A while back, I wrote this post about an eye-popping modification that turned an ordinary computer keyboard into a phantasmagorical typing machine.
A few months after that, I came across this monitor modification from the same amazing craftsman. I should have posted it at the time, but for one reason or other never got around to it. Take a look, and even if you don’t want to read through all the nitty-gritty, be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page for some snapshots of the flatscreen monitor paired with the earlier magic keyboard. Wow.
When I was a senior in high school, I took a psychology class where the teacher taught us to meditate. I doubt it was part of the official state of Michigan curriculum, but it was fun, and hey, it was the ’70s.
I still remember all the steps of his meditation process, which drew on various colors to relax your physical body, mind, emotions, and so forth, even if I don’t recall specifically what each particular color was supposed to do.
In a darkened classroom with soft music playing, we would all close our eyes and put our heads down on our desks, while he talked us through a journey from a bright green meadow, through a deep green forest to a warm sand beach, then into a boat and across a crystal blue lake to an island. On the island was a building, and in the building was a room. That was where the detailed descriptions ended and we were left on our own. Each person was supposed to “design” or “decorate” his or her own room. We were, in effect, creating our own private mental space where we could retreat in a relaxed state to think about things, get creative, solve problems, or just take a refreshing break.
Talking about it afterward, I learned that some of the kids came up with bare, undecorated, unfurnished rooms. I’m not sure what that said about them, if it was good, bad, or a little frightening. Others had rooms that looked like their bedrooms at home or a favorite relative’s house or a place stuffed full of toys and knickknacks and other private, personal things.
My room wasn’t quite like anyone else’s. It was, as I recall, like some kind of wizard’s chambers in a high castle tower — small and cramped with rough stone walls, overflowing with leatherbound books and maps on parchment, gigantic globes and big brass telescopes, crystal balls and hissing gas lamps and weird bubbling potions in beakers. There were also a lot of devices like the marvelous keyboard and monitor. Not exactly like them, of course, since we were still a few years away from the PC revolution at that point and I wasn’t visionary enough to imagine a personal desktop computer. But similar. I specifically remember a large brass typing sort of device with an oversized keyboard and ornate knobs and a long scroll of paper spilling out the back.
We did the meditation thing probably five or six times before moving on to the next item in the syllabus, but those sessions were the highlight of the year for most of us. We talked about them endlessly, and some of us tried to recreate the magic in small groups. It worked, sort of, but was never quite as effective without a skilled leader.
I returned to my island room off and on over the years, but again, it was never the same. Still, I remember the bewitching wonder of those first visits and the childlike awe I felt seeing all those strange devices, those impossible machines that I had created in the recesses of my very own mind, machines that could occasionally be used for some kind of practical work but whose true purpose was hidden from human sight and could never be fully divined.
I guess I was steampunk before steampunk was cool. Or before it was even invented, for that matter.
