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notes on parallel grammars
On the Nature of Notation
Every grammar begins as a gesture. A mark on paper, a line drawn in the margin of something else entirely. Before the rules codify, before the syntax hardens into convention, there is the first sketch — tentative, imperfect, alive with the energy of discovery.
The parallel grammar extends this intuition into multiplicity. Not one system of notation but several, running alongside each other like musical staves, each voice independent yet contributing to a larger harmony that none could achieve alone.
What you see here is the sketchbook. The work-in-progress. The margin notes that precede the published text.1
1 The distinction between sketchbook and finished work is, of course, a false one. Every published grammar was once a margin note.
A grammar is not a destination but a way of traveling — each rule a footpath worn by repeated passage through the same landscape of meaning.
Parallel Structures
Consider two sentences running side by side. Their subjects differ, their verbs diverge, yet the rhythm holds them in alignment. This is parallelism in its simplest form — the echo of structure across different content.
Now extend that principle beyond language. Parallel architectures in computation. Parallel lines in geometry that meet only at infinity. Parallel lives that intersect at unexpected moments.2
The paragram takes its name from this multiplicity. Not paragraph — a single block of text — but paragram: a writing that exists alongside, beside, in parallel to the main channel of meaning.
2 Euclid's fifth postulate remains the most productive failure in the history of mathematics.
The margin is not empty space. It is where the most honest thinking happens — unguarded, provisional, free from the obligation to be correct.
The Ink Experiment
Ink on absorbent paper spreads in ways the hand cannot predict. The blob forms its own topography — ridges where pigment concentrates, valleys where the paper drinks too eagerly. This unpredictability is not a flaw but a feature.
In the margins of this notebook, the blobs drift. They are ink experiments, color tests, idle marks made while thinking about something else. They carry no semantic weight yet contribute everything to the atmosphere of thought-in-progress.
The hand-drawn quality is deliberate. Not the polished vector of a final illustration but the trembling line of a first attempt. Each curve records the speed and pressure of the moment it was made.