the contrast between black and white

The contrast between the black shape and the white space around it. That is what type design is about, they say. The black shape that is accentuated by the white that encompasses it. The white that allows the black to become a shape. To first appear as a dot, and then to take its distinct form, and, through that, become a signifier. A sign with its significance.

No one can recall when the dot first appeared. Research into photographs fails to provide evidence. The point of the research anyway would only be to find some relief to the conscience. That it was just a dot. A small dot with a clear border. Not even black. Medium brown maybe, with a slight contrast on the white canvas of her neck. She only has second-hand perceptions of it, images mediated by mirrors and photographs on telephone screens. Something that is so visible to others can be easily invisible to oneself. The mole was there for a while, and it was doing nothing. It became an iconic detail of her appearance. A cheeky dark dot on a long white neck. A dot accent, a period. Soon to become an acute, a comma, an exclamation mark.

She also doesn’t exactly remember when the transformation happened. When did the borders of the circle move to create a more complex shape? When did the contrast grow between the black of the mole and the canvas? She remembers looking into the bathroom mirror on a gloomy night when it hit her. The dot is turning into a letter and is about to write her death sentence. Her partner remembers waking up one morning, and noticing in panic that the shape had turned black. She slowly took immediate action.

Asking her sister’s opinion, who doesn’t think it’s something to worry about, but she doesn’t know for sure. Asking the midwife who recommends to asking the GP instead. Asking the GP, who doesn’t think it’s a reason for worry, but she doesn’t know for sure. Asking the dermatologist, who doesn’t think she needs to worry but just in case… he suggests it to be removed.

She waits for the surgery with her partner and their newborn in the basement of the hospital, the same hospital where the baby was born two weeks earlier. Cheerful elderly ladies hand out murky black coffee from an old-fashioned cart to the patients in the waiting room. They call her name. She walks into the operating theatre with her backpack on, holding on to her earthly belongings as if she was going to the underworld. She has to leave her pack in an in-between room. She makes a note to herself: one can not take one’s belongings to the other side.

There are several doctors. Many doctors. They have their distinct roles, but to her they are just doctors. They give her instructions and explanations. They sit her up on the table and lay her down, clean the skin and draw on it, puncture the skin and inject painkillers, cover her face and open the skin, clip out the mole and fry the blood vessels, stitch the hole closed and cover it with a bandaid. All with admirable precision, all with admirable speed. The recovery instructions are given while the needles are still pulling threads through the skin, and an extra bandaid to take home is tucked into her numb hands before the protective apron is removed. They sit her up and because she doesn’t faint and confirms that she feels alright, she is escorted out to the waiting room.

She sits in the waiting room and looks at her baby.
She drinks bubble tea in the shopping mall.
She looks at her baby.
She looks at her beloved.
She wants to cry.
The painkiller wears off and the wound hurts.
She feels the cut on the throat.
She breastfeeds.
She wants to cry.
She lies on the sofa.
She wants to cry.
She holds the crying baby.
She wants to cry.
She can’t explain in words why she wants to cry.
So she doesn’t cry.
They will tell the results in two weeks.

Red was the first second color used in printing. It was used in early prints to mark points of emphasis, points of interest, points of concern. It was used to mark the endings of paragraphs and beginnings of new ones. When she checks for her results in her online patient account, all her patient history is in black. Except for a small paragraph of abbreviated notes in red: the results of the surgery. She doesn’t look up the meaning of the abbreviations. She understands that the red is marking an ending of something, and the beginning of something else.

She arrives to the hospital for her appointment. She is called in and she sits down in front of the doctor. He looks at her results. A suppressed twitch on his face. A rush of adrenaline through her body, just as the feeling that she used to get before hearing her grades for her school papers. One isn’t surprised about a bad grade when one have already peeked into the teacher’s pile of the papers and glimpsed the notes in red pen. She isn’t surprised when he tells her that the mole was an early stage of melanoma. She isn’t surprised, but she is left wordless. She thinks about the red paragraph. The red face of her crying newborn. The red line of the scar on her neck. The end of something, and the beginning of something else.