Pithy me not
I’m going to be taking a one-day class in letterpress printing. We’re supposed to come with “Some text for printing: ideas may include, small collection of words, business card, short poem. Less is really better!”
Right. I know less is better, because it takes time to set type if you’re unfamiliar with reading things in mirror text, let alone trying to figure out how to set it on the page, and actually get the paper into the press, &c., &c.
But here’s the thing. Though I’m quite capable of writing short pieces for the web (I use Twitter, after all), they are ephemeral — no matter that Google and the Internet Archive may or may not have squirreled them away. A printed thing, especially something I’ve made with my own hands, has a physicality and permanence that web-writing doesn’t. It’s imbued; possibly even fraught.
So I’m trying really hard to find something that when I run across it in a couple of years I won’t wonder why I set something so stupid, like “Hello World” or “Trying out Letterpress Printing!” or even just my name.
I have a few books of aphorisms and epigrams around here. Maybe I’ll skim those. Otherwise, it’ll just be “Orthoclase couldn’t come up with anything, so she just set this.” Hmm… maybe if I did that in a swashy font with lots of sorts…
