Loss and absence tend to be frowned upon in the dominant international culture. The growing sense or drive toward the progressive, the absolutely positive, the excessive (hybris for the Greeks), the unlimited, etc., is imposed as a value and, even more so, as an attitude. Thus, anything that implies restraint, attenuation, purification, withdrawal, among other forms of manifestation of absence, is despised. Something similar occurs with silence, which would also be a manifestation of absence.
I have always admired the idea-image of emptiness in Taoist and Zen philosophy, as well as in traditional Japanese art, whether in painting, architecture, or poetry. In the latter, emptiness, absence, is a particularly important element, which finds its maximum expression in haiku. In modern Western poetry, blank spaces in the poetic space are a manifestation of this.
Being able to distill expression, strip it of the unnecessary, until reaching its essence, is an exercise that fully embodies the spiritual search for beauty that absence implies. Of course, there are other manifestations of absence, but the one I am referring to is the one that interests me the most.
