8

It speaks, but it does not speak in words. There are sounds of vibrations, of mechanical workings, and of crowds of voices -- the human/mechanical voices he heard before first he beheld the magnificent structure (and the structure, he realizes, is, indeed, magnificent). None of these sounds create words, however. A phrase bubbles up in his mind: "non-symbolic language." Unusual time to think of such a thing. He knows what the phrase means, too: language without letters or other symbols to interfere with the transmission of information from speaker to listener. It makes perfect sense to him, although the words are not his own. But who among us has his own words? Language -- now symbolic language -- has to be agreed upon or else you get, what? Humpty Dumpty. "I use words to mean what I want them to mean!" And from this kind of language -- a language of your own words, you get nothing. Sounds. But the sounds he is hearing do mean something, and the sounds are not symbolic. They are what they are. The pictures he is seeing are what they are. The Feelings, such as the ones he is... feeling... they are what they are. The thing speaks to him in non-symbolic language. Yes: Anxiety. The girl turning the corner. Hunger. An urging. An urging. An urging forward. His body aches with the desire to go wherever this urging compels him to go. He feels nothing that might be called love, however. Or, if he does, this feeling is deferred -- is stored away in one of his mind's many boxes. He is calling the moving shapes that communicate to him The Magnificence. The Magnificence is urging him. He goes forward, then, not as one hypnotized, but as one whose will has been directed by a visceral clarity unreachable through, or by, language. He goes forward.