i could buy a typewriter

“it's something about the feel, y'know?”

(i don't know, but i pretend)

“mechanical keyboards get close,

but, you know, its just not

the same. this is the real deal.”

i nod politically.

i can't take my mind off the price.

i could buy

new tires

for that much.

“so you really got that

for $400?”

“yeah, a steal too!”

my eyebrows raise

“oh, don't look like that -

it's worth it! here, just

sit down, try it!”

i take a seat at a mahogany desk,

with a real Emeralite lamp,

in front of a black steel typewriter.

on the back decal: “UNDERWOOD”

all in all, quite a setup.

i put my finger at the base, try to lift -

“heavy as hell!”

“yeah, it sure is. but type!”

I pound out a few clicks:

“Hello world...”

i look at him as he looks at me

expectantly;

“wow, that's really...something, man!”

i'm signaled out of the chair.

we finally get to the beers.

an alright night, overall.

walking back to my car,

i look at my tires,

and think about a typewriter.

~~~~~~~~~~

These things, these items, were they ever really what we thought they were? So many of us are inclined to think: "This is me, THIS is my craft / muse / tool / identity." But what have things done for me lately?

I must sit here in a wooden box with a little Pope on the other side of the booth. I sit and I feel every attachment I've ever had, and I know attachment itself to be a vice. Perhaps I am not as Buddhist as I would like to think. "Who knows..." I silently say in a dismissive resignation. "I should know..." I reply with a resolute disappointment.

Hails and lamentations said inauthentically are worse than not saying them at all. Were I to have a mahogany desk, an Emeralite lamp, an Underwood typewriter, surely I would have a claim to an aesthetic - but what sort of prayer is an image? Between simulacrae, one never finds the Real; within simulation, the Real is forsaken.

There is a prescription given by these modern priests. And surely there are priests, even outside the churches! Those who profess guilt, those who profess healing through guilt, those who give out commands as if they were medicine - to believe something, to take something, to have something, to buy something...

Commodities weigh down the heart. To live, at least in such a capitalism, is to be a long time sick. That pig-face philosopher was such a prophet (though it is an intuition of many that prophets have never been a sign of good health, collectively or otherwise...). Is it I that am sick, or the world? Is it prideful to ask such a question, or moreso to normalize the greed of typewriters and tires?

So serious here! What bad air, what a stench of morose and inaccurate "wisdom!" The word "pretentious" comes to mind, yet I am at a second-hand desk with an old refurbished laptop, using letters and words that have existed long before me. I have not bought them, nor taken, begged, borrowed, stolen...though every artist, so far as they must battle their pretentions, should admit their weakness of heart, their hridaya daurbalyam.

These things are what allow myself to be weak. That I can look at my tires and be tempted to trade for a typewriter is itself a sign of weakness both ways; either I dream to a fault, or am practical to a fault. Either way, the fault, the vice, the confession, is my own.