The Weight of Words
“He who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown."
Herman Hesse. Steppenwolf.
The guys that show up at your door wear suits that must be special made to accommodate their barrel chests and the frightening width of their shoulders. And the sleeves are massive tunnels with room enough for their huge biceps to flex and their broken hands to pass through. Their big hands dangle, poking out of the tunnels, their knuckles scarred and twisted and swollen. These guys, in custom suits, speak simple and they say to you,
“There are too many words in the world and words make too many sentences and sentences make too many stories and stories create an unbearable weight and the houses and bridges are collapsing beneath this weight of words.” These guys say to you,
“Your address is on our list. We have come to stop the words that keep flowing from your crooked mouth and oozing out your smelly pores and dropping on your dirty floor. Look at the mess you are making! You are a mess with all this oozing emotion, all this emoting. Your floor is a mess of conjugations and the floor joists are sagging under the weight of this nonsense.”
You look around your house of words and see that they are right. This place is a terrible mess with scraps and snippets and snarls and smiles and similes and silly sayings and twisted aphorisms and twirling tediums and titillating thoughts swimming like tadpoles in the bathtub. None of it makes any sense! At least not now.
“But it seemed to make some sense in the moment,” you say softly to the large men. You are embarrassed when you see your house through their eyes.
“Come with us. We have a place for people like you. We have a place where your words will be transformed into bubbles that rise to the surface and then pop and float into the air as light as dry leaves caught in a gentle breeze. You will not inflict more damage to our houses and to our bridges. The acid from your words will no longer burn potholes in our roads.”
“Finally, people will sleep again. They will no longer be exceptionally ecstatic and they will no longer be exceptionally depressed. They will go to work and build our city without your constant complaints and distractions and contradictions ringing in their ears, without your ridiculous fantasies and philosophies confusing them and distracting them from their manifest purpose.” These guys say,
“You must come with us now,” and they take you by your armpits and your feet hang useless and drag across the dirt and the dirt swirls up in motes and the motes dance in the light that filters through the big trees. And you think,
“Okay, it must be time for me to go.” You think,
“Isn’t the light beautiful today.” You think,
“Isn’t the fabric of their suits so smooth and shiny and iridescent black. Very expensive material.” You want to stroke the beautiful black cloth but you cannot because they are holding you so tight. You think,
“I have no choice. After all, my toes are dragging through the dirt and these big strong men have got me.” And you think,
“They hold me firmly but gently and without personal rancor. This is just their job and they must do their job and I must play my part so they can do their job. I mean, after all, they have families that must be fed and mistresses that must be fucked and bosses they must report to.”
“Did I ever have a choice?” you think. And you know you did not. Because of the words unbidden and unruly rising up through you. Because of the unstoppable words that made you shout and made you whisper and the words tore through the city with no respect for stone or brick, no respect for the obvious, no respect for the solid square truth. Because you could not stop the fabrication of words, the spinning of enticing sentences, the weaving of your own black cloth. And because that cloth could not be cut and sewn into a suit that would fit the body of any human or animal. A useless ill-fitting costume, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, scratching your skin and causing welts. A fabric with a sloppy warp and an erratic woof. The flying shuttle goes in and out randomly, sometimes missing its mark entirely. And the cloth is never finished but goes on and on spreading out and covering the houses and the bridges so they appear like phantoms in the strange light you have woven. In your foolishness you have turned the world upside down and shaken it to see what will fall and what will float. And now you have made your deal with the devil and cannot tell the difference between solid earth and water.
So, no matter which road you took, no matter which alley you stumbled down, no matter if you were drunk or sober, silent or ranting, crying or laughing, loving or hating, you were bound to end up here, drowning at the bottom of this river.
Water: one minute she is an effervescence of light filled with joy, a spritely dance that will never end, a beautiful sensual creature smooth as silk stroking your body with such perfect knowledge of who you are and what you need. She knows you; she loves you! You are her one and only! You are her very special creation and she will never leave you. You are the little waves of sunlight shimmering on her surface and you shiver with ecstasy.
And then a dark cloud passing in front of the sun turns her surface into a sombre reflection of your innermost despair, a dark female presence that will never be tamed and will choke you as you sink through her frigid, bottomless ocean, a cruel mistress, a demanding bitch withholding her favours and laughing at your dismay, sneering at your shocked cries as you wake to your smallness, to your impotence when pitted against her immense womb, her deep dark cunt. She is the one, all through history, who demands bloody human sacrifices! She has many lovers! And she is done with you! You have lost your hold on her surface and now you are swirling down and she is killing you forever, and over and over again, and without remorse or pity. Water.
