  To turn a dead-end into a clearing one has to see it differently. Notice how Heidegger looks at Van Gogh’s still-life painting of a seemingly ordinary pair of well-worn shoes. The pivotal point in Heidegger’s meditation takes place when he attends to the fact that “[t]here is nothing surrounding this pair of farmer’s shoes” (PLT 33/GA5  18–9).[54] Although all the English translations obscure this (and no other interpreters seem to notice it), it is clear that for Heidegger this nothing is not nothing at all. Heidegger literally says: