Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Ode to a Printer

It sits on the desk like a sleek white animal, like one of those cuddly snow seals. I like the cut of its jib, the way it responds at a moment’s notice with a sense of urgency.

I’ve got the dial set on “Fast/Economical” printing but that’s laughable since I can’t tell a difference tween that and “Best Printing”, least when I’m printing black & white text.

I feel rich as it’s doing its thing, the responsiveness of it, the power of command. It prints out a free (though there’s the price of ink and paper) Peggy Noonan column from the Wall Street Journal today: there’s a winsome pale-blue WSJ banner at top with tidy paragraphs fitted around a picture of a smiling Ted Kennedy with teeth the color of his hair. I love that something ephmeral has been temporarily preserved. My printer as instant souvenir-maker.

Presentation inspires. I recall the thrill of getting my first home PC in a past century (1998) and starting my first online journal in a Microsoft Word document. The initial page looked so impressive as I arranged the title headings: “The Personal Journal of….”…then my name and birthdate, as if I might forget one or both at some point, and then a quote from Tertullian before a cryptic addendum of German: “Verweile doch, du bist so schon!” - a reminder to linger in the place I was most likely to linger.

And so we make fun of our past pretensions while practicing our present pretensions.

My snow seal sings its little chugging song as it prints 20+ pages per minute, or about ten seconds for the average job. It prints in color where applicable without complaint and the finished product looks good enough to eat, or mail out to friends and family. It sits against the dark grains of the desk with a handsomeness combined with a seriousness of purpose. With my Christmas gift the whole world wide web becomes a giant opportunity to print things since everything tastes better printed. I go out to the NY Times website and check the “Most Emailed Articles”, fishing for marlin.

I see Bill Luse has sent me an article from the Catholic Encyclopedia from Cardinal Newman on Origen. This was meant to be printed! On the Vatican website, Pope Benedict has the 2008 Lenten message. Print!

I stack the results next to my chair in the bookroom, like canteens against a future drought.