Void

“‘I have to fast, I can’t do anything else,’ said the fasting showman.
‘What a fellow you are,’ said the overseer, ‘and why can’t you do anything else?’
‘Because,’ said the fasting showman, lifting his head a little and speaking with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the overseer’s ear, so that no syllable might be lost, ‘because I couldn’t find any food I liked. If I had found any, believe me, I should have made no bones about it and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.’
These were his last words…”

Franz Kafka – A Fasting Showman

The fasting showman eats the void – the nothingness. In the Dutch translation ‘the fasting showman’ is called ‘the fasting artist’, but he is not an artist. He has taken the first step to creation – recognizing instead of denying the nothingness – but he does not create anything out of it (or despite of it).