About how once all we argued over were definitions. About how pretensions were once thought smart. About how negations became affirmations became salt lamps. About how quotation was once all you cared for. About how I put your writing in a separate window next to an empty page. About how it used to represent possibility and the voice of hope—of higher knowledge. About how I once misused the word tautology in a sentence about selling tea. About how I relearned its proper usage recently, but liked my old retelling better. About how it was meaningful because it was made in the deep snow. About how we return to big feelings and bad days. About how the About page is the first page I open. About how this translates to self-reference, but also every other personal webpage. About how institutional know-how, trade secrets, become secret currency. Your fingers turn blue.
From what was cold came associations with the hoarfrost. From what was dilute came honeyed sweet peaches. From what language games we learned to set parameters for. From the paratext, what do you conclude? From wild child to observable one lost in the thicket. From me to you, isometric drawings, verbal images of all four angles. From a letter, written at a kitchen table, that was never replicated for lack of desire. From profiles missing or unseen or unsent and then excavated, language events, after the fact. From sifting through the Web for a seismic tilt-shift, only to stumble across the City of Spiders. From the void at the center of it all. There was never any meaning to the place you went when you wrote about what happened so long ago, for tomorrow.
Danielle Shi 