Starting a new sheet of writing is perhaps the most difficult thing I can think of. The black ink strikes a bold contrast with the white shine of my canvas, so alone and exposed at the height of the page. One by one the words tumble down from my mind through my body to my pen to the paper. Something is lost in the translation; my words take the colour of the various filters they’ve traversed to reach this point, and the message is lost.
Lost in park, see in Canada, the Dragon of my own personal mythos… simple abstract representations of thought put to the closing plateau of mortal confines, of notes lost and washed with the laundry, of sheets intercepted by observant teachers, of letters never ever read by loved ones but written for them. This is the struggle of writing, the danger of it… and its ultimate appeal. Finding the ability within yourself to brave the blank slate and embark on a destructive-cum-creative journey, observing your feelings being beaten into the shape of established language and the pattern of existing convention, consonant and its brethren. Writing is but thought described, and who may lay the claim that thought — which first began as feeling — is understood, or sufficently rational to be explained?
I tire of this conflict, of will versus language, yet am comforted by the sight I see before me: a page approaching equality in terms of black and white, and yet am discouraged… how many words must be wasted in my pursuit of the description of an idea, a feeling, that in my mind that makes such sense? And yet I take comfort in knowing that I am not alone… these words contain me, like so many others, and I surrender myself to lack of meaningful expression and flail about blindly in the white void, seeking definition. I am lost and losing.
i love you Big Brother!