It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.
“Why does language subvert me, subvert my seniority, my medals, my oldness, whenever it gets a chance? What does language have against me—me that has been good to it, respecting its little peculiarities and nicilosities, for sixty years? …What do ‘years’ have against me? Why have they stuck stones in my kidneys, devaluated my tumulosity, retracted my hair? …Where does ‘hair’ go when it dies?”
Donald Barthelme | “A Picture History of the War”