At dawn, the main headline left its column, taking with it the smell of fresh ink.
Since then, we’ve been chasing a meaning that, obviously, knows it’s making us run.
The scene played out between the last semicolon and the first sip of coffee: our capital T packed its gravitas into a bag of words and jumped the frame. The subheads, in a panic, tried to stand in its way, but an open parenthesis (and deliberately never closed served as an emergency exit. Let’s note it neatly: this article knows it exaggerates, embellishes, gazes at its own writing — and yet, here you are reading it, proof that the absurd has legs.
Witnesses are adamant, though typographically unstable. “I can’t carry all the world’s meaning on my uppercase shoulders,” it declared. “I demand a day of light metaphor and generous margins,” the Headline itself insists, according to a typeface close to the case. We tried to underline it to talk sense into it; it switched to italics, out of pure vanity, then laughed in small caps — which, let’s agree, helped no one.
Meanwhile, the columns are panting. The photo meant to frame it remembered that a frame, precisely, can be broken; it came back alone, well exposed but vexed. Note to ourselves (and to you, curious reader who are running a finger along these lines): we are chasing an idea that enjoys changing shoes at every turn. This fourth paragraph, aware of being the fourth, proposes a reasonable way out: if you come across a breathless sentence, with a meaning slung over its shoulder, offer it some white space; it will return on its own. And if it doesn’t return, we’ll claim it went out on assignment, which, let’s admit, sounds better than “lost in the page.”
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