J: We understand only too well that a thinker would prefer to hold back the word that is to be said, not in order to keep it for himself, but to bear it toward his encounter with what is to be thought.
When I called out to you, it was as if my voice were traveling through some strange, opaque medium … like water at night … and that this liquid was deafness itself. You never heard me when I spoke and never spoke up for me. You never spoke on my behalf. And now … years later … amid all the ellipses and parentheticals–all these theoreticals–you come calling again as if deafness were sound and not silence. As if you used words to stuff your ears into not hearing. As if your hand were mere gesture and not a slap on the face.