Empty Space

Real estate broker Carl Muhlstein maneuvered his silver BMW convertible through downtown Los Angeles traffic, one hand steering the car and the other pressing a cellphone to his ear. "Come on," he teased. "Insult me with an offer." While some who swim the deep and often lucrative waters of commercial real estate have retreated to the golf course, Muhlstein is among those pushing on -- joking, nudging and networking in hopes of making deals in a time of no deals.

Office landlords can expect to see gradual improvement in tenant demand for space this year, but employers will continue to be cautious about expanding, a real estate brokerage said. The office sector of real estate will be bolstered by the improving economy, which should drive more purchases of buildings by investors, Marcus & Millichap reported. Based on its research, the brokerage expects office-using employers to create about 720,000 jobs in the U.S in 2012, a 30% increase over last year.

The meaning of the word "vacuum" in the Whitewater investigations: the empty space in the heads of senators who look for criminal conspiracies where there are none. DENA SCHULMAN Canoga Park

The Guardians: An Elegy Sarah Manguso Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 128 pp., $20 For more than a year, I've been on a reader's grief patrol. Memoir about a mother dying of cancer? Story of a husband's stroke? Taking care of a declining relative on a remote barren coast? Yes, yes, yes, all those and more. I try to swear them off, but I'm still drawn to these books. They are to me a form of secular reckoning; the faithful have their way of facing the big questions of life and death and sorrow.

Jon & Kate: In some editions of today's Calendar section, due to a production error, there is an empty space where a photograph should be to accompany a story about new episodes of "Jon & Kate Plus Eight" returning to TLC.

Office landlords can expect to see gradual improvement in tenant demand for space this year, but employers will continue to be cautious about expanding, a real estate brokerage said. The office sector of real estate will be bolstered by the improving economy, which should drive more purchases of buildings by investors, Marcus & Millichap reported. Based on its research, the brokerage expects office-using employers to create about 720,000 jobs in the U.S in 2012, a 30% increase over last year.

Re "Hearing for Golf Course Plan Is Today," Oct. 9. I attended the public hearing discussing whether or not to build a golf course in environmentally heavy Big Tujunga Wash. And let me tell you, big business won! There were too many suits and ties at that hearing. Suits and ties fly airplanes, and when they see a large, empty space in Southern California, they get very excited. "Hey, we've got to build something down there." When the plane lands, it's time for the concrete. The Big Tujunga Wash should stay the way it is for the next thousand years, say the state Department of Fish and Game and the Army Corps of Engineers.

With regard to your recent article on the National Endowment for the Arts (Calendar, June 23), I am the author of the one-word poem, misprinted in your article without acknowledgment, that was the focus of the 1969 NEA/Congressional ruckus. For the record, the poem should appear--ideally in the center of an empty space--as follows: lighght Should any of your readers be interested in the extraordinary literary and fiscal history of this work, allow me to refer them to my own article, with an introduction by George Plimpton, in the August 1981 issue of Mother Jones, entitled "The Most Expensive Word in History."

"If there was no empty space," wrote Lucretius, "everything would be one solid mass." In championing the concept of empty space, what the ancients called "the void," Lucretius was going against the grain of mainstream Greco-Roman thinking; most scholars of the ancient Western world agreed with Aristotle that the very idea of nothingness was an abomination.

God is that which nothing is greater than. So, in essence, goes Anselm's famous proof of God's existence. According to the 11th-century saint, the deity was that entity of which nothing more perfect could possibly be conceived. Throughout the Middle Ages, Anselm's argument carried enormous weight, but even in its heyday, this seemingly impregnable logic was the source of much vexation.

An ambitious downtown center created to celebrate the role of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles culture and history opened with great fanfare six months ago, fueled by more than $36 million in public funds and boasting a prominent board of directors. Today the center, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, is staggering. Its chief executive was let go in August, and he's accused of mismanagement. Attendance has been sparse. The private foundation set up to run it hasn't raised much money.

The little boy held tightly to his grandfather's hand as they walked slowly along the city street. "Where are we going, Papa?" he asked, craning his neck to look up at the old man's face. "Ah," the grandfather said, stopping and bending at his waist. "You are so curious about where we are going that you forget to see what's around you. " The old man's eyes twinkled as he winked at his grandson. The boy felt safe and loved when he was with his grandfather. In the old man's eyes, he saw secrets that were so special and wonderful that it made him feel lucky to share them.

The days of lugging around fistfuls of quarters to feed hungry parking meters, or circling the block repeatedly in search of a parking space, could be nearing an end for downtown motorists. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation has begun installing 10,000 high-tech parking meters throughout the city that allow for credit and debit card payment, in addition to coins. And next year, the downtown area will host an experimental program that aims to take much of the hassle out of parking.

Southern California office landlords faced more bad news in the second quarter as occupancy and rents in their buildings fell again. The persistently soft market has created opportunities for tenant businesses to sign some of the cheapest leases available in several years. The pace of deals has picked up a bit, brokers said, but many companies are still carefully husbanding their finances and avoiding long-term rental commitments. Commercial real estate is a lagging indicator of the economy, and the drop in California employment that started in 2007 has helped shrink the amount of space businesses need to house their employees.

A Florida conductor was recovering at home Monday after falling 14 feet into the empty space below a movable orchestra pit on the opening night of an opera he had written. David Ott fell Friday after the premiere of "The Widow's Lantern," an original work written for the Pensacola Opera. Ott said he fractured nine vertebrae, dislocated his shoulder and may have broken an ankle. It happened when the lights were off and he went to retrieve his music, not realizing the Pensacola Orchestra pit had been raised to stage level.

Jon & Kate: In some editions of today's Calendar section, due to a production error, there is an empty space where a photograph should be to accompany a story about new episodes of "Jon & Kate Plus Eight" returning to TLC.

Over the past five years, some physicists have increasingly embraced "string theories" that appear to defy common sense: Among other seeming absurdities, these theories would expand the universe into 11 dimensions and perhaps even dispense with space and time. What, one might ask, has led physicists to brazenly embrace such a bizarre scenario? Revolutions do not come lightly in physical law, and space and time will not go gently into the night.

The little boy held tightly to his grandfather's hand as they walked slowly along the city street. "Where are we going, Papa?" he asked, craning his neck to look up at the old man's face. "Ah," the grandfather said, stopping and bending at his waist. "You are so curious about where we are going that you forget to see what's around you. " The old man's eyes twinkled as he winked at his grandson. The boy felt safe and loved when he was with his grandfather. In the old man's eyes, he saw secrets that were so special and wonderful that it made him feel lucky to share them.

Real estate broker Carl Muhlstein maneuvered his silver BMW convertible through downtown Los Angeles traffic, one hand steering the car and the other pressing a cellphone to his ear. "Come on," he teased. "Insult me with an offer." While some who swim the deep and often lucrative waters of commercial real estate have retreated to the golf course, Muhlstein is among those pushing on -- joking, nudging and networking in hopes of making deals in a time of no deals.

Considered Asia's greatest composer of the 20th century, Toru Takemitsu has become such a revered figure in his native Japan since his death in 1996 that his music is now, like the emperor, above criticism. His are scores of ethereal, ephemeral, exacting beauty able to still the restless heart and salve the disturbed soul. More than that, Takemitsu's music is held up as the embodiment of Ma, an untranslatable Japanese word that stands for the Asian principle of empty space. This is the spiritual equivalent of physical nature abhorring a vacuum, except that in the case of Ma the emptiness can be that of the mind in meditation, which is a preparation for enlightenment.