That day, when it first sunk in that words were making the world,
and that every cow that walked across the page was mooing,
because I'd put the moo in his mouth.

It felt like the world was flying apart
Like the whole universe really was expanding.

After that, there was nothing I could really count on anymore.
My words had taken on a life of their own and there was no real world behind them.
Only these words flying across the page, making things up.

What if you took all the words and threw them away?
What if all you had left was looks and smiles and frowns,
and no words of correspondence in your mind?

The words would lose their power, and you'd find yourself in the
everlasting light of the present moment.

Did you see that? Did you see how I suddenly threw religion into the mix of things with the words "everlasting light."

And then how I turned it you from Western religion to Eastern religion with the words
"present moment."

See how I did that?

The present moment is the pure seeing of things.
Things. Things. Thing. That empty word.

And yet it is useful when you are trying to live in a world without words.
It's such an empty word it doesn't bring along any baggage. No complex meaning.
When "thing" shows up, it's so empty you can leave it as it is,
or you can fill it in with your own experiential preference.
And thus, a "thing" becomes a friend or a foe, or even a cow
mooing across the landscape of this page,
or an actual squirrel filling his cheeks with nuts
under the pine trees in the Sierra Mountains.

See what that does when I fill in the specifics,
how I pull you this way and that,
determining what you'll see when you're looking at the world through my words?

I can't imagine living in a world without words. Can you?