the gap tells us more than does the bridge

Currently doing research for my essay on Kroetsch's What The Crow Said, and i'm mainly focusing on language/negation/nothingness. Which is a rather large topic, as I am finding out. For some reason, I find that I am particularly perceptible to losing my grasp of reality when I'm confronted by concepts such as these. The entirety of Language is being Deconstructed, destabilized as I read, and I find this discomforting. Quotes such as "knowledge of the world, of others and of self is determined by language. language is the precondition for the act of becoming aware of oneself as a distinct entity. it is the I-Thou dialectic, defining subjects by their mutual opposition, which founds subjectivity." This sort of statement places the entire weight of existence onto language, then later, the author takes it all away: "language is something I am made out of, rather than a convenient tool I use, the whole idea that i am a stable, unified entity must also be a fiction". I slowly lose my grip on... myself (to misquote american pie). Nietzcsche nicely put the whole thought process:

"if we say we are trapped in language and its concepts, that claim is in itself, of course, a part of language. we wish to explain that 'trappedness' but we are unable to do so other than with the very concepts which trap us. the original thought, therefore, eludes us, for if we could express it, we would, after all, not be trapped."

wraps it all up nicely into a box of Catch-22, does he not?

its unsettling. and i am existentially exhausted because of it. I feel myself grow thin and hazy, flickering between absence and presence, meaning and non meaning.

I think, therefore I am unsure.

-jr