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THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE for whom there is no such thing as nothing. In their psychic calculus, zero does not exist. Inside the zero, where there might otherwise be an absence, there is instead a presence of an absence. One patient described the no-thing inside the zero as a breast sticking its tongue out. This was later, when he could afford to be whimsical. Another, looking at the acoustical ceiling tiles, said: "I see a bee (my initial) a Queen bee, actually a stinger; it looks deadly. What is that word? "Anaphylactic" shock. Anaphylactic, such a curious word to be so deadly. "Lactic", "lactose", means milk. "Phil" means love. Yesterday when you reminded me of that word, you said one found one's own antitoxins toxic. … At the end of the session, when I thanked you—it was such a good session—you said the thanks should go to myself—that I owed you nothing. I felt so hurt. So …"
"Stung?"
Why this is, I don't know if I know. But what follows are some of the ways I have to think about this intolerance of nothing.
What the No-thing Isn't When we are lost what image tells?
Nothing resembles nothing. Yet nothing
Is not blank. It is configured Hell:
Of noticed clocks on winter afternoons, malignant stars,
Demanding furniture. All unrelated
And with air between. The terror. Is it of Space, of Time?
Or the joined trickery of both conceptions?
To the lost, transfixed among the self-inflicted ruins,
All that is non-air (if this indeed is not deception)