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Guess what's in the middle. You're right! Now proceed |
Lesson MMMCI: Super-advanced blogging. A post about nothing (without cheating).
Minimum experience: Ten years of blogging. Better still: ten minutes; the mind is fresher.
Mindset: Disdaining tangible reality
Preparation 1: Clear the mind of personal and/or family events and relationships, traditional and regular activities, chintzy videos from YouTube, recurrent memories (especially those ending in triumph), purchases from Amazon, references to books read (especially if high-brow; even more so - poetry), knee-jerk responses to politics, funny pictures involving kittens, yearnings for a youth now past, good health and ill health. Most of all: the conviction that there’s nothing left to write about.
Preparation 2: Concentrate on abstract nouns, the more esoteric the better: eg, fecundity, minimalism, over-intellectualisation, the tendency toward ignorance, renaissance (with a lower-case r).
Method, Step 1: Pick one abstraction: let’s say fecundity.
Method, Step 2: Say: This post will NOT be about fecundity
Method, Step 3: Say: This post will be about NOTHING
Method, Step 4: Click Enter four times
Method, Step 5: Say: The above four-line space consists of NOTHING. It says NOTHING. It owes NOTHING to this blogger’s prejudices and/or enthusiasms. However it may represent the vacuum that nature is said to abhor. It may be crying out to be filled.
Method, Final Step: Concentrate on that space. Imagine it being filled. With what? Don’t ask childish questions: obviously, with NOTHING. This may be difficult so allow plenty of time, take a tea-break if it helps. As dusk descends you should be able – in perfect confidence – to say that that four-line space has been filled. That it accommodates two NOTHINGS, one on top of the other. Logically, two NOTHINGS are more significant than one. Quod erat demonstrandum (always finish with a Latin tag)
Conclusion: There’s no such thing as NOTHING.
I hesitate to comment feeling that in view of your title I hardly qualify.
ReplyDeleteOn occasions of being unable to sleep I have tried to blank my mind. I get a feeling that I may have succeeded for a split second, but then, as you say, or as I think you say, it is impossible to sustain.
Anonymous, better known as Arnsider. This is very much an open goal. I'm going to regret being cruel but Cruelty is my middle name, even though the initial is N. Have you ever considered that the problem is the reverse of what you've outlined. That...
DeleteNo, I can't, I really can't. There must be some good in me. Time to visit a priest.
That was from Conrad. This Anonymous thing is also happening when I comment on other Blogger blogs.
ReplyDeleteI have nothing much to say about this........
ReplyDeleteAvus: I once owned a NOTHING car. Or was it a NOTHING car? NOTHING good could be said about it, true. But lots of bad was freely available; like turning on a tap at the sewage works. And not just bad; pretentious bad. The car itself had ideas above its station. What was its station? you ask eagerly. Oh, definitely Ongar on the Central Line. Remote and unloved. Above its radiator stood a wingèd symbol (please note the accent to ensure the correct stress) as if it had aspirations to be a bird. These were partly achieved but not as an ascending lark, rather a dead rhea. You set great store on comfortable seats. Had you owned this car you would have just dictated your comment from the supportive interior of an iron lung. The small of your back shot to pieces. I sold it just in time.
DeleteThis is not a NOTHING comment. It cheats. Handling NOTHING demands great technical skills. You missed your opportunity and I won't reveal the score I've accorded you. In the meantime, it's time you buckled down, looked hard and long into the eyes of Huw Edwards where true NOTHINGNESS resides. Happy mini-bank-holiday.
Avus: Whoops, I overdid it re. HE. He was in Wales for the 10 pm news, apparently in support of two courageous women who sued the government for moving Covid-infected hospital patients into care homes during the first phase of the pandemic, resulting in many, many deaths. And they won. I take it all back Huw.
DeleteI guess my score was nothing?
DeleteAvus: You're getting the hang of it.
DeletePlease note the nothing presence of my seven nothing comments above this one. This one, naturally, is not nothing. Merely a kind of arrow, and arrows are not nothing...
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