void

I saw the Tracker__ut that__ wrong, really. I saw right to where the tracking thing was. I saw those winnowing tentacles come out again, and the front figure pause, and then__t__ the only word that actually describes it__oze on again on its via dolorosa. And at that the hind figure seemed to summon all its strength. It seemed to open out a fringe of arms or tentacles, a sort of corona of black rays spread out. It gaped with a full expansion, and even I could feel that there was a perfectly horrible attraction, or vacuum drag, being exerted. That was horrible enough, with the face of the super-suffering man now almost under me resonating my own terror. But the worst thing was that, as the tentacles unwrapped and winnowed out toward their prey, I saw they weren__ really tentacles at all. They were spreading cracks, veins, fissures, rents of darkness expanding from a void, a gap of pure blackness. There__ only one way to say it__ne was seeing right through the solid world into a gap, an ultimate maelstrom. And from it was spreading out a__ can only call it so__ negative sunrise of black radiation that would deluge and obliterate everything. Of course it was still only a fissure, a vent, but one realized__his is a hole, a widening hole, that has been pierced in the dike that defends the common-sense, sensuous world. Through this vortex-hole that is rapidly opening, over this lip and brink, everything could slip, fall in, find no purchase, be swallowed up.It was like watching a crumbling cliff with survivors clinging to it being undercut and toppling into a black tide that had swallowed up its base. This negative force could drag the solidest things from their base, melt them, engulf the whole hard, visible world. And we were right on that brink. What was after us, for I knew now I was in its field, was not a thing of any passions or desires. Those are limited things, satiable things__n a way, balanced things, and so familiar, safe even, almost friendly in comparison with this. You know the grim saying, __ou can give a sop to Cerberus, but not to his Master._ No, this was__hat__ the technical term, I found, coined by those who have been up against this and come back alive__his was absolute Deprivation, really insatiable need, need that nothing can satisfy, absolute refusal to give, to yield. It is the second strongest thing in the universe, and, indeed, outside that. It could swallow the whole universe, and the universe would go for nothing, because in that gap the whole universe could fill not a bit of it. It would remain as empty, as gaping, as insatiable as ever, for it is the bottomless pit made by unstanchable Lack.

O sun, heart of the heavens whose blood of lightInfuses the vigor which transmutes to azureThe black ice strangler of great space obscureI hate you, mask of gold, mist and fire, circularBlind monster blinding all the prey aroundYou who veil the impure dazzling phantasmTo the loving vertigo of my avid gazesThe visions of the colorless abyss of the voidReversed hollow truth-mask of the other world.

The colour of the magpie, her father was saying, was symbolic of creation. The void, the mystery of that which had not yet taken form. Black and white, he said. Presence and absence.

We become aware of the void as we fill it.

Wednesday. March 16 Isn't it strange that it hasn't occurred to me to put my relationship with Clarimonda on a more serious basis than these endless games. Last night, I thought about this...I can, of course, put on my hat and coat, walk down two flights of stairs, take five steps across the street and mount two flights to her door which is marked with a small sign that says "Clarimonda." Clarimonda what? I don't know. Something. Then I can knock and...Up to this point I imagine everything very clearly, but I cannot see what should happen next. I know that the door opens. But then I stand before it, looking into a dark void. Clarimonda doesn't come. Nothing comes. Nothing is there, only the black, impenetrable dark."The Spider

There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness__ike how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake__e could no longer get at.

...nor can we know ahead of the fact the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.

Loss eventually arrives when something departs. Grief is working through both.

Being empty makes me whole sometimes. I wonder if every hollow hole has its own solidity of fulfillment

When the world careens out of control, we can rest in the fact that God spun this world with a simple word. Matter from emptiness. Beauty from void. Community from chaos.

The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.

After years in utter darkness, I force my eyes into the light. For I must retain my sight, that I might view the wholeness of the void, objectively.

Even if there were no ear for them but the void, our prayers would still be the only things that sanctify our existence.

The problem with making a virtual world of oneself is akin to the problem with projecting ourselves onto a cyberworld: there__ no end of virtual spaces in which to seek stimulation, but their very endlessness, the perpetual stimulation without satisfaction, becomes imprisoning.

_Do you think there__ somewhere else, some other place to go after this one?_ Mandy blurted out.__ou mean when you die, where will you end up?_ Alecto asked her. __I wouldn__ know_ back to whatever void there is, I suppose._____e thought about it_ every living thing dies alone, it__l be lonely after death,_ Mandy sighed sadly. __hat freaks me out, does it scare you?___ don't want to be alone,_ Alecto replied wearily. __e won__ be, though. We__l be dead, so we__l just be darkness, not much else, just memories, nostalgia and darkness.___ don__ want to be any of that either though,_ Mandy exclaimed, bursting into tears and crying, keeping her eyes to the floor, her voice shaky as she spoke to him. __hen we die, we__l still be nothing, the world will still be nothing, everything__l just be nothing!___ou__e real though, at least that__ something,_ Alecto pointed out, holding his hand out in front of her. Smiling miserably, Mandy took his hand in her own and sat there beside him quietly.

When silence greets you, listen for those powerful words lost within the void of reason...

Where once there was a void,Now at least there are Seeds of splendour,Becalmed belief for another time.

The future was becoming past, everything vanished into the void, and reaching back to grasp for something, one came out clutching - what? A bit of string, scraps of cloth, shadows of the golden time. If one could only reverse it, turn the past into future, and catch it on the wing, on its journey across the always shifting line of the present ...