Emptiness is palpable. Its evidence inhabits every crack and crevice, every nick in an otherwise smooth surface. Negative space is the phrase artists use to describe the way space around or between objects define them and render them in multiple perspectives. But negative space is emptiness. It is matter turned on its head; it is the absence of substance. Lifetimes comprise the absence of emptiness. All the intricate pieces—the interwoven substance and experience and the web of interpersonal interactions—form cloth we drape around the cage within which we reside. But between those pieces are shreds of emptiness we didn’t even know were there. Hidden in that woven collage are conspicuous gaps, gaps we don’t want to see. We hope to remain blind to them; to keep them at bay. But emptiness is palpable. At some point, light penetrates that comfortable darkness with such brilliant clarity that every negative space casts a shadow a lifetime long.
I wrote of negative space a few months ago. It meaning has not changed since them; it presence in the form of emptiness has only become more precise, more clearly defined.
