The Word

I have a new acquisition. A new enhancement to my retinue of a packable life: a keyboard.

 I had gotten myself a tablet a month ago for the purpose of being able to always stay one step ahead of my debts. The typing could be slow on it - hunt-and-peck, using just the index fingers, with frequent mis-spellings and incomprehensible auto-corrections. Then, I got myself an auxiliary keyboard. The words can fly out from under my fingers again, almost as quicky as I think them. I find myself typing words for the joy of having the keys clack and the feeling of speed in my hands.

"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party,"

 "We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalieble rights..."

 "Whan that Abrille with the showrs soote, the drouthe of Mars hath perced to the roote..."

 Why the Hell can't I play anything more complicated than Frere Jacques on the piano but can type out, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," with fluency?

Regardless, I like it. No concert hall seats are going to be sold to watch me type out a daring improvisation, but for personal satisfaction it shall do nicely. It makes me feel more akin to the old writers, like Jack London prowling San Francisco with his Underwood under his arm. But several degrees better.

Lest the reader think me boastful and vainglorious, I don''t mean to imply I've written the great American novel and laugh at all preceding writers as but preludes to myself. What I mean is, compared to the processes the old boys used - typewriters, pen and paper - I'm much better off. I can write up a novella in an hour if I felt so inspired and then have it published in multiple languages within the same day.

 I like that my arrangement of tablet and keyboard makes me feel like some starving artist on the Left Bank of some river in whatever city the poets gather to self-congratulate. Typewriters are still pleasing to me, and not just because of my affection for the obsolete. But because of the swish-clack of the keys and the cranking sheets of paper. It's an audio as well as visual experience. The stacks of dirtied paper, however, has always troubled me and kept me from making anything serious on a typewriter, historical precedent be damned. Not to mention the difficulty of finding replacement parts for busted machines. I'd rather be a writer than a technician.

 But I love words, I love language, and I love machines that make the verbal into the visible, especially when they go swish-clack. I have never felt so powerful holding a gun as I have sitting at a keyboard. Lucky for me, it is much more socially acceptable to sit down at a table in a cafe and pull out my sidearm of choice. Call it excersizing my constitutional right.

 So my embracing of new technology has only come as I view it as a return to the classic. Everything old is new again, no?