Rita Golden Gelman: From the Female Nomad: Too Much Information

For those of you who are not aware that papers multiply spontaneously, I have two things to say. First, I hate you for not experiencing this evil phenomenon. And second, how I wish I knew your secret. The papers in my life expand exponentially.  As I write this, I can feel and hear them reproducing themselves like millions of lymphocyte cells endlessly and relentlessly reproducing themselves.

I am very much aware that you who are immune are part of a conspiracy to keep those of us who are plagued by this environmental disease from escaping its clutches.  Oh, you give us lectures and lessons and you tell us about numbering pages, using organizational software, buying special notebooks and files and sticky pads and sticky labels. So we rush out and buy the equipment…but it never works. Many of us have brief moments when the disease is in remission, but always it flares up again, like herpes or malaria.

Those of us afflicted need those of you who are immune. At the moment I have three of you who are trying to help. I really don’t hate you; I need you. Liz, Hope, and DeeNice. I do appreciate your efforts, don’t stop trying, but I confess that I’m secretly afraid you will all abandon me when your frustration peaks,  and then I will be left alone with a growing pile of disaffiliated papers, notebooks, recycled sheets and napkins and sales slips with scribbles on them. Surely it is a genetic thing. Just a few more generations and the fittest will survive and the piles of papers will disappear.  But meanwhile, don’t go away. I need you.

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