It annoys me to no end how much we ruminate and of course such a predilection has some clearly dreadful downsides… but sometimes it's interesting to note how that tendency is also a foundational element of our creativity with words. I spent more time than is strictly necessary tasting the differences between < word / word > and < word : word > as... semiotic? semantic? representations of the esoteric concept we attempt to convey. The slash evokes an already-extant narrative device (the way the Board speaks in Control), which may aid in interpretation; the colon evokes the mathematical concept of the ratio, demonstrating the symbolic equality of both words. If both strategies work, then it becomes a matter of aesthetic and, again, taste -- which one feels best? Today, in the previous post, it was < word / word >. Perhaps tomorrow, in a different post, it will be < word : word >. And it will be both a meaningful distinction and a meaningless affectation. It is always like this -- a constant background process that is solely dedicated to the weighing and tasting and fingering and fondling of words, trying to find the exact moment of "ah!", the perfect ecstatic tension of obfuscation and clarity.
Unfortunately, this more often means that I'm just constantly playing and replaying conversations in my head to no avail except my own irritation, rather than weaving delicately tensile webs of prose with increasing skill and mastery. So it goes.
