January 26
The moon has risen, / the little golden stars are gleaming / in the sky, bright and clear.
Evening Song
Listening mode
The moon has risen, / the little golden stars are gleaming / in the sky, bright and clear.
Some sentences contain no information. “It's already dark,” you say on the way home, though you can both see it. No one has to reply, and nothing follows from it either. And yet it is often harder to say something like that than to stand up for an opinion.
Perhaps that is because such a sentence has nothing to hide behind. An argument can be defended, a request justified. Someone who merely remarks that something is beautiful, or simply there, is only inviting the other person to look for a moment in the same direction. The invitation may go nowhere. The other person nods, already thinking about tomorrow, and for a moment you feel childish.
And if it works, nothing comes of it that could be held on to either. You haven't settled anything or decided anything. For an instant you both took in the same thing, and then each of you went back to your own thoughts.
The next evening it will get dark again, and it would be just as superfluous to say so.
