Can't stomach it?

  I'm recalling the medical ad in yesterday's newspaper which illustrated a depiction of a person with a gastrointestinal condition. The ad showed a sketch of a person with bricks piling up in his digestive tract, the bricks representing the weight of the discomfort he was experiencing.  If pain had mass and volume, I suppose that's what it would look like.  The discomfort is real; mustn't then, the measure of it take up space somewhere?
     I've always felt the same about words, or rather thoughts: that is, if all thoughts are capable of being verbalized.  I understand that some believe it possible to think without words.  I have never been able to accomplish that, not even years ago when I tried unsuccessfully to achieve what was presented as mental prayer.  The Zen of it eluded my grasp.  Words, though, dominate my mind.  For years, I was paid to talk, and did so all day long, to more than a hundred people a day during my classroom days.  Words poured out, in exchanges, back and forth.  Conversations existed, between co-workers, family members, merchants, and in phone conversations with friends.  There was never a thought that the flow of words would dwindle, almost to a stop some days.  That is the truth, though, but only with the uttered words.  Talking is a vanishing part of my life.  I watch daytime talk shows on TV, listen to the repartee of the various hosts, and yearn for the days when conversation was part of my life.  I come across words when I'm reading, and wonder if I've ever used them in conversation or writing, as familiar as those words might be.  For example, the word prerogative.  I can't think of a time when I'll use it in the future, but surely I must have in the past, all those hundreds of papers and exams, all those long philosophical discussions deep into the night trying to understand the meaning of the universe. 
    No longer though.  The audience diminishes as time goes by, and your voice becomes largely unheard.  But the fact remains that thoughts, and thereby words, keep accumulating, for at least sixteen hours a day.  Like the pile of bricks threatening to disrupt the unfortunate patient's digestive tract, the sheer volume of unspoken words serves to suffocate the mind.