Elementary Rules of Usage
Strunk & White, The Elements of Style
On a gravestone,
there is a significant mark that is often missed- the dash between the date of birth and the date of death; an engraved summary of all that occurred between two moments in earth time.
Today I am living in the dash.
A dash is, of course, the stuff drawings are made of.
Artists call them lines.
Psalm 19 begins, 'The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard. Their line (sound, precision, musical string) has gone out through all the earth, and their utterances to the end of the world. In them He has placed a tent for the sun.'
The Hebrew word for line in this Psalm is kav. One Rabbi says of kav- "The precision of the universe is likened to a surveyor's tape stretched out to the ends of the earth. This means that the precision of the cosmos is evident all over the earth to any observer."
Maybe that is why John Muir said, "Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe."
A language of line
The Letter
oh, the power in a line
to ascend and descend
arc and loop
open close
thin becoming thick
as thought begets
a river of black-
and there is Life
