On the Comma

Welcome. Welcome, my midnight darlings. What does Rachel muse about when sleep deserts her at the hour of midnight?

Arbitrary to-do's, novel character sketches, humorous replays of the day's mistakes, acknowledgement of accomplishments, the ingredients of red velvet cupcakes, what to wear tomorrow and, among other things, punctuation. With a large bowl of captain crunch, a spoon too large for my mouth, an XL men's cotton t-shirt and a bout of insomnia, I scribbled this on a napkin last night, and thought I'd share it with you, as I've been running all day and haven't had time to post anything yet.

I love commas, and shamefully overuse them. There is an indefinable, delightfully charming something about a comma, a bushy-tailed freckle that gives a pause for respite in light, taking a moment to linger, to saunter, to suspend, to breathe, just to breathe.

The world hovers around the infectiousness of ideas, absorbed through the black & white austerity of words, which ascends each moment, as it follows the next. A comma pulls that moment from the sequentiality of time, allowing it to expand, enlarge, grow wings, seeing that there will never be an end, but a continual shift in ideology and perspective, perceiving all that is encompassed in a moment I would have missed, without the pause, the comma.

© 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All rights Reserved. {via & via}