Nothingness

I'm writing this from the MacDowell Colony, an artist's retreat in the woods of New England, and I am sitting in the one spot on the property with Internet access. There used to be two buildings wired here, but apparently the place was taking on the continual-partial-attention quality of a midtown Starbucks, with everyone hunched over their laptops after dinner instead of talking to each other, so the main building was unplugged, leaving WiFi just in the small library. The question of...