Amor Vacuii

This last week I took a test, a test in my least favorite subject of all. Art history. It was a source of amazement to me how the study of something so beautiful could make it, to me, so downright boring as to make my weary body decide that it's needs, mainly that of sleep, were of much more importance than my brain's needs to fully process the information that would soon appear on tests to be. There was a constant struggle in that class to remain awake, and I'm afraid to say that often the body won out that debate. I became cleverer as time went on, though, and soon found interesting ways of keeping myself alert, if not particularly attentive, during that torturous hour and forty five minutes. I resorted to poem writing, bodily experiments involving fingers and dancing, and the most expensive of all binge snacking. All of these efforts were valiantly made, though I have to admit for the most part they were ineffective at helping me achieve higher than a c+ on my exams.

That being said, I was able to retain consciousness long enough during one lecture to learn something about those in the early medieval times. Not only were they medi-evil, (it's like being mostly dead), but they had an absolute abhorrence to empty spaces. They would decorate everything and anything as much as they could, not leaving a single spot without some embellishment. Their walls become more and more cluttered, they're architecture absolutely befuddled with embellishment, and their paintings positively filled with frills and fluffs. All of this only confused my poor weary mind, and led to the welcome oblivion of unconsciousness.

But that "Horror Vacuii" as pronounced by the professor has stuck with me. I don't think we're really all that much different now. We find different mediums through which we express our absolute terror of all empty spaces, of all vacuums. We cannot stand it. I will show you why.

I love my car. There are few worldly things that I enjoy as much as the rumbling of my cars engine as it chokes into life each morning and several times after that, or the way it rattles my hand as I wait at a traffic light. (I'm told that the rattling is a sign of something terribly wrong, but I get a sort of sick satisfaction out of it) I love my car, except it's radio. Some mad man, terribly afraid that someone in the car would one day have to live in, dear me, silence as he drove down the road made sure that the radio will never turn off. Quite literally, the radio will never turn off, only go so quiet that you cannot hear it. I understand that my car in this aspect is freakish indeed, but I think it reflects a popular attitude. That silence, a vacuum of noise, is not to be tolerated. We must never have silence, and shun it at all costs. Can you remember the last time you took a car ride and listened to just the sounds of the car? It might just deafen us if we listened. Or, while at home, how often is there music in the background, and how often not? At my work, it's amazing if we don't have two sources of sound constantly blaring. True, one of them happens to be myself, but the point is that some sort of electronic equipment is constantly going, without a break.

This extends as well to when we walk, sit, anything. If there is no source of noise, we find one. Friends who don't talk to each other talk on the cell phone, or put one noise creator into their ears, so as to not have to suffer through the silence. I-pods, cells phones, ancient Walkman, radios, cameras that record sound bytes, all seeking to fill the vacuum.

I discover more about myself in that vacuum than at any other time. Can you breathe in silence? When all the noise is hushed, and the serenity of silence surrounds you, are you comfortable? Sometimes I am not. Those are the times I find a good book to read, I write on the Internet, or worse still, I make noise so I don't have to deal with the void.