Carved in Stone

35

My eyes draw sound
out of the white space
of silence.

Silent the pen,
gliding smooth,
over unlined paper,
a skater leaving marks
on fresh ice.

Each mark is a signifier,
or a series of signifiers
constituting a signified,
a message engraved
in the reader’s mind.

Commentary:

Each mark is a signifier, part of a series of signifiers constituting a signified, a message written on paper, then engraved in the reader’s mind. But, of course, the message has to be read, and the reader has to be diligent enough to burrow into the meaning of the message. And what is the meaning of meaning? Ah, we have been down that rabbit hole before and Alice has been through the looking glass, and we have seen ourselves in our daily mirrors, slowly fading as the years go by.

A skater leaving marks on fresh ice or a stone cast into a pond, with multiple meanings, multiple ripples moving slowly outwards, to end up where? Who knows? Not me. I only know that the thrown stone, like the spoken word, can never be recalled. And there’s a 2,000 year history behind those words. Each word a stone, and each stone leaving its mark on many people of many cultures and multiple languages, though English is the language in which I now write.

Frost and snow here this morning. Not much, just a dusting. I looked out of the window at the crows’ prints on the white surface of the garden. My eyes drew silence out of the white space with its runic language written by the crows.

The meaning of meaning – tell me, if you can, what did they say? What did they want from me? What did they mean?