Backwards in the sun

Backwards In the Sun

A man loathe to give up the manual typewriter
To bow to the age of computers
Who liked push reel lawn mowers
Wringer washers
And treadle sewing machines:

I announce that
Something good happened here to mitigate
My reluctant accessions adopting the new over the old
While sitting as a machinist
Marveling at what my word processor
And color printer can do;

I like to correspond with fountain pen
And then hang the letter backwards in a sunny window
For a while before sending
To study the line without the ability to read text
As though the right or wrong will show
And save me from mistake or unmeant innuendo

Hand script, even supposedly horrible hand script
Sometimes dangerous from the front side
Takes on a loveliness when viewed backwards
And this is interesting when one thinks
Of evaluations involving all angles and facets
Rather than merely the most obvious surface

(How often have I sent letters not so carefully inspected)

The thinner the paper for this sunlit viewing
The better:
I remembered a box of old onion skin typing paper
I had from when thinner meant more copies
Yielded by typewriters and carbon paper
Before clicks and double clicks and infinite production

I got this dusty box down and opened the lid
To find nearly a full box of crispy thin sheets
Audibly-crinkling onion skin paper
Talking paper very loud to the touch
After all that time being cooped up

Like a presumed useless ugly duckling
Or love-starved oldster getting dryer
It leaps to respond to the slightest tactility
And you cannot buy it anymore
Who needs it?

On the word processor so novel to me
I can practically put cardboard through
And obtain glorious-looking pages
But they don't talk when I handle them
They are dead except for the images on them
Not so with onion skin
It says something

You must be of an age to appreciate V Mail
From World War II when loved ones communicated
Across seas on government-mandated crackling tissue paper
To keep the weight of transport down
And to reduce bulk
It was a practical and beautiful medium

I inspected my father's letters then on the flip side to the light
After I had digested all from the most obvious facade
I knew there must be more from him than that
Which showed on just one surface;
I was only six years old

I searched side-ways both sides and between the lines
I became familiar with the look, feel and sound of onion skin
My one contact with Dad and so much preferred
To the dreaded telegram on dead yellow paper;
That bad paper never wanted never came here
And to find a whole box of lively paper fifty years after
Those haunting hungry scrutinies was a blessing

I had it among my high basement cobwebs
Must have known it had value
It had escaped years of throwing out
In silent peace like a covered bird
Intact a perfectly good box of now off-white paper

Backwards fountain-penned sheets in sunny windows
Will vibrate while this irreplaceable and
Obsolete box lasts

It will last long this new lost art
Because there are so many dry leaves fitted in the old box
Like memories they are so very thin
But strong
Tearing such gossamer is not as easy as you'd suppose

In my cyberspacial kingdom there are many color images
In my computer's memory favorite old snapshots
And vivid drawings I've committed to that realm
And my fountain pen will not quit till I do

A way is pointed to a blending
Validating procedures and leanings in the doing,
Printing computer-generated transparencies
On talking paper - with penned script -
And backlighting these marriages not on an electric monitor
But in the window backwards in the sun


[DD circa 2001]



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