A man opened his mouth and out began to usher forth a length of string. Whenever he would close his mouth the ushering forth would come to a halt, but once his mouth open again the string extends off on its way.
After a time he became curious and decided he would follow this string to see where it led, and so he took it by his hands and began to pull himself forward - his legs glad of the help from his arms. It was surprisingly taut, as if tied to something at the other end. And after a further time of movement after the string he stopped and said, “The string is finite, has not been endlessly extending, and so I must be nearing its end.”
However, with such uttered thoughts the string poured forth again, and so the end receded.
“Yes, self-defeating this uttering, but I can hardly be expected to stay quiet all this length of time. And in any case, if it wasn’t for opening my mouth in the first place there wouldn’t be any string to follow. So this is just as well. And with this extending of the length of the string, the destination is becoming more distant but also more grand, more worthy of reaching. So I’ll talk on. I am enriching the whole.”
So on he continued, keeping himself company philosophising about such things as the great glory of his destination, the longest possible length of the journey, what kind of welcome he'll receive, and other similar matters. At times he shows signs of tiredness, but thoughts of the end are ever enough to raise his spirits and push him onwards.
2 comments:
A metaphor for speech? A vivid picture anyway. You should really try to publish your pieces - they would make a remarkable volume
I think it's kind of about the fallacious idea of truth - or perhaps Truth - as lying at the end of a historical/intellectual process, rather than say a state of living being.
I did a few months back make reasonably sustained efforts to get published but I'm afraid there was a total lack of success. I ended up, internally anyway, seeing an almost total lack of avenues for my stuff.
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