Along with my daily creative practice, I now think of Sunday writing. Midweek as I start thinking about Sunday writing, my mind gradually starts to go blank. Similar to painting a wall from top to bottom, each thought becomes a paint stroke of white paint over my mind. If I give in, it becomes a silent but not less agonizing thought.
Sitting in front of the device, the pulsating cursor screams at me demanding a word, a sentence, a paragraph… anything? It is akin to the leaking faucet with its predictable water drop making the sound. You know the sound. The one that tells you the faucet is leaking? But you put it aside and entertain tolerating it because the moment you start fixing it, who knows what would happen? The other side of the leak brings with it a plethora of options of possibly catastrophic repercussions that you are not prepared to handle. In other words, it brings the looming thought of larger problems.
The cursor however, pulsating rhythmically represents a promise. The promise of a poem, a prose, a story, and essay, and something you can edit and rework. Still, the first word or the first letter painfully struggles to become a visible thought and each attempt becomes a mockery of what you imagined.
Recently, I met William, who traveled from Scotland to be part of the vendors at the American Society of Botanical Artists annual conference this last October. He makes and sells high quality paper for fine-art and handmade sketchbooks. I held one in my hands and was in awe. When I commented that I would not be able to even make a line on that paper for fear of ruining it, he said “start in the middle and work your way out. That way if you ruin that page, it is in the middle.”
On the monitor however, there is no center fold. The screen shines back at you waiting while the cursor pulsates. No sound, which makes it worse. The cursor hypnotizes and continues—as if by magic, to paint the mind white. Hence, the white monitor becomes a metaphor of a mind painted white.
The mind is reliably treacherous. The moment I get up, a flood of ideas will overwhelm me. Then, the regret of not writing about this or about that becomes a little monster I need to ignore. At least until next week.
Much love,
Alma