November, 2018
So much depends
upon
a red Bic
pen
uncapped and
resting
beside the white
manuscript.
Writing is the embodiment of abstraction. First, we make sounds to represent things, and then we make squiggles to represent sounds. We arrange the squiggles just so on paper or stone, on canvas or bark or wood or skin—even, now, on screens of crystal and glass, which translate and transmit squiggles as images of light and dark, fueled by digitized fire. An alchemy of paradox as much as it is an art, with writing we archive / codify / capture the idea of a thing while freeing the thing from its original source and form, firing it like synaptic starlight out into the universe to proliferate, instigate, inspire…
And yet.
Writing is embodied abstraction. What would become of our ideas without the physical, the material? Consider the pen, the ink. Consider the paper, the eraser, the envelope, the keyboard keys, the calendar. Consider these, the tools of the writer—as essential to craft as paint and palette, yet so often overlooked, and unsung.
This issue of Riddled with Arrows, “Objects and Artifacts”, is dedicated to the silent and stalwart things on which the writer’s work depends.
Thank you, laptop. Thank you, coffee cup.
Thank you, red Bic pen.
—> Shannon Connor Winward