The White Space of the Civil War

Nothingness contains infinitudes… not a trick question, a forceful contradiction… there is no final grade, the answer perhaps self-prompted or sitting in the corner of the room, ignored, pushed out of the eyesight… it is not context, the nothingness entirely within itself, a sea of nothingness, but this patch is different… how is it different, tell me how it is different they demand of you but you resist, because you do not know, you cannot know, you cannot justify, cannot act on a divine thought from the hand of… the nothingness is everywhere, everything, pushed onto the corners of the paper by something of importance, a map, a photograph, not destroyed but compressed, concentrated, under a sort of pressure… it is everywhere, the skies of the civil war painted empty, not vacant, so full, in fact… bursting with emotion, the after before the storm, the eye of the hurricane, swirling every which way, a path of destruction in quiet sweeping across barren fields… the white skies are compensating, piercing, a necessary act, utility, art as a means… focus is the same compromise but tripping into the arena of our benefit, a reversible and beautiful artifact desired in its distortion… for the sky there is no desire of white, the heavens covered (the canvas is white but not blank) and a hindrance to the view of god, undressing the sky, and plunging the “subject” into the pits of hell, a different kind of nothingness, neither desirable, but tradeoffs must be made, even though for the plates of glass, the pits of hell is all they know, but no one asks the plates, they are, again, a means… but this is a false dichotomy, a dynamic range that drives a wedge in the tiniest gap between two types of beauties… the one that occupies the skies of the civil war, but in the negative, swapped, they at least occupy the same space, a projection of reality, (in junction, a void)… but despite their utility their nothingness is a reminder of the primary principle, because to achieve peak efficiency, crushing the meaning and emotion into every corner of the page, the pane, no grain of sand wasted, maximizing efficiency, more productive, an impact made on the world, doing something important, meaningful, with a mission, a purpose, tangible… would be to put the field inside a single flower, a single seed, efficient, build a house here, a monument there, not let the space go to waste, the rolling hills as a real estate venture, the closing buyer reveling in their destruction, congratulations sent, a plot with so much history, but what is it replacing… in our quest to overwrite the white space we deny a reality embedded within the folds of the general’s map, as the roads fade into space he presses the creases and places the paper back into the breast pocket of his coat, mounting his horse (white) and riding off into the sunset… it is precisely the folds that make the white space beautiful, unoccupied by entropy, untransformable, the lines on top of the abyss, erasable, piercing the medium instead of the message, the hole in the center (a camera obscura) inverting the world, a map turned backwards as north becomes south… but the white space is small, the same as the big if you look hard enough, composing our everything, the cracks in the paint, the bubbles on the surface of the water as we swim upstream, against the current, foam (does not call when come), the beads of sweat dripping down a face in the bitter afternoon sun, the whites in his eyes, in the pupil (a classroom?) of dance and destruction… turbulence, a wave crashing down, so loud, too loud, an endless sea of rolling hills, carved into a barren landscape, empty but not desert, and when trees do come they are loud, crowded, their bark (white) peeling into the abyss as even they seem to have given up, not a humble act but one which will be granted in time as they outlast our skirmishes and ethics and all that is human, they will still see the white space, the clouds crossing the sky, the ants in uniform, unconcerned with the passing of a time which falls in a forest with no one to see it… the face of the moon is shared, another white space accessible to all, but it is so piercing, unique as we don’t align, seeing shapes, faces, during the day in the clouds, a sheep crossing the sky in broad daylight, showing its hand, unconcerned with the skirmishes on the battle field below… and where do clouds go, when they march onto the horizon, sometimes rushing across the pane of our sky, never to appear again after crossing the blinking point, or line, at the end of our duties and our life… but only if you look up… the white space presents itself to all yet some never see it, staring at the ground, at their gun (or the gun of a foe), keep your eye on the ball, checking the time, a second hand marching its way around the white face of the clock, eternally, make sure to clock in, here is your uniform, sit this way, stand this way, did you hear what I said, don’t lose focus… and if, instead, the crack of the bat does nothing to distract you from the infinitization of the self, when you have abandoned your post, staring into the stands at the reflection of the sun (a watch’s reflection on the grass below) or watching the clouds blow by the stadium, asking what they know, how they know, the ball dropping silently besides you, unlike the game, the clouds don’t stop moving, time stands still, it is just separate, surreal, subjective… but that is it, everything is contained in that moment as the ball flies through the sky… if we were to press pause, we could all go home, taking away what we want, need, from the white leather and red laces floating above center field… the white space is the ball, and it is the air, flowing, empty, open, the invisible in the visible, a beam of light, weightless, opening up, exposed… it is the sky but also the after, the before, white a reflection, traversed by our knowledge, the aesthetic an action as much as a force, space simply a medium for its traversal… the aesthetic swims in space, making use of it, colors fighting their respective fronts, compositions (lines) a battle of space and time, move it that way, silent murmurs, the growing wave of anticipation peaking over a single point, aligned, perfect, even if inexplainable… the shouts of a single flag crying out from the pocket of a general, its position to others defined by its position to itself, it looks downstream, down the battlefield, the wave of terror crossing the page, through the white, it flies in terror, itself a composition of color, a construction of paint, soaking into the page, stained, burned, an incomplete outline, circled, noted, to exhaustion, still standing, standing still, forever flapping in a nonexistent wind trapped in the fibers of the paper that encompass its entire being… and even it cannot explain the white space, composing its inner self, reading between the lines, the stripes, its composition is empty and fuller in consequence, the flag is part of a greater purpose, a soldier on the frontlines, serving its time, guiding the eyes of the others across the baren wasteland, space cemented in a beaten pulp, the there is there, on the page, not a manifestation, or representation, but its actual being, playing out in our mind as we turn the corners of the page to match our imagined expectations of the way the world ought to be, aligned with nothing, facing north, the needle of the compass blowing in the earth’s wind, seeking landmarks, though we are alone, standing in the middle of the field, the grass scratching our ankles, horizon stretching out every which way, the sky, white, above us, the earth picture perfect, grass blowing in the wind, almost taking the map, as we look down and then up, a softbox lighting the world beneath us, a bare common, would it really matter which way the needle pointed, direction without directives, following something simpler than ourself, if the map is even there at all… and when winter comes, a storm blowing across the barren fields, diving into the snow, the crystals a story for another day, another time, what separates the sky from the earth, to lay in a field would be to lay in a void, even on the clearest of days… make an impression in it, the footprints to be erased, better be erased, to stay alive, hunted, haunted, a temporary act, visible only to oneself, the snow piling on, an aesthetic act in a fleeting moment, fragile, melting, buried, at any moment… and even if each flake had its own consciousness (again, a story for another day) would it even matter, aren’t the domains separate, each being alone in their own impression of the physical and the ethical… the erosion of the subjective manifests in this white space, it too melts, it is all us, warming the snow, wet, hungry, tired, tried, as we strive to experience, twice allotted daily, if you’re lucky, each rotation of the earth providing a moment of complete calm, to wake and to rest, as we finally release the chains of our being on the mind… the other moments are hidden in a fog, the same fog trapped by the snow, the same fog lining the horizon, the bleeding of the water onto the page, washing away the lines which already transitioned into emptiness, going nowhere, it is all stationary, pinned, pens… the space is what brings those moments to life, crosses, parallels, vectors, the single line striking through the white canvas, zagging, beginning from white, peering through the panes of a window, onto everything and nothing simultaneously… but can an entire world not fit into a single word, a single letter, the edges arranged to provoke a single thought, easier in its isolation, a book only a sea of letters floating within the same white space, spaces giving rest, a cacophony of letters, psalms, a bible, ideas, letters with structured order and being, knowing thy place, not so bad, a symphony of ideas originating from the arrangement, the reader a conductor, a conduit, for the essence that originates from those pages… letters as a commodity, a disposable resource, scarce and treasured, we fight to keep them, collect them, only if for a moment, before releasing them into the world as spoken thought, our own collection informing our identity and being, so many letters on their own and in relation to each other… to collect is to experience, to act in the face of a perpetual gravity, to raise oneself off of the grass and onto ones feet, the snow melted… as spring arrives a uniform beauty strikes the battlefields of the civil war, flowers trapped between the blankets as bullets fly overhead… is there a meaning for us or is it only a polite fantasy, colorless slides backed by a bright white light illustrating the serenity of it all, still no direction, although a tree starts to grow, what is trapped in the foliage will remain to be seen… a rhythmic distribution of color forever forgotten to history, the tune, a chord progression, so alive, warm, bright, changing, evolving, walking, strutting, rhythm a medium defined only by space and time, the tap-tap of the telegraph operator, wires crossing the white skies of battle, information encoded musically, instantly accessible, as letters see their death note… no, this new age is direct, no time for that, ordering by wire the sky be returned to its natural state of color and flourish, back to normal, repairing through destruction, liberated, free, fixed… or is that solution only a footprint in the bed of snow, covered, swept over, no freedom to be found, as the world cranks on, the stone overturned, the body moved, a retrospective through the window’s panes, photos posed, still, like the ball floating in the sky, because motion moves too quick, forgotten in the blink of an eye, our instantaneous memories stretched over hours as the battle rages on… but does truth even matter, our visual perception simply a fantasy of movement, artistic license, stories told over generations… the fern traced onto the blank canvas (again in a sea of white) only goes to prove an example, a part of a narrative, valued in its detail… the fern is individual, even as the mean, helped by the white that surrounds it, defined by its traits rather than judged for them, it is just as real as any other leaf… the fern captured in the page of a book, staining the page, imprinting itself over and the text, the words, the letters, the shadow cast by the long-forgotten plant living on through the stories in the act of preservation, imprinted into the page… perhaps the leaf has drifted off the page, into another story, or perhaps decomposed, returning to the fields, to its home, as nature takes its natural path.. in either world, what matters is the stories, the imprints, as our leaf drifts through the universe… what is left up to interpretation, then, is the color of the leaves, as the fall foliage turns, along the river bend, the water reflecting the sky, now blue, instead of white, it does not matter how real the picture is, more because of its color, less because of its serenity, its perfection, never seen on a scale larger than a flake of snow, the final perfect object, the envy of it all… a periodical perched peacefully on the porch of a reader, glistening, open, aware, knowledge beaming, as one dips their hand into the vat of content, an awesome effort, the book bound, where does the edge begin and the story end, monthly, expected, arriving when you think it will, isn’t there a value to that, regularity, and collected into a solid rectangle, but just like the universe, the snowbank, the bible, the sky, there is space there, between the cracks of the pages, between the words, and oh the diagrams, bursting with emptiness, the tree bending to the page, bending to the reader, drinking from the stream of ideation and idolization, broken, its back bent, braced, even though it is lost, undisclosed, knowing where one is without knowing where the is is… and the sapling still stands tall, the youngest the most whole, not yet broken, not yet formed, naïve, acutely aware of the future that awaits it, not understanding (for the better) the stories told by its family… even though the tree is not a person, not real, not speaking words or thinking thoughts as we understand them, we cannot understand them, we are too weak, too fragile, the tree is the better of us, the best of us, not wanting to best us but simply bee, the bullets flying between the leaves, drops of blood spattering the bark, the bush, concerned but unbothered, a blip in the timeline of our history and context, the trees are not our savors as much as witnesses to our own being and destruction… and this is good, it is real, the tree as a mirror to our own emotion, interwoven, the tree is not better than us, better a word without meaning, pretense, even though we carved our fences out of their flesh, they stand to protect us, again, remembering without ill intent, as their intent is so far beyond our believing… but only if we choose to accept the awesome power of it all into our lives, mountains forming out of their own free will, choosing to burst upwards into a frame filled with white, the waterfall appearing as the slow drip of the heavens above… and the concentration of that power gives an impression of the true scale of meaning, the mountain ranges filled with thousands of peaks, each one standing among its siblings, to the speck of dust floating through the sky it is too many to count, as we look up at their cowering presence… the most obvious space occupied by the ghosts of the past, not physical, floating, like the dust spec, interweaving themselves between our eyes and the projector… they are the remnants of our emotions, the freedom to breathe when struck by the image of the dying soldier, the ghosts bear the brunt of the impact, then, now… the history itself is with us, an endless task, and so are the ghosts, peacefully invading our thoughts, who we are, what defines us, its all ghosts, they themselves defined by ghosts, their wind blowing over the pages of our books, they are the answer to the question, if one is so desired, the answer to the demands of others, to justify, to explain our contradictions and our ethical frameworks… the super natural is explained by science, to whom it may concern, the dust blowing off of the bedside table, packing up, going home, done for the day, the ghosts inhabiting our mind, they are there always, we sense that we should miss them if they were missing… for their disappearance would create a colorless word, a world governed by the utilitarian, because yes, the ghosts protect us in more way than one, even if they are not real, they are more real than we are… what is sport if not emotion, love, life, it is all rooted in the inexplicable, god playing dice with the universe, so why do we have to know, explain, knowledge as an action rather than a thing, to know, curiosity quaking in its boots, intimidated, as we throw ourselves and everything we ought to be at a single word on a single page in a single book, the desert storm slowly retreating behind the mountain as the sky opens up, devoid of clouds but still white, as we stand in the field with only our being to protect us, surrounded by an emptiness fuller than we could ever imagine, and finally, in finding truth, we are at peace with ourselves and with the world.