Maybe you’ve heard of me. I’m the guy who sold language to the gods.

You’d think it would be like selling sand in the Sahara or carrying coals to Newcastle, but I had a hunch that the divinities would be a taciturn bunch, utterly devoid of language. So I set off up their holy mountain with garment bags full of my best specimens. Cloaks of woven syntax, adverbial accessories, pronominal footwear, shimmering modal nightwear.

It was a tough climb, but once I reached the cloud-covered peak I had my intuition confirmed. Linguistically speaking, the deities were naked as newborns, and eager to sample my wares.

I was eager too, and my enthusiasm was my undoing. No sooner had I draped the cloaks of language upon the gods’ colossal shoulders than they were descending down the mountain and into the world.

Language made them mortal. Words made them flesh.

Philosophers and mystics would be talking about this event for years, but it goes down in my memory as the time I didn’t close the deal. Even now I shudder to think of my merchandise, unpaid for, rolling off into the abyss on the backs of debtor gods. 

Would you like to know more about this story? I discuss it in Episode 93 of Structured Visions.