Delete Key, Deleted

I’ll just come out with it: I’m a big geek, a total computer nerd. My laptop is now my sole connection to the world; it is my soul. It lets me chat with my friends in Kinshasa and Taipei simultaneously, shop for shirts, play music, or even make music. With a wireless network at home, the world comes to my toilet.

Again, I’ll just come out with it: I’m a writer, a total word nerd. But, truly, I only need a computer to type letters. I learned this painful lesson when my laptop died and I lost every last sentence, every last song. A writer without a computer is like a plumber without a wrench. Especially when my handwriting merely confuses and cramps my readers. Not only had my virtual world disappeared; my sole soul went silent.

Soon after the crash, I needed to type a letter to a friend but I had no way of finishing it. By chance, I found myself in a church rummage sale during a spring weekend shopping spree. As I fingered through the cast-away jeans, plates, and paperweights, I came upon a black wooden box sitting on a table. It was mysteriously heavy and banged loudly when I laid it on its side. I popped the steel clasp and lifted the top. Inside there was an Army-green typewriter with forest green keys. The scent of oil and dust wafted out. Its embossed nameplate said, Smith Corona, a name that marries a commoner with royalty. My hands caressed its cool, shapely metallic sides. My finger struck the “H” key and the typewriter suddenly jumped to life: a hammer-like arm swung up and hit the black ribbon with a dull thud. It didn’t need to be plugged into the wall or recharged. It just worked. I felt a shiver of excitement. The kind lady wearing an apron said it worked perfectly. The tag said $5.

Back at home, I plunked typewriter on my desk, next to my dead laptop, and opened the cover. I borrowed a sheet of paper from my bubble jet printer, loaded it into the Smith Corona, and cranked the dial. I suddenly felt like a painter confronting a newly stretched piece of canvas. What should I type?

I realized I could type about anything. I started simple: the weather. Today was a bright spring day; the buds were starting to poke out from the bare Maples outside my window. It was not a literary sensation, something I could have done on my laptop. But it wasn’t what I wrote that excited me, it was how I wrote it. With the typewriter, everything was different – it was teaching me how to write like a writer.

The first lesson began when I made my first mistake. The typewriter has no backspace key to erase my errors. Although this an inconvenience, this inability to correct also has its benefits. The inability to erase also erased my need for perfection. On the computer I can go back and play, delete, insert, cut, copy, paste the words around. On the typewriter, I’m forced to overcome my fears and go on instinct. I can only go foreword, warts and all. I also had to learn to slow down my typing and pay attention to every key stroke. Type too fast and the hammers jam together and I must unstick them with my finger. I became more mindful of what I wanted to say. Writers are notorious for letting their minds wander, but this mechanically imposed concentration made me focus.

Writing on the typewriter is real work. Unlike working on a computer, I feel connected to my product. I am not processing words, I am actually making them. For every letter, the hammer surges forth and hits the surface of the paper like two fists from a boxer: THUNK, THUNK, WACK, THUNK, BING! A full word is a knock-out combination. As I type, the desk shakes, the percussion reverberates throughout my house. THUNK THUNK THUNK, WACK. Every letter pressed sets off a chain reaction of minute, yet precise movements: cog wheels click, a rubber belt tugs the carriage, the ribbon uncoils one space, the hammers strike, and a bell rings. By nudging the carriage return, I start a new line of words, threading together a paragraph like a scarf.

When I remove the sheet paper, I can feel the letters punched through on the back like a license plate. These letters are permanent, solid, real, not saved deep inside a hidden hard drive. I lay that sheet on the table and start on the next, as if I was on an assembly line.

For weeks I learned my typewriter had its own personality that I had to get used to and I have come to accept its faults: after a few minutes of typing it slides to the left because one of the rubber feet is missing. When I type a capital “A” the carriage jumps two spaces; if I want to type the number “1” I must type a lower case ‘L.” If I want to type an exclamation mark, I must type an apostrophe, reverse one space, and type a “.” below. There are two collapsible paper supports like two bunny ears.

I’ll just come out with it: I have not become a Luddite. I eventually bought the latest laptop. I travel far around the world again from my desk. But my typewriter still sits nearby. It is my black box, ready to faithfully record everything, at any time, when everything else crashes.

Nothing here was designed to affect you

The following quote is by Thomas de Zengotita which appeared in the December 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. I just returned from a weekend in the countryside north of Toronto; as I drove back into town, passing from pastures to parking lots, these words rang in my head. Every time I make the commute, I see more and more subdivisions and big box stores overtake farmland. Enjoy:

"Say your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere-the middle of Saskatchewan, say. You have no radio, no cell phone, nothing to read, no gear to fiddle with. You just have to wait. Pretty soon you notice how everything around you just happens to be there. And it just happens to be there in this very precise but unfamiliar way. You are so not used to this. Every tuft of weed, the scattered pebbles, the lapsing fence, the cracks in the asphalt, the buzz of insects in the field, the flow of cloud against the sky-- everything is very specifically exactly the way it is, and none of it is for you. Nothing here was designed to affect you. It isn't arranged so that you can experience it, and you didn't plan to experience it. There is no screen, no display, no entrance, no brochure, nothing special to look at, no dramatic scenery or wildlife, no tour guide, no campsites, no benches, no paths, no viewing platforms with natural historical information posted under slanted Plexiglas lectern things. Whatever is there is just there, and so are you. You begin to get a sense of what it would be like if you weren't the center of it all."

Do You Remember Vietnam?

...continued from previous entry here.

Leaving the Lincoln memorial, visitors can make a short walk to the Vietnam Memorial, a place that has become the final scene for various Vietnam movies and documentaries. But before you get to the memorial, you have to pass two squat, wooden shacks the shape of mini-boxcars that straddle the walkway. They are ramshackle souvenir stands with bad paint jobs and wobbly plexiglass casings.

They seem to have appeared from no where. With a crude construction they appear to be merchants without offical sanctioning-- like gypsy. Yet on this hallowed ground of the American nation, amongst the marble monuments, it seems they are allowed to remain open for business. Perhaps they are just as permanent as marble.

From behind the stall, a middle aged man with a standard-issue foam-brow trucker hat guards his wares: a tray of pins from the US Army, The Marines, Air Force, Navy. Under another glass case are stacks of sew-on patches bundled up with elastic bands, some proclaiming “KILL FOR PEACE” stitched below a skull, or “MESS WITH THE BEST,” or “FEAR THE REAPER.” Tough-guy statements, all of them. Price? $5, no tax.

Another case bears items from a more recent war, a more recent fear. For $20 you can buy a poster of the infamous “Iraqi Most Wanted.” On the sample poster on display, someone has written GOTCHA above each face with a Sharpie. GOTCHA GOTCHA GOTCHA.

Or you can buy a “USA Terrorist Hunting Permit” that gives you the right to kill a terrorist, with the benefit of “No bag limit – Tagging Not Required.” However, the man behind the counter tells me these permits are hot items – they’re all sold out.

A man and his wife are pushing a baby stroller between the two stalls, en route to the Vientnam Memorial. They stop and look at the souvenir shop.

“Hey, we should get some more of those terrorist playing cards,” he says.

“There all sold out of those,” she replies. “I already asked.”

The Life of a Hunter

When news came of H.S Thompson’s death-by-shotgun, few fans were surprised. In reality, the shotgun was the only way he could go. Hunter retire? Ha! Never. What would he do then? Live in a retirement home and shoot the blue-rinse bingo players when his numbers wouldn't add up?

But his suicide reminds me of a story about the time when a good friend of mine John who introduced me to Thompson's writings.

I was living in Montreal and going to university. He and I shared a creative writing class. John was five years older, grew up on the West Island. That summer he lived on my couch, an arrangement that was supposed to last a week and turned into months.

John was a study in contrasts. On one side, he was a foot-ball playing, athletic guy with big muscles. He had a mop of blond hair and a badly warped nose that leaned to the right from years of injuries and re-injuries. He would walk around in a pair of flip flops, khaki pants and a t-shirt everywhere we went -- he would not understand why bouncers would not let him into fancy clubs in Toronto. He drove a beaten Ford Escort with Florida plates with a stop watch duct-taped to the dash board because the clock didn't work.

Sometimes he would just get in his car and go on long road trips to no-where America and return weeks later with his fingers stained carrot-orange from smoking too many cigarettes on the interstates. He had a pretty girlfriend with long brown hair and toured as an Irish dancer. But, despite the bravado, he could write words beautifully. He took writing and reading as seriously as he did his sports, boozing and ladies. He was the only person you would see with a skateboard and a copy of The Collected Works of Samuel Beckett in the back seat of his car.

Once, he took me to his place outside of Montreal. His father and a the locals maintained a small ice-fishing hut on a bay of the St. Lawrence River. It was early spring; we crossed the ice which was already starting to melt. John was only wearing an old pair of skater shoes (the flip flops woudl not do this time). We dragged a case of beer with us to the shoddy wooden bo that was a cabin and lit a fire in the small cast-iron stove.

We didn't even bother bringing the fishing rods, just the drink.

Instead of fishing we went ice-golfing: the object of this game is to hit a large plastic ball with a golf club towards a series of old branches that they jammed into the ice. The puddles were water hazards; the drifts of snow were sand traps. As we walked we could see the water gurgling below: "We might have to get out of here soon, if it keeps warming up."

A few years ago, their last cabin had fallen through the ice.

John teed up a ball on the snow and took a healthy swing -- chunks of ice and snow spat into the air and the ball flopped down 30 meters away. I took a shot and we started walking to retrieve the balls. He looked to the shoreline where there was a stand of tall trees.

"That's my uncle's house over there by those empty oaks." He paused and considered what he had just said. "I like that," he repeated. "Empty oaks. That sounds nice. I will use that sometime."

It was just about then that John started getting into Hunter S. Thompson books. The summer arrived and I graduated. I was kicking around Montreal for a while to finish off some extra courses. A friend of his arrived from out of town and they subletted a huge loft on St. Lawrence Boulevard with high ceilings and wooden floors with grease stains from where the machinery once stood. There was a grand piano and bookshelf in the middle of the room. The "kitchen" was a plank with a sink and a 50-year-old fridge with heart murmors.

John moved in with an old typewriter that he bought in a pawn shop on Ontario Street with a small bag of clothes. And a stack of Hunter books and Bukowski books. I would visit him and he would be at the typewriter smoking cigarettes. He would recite lines from Hunter's books -- every conversation would reference a story. "He's crazy."

He lent me the Rum Diaries and told me how much he would just love to go to Puerto Rico and open a burger stand and write for a living...

John started drinking more and more. I'd see him leaving the grocery store with a King Can of Molson and a pack of cigarettes. He found a stash of LSD in the freezer of the loft and talked about doing it for days. Then other drugs, coke, weed, E. To make money he would make runs to construction sites and pitch in on demolition jobs.

Then John took a liking to Bukowski and he started writing poems at his typewriter about his tennis shoes. I’d see him walking down the street during the day -- but he had not slept for days. I would come by the loft for a visit and he would read me stories from The Great Shark Hunt or Generation of Swine. But these visits were cut short when his new friends arrived with more cases of beer, more hard drugs. He toasted Hunter when he cracked open a can of beer.

Days before I moved out of my apartment, I was sitting in my room at the computer. I heard a knock on the door and it was John. His Escort was packed with bags, boxes, stuff. He had his girlfriend with him and a friend. He was leaving for Atlantic City to work at a resort with some friends. He came by to pick up a few things that he left the time he stayed on my couch. He came upstairs looked around and went into my roommates room without knocking. He seemed frantic, unable to speak normally. He pulled my roomates alarm clock out of the wall and walked door again towards his car. My roommate tried to say that it was her clock -- but he would not listen and drove off. "I know for a fact that this is my clock," he said over and over. I could sense a fight breaking out.

"Just go, just go." I said. He took the clock and threw it in the back seat and drove off.

I haven't seen him since. That’s the way of the Hunter.

Apology

Sorry for the lack of posting recently. My web server died and I lost access to this blog for a while. But I have been typing and you can stay tuned for loads of story about murder, suicide, and stale pizza.

Come back soon.

Mike .