tie

The tie is a noose turned upside down.

It tightens around the neck.

The closing tension is not caused by an intentional collapse-of-the-body-beneath-the-weight-of-the-world, but an auspicious and determined yank of the arm towards it. The tie indexes the ground; pointing to where the bones it beguiles eventually disclose the arbitrary gesture of tying a tie. Its determining motion parallels an invisible but pervasive potency, the active effort against which, brings about the cessation of life.

It does not defy gravity, it harmonizes with it.

The final tie follows the blind force of the boulder, and contradicts the slipping but never seizing fight of Sisyphus. In this way, the tie deceptively reverses the dialogue between productivity and death, between power and the power to decide, between business and game. While Sisyphus struggles against a rolling rock for an eternity, it is only because he cannot evade immortality. He yanks his tie towards the earth, and is forced to work against the sky; cursed by his inability to make the single choice that validates other less profound ones:

To turn the tie around, towards those who punish.
To let the boulder roll, towards the punished.

To be the object of choice.
To be the object that choses.

Tie, when spelled with a capital (T), starts with a letter that structurally resembles the object to which the word it begins refers. (T) looks like a tie. Just as the shape of Apollinaire’s calligrams often refer to a theme contextualized by the graphic poem itself, so the shape of a letter can reference the meaning for which it is the guiding principle, the first symbol if you will. The (T) therefore exhibits the same calligramatic affinity to tie, that (O) shares with orange, and (S) with snake. At the same time, (T), as traditionally employed in symbolic logic, refers to a logical truth (becoming a function of gravity). Whereas (T) turned on its head (⊥), refers to a formal contradiction (opposing the function of gravity).

The logical inversion of separately chosen conclusions.
The cessation of an absurd argument, of a listless life.

The tie is a noose turned upside down.