Contemplate.

The quarrel between the One and the Many, between the spirit and the letter, has been resolved in different ways. The search for an original, primal language becomes, inevitably, the question as to the meaning of meaning. But meaning breaks down into a plurality of contrary meanings that ultimately cancel each other out: there is no meaning. The dissolution of signs culminates in the appearance of a presence or an emptiness, both of them unutterable and unthinkable. Being trickles away into its attributes and manifestations; emptiness negates itself in its nothingness. Both presence and absence are eaten away by contradiction. We can say nothing about them and nothing names them, not even the word nothing. Nor does silence designate them. Silence does not say, or rather, it says only as the reverse of saying. Silence depends on words; it is an ultimate dimension of saying. If everything we touch and name becomes full of meaning, and if all these meanings—provisional, disparate, contradictory—instantly lose their meaning, what is left to us? To begin all over again. Between meaning and meaninglessness, between saying and silence, a spark is struck: a knowing without knowing, a comprehending without understanding, a speaking while remaining silent. We can still hear, in what we say, the meanings we do not voice. We can still contemplate.

Octavio Paz