Telling is the business of language.
What does language tell?
What language tells,
what it speaks and what it keeps silent,
is and remains always everywhere what is,
what can be, what has been, and what is about to come —

…For whatever is put into language in any real sense
is essentially richer than what is captured
in audible and visible phonetic conformations…

But even so, every statement remains in a mysterious manner
related to all that can be called up by a
“There is …”

“There is a light that the wind has put out.
There is an inn on the heath which a drunkard leaves
in the afternoon.
There is a vineyard, burnt and black with holes
full of spiders.
There is a room which they have white-washed
with milk.
The madman has died…”

What Is Called Thinking? by Martin Heidegger, Part II Lecture VII

Friday is the end of the workweek as tradition has it. And what is tradition, but ruts, beaten paths, even paved highways in the mind, left by dead and gone generations. We continue to use the interstate highways build in the Dwight Eisenhower administration. Work is in fact done 24×7 now, while Friday is generally recognized as an end of a work week. Language is a telling and a “keeping silent” – much is unspoken, left to silence. Quite similar to the way of life of my parents generation, the post-WWII Americans that served in Europe and in the Pacific and worked in the factories. What ends is also a beginning, or in Heidegger’s words a “what is about to come”.

So what is our “is”? What would you say is our “about to come”? Contemplate those simple inquiries for a moment while silent. Do your best, keep telling yourself that the “what” you or I may say or write, as a matter of fact is richer. The “what” thought and language refer to is not the same, is infinitely complexified with concealed potential.

I read earlier this morning about the visit of Chinese Premier Xi to this country, and with the American President elected by popular ballot in the 2024 election. This visit is characterized by pomp, by glitter, by military uniforms, and by the roar of warplanes. No doubt the Chinese guest clearly understands what is meant to impress, to dazzle, the effort to cozy up with a state dinner guest list of tech-titian-bros, is only a tactic of misdirection. His host is a consummate liar, a one-trick-pony, who will in the end, have to comply with the policies of China in Asia.

The photo is a single image, in garish colors, a wooden staging of the visit. Out of frame is the demolished wing of the White House.  A pit in the ground prepared for a grand ballroom to come.

Stay tuned…

How about the verse which Heidegger employs to illustrate the mystifying effect of language? Especially the line: a milk-whitewashed room of a deceased madman…