You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Staring at the interminable void and putting down thoughts.
The white space on my computer screen is alluring and intimidating.
It calls to me like a child predator with a candy apple.
I am afraid, still I shuffle closer.
“hello little boy. Would you like to write a story?”
The allure of something greater, something mystical and timeless beckons.
Over the hushed hum of my lap top’s fan, I hear a whisper.
“Type your words. Think your thoughts. Create in the vacuum of time and space, if you dare.”
The candy apple denizen is a pusher, calling to me, daring me to begin.
I stare at the white square and the quietly blinking cursor and I gulp.
The screen before me bare.
It is empty like an arctic ice flow. The white is blinding, powerful, hypnotizing.
The white penetrates my eyes, like the 1st morning light pouring through the window, interrupting a beautiful dream.
The white is without feeling, or compassion, or meaning.
It is hollow and endless and staring at me.
“Write your thoughts. Think your things. I dare you.”
The whisper grows louder as my fingers hover over the keyboard, thoughts swirling around the drain in my skull.
Where to begin on a screen so empty, so cold. I stare at the flat white nothingness taunting me to excel.
In many ways I am staring into Dick Cheney’s heart as I ponder what keys to type and what words to lay down.
It is hooked up to an EKG and the emergency room doctor screams “Clear!”
Suddenly there is a jolt of electricity and the amalgamation of synaptic induction and creative energy surge to life
I close my eyes and release the spigot of my brain.
I feel a release of pressure, of energy, of previously lobotomized lunacy.
It churns, pushing down the drain pipe, forcing the air out of the chamber, in belches of exhaust.
I sense my fingers tingling and they begin to move.
Peck. Peck. Peck.
The rhythm of writing begins and the white arctic field begins to calm, to be tamed.
What was an interminable void is suddenly a canvas where a masterpiece has the potential to be born.
What am I thinking about? What is crazy today?
I am quietly content, but I let the synaptic discharge filter onto the canvas.
The candy apple pusher is now a memory. The white is soothing and comfortable, a place for building something great.
I begin to type.
The key pad pushes back on my fingers like a tiny percussion instrument set to a conga beat.
The page is being filled with words. Line after line. Black on white. White absorbing the black. It is defining, precise, lyrical, almost spiritual.
As I type, as I breathe and exhale my thoughts, the nebulous, infinite space absorbs the stain, the ideas.
I like the way the black words project against the white screen.
Like a sea-gull floating against a setting sun, the words linger, effortlessly, gracefully on a zephyr of creative thought.
The words blast against the white like a drive by shooting.
Blam. Blam. Blam.
It’s like an ink blot test in a psychiatrist’s office.
“What do you see?”
“I see a wicked step mother and a butter fly soaring too close to the sun,” I snicker.
I don’t even know what that means.
The psychiatrist offers to discount my session because he feels there is no hope.
From the void of white cyber space and infinite possibilities I hear a chuckle.
It’s the men with the butter fly nets trying to squeeze into the periphery of the frame.
They sense my crazy demeanor and untethered reality leaking into the page, into the arctic void.
They would lock me up, but this is the arena where irrational amusement is expected.
I have an E ticket to ride as long as I like.
The words, like tiny bullets, like tiny birds soaring above a golden aura, unlock the nuances of another unsettled mind.
What was a white jail cell with no exits, no escape, suddenly is a class four rapids.
I am plunging over the rocks, cool river water blasting my face, holding my senses hostage.
It is fantastic, an exhilarating ride.
From a dead-end of white emerges a creative spring-board into forever.
Writing is a labor of love, a passion, a jones that a junkie must fix.
A woman asked me recently what is your favorite quote from a book or a movie.
I had to stop and think for a moment.
There are so many great sentences, quotes, things that have been written.
I am an anomaly. I write, but I don’t regularly read.
I’ve read the classics. Farenheit 451 and The Sun also Rises and the angst of Holden Caufield.
I’ve read Stephen King. Some of the best writers dance for Sports Illustrated.
But by and large, if I could be reading, I’d rather be writing.
And so I write.
It’s a lousy excuse. Writers should read to inhale the thoughts of other writers.
But I have never needed to know what the other writers are writing. In some ways, I don’t care. My thoughts are my blanket, my nourishment, the vitamins that give me life.
My head is too filled with a whirlwind of color and multi syllabic cacophony to let other writers’ stink infiltrate the quagmire of my thoughts.
So I have tamed another blank screen of frosty indifference.
I have stained another white ink blot of insanity and made Dr. Seuss and Sigmund Freud both gulp hard
That’s the beauty of the interminable white void.
It doesn’t care about you. It slaps you in the face if you are afraid to engage. It strokes you like a lover if you hit the right keys in the right sequence.
It’s a Conga of interminable thought.
Life’s Crazy™