The Quiet Grammar of Symbols
Symbols are not decorations. They are a second language — older than writing, quieter than speech — and they follow rules we rarely notice.
Before there was writing, there was the mark. A hand pressed to a cave wall. A circle scratched into bone. A spiral drawn in wet clay. These were not decorations. They were the first sentences of a second language — one that speaks in image rather than sound.
A symbol is not the same as a sign. A sign points; a symbol contains. The exit sign in an airport tells you where to go. A rose, held in a lover's hand, tells you nothing precise — and everything at once.
To read symbols well is to slow down. To notice how a circle behaves differently from a square, how gold behaves differently from silver, how a raised hand differs from a hand at rest. This is the quiet grammar we forget we already know.
— Madame Monsieur