Quandary – A tough situation; a pickle; between a rock and … oh, you know what I mean.
I need a word.
Those who know me, know I’m a stickler for words. I know it’s why I enjoy reading stuff by Dick Cavett, W.F. Buckley, Maureen Dowd, Christopher Hitchins and a couple of others. I like how they put their words together. Even when I don’t agree with whatever it is they’re saying.
I blame my dad, mostly. He was a musical genius, and had a real flair for writing. My mom was good, too, but Dad’s witty humor seeped through so much of what he wrote, I couldn’t help but learn to enjoy that kind of prose.
Anyway, I need a word.
Something to replace nothing, because nothing is the place where something goes to hang out.
Therefore, nothing is something, too. Nothing is a container, a void in want of content.
So, I need something that means what we carelessly mean when we off-handedly toss out nothing, but a word that — by its very definition — excludes any possibility of containing anything. This word must mean the absence of absence, the lack of everything/want of nothing, an un-fillable void-less void.
Yes, I’m quite familiar with “nihil”, which, (the dictionaries tell me), is Latin for nothing, but that doesn’t help me, because nihil is usually used in its ablative form, (don’t ask), nihilo, and paired with “ex”, and then you get ex nihilo, which is almost always used in conjunction with Creatio, and then you get Creatio Ex Nihilo, meaning, “Creation out of or from nothing”, which is a biblical thing that creationists and Tea Partistas get all foamy about, and that just doesn’t help.
Besides, that notion means God created something out of nothing, right? But, c’mon, this is God. When God creates something from nothing, God is still . . . stay with me . . . creating something from God. We just call it “Nothing” because we can’t see what’s going on behind God’s back.
So that doesn’t help me.
I still need a word.
Anything?
