Delusions of an erasure poet: invention is discovery

This is sculpture. No, it is interpretive dance. No, it is architecture without blueprints, otherwise known as archaeology. That stone is just a stone, but this one has been worked, and this fragment of human bone will yield up its secrets in the laboratory. And this spot could become a sacred place again, and for the same reason—ancestor veneration—were it not for the fact that a factory must be built. Or, more likely, a parking garage. But I digress. But I always digress. But I also keep circling back and finding new things to dig for. I am like a dog who buries a chew toy and comes back later and digs up a bone. An old dog who looks forward to forgetting his old tricks. A new study shows that dogs process language the same way people do: poorly. When hearing an unfamiliar language, we tilt our heads to catch the few fragments that still make sense. We apply our advanced archaeological skills to assemble those fragments into something just familiar enough to make sense—and just strange enough to keep us listening, looking, tasting, smelling. Such an enticing redolence. Such an efflorescence among the tombs.