thing or no thing

By Jillian Hanson

When you can do nothing what can you do?

—Zen Koan

i.

Sit in the nothing. Talk to nothing. Do nothing. See what nothing offers, probably

nothing. Offer nothing something, since you are not nothing. Offer nothing your

whole presence, the sacred quiet of your unseen innards. No real words for nothing, 

so this is not nothing, these are nothing-related-words. Doing nothing is different

than being nothing, which is to disappear.

ii.

My father’s email broke   my cultivated 

equanimity, yanked me into the old imagined 

void   a nothingness he believes in. What 

a thing to paint in a child’s imagination 

 no-thing death place where I float forever 

without suit air body but still conscious

of not being a being. Blankness is much 

harder to picture than black astronaut 

space. Then and now I shatter to imagine 

us not existing but am still unable to refute 

the argument for your not-existence in 

the place where I will need you most, daddy.

iii.

Face it, “doing nothing” is more like visiting the neighborhood of nothing, 

a place you’d never tolerate living in this something-body that needs things.

The place you are accustomed to is a place which is very very thing‑y. Many things 

occupy the space where you live which require a great deal of doing, a great busy-ness 

that eats up your life: bird feeder to fill, garden to water, leaves to rake, snow to push 

around, sentences to write. Roads waiting to unfold the something-something-everything 

roar of this world.

This story originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 17.

Photo by Laura Skinner.