NcfN

NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING
Because Nothing was ever what was there before
And what was there before ever ends up as Nothing
We shall trouble you no more
Truths can only be said once
Otherwise they are taken for granted
And Truths that come from Nothing have haunted
The rest of us forever until we also came to Nothing

These words were written on the side of the stable that Owen had owned, and Owen’s son peered further beyond the stable towards the broken down house where he had not yet dared enter, something he had recently inherited and where he had spent his boyhood but never returned till now after a lifetime of marriage and his own children and state business abroad. He turned back and frowned. He could not recognise the handwriting, if such words created with paintstrokes could actually be called handwriting. A very narrow brush however had evidently been used. As a widower, Owen’s son had once painted a coffin for his wife with a similar fine brush. It was the least he could do, in the circumstances. His children, meanwhile, had never forgiven him for the circumstances of her death, and a teardrop came to Owen’s son’s eye as he thought of them. Basil, the only one of Owen’s son’s grown-up children to travel to England with him, despite previous estrangement, had already entered the broken down house where Owen, Basil’s grandfather whom Basil had never known, spent a lifetime since Owen’s wife had died in giving birth to Basil’s father who had just surveyed the words on the stable. Basil’s father now gazed across the fields towards the forest. There were not many real forests in England. But this forest seemed to stretch forever. And there was not even any sign of Basil returning to fulfil some sort of stability for the father with whom he had just been reunited.

All these words above, in turn, were written on the flyleaf of an old Bible. Owen’s Bible. The one he used every day to fill the available free space in it with words using an old-fashioned fountain pen with a fine narrow nib. The sheets of blank writing paper in Owen’s room had run out before the ink. So this was the obvious place to use for the words that were left over. They owed Owen that at least, whatever life’s instability.

In the Beginning was the Word. But every page was blank. Even the freehold God was born instable.