Please let me, if only for a moment, break the silence and step out of the underground. I am a thief, I admit it openly. I steal words that don't belong to me. I steal because I don't possess any of my own. You do the same but it doesn't seem to bother you the least. As you have managed to convince yourself that you unharmed, without visible damages, return what has been high-handedly used, perhaps you rather regard your act a loan. Believe me; I do not question your innocence in this matter. But I myself haven't managed to reach that kind of conviction. In my mind I haven't reached the same peace of conscience in conviction.
My conscience preaches that each and every linguistic user, user of a language, must be a thief. But am I not a criminal of the lesser kind? For instance I would never admit a term like "consolidation" or "incentive" within my vocabulary. I would never even dream of confiscating this kind of precious treasures. Isn't this a token of a fairly innocent and insignificant nature of a crime? Most certainly not! My deed is far more devious and morally corrupt. I don't merely oppose in defiance, illicitly break laws and regulations. No, it's worse than that. I believe myself to be powerful enough to go around these laws and regulations, to be superior to them. Hubris! the Gods are howling. Well let them howl.
In these days, in this world, no more is it possible for anyone to be able to choose or refrain from his criminal course. It lies there, like a trench, tempting the ball with its slope to give away. For those outside this trench blissfully born, words like "laundry" have been so contaminated that they have entirely changed their meanings into its opposite. Anyone who believe himself to launder is in fact contaminating, committing an act of crime. But even as I know that you are a much worse, meaner and dirtier thief than I, I still have a lot of conscience (of course this statement can only be understood as a criminal's sarcastic irony). That is why I only steal in small portions but assure my loot to grow big and strong.
The abomination of my crime isn't the act itself. It is the purpose. And in the purpose I am the most wretched of terrorists. While using the known pretext to "launder" the words (but we all know what that means) I have created my very own semantic mercenaries with orders to infiltrate hostile countries. Their missions are many and various but we have not yet met full confidentiality in order for me to recount how they operate or reveal their main objective. You could still be an informer and as I only just have stepped out of the underground and have gotten used to my freedom. I have no desire to be deprived from it
I steal to earn my living, not economically but existentially. I steal because I nothing own. But this means that all the words that I surround myself with, are not mine and therefore cannot describe who I am. Without words or a language of my own, my identity belongs to someone else. Who's am I or what do I belong to? The questions corrode my already fragile mind. Perhaps the best thing would be to sneak back into my dark and quiet underground.
