Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
The Irregular, Finite, Fantastic Golden Braid
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
When I was in sixth grade, I got a bookmark at school that displayed the twenty-six letters of the alphabet in American Sign Language. Somehow, starting with that, I have now filled and overflowed a shoebox with hundreds of bookmarks. I doubt I'll have time in the next few weeks to properly sort and label the things. Someday, after I put up my travelogue for the first time I ever visited New York, and after I've moved there.
What a tremendously baroque civilization we have! At first bookmarks were ribbons sewn into the bindings of books. Then they were pasteboard advertisements for patent cures and the like. Now they are paper and plastic and metal, ads for everything and nothing, fanciful clips, inspirations and tassels. So much human energy has been poured into my little shoebox, so much effort to keep me from having to dogear or remember a page number.
The Holy Tango of Poetry. Search requests in a certain order. Sometimes the beautiful complications of the world that we've created together just overwhelm me. I should lay down and rest in this beautiful world.
