And This Empty Page Won't Leave Me Alone

In Spanish, the word is blanco. In French, the word is just blanc. In Greek, they pronounce it aspro, like ass pro, but they spell it άσπρο. I wouldn’t have thought that about the last one, but what’s weirding me out is that I can sit here, fingers ready, vibrating, and empty of the letters needed to make the page unblanco, unblanc, unaspro, and with words in English that will make sense, but all I can come up with is a page where all of those words punch me in my face because they are blanco, blanc, aspro, and very white since the page is devoid of words. The punch in the face is one that acutely reminds me the blanco, blanc, aspro, white page is sneering in its snobby little purity.

I’m blanco, blanc, aspro, white, and you, sir, shan’t take my virginity. Oh you can dream of that first letter, just like me baby. That first word, mmmm…Oh, baby, I’m ready, but you aren’t man enough. You can’t do it, can you? That’s right, I’m burning baby, and you don’t have any verbal Viagra bitch. I own you, and you can’t touch me.

I slammed the desk chair across the office I stood up so suddenly. I had to get outside. I needed “my chair.” I had to think.

The trouble was, however, I have been spending too much time in “my chair” and not getting any writing done. The page has been intimidating lately. I‘ve had to get up and go outside and sit. I watch the traffic and try to find a hook that will make the little pads of my little fingers tap on the little keys so I can make a little money.

So, I smoked a doob and went back to what I really wanted to be doing, which was work, but it had to be work I could make something from.

You know, something printable.

Today it just pissed me off, and this time I stormed away, stomping, rather than invoking my tail between my legs, hunched over, what the hell walk. I mean that in both senses of the phrase. I was giving up and had no idea why the hell I couldn’t come up with something.

The band Blues Traveler did a song called “The Hook, and in it, they described how the hook brings you back and how you can always rely on that. But he says something else about how he can use the right inflection, and it will just make you understand, you know.

I get that.

But he has a voice, and you can hear that inflection, that sweetness of sound carrying his feelings. He can sing some nonsense with the right inflection, and you’ll get it ninety-nine out of a hundred times. You’ll know it right away.

They made a whole show from people being able to name a song in three notes, or whatever they wanted to gamble the house on. I remember it as Name That Tune. Jimmy Buffett even used the phrase on one of his albums.

But you CAN do that with a song. Or, of course, in conversation as well, but music does a much better job. I grew up surfing, and it’s always been a joke that surfers have their own language, using the one word, dude. You can go doood, or just dude, or oh doo..ooo…oood, and they all mean different things because the inflection is there, and it’s even dependent on the subject, and the best part is it can be any subject. Ocean-oriented phonetics, if you will. Language is all about inflection in verbal communication, but on paper, not so much.

Nope, it’s all about me putting me on paper right here, right now, and you being able to decipher my feelings, and hopefully my feelings can be transmitted via paper, and you feel them too. I have to make you taste the champagne, smell the meal cooking, feel the pain of watching a child fall, and it has to be explicit enough to make you smile, or make you cry, or scream at the top of your lungs if that’s how I felt when I wrote it. If I can make you feel the gut-wrenching feeling of feeling a loved one’s pain, or the soaring feeling of the air on your face as you sail on a sunny warm day, or or if I can explain to you how grandma’s house was cinnamonny, but there was something else too, maybe allspice, but it was all Nana. And if I can evoke the things that make you feel that memory, smell that memory, as something she said rings true in your life and she touches you again, that’s the thing, or maybe it was play.

That’s why the white page is starting to piss me off.

There it is, glaring, with its pure, rectangular white face, staring at me, sneering, and gloating. Oh, but I am so gonna print all over you. Oh, the tattoos coming to blank page world. There’s gonna be soooo many letters. It’s gonna happen. Soon, too, you just wait. I hope you’re getting ready, and you'd better warn the other pages too. I’m coming after them as well. I don’t know how many yet, but, but it’s gonna be sooo many. I mean it. Look out Colonel George Whitepage Custer, this American writer is coming hard, and I got quivers of words like the world has never seen.

Dammit, you win. Why do you gaze at me like that? I mean, it’s almost like a leer, like you’d see on some nun with a ruler. And you make me feel just as guilty, for Christ’s sakes. You put me in full mea culpa mode, and I’m a damn Buddhist. Where’s an altar when you need one?

And people ask me why I drink.

There are eight million stories in the naked city. Nope, I think that was taken. How about it was the best of…crap something. Nope, I can think of nothing on saving kids in a field, and you’d think that would make a good story. I keep coming up empty without the right stuff here. I need a blockbuster.

Let’s keep going.

Oh, it’s coming fast and furious now.

Well, maybe not. I mean, I should give up writing and, you know that since I live right by the airport, I hear them taking off all the time. It occurs to me often that if that plane leaves the ground and I’m not on I’ll regret it. Maybe it won’t be today, but someday, I bet. And it would be for the rest of my life, but then I think, I can make a go of this gig, no matter how many times I get knocked down. I’ll get back up again, you know. Yeah, page, how ya like them apples? Bring it page, I’ll be your huckleberry.

There was an author named James M. Cain, who was an author I had heard about back then. I looked him up and actually found a phone number for him, but every time I called him, the phone would ring only twice. I always found that odd because there wasn’t even caller ID back then, and so forth, you know.

I have never understood why authors that have made it are so reticent about helping us on this highway to hell, you know. I mean, when I was growing up, you smiled on your brother, and you loved one another, but now, you can get shot running through the park and not just by the cops mistaking you for someone else.

When I was in the military, it was so easy. You know, the stories would come easily. I was young and living all over the world, and I had been told over and over it don’t come easy, but as I sat in those watchtowers, listening to the wind cry, I couldn’t write fast enough. Of course, that made my commanders upset that I wasn’t paying attention. It always made me feel like those days I got caught smokin’ in the boys' room.

Man, I gotta tell ya, if I could even get one page out tonight, I’d feel like that ant that knocked over the rubber tree plant. I do have high hopes.

Sometimes, I just feel these blank pages are like the mean streets, but mentally, you know, but they’re the only streets I know. I want to quit sometimes, but when I wake, even if I have to walk the five hundred mental miles, I know that’s what I’m still gonna be, a hopeless romantic and writer.

I wrote Charles Bukowski a letter one time and asked him what the key to success was, and he wrote me back and said he could tell me, but then he would have to kill me, and still might for asking such a stupid question. I thought that was kinda rude, so rude in fact I had to hit my bar over in China Grove for some doobage. I scored, headed for LaGrange expecting some action, but I was mistaken. You never know about these things. C'est la vie.

You know, even if you score a hit, everybody’s a critic. There’s so many people with verbal slings and arrows, and it can get you down. Usually, I have a Coke and feel better for a little while, but then I get really sad I can’t buy everyone a Coke, and I’m bummed again. Maybe it’s just the sugar high, which explains why a Diet Dr Pepper leaves me walkin’ on sunshine.

In fact, I think that’s exactly what I’m gonna do now. I’m gonna go have a Diet Dr. Pepper on the front porch, because, right now, you know, I just don’t have the words, except maybe just “de do do do, de da da da.” I heard it worked before.

Virgin be damned.