Then I come to a place where language fails me. I know this place too. It’s filled with monochromatic syllables and simmering morphemes. Without a properly functioning language, the sun goes on the fritz. Without the sun, it gets very cold. All of a sudden, our sentences become sprinkled with sharp, spiky syllables that cut our tongues when we speak. Those guys, when they get cranky they're almost impossible to deal with. It’s just like dragging myself across the desert except that now it’s edged in verdant floating tones and the taste is slightly bitter, almost metallic.
* * *
Then I come to an image that looks familiar but has been de-contextualized in such a way as to strike me as totally new. This image has been plastered everywhere and has begun to infect my contemporaries in a way that makes them forget to eat. You know how they get. Their sleep is fitful and filled with anxiety-inducing dreams. They lose the ability to speak. Their faces become covered in a mossy fur. Soon, my contemporaries begin to age dramatically; their skin goes slack and begins to cling desperately to the bones around their eye sockets. Next time I see them I begin to doubt whether they were ever my contemporaries in the first place. To view them in this light is calming but also obscures a mounting panic in which I envision all of the familiar structures in the world falling down around me. Maybe I haven’t been here before after all?
* * *
Then I come back to the beginning again. The problem with the beginning is that it looks just like the middle. The problem with the middle is that when you really take a look at it, its hard to distinguish from the end. Here. Let me hold it up to the light for you. It kinda looks like this.
* * *