Sounds like a disease

If I get stuck behind another guy on the bus who has to make the clever observation to the person on the other end of the line that the name KY Market sounds a lot like KY jelly, I'm going to scream.

No, I'm going to wait until he expands the clever observation into a joke about how it's a lube market. Then I'll scream.

Nope, wrong again. I'm going to wait until he chuckles and says that it's a faux pas, and pronounces it fawx pox.

Fawks pox. Sounds like a disease. I'm going to let it grate upon my nerves and then I'll scream.

Or maybe I'll just get off the bus.

I feel so drained these days. I've opened my sketchbook several times over the past week only to stare at it, willing the pages to somehow become less blank. Pen and ink, pastel, carbon. I don't care, but nothing comes.

I've heard that some artists and writers are afraid of blank pages, that they have one purpose and that is to be filled. Without the injection of meaning, blank pages represent failure. I tend to see it the other way. Think of all the meaningless drivel there is out there, wasting paper and space. Think of all the times when people have aimed at something brilliant and then failed, all the times when an inoportune brush stroke has marred something I was doing completely beyond repair.

In the past month I've been working on some drawings for people for Christmas presents and I started rushing myself, working a little too fast until all of a sudden I make a mistake that I can't possibly undo.

There's none of that with blank sheets of paper, just potential.



















Lots of potential.

Almost gives me hope.