O How The Wheel Becomes It

When a perfectly circular font is chosen, the letter O is formed by the jetstream of a dot on a very fast merry-go-round: "make it stop. I want to get off. I think I'm going to be sick". But not all O's are round, of course, some are oval, and others look like a big fat typographical zero that a giant has sat upon. And – “O tempora! O mores!” – O is also the letter of sado-masochism, as witnessed by the infamous The Story of O, and since in old Hebrew O was called “ein” and was represented by an eye, we can include Georges Bataille’s truly taboo shattering The Story of the Eye in our litany of debauched O references. Although perhaps the best use of O is as a patronymic for transforming people into Irishmen with a single circumferencial stroke of your pen. That is all I'm going to write about O because I don't want to get into the whole serpent devouring its own tail thing.

Comments

[Mrs. Peperium]

O dear, is that all?

[Outer Life]

Like "I," "O" is more than just a letter, it's a word (no need for the silent "h"). And what a word it is, signifying sudden comprehension or ecstacy, or both.