empty_page

They say emptiness is full. Full of different potentials, fluctuations, ripples, oscillations, vibrations and whatever. In this part of the world where it happened that I was born and have been living emptiness is considered something awfully hideous. Emptiness is nihilistic. Emptiness is full of naughty nothingness. Our reluctance to emptiness is so great, powerful and enormous that we can’t imagine our life without it and due to this we can’t imagine either that emptiness may not exist, that there is something in it while there should be nothing in it. We have always preferred what we can imagine and what we imagine (and what may not exist) to what we can’t imagine (and what can exist).

I'm reading a book. It's a novel. It's a nice edition: hardbound but a really pocket size (A6). One can carry it easily everywhere and read it at any time and in any place. Letters are clear and light, neither aggressive, nor illegible. Grey and white are in good proportion. White? This paper is not white – it means it is not an archetype of whiteness, when we say “he’s pale as a paper” with no doubt we think of another paper although this one looks much alike pale face skin. The book is more than twenty years old, so the pages could get a bit yellowish, especially on the edges. But this is so not only due to the age. More than twenty years ago almost all books here were printed on paper of rather poor quality. This book is not the exception to the rule. The surface is not smooth, you can see with your unaided eye and feel with your fingertips a very delicate roughness of it, unevenness, tiny splinters of ...... No, I can't say this roughness is abominable. I like it, it gives the paper a certain character, makes it more "emotional". I think other readers like it too. Provided they notice it. After all it absolutely doesn't matter what kind of paper has been used - the change of paper will change nothing. This is what a reader, a normal or even an experienced reader usually thinks. So, what does matter in a book? Of course a text, narration, plot, language (this spoken-written one). This is what does matter. A paper doesn't matter at all. What you write – this is what counts; what you write on is of no importance at all.

Really? Insolently I dare to deny, although my insolence will be full of subtleness and besetting anxieties. Let us imagine this book printed on a toilet paper. Certainly, then not only the sort of paper will matter, but the shape of the book, too. Single leaves of toilet paper stitched together like a codex won't give as clear associations as a roll (or a scroll). Quite probably in the case of this book such an experiment will cause only a slight astonishment. But imagine Declaration of Independence or Gospel or Koran printed that way! Yes, the toilet paper is an extreme - due to its function and very clear associations it can thus provoke (of course in the countries where it is known and used). So let us experiment with some other "characteristic" papers. Rough and rude, grey-brownish paper for packaging (at least here). Tracing paper. Hand-made paper. High glossy paper ...... It's interesting that an ordinary inhabitant of the country where I live can distinguish several "emotional" categories of paper: elegant, noble, rude (which in some situations can be perceived as noble and sophisticated, even exquisite), aggressive, delicate, ugly (not ugly itself but being a symbol of ugliness and bad quality, like a "newspaper" paper twenty or thirty years ago in this country), rich and valuable, poor.....

Well, I'm aware that my classification is very chaotic, random and based on no researches. I don't know if any researches of that kind have ever been done in any country. (Probably these things belong to the kind of matters which everybody knows so well that thinks they don't exist. It's interesting that people know quite well, "instinctively" - one may say, when this or that kind paper can or should be used). I can only suspect that in other countries people can also distinguish several categories of paper "character", maybe different and differently hierarchized. I'm also aware that such classification is based mainly, but not only, on function and symbolic associations of a specific paper those being determined by culture and tradition (there's always a question why this or that kind of paper was chosen for this or that purpose and function - the physical features of paper are not the only answer). But I won't try to answer these very interesting questions right now since they are not essential for this treatise. The essential is the fact that the paper-doesn't-matterness has it's limits because sometimes paper does matter. Sometimes or always? That's a very good question. A question about the doesn't/does-matterness limits.

By the time a book (or a text) is read, it has to be written. It is not the point now whether a writer writes with a pen or pencil on paper or types on a computer keyboard and the letters appear on the screen. The point is whether he thinks of what he writes on, and after all of what his book (text) will be printed on – well, it may happen it won’t be printed, it will remain on the screen; then it is also important if he thinks of it, if he tries to make the most of this fact, of this medium, make of it an additional value. A screen has its own problems to be solved, so have paper, wood or stone. The point is that almost all writers don’t pay attention to these problems – for them these problems are not problems at all ..... Thinking of paper (unless it is lack of paper which makes writing impossible) (or of screen) can only disturb the process of book creation ( = writing, in case of literature), so it's better to assume that paper (paper can be replaced with anything a writer would write his book on) is a kind of non-existing being, a plane perfectly indifferent for the process of writing ( = of book creation, from this writer’s point of view), not influencing it at all. It would be worse, much worse, awfully worse to assume that syntax or metaphors or vocabulary are perfectly indifferent, too. Thus the boundary between what does not matter and what does matter seems to be marked clearly: paper (or any other medium), letters, lines and space between them and things of that sort are meaningless - syntax, morphology are important although not meaningful, but not meaningless either (it seems to be so for many writers; for some linguists it seems they convey no meaning at all; yet vast majority of language users simply don’t bother about it) - words and sentences are meaningful. This is so from the text’s point of view – but this not so from the book’s point of view. This is so for literature – but this is not so for liBerature.

There's a white page in front of me. I have to write a novel. Or a short story. Or a poem. The weather is fine. So I go out, sit at the table on the veranda. Since when a huge canopy of grape vine collapsed one winter night because of heavy snow, there has been no protection against the sun. The table is flooded with light. The page shines sharply. Hurts. Burns. Dazzles. Makes me blind. I retreat to the studio. The page dies down abruptly. It's almost grey now, as if ash covered ..... What is this book going to describe? An illumination? A mystic relation between writer and paper?

Nothing is going on now. A while of rest. Of calmness. Stillness. A page (almost) perfectly clean. With no stains, no dots, no stroke on it. An empty page. Emptiness of a page before the beginning of the first chapter (or a poem) will appear on it ...... But we know that emptiness is not empty. Now we know it. There were times we were convinced (and a lot of people have been and are) that emptiness is really empty, what meant that nothing was in it and nothing was going on in it. And we were afraid of it and wanted to fill it immediately. Now we've found that emptiness is full of different energies, potentials, fluctuations and whatsoever. And again we are afraid and surprised and horrified. And we try to empty the emptiness ….. We can also try to imagine a writer writing on a newspaper or in an old copybook with pages entirely covered with notes – a kind of palimpsest book. And if so, then emptiness is not meaningless. Nor is an empty page. What are these "energies, potentials, fluctuations and whatsoever" making the paper full of meanings (though hidden and hardly perceptible)? What are these meaningful (or potentially meaningful) elements of paper?

For example a description of the Emerald Island. The old ballad tells about "forty shades of green" ….. So for every page I applied a different kind of paper, more or less green. Thus a reader can travel through an almost really, literally ( = letterlessly), though a bit metaphorically and metonymically emerald book-island. And a writer? A writer doesn’t have to waste time and letters for describing forty shades of green – can use these saved letters and words for something else.

But abnormal people turn everything upside down. That's why they are abnormal. They can produce a paper which is so talkative that no story is needed to be placed on it, because the letters, signs, pictures, pictograms will only disturb the immanent and innate story of the paper. Not necessarily a story. It can be a poem. Or any narrative ….. Normal people will ask: how can we read such stories? What answer can be given to them? Such stories should be read abnormally. Like one can “read” a story contained within the texture of a painting.

„No need” does not mean „can’t” or „mustn’t”. A story can be placed on a talkative paper – but it must be placed in a right place and in a right way. Somehow parallely to the story told by the paper. Or interlacingly. Or contrapuntally. In conflict. In tension. In friction .....Tens of solutions are possible. Hundreds of interactions can be imagined. As well as hundreds of kinds paper (or medium) between a perfect dumb and too talkative ones.

I don’t make paper. Somebody tried to encourage me to make it. Once there was a nettle jungle around my house. I could make nettle paper. I could also make apple paper because I have many old apple trees in my orchard – apple-peel-pulp-stone paper. But I did not and I will not. This is so not because I hate to make paper. Making paper using traditional methods is fascinating job. Nevertheless when I heard such a suggestion I shouted That’s too much! In fact it’s too little. If I design sometimes special font for the purpose of a specific book (recently I even cut letters in wood to stamp a few lines of text which necessarily had to be edited in that way), I could design and make a paper. Maybe one day I will. Maybe one day I will design and make a printer, ink and computer – for the purpose of a specific book ..... Really? Where are the limits of this semantic obsessions?

Once I saw a book where the only text were names of big rivers printed with big letters, one name on each page, and the paper has an admixture of mud taken from this very river. Well, you could believe it or not. But I’m sure you can easily imagine (and believe) a paper with rose petals dipped in it and a poem about rose printed on it. With no doubt one could feel indignant with such extreme, naive, vulgar literality. One could protest, shout dramatically that it’s an extermination of metaphor ….. And maybe this is the point – to get out from the prison of metaphor? May we not fall into deeper dungeon. However, it seems to be very interesting path: => verbal => verbatim => unverbal => ?

Well, it could have had. Because nobody would be crazy enough to make really big edition of a round book. Unless it is a book for children. But a serious book for serious grown up readers can be only rectangle (square is a rectangle, too). This is what normal people, normal publishers, readers and writers think of books. I am abnormal, so I have written and made a triangle book. It is very serious book, more serious than many serious rectangle books. You have to believe me, because I made so far almost twenty copies of it. Why is it triangle? The most simple answer is: because it MUST be triangle. The special geometry of this book is very important element of the story told in it. Maybe one day you will have a chance to read it.

Any book can have any size. So, any page can have any size. This opinion is neither sensational nor suspicious. There are books very small, small, medium, big, very big, huge. So are pages. But a book having pages of different sizes – oh! this is something alarming. Although sometimes books can have folding pages, what means these pages are bigger, normally twice bigger than all other pages in the book, doubled up ….. what does not mean, of course, dog-eared. Nor crumpled. Oh no! Never! Pages must be flat! Perfectly flat and smooth ……. Describing is simply projecting a many-D world onto a perfectly flat, 2D surface, and a book is just a collection of such projections. This is what normal people think and they think such projection is the best and the only possible and because of that the most normal and natural. This is very strange if we consider how arbitrary and conventional is such projection. However we shouldn’t be surprised. Majority of normal things is in fact abnormal.

How can I describe abnormally gigantic cosmic catastrophe on one page only? Maybe I can smash this page, tear away a part of it or an edge, make a hole, a terrible hole in it and then put it into the book? What will this be: a description? a performance? a representation? What kind of catastrophe’s projection will this be? What a catastrophe for my teachers engrafting in me reluctance and disgust to dog-ears.

Why are pages not transparent? Probably not to let the text seen from under disturb reading the text on the surface. Not to disturb linearity of reading, to force a reader to read sequentially, word by word, instead of simultaneously …… But why? Why couldn’t we read several sentences in the same time? Why couldn’t one story be covered transparently (or semi transparently) by another story. Why couldn’t one story emerge from another one like from the mist?

Letters can be not only on the paper – they can be placed also in the paper. You can dip printed text into the paper just being made. Thus you can scumble the text. Some artists do that, but I’m afraid only for artistic effects and not thinking of any meaning. But using such method we could place several layers of text in one sheet of paper. And maybe not only layers of graphemes but layers of morphemes and sememes as well. Think of it …… What for? To let the text shine its black light mysteriously through the mist of paper-thoughts .....

The paper sounds. Everybody knows about it. Different papers can sound differently. Rustle differently. It seems that everybody knows about it, too. So, imagine that pages of a book rustle a symphony or a song or a tale, that the sequence and quality of these noises is composed, organised, predetermined. It’s a tale told by dry leaves covering an alley in the park … And think of other media: metal, wood, plastic, porcelain and sounds they can produce …..

Is that all about paper? Definitely not. Nevertheless is quite a lot. But I do repeat: this treatise is not going to be about paper, it’s going to be about books ….. no, it’s going to be about liBerature. It means about another way of thinking, another imagining, another projecting, another representing, another seeing. A page does not have to be made of paper. We are used to paper too much. Our computer printers at home couldn’t print anything on stone or wood. But mind that not always and not everywhere books have been made of paper. Probably everybody knows it, but has forgotten. Almost everybody. With no doubt all producers of computer home printers. Who would like to print on birch bark or leaves or water? I would. Because I can imagine a book having each page made of different material ……