TYPEE
A LIFE IN LETTERPRESS PRINTING
Sam FARAHMAND
it ain’t me,
it ain’t me
I am staring at all of the letters of the alphabet, all twenty-six of them from the letter A to the English-language-equivalent of the Omega, being printed again and again on the poster-sized sheets of paper coming out of the printing press, my job for the day to straighten the posters into a stack while I wait until I can take thirty or forty of them and set them vertically wherever I can find the space in the print shop, so the ink, which takes a day or so to dry, doesn’t offset the blue from the front of the poster onto the back of the poster, before I head back to where I was at the proverbial end of the line. I am staring at all of the letters of the alphabet, from the letter A to just before the Next time, won’t you sing with me, being printed again and again on the poster-sized sheets of paper coming out of the end of the Miehle Pony printing press from the turn of the twentieth century, one year younger than the author of The Sun Also Rises and another ninety older than me, before I head back to where I was at the proverbial end of the line.
Three months ago was when I started working for the Country Music Foundation in one of the oldest still-active letterpress print shops in the country, down on the first floor of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, where the visitors to the museum, if they are from here, and when I tell them I have only lived in Nashville for three months, they all tell me the city has changed so much and they even start to sound like they have always stayed the same or sound like there is some city on some hill somewhere that hasn’t changed at all. Some of them, when they ask me how I ended up working here, they tell me I must be overqualified to be working here, as if the man from Galilee wasn’t overqualified to be crucified.
I tell some of the visitors to the museum I don’t know what I am doing, though I once thought I knew what I wasn’t doing, but maybe I am blocked and maybe it has something to do with staring at woodblocks of all of the letters of the alphabet, all day into every day, that has me wondering what I am doing. I tell some of the visitors to the museum about the uppercase and lowercase letters of type and how they are arranged in the cases, when they ask me about the drawers in the print shop, the cases that used to have the uppercase in an upper case and the lowercase in a lower case and thus the origin of uppercase and lowercase letters, before the type would be arranged in the same case with the advent of the California job case, so called because all of the forty-niners needed their letters arranged in the same case to be even more moveable when everyone was rushing to the promises and premises of California.
The sun is out for the first time in some time, so instead of getting something to eat inside the basement breakroom, I head outside to sit in the sun. I cross then uncross then cross my legs because I am wearing a new pair of blue jeans, the ones with the apostrophied s branded on everyone’s ass in this city, the ones I bought to feel like I might fit in in this city where everyone is so blonde I am afraid I might go blind. Maybe it is because I have been calling the third novel I am working on C, so I have something to call this novel, but I like to tell some of the visitors to the museum that the letter E is the most commonly used letter in the English language, though later when I am staring at an uppercase E and later at a lowercase e, I think an uppercase E looks like three lines coming out of one line, or even three novels from one I, whereas a lowercase e looks like a c that has writer’s block. I close my eyes, but I can still see.
All of the type in the print shop is either made out of wood or metal, but for me to be working in a letterpress print shop where the letters are literally made out of sticks and stones, I am lost in the irony. What are words if not letters, only twenty-six of them, and most words made up of less than a fifth of that amount. I am staring at all of the letters of the alphabet and I am trying to take them one at a time, because I am trying not to write in circles for the time being, but it is hard for me to write the letter C. C.
I am staring at the hundreds of thousands of words I have written in my life and I have to wonder if something is still the truth if it is something you have told no one or if something you have told no one is more of a white lie than it is the truth. Maybe I have always lived this life of mine a little too semi-autobiographically to make sense of who I am, as much as who I am not, though the truth isn’t what you believe but what you don’t believe. I wonder if some of the nonfiction I have been writing has become too true to be good, but I was never as good at having to say something than I was at having something to say. I know I am not the type to claim I would die if I couldn’t write, though I wouldn’t write if I could die, so here I still am, whimpering into the void.
I am staring at all of the other license plates on the drive back from work, because I like to see the plates from some state other than Tennessee and because I miss California, but then I feel bad for the prisoners who made the license plates as I wonder what good would my dollar do the bum at the stoplight on the street named for the veterans of some foreign war. The light turns before I can fish the dollar out of my too-tight blue jeans, but I will still stop at the liquor store where one of the clerks asks me if there was something I was looking for when it must look like I am taking too long to find myself. A cliché is always a crying shame the same way every metaphor is never more than a sheep in wolf’s clothing. I tell her, I’m trying to make up my mind, but I should have said, I’m trying to make out my mind.
Maybe I should have gone to the bar I like, rather than the liquor store, but then again, it’s not the destination, it’s the predestination. The bartender I like in the bar I like is so blonde that I can barely see her sometimes, but I like how she knows what I like to drink, because someone knowing what I drink is as close for comfort as I can get to someone knowing why I drink. The clerks in this liquor store look like father and daughter, but when the father asks for my driver's license, he reads aloud, California, though when he says, California, he says it like he is saying it in italics and he even sounds like a prospector. Maybe I have passed too much of myself out, but all I want in my life is for the clerks in this liquor store to remember what I like to drink as much as I want every bartender in every bar I drink in to remember what I like to drink, which must sound strange, how much of myself I have forgotten so someone else might remember me.
All I remember is all the forgetting, but I can’t even remember what I was trying to forget, because I still don’t know if I write things down so I don’t forget them or if I write things down so I don’t have to remember them. I wonder if all we are is a hell of our former selves when I think of all of the bad things I have done in my life and try to think which one is the worst one, but I wonder, on a scale of good to bad, where the good things you don’t do correlate to the bad things you do, because there is a lot I haven’t done in my life.
If I can’t wash the sins away, I suppose the least I can do is wash my hands of the blue ink left on them from the printing I did today, the blue under the nails, but then I see my hands are bleeding from washing them too much. I remember my blood type is one of those letter A’s, because I always liked to donate my blood so afterwards the B can feel the A harder in its C, but then I see the last tall can in the six pack I bought at the liquor store. I am staring at the can, its mouth stuck in a plastic six pack ring like some poor sea creature, so once again I save the day with mouth to mouth and I think I will even take the recycling up to the recycling center tomorrow. I remember hearing in an interview some screenwriter saying that an antihero is someone making the case as to why they should be allowed up into heaven, but I suppose if I were ever interviewed, whether it is the exit interview coming at the end or not, I would say an antihero is someone who goes to hell while trying to get as many other people up into heaven just to see the look on God’s face.
Sam FARAHMAND is a writer from Los Angeles.