I'm thinking about peace.
Peace as a sound we have decided to designate for a silence, for an absence of war in countries and bodies. That quiet homonym for piece. And then I think about all the peace we piece ourselves together with, all those spaces of quiet we stitch together to try to create something out of nothing. It's more of an absence than a state of being, really.
Peace isn't active. You can't search for peace anymore than you can create silence. It's not like water, something transparent sloshing in your body and on your taste buds, something that's supposed to be tasteless but always has a tangible flavor nonetheless. Something like peace isn't part of a solid, restless body like mine, with all its cells fighting and dying every second. My body is painted in red tones. Close my eyes in the quiet, in the dark, and I'll still see red on the backs of my eyelids.
Dali painted burning giraffes as a symbol for war. I find reality in him. I don't think you can ever really find peace; you can only outrun war. And you can run in empty spaces until that fire creeps up the back of your legs, thundering up the length of your spine, distorting everything in its heat.
I think Lao Tsu understood:
"Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there."
Peace is shaping ourselves to hold an emptiness.
