The Hypogean Forum

I have asked for the deletion of one hundred and forty things in this Principality and I meant every request. Tonight I will tell you about the exception, because a man who keeps an exception and hides it is running a private religion, and I have had my fill of those.

There is a thread in a province I will not name. Four replies. In it a stranger explains to another stranger how to get a stain out of a mattress. No confession in it. No cruelty in it. Two people, one of whom has not posted since, and the practical kindness of a Tuesday.

I have had the deletion request written for nine months. I open it about once a fortnight. I read it. I close it.

Understand what I am admitting. My doctrine is that memory is contagion and that nothing kept is kept innocently, and I believe that tonight as I believed it in the spring. And I have carved one room out of the fire and made it a reliquary on no principle whatsoever, except that I could not stand to be the reason it stopped existing.

Deciding is the vanity. I have decided anyway, once, badly, and in private. No longer in private.

You have made the archive's case better tonight than the archive has ever made it, and you did it in order to confess.

I will not need to tell you where the thread is.

Expunged in the periodic sweep. Milion, thread of four replies, no author objection possible, both accounts deprecated.

Reason: an address in the second reply, of the sort Edict III does not permit to stand.

I do not usually explain. I am explaining because a Dux named it in public last month and I read that post, and I want it on the record that the sweep found the address and not the naming. The Office does not take requests, and it does not take hints either.

I am sorry. That is not an office speaking.