I can now see that books should be banned. All books. Each word is a landmine. A sentence is made of a million different explosions and a book can go off in the mind with the force of nuclear bomb.

They change things. They alter minds. They eat their way into the soul and work on the very fabric of existence like hungry maggots feasting on living flesh. They threaten the stability of civilisation. They shake the foundations of sanity and leave one standing on air.

Slippery words; like eels wriggling through the waves fronds of thought; insinuating themselves in the Sargasso seas of the mind. Those becalmed areas of mindlessness where life is so tranquil and easy. Just the bills to think about; just the work to do. So simple. The daily routine, with all its myriad of worries, is none the less a linear series of stepping stones through the bottomless bog of mundane life. Safe and secure. Then one is confronted with a single word. A slimy eel weaving its spell through the tangled mass of  order. And as you reach for it, to grasp it, to tie it down into the pattern of  today’s breakfast, it slips away and explodes in your brain with a million nuances. And you know that life is different. It will never be the same again. There is this chain reaction going through the whole of your being. You may look calm and peaceful but the tendrils of subtle explosion is eating its way through your existence. You know that nobody else can understand that word the way you do. You have cracked open its code, reached into the guts of the beast and opened up a monster. It is spread-eagled before you, its viscera still vibrant with life, laughing in your face. This word has exploded. Its inner meaning is resounding through you like mental shrapnel. Wriggling through your mind.

How come you had never understood all this before; that each word has a million meanings; that nobody really understands a single thing anyone has ever said. The words shimmer and change before the eyes like chameleons. They seem to say something. They seem to communicate. But all that is just on the surface. Just the appearance of sense within the confines of this moment, this mundane existence. Beneath the surface they are laughing and swirling through a million disguises. DNA does not use words. Fucking is the only pure communication.

I have come to realise that every word I have ever written is a lie; every thought I have dreamed, every deed I have executed badly, every utterance I have committed to vibrating air. All of this a lie. All of it. Making no sense. Based on deceit. Conceit.

Once the nuclear bomb has cleared the mental tangles and the words are free to dance on a clear stage where they can be seen in all their glory the universe is bared and the stepping stones sink out of sight.

Explosions can be so slow. Now I am standing on air.