Reading the Void, indeed. I greatly appreciate this line of thought, Peter, and the multitude of paths that might be spun out from it--the potentialities of the Void are as limitless as our capacity for imagination. Of course, my first spinning out of your article leads me, perhaps too obviously, to marginalia, though less obviously my word choice in this comment is itself spun out from a poem by Paperfly (another Substacker, an excellent poet) titled "Metamorphosis: Arachne's Tale".
Oh, what tangled webs we weave ... without even trying to.
Hmm... suddenly I'm thinking of the guest publication section of Have I Got News For You. Filling in the blanks in my head, so to speak. Cheers!
Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn’t
is where it’s useful.
Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.
Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn’t,
there’s room for you.
So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn’t.
- Lao Tzu (trans. Ursula K LeGuin)
Totally brilliant essay -- kudos, Peter! (The question of how to read "blanks" put me in mind of Heinrich von Kleist's "The Marquise of O"...)
Another thought: Quaker Meetings for Worship consist mainly of silence, sometimes for a whole hour.
Reading the Void, indeed. I greatly appreciate this line of thought, Peter, and the multitude of paths that might be spun out from it--the potentialities of the Void are as limitless as our capacity for imagination. Of course, my first spinning out of your article leads me, perhaps too obviously, to marginalia, though less obviously my word choice in this comment is itself spun out from a poem by Paperfly (another Substacker, an excellent poet) titled "Metamorphosis: Arachne's Tale".
Oh, what tangled webs we weave ... without even trying to.
Hmm... suddenly I'm thinking of the guest publication section of Have I Got News For You. Filling in the blanks in my head, so to speak. Cheers!
excellent correspondences here re: monochromy blankness silence and language
bravo