arkallen
Distinguished member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2009
- Messages
- 268
- Reason
- Other
- Diagnosis
- 05/2009
- Country
- AU
- State
- VIC
- City
- Wodonga
I’m rattled. There’s no skirting the issue: my keyboard’s betrayal is shaking the core of my being. I just love typing, or I did; and for many months it has been a lifeline of communication. But too suddenly it's becoming a thing of the past.
For a long time now I have been rolling along through the various losses and challenges of my unknown condition with a belief that no matter what comes my way, there will always be a “Graceful Companion” alongside each less welcome intruder. For three years there has been a patch of blue in every cloudy sky; sometimes a small patch admittedly, but redeeming virtue seemed to attend each adversity I faced. Events have fitted together in such a manner that I have been able to embrace them with faith, by and large, knowing that I was not the lonely victim of random misfortune, but that there was a divinely ordered providence to life. At times the Graceful Companion has taken the form of miraculous provision: extraordinary gifts such as our home in Paradise; or more commonplace wonders like the many successful adventures Bugger, my power wheelchair, and I have shared; often with astonishing timing in regards to boggings, break downs and spare parts. Sometimes the Graceful Companion has appeared as a tangible sense of the presence of the Almighty himself; or as the rich companionship and fullness-of-life to be found in silent contemplation. My current experience, however, has yet to yield that familiar balance.
Six months ago I was expounding the joys of the keys in Typing School . The pleasurable years of touch-typing developed into something much more serious between my keyboard and I once the need for her assistance became acute last year. We were a couple, we were co-dependent; she relishing the lightning sharp caress of my fingertips, and I entranced by the clarion quality of her fonts. We were a team; together we conquered the non-vocal world. We were inseparable! Tonight, as it has been on many nights lately, she is sitting neglected in the corner. Her innards are still purring away in misplaced hope, but I have my back to her; concentrating instead on the big new screen on the wall where there is ample room for Dasher, the vixen usurper, the trackball driven typing software. I don’t know what it is exactly; it could just be the need for unblinking concentration on Dasher’s endless stream of letters and alphabets, but this is hard work. It’s an alien language with none of the type-as-you-think fluency that I have practiced for so long. I feel incapacitated, mute, disabled.
Her softly backlit keyboard still flirts at the edge of my vision, longing to lure me back, but I think it’s over between us.
How sad!
For a long time now I have been rolling along through the various losses and challenges of my unknown condition with a belief that no matter what comes my way, there will always be a “Graceful Companion” alongside each less welcome intruder. For three years there has been a patch of blue in every cloudy sky; sometimes a small patch admittedly, but redeeming virtue seemed to attend each adversity I faced. Events have fitted together in such a manner that I have been able to embrace them with faith, by and large, knowing that I was not the lonely victim of random misfortune, but that there was a divinely ordered providence to life. At times the Graceful Companion has taken the form of miraculous provision: extraordinary gifts such as our home in Paradise; or more commonplace wonders like the many successful adventures Bugger, my power wheelchair, and I have shared; often with astonishing timing in regards to boggings, break downs and spare parts. Sometimes the Graceful Companion has appeared as a tangible sense of the presence of the Almighty himself; or as the rich companionship and fullness-of-life to be found in silent contemplation. My current experience, however, has yet to yield that familiar balance.
Six months ago I was expounding the joys of the keys in Typing School . The pleasurable years of touch-typing developed into something much more serious between my keyboard and I once the need for her assistance became acute last year. We were a couple, we were co-dependent; she relishing the lightning sharp caress of my fingertips, and I entranced by the clarion quality of her fonts. We were a team; together we conquered the non-vocal world. We were inseparable! Tonight, as it has been on many nights lately, she is sitting neglected in the corner. Her innards are still purring away in misplaced hope, but I have my back to her; concentrating instead on the big new screen on the wall where there is ample room for Dasher, the vixen usurper, the trackball driven typing software. I don’t know what it is exactly; it could just be the need for unblinking concentration on Dasher’s endless stream of letters and alphabets, but this is hard work. It’s an alien language with none of the type-as-you-think fluency that I have practiced for so long. I feel incapacitated, mute, disabled.
Her softly backlit keyboard still flirts at the edge of my vision, longing to lure me back, but I think it’s over between us.
How sad!
