22 Comments
Mar 26Liked by Ruben Bix

I for one am grateful that Mr. Bix has chosen to retain at least the spacing between words and continued use of English syntax, nor embraced the full panoply of ligatures and typographic markings as so commonly seen these days, nor yet resorted to actually making up vocabulary. It is however a slippery declension.

Expand full comment
Mar 20Liked by Ruben Bix

Punctuation aside, I found the story hilarious!

Expand full comment
Mar 20Liked by Ruben Bix

Another punctuation analogy might be like driving a tour bus or any vehicle for that matter—punctuation being the stop signs, traffic lights and the rest. You might get away with not using any in an Asian country but here, not so much. Fatalities as a result of rude and poor driving and mostly road rage would be the order of the day. I doubt anyone would reach their destination. Parts of me died several times as I was reading these chapters but were reborn to carry on.

Expand full comment

The lack of punctuation is like those memes where the words are all spelled wrong but most people can read them anyway because we automatically pick out patterns and our brain makes sense of them. IMO you definitely have achieved a stream of consciousness flow which really works to get across the feeling of a dream. There's so much stuffed into this piece I'll have to reread it several times while wondering if it's really a description of a dream you had or completely made up or someplace in between. Also, as a hyphenated word lover, I really appreciate the inclusion of so many great words!

Expand full comment

Use a fuckin period sometimes

Expand full comment
author

A preemptive comment/question from me: what do you guys think of my recent efforts to throw normal punctuation under the (tour) bus? My honest desire is to completely ban periods and commas and capital letters as a means of writing something "you read with your eyes," not with your mouth. I mean, most English punctuation was created for the town crier of ancient times don't you think? The way we read nowadays is usually on a device and in a hurry. We read with our eyes and all those .,?!:; are like bumps in the smooth flow of words. I also want to simulate a stream of consciousness sort of feeling though I probably haven't succeeded in that. I've been writing these recent stories quickly without punctuation and then later when I read them back I'm adding in a few commas for fear that without any pauses, people will rebel against me and stop reading entirely. So I'm curious to know how people feel about this.

Expand full comment