1.26.01

I edit for a living. I flatline the rhythm of language into dumbed and numbing clarity. (Lately I'm afraid to write because the voice doesn't leave me—or, these days the voice is afraid to leave me for fear of critical eyes.) The women in the boardroom gave a sermon on grammar. Singularly and collaboratively, when the narcissistic one could not contain herself, they moralized the "finer points" of language. Later, Narcissa and the copyeditor groaned at the mention that language evolves. Would it were the purity of English could be justly preserved! Someone quipped that if language did not evolve we would be speaking Elizabethan. The copyeditor, blinders on, replied, "Oh and how much more beautiful our language would be!" My dear copyeditor, your beautiful Elizabethan language flourished before the introduction of formal grammatical rules. These people lack imagination. They lack the ability to observe subtlety and the implied. Sitting at the oak table, canted far into my chair, some drivel about pronouns or verbs—or something—a low-grade buzz, it occurred to me that anyone who could vehemently rail against the evolution of language irretrievably denies the truth of her own evolution. And what a sad individual that is. It's all very clear now, why she and the other look like they do—worn, outdated, edgy. If only grammar and punctuation could be tightened, might then life be manageable? She's a line in her face for each syllable of spontaneity extracted from body. 'Tis a wretched and age-ed sack pressed and cinched tautly over a frightened skeleton. When she looks in the mirror, she sees a brittle costume she can't remove; she's come to know herself in it, unable any longer to identify even vestiges of suppleness. So she takes between her spindly thumb and index fingers a short black plastic wand and dips its spongy swab into an eggshell powder until the pores of the swab choke in the stuff. With long arced strokes she covers the bone and paints herself a skin.

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