The key question is not what a given sentence means but what it does, especially how it does whatever it does…to know is by definition to say that something is something else and be believed when one says it – Gunnar Olsson, Abysmal
Whatever we might say, we see in all that we say. – Sophocles
Only apparently is it a ‘presentation.’ – Martin Heidegger
It follows that in the world of humans any mark is better than no mark, for without categorization there is nothing at all, not even nothing at all. – Olsson, Abysmal
How small life is here / and how big nothingness. – Robert Walser, Oppressive Light
Polysemic Stupor 
“without categorization there is nothing at all”
Somewhere out there is a short story about naming that turns this idea inside out… gosh, it’s buried in my brain somewhere. I’ll track it down and let you know.
“She Unnames Them,” Ursula Le Guin
Thank you so much!…I’m on it!
Well … thanks smirkpretty for the reference. I see I am of the Ursula Le Guin persuasion. As always, Nathan… provocative!
I saw a Mappa Mundi at Hereford Cathedral – it was presented to us in chains like a rare and valued prisoner.
The Sophocles quote strikes me more than anything else here. It’s the sensory connection, I think: to speak, which is to use our tongues and mouths, to taste the old coffee in our spit and quickly clean our teeth of old blueberry muffin before we endeavor to share a thought with someone. We can feel our mouths purse, thin, widen. Hear the sounds become the words become the thought. What we do NOT is “see” them. Not, at least, as one sees a star or the steam from a freshly brewed cuppa (thank you very much). We “see” the impact upon another, I suppose: their own ears receiving, brain perceiving–or blanking out, as mine often does–eyes skirting towards the last muffin, finger twitching as the mouth starts to curl and pucker to life so we are distracted by the appearance of thought while the other makes a grab for that muffin. Dammit, I was hungry…
I suppose I’ve misread Sophocles entirely, I’m sure, but that was my reaction.
:(…perhaps part of the representation of human…invention and limit
it’s intriguing that perception has for so long been entrenched with metaphors of light (enlightenment, perceiving, looking into/further/on and so forth) … perhaps Sopho intended perception…but thereby simply proves the point I suppose…
I would trust your judgment, Nathan, far better than my own in this regard.