Author: Ryan

Deep Sea

I’ve always been fascinated by the deep sea, and I’ve nearly always lived in sight of the sea. I love to stand at the shore, my feet at the edge of the water, and think about how from there it’s a straight line all the way to Greenland or Norway or Canada, or a curved line to any damn place. And on the way to that place, what do you pass? Every creature in the sunlit ocean, every thing that swims and crawls and floats and chases and runs and sits and waits, going about their business almost entirely out of sight of people. And you go deeper, out of sight of the sun, and it’s not even a mile away but the rules change entirely, pressure and dark creating entirely alien environments that still fill the usual needs of completely unusual things.

And then there’s the door.

Learning curves

The letter ‘g’ is not what you think it is.

When I was learning calligraphy, ‘g’ was one* of the stranger things I had to wrap my head around. Why does it curve like that? Nobody knows! It lurks in texts, an ambiguous little sound waiting to catch me out as my tired paws stick the belly curve on the wrong way round again. And then it finally makes its counter-intuitive way into your muscle memory, and I can start playing with it, and now that bizarre little loopy thing is one of my favourite letters, having two ends that can turn into great glorious flourishes or subtle little interlinks depending on the mood the pen is in.

*The real strangest thing about calligraphy is that you end up having favourite letters, which is both a sign of a troubled mind and a subject for another day.