The trick with gazing into the void is to pick the right void in the first place.
I wouldn’t advise the night sky, for instance. There’s too many stars pulsing up there, lighthouses trying to catch your eye, trying to save you from your foolishness. Even if you could peer past their spidersilk weaving, the void is so very big and deep, wrapped all the way around the world and stretching out far beyond the moon, that it would take an awfully long time to notice you. You might not live long enough.
That one lake is tempting, I know. The waves froth and foam up among the rocks over and over again, a neverending story written and erased in the same ongoing moment. And when you look deep enough down there is no bottom, only spiraling blue drawing you down and down into a soothing embrace.
Or you could set two mirrors opposite each other. Do it somewhere full of sunshine, somewhere open and airy and clean. If you have the patience and the perseverance, if you are careful not to trace the maze with your eyes and fall into its silver corridors, you can gaze into it long enough. Something gauzy will stir, long streamers of breeze all turning together at the same moment like a flock of sparrows, and eyes the color of budding aspen leaves will open.
Don’t look into his eyes again. It would not take you long – that is a small and seething void, ripe for birth – but nothing you could ever wish for will gaze back at you out of them.
Some people prefer the Internet now. Recent statistical studies suggest that results are widely varying, running the gamut from the perfect, sparking coded eyes opening slowly all the way over to The Wrong Thing Completely drifting up from some deep ugly crevice… and sometimes you attract attention that is human, and entirely unwanted. It’s not really worth it to look too long here, you know.
Oh, myself? My favorites are the small, cozy emptinesses. The exact center of a cup of black coffee. The far left corner under the bed that consumes anything and everything pushed within reach. The odd-shaped hole in a stranger’s heart, waiting to be filled by a new friend – or by a carnivorous plant – or by an early morning misted with fog and dripping liquid sunshine. Gaze long enough into the abyss, and it will look back.