going fishing

abbreviations

And what the dead had no speech for, when living, / They can tell you, being dead: the communication / Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

t. eliot, “little gidding,” ll. 52-4

Words are acoustical signs for concepts; concepts, however, are more or less definite image signs for often recurring and associated sensations, for groups of sensations. To understand one another, it is not enough that one use the same words; one also has to use the same words for the same species of inner experiences; in the end one has to have one’s experience in common … the history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation.

f. nietzsche, bge: 268

great things are done when men and mountains meet

w. blake [1807]