When I tried to be a writer I was too young to have interesting thoughts. Rimbaud was a freak to be worshiped despairingly. Why couldn’t I be an ancient soul at nineteen like him? I could not find impassive rivers to descend on my Smith-Corona portable.
Now that I have a mature outlook, touch typing may rescue me. The skill requires assuming the home position from the onset of attack, index fingers bookending ‘G’ and ‘H,’ no droopy wrists, eyes on your copy — and sit up straight! My attractive high school teacher was emphatic. Her impact on my keyboarding endures.
In the throes of afflatus my occasional failing is to be carelessly right-shifted from home position by one key. My index fingers rest on ‘G’ and ‘K’ instead of ‘F’ and ‘J.’ A glance at the screen after a spate of keying reveals gibberish. For example, “Read the rune.” comes out as:
Trsf yjr timr/.
In point of fact, this isn’t true gibberish. Train wreck of a false start, yes, but it’s also a map to a message. Knowing the state of affairs, you could decode it yourself if you had half a mind. But what you deciphered would be less interesting than what my delinquent fingers had wrought.
Eureka!
Fun is ahead in shifting right expressly. I could type something disobliging here on my blog, say a snatch of billingsgate, and my reader would be none the wiser. She would take it to be a citation from Welsh or a Transcaucasian language.
I’m calling this gift rhapsodic typographicalism and its specimens typo rhapsodies. The best ones are destined for submission to the poetry journals.
I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.
EthicalDative 
‘Trsf yjr timr/‘
When I tried to be a writer I was too young to have interesting thoughts. Rimbaud was a freak to be worshiped despairingly. Why couldn’t I be an ancient soul at nineteen like him? I could not find impassive rivers to descend on my Smith-Corona portable.
Now that I have a mature outlook, touch typing may rescue me. The skill requires assuming the home position from the onset of attack, index fingers bookending ‘G’ and ‘H,’ no droopy wrists, eyes on your copy — and sit up straight! My attractive high school teacher was emphatic. Her impact on my keyboarding endures.
In the throes of afflatus my occasional failing is to be carelessly right-shifted from home position by one key. My index fingers rest on ‘G’ and ‘K’ instead of ‘F’ and ‘J.’ A glance at the screen after a spate of keying reveals gibberish. For example, “Read the rune.” comes out as:
In point of fact, this isn’t true gibberish. Train wreck of a false start, yes, but it’s also a map to a message. Knowing the state of affairs, you could decode it yourself if you had half a mind. But what you deciphered would be less interesting than what my delinquent fingers had wrought.
Eureka!
Fun is ahead in shifting right expressly. I could type something disobliging here on my blog, say a snatch of billingsgate, and my reader would be none the wiser. She would take it to be a citation from Welsh or a Transcaucasian language.
I’m calling this gift rhapsodic typographicalism and its specimens typo rhapsodies. The best ones are destined for submission to the poetry journals.
z0vz0 3-33 zk,m == Ryjovs;Fsyobr/ S;; tohjyd trdrtbrf [<— rhapsodic copyright line]
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About JMN
I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.