Day 115: “Blank Canvas”
Whenever I stare at a blank sheet of paper, my imagination runs through picture after picture of things I could draw. Unfortunately, when I end up picking one and putting the pencil to paper to draw the city skyline in my head, the lines don’t turn out anything like what I had imagined.
I used to draw and sketch all the time. At the age of 3, I started with running my pencil in circles across the page and declaring that the result was the best tornado even drawn.
As I grew to age 6, I discovered the technique of putting a white sheet of paper over an image of a cheetah — carefully tracing the lines that shown through when I put both pieces of paper against the window.
Creativity was in abundance as I moved from one house to another — just figuring out the maze of trees behind my house before we packed up the boxes and moved to another house amidst a forest.
However, the older I get, I’m realizing that I’m no longer surrounded by the revolving colorful energy of creativity. Living my day to day life, I find myself in front of screens, or people, or words and storefronts. It’s rare today for me to discover a blank canvas — the ones that followed me everywhere whenever I explored the woods behind my house.
The pictures I envision when looking at a blank sheet of paper probably represent the most creative — and emotional — parts of me.
A silhouette of a scrawny, half-starved kid — standing on the roof of an old brick building (the ones with fire escape ladders running down the side) — looking at the skyline of an intimidating and overbearing city, lit up with office building lights.
A carefree college kid — baseball cap pulled over his eyes — arm extended over and behind his head as he lays on top of…..a cloud. The noisy and stressful world far and away, underneath him.
These days, we look at a blank page for a millisecond before we decide that it’s boring — nothing on it. But it’s when we look at that blank page that our minds start creating something interesting — full of life.
If I Seem To Wander 