Blank has a vast openness that bestows tremendous freedom to the drifting mind. There is no structure, no binding, only a promise of free flow and an open sky.
Unpredictability is delicious and I love the smell of that prospect as I abandon the structured thought neighbourhood and move in the vicinity of blankness! It is like a quantum field that offers infinite possibilities and time is rendered immaterial. There is an irresistible lure of this promise of effortlessness in the future when I float upon blank.
I offer myself in surrender to this strange form of intuitively informed writing where the next word is not planned but awaited. The incoming phrase bypasses my conscious mind and simply informs the fingers and the page. Such writing has neither a deliberate motive nor a specific target audience. It simply pours out of the inner-self with a pure desire to communicate, connect and share.
For several months it has developed itself in my journals and now wishes to reach out to a larger audience. It has worked through me like breath-work, while I remained under the false impression that I was practising something novel. I simply step away and allow this garrulous yet intimate dialogue with the reader transpire.
As soon as a judging, conscious thought about its fate, future and purpose pops up in my head, the writing begins to feel disoriented and lost, like a deer caught in the blinding headlights. It too, wants to run back into the safety of the jungle of the soul, where it can camouflage as mere energy vibration again. It is nimble, delicate, ephemeral and fleeting. I must be extremely gentle and careful, else the connection to it might snap.
I admit, I often confront this writing with perplexing questions that paralyse me. “What practical purpose do you serve? Are you informative and of any use to anyone?” As soon as I confront with human questions, it retreats and when it does, I am unable to write a word. And, it is better to write than to stare at the blinking cursor. Complete and unconditional surrender is, ironically, my only option.
I allow the flow to resume its uninhibited expression and offer complete obedience. I have a confession to make though. What actually pours out on paper in ink is more intimate and bolder than what graces the document via the cursor’s calling. There seems to be an invisible censor that defines the extent of revelation too. I have no intention of combating the two, the writing tide or the censor that controls the ebb and flow.
It has a memory and a mind of its own. It observes the universe and its immediate surroundings with a keen eye and brings a perspective I can’t claim to be my own. Blank is beautiful, fragrant and soul-food when I starve for writing and I very often do.
As I pause and scroll up to see what has come through me, I am astonished at the line-breaks, punctuation, words and sentences that continue to flow with or without my involvement and conscious engagement. A self-aligning form emerges, I bow in deep gratitude.
I have been with this practice for a while and this is a confession statement called ‘Blank.’
What will the reader find of value here? Is this a solo, weird, maverick endeavour or have others gone through this incessant rambling experience too? Does this undergrowth and overgrowth of words lead to a pruned clearing of poetic flow or an orchard of prose with trees bearing a variety of delicious, citrus short-story fruits?
As I begin to question its hidden agenda, I begin to choke it again! The voice that guides me grows thin and distant. My resolve to hit the keys begins to slow down, fingers tremble, typos creep in and the chattering mind gets desperate to seize control. Frictional heat rises through my now sweaty palms and moves to hasten the heartbeat to an incoherent thumping from a rhythmic sway.
I recall the first file ‘Lost’ I created with an intention of writing a short story minutes ago and abandoned its blankness in frustration to actually title this file ‘blank’ and start taking a dictation from The Source.
There is an effortless graceful movement in this writing and I can’t get away from the guilty pleasure i draw from the experience. It keeps me selfishly hooked, leaving you, the reader to salvage what you can. Perhaps the second hand experience of drinking the leftover wine gives you some idea of what I am drunk on and spinning on the tip of a pen, kneading the parchment soil.
The moment I pause to work hard at explaining my rendezvous with this mystical source of words, it disappears, leaving me high and dry, craving for more of the same.
Blank…is what I must be to enter this void wherein a pure light casts its own prisms and kaleidoscopes to create an astonishing show that leaves me bewildered and in awe. I close may eyes and watch the phenomenal unfolding, hopelessly hopeful that you, dear reader will catch a glimpse of this through the blinking of these phrase-shutters! Is this what swimming in grace and prayer is? Is this a portal of bliss?
Questions again, and the light show turns the dimmers on and begins to fold up. I must leave you here and deconstruct my body instead of trying to decode the experience. I must disintegrate and dissolve into the momentary wormhole of blankness…it beckons with the gravitational pull of a blackhole!
When I re-emerge, if at all i do, I won’t remember the experience, because ‘I’ will fill all my pores and crevices again and the light will elude me, until I sit to write again.
After all the ultimate promise of blankness will be to leave me as it found me…absolutely blank!