returning to typography : no more dreams of the ocean and that soup of faces

detailed painting given to him by his friend of the boat they were on together until the injury



He is not working on letter forms again. An unseen swarm of molecules is not twisting and bending like locust in arcs and turns, atoms not amassed in a pen, a piece of paper, a worn chair, and 8 fingers.

There was a boat in 1989. It had a captain and small crew. It was and may still be some color if not under the cold waters or long splintered against some dull rocks.
The men would have been faces, arms, legs, names, but they are not and due to two minutes across a phone line will never be more than a fog if even that.

There was to be a 3 month agreement. It was found by a friend in the back of a magazine with a name of some kind and a readership of some number, these details forgotten, submerged as unimportant in time along with so many other things.

The length of several phone calls with the friend may still remain in old records, perhaps on oversized floppy disks in storage, or in a newer transfer of unused information buzzing away near invisibly numerically in some database of no clear purpose any more but remaining.

The possibility of injury such as the loss of fingers (or worse) becoming clear and one last 2 minute call, its blasts of air deflecting off plastic now long thrown away to decay, in some moment errant and impulsive at 19, this did not lead to missing digits, a need to return to a love of typography and font making born out of dull, repetive physical therapy and time.

He is not staring at that letter, perhaps an R that just never looks right...blows the whole alphabet, makes it disposable and not to use.



latest page of fonts ... 50's office door letter forms and something more of the shapes of old technology...