#Microblog Monday 260: Parentheses
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Robin Sloan (the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore) sends out a weekly email containing a mishmash of thoughts. In a recent one, he talked about the Gutenberg Parenthesis and the whole idea of recognizing when you’re living between parentheses.
Or, as Sloan states: “Here’s a question you should ask sometimes, about the story of the world and your place in it: am I living inside the normal body text now… or a phrase offset by parentheses, set to close?”
Mind blown.
I think there are our personal parentheses and then there are societal/historical parentheses. And as Sloan says, the point isn’t to prove the theory. It isn’t to find proof that it is or isn’t happening. It’s to ask yourself the questions and simply wonder whether you’re “living (or reading books, or participating in the economy, or or or) at a point along a ‘normal’ historical continuum, or inside a bubble of strangeness?”
Life if pretty strange right now. Do you think we’re inside parentheses or is this just part of a new normal?
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9 comments
What a great way of thinking about life. I hope our current moment in history is a parentheses, but I fear not.
There’s more than one set of parenthesis…a collect set, and a personal set.
And I don’t know where we at in either of them. I feel like I just don’t know anymore.
i hope that the world is in a set of parentheses. this cannot be the new normal.
I can only hope we’re in a parenthesis right now in terms of public life.
I don’t know if it’s easy to judge between parenthesis/main text while actually in the moment. In hindsight, particularly with personal parenthesis moments, I can usually see where they start and end. I just can’t do it well in real time.
Parentheses…I think. But what if life is just a series of parentheticals and there really isn’t a “normal”?
Y’all are blowing my mind and it hurts.
I like what Katherine says about not being able to assess something when you’re in the middle of it.
And also, wow about what Geochick says.
Oh, wow. Jeezum, I hope we’re in a parenthetical moment now, because if it’s more like an ellipsis I may cry. More than I usually do over the state of things. 🙁
Oh please, let this be a parentheses. This idea gives me hope because this cannot be our new normal. It just cannot.
Life feels very…circular right now.