We give firsts and lasts too much power: New Year’s Day & New Year’s Eve, sunrise & sunset, Monday & Friday. Those moments in time get to decide the fate of all the moments of time between.

Birthdays & death-days.

The distance between them somehow determines the quality of the life. Too close together makes us sad. Too far apart makes us exhausted (and a bit anxious). Just right makes us, well, there isn’t really a just right, is there?

We notate a life by subtracting birth from death:

1944-2021.

And if you change the code from math to English and call it a dash, the intent is still a reduction of what’s between.

And that minus or hyphen or dash (en or em—doesn’t matter) elides a life. Or waits for one to end.

1969-

Life gives the dash its power. It is the most energetic, emphatic, and emotional punctuation. It doesn’t really mean anything until it is followed by something—it’s just holding the space. It doesn’t have any time to wait and yet it has an entire lifetime.

Emily Dickinson, of course, understood the dash’s urgency and patience—its frenetic buzz and absolute stillness.

There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -

We exist in the dash—past, present, and future—and wait for it to mean something.