Text (retyped for searchability but not edited):
The bugger is that I’m out of coffee. Losing apostrophes and adding spaces. My first attempt at a sentence haunts me on the back side of this paper. This physical dead tree in my typewriter. The sentence draws nearer every time I slide the platter back to its starting point on the far left side. “Jay Patrick is trying to type on a typewriter.” Only there was no capitalization – I couldn’t be concerned with that all those 90 minutes ago… nor missed letters nor punctuation. I still – get this – thought I could type like I always do. I scoff at that me from 90 minutes ago. So young and innocent and forward-thinking. The sentence has come much closer already. Creeping. Crawling. I look down to the keys. I look up. Because this composition requires all of my focus. All of my attention. There’s no room for iTunes or e-mail or Twitter. No room in my brain and especially on the page. I just cheated the margin to fit the “e” and the “.” at the end of that last line. I expect I’ll probably have to do it again. I hope all this clatter isn’t keeping my two-year-old daughter awake. I look up. The sentence has fallen behind the top edge of my paper. It is obscured by still visible. Just above the sentence that begins… “losing apostrophes.” But as I type it has no completely disappeared behind the text, behind the page. I boldly typed without want of timeliness. By the time I finished the sentence the truth had evaporated. Typing in this, this archaic fashion requires a bold approach. Let me try that again. Typing requires a boldness. One more time. Typing is bold. Creating is bold. What I am about to type cannot be erased, modified or corrected. It is what it will be. Nothing more profound or nothing less. (Now I’ve gone and changed the line spacing. I have no idea how I did that. I’m sure it will take ten minutes to figure that out.) Everything that is old is new again. (I figured out the line spacing thingamabob. Huzzah. Now if I could figure out why some of my capital letters hit the roof I’ll be golden.) That initial sentence is now long gone. I do not miss it because I’ve got more pressing concerns. Like my next sentence. And the one after that… and the one after that.
I can’t keep looking back.
Soundtrack by Pink Turns Blue. It just fits the mood.
