B1006-1 The Words We Use: Nothingness

An old European immigrant, who sat on a bench outside a mom-n-pop grocery store, used to tell us that our language was “funny.” When we asked him what he meant by that, he said that we say “we are going to catch train. How is possible to catch train? Train very heavy.” Well, yes. You might say that this was a typical misunderstanding of idiomatic English. And perhaps it was.

But we use expressions that are often senseless even to native speakers of the language. For example, our American friend told us that she went to that new restaurant in town. When we ask how it was, she replied with some general affirmations of its goodness and suitability as a restaurant. She said she had the filet mignon. Again, when we ask how it was, she told us that “it was like nothing you ever tasted in your life.”

There’s a problem with that way of speaking, however. How would we know what something was like when we never tasted it in our lives? Indeed, how could we begin to understand this particular form of tasty “nothing?” I suppose one could imagine varieties of nothing - some of which could be tasted - in some erudite, philosophical sense. Once you fall through the trapdoor of nothingness, though, all possibilities for affective interaction seem to disappear as well.

The problem here is to know when you have arrived: if something “is like nothing,” then it ceases to have an ontological existence. Accordingly, it can no longer be intuited, or even be considered in any constructive sense of the word. So, our American friend’s comparison was considerably beyond nonsense: it was logically impossible to even consider the contours and implications of nonexistence, and, moreover, to compare that with something with which we were familiar. Once you open the door to nothingness, “there is no there there.”

During the O.J. Simpson murder trial (1995) we heard this statement: “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” But, apropos of our discussion here, if the glove doesn’t exist, we can’t even talk about it.

Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have to run along now. I have to catch a train.