palimpsest

Two heavy wooden doors open onto a room with no windows. The cement floor is black. A worn red chair sits in the center of the room. Before it is an old trunk with a stack of typewritten pages. A long table with two typewriters is against the back wall. Stacks of blank paper sit next to each typewriter. Carbon papers bearing the imprint of a typed text line the wall.The side walls are gray, the back wall is black; they are covered with layers of writing in chalk. Some of the text has been smudged, erased and written over. The sound of the typewriters lured people to the room. Pushing open the doors they saw two people madly typing across from each other at the table. Their key strokes echoed loudly. After an interval of typing one writer exchanged pages with the other. The typing resumed as they continued each others’ text. Each page was typed with a carbon; each writer left with a copy of their text. Sometimes a passer-by sank into the red chair, reading the pages that had been written. Others wandered, reading the texts on the walls, sometimes adding their own mark. The traffic of readers and writers left a trail of footprints on the black floor.