Connecting the Dots

For the reader’s peace of mind: the mole was benign, Janet has not been contacted by the Islamic State and the guest room, well, that remains to be seen. I’ve always accepted my mother’s overuse of ellipses as an idiosyncrasy of an elderly texter. But she doesn’t reserve the ‘. . .’ for ominous messages. When I told her the date I’d be returning for the holidays, she responded, ‘OK . . .’

What does that mean? Is she going to say more? Is my coming home for Christmas an imposition? Is there an autocorrect setting on her phone she’s unaware of?

It’s not just my mother. My older downstairs neighbor left me some pastries last week. When I texted to thank her, she responded, ‘Enjoy . . .’ Why not Enjoy period or Enjoy exclamation point? Did she resent the gift? Are the treats poisoned?

There’s an extensive online discourse on the Baby Boomer generation’s penchant for ellipses. ‘OK . . .’ ‘Thanks . . .’ ‘See you next week . . .’ Sometimes they’re a playful way to build suspense, sometimes a form of passive aggression, and sometimes they relay an implication: ‘You were going to call me back in 5 minutes and it has been 10 so . . .’ Draw your own conclusions here. But my mother’s use of ellipses doesn’t reveal a pattern or convey a tone. She’ll ‘. . .’ in good times and bad. Excited, pensive, disappointed or otherwise.

A seasoned texter knows that colloquially the dot-dot-dot is a cliffhanger and its receiver should heed the punctuation accordingly. The connotation isn’t necessarily positive or negative, it just insinuates that more is to come.

Some linguistics scholars theorize that those born before the advent of texting utilize ellipsis as a space-saving method for informality or shifting sentiment. Boomers are accustomed to analog communication, a letter on paper, where space is limited and one cannot press ‘return’ to generate infinite writing real estate. A possible, yet unsatisfying explanation.

Ellipses were developed in literature to communicate a pause or omission. The word in Greek means ‘leave out’. Many respected writers employ ellipses to different ends: drama, fragmentation, etc. Virginia Woolf likes them. They mark her move away from Victorian prose and toward modernism. She inserts ellipses not as decorative punctuation but as structural devices. Where Joyce uses stream-of-consciousness to overwhelm with abundance, Woolf uses ellipsis to pare down, to suggest that what matters most may be what is omitted.

‘She felt somehow very like him – the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away . . .’

The semicolon already fractures the sentence, breaking between the rational (‘She felt glad’) and the irrational (‘thrown it away’). The ellipsis takes that fracture further. It refuses closure, resists moral conclusion.

It’s of course unreasonable to compare my mother’s texting quirks to Virginia Woolf’s prose. That ‘thrown it away . . .’ is deliberate. It speaks volumes. But in a way, my mother’s ‘OK . . .’ performs the same work, though unwittingly. Her ellipsis is a modernism of its own: the pause of someone caught between analog warmth and digital brevity. Like Woolf, she’s hedging against the limits of form, trying to insert tone into a foreign medium. What has become a signature of our parents’ digital awkwardness may really be their own adaptation to the medium.

Have I not been giving this generation enough credit? Are the over sixty crowd as intentional in their punctuation as Virginia Woolf? Enlightened even? It was a Boomer who invented the smartphone after all. Maybe . . .-ers know exactly what they’re doing.

To end this piece conclusively, to not have written the ellipses of essays, I texted my mother. Why, I asked, do you do this? She responded:

To end this piece conclusively, to not have written the ellipses of essays, I texted my mother. Why, I asked, do you do this? She responded: ‘I don’t know . . .’

Gee, I was hoping that the author was named Margo.

***

Are you in a good mood? I hope so:

I love the ellipsis. I've discovered that there's so much in there.

So many foundational menu items to choose from.

...

S Sierra

"I am operating astern propulsion."[b]

[b] Also signallable on a ship's whistle using Morse code.

Meaning when used with numeric complements -- Speed (velocity) in knots

sierra: Borrowed from Spanish sierra, from Latin serra (“saw”), referring to the saw-tooth profile of the crestline of the range seen from a distance.

... is also Morse for the letter shin ש, and in the Hebrew spelling alphabet, shin is for shamir.

The visual puns are most excellent especially because an ellipsis is used to indicate that something has gone missing from the text. In Navy lingo, the analog is when a sailor goes missing -- declared UA for "unauthorized absence"

JERUSALEM

JERUALEM

Wal-Mart and Amazon sell these blue boxes in packs of 50:

צדקה

(= 199, makom echad, one place -- Gen 1:9)

534. THE DESCENT OF THE HEAVENLY JERUSALEM

One of the key events of the messianic era will be the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. In this myth the problem of rebuilding the Temple is solved by having the heavenly Jerusalem -- including the heavenly Temple -- descend to earth and settle on the tops of four (or in some versions, three) mountains.

536. THE CENTER OF THE WORLD

628. THE CAPTIVE MESSIAH

For many generations the Messiah has sat captive, chained with golden chains before the Throne of Glory. Elijah has tried to release him many times, but he has never succeeded.

So Elijah descends to earth and explains that in order to break the chains of the Messiah, he needs a magic saw whose teeth are the deeds of Israel. Every deed adds a tooth to this saw, but every sin takes one away. When there are twice as many good deeds as there are sins, then the saw can be used. That is why it is said that the Messiah will not come until we bring him.

Tree of Souls

... (S, ש) is a sierra is a magic saw:

"I am operating astern propulsion." ~ Jonah (the dove who went UA)

(When there are twice as many sins as there are good deeds, then the saw can be used. That is why it is said that the Messiah will not come until we bring him.)

Thus Jerusalem is the navel of the world, and its core is the altar of the Holy Temple,
built upon the Foundation Stone, which forms the foundation of the world...

Chesed - The World is Built on Kindness

…
2026
HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS

Boston (= 133): Trimountaine aka The City on a Hill and

The code Alt + 0133 on a Windows computer inserts an ellipsis character. The ellipsis character is U+2026 in Unicode and can be typed by holding the Alt key and using the numeric keypad to type 0133.

To add just a little more to connect those dots (ALT 0133) —

534. THE DESCENT OF THE HEAVENLY JERUSALEM

Some say that in the future God will cause the Jerusalem on high to descend from heaven fully built, and will set it on the tops of four mountains: Mount Sinai, Mount Tabor, Mount Carmel, and Mount Hermon.

>>>

This image, in itself, is quite beautiful, with the ethereal Jerusalem appearing as if in a vision, balanced on the tops of four key mountains in Jewish history.

In some versions, however, it sits on the top of only the first three mountains listed, excluding Mount Hermon.

Psalm 133

1 A Song of Ascents; of David.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

2 It is like the precious oil upon the head, coming down upon the beard; even Aaron’s beard, that cometh down upon the collar of his garments;

3 Like the dew of Hermon, that cometh down upon the mountains of Zion; for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for ever.

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