For those of us who look at language as a failure to transmit this meaning now and only this meaning now, the gaps might as well be scars. As if the insulation that would otherwise guarantee the safe transit of words down a channel of communication has been eroded, and the channel itself exposed, then degraded, then hardened, calcified, scarred over with necrotic matter. The line is broken. Every word a scar, the lexicon a multiplication of scleroses.