qwertyuiop
I have been writing almost every single day for a year and a half. There were moments that I had huge dips in production, but even on those days, I wrote something. I'm sure that some of you have noticed the most recent dip in the number of postings, that should be changing shortly. I appreciate you sticking it out during this odd transition. Thank you. The emails have finally been positive on a consistent basis and I really appreciate that. I will try to get back to more of you.
The Perch is coming along and it's getting to the point where it's more than just a safe place for me to live where the Oompa Loompas won't find me and eat me. It's actually becoming a neat little corner to hide in. The relationship with the Oompa Loompas is very healthy. I need them to keep people away from the Perch and they need me here so they have someone to ask, other than themselves, for money or for a good time. (I am the Omega Man)
I have filled my days with shopping and exploring to put food, furniture and other essentials into the Perch so that in the future, I won't need to leave my "Shire" as often unless I am asked to by a bunch of dwarves and a wizard with a good pitchman. I'm not big on dwarves, but some of them are kinda sexy. Wizards - not so much.
One of the philosophies that I follow when buying all of these goods for my impending hibernation is that I need to plan for all types of contingencies. For example: Power outages - have flash lights, batteries and bottled water. I have called this kind of shopping during my day, "needful things". Bread isn't a needful thing. Canned food is. A bathroom rug isn't a needful thing. Toilet paper is. You get the idea.
A big part of who I am can be found in need to express myself through the written word. Long before I had a computer that I could drag around the world with me, I had pens and paper. I love writing long hand, but it's trying on the fingers and I think faster than my lousy penmanship can accommodate. A lot of great literature has been lost to my ALL CAPS style of writing. Sadly, my hands, fingers and forearms aren't as strong and they don't have the tolerance or the endurance for extended periods of writing long hand. Thank the gods for the modern day keyboard. It's made getting these odd ideas out of my head a lot faster and more efficient. That's not always a good thing, but it's therapeutic.
I don't know who came up with the letter-key positions that we know as the modern day keyboard, but she/he really knew what they were doing. (perhaps the inventor was black. It seems all great inventions have a black person involved - or so black people like to tell me) I have been to Europe and Asia and both of their keyboards are set up differently than ours and I am shocked at how hard it is to learn a new set up. Even with the "where there is a will there is a way" mentality it's still really difficult to get it right. There is a natural flow to typing and it's discouraging when a 180 word a minute typist loses 50 to 60 words because the Germans put the "K" and the "Y" in different places.
We now live in a world where everyone will know how to type by necessity and by cultural experience where as it used to be an elective in Junior Highs and Middle schools that not everyone had to take. Those people are the cultural illiterates that seem to be falling behind the rest of us.
Back to me...
There are several contingencies where things might not allow for my electric word factory to work. It's while thinking of this that I came across my father's old steady typewriter.
It's an old collegiate edition typewriter that hasn't been touched in over 18 years, and that was by me. My father died almost 8 years ago and I know he hadn't touched it in years having moved on to computer keyboards along with the rest of the free world. His typewriter had just become a comedic relic like so many others around the world. As microsoft took off, more and more typewriters found their way into dust bins, attics and the Goodwill store rooms. Today, if you find a decent typewriter, it's over thirty years old and hasn't been touched in the last 29 years. Manual typewriter production all but ceased in 1969 when electrics became more en vogue. The manual typewriter is a time machine....
When my dad died, his so-called wife tried to play it off that there had been a fire in our father's house and that none of his stuff was salvageable. (did I mention she worked at a law firm and she knew the legal loop hole?) Somehow his typewriter made it free and clear of this mighty blaze which also stayed free and clear of absolutely everything else in the house. The typewriter also escaped her talons as she saw no value in the machine (because she knew my father really well) and she gave it to my sister, who gave it to my bother and he kept it in hiding for years until this recent move of mine when he gave it to me.
WHY?
Because if the power goes out, I can continue to type my manifesto and my brother loves me enough to know that I would need a manual typewriter.
When I picked up the typewriter the first thing I did was open it up. Inside the carriage housing was a massive amount of food crumbs and cigarette ashes. My father loved to smoke while he used that typewriter and I can see him now - typing away, cigarette in his mouth, ashes growing on the end of the cigarette until they fall off under their own weight into the carriage house below. My father, the two pack-a-day smoker to the day he died, the none stop writer, had left me a clue to the location of the ring of power. Those ashes spoke to me like tea leaves.
I started looking for manual typewriters in all the familiar places; Online, Goodwill, Garage Sales. Now I have 9. Smith Coronas. Royals. Underwoods. Three of them are over a hundred years old. One looks just like my fathers, which allows me to put his into a display. That way I don't have to have it cleaned and lose those family heirlooms that eluded me after his death. She got to be nasty and keep all of his stuff. I got his crumbs and his cigarette ashes. Which is closer to his essence than his stuffed bunny that she cherishes.
Typewriters are a fetish. They are glorious. I have grown so used to typing on keyboards that a slim and silent that I had forgotten the hypnotic sound of a metallic key being slammed against a silk ribbon filled with ink, pressing a symbol onto paper. One font. No Delete Key. No return key. Only a return "bar". It takes some time to remember to slid that back across. I keep pressing a tab button where the modern day "return/enter" button lives today.
It's music. It's poetry. It's history.
The typewriter is the earliest form of a computer. It's parallel to humanity's evolution and to the twentieth century's progress is staggering. Looking at a 1902 Royal and you can see the bulkiness and the rigidness of the machine. It's hard, it's cold, it's no thrills, but it works every time, much like the people from the generation it was created for. When it was made it came in only one color. Black. The generation at that time didn't express their individual spirit by purchasing a different color machine, having a yellow typewriter wouldn't have made them special or different, what they typed on the black typewriter made them special and different.
The 1957 Smith Corona is sleeker with an art deco design and naturally curved edges. It's light brown in color and was designed to match any modern day "den" in your home. It's solid steel and the carrying case is made of wood with corduroy fabric covering the wood frame. The machine speaks of a more carefree era when you could spend and you had the flexibility to have a "den". You could mix and match materials and textiles and modern day "bad taste" was in it's infancy and this is a good example of good bad taste. It's composition is consumer and the materials used in it's construction tell a tale of a time when no one was concerned with toxins or bacterias. No one thought that economic prosperity could or would ever end and the machine is still here to prove that. It's a great machine.
There are more and all of them are beautiful machines. They are an indulgence with a dual purpose to serve. They satisfy my need for all things compositional and they are both practical (in a dark, powerless world overrun with ring wraiths and orks) and sentimental. The few family traditions that my family has shall survive through my generation if I continue to type away.
I shall continue my progress and post every day that I am able. But there will be a shift in my timing and a great deal of my work is going to shift to those magically little beauties that grace the shelves nearby.
I can't use them all, so I have lent the majority of them to a coffee house in my neighborhood for everyone to use. Spread the good word and remember to use double spacing.
The Perch is coming along and it's getting to the point where it's more than just a safe place for me to live where the Oompa Loompas won't find me and eat me. It's actually becoming a neat little corner to hide in. The relationship with the Oompa Loompas is very healthy. I need them to keep people away from the Perch and they need me here so they have someone to ask, other than themselves, for money or for a good time. (I am the Omega Man)
I have filled my days with shopping and exploring to put food, furniture and other essentials into the Perch so that in the future, I won't need to leave my "Shire" as often unless I am asked to by a bunch of dwarves and a wizard with a good pitchman. I'm not big on dwarves, but some of them are kinda sexy. Wizards - not so much.
One of the philosophies that I follow when buying all of these goods for my impending hibernation is that I need to plan for all types of contingencies. For example: Power outages - have flash lights, batteries and bottled water. I have called this kind of shopping during my day, "needful things". Bread isn't a needful thing. Canned food is. A bathroom rug isn't a needful thing. Toilet paper is. You get the idea.
A big part of who I am can be found in need to express myself through the written word. Long before I had a computer that I could drag around the world with me, I had pens and paper. I love writing long hand, but it's trying on the fingers and I think faster than my lousy penmanship can accommodate. A lot of great literature has been lost to my ALL CAPS style of writing. Sadly, my hands, fingers and forearms aren't as strong and they don't have the tolerance or the endurance for extended periods of writing long hand. Thank the gods for the modern day keyboard. It's made getting these odd ideas out of my head a lot faster and more efficient. That's not always a good thing, but it's therapeutic.
I don't know who came up with the letter-key positions that we know as the modern day keyboard, but she/he really knew what they were doing. (perhaps the inventor was black. It seems all great inventions have a black person involved - or so black people like to tell me) I have been to Europe and Asia and both of their keyboards are set up differently than ours and I am shocked at how hard it is to learn a new set up. Even with the "where there is a will there is a way" mentality it's still really difficult to get it right. There is a natural flow to typing and it's discouraging when a 180 word a minute typist loses 50 to 60 words because the Germans put the "K" and the "Y" in different places.
We now live in a world where everyone will know how to type by necessity and by cultural experience where as it used to be an elective in Junior Highs and Middle schools that not everyone had to take. Those people are the cultural illiterates that seem to be falling behind the rest of us.
Back to me...
There are several contingencies where things might not allow for my electric word factory to work. It's while thinking of this that I came across my father's old steady typewriter.
It's an old collegiate edition typewriter that hasn't been touched in over 18 years, and that was by me. My father died almost 8 years ago and I know he hadn't touched it in years having moved on to computer keyboards along with the rest of the free world. His typewriter had just become a comedic relic like so many others around the world. As microsoft took off, more and more typewriters found their way into dust bins, attics and the Goodwill store rooms. Today, if you find a decent typewriter, it's over thirty years old and hasn't been touched in the last 29 years. Manual typewriter production all but ceased in 1969 when electrics became more en vogue. The manual typewriter is a time machine....
When my dad died, his so-called wife tried to play it off that there had been a fire in our father's house and that none of his stuff was salvageable. (did I mention she worked at a law firm and she knew the legal loop hole?) Somehow his typewriter made it free and clear of this mighty blaze which also stayed free and clear of absolutely everything else in the house. The typewriter also escaped her talons as she saw no value in the machine (because she knew my father really well) and she gave it to my sister, who gave it to my bother and he kept it in hiding for years until this recent move of mine when he gave it to me.
WHY?
Because if the power goes out, I can continue to type my manifesto and my brother loves me enough to know that I would need a manual typewriter.
When I picked up the typewriter the first thing I did was open it up. Inside the carriage housing was a massive amount of food crumbs and cigarette ashes. My father loved to smoke while he used that typewriter and I can see him now - typing away, cigarette in his mouth, ashes growing on the end of the cigarette until they fall off under their own weight into the carriage house below. My father, the two pack-a-day smoker to the day he died, the none stop writer, had left me a clue to the location of the ring of power. Those ashes spoke to me like tea leaves.
I started looking for manual typewriters in all the familiar places; Online, Goodwill, Garage Sales. Now I have 9. Smith Coronas. Royals. Underwoods. Three of them are over a hundred years old. One looks just like my fathers, which allows me to put his into a display. That way I don't have to have it cleaned and lose those family heirlooms that eluded me after his death. She got to be nasty and keep all of his stuff. I got his crumbs and his cigarette ashes. Which is closer to his essence than his stuffed bunny that she cherishes.
Typewriters are a fetish. They are glorious. I have grown so used to typing on keyboards that a slim and silent that I had forgotten the hypnotic sound of a metallic key being slammed against a silk ribbon filled with ink, pressing a symbol onto paper. One font. No Delete Key. No return key. Only a return "bar". It takes some time to remember to slid that back across. I keep pressing a tab button where the modern day "return/enter" button lives today.
It's music. It's poetry. It's history.
The typewriter is the earliest form of a computer. It's parallel to humanity's evolution and to the twentieth century's progress is staggering. Looking at a 1902 Royal and you can see the bulkiness and the rigidness of the machine. It's hard, it's cold, it's no thrills, but it works every time, much like the people from the generation it was created for. When it was made it came in only one color. Black. The generation at that time didn't express their individual spirit by purchasing a different color machine, having a yellow typewriter wouldn't have made them special or different, what they typed on the black typewriter made them special and different.
The 1957 Smith Corona is sleeker with an art deco design and naturally curved edges. It's light brown in color and was designed to match any modern day "den" in your home. It's solid steel and the carrying case is made of wood with corduroy fabric covering the wood frame. The machine speaks of a more carefree era when you could spend and you had the flexibility to have a "den". You could mix and match materials and textiles and modern day "bad taste" was in it's infancy and this is a good example of good bad taste. It's composition is consumer and the materials used in it's construction tell a tale of a time when no one was concerned with toxins or bacterias. No one thought that economic prosperity could or would ever end and the machine is still here to prove that. It's a great machine.
There are more and all of them are beautiful machines. They are an indulgence with a dual purpose to serve. They satisfy my need for all things compositional and they are both practical (in a dark, powerless world overrun with ring wraiths and orks) and sentimental. The few family traditions that my family has shall survive through my generation if I continue to type away.
I shall continue my progress and post every day that I am able. But there will be a shift in my timing and a great deal of my work is going to shift to those magically little beauties that grace the shelves nearby.
I can't use them all, so I have lent the majority of them to a coffee house in my neighborhood for everyone to use. Spread the good word and remember to use double spacing.
posted by Daniel Loomis | 9:35 AM
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