I just purchased a 1935 portable manual typewriter…
a Remington Rand 5. A thing of beauty, all black and mechanical
it’s brought back, in one fell swoop, the joys of hearing thoughts
to the clattering accompaniment of letters onto paper.
Here’s a poem that was its first use:
The thing that’s good
about the sound
of old steel slapping ink
is that it’s the sound of thought
that’s just escaped the mind.
It’s not like the thought
that nicely spews
all tidy on the screen
but thoughts that jump
from out your head
onto the waiting page.
Yes…! Way to go! So glad you’re blogging. I will check in regularly. I used to have an old manual typewriter–back in the day–and I loved it!
This is great!
THE CURSOR’S TOUCH
If I traverse the strange canals of Mars,
Or dive the Marianna Trench—online;
If with my cursor I finesse the stars,
Imagineering nerve to joule to dyne
In ways fantastical to Newton’s mind,
Unproved by academics in their chairs,
Who say what can and can’t be thus combined,
Should I defer, descend to splitting hairs?
Or should I just admit that I don’t know
The whys and wherefores of this orphic art,
Concede my grasp statistically below
Their knowledge of the periodic chart,
And wave them off like a unified field of gnats,
Back to their boxes of Schrodinger Cats?
~ D. Edgar Lamp (Sonnet)
DYNE & DASH
Let’s dyne on some cognitive joules,
And chew on reality’s rules,
Just slice up the Gordian Knot,
And nuke it right here on the spot,
Let why be the coming because,
And here be the dream that once was.
It’s time to dash out of this place,
Escape from the old data base,
Leap into the quantum of things,
Thread silicon needles with strings,
Release our old Icarus fear,
And fly the new tip of our spear.
~ D. Edgar Lamp
ONE DIMENSION UP
Let’s say for sake of argument
That like a map which signifies
A territory not itself,
This earth of ours beneath blue skies,
This habitat we call our home,
Is just a map of someplace else—
Some Kubla Kahn, some pleasure dome,
Just one dimension up the stair
From map to globe, and globe to there.
And if our supposition’s true,
That This is just a map of That,
Then every stone and leaf and face
Is pointing off to where it’s at,
An emblematic metaphor
Of some immense uncharted place;
Degrees of freedom to explore
Beyond our tethered flesh and bone,
A field of vision still unknown.
What follows then from this new view,
This paradigm of shifted scale?
How should we move toward this new light
From our topography of braille?
How would a two-dimensional man
Imagine climbing, jumping, flight,
Beguiled within his diagram?
If we would go, then let’s begin
By asking God to stretch our skin.
~ D. Edgar Lamp
Just knocking down the weeds and kicking away a few stones to keep the path between your site and mine passable. May your thesis soon be finished.