How Language Can Come to Tire You

A: So is there nothing else you want to tell me?

B: I think I’m rather spent; I’ve said everything there is to say.

A: You can’t possibly mean that….

B: Well, for now, I do.  It seems the words have left me–the thoughts too.

A: For one as garrulous as you are, this seems an unexpected turn of events, to be sure!

B: That’s just it, friend: I’ve spent so much of my time in the World of Words, as I’ve called it.  You’ve heard me say it before; I wake and I write or I wake and I read, I read after I write or I write after I read.  Then there’s all the speaking.  You know how I can get; well, it goes on all day, more than greetings–the conversations, the delving into this or that with this one or that one, the arguments, the constant need for an account.  After so long, well, it seems, you just sort of give up.  There doesn’t seem to be anything of importance for me to tell you right now.

A: But look at you!  Listen to you now!  You are still–speaking, and relishing it, if I may add!  This can’t be anything like seriousness on your part.

B: It is, it is.  I only tell you these things because you asked, because, I guess, that’s what we do, we humans, we’re always looking for the best way to put things with our tongues.  I know you have noticed my troubles as of late, that I have not been my usual talkative self.  I thought maybe it would be best if I could just keep quiet; that seemed the best way to make it through this dark night of the soul, you could call it.

A: Don’t be so melodramatic!

B: You are so hard to satisfy!  That’s what it is, at least when you see something divine in language.  To no longer have the words at your command, to be exiled to a speechlessness; this is no small curse for a man such as I am.

A: One question, I wanted to ask you one minor question, and for once not have it turn the world upside down.  For once I didn’t want the existential crises to follow upon my questioning you.  I was only wondering why you suddenly turned silent, why you just ended up sitting in place where you are, mouth agape, as though on the verge of saying something, but you said nothing.

B: I was thinking, and I tend to grow silent and open-mouthed when I think.

A: All your contradictions!  You think I can stand them any longer!  Just a minute ago–surely you recall, the day has not moved a breath since you uttered the words–just seconds ago, count them and count on it, you told me that you were not only without speeches and phrases, ways to put things on the tongue as you described it, but without thoughts too.  Now you tell me you were lost in thought.

B: You’re right, and there’s nothing I can do to escape the contradiction you’re pointing out.  It comes in waves, I guess that cliche manner of putting it is the best I can find.  A thought comes, and it’s precious, you even want to hold it dear and close for a while when it arrives, like an irreplaceable gift.  But then like a bird it flits away, it might as well have never come, you stand there, empty-handed and empty-headed, and look out to where it flew, but the thing didn’t even have the mercy to leave a trace.  It’s this thoughtless thinking that leaves me bereft of proper words.  How in the world can you take hold of something so damnably elusive?  Why even would you want to?  And that’s not the only thing: I’m constantly reminded, when I put the pen to the paper, when the thoughts crystal-form themselves within me and I attempt to get them out and express them–the whole enterprise is a sham, at least as long as you hope to really attain anything with the words.

A: What are you saying now, that you have become an adherent of the religion of senselessness?

B: That’s not quite it, either.  There’s sense, to be sure, sense and sense enough.  But like clouds it dissipates, and then there’s the sky, either blue or black or purple or crimson or whatever, and the sky is not a book, nor is it a vault for our memories or anything on whose surfacelessness anything like a face could last, that face we attempt to write into all things and everywhere.  It’s just a dumb dome, a rim and endpoint, an ending, to all of our ramblings.  There’s nothing to say to the sky, I guess that’s what I’m saying.  It seems I’ve been dwelling recently with my head turned upwards; the mouth slits open, you’re right, but there’s nothing of any use coming out of that mouth, nothing but stupefying wonder.

A: So all of that, your work, your poems and your captured thoughts, your essays, the big books of them on the filing cabinet, you’re telling me they are all for naught?

B: That would be a good way of putting it, if it weren’t for this: it’s awfully bold, that nothing of yours.  No, I think it’s more a matter of somethings, little things, big things, momentous and trivial things, all stacked up and piled in a mess atop one another.  In other words, it’s important and all, but at the same time, for anyone who gives it a moment’s thought, or is visited and stunned like I am, it is the stupidest of stupid things.