Thursday, September 27, 2007

Language That Carries Us

Language that carries us.

These words emerge like a refrain. Of what carries us in its stories. We shape ourselves through it. It's not like any natural processes, yet it is. More than a reference system. Living. An amorphous alphabet living through us. The grammar of our minds. Velocities and productions. Marks that remain, moving on. How can you use it to fathom what is? How can language describe itself?

Language that carries us.

At one time I wanted to collect theories and embody them. I never developed a mistrust of concepts. Yet the theories and approaches I once knew are like ocean foam, appearing and disappearing on the vast water. Traceries, all that's left. Without understanding how fully immersed we are. Can a watery mirror reveal itself to itself? Or only reflect?

Language that carries us.

It has no weight, language. It doesn't exist unless there are those who understand its signs and references and grammars, its codes and systems, the whole referential ocean of letters that language buoys. What floats to the surface is my sentence: sentences that play with grammar and meaning. They aren't even me; I am quite different, sitting in the library in the depths of the city writing in my mermaid colours.

Language that carries us.

Not that language escapes the telling of it, not at all. When we utter, we are the "I" of language. Can language reflect on itself from the position of subject? Can language even be a subject? I am the speaking, or the writing, or the reading, or the thinking, therefore I am? I am that which proposes memory. I am the bank. I am the money of words. I am the currency through which we. And now I go blank. The vault is full, and spins on the ocean current.

Language that carries us.

Ponder it, carry it like a mantra, a thought, to sift through, resonate in, drift with. What is language that it can carry us? I am a system of language, an encyclopedia of possibilities, an array of alphabets, a lexicon of meanings; and you are yet more. Were our minds created as vehicles for language? Words open doors of meaning; hatches in galleons of knowledge sailing on ancient seas.

Language that carries us.

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