I'm sorry about your dictionary. I took all the words out, leaving
only blank pages.
I was inspired, you see; a little crackle of imagination set my
mind on fire, and I knew I had to make something wonderful. It's
just like when poor Victor first loved the new man and then created
him or Henry first dreamed of isolating and discarding evil. Well,
not exactly like them. Mine turned out perfectly, at least so far.
It'll stay that way, too.
I'm naturally lucky, you know: the universe's favourite son.
I stole all the words from your dictionary, like I said. I put
them together so very carefully in such a beautiful structure,
precariously balanced, just waiting to fall into sentence after
sentence��and it just sat there. I couldn't find the reason,
until I took it apart. I put it back together, thinking of flowers
and vines and jungles. I took it apart and put it back together
thinking of steel and cities and skyscrapers. Finally I knew:
dictionaries had all the words but none of the meanings.
Thursday night when the moon was full, I took to the sky and flew
over the whole world. I visited hundreds of thousands of people
and, gliding in through their windows, reached down. I touched my
finger to their temples, and from each person I took just one
meaning. The meanings must have wanted to be with me, they came
so easily into my hand when I called them, and lay in my grasp like
pearls glowing with light to shame the moon. I hid each one in my
sack and flew away fast, lest the light wake the sleeping man or
woman or child.
Most didn't lose anything important. Nobody actually needs to know
what a durian is or what it means to wend. If there's a five year
old girl who doesn't know what liver is, why, she'd thank me, if
she had any idea what she was missing. For all the important ones
I glided into hospitals to see the dying. The ones who wouldn't
last the night had no more need of hope or faith or optimism. From
the lunatic wing I took peace, tranquility, and contentment; their
owners hadn't seen them in years anyway. From those who were
waiting out the long weeks I took agony, pain, and fear all away.
There was one woman, she was supposed to die in less than an hour:
A wife, a mother of six. But she made a miraculous recovery, and
now she doesn't know what love is.
But that's a small price for science, a smaller price for something
so beautiful. Don't you agree?
I took away my little sack, filled to the brim with gleaming pearls,
each as small as a grain of sand. I could feel them, all that
sense and intentionality tinged with the lives that had built and
illuminated them pulsing, thrumming like a great dynamo, waiting
for its power to be tapped.
I came home, and I pulled out a pearl, "corduroy" by chance. I
was hoping for something more auspicious, but it didn't matter.
it filled my hand with its weight and potential, filled my room
with its light, and I threaded it onto its word. The two wove
together, form and substance one animating the other, the other
structure and composition to the first. So I spent the whole next
day, joining syntax and sense together. They piled up into a mountain
a thousand feet high in my bedroom.
It was time. It would work, no doubt in my mind. Word by word,
I started building a foundation, articles, conjunctions, prepositions,
all the functional categories. Tier upon tier of closed classes
a skeleton, structure, and strength. Layer on layer, nouns and
verbs in lacy arrangements, sandwiched together, or stacked up
high.
It would live, it had to hold, the world could be no other way.
I had no worry about grammaticality or sensicality, I followed my
eye and my heart to make the most beautiful patterns, cascades of
syllables that fell off the tongue leaving a rich flavour, sweet
and complex.
Finally, I had one more word to place on the pinacle. The crowning
move was "perfection".
It moved, animated with a life of its own. The whole language was
now free, disembodied, no longer imprisoned by our minds and our
bodies and our fleshy, wet tongues. It's the most beautiful thing
I've imagined. I can hardly believe it's real. I'd hold it close
to my breast and cry, tell it how sublime it is, if it only had a
substance to hold.
It doesn't, of course.
I can feel it, but only as Braille moving over my hands, unbidden,
caressing my body with stories and verses.
It has no face I can see, but only words, printed on my eyes over
everything I view, descriptions surpassing any mere reality I could
see.
It has a voice, though, it chants and whispers. I can listen, for
once in my life there is nothing I must say.
I've stayed in my room for days. I don't need food. I lie in my
bed and dream awake, listening, feeling, and fading away until, in
the space between syllables, I'll die.
It's all I could hope for, I've finally found love.
