The keeper and the stranger left the Gate of Signs at first light.
For some time they walked without speaking.
The road descended from the hills and entered a great plain.
At first the stranger saw nothing remarkable.
There were fields.
Houses.
Roads.
People.
Rivers.
The ordinary things of the world.
Then he noticed something strange.
The road was covered with words.
Some were painted on stones.
Some were carved into trees.
Some were written on boards.
Some were scratched into walls.
Others had been carried on scraps of paper by travellers.
"What are all these marks doing here?" he asked.
"They are travelling," said the keeper.
"Marks cannot travel."
"These can."
They came upon a woman standing beside a field.
She held up a sign.
The sign contained a single word:
DANGER.
The stranger looked around.
There was no fire.
No wild animal.
No collapsing bridge.
Nothing immediately threatening.
"What is dangerous?" he asked.
The woman pointed towards the far end of the field.
"There."
The stranger looked.
A deep ditch had been hidden beneath the grass.
He stepped back.
The keeper smiled.
"You see?"
"The word made the danger available to me."
"Yes."
"But the word itself was not dangerous."
"No."
"And it did not cause the ditch."
"No."
"Nor did the ditch cause the word."
"Not in the way a footprint is caused by an animal."
The keeper nodded.
"The word belongs to another kind of relation."
They continued along the road.
The stranger began to notice that the same word appeared in many places.
On a wall.
In a book.
On a piece of cloth.
Spoken by a woman.
Whispered by a child.
Written in a letter.
The physical differences were enormous.
Yet somehow the same possibility travelled through them.
"How can the same thing survive so many changes?" he asked.
"It does not survive as a physical thing."
"Then what survives?"
"A possibility."
The stranger looked puzzled.
The keeper picked up a small piece of paper.
"Suppose I write the word here."
He did.
"Now I fold the paper."
He folded it.
"Now I carry it across the mountains."
He put it in his pocket.
"Tomorrow someone else reads it."
The stranger nodded.
"The word has travelled."
"Yes."
"But the original sound has disappeared."
"Yes."
"The person who first spoke it may be dead."
"Very likely."
"And yet the possibility remains available."
The keeper smiled.
"That is one of the peculiar powers of meaning."
They reached a town.
In the town square stood a large stone tablet.
People gathered around it.
The stranger approached.
"What does it say?"
"A law."
"What does the law do?"
"It changes what people may do."
The stranger looked at the stone.
"It is only writing."
"Physically."
"And yet people behave differently because of it."
"Yes."
"Then meaning has entered action."
"Exactly."
The keeper touched the tablet.
"The stone is part of the material world."
"The writing is part of the semiotic world."
"And the practices of the people connect the two."
The stranger considered this.
"So meaning does not float above reality."
"No."
"It travels through reality."
"Better."
"And changes what happens within it."
"Now you are seeing the road."
They left the town by a road marked on a map.
The stranger unfolded the map.
It showed mountains, rivers and settlements.
"Where is the road?" he asked.
"Under your feet."
"But the road on the map is only ink."
"Yes."
"And yet it tells me where to go."
"Yes."
"It doesn't create the road."
"No."
"It makes certain possibilities of movement available."
The keeper nodded.
"A map is a strange kind of companion."
"It does not carry you."
"No."
"It does not remove the mountains."
"No."
"It simply organises your relation to them."
"Exactly."
The stranger looked at the map again.
"A meaning can therefore change what I can do without changing the physical constraints themselves."
"That is the secret."
That evening they stayed in a village.
The villagers gathered around a table where a timetable had been pinned to the wall.
The stranger stared at it.
"Another map?"
"In a way."
"It has no roads."
"No."
"No rivers."
"No."
"No mountains."
"No."
"Then what does it map?"
"Possibilities in time."
The stranger looked at the columns of numbers.
A train would leave at one hour.
Another would arrive at another.
People planned their journeys around the marks.
One person would leave home earlier.
Another would wait.
A third would meet someone at the station.
The stranger smiled.
"The timetable does not make the trains run."
"No."
"But it changes what people can do with the trains."
"Yes."
"Meaning is organising possibilities again."
"Always."
Later that night, the stranger asked the keeper a question.
"Does meaning merely allow us to communicate?"
The keeper shook his head.
"Communication is only the beginning."
"What else does it do?"
"It lets possibilities travel."
"Through space?"
"Yes."
"Through time?"
"Yes."
"Between people?"
"Yes."
"Even between people who have never met?"
"Especially then."
The keeper pointed towards a book lying beside the fire.
"That book was written long before you arrived."
The stranger looked at it.
"You can read it?"
"Yes."
"Then someone who is absent can still change what you do."
"Yes."
"And someone who is dead can still alter what someone living thinks."
"Yes."
The keeper leaned towards the fire.
"Meaning gives differences a kind of historical mobility."
The next morning they entered a great city.
Here the road became difficult to follow.
Words covered everything.
Buildings had names.
People had titles.
Streets had numbers.
Objects had categories.
Laws had definitions.
Trades had rules.
People argued about the meanings of words.
They invented new ones.
They changed old ones.
They joined them together.
The stranger became dizzy.
"How can anyone find their way through this?"
The keeper laughed.
"You have entered the city of construal."
"Everything seems to be connected."
"Of course."
"One word changes another."
"Yes."
"And that changes what can be said."
"Yes."
"And what can be said changes what can be done."
"Yes."
"And what can be done changes the world."
"Now you understand why the city never stops growing."
In the centre of the city stood a great hall.
Inside were shelves upon shelves of books.
There were histories.
Maps.
Laws.
Stories.
Scientific theories.
Poems.
Instructions.
Treaties.
Arguments.
The stranger picked up a book.
"What happens when one person writes something here?"
"Others read it."
"And then?"
"They may alter what they do."
"And then?"
"They may write something else."
"And then?"
"Others may read that."
The stranger looked around the hall.
"So meaning can produce more meaning."
"Yes."
"And those meanings can alter practice."
"Yes."
"And practice can alter the world."
"Yes."
"And the altered world produces new differences."
The keeper smiled.
"And those differences become available for new meanings."
The stranger laughed.
"We have come back to the beginning."
"Not quite."
"Why not?"
"Because the beginning has changed."
They climbed the tower at the centre of the hall.
From the top, the stranger could see the entire city.
He saw roads that had once been paths.
Bridges that had once been crossings.
Boundaries that had once been lines on maps.
Buildings that had once been plans.
Institutions that had once been ideas.
He saw signs everywhere.
And beneath them, the physical world.
Stone.
Water.
Wood.
Metal.
Bodies.
Weather.
Gravity.
Nothing had been replaced.
Yet everything had become entangled with something new.
The keeper stood beside him.
"What do you see?"
"A world in which meanings have acquired histories."
"Yes."
"A world in which people inherit distinctions they did not invent."
"Yes."
"A world in which something can matter to me because someone long dead gave it a name."
"Yes."
"A world in which a possibility can survive its original circumstances."
"Yes."
"A world in which a distinction can be carried forward, changed, combined and returned to the world."
The keeper nodded.
"Now you understand why meaning makes a difference."
The stranger was silent for a while.
Then he said:
"But if meanings can travel so far, they must also be able to change."
"They do."
"A word can mean something different in another place."
"Yes."
"Or another time."
"Yes."
"Or in another sentence."
"Yes."
"A sign can acquire new relations."
"Exactly."
"So meaning is not a fixed possession."
"No."
"It is something that happens within a system."
"Yes."
"And systems change."
"Constantly."
The keeper looked down at the city.
"Meaning does not end becoming."
He smiled.
"It accelerates it."
Before they left the tower, the stranger returned to the word DANGER.
He wrote it on a piece of paper.
Then beneath it he wrote:
DANGER OF FALLING.
Then:
DANGER OF FIRE.
Then:
DANGER OF LOSING THE WAY.
The same word had entered different relations.
Each relation opened different possibilities.
He added another line:
DANGER OF FORGETTING.
The keeper read it.
"That one is dangerous indeed."
The stranger laughed.
"But it is only a word."
"Only a word?"
The stranger looked at the city below.
He saw that the word could warn.
It could frighten.
It could persuade.
It could be denied.
It could be exaggerated.
It could be argued about.
It could be written into law.
It could be remembered.
It could be carried into the future.
The word itself remained a small physical difference.
But within the web of meanings, it had acquired an enormous range of possible consequences.
The stranger folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
They left the city at dusk.
Behind them stretched the road they had travelled.
Ahead lay another country.
The keeper pointed towards it.
"What is that?"
"A country where words become concepts."
"What is the difference?"
The keeper smiled.
"You have learned that a word can make a distinction available."
"Yes."
"Now you must learn what happens when a distinction begins to organise the possibilities around it."
The stranger looked back at the city.
"The word can travel."
"Yes."
"The meaning can change."
"Yes."
"The distinction can be inherited."
"Yes."
"And eventually it can reshape the landscape."
"Exactly."
The keeper began walking.
"Come."
"Where are we going?"
"To the place where meanings begin to change what matters."
And so they left the city of shared possibilities and followed the road into the hills.
Behind them, the signs continued to travel.
Ahead, the furrows were already waiting.
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