It's 4 o'clock and all I want to do is write something. On my typewriter. Which is far far too loud for the small hours in a house full of sleeping students. So I bide my time, as I always do. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, as they say--until the last fell notes of the clock in which I believe only because I have to.
It piles up, the amount of brilliance I'm just waiting to unload--waiting for the right time, the right circumstance, the right experience--until I'm fit to burst, and then it's all forgotten. Gone with the sands of time whose fleeting fantasy guides us all.
Tick tock click clack. It calls my name, but I'm unable to answer. My fingers fizzle when they dare brush the keys. Never enough time. Never enough inclination.
And yet I can feel it, somewhere scarcely tangible. Building; growing; evolving. It seems only a matter of when...
Friday, October 17, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Corona Conceit
There’s an ancient piece of machinery occupying the star spot on my desk. It has a keyboard organized much the same as the newfangled computer next to it, but the keys reach out invitingly; honestly. No hidden functions, no backlit letters, no fickle electronics.
Sheet-metal body, heavy and robust, colored like spilt wine. It exudes an energy of wisdom, experience, and history. Faintly musty like an old leather chair in the far corner of a leather-bound library. How many words has it written? sentences inscribed? paragraphs composed? Like an old violin: how many hands have tickled out a reflection?
A sheet of paper sits waiting––mostly blank––with a few words etched in black ink. Across the page, a black and red ribbon stretches like a banner of literary significance. Below the ribbon, a multitude of metal letters lie ready, poised to strike. A silent story unfolds, before my fingertips even brush the lillypad keys.
And then––no secret writing in the rhythmic clack clack clack––the song of prose grooves to the steady strike of type on paper. No pattern of zeros and ones: all words, all the time. Dancing and skipping across the white expanse like the footprints of fictitious figures in my dreams.
Old and new, side-by-side on my desk, coexist in perfect anachronic harmony. Which will my fingers flit for today? They say a man’s desk is a window to his soul—or maybe they don’t, but perhaps they should…
There’s an ancient piece of machinery occupying the star spot on my desk. It has a keyboard organized much the same as the newfangled computer next to it, but the keys reach out invitingly; honestly. No hidden functions, no backlit letters, no fickle electronics.
Sheet-metal body, heavy and robust, colored like spilt wine. It exudes an energy of wisdom, experience, and history. Faintly musty like an old leather chair in the far corner of a leather-bound library. How many words has it written? sentences inscribed? paragraphs composed? Like an old violin: how many hands have tickled out a reflection?
A sheet of paper sits waiting––mostly blank––with a few words etched in black ink. Across the page, a black and red ribbon stretches like a banner of literary significance. Below the ribbon, a multitude of metal letters lie ready, poised to strike. A silent story unfolds, before my fingertips even brush the lillypad keys.
And then––no secret writing in the rhythmic clack clack clack––the song of prose grooves to the steady strike of type on paper. No pattern of zeros and ones: all words, all the time. Dancing and skipping across the white expanse like the footprints of fictitious figures in my dreams.
Old and new, side-by-side on my desk, coexist in perfect anachronic harmony. Which will my fingers flit for today? They say a man’s desk is a window to his soul—or maybe they don’t, but perhaps they should…
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