Wearing my heart on my sleeve

So I'm finding ways to preserve my fond memories other than hanging onto unused objects. One way is to create a digital library of objects that help me recall times and places.

For instance, I took this picture of my LC Smith manual typewriter about two years ago. The typewriter, on which I never typed anything, sat in the basement for years.

I wouldn't part with it because (a) a dear friend had given it to me as an impulse purchase in an antique store, (b) I once loved writing on manual typewriters and still love the memory of doing so.

I was given my first manual typewriter when I was eight. I kept the LC Smith to remember pleasures no longer at my fingertips: the greased slip of ribbon, the clack and snap of keys, all those tiny silver levers that controlled the minutiae of document formatting.

And here it is again, reborn as one of the pieces of jewelry that local artist Jane Hosey Stern will create from it. Here's the bracelet that she made for me:

I picked the word "Quiet" and Jane chose the three keys on either side, resulting in the truly wonderful and apt typographic joke of following the word "quiet" with the shift lock and double quote.

Why "quiet"? It works for lots of reasons. One of them: It has always been true that when the typewriter is noisiest, the noise inside my head is most quiet. And then I feel whole.

Oh, it's a lot for one little bracelet to carry, isn't it?