Nothing Lasts Forever

In the beginning there was nothing. All existence summed up equals to nothing. Nothing lasts forever. Embrace nothing.

...

Morning, Saturday. There’s silence and then H says that contrary to popular belief the problem is that intelligent people think everyone else is as intelligent as them, when the evidence shows otherwise. (Some hours ago we had been in the company of a very intelligent man.) And that maybe the reason why human civilization is facing such a massive crisis.

There is silence.

We could sit and think for an eternity but the empty cups and the grocery call. So eternity gets disrupted.

…

The man before me at the express line at the grocery store has forgotten his pin number. As the seconds tick, time seems to stretch till an eternity. He fumbles again. And yet again. And then again. Then in a moment of desperation he mumbles, ‘let me try this’ and in a couple of seconds the ordeal is over for him.

I am in no hurry. Perhaps an eternity ago I had been rushing; grabbing keys and bags, walking at a brisk pace, dumping potatoes and carrots in the basket. Until I came upon this moment: nothing stretching to eternity.

…

Midday, Saturday. Email from G. Almost four years since we’ve (physically) met– one day same city, the next different continents that sort of thing. But for shared thoughts.

Human thought transcends time and space (and every other human construct). It is the only thing that bridges the void. In five minutes one can encompass eternity and beyond. Or 'see' a friend many miles away.

…

In the background a guitar has been strumming Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ for the past few minutes. C D Am G D C Am G.

A male House Finch is sitting on the porch railing quietly, taking a breather from his exuberant recital. Is he also listening? Strange notes stirring some ancient memory perhaps.

...

"The World is not Conclusion

A Species stands beyond–

Invisible, as music–

But positive, as sound–
It beckons, and it baffles–
Philosophy–don't know–
And through a Riddle, at the last

Sagacity, must go–…

Narcotics cannot still the Tooth

That nibbles at the soul–"

 – Emily Dickinson

…

Another sound beckons. The kettle whistles, a positive reminder that I will soon drink mint tea thereby doing something that I don’t need to do, yet I do when I have nothing else to do. 

It is something I do everyday.

…

Evening, Saturday. Dry air crackles. Lighting and thunder. Rain. The dogs and their walkers are running back. The birds are snuggling in the lilac bushes. The kids are laughing, their skateboards held over their heads. Text from P rescheduling dinner. Even the sunset is cancelled today.

Everything is interrupted, except for the drinking of tea.

In the end, only nothing lasts forever.

Everything

All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else. – Buddha
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it – Confucious
One must love everything– Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

Lately, I have been contemplating the word 'Everything'. Over the years as 'belongings' have diminished to only so much and nothing else, everything has become a well-worn word. Everything is disposable. We don't need everything. Everything isn't important. Everything must go.

3 suitcases, 2 checked in bags. 20 cartons of books and household goods. That is all. But is all everything? Einstein said, 'Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted'. Now you see what I mean? How do we make sense of everything?

The shape, the size, the feel of everything, as certain as the seasons, shifts and changes. And often slides into nothing. Yesterday what was everything, today it's nothing. Nothing. Always following everything. Like the shadow following the form. Till the inevitable moment in time when they merge to the point that it becomes almost redundant to separate nothing from everything. If you have nothing, you have everything.

I

Cleaning an Attic
By Brent Pallas

The day had finally come   

when everything there   

seemed misplaced or out of place   

as an ex's box of things. The unused   

beside the irreplaceable, the easy-   

to-assemble uncomplicated now   

by disuse. Some hand   

of randomness leaving behind   

its lampshades stained   

like ancient maps, its ladders   

still climbing upward, and enough   

old tools to restart a world.   

Every drawer filled   

with the other half of things.   

Everything care embraced,   

and held once as new,   

left too ragged for another winter   

to wear. Its ring of keys   

dangling by a nail   

for rooms left long ago. And whatever   

I said I'd never forget   

found, just as it seemed   

completely forgot—all its letters   

beginning with Dear....

II

Everything
By Fanny Howe

Infinite nesting

pushes all matter

towards emptiness:

child-nodes,

tree-droppings

with a root element of null.

None is always included

in every cluster

of children.

Nothing in nothing

prepares us.

Yet a fresh light was shed

on immortality

for me climbing the stairs

firm foot first.

Everything was in the banister:

crows on branches, crickets,

architects, handsaws and democrats.

Red moon at 3 am.

III

Hold Everything Dear

by Gareth Evans, from 'Hold Everything Dear' by John Berger

As the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the journey

as the rose buds a green room to breathe

and blossoms like the wind

as the thin birches whisper their stories of the wind to the urgent

in the trucks

as the leaves of the hedge store the light

the day thought it had lost

as the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a sparrow in the turning air

as the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the sky

and unwrap them to each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear

the calligraphy of birds across the morning

the million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earth

one step ahead of time

the broken teeth of tribes and their long place

steppe-scattered and together

clay’s small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jug

carrying itself towards us through the soil

the pledge of offered arms, the single sheet that is our common walking

the map of the palm held

in a knot

but given as a torch

hold everything dear

the paths they make towards us and how far we open towards them

the justice of a grass that unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searching

the vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days

as it sinks to become what it loves

memory that grows into a shape the tree always knew as a seed

the words

the bread

the child who reaches for the truths beyond the door

the yearning to begin again together

animals keen inside the parliament of the world

the people in the room the people in the street the people

hold everything dear

Nothing

He asked her, “Tell me what is your most priced possession?” He meant, of course, an object– a thing. Spring came by and went away. The blooms of summer are turning to dust. Autumn is primed for its grand entrance. Winter is starting to prepare its brooms of steel*. The earth shifts on its axis, as it has done time and again, and still her answer remains nothing.

...

She sends her quotes in the mail. “We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust”**. And she sends her poems.

She sends essays on Parmenides, Sartre’s être-en-soi (the brute existence of things) and être-pour-soi (consciousness), and Śūnyatā: Phenomena are śûnya or unreal because no phenomenon when taken by itself is thinkable: they are all interdependent and have no separate existence of their own***. She quotes conversations between Ananda and Buddha, “It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, lord. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?" The Buddha replied, "Insofar as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self.”

She sends her all this and more. In reply she gets nothing.

...

She runs her fingers through sheaves of paper, clicking back and forth through tabs, Google searching her name; there are figurines in gold and silver on the bookshelves. There are no diamonds in the mine. “What have I got to show for it all?” she slowly mouths the words. The reply is heavy in silence. It sounds like nothing.

...

My mother dislikes the dark, not because of the things she can’t see but because of the things she can. My mother likes to be left alone. She is happy when there is nothing.

...

He looks at himself in the mirror and tries to frame the question again. What do you want? What are you looking for? Every question begs something in reply. He looks in the mirror again. This time he imagines the vast blue sky. Someone far away seems to be saying, “Was there anything you wanted to ask?” He can come up with nothing.

*from a poem by Emily Dickinson:
Like Brooms of Steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street –
**Rumi
*** Eliot, Charles (1993; author); Sansom, G. B. (edited & completed). Japanese Buddhism.

Doing nothing

When conversation begins to flag, as it often does in these too-besotted-with-the-superficial times, they look towards the one unaffected by it all and begin probing.

They often start by asking, ‘What do you do?’ One doesn’t even exhale before replying, "Nothing". They then say, with a mixture of fake concern and affected censure, not sure of which emotion to pursue, “Then how do you pass the time?” And one smiles and answers, “I sit at open windows. For sanity must be preserved.”

And then they all mumble. And fiddle with their handkerchiefs or whatever it is that has replaced handkerchiefs in these times. Ah! The cellphone. They fiddle with their cellphones. And mumble and stumble out of the way. And one can in peace resume the contemplations while sitting beside an open window. And do nothing.