Intimate Feel

Intimate feel:

there’s an intimate feel to holding a pen, writing — at one time, perhaps twenty years or so ago, everything I wrote was handwritten, usually on a yellow legal pad, and almost always illegible to anyone aside from myself, although often even I couldn’t later decipher what was written. I never bothered practicing typing past my basic grade school lessons, and long believed that as an instrument used for producing art that it lacked a certain intimate feel, being an object that caused a true sense of separation between myself and what I felt was the holiness of words and the act of writing prose and poetry. A pen was hand held, deeply recognized by my body as an extension of the source of words and inspiration, an essential instrument delivered by the muse for sacred use alone. Writing with a pen felt comfortable, personal, an act of actual communication with something larger, greater, than myself.

and now I use a keyboard, typing everything in almost continuous contact with the board, my fingers in a light caress of inspiration, motion, and then a pause for words to gather, fingers still held against the keys, patient, yet eager for the caress to carry on. It’s just as intimate as before, maybe more so, kinetic, a swift connection of words and fingers with an easy grace between them.