This is Part 1 of a two-part story. Read the next part here.

The problem is that no matter where I begin this story its beginning will bias you and I want you to remain unbiased as long as possible, as long as I still have details to give you before you decide for yourself. I wish that you could jump right into the middle of the story, like one of those postmodern novels, but that just means that the middle would be the beginning. See, I have already changed the story by talking about beginnings and middles. I have subliminally made you think about endings. And I don’t want you to think about endings, I don’t want you to think this is a story with an end.

This story is one of those interstates through the desert. Long and straight, where you can see where you are going for miles and miles. There are no bends in the road, there are no trees or hills to cut off your view of the road ahead. You cannot see the end of the road but not because there is anything blocking your view. It is too far away. This is not one of those deserts with sandstorms or red hills or fence lines. Just ochre dirt on all sides. There are no roads other than the one you are on. When you see a train, you see the whole miles-long train of hoppers and tankers and engines, you see it all at once, all in one look off to the side. It is far away, but nothing keeps you from seeing it all at once because there is nothing out there. No trees, no scrub brush, no barbed wire. Just the road, long and straight and clear. This story is like that. When you get to the end, you will not be able to see how you got there, because it will have gotten dark and there are no lights on the road to look back and see. 

But, see there, I did it again. I put the idea of the end in your mind because I mentioned the end of the desert highway. I was wrong about the highway. Have you noticed? Roads do not end, they always connect to other roads. When you cross the desert, even though you cannot look back at where you have been, you just keep on going, because the road is still there. It is no longer straight or clear, but it keeps going with no end. I mean, sometimes you go down one of those roads that says Dead End, but then you turn around and keep going until you cross the desert, climb the mountains, stare at corn fields, wonder why there are so many trees here but not in the desert, look up for sky, and stop when you get to the ocean. You know that you can always turn around and go back. This story is like that. 

It is possible that you have already heard this story. I heard it once when I was your age, but to be honest, I did not understand it. I did not understand much when I was your age. I had not yet been to the desert. I did not yet know that you can turn off the road anywhere, even where there is no road, because there is nothing stopping you. No ditch, no culvert, no guard rails. Just rocks and dirt. In the desert there is nothing. Well, not nothing, but you know, nothing. If there is anything there, you bring it with you. Like water or trigonometry or a guitar. Pack it in, pack it out. Leave no trace. The first time I went, I did not know what to pack. I took all kinds of things I did not need. Like extra shorts and a map and hope. Just because you brought it does not mean you need to keep it. You can leave it in the desert. 

This philosopher, Quine, he used to talk about desert landscapes. He was talking metaphysics, talking about what there is. He used to say that when we fill up our shopping carts with unnecessary plastic items, it offends the sensibility—the aesthetic sensitivity—of those of us who have a taste for desert landscapes. Good old Willard, pack it in, pack it out. Leave no trace. Don’t pollute the desert, although that’s not quite what he meant. Mr. Willard Quine was talking about how you can have fewer things in the world with lots of different ways of looking at them, or you can have lots of different things in the world with fewer ways of looking at them. He used to talk about how having fewer things in the world made it a desert, made it aesthetically better than an overcrowded world. Simpler. Jokes on him. Deserts are a lot more complicated. Nothing is complicated. 

I am not talking about the kind of nothing King Lear had in mind. The kind of nothing he threw back at Cordelia after she offered him nothing. Nothing, like it is a thing you can talk about, a thing called nothing. Nothing comes from nothing, he said, although he was talking about love and inheritance more than deserts. Still, I think we can talk about deserts as if they are full of nothing. There is nothing quite like a desert. If we make our world a desert, then we need more ways of looking at the fewer things there are. But see, the phenomenologists talk about how you cannot see things the way others see them. You can see them only your way, the way you see them. You seeing them is the only way there is. So, really there is nothing until you see it. I told you nothing was complicated. 

Nothing trips you up in the last lines of Wallace Stevens’ snowman poem too. It is cold and there is wind outside, blowing through the yard. And Stevens says the listener listens in the snow, and, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. So, nothing and the nothing. It’s like nothing is an adjective and nothing is a noun. Nothing you can count and nothing can stand in the yard and stare back at you with coal eyes and a carrot nose and make you shiver thinking about emptiness and make you go back and read the poem again because you feel like you did not understand it the first time. 

See, I think the desert can help us figure out what we are talking about when we talk about talking about something. I mean, what is it that that poem is about? What’s that play about? What’s this story about? Aboutness seems like an unnecessary plastic object, and my shopping cart is getting heavy. I want to get back to the desert, where there are no quantifier/noun ambiguities, just a long straight road ahead. Lots of people go to the desert just to get through it. Just because the desert is between them and somewhere else they want to go. It’s true, you do have to cross the desert if you want to get to a forest or the woods. But the desert is also somewhere, even if it is full of nothing.

You can read the next part of this story here.