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Page 55

All blanks have been left blank
intentionally. Of course they have.
We think of blankness as their native state
(and ours? Naked we come into the world.
Nothing-at-all, we precede the world
and dream it, so that our dreamed-up selves
may come into it), but books and tablets
and reams full of blank pages are blank
for our use. Or should be. To make
a blank page blank, it may be necessary
to look at it -- and do nothing but look
at it -- for hours. The writer cannot write
because his blank page is not blank;

it is crowded. There isn't room on it
for anything more. Each day
would be new if we were not crammed full
of bad lost days. (Odd how hard it is
to lose what has been lost. How do you kill
a ghost?) We may once have been blank,
but if ever again we are to be, for a moment,
blank (not obscured, fogged over, blurred; simply
alert emptiness), we must achieve it
intentionally.

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