Two Typewriters

Bonus Birthday Substack For All

These are our typewriters. Hers and His. Mine’s the one on the right, Katy’s is the one on the left — of course: it’s in her colour! Mine is a Tippa, one of the, erm, type favoured by Stanley Kubrick. Katy’s one is a Smith Corona. Also a classic. Favoured by nearly everyone at one time. (In a different time).

I’ve fetishised typewriters my whole life. I used to bash away on an old typer my mum and dad occasionally used for real. Later, as a teen, I was given an electric typewriter, and I dashed out my first poems. Somewhere, still, I have folders and folders of them. But they’re hidden in a high-up storage spot. And that’s as the court order would have it.

Look at these though — these two busted but beautiful typewriters. I look at them everyday, side by side. I can’t help but think how perfect they are as a pair. Her one: Looking beautiful, its blank page there, a symbol of what’s to come, of what might currently be cultivating; of what’s being dreamed for another time. Mine: With its page full already, and it’s just the same line over and again. Repeating and repeating and repeating itself (lol). That’s a cruel self parody masquerading as a tribute to a film (the line read is: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy). It’s not just a nod to Kubrick, it’s a reminder to keep at it.

I wake early and put things into place — as best I can — by typing words on a laptop and positioning them just so on Ye Olde Internette. It is work. It is play.

That sets me up for any day ahead. Any. If I miss the chance to sit with some music and type a few words, I’m ever so slightly out of sort. My typewriter is always full. That’s not always a good thing, but sometimes it is. It’s just always a thing. And that’s the part that — I believe — makes it good.

I sit up alone, and that’s also okay. I look over at my typewriter, a symbol of and for the ‘work’ I’m doing. It’s never alone. It’s right there with her typewriter. And I like that. We purposely positioned them just so.

Today is my birthday. It’s no big thing. Birthdays aren’t much either way when you’re a parent. No shame in getting older, no issue at all. But the celebrations in the house are always for the youngest.

Today is no day off. And weirdly, I woke up at 4.15am — the stamp on my baby book tells me I was born at 4.16. So here I am leaning right into the birthday, honouring my birth in the only way I know.

I get up and hit the letter-keys on the keyboard as if they owe me money. Because, well…

A few minutes later Katy joins me. She has her book. And the dogs. Tells me she wants to sit up with me and read, since it’s my birthday.

We have coffee together, and she only suggests a small edit to the volume of the music. And then she drifts straight back off to sleep. Her page still empty, the thoughts to fill it forever gathering. I’m awake and on guard over the house, as is my role. I’m working hard when not working to make up for all that time when I didn’t know what to do or how to be or who I was. I’m filling my page — even if it’s with the same old words. But I look over at Katy, sleeping. Beautiful. Peaceful. Calm. Only one or two snores to punctuate the soft music. The rain comes in hard with its own punctuation. Its added percussion. We are safe here in this room. In our home. Two typewriters.

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