Negative Space

I was writing today. The scene involved a girl and the man she had always thought was her older brother, but who has just confessed that he is really her father. His girlfriend got pregnant when they were both teenagers and his family, a rich one, whisked the baby away the day she was born and raised her as one of their own. The birthmother never knew about it, because they didn't tell her. She always thought strangers had adopted the child, and always regretted giving her up. Always worried about her and wondered what had happened to her.

The point is, while I was working on the dialogue I realized that sometimes it's not the words we say that are most important, it's the words we don't say. The things we don't tell. Except perhaps with a look, a posture, a gesture.

The absence of something is as evocative as the essence of it because each implies the other, its opposite. Interesting, isn't it?

It's true in books, and it's true in life. It's also true with images like this one, an old stone wall on my property.

We're glimpsing the graveyard next door through that crack, by the way.

And what does that tell us by not telling us? Hmmm.....