A Line Is a Decision

A line is a decision with duration. It starts, it continues, it stops — three ethics in a single gesture.

I distrust lines that arrive already certain. The ones I keep are the ones that change their mind halfway and still refuse to apologize. A construction line, faint, remaining after the ink. Evidence that the form was argued with.

Paper is not a surface. It is a climate. In this city it warps overnight; a plane becomes a shallow topography by morning. I have learned to let that be information. Humidity is a collaborator if you stop calling it damage.

When I write, I am also drawing. The paragraph is a corridor. The period is a corner. A short sentence is a plane seen head-on; a long one is the same plane in perspective, receding, taking light with it.

I keep a brass ruler on the table not because I need straightness, but because I need to remember that straightness is optional. Most of the true things I know arrive slightly off-square.