I got a new typewriter!

Pictures up soon, now I need a good scanner/printer/copy machine. Maybe a good drafting table?

details of a sunset

"That was stupid. Almost got run over by a bus..."

The street was wide and gay. The colors of the sunset had invaded half of the sky. Upper stories and roofs were bathed in glorious light. Up there, Mark could discern translucent porticoes, friezes and frescoes, trellises covered with orange roses, winged statures that lifted skyward golden, unbearably blazing lyres. In bright undulations, ethereally, festively, these architectonic enchantments were receding into the heavenly distance, and Mark could not understand how he had never noticed before those galleries, those temples suspended on high.

Foreword

Nicolas Gavin was a mourner with no tragedy. Among other things he was a chronically late and an habitual drunk. He could be vitriolic at times and in the next instant be incredibly sincere. One could only imagine what the world was to him or how a day went for him. I remember one time, and I write about this in a later chapter, I had been with him maybe three hours. I was paying his bills, preparing his letters for the mail the way I always did when he reached out and took hold of my arm. In perfect silence he seized my arm just above the wrist as I wrote his name on an envelope. I knew his temper and by now knew how to handle it. As calmly as I could because, you see, I was a bit startled, I traced with my eyes a path from my unfinished words up my arm to his arm and up to his eyes. They were wild.-Never write my name with those clumsy letters- he was quiet and restrained- if I have to tell you again, you dumb cunt, not to write my name with those clumsy, childish letters of yours… he trailed off momentarily as he collected his thoughts. He began to speak again but instead sat down beside me. More naturally this time he began again –you hold your pen too tightly, if you relax your fingers your handwriting will look more natural. This is your mark, this is what you send out into the world to let it know you’re here and you exist and you’re reaching out to it. That pen is your implement; it’s at once your rip cord and your detonator. You should treat it with the reverence it deserves. Now the typewriter and the computer- Nick scratched his beard and, finally having freed my arm, turned to leave the room. Over his shoulder he finished his thought –you can’t caress those jackals. Those putrid little machines must be punished- Everyday was like this with nick. He at once loathed me and opened up to me in the deepest sense. Every word was carefully chosen among several choices. Every sentiment was expressed most emphatically. In brief, it was as if he were a raw nerve hidden under a thin veil of propriety and duty.

Nicolas Gavin was a lot of things but above all else he was a writer, he was a poet. While none of us knew the day his death would come so soon, least of all Nick, we’ve got his brilliant words to remember him by and Nick may finally have gotten his tragedy.