An email correspondent said to me once that I could write a thousand words about absolutely nothing without taking a breath. I’m hoping she meant “write interestingly.” At the very least, I like to think that puts me somewhat in the category of the TV show “Seinfeld,” which was enormously funny and was about absolutely nothing.
If nothing else, I AM a communicator. I can’t seem to stop myself. That’s how my monthly newsletter “Livin’ on the Bay” got started: after retiring from Central Texas, I wanted to tell my big sister in Kansas about my delightful new town on the Texas coast.
I’m even drawn to novels about communicators. I’m currently working my way through the treasure trove of “The Cat Who . . .” books by Lilian Jackson Braun at the library. Our hero writes a twice-a-week column for his local newspaper and solves murder mysteries with the help of his two Siamese cats.
With the advent of email a few years ago, communication between far-flung friends and family has become as easy as typing out a few lines, speeding almost immediately to the recipient regardless of continent, and cheaper than a phone call. The expense of a computer and internet access isn’t even necessary with service available at most local libraries and evening labs at schools.
When committing to a regular column, be it monthly or more frequently, writing cleverly about nothing can be an invaluable skill. It’s astonishing how blank one can be one moment, and then some unexpected encounter will whack the head and fingers into action. Sipping my morning coffee on the deck guarantees a subject will come to mind. Reading the Sunday paper, I peruse the wedding photos and wonder, What was the photographer thinking! I observe the neighbor up the street back out and one more time drive off the culvert. I hear the cheerful chatter of a flock of snow geese moving overhead in a ragged V, I watch my cats frolic in the early dawn, a bay breeze ruffling my hair, and it's not long before I head for the computer and words tumble out.
Defining “nothing,” I suppose, depends in large part on how one’s brain receives and processes stimuli. Take for instance this thought: A fun quiz making the email rounds a few weeks ago included the question “What do you do when you’re bored?” Bored? What’s that? The fact that I can’t think right off of a boring occasion probably goes back (way back) to those small town Saturdays of my youth when my parents and I would sit in the car after the week’s shopping and be endlessly entertained by watching the people--the way they were walking, the clothes they wore, who they were with, speculation as to where they were going. There was no TV to hurry home to watch and we’d already seen the downtown movie. To children of today, accustomed to a relentless technological assault on their senses, such an activity probably seems like a truly scary horror movie.
It isn’t a thousand words, and I breathed once or twice, but I hope this essay triggered your thinking about what nothing could mean to you.