the shape of words

I am writing this on the bus. It reminds me of early morning bus rides to school, furiously trying to finish the day's homework as the bus lurched and threw my writing into fanciful squiggles. But you cannot tell, because what you see is typed, and what is typed is flat, devoid of the 3rd dimension of meaning.

1. Sound
2. Meaning
2. Shape <-- this dimension

(I am standing at the light, waiting for it to turn green. Someone once said, I think it was the poet Horace, that a person who travels only changes his skies, not his condition. I am now on a bench on the flight of steps beside Park Mall, neither up nor down. But up I go.)

If you're still with me, God bless your heart, Geoff Huth is an expert on the shape of words. Check out his website if you have the time.

(I am crossing the street. Dare I stop in the middle to write?)

The personality test based on my handwriting tells me that because I inhabit and crowd the left margin of my unlined paper and leave the right margin empty, I fear the future and crave the familiarity of the past. Hence, I am trying my best to populate the right, to capture that future for myself.

(10 minutes to class, on a different bench now, this time under a blue and white striped tent. Why do people use words like `tentage' and `signage' as if `tent' and `sign' is not enough?)

One paragraph more and I'l come to the end of this sheet
of paper and this simultaneous post.
I give the right margin
back to
you.