Sometimes it’s good to just focus on the spaces of writing. The spaces of time. The spaces that surround the words in a story. The spaces in between words1.
We live in the gaps, in between the before and the after, the said and the unsaid, connected yet hanging in abeyance, expectant. A space contains at the same time that it liberates. It’s a threshold and an invitation at the same time2.
We enter and leave with the same step. We belong and we also do not belong.
Something always fills the spaces. Even if it looks or feels like nothing. Little surprises3.4
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Easter Eggs
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whimsicality. just because
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Scallywag
euphonious
diaphanous
ohm
“You look good for your age.”
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Quixotically pensive: one definition of God.
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‘out . . . into this world . . . this world . . . tiny little thing . . . before its time . . . in a god for– . . . what? . . girl? . . yes . . . tiny little girl . . . into this . . . out into this . . . before her time . . . godforsaken hole called . . . called . . . no matter’5
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The track of the swan through the sky
Never leaves traces—
Its path is soon forgotten
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Imagine the moment a bell is rung, how its sound dissipates into the air, how it’s defined by silence as it becomes silence. The white space in a story functions like that air surrounding a sound. It allows a piece of art to breathe.
White space tells us that there are other ways of knowing. Text and logic have their limits. Feeling and intuition are relevant, too.
White space recognizes the way life dissolves and evaporates. Our monuments of text, whatever we build, are transient, mere sketches.
All footnotes are from my book The Art of Brevity, which just happens to be for sale. I would cherish it if you bought it just because I love having readers and hearing from them. And some of them tell me it’s a good book.
Beckett: Waiting for Godot. An example of parataxis.
The irony of this post, of course, is that Substack took out all of the white space I inserted via paragraph breaks into this. So the newsletter that went out—without any white space included—has a different feel and meaning without the space. In the version on this page, I began each line with a period in order to make sure Substack maintained my white space. So this version is better.
The lesson: the internet doesn't like white spaces. It likes all to be filled.
thisoobubbleoooosteam!
ahooooooooooooooirony
stillooooooooooolovely
little cup of thanks
brevityismyonedayfriend