photo by Pete, Margam Park, South WalesI think I’m loosing any meager command I once had of language. I was sitting in a heated meeting the other day and was desperate to make my point. When it came my turn to force my way into the discussion, nothing but a stream of runny shit dribbled out of my trembling mouth. I tried to scoop the mess back into my mouth to swallow it discretely but it just kept pouring out, dribbling down my neck, onto my lap and pooling at my feet. So I shut up and stared down at the putrid brown pool between my legs, while everyone giggled my way.
Did you ever read the Burroughs story about the man who taught his asshole to talk? Well I think I inadvertently taught my mouth to shit… as well as this keyboard.
Language is an overrated form of communication anyway.
Language is conformist in the profoundest sense; even objective reality yields to its pressure. The so-called factual is brought to dissolution, because it is shaped and constrained by the limits of language. Under its reductive force, we forget that we don’t need symbols to be present to meaning. The reality of pre-linguistic social practices is screened from us by more than the practical, empirical limitations of access to time past. Primal existence has been ruled irrelevant, and indigenous life-ways are everywhere under siege, because of civilization’s pervasive over-valuation of the symbolic.
Too Marvelous For Words by John Zerzan
