Monday, July 12, 2010

7/ Letters ubiquitous

We glimpse letters everywhere: the H in the ladder and the fence, the S-bend in river and road, the alphabet on the telephone keypad, in the tangled garden, in the limbs of bodies walking the crowded street.

The taps pour out letters in foaming chaos, so too do letters fly from the banner whipping in the wind. The Tibetans believe prayer flags, when fluttering in the breeze, release over and over the prayers printed on them. Cars and buses make sounds that represent alphabetic nonsense. Every mouth has a balloon attached, a bubble filled with words. Another balloon stretches and swells inside our heads.

The three electric wires passing over my back yard are a lined page waiting to be filled in. The city is a kind of text, Borges’ infinite library broken free of restraint and gone mad, as if the letters and words have been liberated and come pouring out of the neo-classical building like inmates released from an asylum.

The letters are a kind of God: ubiquitous and omnipresent. Like some primal foundational energy, they magnetize themselves, gather, cluster, resonate, creating an ongoing story of infinite complexity.

2 comments:

  1. I am reminded that the essence is the same by many names: atoms, quanta, letters, signs and symbols, pictographs, wide-faced awe, incredulity, and openness. Thanks for your blog. It is truly generous.

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  2. Thought-provoking post, Mark. Thank you for your insights.

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