often reading turns into a silent graphic fray—looking at words, we pierce them—and when they make sense, we keep looking as if nothing. at the moment the letter releases us, back to the surface, we see lines and stains—figures of ink infused with the unforeseeable. now we see the medianilmedianil, spanish for the gutter, is that very line across the open book where both pages meet, flush, flee. a vertical horizon. everything and nothing at once. ungraspable—speaking all tongues and none. like those other lines and figures.