Smith-Corona

[rebeccmeister]

One of my most-treasured, least-used, most awkwardly bulky possessions is an old typewriter I rescued, happen-stance, from an estate sale in Seattle for a mere five dollars some six and a half years ago. I brought it back to Boston with me the summer I had only ten dollars for two weeks. The case was battered on the airplane ride, and something in it came apart, but I was so poor and bored that I had nothing better to do than to take it apart and figure out how to fix its simple mechanics across several evenings--my most fond memories of time spent in that room in that house (before I moved into a different, better room).

It is no quiet affair; its obnoxious slapping keys are the happy clack of pretend-productivity (who types documents anymore anyway?). I type on it not for the sake of substance, but for the sake of text applied directly to paper, unfiltered. I neglect it for long periods and then occasionally haul it out for aesthetic reasons (the writing of useless story fragments or things that pass as a sad excuse for poetry).

D noticed it in the corner the other day and so I feel compelled to fill in the narrative just a touch more. It is a beautiful bastard of a machine and is much more reliable than any computer I ever owned. A grand extravagance.