radiant fracture

Writing is the solid form of language, the precipitate. Speech comes out of our mouths, our hands, our eyes in something like a liquid form and then evaporates at once. It appears to me that this is part of a natural cycle: one of the ways the weather forms on the ocean of meaning.

This morning I sat in the orrery*, leaning on the iridescent grain of the new desk, and ate my slices of pear with a miniature cocktail fork, to avoid getting juice on Bringhurst.

The pear was a bosc, with that dusty-brown-paper-parcel skin and wet, crumbly flesh, in company with some dense white goat cheese and crackers. The Bringhurst was The Solid Form of Language. (Thank you in all the scripts of the world to chromemagpie.)

{rf}

*Okay, it's not a mechanical model of the solar system. It's a view of the actual solar system. I have given in to the word 'orrery' because I used to refer to the window as something else, something that actually meant 'window that sticks out', but that word got overwritten with 'orrery' in my brain, so that even though I know 'orrery' isn't the word I mean, it's the only one that comes up out of the soup. If you can remind me of the proper word, I can retire 'orrery', but until then I'm just letting it move in and redecorate any way it likes.

[ETA: Oriel! Oriel! That's the word! My window isn't properly an oriel either, but it could romantically be one. Although now I rather like 'orrery' after all.]