As of the cave paintings at Lascaux and Altamira, those bulls and horses still running in the flickering Neolithic torchlight. And one that remained with me even more powerfully. And all about the cluttered room are other arcane artifacts, each of which serves as an entry point into a secret and otherwise unknowable universe. Symbols we call them, for lack of a better explanation. Symbols represent something that isn't immediately obvious, or perhaps that we'd rather wasn't.
Words represent mental constructions, concepts, which try in turn to justify experience to itself.
Think of a tree falling in the forest of your solipsistic psyche. Quite possibly both, depending on your expectations of the latter state. Abruptly, I was awake again and the plane was banking over Tokyo Bay. At the time, reinventing God seemed a noble enough vocation. It had to be today, but this is all there's time for.