In Praise of the Ampersand (&):

A childhood memory masquerading as a prose poem

Oct 31, 2024

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After posting a piece earlier in the week about white guys and Trump, I realized that, like everyone else, I have become consumed by this election. Consequently, I want to repost a fun piece I posted very early when I only had 40 subscribers. I hope this amuses you for the rest of the week, and for next week, which, with any luck, will not be disastrous.

“Tattoo”

There’s a tattoo of a tiny gun on my hand symbolic of the tiny wars I wage inside myself. Its barrel beckons like the phallus that’s visible when you stare directly at the sun. My father said, “A man who can’t fight is disgusting.” He was half-right about that. Most fathers are, even the one who erected a basketball backboard outside my bedroom window. In the evening, when the sun shrugs its tense shoulders, neighborhood children are rewarded with ice cream. But I’m sent to bed, where I stare at the tiny doorknob tattooed on my other hand until I fall asleep.

We experience much of life through symbols and imagery. Being an English professor, I could torture regular folks with explanations of the subtle differences between the image and the symbol. But, in fact, I don’t think there is much difference between the way we process images and symbols, and that they often resemble two jazz musicians who complement each other while doing their own things. The perfect example of this interplay between image and symbol occurs in that oldie-but-goodie movie Citizen Kane where the main character, Charles Kane, played by Orson Welles, murmurs on his deathbed the word “Rosebud.” It’s an enigmatic exhalation that only becomes intelligible at the end when all of Kane’s belongings are going up in flames, and we see Kane’s childhood snow sled on top of the burning heap, with the word “Rosebud” emblazoned on it. At that moment, we realize that the image of the sled is a symbol of the simplicity and innocence of Kane’s youth, in contrast to his troubled, chaotic adult life. Note how I use “image” and “symbol” interchangeably here, because the sled cannot be a symbol until we absorb the image of it burning.

We have lost a lot of symbolism in our culture, and most images inflicted on us are meant to manipulate not to enlighten or uplift us. But on a very personal level, we all rely on the symbolic to navigate life’s uncertain terrain. Whenever I was terrified as a child and experienced the anxiety of being unable to sleep, and when my prayers seemed to disappear into the deaf ear of darkness, I would stare at the brass knob on my bedroom door (the same doorknob in “Tattoo”) until I drifted off. It was a kind of meditative exercise. Years later, I didn’t need a Jungian psychologist to read the symbolism of that doorknob. To my childhood consciousness the doorknob represented a way out. The claustrophobia suggested by the closed door was indeed real, but, at any time, I knew I could escape by grabbing and turning the knob. The doorknob became a friend of sorts. It was hard, shiny, and stubborn. It basically said, “I’m here if you need me.”

Which brings me to the ampersand:

The ampersand is my favorite logogram. A logogram is a sign or character representing a word or phrase and is often used as shorthand in some writing systems. Take the dollar sign ($), for example.

But the ampersand has a more interesting history than the dollar sign, and before you can consider its symbolic possibilities, you have to look at its literal history. Something can’t stand for something else until you know what that something “literally” is.

& is a ligature. It’s a combination of the Latin letters “e” and “t,” which put together spell the Latin word et. Et means “and” in Latin. If you look at different renderings of the ampersand on the internet, you will see that in some of them, the “e” and “t” are more obviously visible. The Romans used many ligatures in their writing, but the ampersand persisted throughout history, reaching its peak in the mid-19^th century when it was often included as the 27^th character of the alphabet.

I could delve deeper into the ampersand’s history, but I am more interested in what it symbolizes. You could argue that its long history suggests its stubbornness, or that its ability to effortlessly absorb two letters suggests it has a welcoming nature, or that its elegant design exemplifies a certain grace. But just as all symbols have general connotations, we also, as individuals, have personal responses to symbols. Note my “reading” of the doorknob as a symbol of freedom when I was a child. Not many people would feel the same way about a doorknob.

For me, the effortless looping and crisscrossing of the ampersand represents acceptance. It also symbolizes a way of life mentioned in one of my favorite novels. In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, the phrase “So it goes” often appears after a tragedy, especially after a death. It was Vonnegut’s way, I think, of dealing with the frightening unpredictability of life and accepting our powerlessness to change certain things. Vonnegut had been a prisoner of war in Dresden after World Ward II, and after that city had been firebombed and burned to a crisp, he was forced to clean up the mess—the destroyed building and charred bodies, the stench of burnt flesh probably never leaving his nostrils. In short, he witnessed the worst of humanity. But Vonnegut didn’t see the “So it goes” approach to life as being a sign of helplessness. In fact, you could argue that the “goes” part of the phrase encourages one to persist, to endure, in spite of life’s unexpected and often debilitating tragedies.

For some reason, I have always thought of Vonnegut’s phrase as being, “And so it goes,” probably because that’s the title of a biography of him I read years ago. And so, whenever I see the ampersand, I think of the “So it goes” line from Slaughterhouse-Five. Whenever I confront something cruel or unfair, some behavior or happenstance that can’t be rationally explained, I say to myself, “And so it goes.” It has been almost a mantra for me, which is why, much to my wife’s consternation, I am getting a tiny ampersand tattooed on the “V” between my left forefinger and thumb. I want to look at it whenever I’ve had my fill of man’s seemingly inexhaustible appetite to inflict pain and misery on each other, or whenever, for no apparent reason, tragedy befalls someone dear to me. In short, to me, this tattoo will be a symbolic antidote to all things unexplainable and dumb.

Oh, to invent a symbol as complex and adventurous as the ampersand! Some may search for the mythological island of Atlantis or the Fountain of Youth. But the joy of getting lost in the ampersand is enough for me….

Old Man Still Howling at the Moon

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