What if I were to say to you: "There are no words to express how I felt at that moment." What would that mean to you? That I must have a limited vocabulary? That there are experiences beyond the scope of language to express? That I'm just being a Drama Queen? That I have a limited imagination? That I might be retarded? All of the above? Like all of us I have indeed experienced moments of awe, of horror, of sadness and sorrow, of self-revulsion, of unexplained elations, of fury and anger and self-destructive urges, of mercies that melt me, of tendernesses that embarrass me. Emotions, that is, that language seems hopelessly inadequate to convey. A horse is a horse, of course, and we know that because the word "horse" completes itself, even if it's name is Mr. Ed. In such outer-world instances language shines with ineluctable meaning. But in the diaphanous interior land of ourselves, language is only a shadow among shadows of what is meant. JL loves language in ways that are almost as alien to me as is chess. I find his fascination with language fascinating -- up to a point. And it's not a very sharp point : ). Th(ought, I used to think, was the provenance of language. No words, no thoughts. "But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." I think Jesus said that. Or some god. Now I believe that thoughts preceded language and that one day "presto-jockamo" in an ape-thick anonymous female brain (if you don't know why female, you're hopeless) it happened that a word suddenly manifested itself.-- perhaps it was "apple" -- whatever, it was plucked from the thing that ever since has been called "tree" and eaten by she and he -- grammar hadn't been invented yet. I truly believe that was the first sin that condemned us all to die of philosophy. The ape-thick female brainy one, said to the ape-thick male one: "Apple good. Eat." That did it. Language was on it's way to writing the Bible. And all of Shakespeare's plays and, wouldn't you know it, even invaded physics with its 3 quarks. So where does this get us? No where. There's no where to get to but internally. Reminds me of that saying: "No matter where you go, there you are." And who is that "you"? We each are, I believe, the universe -- at least the only one we'll ever know. And when each of us dies, the universe dies with us. The only good thing about death is that you never ever know you're dead. One of the very most good things about life is the encompassing of all emotions -- a way of being that cannot be taught, it has no subject matter, is approachable only through compassion, expressible only through poetic dialogue. This to me is the crown jewel of Language. The greatest reward of being alive. On the otherhand, there's war. Mike Geary all peachy and preachy in Memphis