Page and Mouth

Two records run beside each other under the roof, and neither is permitted to silence the other. The page holds what must be exact: counts, recipes, the formulae of medicines, the rights to water, the measure of a debt, the judgement of a court. Ink does not tire and does not flatter, and for a count or a cure that is precisely what is wanted.

The spoken record holds what the page cannot keep. A written sentence outlives the room it was first said in and loses it — the speaker's weight, the thing everyone present understood and no one thought to set down, the warning carried in how a thing was said rather than what was said. Our mouth-keepers carry the migrations and the judgements, the vows and the insults, the old war-cycles, and they carry them as living things, learned by heart and handed down voice to voice.

When page and bench disagree we do not hurry to make them agree. A page may correct a count; a voice may correct a meaning. What we are willing to call settled history is only what is left after both have had their long chance to accuse each other.