I went out to buy a computer this week. I don't want to replace my computer, you have to understand, but it's forcing my damned hand here.

Sure, it's old and kinda crappy. All right, I'll admit that the monitor is losing the red channel so that everything appears blue. It's like reading inside a smurf's ass some days. And I'll even tell you that the thing shudders and stalls and sometimes burps. It's an old beast, and after many years of the good hunt, it is slowly giving up the chase for sleep.

That'd be fine if I didn't need it. If it was a shaver I could just toss the fucking thing and keep moving. So my beard grows in a bit thicker this month, so what? I have time to find a new shaver. The computer -- it isn't like that.

Sometimes, 3 a.m. I'll be in bed and wake up in a sweat. All I can do is walk, shaking, to my machine and sit down to hammer out some words. I couldn't live without it for an extended period of time. No, I have to replace it preemptively. Take it out before it gets me. Kill or be killed. Upgrade or die, commie bastards.

This should be simple. Six years ago it was simple. You go out. You hand someone some cash. You come home, open a box, and there's a machine inside it. If you're lucky it even works. That's all there was to it. But not now, oh no.

I wanted to just go to a store and get something so... well... I did. I walked right in and found the computer section. It was full of printers and laptops and monitors and... almost no computers. Still, that was fine. I found a guy to help. You know... a guy.

"Hey man," I nodded at him as I approached, "I'm looking for a computer."

"To, uhhh, do what with?" he asked as he took out a phone and tapped a text message out to someone.

"What? I want a computer. I don't need a blender. Just a computer. To write on."

"Oh, you want a tablet." He nodded sage-like and walked me over to a row of laptops so shiny you just knew they were utterly worthless.

I looked at him and imagined the other two heads he had to be hiding. I tried again. "I…" I spoke slowly, as if to a baby, a wall or a dead dog, "want... a... computer. Not a... whatever the fuck."

He shrugged and walked away towards another set of high gloss plastic. I left for the bar. I had to fortify myself with a little something. I needed to bolster my courage. When did it become about gigabytes and Core Duo chips? I guess it always has been, really, but some part of me longs for the typewriter again.

The sharp tack of keys under your fingers. The smell of the ink and paper. The swift movements of a roller here, a key there, a thing of solid structure and beauty. We've lost it. Now we rely on things we can't see to make magic turn into the printed word. And I'm down with that, I embrace it - mostly - but damn it all I want a typewriter. I want to write the way we were meant to mechanically write. It took effort and skill to do. You took classes, just to learn how to press buttons marked with symbols you already knew by heart! That's how special they were.

Now it's mushy chiclets and mice. Everything is soft and quiet and unassuming. Writing used to have thunder. It shook the room when a writer plied his craft. No longer. It used to leave you shell-shocked. You'd sit and write for hours, and the steady cracks, bangs, booms, dings, and whirrs of the machine would infiltrate your every pore. Your hands would vibrate with the hum of the machine; your bones would shake preemptively as your fingers hovered over keys.

Now it's silence.

Now it's sterile.

I'm back, for now, to writing in a bar. I got a laptop, after all that fuss, and I couldn't stand the silence of the machine. So I take it to the bar and try not to get it too wet. It's a start. But I still want to recapture the feeling of writing again. Somehow.

Once I manage that I can try and recapture other feelings.

One step at a time.