The Empty Pages

12/01/14

I leaf through the pages of my notebook rediscovering snippets and smithereens of unfinished or scratched writing.  There are pages with multiple incomplete entries; stories, poems, observations and quotes both classical and modern.  The first block of pages are filled perhaps with a tenuous link, thought or theme.  This runs dry and the white swells until it engulfs the page.
The white page stares blankly at the pen.
Flick forward and it becomes apparent this is a pincer attack-the back of the book is also filled with an eclectic mix of writing.

Sometimes there is an obvious discrepancy to warrant this meandering.  A story starts at the back and movies forward to prevent it being interrupted or butchered by the random influx of ideas and sentiments charging from the front to the back.  The information at the back is sometimes more relevant to daily experience or current circumstances; e-mail addresses, letter drafts but even these are sometimes littered with forceful digression bursting into my thoughts.

Every notebook I have starts at the front or back, drifts to the other end and starts the push towards the middle.  What will be the last printed piece?  A random thought or observation or something more precise like an address or directions?
I cannot say.
I drift on to a new notebook.  All of them unfinished but with their middle pages burning white, their outer edges daubed in black and blue-the depressions of mind and soul upon the paper.  I sometimes feel a pang of guilt looking at these unfinished notebooks.  Such a waste of paper, surely?

Perhaps my mind fills in the ditches, building walls to keep me in the middle.  The straight and narrow narrowing.  Although I am worried when and if I extinguish the white light of those empty pages I will never need to pick up that book again and thus I forget.  I forget the things I have written and how I felt, along with ideas good and bad.  It is a diary of sorts and it spans many moons.  The very book I write this entry  in carries a stamp from 2011 to 2014 and still has pages to spare.
This story is not over yet.