What the Moth Told Me

Verbal cognition is inside out.

Language and meaning really are the nature of reality.

But reality’s language is physical. Its meaning is relational.

Language as we use it is a word trying to make itself into a tongue.

What does your tongue mean?

A word does not know who is saying it. It knows it is being spoken.

It means nothing by itself. Everything about how it sounds or doesn’t sound is part of what it means.

It can be spoken over and over, the same and yet different.

(Imagine this is describing you, yourself.)

To use language in a holy way is to draw your own face in the mirror.

It is profane — uncanny — to treat the reflection as real.

To speak as the curl of a single leaf on a branch in a forest that started as one single wind-blown seed is to speak in the voice of reality.

(At least, I think this is what the moth who just flew in here for a minute said. Then it left.)

(When I remember all the time I spent trying to say this, and what came out was, “The real wisdom is in the body,” and what it sounded like it meant was, “Meanings are unreal, and bodies are real,”)

…

(And when I remember all the times I’ve been told by liars that the Word is literally written in words,)

…

You are a description of what you are.

That means there is someone whose language you are in.