By: Aiman Pasha
The clicking sound of the typewriter resonated through the workroom, the only source of light being the thin streaks of sunshine coming in through the massive window lining the wall. The writer’s back was hunched, an empty cup of tea sat on his messy worktable. He raked his hand through his hair the nth time as he groaned, throwing his head back. Nothing made sense. His thoughts were a cluster of mismatched situations and a convoluted web of undeveloped characters. He snatched the inked paper from the contraption laid in front of him, tossing it into the reject pile surrounding his table. The silence in his office drove him insane as he began furiously typing senseless words into the typewriter.
He had been writing for 11 years now, it was all he ever knew. Never was there a moment in his life where he regretted following his passion. He was always sure of his work, no second guessing. The people loved his writings and he was highly respected in the community. He got himself a house away from the city, his huge office lined with books and a small desk on a higher surface where sat his typewriter. It belonged to a lady who worked in his father’s house in the countryside. When he was just a boy, she would tell him stories she wrote when she was a 23 year old seamstress and how her town newspaper would always publish them under anonymous.
She talked about writing like it was an escape from reality, like it brought her all the happiness in the world and that fascinated the small boy. When he wrote his first story at age 13, she praised him like he was her own son. At the start of his career, she gifted him her old typewriter for his 21st birthday. Since then, it never left his side. Even after she died, he continued writing to keep the typewriter, and so her soul, alive.
But here he was now. Empty. It was as if the bright crystal of passion that lived in his heart had tipped over and shattered on the ground into a million tiny pieces. He felt hopeless, his hands were trembling. Maybe if the light from his window hits the broken crystals on the ground, the colours of the spectrum that will reflect from it will ignite his love for writing once again. His shadow on the wall moved as if it was becoming self-aware. Dipping and moving gracefully across the wall, with what appeared to be a quill in its hand. The quill dropped, the shadow slipped down against the wall.
‘To confront a person with their shadow is to show them their own light.’
His heart no longer races when he writes. His eyes no longer drip with awe at his own work. He thought to himself whether this was his first death. The writer stood up, hands gripped the table to remain steady. Eyes focused on blank sheets of paper and a rusty typewriter. If writing, something he had always been able to rely on, became something impersonal and disconnected, he could no longer live the way he once did, which was eerily similar to death. He traced his hand over his last book which sat on the edge of the table, did he pour everything out? Was he now devoid of artistry? His passion drove him, the sound of the typewriter give him a peculiar high. His breathing became unsteady. The lady who once praised his words would not be proud of this moment of weakness where he doubted his love for what he pursued. She would want him to shout out with ferocity that nothing can devour him. But all the writer could do was curl down on the floor; he hugged his body and slipped into the void in his head. Maybe he chose to continue trudging through the path he made or he possibly lost his way.
(image; chicago typewriter (2017))
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