The Book of Form and Emptiness

Annabelle waits in the alley for Benny to come home. She decides to search for him herself and begins walking down the alley. Mackson and Alice, on their way to the peer support group, are also in the alley. Annabelle recognizes Mackson as Benny’s roommate in Pedipsy and Alice as the girl that gave her the rubber duck. They, in turn, realize that Annabelle is Benny’s mother. Mackson and Alice walk her back home, whereupon she asks them to tell Benny to return home if they see him.

After Annabelle goes into the house, Alice looks more closely at the piles of garbage bags and clutter in the house and yard, becoming uneasy that Annabelle’s hoarding issues must be connected to Benny’s unhappiness.

Benny wakes up in the staff room; Slavoj is still there, writing and eating a sandwich. He offers Benny vodka as Benny describes the fight he had with Annabelle. Slavoj begins explaining an epic poem, titled “Earth,” that is a conduit for the voices he hears that describe the world’s problems to him. Slavoj says that “Poetry is a problem of form and emptiness” (276), in that each word Slavoj adds to his poem requires more. Slavoj advises Benny to write all that he hears to give form to the voices of things so others may understand them.

Taking Slavoj’s advice, Benny concentrates on the voices in his vicinity. The table leg resonates most strongly with him; he begins writing a story about the table leg that describes a baby being tied to it. Benny is not transcribing the voice of the table exactly, but rather acting as a conduit for what he perceives the voice to be conveying emotionally and energetically.

Benny explains that writing the story about the table leg was a matter of perceiving the leg’s “feeling-voice” and attempting to convey this using human words: “It’s more like trying to write down the kinds of feelings you feel with your body and then remember later on” (281). Benny links his perception of voices to that of phantom limb syndrome, believing that he must experience a phantom “object” phenomenon. When Benny tells this to Slavoj, Slavoj prompts him to think of other stories. Benny immediately thinks of Kenji as a “phantom father,” and Slavoj encourages him to explore his relationship with Kenji in his next story.

The Book claims that a story, before it exists, is pure experience. When a story is written, it contains everything of that experience so that others may perceive it: “Books will always have the last word, even if nobody is around to read them” (284).

Benny goes to the Bindery to get paper to write his story. Slavoj warns him against spending too much time at the Bindery as the energy there can be overwhelming for an individual who hears the voices of things. Still, Slavoj insists that Benny must go into the Bindery alone. If Benny is to write his own story, he must collect his own paper.

Benny enters the Bindery. He looks carefully at the binding materials and paper cutters, beginning to hear the voice of the Book itself. The voices become so overwhelming that it corporealizes in the air around him; Benny panics and accidentally cuts himself on the paper cutter. He faints from the blood loss before he can make it to the exit.

Benny asks the Book if it was in the Bindery but doesn’t truly need an answer. He says, “I just knew you were mine” (291) based on instinct and the familiar emotions he associates with the Book.

The Book expresses his delight at Benny’s statement “I just knew you were mine. These are words every book wants to hear” (292). The Book considers the relationship between an author and a Book as interdependent.

Annabelle waits in the kitchen for Benny to come home. She talks to the fridge magnets in a desperate plea for Kenji’s help. Doing so motivates her to call the police station again and argue that, because Benny has a mental health diagnosis, the police should file a report even though it hasn’t been 24 hours. She persuades them, then searches for a photo of Benny to send to them. She unlocks Benny’s phone and goes through his messages, finding his texts to Alice, who is called the Aleph in his contact.

Annabelle searches the term “the Aleph” and finds a Jorge Luis Borges short story, which features an Aleph, or a point in space that contains all points, and a poet working on a project called The Earth.

Alice and Mackson return from their meeting to find Benny bleeding from a severe cut on his hand. Alice tries to stitch his wound while admonishing him for entering the Bindery. Benny describes how he saw voices corporealizing into words but becomes distracted by the closeness that Mackson and Alice display. Alice’s phone rings.

Annabelle uses Benny’s phone to call Alice and ask whether Benny is all right. Alice passes the phone to Benny, who tells Annabelle that he is spending time with friends then hangs up on her. Overcome with frustration and feelings of inadequacy, Annabelle nearly flushes Kenji’s ashes down the toilet. Her grief and sense of failure compel her to accuse Kenji of abandoning her. Ultimately, though, she doesn’t flush his ashes down the toilet and instead turns to Tidy Magic for comfort. She considers emailing Aikon because she needs someone to talk to but gets lost in tidying up the house instead.

The Book relates Tidy Magic’s second chapter. In it, Aikon describes how her first days at the temple were full of tidying up, cleaning, and fixing up the building. The elderly monk needed a handyman, and Aikon cares for both the temple and the monk as he grows frailer from illness. Aikon reflects on how cleaning brought her closer to her new spirituality. She proposes writing a book on tidying up to bring more money into the temple.

Alice and Mackson walk Benny home. At the backdoor, Benny waves goodbye to them, feeling jealous at the suspicion that Alice and Mackson are a couple. Annabelle has already gone to sleep. Benny finds Kenji’s ashes and talks to them about the fight he had with Annabelle. He tells Kenji about the story he wrote and the one he plans to write about Kenji himself.

Annabelle finds Benny asleep the next morning. She takes him to the hospital to get his hand stitched properly and be treated for a concussion. Annabelle calls Dr. Melanie to set up an emergency appointment, then leaves a message with Benny’s high school principal explaining that Benny won’t be in school that day. The principal tells Annabelle that Benny hasn’t been in school for over a month and that they were under the assumption that Benny was in Pedipsy.