LANGDELL

Late at night, I used to stand outside Landell and listen to the sound of typewriters. I was certain that great works of genius were being committed to eraseable text weight paper. I didn’t think it was all genius, of course, but there were so many typewriters, and they were all going so quickly, and the sharp punching clicks I found exciting, especially when it was snowing, especially when it was dark.

I wondered if it was that one typewriter that worked so slowly, and steadily. Or perhaps the other that seemed to be the Devil Down in Georgia, as the song used to say. Perhaps it was the typewriter that hadn’t even started yet–the thoughts were still coming, and cigarettes were yet to be smoked and savored before an A-HA! made itself manifest. Perhaps it was simply all of the above, and that I was wrong–nothing but genius is here with us tonight.

No matter what, I was certain that an act of genius was being committed, or would soon be, inside where it was warm and amber gold and removed from the snow, snow which was also something quite brilliant that I was happy to discover, and something that I liked to see when I was inside, and probably something that was being written about inside by someone, at least one someone, who was barely dressed, smoking furiously, aching in at least eight fingers, still young for the time being but still could barely see me outside the window and could care less if he did, shivering and not thinking good thoughts at all, for reasons of genius I do not think that I will ever know.