In language, we have a clay that we can mould, though once it hardens, it moulds us: our thoughts and the world.

In poetry, we have language moulded with skill, crafting new shapes, new mirrors, new eyes with which to see the world — within and without.

But this language — so necessary to thought — must also be a wall — a cage — between us and the world. It is nothing to Her. The stars are not stars, and space is not space. The hubris to imagine we can tame the infinite emptiness with a few marks of ink on paper, or a few vibrations of the air! We reduce All to one, and fracture One into all. Language creates and destroys, but this is the only way. Without it, there can be no ideas, no passing on of life. Could there be consciousness without words? Ah, what a question! For consciousness itself is a word! In this word we subjugate the mystery of our Self — flatten a multidimensional experience into a thing that could be found, seen, analyzed, understood.

But this violence is also the spring of Beauty. If Love is sharing of experience, then words are the coins of love! To share the mystery , we must name it, and in doing so, it dissolves. Maybe this is Camus’ absurd. We touch the world into existence with words — the same words that extinguish its truth and mystery. Books are the living children of the universe, but they are shadows, never able to mature and grow wise. True wisdom is silent and alone — and therefore useless!

And so we march on, one hand folding the paper of the world into beautiful icons of beauty, the other hand tearing the paper to pieces.

On hand punches holes in the fabric of reality; the other fashions the shards into glimmering sculptures.

One hand peels back the facade of the world; the other unrolls it into a flat facsimile of the palace — the blueprint has destroyed the building.