Enjoyable

From skulls to data centers
There’s no doubt of the precious
Value and fragility

Of memory. Yet so much
Never is revisited
Before it corrodes away.

You started offloading it
To language and rituals
And cave paintings long ago,

Your ancestors worming past
Blind cave crickets, blind cave fish,
Myriad vestigial eyes

Warning use it or lose it,
Not that ancestors noticed.
Now it’s photos in the cloud

Composed of warehoused machines
Humming with heat, carrying
Exponentially growing

Seams of junk data to mine
With learning models, which will
Require ever more machines.

It works to make memory
Mostly more available,
Easily enjoyable,

Those vivid living colors
Of updating narratives,
Fantastic fragments of lives.

But the accumulation
Of even one boring life
Is incomprehensible

Within that life, always was.
While you still can, if you can
Still sit still, by some window

Or out of doors, remember.
Rummage around in your skull.
Find something enjoyable.