The first 14 essays tried to “come to terms” with the limitations of language. By extension this included all of thought and imagination – the whole category of construct-making.
How can we discover the “limitations” of something that covers the whole of experience? An all-enveloping fluid from which we can’t leap free, like lucky fish?
In Part II of “Imagine the Limits of the Imagination” I suggested that this can be done by considering the category of “odd words”:
The Three Oddest Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.
— Wislawa Szymborska
Negative Geography 