THUSNESS

   for Cassandra Passarelli 
   ‘There is in the soul a desire for not thinking.’ 
        Raymond Carver, ‘Radio Waves’ 
  
When you ask me why it is that, sometimes,  
I don’t say very much, I don’t say much, 
just as when you ask me what it is I’m  
thinking about, I say ‘Thinking about?’ 
 
It reminds me of that joke we’ve all heard  
comediennes tell: ‘In every man’s head  
there’s a room with nothing in it. Never – 
and I mean NEVER – ask to look inside.’ 
 
Buddhists call such emptiness Sunyata
Carver gets it in his poem: ‘There is  
in the soul a desire for not thinking…’ 
 
something to do with keeping that small room  
empty, or knowing that ‘fullness’ and ‘void’  
are just two ways of naming the same thing.

 

Andy Brown

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