Wanting-to-Say

A sentence wants to be written. Which sentence? ‘A sentence wants to be written’. What does it mean to invoke the wanting-to-say of words? ‘I would like you to write me’, say that. ‘I would like to be written’ – who speaks? Language – but as it turns from what you would want it to say. Language, now, without the ‘I’ at its centre. Unoccupied, murmuring, concerned with itself – but it asks, still to be written.

‘Write me. Let me be written, so that I can return to myself on the page’. Why does language ask for this detour? Why must it exist in order to suspend itself from existence? ‘I want to disappear. Write me so that I can disappear’.

Disappearance – there are words, to be sure. One sentence, another, that you can read, and that make sense. But is there a way of letting their meaning fall from itself? A way of turning meaning aside, of sending it on a detour? Then reading and not-reading would exist both at once.

‘Read me; but you cannot read me. Draw close to me, and I will retreat’. I would like to come close to you, say that. I would like to be able to read you. Why is it, as I read, that the page seems to turn its face away from me? Why does the page turn, gazing only into itself? ‘I am not here’, says the page. I am here and not here, both at once.