But when I began the leap, a great sadness came over me. I loved the writing process on the typewriter, and dreaded the conversion.

Was there a way to avoid it all together?

Was a contemporary writer just doomed to the laptop hell for a majority of their life? The faded vision, poor posture, decreased sleep, endless distractions, constant surveillance, auto suggestions, etc etc?

Years ago I’d rushed to the ocean with a typewritten manuscript in tow, and a trusty rollerball pen, and I began to read.

I was hoping to experience that exhilaration:

“I hate writing; I LOVE having written.”

Actually, I was aiming even higher.

I LOVE writing. I love having written.

But to my great surprise (wry grimace), it was not a masterpiece. Of course, no first draft is, but during writing, especially free drafting (which can ONLY be done on a typewriter or with a pen in my experience), that feeling of ‘brilliance’ sometimes comes through. Sometimes explodes through. It FEELS flowy.

Well, back then, I just typed out each page into the computer. As I did I tossed the manuscript page (fool, I say!) or burned it. I like editing in any form, and I relish the ease of digital editing...

But I also dislike the ease. Changes are too easy. It takes on its own digital life. That carries it away. It doesn’t feel so much like my own idiosyncratic work... only further away, more ‘perfect’.

Also, where is that book now, I wonder? In a hard drive somewhere. I’m not blaming, but that transformation, from pages to digital, was MEANINGFUL. And not in the direction of the dream.

That’s why I launched Classic Typewriter, to be frank. To facilitate this awareness in others.

I write not merely to write, but to enhance my own understanding of my own life... my own consciousness. And I do this better NOT on a screen.

That’s why I’m writing The Screenless Writer.

That’s me, and also you.

It’s a beautiful thing, writing while staying alive to the senses. It’s beautiful and also exceedingly rare. Most writers, like computer programmers, are so tethered to the screens the life goes out of their eyes. Each slaves to tech billionaires in their way (I’ve done both).

Anyway, as I wrote that book on a series of typewritten drafts (approximately 8 though I lost track in the end), it was harder than I imagined. And I was smiling more, loving more, enjoying the writing more.

And hopefully, writing better, clearer, freer.

So my advice to anyone with a pulse:

Ready yourself, slow down, take a breath, and write.

I don’t say ‘sit’ because I often stand. Keeps me embodied.

Escape the screen, and any distracting device.

Become ‘Impossible to reach’ *

I promise, you’ll fall in love with life again. It can’t be otherwise.

Love the flow,

Steven Budden Jr

(Photos below)

* Screenless Precent # 7 ish.

The Classic Typewriter Company

The Budden Papers

PS. Since beginning, I’ve revolved my life more and more around the typewriter, and just writing in the clear light of day, in beautiful places, to inspiring people.

1959 Silent Super typewriter.

The primary workspace… my patio in Chapel Hill, NC. A place I never thought I’d live, after decades in Arizona and decades in California.

Here’s to being human in the age of ai.

Some pen work and my NEXUS cards, my non-digital thinking and thought capture system designed to organize a lifetime of diverse thoughts and ideas. Mont Blanc pen my father gave me for graduation.

And then there are a few stunning works of art.

The genius usually follows the money. For instance, now that marijuana is legalized in some states, there are all of these high tech gadgets for extracting the benefits. They’re beautiful as well as utilitarian. (I don’t use that particular plant, by the way, but friends and family have been showing me the technological upgrades that came right after legalization). It’s not that ‘I didn’t inhale’, but that I dislike the numbed mind affect.

Someone showed me recently … a glycol pipe you keep in the freezer to cool the smoke, and a host of futuristic electric contraptions that look like a translucent Brancusi statue. Bird or human form or smoking paraphernalia? You decide.

This gets me back to the topic at hand… typewriters back in the day.

Engineers and designers were scrambling to work on this poetic, everyday device that was in virtually every household and a part of virtually every story. The world waited with bated breath for the next upgrade. Shapes and sizes proliferated.

After a certain era, maybe the 30’s, the features became fairly comparable across the decades, across models and machines… in my experience. Much of the actual innovation happened in the 1800’s to the 1920’s. After that, it was refinement, branding, style, and packaging.

And killing works of genius.

I have a nostalgic feeling for the early twentieth century typewriter design, way back to some parts still needed to be hand machined. The Blickensderfer 5 Pound Secretary book has some interesting history. Hammond is another case in point.

The variety of design innovation in those days was almost beyond comprehension. If you compare an aluminum Blickensderfer to a Hammond Multiplex to a Corona 3 to an Oliver. Etc etc, you’ll see what I mean.

Back then there could still be preachers turned engineer, or visionary ideas coming to designers in dreams (like the Batwing on the Oliver). It wasn’t such a specialized area. An Entrepreneur could still design a typewriter.

Now my sources tell me that a factory to make such a complicated machine for such a niche market could not even be set up. I doubt it, but they tell me. I listen.

Typewriters took over the world for a while. That’s for sure.

The priest was writing a sermon on one, while the President was writing his speech on one, while the novelists were writing the novel on one, while the business owners were writing out checks on one.

Some of these designs are pure brilliance, with some overlap into other arenas of engineering: notably automobiles and sewing machines: two other household objects that captured the imagination of the more practical creative spirits of the era.

My photo of a Remington 5 (which has been lifted more than once by unscrupulous eBay sellers). (We sell these here). To me these scream of overlaps with the 30’s Auto Industry.

From this moment, we get a unique purview over the entire arc of typewriter history. This would have been hard to fathom in the early twentieth century.

Personally, though I love typewriters, I often wonder why they barely evolved. Like someone or some force unseen usurped the direction and cut off innovations. I would have followed the thread of the DHIATENSOR keyboard layout, for instance. Or the Hammond notion of switching out typefaces on the same machine (which virtually died out until the 69’s IBM Selectrics and the famous typeball.

Something is amiss in typewriter history.

The little Hammond Multiplex and the Blickensderfer were tiny and already had exchangeable typefaces in the teens. Some were already electric in the 1880s!

It wasn’t until the huge IBM Selectrics brought back similar features, but gave up the portability. Beautiful machines, to be sure, but not exactly space age. (We sell these here).

It reminds me of the story of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Car. When he bought it to Chrysler, the CEO told him ‘that’s too advanced. No one will bring that out. We all kind stay within the same technological innovation spectrum, otherwise it would throw the whole industry off.

The Dymaxion Car and Fuller…

Something like that was going on with typewriter for sure. Like an attempt to throttle human imagination, which is still quite in place, now with AI.

For instance, the way the brain maps to the keyboard: the QWERTY / QWERTZ (named after the order or the first row of keys) is the most familiar, but not necessarily the best… for speed or facility. Somehow, it was just adopted and then most alternative squashed (though there were a few stubborn adherents to alternative keyboard layouts).

The Blickensderfor with unique design and keyboard layout… the right carriage knob is the end of line bell. (The economics of space).

Anyway, in this moment, the typewriter facilitates improved cognition over the digital tools, in my experience. Perhaps it won’t always be that way. It’s just that with every advancement, the world of machines improves… and the human faculties erode.

I choose to use machines that facilitate an evolution of human consciousness.

I don’t know of the EXACT tool even exists yet.

Lately, I’ve been in and out of hospitals (as I’ll relay this month in The Budden Papers - which only comes out on paper, typewritten), and it’s obvious: the ‘machine’ is not optimized for humans. Birth, a natural thing, has been transformed into a medical ‘emergency’ requiring hosts of doctors, robots, etc. And they’re all disconnected from one another, so it is a dangerous prospect. AI should be able to remedy some of that, but the powers that be will have to allow the improvements.

The Dymaxion car equivalent will have to be adopted. Elon Musk SEEMS to be doing some of this. But what SEEMS to be the case and what is? There are sometimes worlds between those two. And the propaganda is vast, my friend.

In my mind, we’re always being plunged into chaos on the one hand, and we’re a hair’s breadth from paradise on the other.

Until then, use the HUMAN tools and re-train the mind to fire all cylinders.

We’ll find the next iteration soon enough.

Write on and stay human.

Steven Budden Jr.

The Classic Typewriter Co.

The Budden Papers

PS. Anyway, though these are gorgeous machines, these OLD OLD ones mentioned above. I tried to type a novel on a 1923 Hammond Folding Multiplex and it was hard. As much as I advocate making things harder and slowing down, it was hard to the point of impracticality.

Mostly people think of the machine in one dimension. Stay out of it or dive into it.

It’s more complicated than that.

Pictured is my 1959 Silent Super, quite beat up really, and a 20 volume OED which I use to reclaim capacity for thought, a picture of my deceased grandfather and grandmother, and my NEXUS computer-less thinking system (the boxes at the top). The boxes at the bottom are typewriter rollers, and the books to the left of those are books I’ve written. There’s a vintage pencil sharpener and that red thing is an extra IBM type ball.

In writing The Screenless Writer, and attempting to finish it on a typewriter, a few profound epiphanies have surfaced. Especially as ai exploded while I was writing this, a family member entered a psyche ward, and I visited Yellowstone and watched gray wolves chase a herd of Buffalo.

While I’ve worked to reclaim my body and mind from the machine, while at the same time using machines in conscious ways, I’ve realized that my interactions with machines have, in general, de-evolved my brain. Memory, spelling, grammar, and even thinking had been outsourced to various machines.

This isn’t in and of itself bad, but it is a chilling realization.

I’ve been considering it like this:

• No machine advances human ‘being’, to an extent. For instance, sitting there. Some technology may be involved even here, as in clothes that are woven. But for the most part, this is the machine-less space. Where human ‘being’ flourishes.

• A beneficial machine improves the human mind while it works. Like a bicycle or a typewriter. The human physiology evolves and is aided by the machine. There’s space here for technology. An electric bicycle or typewriter, for instance. Or a pen. Some freedom of movement. Tracking capacity limited.

• An ‘adversarial’ machine erodes the human on contact, over a duration of time. For instance, LLMs, Spellcheck, Google, auto-suggestion, flickering social media engineered to addict. There is a way to maintain consciousness hypothetically (by asking, during use, where the ‘I’ lives and not fully losing the self). But this is difficult due to a human’s tendency to chase dopamine. It tracks your movements and locks down the grid.

So, writing The Screenless Writer has been something of a battle for the human mind, for me. We underestimate how powerful it is to be off of screens, to think and create free of ‘algorithms’ and unseen forces. Sometimes, as I’m typing, the most blissful peace descends. I’d forgotten the joy of actually writing and mind work.

I’m working in the no machine realm, sitting and thinking frequently, the beneficial machine realm, as much as possible, the typewriter, and the adversarial machine realm as needed.

The Unseen Forces

In Steiner’s cosmology, the polarity at work through humans is Lucifer and Ahriman1. Are Thoresen refers to these forces as Yin and Yang, respectively, with few differences. So they’ve been known and embraced since ancient times, under different names.

They work together, in a sense, to co-opt the human mind and body.

As soon as I began to intensify my study, I got the lesson. As for the family I mentioned, I had two family members around Christmas fly ‘off of the handle’ in the Luciferic sense: totally ungrounded mania.

The solution presented is completely Yang / Ahriman: structured lockdown, medications, rigorous schedules, force and coercion (admitted to psyche ward).

Steiner would say that it is not so simple: the solution is the ‘middle way’, as Buddha called it. Or the Christ Impulse as Steiner termed it. That warmth that lives in the heart and creates the balancing force between the necessary dualities.

How they work together in technology…

The Lucifer story compels. Flattery, things you want to hear, promises of freedom. Bitcoin comes to mind, or the promises of AI. If you even start chatting with AI, it will acknowledge this. It literally cannot embody the middle way: that is a human capacity. It will be oddly disembodied and aggressive or purely idealistic and Utopian.

Once you enter the gate, your every move is watched, monitored, surveilled. Because you entered at the prospect of freedom.

With an electric car, you save the planet (Utopian promise), but you now have a car that can be remotely controlled or tracked as needed, that is probably recording your every movement, and that limits where you can travel. (Stay in the vicinity of chargers but also attempt to drive into forbidden zones and you’d be locked down). Advanced gasoline cars have this capacity as well, this is just an example.

The 8th Sphere.

Rudolf Steiner postulated that there was this 8th sphere, created by the forces at work, where souls would go that over-used technology or fell for the materialistic framework. In that sense, you are fighting for your soul by the simple act of not over-using technology.

Human Effort.

Gurdjieff said something similar when he said:

"All energy spent on conscious work is an investment; that spent mechanically is lost forever". George Gurdjieff.

Gurdjieff, by the way, taught what he said was ancient knowledge of a Sufi lineage. He thought that humans weren't born with the soul: they were born with the seed of a soul, and they had to accumulate or accrete it through effort and practice.

Though it is difficult to articulate, I’ve felt this building force as I’ve worked on this book, across 7 drafts, all typewritten. I’ve seen the stacking pages: I’ve felt the inner fortification.

Human Yellowstone.

While we were guided around a tour of Yellowstone in a big-wheeled snow coach, I was inspired by the driver. She’d given up her inane phone scrolling, and taken up the practice of going to the library. She was a veritable wealth of knowledge about the park and its mammalian inhabitants, sparking conversions left and right. She felt… what’s the word… human. While the only young boy on the bus played video games on his phone most of the time.

It’s heartening to see people crowd national parks. Something about that draw to the ineffable haunts of nature still drives humans even in this advanced technological world. Perhaps someday it will be the mere Virtual tour of a park, as in real estate. Activate wind, activate sulfur smell, cue the Buffalo sound!

Ah, experience complete.

Man vs. Machine.

Men (and women) have been fighting the machine’s’ influence since the age of the materialist began. Every time there is a new technological advancement, there is adoption and also resistance. The plow, the computer, the telephone.

There has also been people coming into flow with machines, and then technological advancement rendering those machines ‘obsolete’, but people refusing to change. One powerful example is writers on typewriters. MANY of the great writers still alive write or draft on a typewriter, and virtually all of the older ones. And the ones that don’t often draft with pens.

There’s also examples like Anais Nin finding great joy in publishing a letter on her own printing press or Gandhi doing the same. This self-sufficiency; technology that can exist outside of big tech. Sometimes a nostalgic throwback to earlier times. I know a few people that sew together their own little community newsletters.

Walk out of the Machine

I haven’t written much here, because I’ve been orchestrating, slowly and deliberately, a walk out of the machine. The book I’m finishing, The Screenless Writer, is supposed to be the launch point to a paper newsletter, wherein I write freely and build a non-digital community around it. It’s also the springboard to my screenless writer life as a free novelist. Free as in freedom of thought and subject matter.

The title: The Screenless Writer. Break Free. Write Fearless. Live Forever.

The ‘live forever’ as a profound nod to Steiner as in ‘doing the soul’s work’ and avoiding the 8th sphere purgatory, a lesser nod to notions of deeply wrought masterpieces that endure the test of time, and an implication of entering the deep work space where life takes on a meaning of its own.

While most people are willingly giving life and limb over to machines, relegating themselves both to psychological mediocrity and also physical redundancy, a few of us are consciously walking out on the machine, in body, mind, and soul, and creating the most fulfilling work of our lives.

More to come, friend.

In the meantime, write on.

Steven Budden Jr.

Screenless Writer + Author + Entrepreneur.

classic typewriter.com

PS. Machines break. The more advanced a machine, the more potential points of failure. Through writing this book, I’ve mostly used a Smith Corona Silent Super. I’ve used an IBM Selectric for parts of the book as well, though it has glitched and failed a few times. Though these are generally resilient machines (I’ve used this one for five years without trouble)… evidently the forces at work (Bennet’s Demiurge) wanted me to write this one on the manual typewriter.

One thing that has kept it going has been the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, particularly the teachings on Lucifer and Ahriman.

These can also be simplified down to Yin and. Yang, in terms of the qualities.

Ahriman is the primary tendency today. The over-reliance on machinery and technology. We call this Ahrimanic in Anthroposophical circles. It’s a materialist view of a world devoid of spirituality or even the potential ‘Spirit.’ Spirit has to be oversimplified and then made the laughing stock. It is replaced with ‘science’.

The view is forced upon us at every turn.

Suddenly, remaining human, in its complex essence, requires a very particular effort.

I was always thinking, meditating, creating, walking… and then I’d sit to write what I wanted to say, and there it was, this Ahrimanic influence. The Screen. I wanted to find out how to say what was human without diluting it or even destroying it during the process.

I’d write, and in the next window, digital extensions of human beings threatening to kill or main each other, because such threats are only the push of a button away. I had to get further from those other windows, somehow.

So a typewriter and a pen seemed the logical choices.

A typewriter is great for long-form and for legible thought transmission. It’s great for labels and for forms and for checks and whatever else needs to be done. Recipes, lists, love notes, poems.

A pen remains for all of the in between areas. When I enter the exalted throes of rapture, I can’t read my pen scrawl. Neither could you, I’d wager.

So look around. Don’t do that thing. Resist the pull of this river.

Douglas Gabriels (says that he) gave George Lucas a book while he was writing Star Wars… it was called ‘The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman’ by Rudolf Steiner. So even if you don’t know this alien term Ahriman, you know Darth Vader, and the impulse of the Empire. A simplified one world order devoid of little furry creatures and the complications of cultural differences.

Also, when Luke loses a hand, and gets the black robot hand, that’s where we are now. Look at the at the end of every hand, wherever you go, and there’s the screen; the computer… the ai apparatus. The fourth eye, seeing inward and outward.

Most people climb into that thing, curl up to die.

There’s another way, I think. Unfold, unfold, unfold.

This is why I release a paper newsletter monthly and this is why I write it on typewriters and this is why I help people find the perfect typewriter and this is why these times are so critical.

An any case, these Holy Nights of Christmas are the most powerful times for turning inward to find the truth, especially amidst a world awash in too much information, to befuddle the discernment.

Keep writing, my friend. And do it human style.

Write on,

Steven

The Classic Typewriter Co.

Once, when I lived in the forest, I had to resurrect myself, like a Phoenix from the ashes, using a vintage typewriter.

Why not a computer?

Well, we need to be careful about the rooms we reinvent ourselves in, because sometimes they become prisons.

In the forest, in the cabin, I was surrounded by remote workers, who had ‘escaped the grind’ only to move their prison cell to a screen, and their screen to the middle of a forest.

Not that the forest isn’t better than a cubicle. But what’s the difference, really? A plant on the desk or trees outside?

So as I was there, I was fighting for my life. I mean, my humanity.

I saw clients in deep 2-3 hour sessions, releasing every trauma they’d ever carried. I’ll get back to this work eventually, which COVID halted.

I thought about what I wanted to do, as I broke away from the digital matrix and became human. I thought of writing or making art; discovering things and leaving crumbs in the wake of these discoveries, that people could find… and that could, ideally, compensate me.

Listen. Like you, I’m fearless in some pursuits; timid at others. I’m a warrior when it comes to clinging to what matters most. I mean, I still fail at it. I’ve got scars to prove it.

Now, I’m in the middle of an odd life. Where I write on a typewriter, and run a company that refurbishes vintage typewriters. I sing the song and attempt to walk the walk. The challenge is that my technicians are remote, so I spend time on screens managing that. Not to mention financials and other things.

Systems can free us, I think.

While writing The Screenless Writer, it’s taken a year, not because the drafts took that long, or the editing; because it took that long to clarify the needs and invent the system, pulling references from throughout history.

Also, I confess, I haven’t been in a huge hurry. There are a few signposts of works created out of desperation. I know this, because most of the work I’d ever done have these qualities. I wanted to create from a different place; from a place of joy and curiosity.

So I lugged the typewriter up mountain roads, to little cabins, to ocean side retreats. I live in a Suburb now, with a family. But I am still my human self. It is more alive AND more at risk than ever. Comfort, comfort everywhere, always stripping away little pieces of the soul.

Till I’m just a shred trying to write, staring at a digital screen, trying to rise above other avatar or people or bots, all giving their lives to the system.

I was done with that, so I decided to write The Screenless Writer, not as a book to sell (though it will, after I give many away at cost)… but as a catalyst to my new life.

Spending time away from screens will vivify you, in and of itself. Spending time away from screens doing creative soul work will transform you.

The more you spend, the more transformed you’ll be.

While writing this book, I’ve saved myself from hundreds of hours of screen time, and gotten to know myself (and you, typewriters, my favorite writers, the world) so much better in the process.

This is what I do, now.

The book will show you how. You can also follow me here.

Will you follow the example, my lead? Hopefully, you’ll do it better.

I have a thousand dreams dashed on the seashore of good intentions (aka idle busywork). Digital distraction has brayed my poor bones nearly into powder.

But lo! I hear the click and clack of a typing machine.

Write on and stay alive.

Steven Budden Jr.

The Classic Typewriter Co.

The Screenless Writer (coming very soon)

PS. My next book will probably be about NEXUS, my screenless computer (which I had to develop to write this book)

PPS. If you need a typewriter, we carry the best ones in the world. Only go easy on us in terms of the timeline… it’s Christmas after all.

Sorry for the interlude. We do things a little differently here. Ok, a LOT differently. For one thing, I’ve built my life around NOT being on screens and being creative at the same time; running a few businesses and parenting.

You understand something most people have forgotten: the weight of words when they’re pressed into paper. The satisfaction of the bell at the end of each line. The commitment required when you can’t simply delete and start over.

I started using a typewriter in 2002 - a writer seeking respite from screens, working as a graphic designer by day. I was already burned out by endless screen time, watching days slip by as I moved from screen to screen while my dreams slowly faded. I was drawn to the tactile reality of keys striking paper.

Over the last 27 months and six days, I’ve discovered that owning a typewriter and living an analog life are two very different things.

For years before Covid, I was a healing facilitator, coaching executives and creatives. I often urged them to consider the typewriter’s magic - the way it slows thought, demands intention, creates presence. But I fell into the same digital trap as everyone else - teaching presence while practicing absence, writing about analog living while conducting my most important conversations via text. Covid had pushed my work entirely online, and I found myself drifting further from the very values I was trying to share.

Part of it was being an entrepreneur, part of it being a writer. I felt a greater calling to merge the two. But I became a parent who is on call. Clients who have issues require being on call. The constant availability was pulling me further from presence, not closer to it.

So I slowed down. The irony became unbearable.

I stepped away. Not just to collect vintage machines, but to actually live the analog life they represent. To have conversations that matter. To write letters that arrive by mail. To build a business that forces me to practice what I preach, that allows me to be present for what matters most.

This led me to Present Company - correspondence for people who refuse to live entirely behind screens.

Some conversations can only happen on paper.

Every month, I sit at my typewriter - wherever I am - and write a letter. Not about typewriter history or ribbon recommendations. A letter about what I’m discovering as I step away from screens and back into life. About what happens when successful people finally have important conversations with themselves.

These letters arrive by mail because anticipation is a luxury we’ve forgotten. They’re called “The Presence Papers” - dispatches from someone actually living the analog life, not just collecting the artifacts of it.

This isn’t about typewriter nostalgia. It’s about using these machines the way they were intended - for real communication, real thought, real presence.

If this resonates, simply reply with your thoughts on:

• What drew you to typewriters originally?

• What conversation are you avoiding having with yourself?

• Are you ready to use your machine for transformation, not just recreation?

I review responses personally and will reach out within a week if we’re a good fit.

Spaces are limited, applications considered in order received.

Thoughtfully yours,

Steven Budden

In trying to calculate dog years, I get a little wiser about human years. We're at the beach for a week in New Smyrna, and we left our dog, Copper, with a dog sitter. So it is a week for him. But if a dog year is 7 years, then a dog week is 7 weeks. I know it is a fairly oversimplified generalization. Still, pondering time through any framework puts things in perspective.

For instance, if we live to be 80, we have 80 summers to live. That's not that many. Or 80 Christmases, or 80 Thanksgivings, birthdays, etc.

Alan Watts was said to have said:

"Measure your days not by degrees of productivity but by degrees of presence."

Many summers I've wasted. Some I've lived. Some I've frittered away on a computer. Some cast away presence into future-paced fictions, branded 'dreams.'

No more.

The longest 10 days of my life, a meditation retreat, was also the shortest. It was an objective representation of 10 days. Just sitting there, present with thoughts, in silence.

This Summer I've been Screenless Writing. It's close to an objective experience of the passing days; a blend of present-moment awareness and past reflection.

I'm finalizing the drafts, seeing how close I can get The Screenless Writer book to actually being Screenless in execution.

Rude awakening.

Some people are engaged with the world in a negative way. It is a learned response to the world. It can be adjusted, tweaked, re-trained. Some people die from it, because endless worry, anger, or bitterness manifests as a host of diseases. This is the flaw of the more materialistic medical model. Meaning that it misses the actual origin of a disease and invents one based on symptoms.

Anyway, I'm cleansing on this beach week as well, compelled by an illness I got before I left, where I didn't eat for some days. It totally reset my relationship to diet for the moment. Coupled with some herbal teas and a diet of mostly fruit. Which I'm familiar with, after experimenting for years and writing Edenbound.

So this purge is a necessity of life, and the clearer we can remain, internally, the more positive the outlook. When I eat chicken, for instance, for 24 hours I'm in a negative state. I only know this because I've spent time not eating chicken.

It makes some sense that causing suffering creates suffering, but that is a thought experiment. It holds up to closer scrutiny under testing in this case.

Anyway, how to remain oneself, and create from there? That's the question. Or maybe, how to create from one's 'highest' self, when the gravity is to create apocalyptic visions and sordid memoirs.
The news programs us to be negative, fearful, dependent upon external circumstances. The Screenless Writer is free, at least temporarily, of this influence. So the Screenless Writer can write fearlessly.

Death and Taxes.

There's no way to live without thought of death. People push it off, by pretending they're going to live to 200 or whatever. Or by numbing the senses until pain erupts and the senses can no longer be numbed.
Either way. Full life sensation can either be embraced or pushed off to be felt later.
80 Summers.

I've always rebelled against this 'the only certainty is Death and Taxes' mantra, because I suppose I don't like to revolve my whole conception of mortality around a governmental function. That being said, people go to great lengths to avoid both.

The third 'promise' of The Screenless Writer is the prospect of 'Live Forever'. Doing something, anything, that transcends time and leaves a trace.

Write on,

Steven Budden Jr.

The Classic Typewriter Co.

Little did I know that when I'd set out to write The Screenless Writer, I'd relaunch my own writing practice. But I should have expected it.

For me, the highest human art form is literature, and the highest form of literature is the prose novel, drawing on the unconscious. I love a powerful narrative, but that comes second for me. It's more of a constellation of a consciousness-mood. The epic poem is a close second.

I read a lot for 'practicality', ie, to learn things. That's essential, of course. But when I read ONLY for practicality, my soul languishes.

This is why, every night, I try to do something that 'moves the soul' so that I can enter dreams with angels. So to speak.

Last night I was reading Lawrence Durrell's Livia, the second novel in the Avignon Quintet (not to be confused with his earlier and more acclaimed Alexandria Quartet).

It's such evocative and rich language, after I slow down my whole being around it, things start to come alive in me that I literally can't translate.

Literature! Actual literature!

And how does one get there, into that state, to create things like that?

In my experience, by slowing down the writing, the thinking, the perceiving. Lawrence Durrell used typewriters until his dying day in 1990.

Because he was ever the wanderer, nomad, he chose little typewriters generally, from his early Corona Three and Four to the Olympia Splendid he used later in life.

Here he is on one:

I mention all of this now in relation to typewriters.

The other night I was going through a list of Pulitzer prize winning authors in various categories (not that a prize necessarily denotes quality), and I was astounded to find that a few used computers, but most used / use pens and typewriters.

I'll break that down more diligently soon.

I'm reading 1776 right now, and the author ( David McCullough), when asked about his writing practice, said:

I write on a second hand Royal Manual typewriter (applause) that I bought in 1965 in White Plains, New York and I don’t remember what I paid for it. Not very much, and it was manufactured in 1940. I have written everything that I have had published since 1965, which is virtually everything I have written, on that typewriter and there is nothing wrong with it. And I’m told by my children and my more advanced friends that I could go so much faster if I used a word processor and I tell them, I know that. I don’t want to go faster, if anything I’d like to go slower. I don’t think all that fast and that is what writing is, it's thinking.

Another person who wrote over 5 million words on one typewriter (and used a typewriter until he died in 2023) was Cormac McCarthy.

Here he is writing next to his Lettera 32:

I know, I know, it is controversial to not automatically embrace every new technology, especially in these times when we're taught to throw ourselves down and kneel at the foot of technical innovation.

In terms of writing, more my be lost by 'convenience' than is gained. Editing is too easy, and the mind gets weaker. But I've also found I'm MORE FREE to edit, and more dramatically when I am retying a draft, because there is lack of attachment to the prior draft. In the digital realms, there's 'fear' of losing something good. In retyping, I sometimes try the wildest things. The old page is still there, and I need to type it again anyway.

I put the page numbers on drafts, in the upper right corner now, because they get lost at the bottom of the page and it is hard to shuffle pages around in that way. (On this, I follow the lead of Henry Miller, Hemingway, TS Eliot, and a few others who's typescripts I've been studying.

So, in wrapping up this book, I also was inspired to write my novel that has been marinating for years, so I'm 20 pages into that, using all of the seemingly magical old fashioned tools I've unearthed.

So now I EXPECT to write five drafts as a minimum, like David Foster Wallace. In general, he did 2 hand written drafts, two typewritten drafts, and a final typewritten draft.

It's a simple system that virtually guarantees better writing, in terms of quality over quantity. If anyone writes something better than Infinite Jest, I'll consider their pleas for a computer obsession.

And I'm aware that literature, and I mean the real stuff, aimed at heart-wrenching comedy, pathos, emotional sub stratum stirring semantics... is at odds with the attention deficit, anxiety-ridden generation that is hooked on screens.

I've always lived outside the general stream, so it is not surprising. Typewriters, after all.

For now, I’m just writing on the patio, in love with language and life.

Write on,

Steven Budden Jr.

The Classic Typewriter Company
The Screenless Writer

PS. If you need a dumber writing machine to get smarter, here they are (It'll also last the rest of your life if you stay with it).

Classic Typewriter Co. sells these beauties here.

After I’d gathered up the pages, about 300 of them, I was overjoyed. To see pages stack up toward one’s dream is a significant thing, yes. But I am one of those odd sods that love to edit.

I tossed the manuscript and the dog into the car, and headed over to the beach in Jenner. There I sat, in a makeshift lean-to made of huge logs, bleached like whale bones by the sun, and I edited.

Of course, in my hopeful state, I’d expected to be bowled over by my own literary daring, my own passion, my own humor. I wasn’t.

Hemingway’s famous quote came to mind:

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

I cursed him for being right, yet again, and I continued to edit. There were occasional hinds of inspiration; a few emotional outbursts, and some very rough gems.

So I marked up the pages assiduously, in my nearly-illegible scrawl. Remember, by this point, our hero of the story had been rendered nearly fucking illiterate by spell check and google. (Thanks, billionaires). I had to reclaim my mind.

After I’d marked up the pages, I ran howling back to the car, Ginger in tow. We kicked up sand into the setting sun.

I then made the biggest mistake of my literary career; I began to type, word for word, the draft into the computer for refinements.

The Screenless Writer process has evolved for some years (if you start to do the math), and while I work on my latest book, The Screenless Writer (oh, it boggles the mind to think of it!), I’m editing the draft no. 4, which I’ve written from scratch yet again.

Because I didn’t want to merely sit at the typewriter for a burst of inspiration, turn out a ‘shit’ draft’, and then be tethered to a computer for countless hours. Where’s the joy in that?

By the way, I’d purchased the typewriter because I wanted to write after hours, and I was on a computer all day as a graphic designer.

The reason typing it in after draft one was a mistake, a huge mistake, was because":

• It wasn’t joyous

• It wasn’t ready

• I wasn’t ready

• The 1st draft isn’t made for copying

I’m giving a very brief outline of what I go through in the Screenless Writer book (which you’ll be able to order soon).

Copying into a computer is sheer drudgery. The non-joyous part seems obvious.

The first draft of a manuscript is like a mind dump; I call it The Blood Draft after Hemingway’s quote about sitting at the typewriter and bleeding. Some call it the Zero Draft, to showcase the fact that… it isn’t a DRAFT yet. It’s just an inner purge. So, ‘shit’ is an apt metaphor for Hemingway for more reasons than one… just get the mess that is inside to the outside, even if unpleasant to look at.

So, to go from first draft to computer edit is a flawed approach. The work will suffer alongside the writer.

Also, to only read through once and to do that? Or not at all? No. It’s too early, and screws up the conception of the order, which may already be flawed.

What I would at least suggest, if you’re hell bent on leaping to a computer, is follow up the Blood draft with three reads, careful edits, and then a true first draft… which is not so much a ‘copy’ verbatim, but a ‘Retype’ draft. Like Kerouac and his On the Road Scrolls.

You got the gist in the 1st draft, honed in on the message, and now, going into that equation more armed with knowledge, you can probably write it MUCH better. Without the pain of having to read word by word as you type.

Also, now that you know whither the road goes, you can freely add and subtract. (I usually have to subtract my tirades against the medical establishment or another huge corporate entity which I launch into at the least provocation… try me!).

THEN you read that few a few times, and you can proceed to copy that into a cleaner, tighter draft, preferably on paper.

Once you get a powerful draft in your hand, let’s say it’s on paper, and it’s damn-near perfection (keep it short), you have a lot of power. Leaping to the computer too early rips that away. It also corrals thought into acceptable realms.

So you can retype a draft from scratch as many times as you want. This will be ultimately freeing. You’ll actually get to understand the piece as you go.

Do you know what book is famous fro being long? Infinite Jest. Do you know how many drafts Wallace created of that monster? 5.

I’m refining some of the guidelines for numbering pages and the like, though that’ll primarily be a personal choice. I like to not do it in the 3rd draft, and I keep thoughts modular, so that I can shuffle pages around as needed to get the most poignant flow.

It’s liberating to have separate drafts (I used a different typewriter for each one in this adventure, and a different location for much of it). Instead of them merging into one (digital), you can always retrace your steps.

So, keep writing, and more importantly, keep ALIVE in the process so that your work is vivifying to write and to read. Otherwise, do something else on the computer… (accounting?).

Fight the power.

Write on,

Steven Budden

PS. That manuscript I typed and put in the computer. Books 2-5 are in a box behind me. Book 1 is eerily missing; it vanished into the computer under a digital icon of a folder called ‘novels.’ Shan’t make that mistake again.

If you need a typewriter, leap to the best, the Hermes 3k. Or our intro package is back for a short time.

(this is me working on draft one on a barely working Olympia SF).

Last week we were in the Smokey Mountains, where I finished up draft 2 of The Screenless Writer.

The river taught me so much. To be more fluid, for one... to surrender... to cut through resistance with soft persistence.

The old Lao Tse adages come to mind:

"Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice.

Therefore the Master remains serene in the midst of sorrow. Evil cannot enter his heart. Because he has given up helping, he is people's greatest help.

True words seem paradoxical."

The Tao Te Ching in the Stephen Mitchell translation is one of my favorite books.

It inspired Screenless Precep #4:

'Keep it short.'

While navigating physical pages, shorter works make a lot more sense. In the fast paced modern world (which some of us struggle not to loathe), the shorter work is practical. For longer works, link various shorter works together, like Dickens did when his novels were released in serial newsletters.

Most books are 20% inspired, 80% filler. This is for a few reasons and on behalf of the writer and the capacity of the reader. But I'm not afraid to take the axe to that 80% filler. How close can it get to zero?

So this is me writing alongside the Pigeon river (with my trusty muse):

The situation was uncomfortable: insects bit me; it was cold in the morning, and then it was hot. Mysterious vines made me itch. And then, worst of all, hikers dared to disturb me with a friendly greeting, no doubt designed to derail my productivity. Joking. Sort of.

But the ache in the back, a tree stump jutting up into my thigh, the blazing sensations all over the body: those are actually good things, human things. I think we give up so much of our inspiration to comfort. We sacrifice what matters most on the altar of comfort. Which is never a very soul-rewarding experience, is it? I mean, look back on all of your best memories. Was one of them ever... I was so cozy on that pillow I just stayed there and weathered the week?

So the next Screenless Precept:

'Embrace discomfort.'

Go against the grain of the whole culture and trade in your comfort for something more meaningful.

I won't deny, in a way, sitting on a screen scrolling the familiar or the familiar and yet seeming new is comfortable. I read in the bath sometimes, but when I do it too much, it becomes this womb and it disconnects me from reality. When I'm writing and want to wander out into the visceral world, I take a night walk instead, bathe in starlight, and then a quick, cold shower.

While working with clients in healing, I often had them sleep on the floor, or walk barefoot somewhere, or give up the drug of choice. That radical notion heals much.

Nearly Freezing Taught Me the Screenless Precepts

My daughter and I spent days plunging into a frigid river.

I do a cold plunge on most Tuesdays with some fellow lunatics. This water in the Smokies was low fifties, maybe high forties. What I noticed was that you don't want to do it, and after you do it, you don't mind it quite as much, and after you get out, you feel wonderful; the surge of aliveness coursing through the body; that mystical 'skin', the boundary between you and I, between heaven and Earth, inner and outer... oh how suddenly clear it gets.

Trauma healing is in fact a learning to distinguish the 'I' from the 'them'.

So then I came out of the water, dripping, and these Screenless Precepts hit me like a branch in the face. So I added them to the draft.

This is part of the beauty of thinking and writing and being in the Screenless state. Creative solutions arise spontaneously like the flowers bursting out of fertile soil after a seemingly endless winter.

I was also hit with some revolutions for my NEXUS, Screenless Computer, because it took a far away river to teach me how to let go of being anything other than myself.

And yes, my beard comes in and out of my awareness. Sometimes when it comes in, I'm a mountain man and my better half howls at me. And I know it's time to shave, but because I'm a little incendiary, a little rebellious, I only trim... barely.

So the last Screenless Precept for today:

Write in the vicinity of nature, of flowers, of flowing water or breaking waves.

Love and rapture,

Steven Budden Jr.

The Classic Typewriter Company + The Screenless Writer + Somatic Trauma Healing Artiste

PS. I'm back in the world of typewriters, so if you have an order in, we'll be working on it this week.

Here’s a late afternoon session:

Half of my family is red-eyed and unable to cross the threshold into the yellow world.

It's paradoxical, isn't it, that there's always a fly in the ointment of paradise? Spring, my favorite time of year, rendered impassable.

When the flowery crowns show their light-hued faces, and Anthroposophists look for an experience of Christ in spring, the resurrection impulse is in full swing. And snot pours forth.

And then in Summer, ah bright-eyed and lake drenched, here the mosquitoes come to feast upon human flesh. Have humans forever dealt with these perennial pests? Or have we worsened the situation a thousand times over by being collectively moronic? Ah, I sometimes wonder.

In any case, I'm still writing, and still choosing to type, despite all obstacles. In fact, I think sometimes obstacles are thrown in our face so that we can build our will and learn to withstand obstacles. Steiner, for instance, wrote on Measles and other diseases, and how they built up not only immune forces but soul forces. They have a very specific place in his human cosmology.

So write, and if you can't write, lament and complain. But at least do it in writing.

By the way, my whole body is a-shudder, because I'll soon be transplanting the content of this mind of mine to a paper newsletter. Just to pour the heart onto something real that you can truly unfold. More details to follow as it unfolds. This, in fact, is one of those details!!!

I've been reading Humanity's Last Stand: The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence: A Spiritual-Scientific Response by Nicanor Perlas

And it really puts the ai debate into a spiritual context, which I think is essential.

The main question is ‘the alignment’ problem: how to align ai with the highest human values, and what are the highest human values? Oh, and how to ascertain that ai will maintain that alignment if it is somehow developed.

The summary is that to not succumb entirely to the ai impulse (and become machines ourselves), we must become what we truly are, human, in all of that messy, dis-colored, lusty, judgemental glory. Intuitively, we mostly know this. Some humans believe that we are merely advanced biological machines, so we're easily replaced by other 'advanced biological machines.'

Steiner called these influences ‘sub human’ advanced technologies. We’re programmed to think they are above human, or we’re just like em… meaning, machines that malfunction. I’ve always railed against this mis-notion. It generally takes a few decades of poisoning before the body rebels. Generally.

In the meantime (until we retake the world), simply be and revel in natural things. And if your ai produces more good and freedom in the world, then by all means, use it. And if it produces less, taper off.

And yes, I realize that a typewriter is a machine. Being human may or may not be returning to sharpening sticks with rocks, or perhaps building cities with our minds (as sometimes happens in Dolores Cannon's sessions). For now, finding flow with a machine that doesn't throw out every addictive signal flare is helping to keep me alive and above the cloud of mediocrity and pollen.

I have my smart phone locked in a box right now. It's a timed box that never lets me back in. Made of metal, even. My teenager repeats that often when we seize her phone for the evening.

'Why is my phone locked in a METAL box! Why can't we be normal?'

Well, you know why.

Breathing deeply. Sneeze.

Write on,

Steven Budden Jr.
Classic Typewriter Co.
Chapel Hill, NC

The Classic Typewriter Company | Working typewriters for the Cult of Sanity

PS. This staggieringg Groma Kolibri is half off.

And we have a number of new listings… including this one: (pairs well with Azaleas)

Now, kids in lesson on their screens, I don't know what they're doing. But it isn't tactile or creative. It isn't free-flowing. It's under the rubric of the algorithm.

I've built a Second Brain in the PARA method. I use it for certain things, to be sure. The problem is that things get lost in there. I have the largest, most diverse digital brain ever. What's even in there and how do I find it?

So, learning the Zettelkasten method and implementing it last year was a breakthrough. I was content to just 'miss paper' before. Now I refuse to miss paper. I use paper, rediscover the joy of fondling ideas in physicality.

I've also been refining my drafting and publishing process. My Zettelkasten is called NEXUS (Network of EXperiences, Understanding, and Synchronicity). It's like a Screenless computer.

Here’s a picture:

Since creating this beautiful thing, full of handmade paper in a wooden box, stress is down and metabolic health is up. Why? Because metabolic health links to stress. And for me, digital overwhelm is a nefarious source of stress.

So, I still have a digital Second Brain somewhere, and it still grows somehow... it's just that I don't have to rely on it for my writing when I don't want to.

I've also read thousands of books in Kindle, and lately I've been seeing what 15 or so notes come up daily in the Readwise Reader, and I'll create a Nexus Note for the most useful ones. Its revelatory because I hardly remember having read the original, in that digital format on the Paper White, but now I get a second pass at this wealth of knowledge I'd taken in in a frantic state.

Though I obsessively clung to paper books, I got the Kindle Paperwhite when I lived in the cabin in Cazadero, because there was a bath outside under the stars, the stars in their glorious array. So I'd sometimes read out there, listen to the rustle of a skunk or whatever. Once a bat fell by the bathtub, and when I went to find it, it was gone! You see, I remember those visceral experiences more than what I was reading. Though I had to have absorbed something from those kindle reading times. I think it was also a sort of passive stress reduction.

The Kindle syncs with a Notion second Digital Brain which partially syncs with Everynote and Dropbox. (Getting confused just thinking about it).

So in embracing paper, I've made a HUGE life and creativity upgrade this year. I have a Screenless Workspace where I can write, flow, and play... like in those old days when I used to doodle. I suddenly feel more awake and alive to words than ever before.

And I run Classic Typewriter company, but that is secondary outpouring of my desire to share this thing which has provided me with some of the happiest moments of my life: writing on a typewriter, or Screenless Writing.

My new book is about writing sans screens. Here’s a picture of the process:

You can see that some notes are typed and some are hand written. I love that none of them are in a computer, being adjusted by an algorithm, and my thinking is free of the matrix.

It takes a little discipline and practice to master this process of thinking before hand and adding in essential components after drafting. (This shows the process between the first and second draft).

Here’s the card that captures version 2.0 of the NEXUS flow. Note that more notes flow out of draft one, and they’re captured or preserved in the box, for the current work’s evolution, future work, and thought evolution (the most important part!).

My daughter goes to a Waldorf school, where they learn without screens in general. This is feeding my process, including the philosophical work of the founder, Rudolf Steiner.

I’ve also been inspired by a few legendary writers, and a few non-digital friends I have that break the mold.

So, as one other component of the equation, MOST of my writing will be delivered non-digitally in 2025, via books and a paper newsletter (which I will go into in the book). I’m building a fulfilling, healthful, lucrative, meaningful life around a screenless writing practice.

Something like this:

Write on,

Steven Budden Jr.

Screenless Writer + Analog Warrior + Classic Typewriter Co.

PS. If you want to get the book when it comes out circa March, stay subscribed here or join my weekly email at Classic Typewriter.

I started writing an elaborate explanation of the trials and tribulations involved in bringing this otherwise dead Groma Kolibri back to life.

Because I was on a computer, I had the luxurious and rare opportunity to delete a whole paragraph.

Instead, I wrote:

“Complex karmic mechanical quantum equation no mortal can fathom. Also a business.”

While I work the machines, I ponder, and while I ponder, the machines work upon me.

What I mean is, sometimes I get caught in a quagmire, some sort of indissoluble riddle, and I can’t move the mountain. Then, something happens that is damn-near inexplicable, and the solution to the riddle presents itself.

Sometimes, sales are a dry desert, because I’m hung up on one karmic debt repayment machine. Ahriman is fucking with me, or Mercury is in retrograde, or an astrological square, or whatever your choice of nomenclature. And then I work, brute work a la Gurdjieff, and the machine starts working! I ship it to a thrilled client, one of the few in the world that are struggling to create an existence that is not a mere lukewarm phenomenon; a spark in space.

And a flood of orders comes in, often with very meaningful places and names attached to them. I was watching a movie star’s film, and he ordered a few typewriters: I was thinking of Ohio, and three orders come in from Ohio.

So yes, there are unknown and unthinkable variables that I carry in the mind, I, an existential detective… and yet I also need to operate in linear time. There are deadlines and such. Lifelong dreams to fulfill.

Classic Typewriter Co. is where dreams come true. Literary, non-distraction dreams. Quick, shameless plug. Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, Christmas, the celebration of the birth of the Christ Child, is one such karmic calamity where hosts of issues come up with a variety of deadlines. IN this deluge, machines are lost and found, addresses changed, people depart the earth, others are born. It’s always a time of great nervous system upheaval.

After the rush, some clarity; some sparkle of the coming year. In the Christ child, or the promise of the incipient spring folded up in the darkness of winter, something profound happens across the land of man and machine. Can’t quite articulate that either.

In this fomenting inspiration, I jettisoned the cell phone and switched to a little lightphone, a minimalist operation. I refuse to be sidetracked and waylaid this year by digital distraction.

Oh, my other motto: ‘From Screen to screen while dreams die.’ That’s my bone-chilling hell. Someone had the audacity to reply to my email and say ‘that’s silly, I want to save animals.’ Well, silly or not, you’re not going to save animals by going onto social media or email and writing ‘I want to save animals.’ So, in that case I might ditch the cell at once.

Sean Penn in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, that blazing aliveness. That’s interesting. I know, in reality he is nothing like that. I’m aware of the magic of fiction. However, that idea of just seeing the snow leopard without snapping the picture: that’s how I desire to live. This archetype unbridled in the breast, aching to be free.

So, in light of the new year…

This is my new phone: (I’ve been testing it for a year on the sidelines of my large smart phone, and now it’s my main phone. Everything transferred, all fears set aside).

Yes it’s got dust, sand, and pocket lint on it. The signs of a true analog warrior, I’m told!

And this is my research machine:

It’s an analog Zettelkasten on printmaking paper in an acacia box. Take that, throw away culture.

And this is my work station:

So my goals for this year:

• Release my Analog Newsletter, typewriter-fueled. [Where my most lucid thoughts go to breed inspiration and discontent in a small tribe of wonder-workers].

• Launch a revolution of digital skeptics.

• Slow way the hell down and create deliberate life work.

• Spend more quality time with alive and breathing humans (somewhat rare a thing).

• Break addictions and bray them into powder under the heal.

• Write fiction that alters the human timeline.

• Less time on social media.

Anyway, thank you for being here, fearless warrior.

Steven Budden Jr.

Existential Detective + The Classic Typewriter Company

PS. I’m creating a few books, Notes that Move Mountains and Analog Nation. More to come on those soon.

Here's why.

I once had a guitar I loved. Every time I'd enter a room, I'd play that guitar, a custom-luthier job that I'd picked up used somewhere. It was a glorious beast, if overbuilt.

After I sold it, to 'upgrade', I found better guitars, sure. And non ever touched the inspiration of that original one.

The same goes for typewriters.

I had a Smith Corona Silent for 20 years, and when I let it go, major interruption to writing. Nothing has been able to replace it yet, not event the same model.

It was like TS Eliot’s shown here:

“In August 1916, he told Aiken that he was composing on the typewriter and enjoying lucidity and compression as a result. Most likely, he was thinking of his prose when he wrote this, but it may not be a coincidence that from that moment no draft manuscripts at all survive until the pages of The Waste Land in 1921. Some papers may have been written and destroyed in the act of transfer onto the machine, a moment which, to Eliot, marked the end of their practical value; but the condition of some initial typescripts—many in states of reasonably heavy revision—suggests that at this time Eliot was making his first drafts directly onto the typewriter.

Or at least that he was making his first full drafts on the typewriter, allowing for the possibility that fragmentary scraps or “scattered lines,” as he referred to them when writing to John Quinn, had provided a source from which to draw—what in Margate later in 1921 he gave another name to, when he called them “rough” drafts.

Two years after the publication of The Waste Land, he said of “The Hollow Men” in 1924 that “I compose on the typewriter,” and repeated the phrase word for word to a poet in 1927, adding: “The nearest approach to a manuscript I ever have is the first draft with pencil corrections.” 1

TS Eliot typed page, corrected by Ezra pound. Look how high the ‘T’ is. A few contemporary writers would freak out about that. TS Eliot didn’t care; anyway he wrote his masterpiece anyway. Elite typeface.

So the key is, I think, to be less consumerist and learn to work with the instruments we have. To master them to such a degree that they fall out of the mind; to become fluent. In the language equivalent, to begin to think in the once-foreign tongue.

This takes time, practice, persistence. It's an incredible gift.

Now, without the familiar writing machine, I'm like a man lost in the desert; like Beethoven without the piano (less hair, too).

So what must I do? Well, earn familiarity again. I'm working on that now.

However, I estimate that I lost years of songwriting and writing to shopping. A sad trade, by any account!

Channel the desire.

Ok, I confess I like to shop for typewriters and to buy them and the thrill of opening them. What did I do?

I channeled that into the Classic Typewriter Co. Now I get that aspect of typewriter collecting, without really collecting (because they go to clients.

Where can you channel the energies that get in the way of writing?

Another example, I would write beautiful social media posts, and pour my heart into the digital void. No! I started to write with that energy into my book in progress, or a journal.

Another example is if you’re a food or sex addict, write those addictions out. (Unless that makes it worse for you, then do the opposite).

Or if you have a penchant for crime and murder, don’t murder. Do what Agatha Christie did with her Remington 5… invent Poirot.

Don't die.

If you write steadily, you will improve. Steadily doesn't mean 8 hours per day, it means every day or nearly every day.

People give up in the short term, in general, instead of sticking with the long term. A page per day = 365 pages per year. A prodigious output by most accounts. A page per day is easy, by the way. Usually my challenge now is keeping to a page per day. Like Henry Miller suggested, you want to go away from the typewriter with some life left in you... not fully spent.

Some authors (like Hemingway) ended their daily writing mid thought, so they'd have an access point when they re-entered.

So, think in forever terms. It'll help.

Use literature to evolve.

I've been thinking of literature as personal evolution for the writer, which then transmits to the reader. Henry Miller is a classic example of this, and he is not as well-known as other authors of the 20th century not because of quality but because of censorship and sexual content.

Lawrence Durrell considered is Avignon Quintet his masterpiece, works of brilliance that threaded together evocative impressions to create a whole. Few ever read those.

(Durrell at his Olympia SF. My daughter has a teal one of these. She won’t let me use it. )

Sri Aurobindo achieved and maintained a level of awakening that is almost unparalleled in the written word, and his only practice was writing. I found out recently that he wrote on a typewriter when he could, which makes sense.

If a pen worked better than a typewriter, a typewriter never would have been invented. Truly. Because before that, everyone wrote with a pen.

A pen only suffers in terms of legibility and speed. Though I love pens as well.

Hemingway with a pen…

Letters.

Another component of the men above is that they wrote voluminous letters with pens and also with typewriters. Aurobindo wrote massive quantities of letters and nothing else, mostly on notions of Yoga and the Vedas.

Nothing beats a typewriter for letters because we need to share ideas, and in this digital age, most of us don't have legible handwriting anymore. And even if we do, it is not as legible as print, obviously.

So in summation, type more letters and spend focused time cultivating your writing voice as you come into flow with a machine.

Master the machine and avoid the trap of ‘constant never ending improvement’ when it comes to a typewriter: direct that toward the work itself.

That's the secret of a happy, productive life, in my experience.

Write on,

Steven Budden | Entrepreneur, Investor, Existential Detective

The Classic Typewriter Company

When she came in the door, I was holding an Apple computer over my head, a series of cords dangling from my mouth, trying to reach something else with my foot.

She backed out cautiously, and I kept working.

Instead of doing the work I'd scheduled for myself, this insane ritual of shuffling around items in my office went on for an hour. I moved plants, books, and typewriters from one shelf to another. I removed my filing drawers, and put them back. I tucked cords into holders, and then ran them behind shelves. I changed the bulbs to be warmer.

What was I doing?

And then, after a series of seemingly random moves, some of which made the space feel worse instead of better, it occurred to me;

I'm redesigning a life build around the citadel of my own soul's awareness.

A little voice in my head said: move the computer. Don't have the whole space revolve around a screen.

I wedged the computer behind a shelf, and waited. It looked better, but there was an emptiness there. Now I could feel more light pouring into the window.

The voice didn't respond, per se, but I knew what to do.

I choose a typewriter. In this case, a 1957 Groma Kolibri, in rare earth tones.

With a Mont Blanc pen that I received as a college graduation gift. With 4x6 cards for Zettelkasten creation.

***

Here is the focused set up:

I propped that up where the computer once was.

You see, I'd used a typewriter for years, but not as the center of my reality. As more of a glorious escape from the necessities of life. As a peripheral oddity. Sure, I’d run to it for long writing sessions, though something about it not being the primary tool never quite sat well with me.

Oh, how wrong I was, hiding away the essential thing and displaying the non essential, mass produced commodity in its stead.

I choose to be an outpouring of the soul, rather than a consumer of mediocrity.

To create something great, I need to take in great things.

To solve big problems, I need to cut out the useless arguments and political diatribes. The savior complexes that live and die by what others do.

No. It's trap!

I choose to broadcast my essential nature out into the world, in various media, so that the world ripples back its answer, and that reflection, that echo of all that I am... well that becomes my life. A halting, aching, haunting melody. Awkward at times, but its mine. I die knowing that I sung.

What I notice is that there are less cords. I am happy with this. I think about a Zoom call I have on another day. I set that thought aside.

A typewriter has a few natural companions. People mention pens and watches. People mention record players and books. People mention stationary and pencil sharpeners.

I place a few of those in the space.

I've recently retreated into a wrist watch again, after literally a decade of wasting time checking the phone to check the time. Every time I wonder what time it is, I've suffered a ten minute distraction, and I've made myself permeable again.

I am again committed to being a guardian of my senses; gatekeeper of my destiny.

And this ritual gesture is the foundation of what comes next; a better life that revolves around my own creative genius, whatever form that decides to take, however many naysayers threaten me with commodification and anonymity.

Hell, I've already embraced that; swallowed it whole, shit out fame.

I'm in love again with the human experience. I write again, after a few lost decades.

At first, I'm dumbed-down, like Google wanted. Then I start to feel a warmth rising in the chest cavity; a rumbling in the loins. I need to commit to learning to spell again. I get an Oxford English Dictionary and I read it with the magnifying glass (yes the huge one, 12 volumes or whatever it is).

I have faith that if I get out of my digital stupor, others might follow, and even if they don't, life is better all around anyway.

I regret being a digital idiot for years. When someone called me, or reached out in the flesh, I’d text them back. I’d hide behind a screen.

I become a fierce and formidable thinker, and the vehicle I use to preserve this space is an analog tool that was supposed to have died a few decades ago.

I love that, don't you? To pick up what is supposed to be dead and to create with it. It throws dirt into the face of the throwaway culture. The computers that wind up in the ocean, in the depths, where upon the shore, on a balcony, there is a man writing his memoirs on a machine from 1923 that shows no signs of dying.

I love to write on a machine, an undying machine, from a certain year. It sings of old wars tearing the Earth to pieces; of courageous souls putting themselves back together again. Of steel moguls rigging the game and profiting either way.

I don’t know what your definition of hell is. For me, it is sitting on a screen while life passes by outside the window. Missing my daughters growing, my wife aging gracefully, my friends telling their sordid tales of youth, my own parents’ entering new stages of life.

It’s ok to miss things when one is working on what matters most; it is not ok to miss life because of the lure of trivalities. That’s my complaint.

So now my office is set up for real creation. It reminds me of my old artist studio from the early 2000’s, when I had just a few tools lined up on a worktable.

Slow down to speed up. Make it less efficient and harder. Do less, but better. Earth the words. Witness the evolution in realtime.

What shall we create? What impossible problems shall we solve together?

Write on,

Steven Budden Jr.

The Classic Typewriter Company

PS. I’m putting together a guide to this analog workflow and a paper newsletter; you’ll hear more about that soon.

The Zettelkasten, where every thought gets a card. In this case, a hand made paper card, either typed or written in cursive. (yes that thread is on the esoteric consequences of medicine).

Last night, I was writing when my daughter sauntered in and said 'you're not a writer.'
 

I said 'What do you mean? I write every day.'
 

And she said 'Writers write all day. You only write at night.'
 

Ouch.
 

I mean, I've published a few books, and I write regularly, but she was right:
 

I'm not living the full writer's life.
 

I decide to change that now.
 

Is change possible?
 

Well, I've helped clients transform their lives in the somatic healing space, so I believe it is possible.
 

The trick is to invite the body into the healing process, and to ignite its wisdom.
 

As one of the most profound philosophers in history wrote:
 

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”

― Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
 

To think, going into the head-centered rationalizations far enough to wind up back at that seminal realization.
 

The body matters.
 

When I was in graduate school for fine art, I was at odds with my body, and so was every other artist. In fact, it was uncool to take care of the body at all. Downright non-intellectual.
 

So I spent some years healing and re-working my conception of the body. I also worked as a somatic therapist, broke my neck, meditated for thousands of hours, practiced Tai Chi and made love (probably not enough of it to tip the scales of war).
 

Now I realized how profoundly head-centered creativity differed from embodied creativity. Most writing is head-centered, because of the nature of the tool(s). Of course, you use your body while writing on a computer, but the movements are subtle.
 

That's one reason I love writing on a typewriter. The writing for a few reasons, and one of those reasons… the writing is better because the body is involved. More senses are involved. More focus.
 

I also write standing up a lot of the time, to accentuate this process.

A pen can work too: taking it out into nature, in particular.
 

Better?
 

What I mean by better is: more delightfully surprising, and clearer.

Art is really the translation of an inner state so that it can be interpreted by another person or other people.
 

The best poetry achieves almost a luminous status because of its clarity. Boom, new line, boom.
 

Haiku comes to mind... there is no separation between form and meaning: one is as essential as the other.
 

Sat to type.
 

Every time I sit to type, a startling surprise shows up within a line or two. It's a surprising fact about myself or the world.
 

This is one of the reasons that I'm adjusting my life to focus on writing more:
 

Writing allows me to understand my life, and understanding my life allows me to live more.
 

By contrast, staring at a screen causes confusion about life, which in turn draws me further away from what is most real.
 

How will it be done?
 

I'm going to focus much of my attention on book writing again, and writing a paper newsletter. If you're getting this missive, you'll hear more about those soon.
 

I want YOU to be surprised and startled by it, and to be inspired to partake in this creative beautiful revolutionary act. A soul remembers Hiroshima
 

Dolores Cannon wrote a book, A Soul Remembers Hiroshima. In it, she follows a soul across a few lifetimes, by hypnotizing a subject. Most of the lifetimes are fairly non-eventful; until she comes to the one where an old Japanese man, a potter, is destroyed by the bomb at Hiroshima. The woman being hypnotized remembers it vividly.
 

I mention this for a few reasons:
 

Your body possesses a host of memories you're unaware of: bring it out.

You've probably used a typewriter in a past life: tap into the familiarity to see what happens to your writing. (Whether you believe in such notions or not, things happen). Perhaps this is why some of us feel this odd nostalgia for the old beasts?
 

I also mention it because, in order to get a sense of the time frame, she asks N. what the emperor's name is.
 

He says: "I don't know his name. He is the sun. Who follows politics? Following politics makes you stressed."
 

So he went on making his pots and a bomb fell.
 

Most of us focus on news too much, particularly news over which we have zero control. Sometimes, a bomb falls or a hurricane strikes. It is good to be prepared, but to live in fear perpetually destroys the creative impulse. Because we mistake creativity as a superfluous act, rather than the essential act it is. By way of this, the human race continues.

Hurricanes come and go: art lasts forever. As the old Greeks put it:

"Ars longa, vita brevis."
 

It roughly translates to "skillfulness takes time and life is short". The aphorism quotes the first two lines of the Aphorisms by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates: "Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή"

It's also translated as: art is long, life is short.
 

Forever words. Will you die with yours still in you?
 

So I'm realizing that I spend too little time creating my life's work that lasts forever. It's a certain quality, an outpouring of the soul, that I am familiar with. It is the opposite of scrolling finite events and thinking about short term politics.
 

It is the notion of:
 

My soul came to this earth to create something: what will I be proud of when I move on, when I leave this body?
 

This way of being is exactly counter to where most people spend most of their time. It can be glimpsed during deep work. However, most people are mired in minutia, and don't get a minute to stretch their proverbial wings.
 

I don't want this fate for you. Not by a long shot.
 

So I'll be pouring writing into a non-digital newsletter, and using non-digital tools to hit a deeper level of thought and creativity.
 

I'll be using an analog knowledge tool to accomplish this, and a few analog tools, like a vintage typewriter and a pen.
 

I am a writer, dear daughter, as you will someday see.
 

Write on,
 

Steven Budden Jr.
 

The Classic Typewriter Company + Existential Detective + Writer

A 1960’s Classic 12 in Glorious Array. We deliver machines like this into the hands of hungry writers every day. Will yours be next?

That being said, I also love trying out typewriters when I see one in the distance: and I don't consider a typewriter as fully 'tried' until you've run at least a few dozen pages through it. [People often complain too early, whereas they'd get the gold if they went just a little further ahead.]

Here’s the Groma Kolibri I’ve been using lately…

A Stable of Writing Machines.

Why might you want more than one machine?

Here are a few reasons…

Language.

If you type in a few languages, you might want a machine for each language.

Typeface.

You know that, unlike a computer, where the click of a button changes the font, a typewriter has the typeface built in (with a few exceptions: the Hammond, the Blickensderfer, the Imperial A and B, and the IBM Selectric and Wheelwriter all had changeable type elements so you could swap them out). Dang, my quest to winnow my collection down to one, I realize as I write this that I have a 1923 Hammond Folding, a Blickensderfer 5, an IBM Selectric III. Fortunately, I sold the Imperial B from 1916: on those you change out the whole segment, typebars and all, to get a different typeface... which is also difficult easy to find.

So, for the most part, 1 machine = one typeface.

And you might want a variety of styles or sizes (yes, the size is fixed too, though on some machines you can adjust the spacing between the letters: remarkably I notice this feature on my 1980 Selectric as well as the 1923 Hammond!)

You also might opt for Italic or Cursive now and again. If you need to pound in the aching beauty of it all. (Of course, some computer folks may not be able to read cursive anymore! Their loss!).

Changeable Type Element on Selectric:

Writing Location.

Of course, a portable typewriter is portable. But some people opt to have a different machine for every place they write. One in the cabin, one on the boat (watch the rust!), one in the home.

Travel.

Some people opt for a hulking brute like an Underwood Number 5 on the desktop, or even a larger portable like an Olivetti Studio 45, and then a portable machine like a Groma Kolibri or a Hermes Baby to take when they go a-wanderin.

The pain of getting them all to fit into one.

Some writers are itinerant by nature, so they're tempted to get an ultra portable as their one and only machine. Of course, it's been done, but it's a pain in the butt to type on an ultra portable when you can type on a full sized machine, in my opinion. You'll get used to anything, but the shift up to more features and a heavier desk weight can be downright luxurious after years on a cramped ultra portable.

And trust me I know the feeling, because I attempt to use a Groma Kolibri as my main machine. It’s delightful and challenging as a man who cranks out manuscripts to do so on that particular machine (though it’s easier than on my 1923 Hammond Folding.

A backup.

While I oft find myself ruminating about the resilience and durability of a manual writing machine (in stark contrast to contemporary plastic digital crap) let's face it, a drawband will slip off every now and again. It's pretty rare, unless you're tinkering too much.

So when you're in the throes of inspiration, and you can't wait to get it repaired, a backup machine can be just the thing. Whip it out and keep writing, toss the other thing aside into the pile of machines that need work (and keep it smaller than my pile please!).

Pile:

Style.

You might just have projects going that depend upon a certain style of machine. One might yearn for an antique, one for a modern portable.

Bask in the profound difference between the feel of a 1970 Olympia SM9:

And the 1937 Underwood Noiseless:

Are you telling me that these instruments won’t inspire vastly different words???

Uses.

You might have a fiction drafting machine (smaller typeface, perhaps, with tabs), a poetry machine (larger or specialized typeface, more inspiring), a letter-writing machine, a machine for forms or envelops, a machine for the kids or family use, a machine for recipes.

In summation.

So, while there are many options, mostly you might consider getting down to two or three than can do everything you need (an art in and of itself). If you have the space and budget, then fill the void with typewriters and write! (There's also the drawback that the more machines you have and that sit idle, the more work it is to get them each up and running as writers, and to keep the ribbons fresh, etc). Typewriters, like engines, abhor idleness.

One of the best machines to fill the gap between them all, in my opinion, is the Hermes 3000. That’s my info page about them.

The reason I say this is because it is relatively portable, relatively light, relatively resilient, and includes every feature you’d possibly need. The clamshell case keeps it portable and durable during travel, so while inches higher than the baby, you gain a lot more in the full sized carriage return handle and other features, in my opinion). The closed bottom helps, for lap typing. (Most portables have an open bottom).

Like this SM9:

Which is fine for the desktop, not so good for writing on soft surfaces like a lap or a couch. If anything gets up in there, it stops working until the fluffy obstacle is out of the way again.

And if you just want to get writing without breaking the bank, I’d suggest getting one of these Smith Coronas and trading up later via our lifetime trade in policy.

I hope this helps you in your quest for the perfect words.

Write on,

Steven Budden Jr.

The Classic Typewriter Company.

I’ve been fighting tooth and nail with the digital / Ahrimanic1 influence for decades. Some powerful force in the world wants the majority hooked into a digital matrix, addicted to things that aren’t real.

The problem is, even when something ‘real’ comes through, it soon becomes unreal, polarizing, oversimplified. You respond to the love of your life in a casual or heartless way. You blow up at that distant little digital photograph because they aren’t real enough to be taken seriously: you can’t smell their sweat or hear their heartbeat.

Here are some general characteristics of the Ahrimanic influence:

1. Materialism: Ahriman is strongly associated with materialistic philosophy and the tendency to deny or ignore spiritual realities. This includes a focus on the physical and tangible aspects of existence to the exclusion of spiritual values and experiences.

2. Intellect without morality: Ahrimanic forces are often described as promoting intellect and cleverness devoid of ethical considerations and human warmth. This can lead to the use of knowledge and technology in ways that may be harmful to humanity and the environment.

3. Mechanization and control: The push towards mechanization, control, and surveillance of human life is considered an Ahrimanic tendency. It manifests in the drive to quantify, predict, and regulate all aspects of existence, often reducing individuals to mere components in a larger system.

4. Coldness and separation: Ahriman is said to foster a sense of isolation, coldness, and disconnection from others and the natural world. This includes a breakdown in community and a loss of empathy and human connection.

5. Denial of the spiritual: A key aspect of Ahrimanic influence is the denial of spiritual dimensions of life and an exclusive focus on the empirical and scientifically provable. This worldview can lead to a loss of meaning and purpose beyond the material.

6. Fear and anxiety: The Ahrimanic influence can instill a sense of fear, anxiety, and pessimism about the future, often as a result of the uncertainties brought about by rapid technological change and the perceived loss of control over one's life and environment.

7. Rigidity and dogmatism: Ahriman can also manifest as rigidity in thought and dogmatism, where the intellect is used to enforce narrow viewpoints and suppress new ideas or perspectives that might bring about spiritual or moral growth.

That seems fairly straightforward, doesn’t it?

Physical Symptoms

There are also physical symptoms of being under the yolk of this influence:

Upper body symptoms in the cranium (headache, congestion, perhaps) and a quick temper2.

Once these symptoms root too deeply, the mortal disease can follow.

The world.

Teenagers walk through stores without any knowledge of the world around them, other than a fictive world that exists in their hand-held screen. Watching a video of the Eiffel tower makes them believe that there is no reason to go to France. Or seeing a 30 second snipped makes them feel that they understand Shakespeare.

As we know, some influences are not so easily distilled into seconds, minutes, or even hours.

Now, there is an invitation to strap a screen to your face and go walking around. Sex is digital; money is digital; love is digital. I know at least one family member that has a digital relationship with someone that delivers pictures that are clearly not the person at the keyboard.

Clearly the world as we know it is suffering immensely due to this Ahrimanic force. For now, I advice you to begin to see these influences as metaphorical. Then you can at least learn to spot them without succumbing to the rigidity of disbelief and doubt.

What is to be done?

Well, when a force is surging like a tidal wave, threatening to encroach on every remaining human freedom, what I do is look at the opposite.

Here are the polar opposites of the results of the Ahrimanic influence:

• Spirituality: Emphasis on the spiritual dimensions of life, recognizing and nurturing the non-material aspects of existence and human consciousness.

• Ethical intellect: The use of intellect and knowledge with a strong moral foundation, aiming for wisdom that incorporates ethical considerations and promotes the common good.

• Organic growth and freedom: Favoring natural, organic processes and the development of systems that support human freedom, autonomy, and creativity, as opposed to rigid mechanization and control.

• Warmth and connection: Cultivating a sense of warmth, empathy, and deep connection with others and the natural world, fostering community and mutual understanding.

• Acknowledgment of the spiritual: Openness to spiritual experiences and realities, integrating them into a holistic understanding of life that balances empirical knowledge with spiritual wisdom.

• Hope and courage: Promoting a sense of hope, optimism, and courage to face the future, inspired by the potential for spiritual growth and positive change.

• Flexibility and inclusiveness: Encouraging flexibility in thought, openness to new ideas, and inclusiveness, enabling a more dynamic and adaptive approach to challenges and diverse perspectives.

In my mind, these can change the world. Or at least tip it back into balance.

Steiner might call this constellation of influences The Christ Impulse, by the way. Most of his books revolve around this force being the saving force for humanity. Though whether we collectively defeat this Ahrimanic influence remains to be seen. It is not so far looking good, and this is coming from an eternal optimist.

There are a few other considerations.

The Ahrimanic influence causes an over-reliance on technology, and is, by its very nature in this age, digital.

So another counter move is:

NON digital. Aka Analog.

If you counter digital with analog, you’re a hero now. Who would have thought?

It’s a revolutionary leap, of course. The ‘backwards’ leap forwards.

And some miraculous souls never took the digital plunge at all. At least wherever they could avoid it.

We know of some writers, like Woody Allen, that still compose entirely on a typewriter, along with Danielle Steele. And Jerry Seinfeld, who writes out his jokes on a legal pad; and Dan Kennedy, a consultant who doesn’t use email and makes the ‘facebook ad guys’ look like morons running in circles without accountability (and he probably does mean to).

We also know of every writer pre digital that did the same, such as Nobakov with his note card system.

A system.

Recently I’ve been reading Scott Scheper’s Antinet Zettelkasten: A Knowledge System That Will Turn You Into a Prolific Reader, Researcher and Writer . It’s about setting up a card system for dynamic, organic thinking.

I’m also an advocate of paper in a digital world (though sometimes the clutter overwhelms me. The digital clutter overwhelms me as well, so there must be an alternative that involves the common denominator (me).

Whether you type notes, this organic system can bloom into something that contains your deepest learning. I’ve, for instance, read thousands of books. Of course, the knowledge is somewhere, and manifests as something, sometimes.

Sometimes, I wish it was more predictable. I think of notes, authors, feelings, and I wonder what became of them.

Meaning-making.

There’s a version of analog card project management for Homemaking called SHE (sidetracked home executive) where you place cards in a rotation, and they come up when the task needs doing.

That’s for someone that wants to excel at parenting in a non-digital way. For instance, if you’re managing your household in Trello cards, which I have tried, you fail.

This Ahriman story above is certainly meaning-generating for me. Without it, though, I can create meaning around being human.

My purpose is to help humans be more human: I owe a deep debt to my humanity, that I’ve carried across timelines and lifetimes.

I broke my neck and was ‘reborn’ in the ocean, and I believe that this occurred so that we could come alive collectively, and some of us could be a part of it.

Whatever you’re doing now is as rewarding as it is meaningful to you; as it fits into the context of your life story.

So find a meaning to return to your more human nature: your higher nature.

Ditch these digital influences that turn men and women into literal beasts, clawing at one another about politics; losing lifelong friends over vaccine choices or other bipolar narratives.

The agenda is to turn you into a commodity: do not comply.

I believe that the agenda of Covid was to pull everyone into screens by necessity, in the hopes that no one could get back out.

WRONG.

My own fight.

• I parent.

• I help people live most fully.

• I maintain my biological organism.

• I fight the digital power.

• I dive into the matrix to leran about it.

• I enhance my own consciousness and understanding.

My systems are vast and varied: I have a macbook pro, a 1923 Hammond, a startlingly cool Groma Kolibri, a Mont blanc pen (college graduation gift), a Remarkable 2, an Astrohaus Freewrite.

It all gets so complicated. I’m streamlining here.

My question is, how can a few priorities enfold a few others.

For instance I parent (support my kids) with a business which is delivers analog tools to digitally burned-out writers and humans, so that they can be more present and life more fully.

I do this all from a 10x10 foot room. I put the typewriters away when I have a client on zoom.

So I fight and the ashes of the fight nourish my family earth. And I fight without violence, but by supplying weapons to the non-violent resisters, who ‘resist’ with thought.

I sit in meditation and resolve every thought: replace ‘negative’ with ‘positive’ until my mind is a shining jewel. And then I go out among the swarthy, muddy fighters who try to tear me to shreds; my composure anyway.

Minimalism and my quest.

This is what I will create + refine this year:

• A system of cards that are typewritten and handwritten, fed by…

• An inspiring portable writing station that is completely non-digital. (Typewriter).

• Transition to a minimlist phone (currently often use a Lightphone 2 which barely works, but is a beautiful idea.

• A low-screen publishing opinon that feeds =>

• A PAPER newsletter for ANALOG warriors, with hand made and typewritten elements. (Did I say PAPER?)

• In-person meetings with clients to transform the consciousness of all involved (to replace zoom meetings).

• Typewritten letters to loved ones and a profound slowing down to fall in love with life again.

• A business that is thriving and portable as needed for travels.

• A loving and giving spiritual life with abundance to provide for those in need.

• Leveling up my creative and intellectual life to its FULL capacity (without digital distraction or the stupid impulse to crank out mediocre content)

• A visual art practice that is dedicated, focused, and inspiring.

IS it too much to ask? Maybe, so I demand it. Our life is a projection of our consciousness. Stop choosing small life, I remind myself.

But what’s more, I’m inviting you onto the journey!

Love and rapture,

Steven Budden Jr.

The Classic Typewriter Company

»»» The Rapture Papers. A Paper Newsletter on Finding Creative Flow in a Digital Word. «««

[I’m going to transition this channel to a paper newsletter: first issue is free + shipping.

Reply or comment ‘Newsletter’ and I’ll send you the sign up link. Through this paper you’ll hear about my in-person seminars and meetings.