space

last evening i watched a really riveting (for nerds) documentary on the impact the helvetica typeface has had on design and life in general. i know, this does not sound like anything a normal person would spend time on, and perhaps it isn't, but i have friends who would find it equally riveting, so pound sand.

in any case, there was something in it that struck me. massimo vignelli said simply that typography is not about the letters, it's about the space between them. now, we can debate the relative merits of that statement ad nauseum, because typography can very much be about the letters, and type itself can be expressive (just not for a modernist like vignelli). but it's the assertion that the space between the letters is what makes the meaning stuck with me all night.

i define myself by what i am not. i am defined by the space i leave between myself and others, the relationships i have defined by their relative scarcity. i count as friends those that others might count as acquaintances, count as acquaintances those that others might not count at all. it is through my lack of ability to open myself to others that i define my closeness to anyone, and that is a shame. would it not be a more pleasant and true way to see things simply to define them as what they are as opposed to what they are not? a friend, an acquaintance, a love, an opponent.

defining things by the space between seems empty and hollow, no admiration of the thing itself but simply a recognition of what that thing is not. in doing so, are we not saying nothing more than that we wish it were more than what it is? in a lack of appreciation of the thing itself, we devalue that thing.

almost friday. another rung up the ladder. not bad, could be worse. better than nothing. milquetoast sentiments of appreciation that things are not as bad as they could be, but far from endorsements of what things are. the stars are not made more beautiful for their paucity in the city sky, but for their great number in the country sky. the night sky is made beautiful not by the clouds themselves, but for the light of the moon dancing on them. the forest is made beautiful by the trees of which it is made, not by virtue of being more than single tree. love is beautiful in and of itself, not because it represents a lack of misery. the moment is wonderful on its own merit, not for being not another moment that we dread or fear.

it is what things are that makes their beauty, not what they are not. it where they are that is appropriate and right, not where they are not. part of making happiness is understanding and finding the magnificence in what the world is, not being thankful for what it is not. it is the additive properties of any given moment that make its grandeur, not the subtractive, for beauty lies everywhere in what things are and cannot be found in what things are not.