On the virtues of blankness

There was a time in my life in which I could be delighted and entertained by being given free reign with the cheap pen and complimentary memo pad in my parents' hotel room.

At home, if we wanted to draw, we had to use "drawing paper", which dad brought home from work. It was old skool green and white banded dot matrix print-out paper -- pages were all linked together, perforations between the sheets and along the edges so sheets could be separated from each other and from their spoke-catching feeder tapes. The back of the print-outs was blank, and all one color. But the front, which became our "back," always had writing. Weird numbers and letters.

Sometimes, especially at grandma's house, we'd receive a crisp, unblemished sheet of typing paper to draw on. I'd envision grand spectacles of dragons and castles for my special canvas. When my rendering inevitably fell short of my vision, I was always sad that the paper was now saddled with the burden of being a lousy drawing. I had such higher hopes.

I still get a little thrill when I tear open a package of 8 1/2 x 11 paper to re-stock a printer or copier. All those clean sheets in a neat stack, so full of potential. They may become persuasive presentations, driving directions, technical layouts, legal contracts, government secrets, love letters or paper airplanes.

I wonder if the paper appreciates how splendidly indeterminate it is. Once there's a pie chart burned to your backside, there's no hope of becoming a supreme court decision. In that moment before irrevocability, no dream is impossible.