empty (word dump)

 i. 

there’s a blank page in front of you. all is empty, everything except the blinking of your cursor, fading in and out, in and out. its pulsing feels inescapable, alive, drawing you in. it feels as though something lies within the rhythm it seems to follow. as if it has a heartbeat of its own. as if there is more to this shallow breath it seems to take again and again, as if there is something unseen hidden beneath the surface. as you stare at the white, the emptiness is daunting. you find it hard to believe that all stories were once born from nothingness like this one. except it’s not completely empty; there’s the ever-present life to a page that is still.

ii.

you came here to write something. right? you try to type something—your mind is bursting with ideas, a world that needs to be written onto a page. and yet nothing seems right, nothing fits the way you want it too. you just can’t seem to find the words. every time you try and sprawl the symbols across the page, something’s not right. it isn’t what you’re trying to say. it doesn’t sound the way it’s supposed to. it doesn’t make sense. it just feels… off. but why do these symbols mean anything anyway? they’re just lines and squiggles, and things that may mean the world to you will not mean anything to anyone who doesn’t understand. in a million years, there probably won’t be anyone who will understand. the symbols are meaningless. and yet we make meaning from them anyway. we make meaning from a lot of meaningless things—metaphors and abstract concepts and the worlds we create in our minds, do they really exist? but you didn’t come here to have an existential crisis. when you look back at the page, you sigh and delete the few words you have written, until all is empty, everything except the blinking of your cursor, fading in and out, in and out.

iii.

it’s been so long, and yet there’s still nothing. you’ve tried so many times—the half-hearted attempts at writing the feelings you want to share with the world have not gone any more successfully than the first. each time you try to spill your ideas on the page it only seems to get worse and worse. and the questions seem to fill your mind: what is this all for? why are you doing this? what’s the point of trying? who are you supposed to be? and all the questions send you down into a spiral of thoughts that won’t. stop. coming. and suddenly you have no idea who you are or why you exist or what everything exists for. you try to spill the thoughts on a page, so that you can create some semblance of organization. but like before, it never works. there’s too much to say and not the right words to say it. words can’t describe everything you’re feeling, words can’t describe everything you’re thinking, words will always leave something up to your imagination. and they just can’t seem to capture what you’re trying to say. you delete the words and stare at the blank page, writing only to start all over again.

iv.

you know you shouldn’t backtrack—even if the words are terrible, you know you should just let them be. and yet you can’t just let them be, because when you leave it all the page becomes a mess of words that no longer means anything other than your messy thoughts, the ones you don’t understand and there’s always something wrong and you just have to redo it and do it again until you finally give up and delete it all. except you don’t.

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v.

it is june 21, 2021 and you are tired of forgetting. or not forgetting, exactly. you are tired of leaving scraps half-finished, lying in a folder titled “old wip” because you know you’re not going to work on them anymore. tired of finding pieces like this one, with beginnings but no end. you are tired of having too many ideas and not being able to finish them. you are tired of concepts that fall apart when brought to reality. 

the google doc tells you that the last edit was on september 8, 2020. the last time this document was brought to life, time was closer to the first words you wrote as a poet (and no, we are not counting the 4 “poems” for the verse novel from october of the year before. we are not counting the words that clung to the side of the page just because they didn’t know how to stand on their own). it is closer to the first words you wrote as a writer, even (and no, we are not counting the narrative essays written for school. the stories left half-finished, tied-up with a few short sentences of resolution long before they had even begun because they needed to be turned in for a grade, left to fade after their use was done. pieces written when you wanted to be a writer, before you thought of yourself as one. sometimes there aren’t clear-cut beginnings, so you make one for yourself). sometimes you wonder how it’s only been so long. sometimes you wonder what it was like when you didn’t itch to record emotions so you could translate them into words.

vi.

it’s ironic that this isn’t writer’s block, but rather a romanticized version of it. writer’s block is sitting on the couch all day sunday because the narrative essay is due tomorrow and you’ve been running low on inspiration all week. writer’s block is trying to find new words to say but everything you write is a metaphor you’ve already written before. writer’s block is telling a story and finding out that it’s already been told, by you. it’s about scattered sentences that don’t make any sense. about a concept that is lying in pieces, about trying to assemble the puzzle pieces that someone’s pulled apart but they’ve ripped up the box with the picture on it too and that someone is you. it’s wanting to delete this paragraph because it makes absolutely no sense in the context of this piece. it’s about wanting to delete everything, because no matter what you write, it will not be good enough. it will never be good enough. it’s about not being able to write anything for a month after forcing out every word you can squeeze from inside you. writer’s block is a lot of things, but this piece does not describe it.

vii.

minimalist art is often obsessed with the white canvas. it represents possibility. potential. something that hasn’t happened yet. it could be my canvas, or yours, or someone else’s. it symbolizes everything, and yet nothing at once. it is perfect, untainted. it has no mistakes. it is stripping everything away to its shared core. a white canvas is by every artist. it is by none. it simply is. it is blank, and it is finished, layered over with a coat of white.

yet there is an artist’s name on the plaque. the artist that will sell it for $15 million. and so instead of separating the art from the artist, the art is about the artist. it is not a perfect piece, untainted. it is about who the artist is. how that artist can sell the piece for ludicrous amounts of money when there have been many who had the idea before. it is about a time where people are willing to buy this canvas, instead of simply scoffing at its absurdity. it is flawed because the world is flawed. by being about nothing, it is about everything. there is no true minimalism in a world full of things.

anything can be art if you think hard enough.

viii.

there is a story about a man who carved beautiful fish statues out of jade. it was said that when he looked into the stone, he could see the fish inside, waiting to be freed. and so he would free it.

i do not remember where this story is from. i do not remember how it ends. in my memory, it was told as a chinese myth. in reality, i’d guess it was a story inspired by chinese folktales and michelangelo. perhaps it is both. perhaps it is neither.

when i gaze into the paper i do not know what it wants to be. when i gaze into myself i do not know what i want to make. and yet when i try and force thoughts onto the page, they thrash and slip from my clenched fists back into the water. they dive deep into the blue and swim too far away to reach.

ix.

there is a blank page in front of you. it is empty. it is filled. it is unfinished. it is complete.

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this is a piece written in two parts: i. through iv. were written in september 2020, and v. through ix. in june 2021