missing comment] you.

---