There is nothing behind anything.

There is nothing behind anything.  Behind memory lies nothing—not a lost world to be regained by time travel or a maze of Proustian text.  Behind the apparently solid world lies only a false or evacuated space, charged with an inaccessible energy, like the dark energy that charges the universe and drives it toward an infinite dilution but cannot be found.

Behind the sign lies nothing—not its meaning, which only exists obliquely, so long as we don’t look for it.  Meaning evaporates to the claims of deconstruction, which leaves us only the trace of a wistful cleverness, like a vanishing smile.