Let's pretend there never was such a long hiatus between posts, that no one came to this non-place in non-space and found it suspended, paused, frozen like a sluggish laptop with too little RAM, rasping that sad little death rattle as it tries to process data, to process images, pop-up windows, as it copes with the accidental simultaneous opening of Word, Excel and Photoshop, groans underneath the weight of all those zeroes and ones, as the pre-Intel chip splinters into a million pieces and the gerbil collapses on his wheel in a handful of inert fur and you say "Fuck, fuck, FUCK" and click and pound and punch, like a doctor on a medical drama desperately giving CPR to a character you've only been introduced to in this episode, not even a special guest star but someone you vaguely recognize as having played the husband of the woman who was killed on the legal show and the paramedic from the other medical drama, the doctor is pressing on his chest and pumping with his locked arms and laced hands in that grotesquely sexual rhythm, his eyes wide with determination and disbelief and horror and effort, but the machine is beeping one long beep and the camera is cutting between the expressive eyes of the nurses, flitting back and forth above the white squares of their surgical masks as they quietly accept the death of this not even special guest star, but the doctor does not accept it, he is locked in his daily battle with mortality, and you see how doctors, as rendered by this actor, who himself you recognize from eighties movies and television shows, you recognize from Top Gun, you recognize from The Facts of Life, your recognize from Fast Times At Ridgemont High (the high school students and handymen and even the dead fighter pilots of the eighties have grown up to be doctors; their fictional mothers are proud), how doctors who have the mettle to battle mortality on a daily basis do not so readily accept it, but the long flat beep will not stop, it will not interrupt itself with the regular peaks and valleys, beeps and silences that even we lay viewers at home know mean we are alive, it is going BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP and we have charged the paddles to two hundred, we have charged the paddles to three hundred, we have shocked the not even special guest star and his body has gone rigid and limp on the table, but to no avail, and now all there is is the long BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP and what has become the mechanical, muttered "c'mon" of the former supporting actor from eighties movies, the true test of his acting skill being whether he can deliver this "c'mon" with just the right concoction of gruffness and desperation, "c'mon, c'mon" because maybe this is not just any patient, but a patient this doctor has promised he will save, because the power of life is his to give and take, and the desire to wield this power and the crushing responsibility of wielding it and the continual realization that it is not a power he holds alone or completely is what gives this medical drama its emotional gravitas, because he is a complex man who lives to work but is also capable of crazed, passionate moments that hint at the carefully--but not necessarily deeply--hidden well of molten lava-like emotion that stews in this doctor's very own beating, beeping heart, because of this all-too-divinely human mess that is the doctor's own insides and the unwillingness of this living mass of tissue, the fighting spirit of this electrified meat that this actor playing this doctor has transmitted to us through the sheen of his makeup and the shouting of the commercials, because it is not going to accept death, not today, not on my table, as the calmest and yet somehow most complicated nurse goes to switch off the machine that is going BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP and the other doctor who maybe this doctor is fucking, a venue in which we see just how passionate and fiery are his lava-like emotions and sometimes just how smooth and firm are his still less well-hidden buttocks, she is putting her gloved hand gently on his gowned arm, and she is murmuring his name, trying to break his trance, and he is pumping the not even special guest's star's chest with a little less regularity and force, he is beginning to realize that the not even special guest star is lost, and we know watching at home that medical drama has advanced in realism to the point where it is altogether possible that he will be lost, the emotional stakes of medical drama now include the possibility that we might attach to a not even special guest star in the first half of the show, come to identify with his plight and admire his pluckiness in the face of death, and he might die today, on the table, and now the doctor is giving up, he stands still, he looks numb, he looks up at the stainless steel clock to do what we know from watching medical dramas is "call it," because it is his responsibility to "call it," and we expect him to say, in his broken, hollow voice, "Time of Death twelve-forty-one PM" and rip off his gloves and storm out of the room to collect himself and tell the family of the not even special guest star that he is dead, an event that may be shot through the window, from the p.o.v. of one of the nurses or the doctor this doctor is fucking, so we cannot hear, only see the other not even special guest stars playing the family of the dead not even special guest star cry out silently in anguish, or perhaps it will be shot through the window but the anguished outcry of the wife/child/mother of the not even special guest star who has just died on the table will be the only thing we can hear, albeit muted and distant, but just as he is about to "call it" the doctor once again does not give in, does not accept the death of this not even special guest star, and he cocks his arm back as if he is holding a hammer and pounds with one fist on the chest of the dead man, not so much a medical maneuver as a gesture of frustration and violence, and this blow makes a fleshy, thumping sound, a sound that comes to rest at the same time as the preverbal grunt of the doctor that accompanied the enormous physical effort of raising his CPR-fatigued, adrenaline-filled arm and striking his patient on the chest, and these sounds are followed by a split-second of silence, and then by the sound of the beeps resuming on the beeping machine, which everyone in the room looks up at in disbelief and one of them states obviously, joyously, "we have a rhythm," and the not even special guest star lives.

Let us pretend that instead of this unnevering pause between beeps, this inconvenient suspension in service, there were instead haiku every day.