Don't Be a Stranger: A story about community and a typewriter
By Gabriel C. Donaldson
Gabriel Donaldson is a creative writing student and a content writer for PI. Donaldson specialises in the non-fiction genre, telling stories that highlight the human condition and how people reconcile with it.
The typewriter doesn’t work. I could tell, even before I brushed the dust off the lid and pried the case open, that it had long been out of order. Because nobody would have left this gorgeous, sleek black writing machine in the back of a storage cell to be forgotten if it worked like it should.
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“I can’t help but dream that he left the typewriter for me.”________________________________________________
The words L C Smith & Corona Typewriters Inc. are printed in gold letters along the side, and a curious Google search reveals that the machine was likely made in the mid-to-late 1930s. All things considered, it could be in worse shape, but it’s by no means perfect.
The ink ribbon has dried up and withered at some point in the last 90 years. Several of the keys are prone to jamming and you must pry them from the carriage to get the machine working again. The typebars aren’t much better. Many of them are bent or disconnected from their keys or simply don’t work, and they may never work again.
The typewriter is old, dusty and obnoxiously loud, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t the most elegant and beautiful thing I’ve ever owned.
Because while many writers dream of having a typewriter that’s actually in working order, this relic feels like it was fated to be mine. Like it was waiting all those long years in storage for me to find it.
It feels like fate, because this beautiful, busted typewriter once belonged to a man I never knew.
*My parents have officially sold our house in Toowoomba, Queensland. In around two months’ time, they’ll have officially handed the place over and will be looking for a new place to live in Sydney. That’s why I’m back home, to sort through the mountain of mementos, souvenirs and assorted trinkets that my parents have held onto.
Everywhere you look, there are memories, strewn across the floor, stacked into neat piles, being packed into boxes ready to be sold or donated or sent into long-term storage.
It doesn’t feel real. Maybe it will hit me on the last night I’m here and with a jolt of terror, I’ll realise I’ll probably never set foot in my childhood home again, or the town I grew up in for that matter. But maybe it won’t.
But while sorting through the endless pile of stuff, there are memories that leap out and grab me with both hands and hang on tight. Memories that aren’t mine alone.
Letters from ex-girlfriends that I buried at the bottom of my desk drawer. A photo of me, arm in arm with a friend I haven’t spoken to since we graduated. Kind words and appraisal from teachers I had in primary school. Cards from relatives I don’t remember, congratulating my parents on my birth.
It’s not the fact that I’ve lost touch with these people that drop everything and replay the time we had. It’s the fact they all played some role in supporting me. Encouraged me. Comforted me. And here I am in the here and now, and I can’t help but feel like I have no way to repay them.
Being a part of a community is essential for aspiring writers and creatives like I was. I can honestly say that without the support of the people around me, I would have never seriously considered trying to make a career out of writing. It’s something I’ve only considered after being reminded of the people from my past who I never officially thanked.
While I was dwelling on this, I asked Kartiya, PI’s Co-Founder and fellow writer about her thoughts on why being a part of a community is so important:
“Connecting with others is such a core foundation, to what I want the inklings to stand for. As creatives, we get inspired by the world around us, and I think that means we should be inspired by others too.”
And it’s true. We should be inspired by others, because people have this amazing ability of surprising you. I finally had the chance to attend one of the Story Soirées run by PI a few weeks back and I was blown away by how talented everyone was. Surprised by how willing everyone was to get up to speak and say things that were so witty and raw and true. But more than anything I felt lucky that I got to be there, to meet people I’d only spoken to online and to be a part of this community that PI has created.
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“Growth doesn’t occur when there is no difference or friction between thought.”________________________________________________
Creative people have a habit of being drawn to each other. No matter what your artform is, whether it’s writing, drawing, painting, singing, dancing, filming, it doesn’t matter. All creatives have a desire to be with their own kind. To be with people that think the way they do, see the world in a way only they can. But most importantly, creatives need other creatives because we’re in this together. We’ve always been in this together. Working with each other to share our art with one another to make sure the medium doesn’t die. If we don’t practice it, who will? If we don’t encourage and push each other to the limits, who will? Again, I posed this question to Kartiya, and again, her words ring true:
“The people I surrounded myself with are the ones that keep me disciplined in my art. I dance at the Salsa Foundation and the truly the only reason I have stuck with that school is not only because they teach very well, but because there is community and having people who share your desires and goals helps you stay focused on your path.”
But while I’ve been fortunate enough to be surrounded by creative people for most of my life, it’s the people without a single creative bone in their body that weigh on my mind as I sort through these memories.
People have this ability to surprise you, and currently, I’m astonished by the sheer number of people who’ve inspired me in some way or another. I can’t help but think about how I never acknowledged the impact their presence had on me until now.
All my life, I’ve tried to surround myself with likeminded creatives because I believed it would make me a better writer, but I’ve been a part of so many other communities over the years. I’ve met so many different people. Some of them have become close confidants, others I barely think about. Some I got along with like a house on fire, and others made me want to set their house on fire.
But whether they realised it or not, they all pushed me further along this career path. Just by simply talking with me, laughing with me, arguing with me. Things that meant almost nothing in the moment, but make my heart swell like a balloon as I remember it all now.
“People in community that aren’t centred around creativity may have different insights to yours,” Kartiya summarises. “It’s important not to enclose yourself in an echo chamber of same thought because growth doesn’t occur when there is no difference or friction between thought.”
As I pack everything away, I keep finding more and more tokens from those who’ve brought friction to my life. It’s an endless sea of familiar faces and stacks of cards and letters. But there are other, stranger things that catch my eye. That grab hold of me with both hands and won’t let go. Almost like it was destiny, like it had been waiting for me all those long years in storage.
And for a while I just sit there surrounded by memories and examine every detail my brand-new broken typewriter from a man I never knew.
*
I’ve tried asking several people about where the typewriter came from, trying to figure out who its original owner was. My dad told me that it likely once belonged to my great grandfather. He’s been dead longer than I’ve been alive, so it’s hard to think of him as anything other than spectre, sending me gifts from beyond the grave.
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“I just want to say thank you. For everything. Even if everything seems like it wasn’t anything at all.”________________________________________________
I can’t help but wonder who he was, what he used this typewriter for, and how it ended up sitting in the back of our storage cell. I can’t help but hope that he too was a writer. That he spent his afternoons tapping away at this thing, driving everyone in the house mad with the clacking of typebars, while he escaped into his own mind like I do when I write.
I can’t help but dream that he left the typewriter for me. Not me, specifically, but for someone down the line who’d write something raw and real and beautiful and true on this machine like he did, and I can’t help but feel lucky that the person who inherited the typewriter was me.
It’s one thing to be reminded of how someone you used to know helped you pursue your dream of writing. But to have a vintage typewriter unexpectedly dropped into your lap from an ancestor you didn’t even know you had feels cosmically ordained.
In reality, all I know for certain is that the typewriter now belongs to me, and I can’t help but wonder what he’d want me to write using it.
I know what I want to write.
Letters. Just an endless stream of letters to the people in my community, anybody who’s pushed me and challenged me to have a go at trying to make in in the writing world.
To my mum and dad. To my three brothers. To my grandparents, uncles aunts and everyone else in my extended family for taking an interest in what I’m doing. To my best friends, my low-level acquaintances and the random people on the street I overheard saying something mildly interesting. To my teachers. To team members. To Angus and Kartiya and everyone at PI for giving me a chance to get my name and my work out there. To the people I’ve known my entire life and have supported me through thick and thin. And the people I never got to know, but supported me nonetheless.
And I just want to say thank you. For everything. Even if everything seems like it wasn’t anything at all. Because no matter what you did or what you meant to do, your support has made all the difference. I wouldn’t be where I am without you.
*
The typewriter now sits on the desk in my room, polished and ready to be shipped back down to Melbourne with me in a few weeks’ time. There’s still a lot of packing and sorting left to do, as my parents constantly remind me, but it is starting to hit me now. That I’ll never live in this house or in this town again, which have shaped my creative practice almost as much as the people around me.
I ask Kartiya for her thoughts again, this time about whether community has had a profound impact on her creative practice like it has for me, or whether I was just getting sentimental:
“One of my beautiful friends and Inkling Teammates, Sara, has introduced me to so many new avenues of creativity I never would have thought of exploring or had the passion to. Just today, we went out with another talented friend who is going to be published on our Substack soon, Chloe, and we all got excited over books and journals. So yes, being in a creative community has helped me immensely in my own creative practice. I would say without it, I would not be as creative as I am.”
And I smile at her response because people have this ability to surprise you. Even when you know what they’re going to say, they’ll manage to say it in a way that’s so beautiful and real and true. So, I have to ask, what advice she would give to any emerging writers and artists who are looking to become a part of our growing creative community?
Kartiya’s advice is simple:
“Talk to people. Say yes to meet ups. Be open to going to new places and trying new methods of creativity!”
The first thing I’m doing when I get back to Melbourne is taking the typewriter to a repair store. I’ve got no clue what it will cost to fix it, but I’m sure it will be worth it. I’m going to make a start on writing all those letters, thanking everyone in my own tightknit community.
I can’t help but feel like it’s what I’m supposed to be doing.
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