The fun here is spending a few moments in the land where language goes to admit what it really is: a system of communication with limitations, suitable for use in everyday life but wonky in its higher registers. Language can appear to say more than it has a right to say; we can form it into sentences that are not in relationship with what actually is or even what could be. If I type, “The desk thought to scratch its arm but, recalling that it was armless and that one of its legs was shorter than the others, blushed slightly,” the personification of the desk is one level of nonsense. But that’s
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