This is a blank space. It is like the wind blowing away the duckweed, or an eraser erasing lead characters. "Kong" (空) is pronounced with three tones and as an action, it means to "empty" something. "Bai" (白) is pronounced with one tone and represents a pure color under the sunlight, a clean and white appearance. Therefore, blank space can be said to mean "a white area of emptiness". Another interpretation is that "kong", as an adjective, means that a certain position is not occupied by anything, for example, "my wallet is empty". The meaning of blank space can then be said to be "the appearance of being unoccupied and clean". However, it is strange that there seems to be no connection between "kong" and "bai": the place of being unoccupied does not necessarily have to be white, it could also be dark and gloomy. The reason it is white is because it is filled with a clean background. The reason it is empty is because the original darkness has been cleared. For example, on a snowy day, the world is covered in clean white, but it is not exactly blank because there is snow everywhere; on a blank piece of paper, there is "blank space" everywhere because the paper is the background, unlike the snow which is the main character in the world at that moment.
Why talk about blank space? Because even though there is nothing to write about, the strange thing is that once words emerge, this blank space immediately ends: describing blank space fills the gaps between words. It is like two children chasing each other on two playgrounds, meaningless words trying to chase after the blank space within words, so I wrote them down. It seems that talking about blank space is always empty, because the real blank space has already been driven away by the words of the present moment, just like holding a lantern to capture the darkness in the night. But is it really like this? Could it be that words have omissions, and when we talk about anything, the words we use always take away the truth of that thing, leaving behind only the illusion of words?
Could such a situation occur? A person who has seen the sun tells a blind child about the sun - that radiant fireball? Hanging lanterns in the sky? The warm sunlight in the sky? From then on, the child keeps asking others, is the sun like a fireball? Is it like a lantern? Is it especially warm? He also made many jokes, such as asking if there is a sun under the stove when burning firewood, or if the sun passes by when the lantern is swaying. If the child learns to think abstractly, he may ask: in a world without light, does the black that envelops everything have its own sun?
But are all these fallacies? Are they disasters that must be avoided? I don't think so. Even words that have no connection can, at the right time, express precise meanings and be understood by people.
In this way, describing blank space with words also has its meaning. At least in the most general context, the things that drive away blank space can also be used to represent the most general enrichment. And my words can at least reflect my spontaneous pursuit of blank space. In this way, the blind child can also chase the sun he cannot see between the words.
But he doesn't necessarily fall into nothingness, because words have their own paths and indications, just like a map. The meaning of a map does not lie in accurately depicting the positions and forms of various places in real time and space according to a certain scale, and the meaning of a position does not lie in indicating the residence of something. What is the basis of so-called reality? Isn't it the thing that is constantly entangled by words?
The sun in a word is like a blank space enveloped by overlapping words - they describe the relationship between the sun and the surrounding things, describe the physics of the sun, the scenery of the sun, and so on. However, a real sun seems to provide no more than that. Can we find a separate sign for "sun" and correspond it to these overlapping words? If it is something other than the sun, how can we be sure that its relationship with the sun is unique and can provide us with indications? If it is the sun itself, then it cannot serve as a "sign" to provide any indications.
In the end, the real sun is just a blank space, a tension that persistently drives the overlapping words around it to the boundaries of facts: like an abyss, constantly attracting descriptive knowledge about it, and constantly excluding it, killing words with a certain truth.
But this kind of true blank space always surpasses any exact occupation, because it is precisely the phenomenon that "nothing can deprive this blank space except itself" that proves the reality of blank space.
What is the ideal? Isn't it a persistent rejection and containment of established reality? What is light? Isn't it a clarification and approach to darkness? But these judgments have a premise, which is that the determined object (equivalent to blank space, ideal, light, etc.) is unreachable. If the determined object itself is doubted, then the tension between it and the object should be discussed separately. Therefore, we need to ask about words themselves, whether such thinking is determined? Regarding the phenomenon of using words, regarding the fact that we are contemplating at this moment, it is at least self-evident (as long as we do not attempt to add additional meanings to it). It is like walking barefoot on the beach, the footprints are always there, waiting to be followed, studied, recorded, and interpreted.
What is a word? Isn't it the path formed by those footprints? "Sun" does not refer to the sun because there is a real sun, but because "sun" itself confirms our efforts to use words to reach the sun. Indeed, it is not real, it is empty, it does not possess even a thousandth of the brightness and warmth of the real sun, but it has its own meaning as itself.
Therefore, I say that this piece of writing may serve as a path to blank space, and become itself.