Poem: Wrapper (cityscape)

I was in hotel during a work trip I wasn't thrilled to be on, and feeling trapped, so I went for a walk downtown and it was cold.  I stopped in a diner I like and banged out two pages on my Hermes Rocket.  There didn't seem to be much order to them, but when I reread them later I liked some of the pieces.  I tried to rewrite them minimally, but organized them into a cohesive poem I quite like, that I feel captures the emotion of my little walk. 

Writing the original brain dump at the 3rd Street Diner in Richmond, Virginia. 

Editing and typing the final version at a laundromat back home.

Poem: Notebook Pages

  

I love this new QDL!

The missing pages in one of my pocket notebooks which inspired this poem. 

Poem: Soil

Hebrew uses a lot of words which build on themselves.  A commonly shown example are three words I chose for this poem.  דם (dam) means blood, adding a letter to the beginning (remember Hebrew reads right to left) makes אדם (adam) which means human, and adding yet one more letter to the end makes אדמה (adamha)(the M looks different when not at the end of the word) which means soil.  In Jewish scripture man is made from soil, so these three words are related and their relationship a reminder of our mortality.

Poem: Astral

Poem: September

Repair Trick: Easy and Reversible Solution for War-time Olympia Paper Supports

Annoyingly my paper support on my Robust used to lay flat, and I would find myself repeatedly propping it back up while typing. 

The key to the repair lies in the relationship between the machine and the support, I needed to limit the movement.

The green arrow shows a perfect gap I could stop up, and have the support perfectly at the desired angle.  At the coffee shop I used some string, because that is what I had, but it looked awful and was obvious (see the white speck in the photo on the blogpost before this one!)

After getting home I cut a small rubber grommet in half to make it skinny enough and threaded it onto the support (which pulls right out from the machine) and slid it to where the sweet spot is.

Perfect!  I only have one of these Olympias, so there may be a bead or something there originally; I am not sure.  But this is easily undo-able and with no harm whatsoever to the machine.  If the grommet gradually wears or gets crushed it will be easy to try something else in the same place.

Poem: Dear Reader

 

The massive case draws more looks than the typewriter.  My choice this day was my 1943 Olympia Robust.

Poem: Cafe 10 and Sycamore Deli

I have been chewing on this one since May.  My favorite place to right, Cafe 10 in Richmond, has closed and I did not know until it was gone. Around the same time Sycamore Deli in Blacksburg, VA which used to be one of my favorite places to write also closed.

Short Poem: Summer Evening

I wrote this poem back in May and found it realizing I had not posted it.  I retyped with a very cool typewriter. 

The Brother Type-o-graph uses a small ballpoint pen, moving the paper up and down and the shuttle side to side to write letters.

Published: Paradigm Shifts

My trusty Royal Aristocrat, whose text you can see in this book! 

Poem: Meadow Mead

The sun set JUST before I finally had a clean copy to take a picture of.  I would have liked more light but it was still gorgeous out there. 

Same poem but an easier to read photo in case the first was too small.

Poem: Naranja

The title begs some explanation and there were two reasons I chose it.  The first is that "naranja" looks a lot like Narnia.  The second is that "naranja" is Spanish for "orange" and there is a legend that Christopher Columbus was eating an orange and watched a fly crawl over the horizon of it, and it looked to him like the same effect of a ship going out to sea.  It is said he realized the world was round at this moment and therefore decided to sail westward to India. 

This is my wonderful 1951 Hermes 2000.

Poem: Messier 87

Never give up on curiosity.

Poem: Bricks

Typed on my painted Olivetti Lettera 32.  The first drafts of this poem go back to December, but I finally finished it today.

The Olivetti is sort of old news, I did this paint job a while ago, but someone wanted to see it and here it is!  I took it out to Panera later to write a very late letter to a friend who follows this blog.

Poem: Spring Please!

Poem: The Zone

  

In spite of the magnitude and awesomeness of my collection this 1941 Royal Aristocrat remains my absolute favorite to use.

Poem: I Am Listening

слушаю is Russian for "I am listening" and is pronounced like the English words slew-shy-you.

Poem: Dust

Richard Polt and I went back and forth once with poems about dust.  I inspired to revisit the topic today, looking out through a very dirty back window of my car into the setting sun this evening. 

My prettiest and newest typewriter, at Mill Mountain Coffee in Salem (once again quite welcoming, thank you!)

Poem: Divine

"Abbott-plane" is a term I made up.  Flatland is a book by Edwin A Abbott published in 1884.  It describes a square living in a two dimensional world, who comes into contact with a sphere and is faced with the difficulty of comprehending a three dimensional object from a two dimensional perspective.  As the sphere passes through the square's plane it appears only as a circle which is changing size.  On a mathematical level the book helps us visualize relationships between dimensions.  On a practical level it challenges us to question our ability to understand things beyond our own scope of comprehension.  It is quick read and absolutely worth it. 

In the middle of this photo is the smallest slice of vivid rainbow.