With the freedom and challenge of writing nothing, with nothing to write.
An assemblage without shape, a conditioned concoction…constrained by language, by individuality, by knowledge and finitude. Dependent on what it is that “I” am, the funds of culture, genes, society and cells “I” am able to access and “person-al” (!?) abilities or capacities to operate, utilize, actuate, participate in/with.
Writing veritable nothing(s) seems easy, suddenly. (When viewed from perspective of self-reference – envisioned this way it almost feels inevitable).
Perhaps I am incapable of writing SOMEthing, some THING. Perhaps I am unable to create a fact-of-artifice, an object, an artifact. Something-being-on. Perhaps I can neither begin work, nor complete it…perhaps “I” is always the EXCLUDED MIDDLE. The liminal divisor, the limit-of-being-this, the present/presence of this particular effort, happening, this action-in-its-taking-place…ALWAYS AFTER and ALWAYS BEFORE. Event? Never quite NOW, excepting AS the action, but EVER precipitate and EVER resulting.
I write. Neither conclusively nor originary. Verb-al.
Skirting this void (where there might have been nothing, no thing such as THIS – these letters) “I” scribble known (“shared?”) language…marks meaning…something…almost. Meaning SOME things to SOME persons, never unambiguous, never decisive or clear, not quite agreed. This is language, these letters, these symbols, these marks. May be scrambled, assembled, undone, recombined – but still marks – recognizable to SOME, and processed through “me,” significance is what is in question.
Understandability, inter-pretation, com-munication, con-course (of the stream of inking letters onto a page to in-scribe knowable triggers…to refer, to signify, to re-mind, to com-pose, to make happen, avail-able, IN-BE-TWEEN: to split BE-ing as shared or con-joined). To joinwith by posing, positing, offer-ing marks formed toward potentially recognizable inscriptions as con-constructed / – accepted words toward meaning. Con-fusing.
Yes it involves effort. Yes it depends on unlike-ness and emptiness or faith. Yes it seems un-like-ly (NOT like-able, not able-to-be-liked) and yet I give it, construct (co-construct) and offer up (sacrifice) what “I” com-pose (set out for sight – with) “YOU” (other) in order.
In order to…? for…?
Assembling identifiable language sets, verbal Lego blocks, so that…?
(an “I” might be posed? seen? heard? recognized? present-ed?)
Meaning, writing nothing – “having nothing to write, and lacking the means to write it, and the extreme compulsion to keep writing” (Beckett) and not to get in your way…
Perhaps this is near what I’ve done,
- a waste
- a con-fusion
- a voiding an ab-sense
- a disruption…
…getting it out of the way (my desire) perhaps I’ve writ nothing of note but a circling, a dawdling, an hesitation, dis-traction and trip-stumble-fall…
…a fragment and faltering, figment frustration.
Nothing of worth, of no value, sign-if-icance, just words.
Perhaps THIS is nothing of note.
What “I’ve” done with the freedom and challenge…the time, urge, and ability:
NOTHING
You say nothing, and yet in saying all the other words leading up to NOTHING it ceases to be NOTHING and becomes SOMEthing. The value of the whole–or, the worth of the journey.
My children race right now as different characters of CARS. Familiar with the film? At one point Sally asks Lightning to go for a drive with her. There is no set destination or purpose. Just drive for the sake of driving. The experience. The doing, and all that one takes on through every sense by that doing.
So you see, when YOU write nothing, it is never really nothing. At least, I guess, to me.
Thank you SOMEone 🙂
My pleasure. 🙂
“effort, unlike-ness, emptiness, faith, un-like-ly, co-construct, offer, sacrifice, I and YOU.” Yes exactly. Thank you. XO
I thought this was brilliant in its evocation of the void and desire to create, the human urge within some of us to recreate Genesis. Poised to lecture upon Elytis’s The Little Mariner and The Axion Esti in a few hours, this is very much in alignment with my thoughts today. Thank you, o narrator of the void.
So happy to hear something is ghosting through! Thank you Lise! And hoorah Elytis!