All of this lying empties the language out

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You can say anything. You can lie. You can promise. You can vow. You can defy all logic and reason. Those words that you say, those expressions that arise from your depths, are bound by no law or force to have any actual reference. Of course, eventually, your actions will prove your language to be false. But there is always another town, a sucker born everyday, someone willing to believe kind eyes,  a nice smile and the honeyed words.

But if you work in the Word, all of this lying empties the language out, hollows you out. That ur-language there inside your skull, that private voice of your innermost being, is diluted by lack of meaning until there is only silence.

Kafka wrote: it is not the singing of the Sirens that is horrible, it is their silence.

I would like to stand by my words again. But, tell the truth, they don't come when I call them anymore. I see them there on the verge of the clearing, whining like beaten dogs, some pawing to come back to my side, some looking to run off into the wilds, some wanting to rip my face off. I don't feel good about trying to chain them up. And mostly, I just sit and wait, hope a few might wander back over.

Everyone tells me to just pretend, to act "as if"... but I'm not even sure that means anything anymore.