The Empty Canvas

I sit here staring blankly at an empty canvas, an unmarked page, unsure of what to say but so sure I want to say something, say everything, without needing to decide on where to start.  The beginning, yes, the beginning, but what can be said for a story with no definite beginning, one that followed destiny, or fate, as it should fall, one with no trigger, no turning point, no denouement,  just being, itself?  What is this paralyzing hesitation that keeps my fingers chained to each other, my hands to my sides?  Where did this uncertainty arise?  What to add?  What to leave out?

                I hear them laughing already, rolling their eyes, rejecting, rejecting.  The voices laughing are my own.  The eyes rolling are my own.  The story rejected?  Also my own.  It doesn’t start with Once upon a time, doesn’t end with happily ever after, doesn’t end at all.  Why should it be told?  There is no lesson to learn on my account, no moralizing, no preaching, no precedent to set.  Who wouldn’t see my words and wonder why I’d felt them worth saying at all?  I have no story as unique as I.  Or perhaps I do, and that’s what stifles me, staring at my blank sheet, muted.  If everybody’s been there, then who is left to care?

                Who among us wasn’t once a scared child, driven by insecurity, greed, the ever-screaming longing to belong?  And who among us hasn’t spent hours and days and months and years plagued by thoughts that nothing would be good enough, that we simply were not good enough, and struggled with that beast, and sometimes won, and sometimes lost?  And who among us hasn’t missed that opportunity that could have turned the tables, could have changed it all?  And who among us hasn’t said the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person?  Who among us hasn’t loved, hasn’t lost, hasn’t loved unrequitedly, hasn’t unwittingly broken a heart or two?  Who among us hasn’t cried into a pillow, wishing for sleep, wishing for that one thing that could heal our wounds?  Is there a person who has truly never laughed?  The story has been told, has been played out in ourselves time after time after time after time, and will continue thus long after us.  What can I possibly say?

                Where is the air?  It was here just a minute ago, fresh and abundant, and now I can’t seem to find it.  The room grows small, breath grows short.  I need… I need… I don’t know what I need.  A cup of tea, a nap, a walk outside, some solitude, some silence.  Solitude is as often an enemy as it is a friend.  Silence can scream louder than human voices, louder than sirens.  Sleep, a welcome friend, grows increasingly elusive, and when it comes it serves only to distract.  It will never readily agree with me, carry a message for me, a message yet to be painted on this still-blank canvas.  It knows only some odd form of stillness, but cannot still the mind. 

                In the vacuum images and stories swirl and swirl toward the void, and I can’t help but wonder what is to be found on the other side.  To follow into the void is an exercise in futility.  To reverse the pull is to stick fingers down the throat of the mind’s eye, regurgitate each image, some too sacred for words, some too banal to matter.  Such is my plight, at times, it seems…

It's hardly even worth the time it took me to write this!

I could say "Enough with this 'God is a bad idea' garbage," but I somehow think the vehement Dawkins-philiacs (I won't call them atheists, in order to preserve the dignity and good name of atheists everywhere who have not succumbed to this slop) won't be hushed by a "now, now, that's enough of that."  Given the time, energy, and interest, I could engage these crusaders easily enough - most of their arguments have little or not relation to historical fact, and most of their temperament is based entirely on emotion and opinion.  However, I have absolutely no desire to engage with pseudo-intellectual children in a playground full of broken glass. 
God is not a bad idea.  It's the people behind the ideas and the actions those people perform that are bad.  Ideas themselves aren't even real in any relevant sense... They, themselves, can't hurt anybody.
I'll attribute to mere ignorance what people may not know about what motivates people to act - usually politics and economics.  My only request is that if you actually truly believe that it's the idea of God which is the source of our world's problems, then please open a history book, and kindly stay out of my headspace.