Inversions

We don’t see emptiness it seems, we only see what is there (provided by emptiness). I asked myself this morning, what is it we learn at a very young age when taught in which direction to look and what to focus on? As I see it, the focus, spatially, was pretty much always on what was there physically (there implying that there’s a here from which to see) – possibly as a means of survival – but to focus only on a physical “there”, completely negates the vastness of what isn’t there in physical form.

If I wonder long enough on what isn’t there physically, but what is there as a result of physicality, I see only sky, or, air. It’s a “something” to be sure, but relative to what we’ve been taught to focus on as being “there” (physical form) a “nothing” is implied, emptiness. Emptiness not nihilistically speaking, but emptiness as a “something” made knowable/perceivable by the physical.

If I ponder longer still on the nature of the space in which the physical resides, I realize that the substance “I’m” made of is of this same material of residence and naturally implies emptiness by way of existence, and so the emptiness encroaches upon me, into a space originally conceived of (by me) as me.

And so I ask myself, how close does the emptiness come? Where do the borders of “me” begin to hold this emptiness at bay? Because if no borders held this emptiness at bay, then that would make this “me”, what I conceive of as me, empty (a terrifying thought to something located somewhere within the vicinity of “me”). But if emptiness is implied by the physicality of my being “here”, then it must be the lines of this “me” that creates the surrounding space. But even still there seems to be something that permeates both the form and the not-form – some kind of über emptiness that implies both of these, or rather, allows the form and the not-form to be seen or perceived, just as a drawing (space implied by lines to form a recognizable image) is only made possible by the piece of paper.

Then I further inquire: if the form of “me” implying the not-form around “me” is only “there” by the grace of the piece of paper, then, as the emptiness further encroaches, past borders that don’t really exist, what am I? As the piece of paper permeates in its entirety, then space implied reaches inwardly as far as it goes, and if “I” continue a retreat from this advancing space I eventually become a pinpoint of definition in the general locale of this “me” until everything is suffuse with what, the piece of paper? If everything is suffuse with the piece of paper, and yet I’m still here, then what the hell am I?
 

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