The Book of Form and Emptiness

by Ruth Ozeki

Sometimes it’s more than one voice. Sometimes it’s a whole chorus of voices rising from a single thing, especially if it’s a Made thing with lots of different makers, but don’t be scared. I think it depends on the kind of day they were having back in Guangdong or Laos or wherever, and if it was a good day at the old sweatshop, if they were enjoying a pleasant thought at the moment when that particular grommet came tumbling down the line and passed through their fingers, then that pleasant thought will cling to the hole. Sometimes it’s not so much a thought as a feeling. A nice warm feeling, like love, for example. Sunny and yellow. But when it’s a sad feeling or an angry one that gets laced into your shoe, then you’d better watch out because that shoe might do crazy shit, like marching your feet right up to the front of the Nike store, for example, where you could wind up smashing the display window with a baseball bat made of furious wood. If that happens, it’s still not your fault. Just apologize to the window, say I’m sorry to the glass, and whatever you do, don’t try to explain. The arresting officer doesn’t care about the crappy conditions in the bat factory. He won’t care about the chain saws or the sturdy ash tree that the bat used to be, so just keep your mouth shut. Stay calm. Be polite. Remember to breathe.

Things are needy. They take up space. They want attention, and they will drive you mad if you let them.

He studied the body, lying there in the fancy coffin. The eyes were closed, but the face didn’t look alive enough to be asleep. Didn’t look alive enough to be dead, even. Didn’t look like something that had ever lived. Someone had used makeup to cover up the bruises, but his dad would never have worn makeup. Someone had brushed the long black hair and arranged it loosely on the satin pillow. Kenji only wore his hair loose and hanging down like that when he was relaxing at home. In public, he always tied it back in a thick, black ponytail. All these details proved to Benny that the thing in the coffin was not his father.

The coffin was heavy, but Kenji added little to its weight,

Benny . . . ? Dad? It was his father’s voice. Benny could barely hear it over the din of the ventilation, but he knew it was coming from the cardboard box. He stood on his tiptoes, tried to see inside. Oh, Benny . . . His dad sounded so sad, like he wanted to say something but it was too late, and indeed, just at that moment, Annabelle gave a nod and turned away, and the attendant stepped forward and placed the lid on the box. Benny pressed his palms to the window. “Mom!” he called, slapping the glass. “Mom!”

He saw the burning throat and the tongue of flame, heard the basso growl of fire and the sucking air, mingling with the threnody of a lone trombone from the street. “Don’t Be That Way.” They were playing “Don’t Be That Way.” Benny pounded on the glass with his fists. “No!” he screamed. “No!” Annabelle looked up then. She was gripping Kenji’s clarinet in her hands, and her face was as white as ash, and tears were streaming down it. She caught sight of her son through the glass, and her hands reached out to him, and he could see her lips move in the shape of his name. Benny . . . ! Behind her, the box slipped into the oven and its mouth slid shut.

The ashes were sealed in a plastic bag, inside a plastic box, inside a generic brown paper shopping bag, which Benny refused to carry on the bus, even though none of the other passengers could possibly know there were human remains inside.

“But we don’t really know what that means. To be dead.” Benny pushed some of the words into a new line. “Yes we do. It means he’s not alive.” Annabelle was bending down over the open oven, flipping the nuggets, but the flat finality in her son’s voice made her turn. “Oh, Benny, no!” She dropped the metal spatula, and the oven door slammed shut. She ran to the refrigerator, pushing him aside. “Put it back! We have to put it back! Woman goes here, and symphony, but there was an adjective, too. What was it? I can’t remember! Why can’t I remember? Oh, Benny, do you?” She turned, beseeching him, but he had backed away. He hadn’t meant to dismantle his father’s poem. The magnets wanted to be moved around, to make new poems, and he was just trying to help them. He opened his mouth to explain, but the words wouldn’t come. He stood there, stricken, and seeing this, Annabelle broke off and reached for him. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Come.” She pulled him in close. He felt the weight of her arms around his shoulders, and the heave of her chest. “I didn’t mean—” he said. She hugged him tighter. “I know, Benny,” she said. “Don’t worry. It’s not your fault. It’s all fine, don’t cry, we’re going to be fine. . . .” He wasn’t crying, but she was.

My abundant woman mother goddess love r we are symphony together I am mad for you

Disturbed by the movement of air, the row of neatly hanging flannel shirts waved their arms in gentle greeting, but it was the smell that she first noticed—Kenji’s smell, pungent and salty like wind coming in off the ocean. It caught her off guard. She closed her eyes and leaned in, letting the smell envelop her, soft and warm against her skin. She inhaled until her lungs could hold no more, and then she exhaled a long, single, shuddering sob. With her eyes still shut, she plunged her hands in among the row of hanging clothes and wrapped her arms around a cluster of shirts, thick as a torso.

she fell back on the mound of clothes, burrowing into the loamy softness of her husband’s worn cotton, his faded denims, and his threadbare tweeds. A strange warmth suffused the weave of the fabric, still lively with him, and so she dug deeper, pressing her face into the collars and pockets and sleeves, teasing out a whiff of smoke and whiskey—lingering nightclub scents that reminded her of the very first time he’d placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her and they’d kissed. She shivered with the memory. The sensation of scratchy wool and soft flannel felt so good against her skin, and she wanted more.

It was a beautiful idea, really, to wrap yourself up in memories and give old clothes a new life.

I liked that they had secrets if it made them happy, but when my dad died, Mom got sad, and the secrets didn’t sparkle anymore, and if that’s the case, there’s no point in keeping them secret, right? Obviously there are things a kid doesn’t need to know about his parents, but you could tell some of them.

maybe you don’t actually know their secrets? I kind of assumed that books know everything, but maybe you’re a stupid book, or a lazy book, the kind that starts in the middle because you don’t know how a story begins and can’t be bothered to figure it out. Is that it? Is that the kind of book you are?

Stories never start at the beginning, Benny. They differ from life in that regard. Life is lived from birth to death, from the beginning into an unknowable future. But stories are told in hindsight. Stories are life lived backward.

Pausing in the shadows just outside the reach of the spotlight, she bit her lower lip and swallowed. She had a wonderful lower lip, Kenji noticed. Full and puffy. No lipstick, no makeup at all. Just her soft, naked face, wreathed in golden curls.

She brought the mic up to her mouth, and Kenji watched it shiver with the pleasure of being so close to those lips.

Kenji let the reed slip from his lips, let his dripping instrument drop, wiped the sweat from his eyes, and when he opened them again, he saw she was looking at him, only now she was smiling and her pale cheeks were flushed.

Later that night, in the darkened bedroom of the small downtown apartment that she shared with two others, Kenji unzipped the long satin sheath of her cocktail dress. As if in a dream, he drew it from her round white shoulders and let it fall to the floor in a shimmering puddle. How could this be happening? He unhooked her bra and helped free her arms from it, and then supported her elbow as she stepped from her underpants. When she was naked, he backed away and gazed at her. She stood there, uncertain, framed by a window that seemed to hold her in place. Outside, the light from a streetlamp shone through the gauzy curtains and turned her creamy skin pearlescent. She waited for him to indicate something, pleasure or displeasure, and when he didn’t, her hands moved to cover her breasts and groin. He felt his breath catch. She was magnificent. Standing in the pool of cheap aquamarine satin and dingy lace, she looked like Botticelli’s Venus stepping from the waves, or was it a clamshell? He couldn’t recall, but she was certainly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and if he whispered Botticelli under his breath, his accent distorted the word and she didn’t understand. Confused, she turned away from him, and he was mortified. He stepped hurriedly forward. He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her, pressing his palms on either side of her lovely face, and then he kissed her lips and felt her tremble. All of her. All over.

Sex with Kenji was a breathless thing, curious and unfolding,

How on earth, on this vast planet of eight billion humans, do two small human beings who are destined for each other manage to meet? A more cynical person than Kenji would say that they don’t—or, rather, that they aren’t. Destined, that is. For, surely, people do meet, and they fall in love, but those meetings are random, mere happenstance, and destiny is just the story they tell themselves afterward. But what a sweet story it is! And in the end, to us, that’s what really matters. That’s what books are for, after all, to tell your stories, to hold them and keep them safe between our covers for as long as we’re able. We do our best to bring you pleasure and sustain your belief in the gravity of being human. We care about your feelings and believe in you completely.

Has it ever occurred to you that books have feelings, too? As you listen to this romantic tale of two ill-fated lovers, do you ever stop to wonder about what it feels like for us? Because, in truth, if skin marks the border where an I ends and a you begins, then in these moments of impassioned boundary crossing called love, we envy you. It’s that simple. We envy you your bodies.

but even the most haptic and capacitive of our skins cannot experience pleasure the way yours can. We cannot feel the ecstasy, the merging of self and other.

We rely on you to embody us, and we exist because you can. So while we are cognizant of your fingers riffling through our pages, and we can describe in words the bitter taste of coffee, or a piquant sauce, or the salty semen spilled between our folios, we do not experience these sensations as you do—on your tongue, against your skin, inside your human body.

As experts in the field of romance, we have evoked your acts of love in more ways and words than any single human mind could possibly imagine, and yet we will never experience what it feels like to take our beloved’s hand and press it to our lips—

but in the moment when real lovemaking commences, we are the ones that get kicked aside and swept off the bed. Discarded, we lie facedown, splayed upon the floor, our pages crumpled, while mysteries unfold above us.

Sometimes we think we would like to make love. Who wouldn’t? We are madly in love with you, after all. As slaves to your obsessions, we know what it feels like to be impressed and bound. But at the same time we understand that thoughts like these are just idle tropes, fantasies we spin to while away the hours. Fantasies, being something that we books excel at. The real stories—the ones that happen—belong to you.

❗️

“He is space baby! Like tiny astronaut in a dream!” and from then on, that’s what they called him. Our space baby. Our dream baby. Our tiny astronaut.

They would help his English comprehension, she said, and she had a beautiful reading voice, but he rarely paid attention to the meaning. Rather, he listened to her read the way he listened to music, and sometimes the sounds of the words were so sweet they brought tears to his eyes and he’d be moved to accompany her, strumming soft chords on his ukulele. The tales and rhymes turned into songs, and as the baby bump grew, they began to sing to it.

Sheltered in this quiet bubble, they would lie on their sides in bed with the infant Benny between them, their bodies like two parentheses, enclosing a small star.

By the end of that first year, his voice had gotten fainter, and I didn’t hear him so much anymore. Where did he go? I went looking for him once.

He heard a crunch and a sharp cry of pain, a high-pitched shard of sound that came from the poor shiny orbs, and it sliced right through him.

The crows on the rooftop were watching him and making comments, but crows always said stuff, so that wasn’t unusual. He started to relax, but when he reached the street, the tires on a passing car squealed in a way that sounded intentional, and the cracks in the sidewalk seemed to be vying for his attention.

listening to some demented conversation they were having with the air.

If she could free the colors from their shrink-wrap and sniff just one tube

His clothes were still everywhere, though. Annabelle had bagged them up, but little by little, they were escaping and migrating over the piles of books and records back to her bed, where at night they helped her sleep.

then he lay down on his stomach beside her. It was their signal for her to tickle his back, so she slipped her hand under his sweatshirt and began running her fingernails lightly in circles. He closed his eyes. His head was turned toward her, and she gazed at his profile, the high cheekbones, the cast of his eye. He had his father’s coloring, but his freckles were hers. He was beautiful, still just a boy, but changing fast. She brushed the fine coppery hair from his brow, and he frowned. He wanted his back tickled, not his forehead, and he hated when she got distracted. When Kenji was alive, Benny used to lie between them, and they would take turns. Kenji had a special way of doing it. He used to sing soft riffs of scat and bebop, fingering his son’s delicate spine like a clarinet, but Benny didn’t like it when Annabelle tried this. “You don’t know how,” he complained, squirming out from under her fingers, and so she had to find her own way. Her way, the way she’d figured out to do it, was to trace big spirals on his back in time to the music, starting wide and moving slowly inward toward the center. Benny approved. He loved the scratchiness of her nails. They were like needles going round and round. They made his back feel like vinyl, drawing music from his skin, like it was singing.

yess!!!!! best feeling in the world

It was more like they just suddenly developed the ability to express themselves—or maybe they knew how all along. Maybe they’ve always been watching us and yammering away since the beginning of time, only since humans can’t hear things, we think they’re all blind and mute and uncaring. Actually, I think that’s pretty accurate. And things don’t like being judged like that, let me tell you.

At first, I think they were just saying stuff, maybe to each other or maybe to the molecules in the air—just expressing themselves into the universe like they’ve always done. But then my ears happened to come along, and when they realized I had ears that could hear—supernatural ears—they started trying to communicate with me, only they were talking in the tongues of things, so naturally I couldn’t understand what they saying.

usually when voices speak, they mean something. But these sounds were just random, and if they meant something, I couldn’t understand what it was. This must have frustrated the hell out of them. I mean, like, finally, someone with ears that can hear shows up, only it’s this stupid, clueless kid! No wonder they sounded so barky and annoyed all the time.

Things are very good at communicating their feelings. You know what I’m talking about, I’m sure, like when your keys go missing, or the top of your toothpaste tube slips from your fingers and makes a run for it, or a light bulb blows just when you flip the switch? That shit means something even if you can’t hear it, and if you can hear, it’s even more intense.

❗️

On bad days, the minute I walk through the door of a Starbucks, the overhead fluorescent fixtures start buzzing with this anxiety of meaning, and the coffee beans start screaming, and I’m literally assaulted by the pain of paper cups and plastic straws, and the chatter of cash registers filled with all those arrogant metal coins that think they’re actually worth something. The only difference is that now when this happens I don’t feel like I have to put my head through the glass of the muffin display. I can just hear the pain and let it go, which seems to have a calming effect on everybody.

It’s not always awful, though. Sometimes the voices are attractive and pleasant, like that rubber duck my mom found in the dumpster. I don’t mean the horrible squeaking sound it makes when you squeeze it, but the other voices inside that are more like the duck’s memories of oceans and tides and swells and shorelines, and something dreamy, too, softer and dim, like somebody wonderful had once touched it with her finger.

I think maybe it’s easier for the Made things because the voices of their human makers still cling to them, like a smell that clings to your clothes and you can’t get rid of. But Unmade things like trees and pebbles speak, too, only their voices are different. Unmade things are usually a lot quieter and don’t shout as much, and they speak in lower registers.

All I know is that it took me a while to learn how to tune my ears so I could hear the Unmade things over all the noise that the Made things were making.

Actually, I don’t know if it was me who learned to tune into the voices, or if the things of the world learned to express themselves in a way that I could hear. Probably both. Pro...

you worked your way through the material world, through clay, stone, reed, hide, fire, metal, atoms, and genes, and little by little you became better makers.

As objects, books were sacred, and you built temples for us, and later, libraries in whose hushed and hallowed halls we resided as mirrors of your mind, keepers of your past, evidence of your boundless imaginations, and testimony to the infinitude of your dreams and desires. Why did you revere us so? Because you thought we had the power to save you from meaninglessness, from oblivion and even from death, and for a while, we books believed we could save you, too. Of course we did. We were flattered! We prided ourselves on being semi-living, breathed into life by the animating power of your words. We thought we were so special. What folly. We see now that you are unstoppable. For you, books were just a phase, a brief expression of your instrumentalism, a passing fad. Our bodies were convenient tools you used until the next new-fangled device came along. In the end, we were just another one of your Made things, no better or worse than a hammer.

Made explodes, we are experiencing a crisis—you could call it a spiritual crisis—as we lose our faith in you, our Makers.

Your unquenchable desire, the fire that sparked us into being, is our unmaking. Your unbounded appetite for novelty has led you to design premature obsolescence into our bodies, so that even as our numbers increase, our life spans diminish. Cruel calculations! No sooner are we made than we are discarded, left to revert into unmade, disincarnate stuff. You turn us into trash, so how can we trust you?