Exile of the word/ IV

…everything is profoundly broken…

…everything must be rebuilt…

Words fall apart. With the deconstruction of language, meaning vacated the scene. Speech fell to mumbling, struggling to find the right word.

History pointed to the death of the word as the death- or impossibility of communication- of inter-subjectivity. They exclaimed, “the king is dead…the king is dead”, and in the place/space of coherent language, nihilism entered the scene. As the revelers and the prophets of doom danced in the wreckage of the word, redemptive speech appeared lost.

In the veil of darkness, there emerged a new form of seeking. Searching through the ruins of the word, a luminous glow, a faint murmuring was heard. Within the breakage of the whole, the parts, the letters were seen for the first time.

These enlightening letters, osiyos mach’kimos, lay dormant, repressed as long as the word, the whole appears full and self-sufficient. The letters, once perceived as necessary stones, avanim, for the construction of a greater whole, battim, were now shown to represent a sign of a wholly different/other purpose.

The letters, osiyos, or signs, point beyond their utilitarian purpose. Beyond the word, beyond the function of an individualized part serving a greater whole- only to lose its meaning in the collapse of the whole.

The letters point to an ancient past.  A time/space beyond moment or place, beyond language. The letters are signs pointing towards the origin of letters. The letters are the message,  the letter, which promises to always, inevitably arrive at its destination.

The osiyos are the spiritual residue of spiritual potencies that have long been absent, present through their absence.

The letters are the trace, of a past presence, present through its trace. They call us to lift them from the wreckage. Read them. Interpret them. To connect to them.

To be continued…