Like everything, there are layers. It is as Russian dolls, or onions; peel them off if you want. I don't know if I can work my old typewriter. Not because I can't type without looking at the keys, and I can't, but because the typewriter is gummed-up from years of sitting in a travel case getting warm and cold, and whatever humidity there has ever been went through the lubricants. I think its jammed, and the "s" and "t" don't work fast like they should and the whole mass of keys jambles to a stop and you halfway cuss and pop the lid and unjam the keys one or two at a time. The cussing is a sure thing. I should never have let it get to that. I should have kept the thing going. Should have used it. Paper is one hell of a storage and record medium. I thouight about the newer typewriters I'd had. Even the newer IBM typewriters, the ones with the balls you could replace for tack-sharp text, elite or pica, needed electricity. Same with the spinwriters and all those old whirling wheels. Would sure not work in the old man's getaway cabin across the valley over there, but now looking back and crushing the Camel in the ashtray I know this computer laptop keyboard would drop me back to the 1930's, or a century earlier if the power really did go away. I do not have enough batteries for more than an hour and a half of real editing work, let alone how long it takes me to string the words together. Correction tape, ribbon, that was a great thing, but now you can wipe a whole line in zilch time. I wondered what I should say to the old man miles away across the valley, or write to him, or about him. Mae Layton told me once her old typewriter got jammed, so she took it ouside and dumped a gallon of gasoline on it. It work. For her it worked. I tried it on an old one I'd picked up for a buck or two, an Underwood. I finally torched it. The gasoline worked good for that. Scrapped it, with a hundred other chunks of metal. I looked at the case of the old manual, knowing what was in it. My fingers were stronger. No repair-men left. Maybe I'll try taking it apart and clean it up so I can go to the back woods. Still a days snowmobile from a power line. And that was a two day drive in the summer, with good roads, good trails. Quicker in the winter with just snow an ice. That would be solitude and quiet. I do not know if I could get Mary to go. I'd be on my own there; she on her own here. I needed at least a month in a near arctic setting to focus. I could borrow a satellite phone. . . I'd have to drag povisions in, and leave at least a days worth to carry on the way back. No electricity. Not anyway to feed a generator enough fuel. I either get a manual going or practice eloquence and brevity in long hand. Do able. Or I could just tape it. I could carry enough c cells for that. But it doesn't work for me that way... Maybe just the old man's cabins. Go there. Across the valley. Ruin his solitude, with my pursuit of it. It was getting light. I did not know how many more all-nighters I had left in me. Probably not enough. You just had to hope. The Journey not the Destination. That kinda shit. Time wears on you. The words you carve out don't, at least not as much.