Talking Ink

1.
Have you ever had a rock in your shoe? If you’ve ever had to write something you know what I’m talking about.  The blank page.  Like that rock in your shoe, you know what you have to do to kill the awkward rubbing against your sole/soul.  Blank page/pebble scratching like sandpaper on the back of your neck, all you have to do is dip your pen into your thoughts and spill them out upon the page.  Take off your shoe.  Turn it upside down and shake it.  You who stares with a curable despair at the blank page on the table, stop staring.  Close your eyes.  Take out your brain.  Now shake it over the blank page until…

2.
Falling like gently tickling fingerblips, raindrops sometimes sound like tapping fingertips.  Storm clouds hanging outside the dust smudged window, there are some days that you wake up to find that the sun is playing hide and seek behind clouds that the TV says will be around all day.  Grey clouds on grey days never play fair.  Grey of this kind of color will pool inside your dream machine.  Lift your brain and hold it in front of you.  If you stare close enough you can see some of the grey ink leaking out here and there.  Scientists say we can’t fully understand the nature of the human brain and how it works.  Blank page.  Negligence is no excuse.  Turn your ear over the page and slap the other side of your head until…

3.
Caressing with the whispery touch of how you imagine fairy feet might feel, the floating petals of summer’s flowers tickle your neck and brush against your cheeks.  Pale gold falls out of the sky.  You know the game.  Soon I will eat that gold, drink that gold, breathe that gold.  If I live long enough I will be that gold.  Our science books in eighth grade told the tale.  So does a summer day.  Whispering winds and their wonderful wiles full of eatable, drinkable, breathable gold brush across the tops of the grass, gently nudging the sleeping fireflies.  After you’ve finished your tall, sweating glass of ice tea I ask you to take your brain out again.  See how the sunlight plays shadows upon the sodden ridges.  If you look close enough you can see some of the golden ink dripping to splatter gently on your lap.

4.
Floating cold as cloud born feathers, snowflakes adhere to autumn earth tones lost.  The white light of a falling and fallen skin waiting with immutable patience, impermeable silence and a wantonness bred of the coming pare.  This wanting is bereft of shading, it’s curiosity and adroit aplomb make of the world an old abandoned house.  Odd white drapes hang gently over the trees as they wait to be uncovered by the owner of the house.  Blankets lie across the ground, fields of winter white.  Take your asbestos hands and dip your brain into the sink.  Fill it with the water as warm as can be, and set your brain out in the middle of the yard.  Come the morrow you will find, icy thoughts within your mind.  But to reach them.  How to spread across the new fallen skin?  You must venture out onto the white blank yard, white with the vacuum of marked meandering found at the tip of a pen.  The soles of your choice will leave a distinct impression on your way to uncover your brain.  When you pull it free from the snow, watch carefully, stare purposefully until you can see white ink leaking out and floating gently to the ground.  Place your brain back within your skull and shake your head from side to side until…

5.
Something falls out.

6.
That’s the cure for the blank page.

7.
It’s strange to think about unless you’re actually there.  The page, though bereft of markings, is not what is truly blank.  When you sit there filled with dread, overcome with apprehension, robbed by anxiety, it’s your mind that is blank.

When your pen runs out of ink, you can simply fetch another.  When your mind runs out of ink, then the page will stay blank.  When your pencil dulls, sharpen another.  When your keyboard breaks, buy another.  When your tape recorder runs out of batteries, replace them.  But when your brain is out of ink, dull, broken and powerless, you must understand the nature of creativity, the innocent child of curiosity and imagination.  Creativity is a creature of habit and does not live upon the pearlescent anonymity of a blank page, or blank mind.  It lives amongst the falling snow, the floating rainclouds and the wriggling sunshine.  Creativity, the magical child, resides in a humble abode.  Made by musings of daydreamers, the child sleeps and eats in the house known as “Inspiration.”

8.
If you are so afraid of a blank page, put something on it.  Doodle, draw, write a simple verse until you’ve found what you want to say.  Then spill your thoughts out through whichever medium you’ve chosen to achieve your self expression.