Void, Not-Void, and Everything in Between

[Image: Figure 5 from US Patent #US 20140215949 A1: “65 db SOUND BARRIER INSULATED BLOCK.” For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

When I was younger I thought my knowledge would increase with years, that it was steadily expanding like the universe. A constantly widening area of certainty that correspondingly displaced and diminished the reach of uncertainty. I was really very optimistic. With the passage of time I must admit that I know roughly as much as then, perhaps even slightly less, and with nothing like the same certainty. My so-called experiences are not the same as knowledge. It is more like, how shall I put it, a kind of echo chamber in which the little I know rings hollow and inadequate. A growing void around a scant knowledge that rattles foolishly like the dried-up kernel in a walnut. My experiences are experiences of ignorance, its boundlessness, and I will never discover how much I still don’t know, and how much is something I believed.

(Jens Christian Grøndahl [source])

…and:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.

(Annie Dillard [source])

…and:

In That Great River: A Notebook
(excerpt)

So a little spring prays to the ocean, so the beating heart prays to the heart of the universe, so the little word prays to the great Logos, so a dust speck prays to the earth, so the earth prays to the cosmos, so the one prays to the billion, so human love prays to God’s love, so always prays to never, so the moment prays to eternity, so the snowflake prays to winter, so the frightened beast prays to the forest silence, so uncertainty prays to beauty itself.

And all these prayers are heard.

(Anna Kamieńska [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Hazy Shade Of Winter

Time, time, time
See what’s become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hear the Salvation Army band
Down by the riverside’s
Bound to be a better ride
Than what you’ve got planned
Carry your cup in your hand
And look around you
Leaves are brown, now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That’s an easy thing to say
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around
The grass is high
The fields are ripe
It’s the springtime of my life

Seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Won’t you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?
Funny how my memory skips
Looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime
I look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Look around
Leaves are brown
There’s a patch of snow on the ground
Look around
Leaves are brown
There’s a patch of snow on the ground…

(Paul Simon [source])

…and:

6

What form or shape to describe?
What second one is there to see?
At first, no Om or Veda—
who can trace his ancestry?
No starry sky,
no moon or sun,
no father’s seed,
no calm air,
sea or land—
who can name him
or know his command?
No night or day—
his race and family
who can say?

Remembering the empty, the easy,
a light broke out.
I offer myself to a being
based on nothing.

(Kabir [source])

…and:

Petition

In the temple, a pear blackens in a statue’s palm.
Birds steal the grain. A man climbs the steps
holding his severed hand, but no miracle occurs.

His body refuses to reach out and claim what it lost.
A woman in a white dress waits to be overshadowed
as she plucks her eyelashes—one for the horses,

one for the rain, one for the hair on the back
of her lover’s hands. She wants her virtue
restored, to return to a morning when her skin

was new and unwounded, when her mouth still fit
her mother’s breast. You came to ask if it’s true,
if angels weep until their faces become human,

and if the dead can escape their tombs, then—
You trap wind as it enters the statue’s mouth,
and command it to rise, walk.

(Traci Brimhall [source])

_____________________________

About the image: In general, this patent describes a method of insulating a space from sound, using a grid of empty cells (formed from concrete, wood, or rock) fastened together using a particular combination of pegs, or pins, and interlocking grooves. (The system also can provide “structural, sound barrier and resistance to earthquake.”) Figure 5 interested me, particularly in the context of today’s rumination, because the fastening shown here does not comprise many other parts: the assembly is held together “without the pins nor the end grooves. Instead of the pins, each parallel block… is wrapped in cross or transversal tape with adhesive fibreglass.” The web of tape thus forms an outer void containing all the inner ones.

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