We are tethered to signs since we share them with the world, yet we can’t be their progenitors if they didn’t come from the world. Signs are behind us, before the eyes and at the backs of our heads, not lying in front waiting for our recognition; as if the world projected our signs we react against with our own. In such a scenario, it is simultaneously presumed the world resists our signification of it and that our signs find reality to a cohering world and we only touch ourselves when the world is touching us. Paradoxically then, we must assume our signs aren’t untethered from the world and rather the world untethers our signs from ourselves, preceding ours instead.
Signs are linked to a slack rope, held by the world on the other end too distant to see. The rope must be slack as it is often pulled by the world when it runs away and towards it’s own end. After it begins running and the rope is taut, our sleeping signs awaken to being dragged out of bed and with their backs pressed against our eyes. The bed of our signs are now at the back walls of our head and are unable to return to sleep while the rope is being pulled. Despite the the world using the required latitudinal distance for our signs to cross the inside of our heads (the ropes length having already reached it’s limit), our signs necessitate more rope to signify again. The world pulls at the moment our signs become signified (to ourself) and signifies to us, hence we must signify again to know what the world’s signified. Our signs sleep for however long the world doesn’t run and hold for the amount of time they slept, without simultaneously knowing how long the world runs for. Luckily, the slack rope leaves a delay between when the world starts running and how long our signs sleep for, a little extra sleep corresponding to the unknown extra distance the world runs for freely. And once the world gives up and stops running, the rope slackens again with more than enough distance for our signs to return to bed. It is uncertain when the world will run again as it is contingent on our signified, which is something our signs can’t decide on (signifieds depend on the world). However, a signs necessary choice is the return to sleep during the period it signifies to the world; before it’s signified again. The world opens the condition of signification.
We can fear the day our signs may be unable to withstand the force of the world as it pulls but the world can only run as hard as it thinks it can. Whether it knows or not, the world relies on us to not run forever, and we on the other side don’t need the world but the rope as well precisely because the world runs. And we don’t know what happens while our signs sleep, are we trying to run as well and it is the world holding us? We will never know why the world runs and whether it takes the rope slowly as we sleep, but we still sleep for as long as the world doesn’t run.
