Bluejo's Journal

Brain-computer interface
I know my hands have something to do with the words I think that appear on the screen. The proof of this is that the letters on the keyboard are slowly vanishing.

My old keyboard, my stealth keyboard, the keyboard of my old puter, my 286, has no letters on it at all. It's not that it was made before the alphabet, it had letters once, in 1992, when it was new, but I wore them off, absorbed them from the keys, dissolved them with my fingertips, sucked them in. It has a Q, a Z, a line of what used to be V, no arrows, no punctuation, the numbers sit there in solitary composure of knowing I leave them alone.

This new keyboard, an IBM, clicky, in a year's use has already lost the A, most of the O, part of the S, the N, E and R are getting ragged. I pretend to be puzzled by this, but secretly I love it. Keyboard letters contain vital nutrients for my metabolism. They are where I get my ideas from, they keep my creativity flowing. They go in and out through my fingers and leave the keyboard burnished and empty.

It's clearly magic realism, because it ought to work like that. It's not in the least remarkable. One would only need to remark on it if it didn't happen. Now I look closely, I can see signs of wear on the Y, M and H. Come to me, keyboard letters, sink into me, refresh me, let your atoms become my atoms, and emerge transformed on the screen, shining in hitherto unknown combinations.