There are so few blanks in my life that I find it hard to relate to feelings of futility over failure to commit lines of verbiage to this page. Yet I am forced in pausing here to look at blanks as they may relate to me and whether or not they have significance. Blank defined: vacuous, unfilled, void, empty, sans form, purpose definition. Is a blank something that can be filled in or is it nothing and therefore defies definition?

Other people have blanks, of this, I’m sure. People I know intimately and casually are brought to their knees at the prospect of a non-fulfilled weekend. I’ve known people for whom void time precipitates an anxiety attack. Countries have been known to fuel wars in times of economic emptiness. Some relationships with too much vacuity suffer bouts of situational infidelity.

Blanks are more terrifying for some people than runaway chaos that lends to early demise. In guns, blanks don’t kill and guns are instruments of destruction. So why do blanks just floating out there in the urban ethers cause such distress?

Perhaps it is the no time, the undefined beingness that is for many unbearable. Blanks move us out of the “box” of comfort. If they defy description then they are of their very nature unsettling to anyone for whom the Pavlovian cell represents structure-therefore ok-ness.

Perhaps my most creative response to a blank piece of paper is merely to bless it, release it, turn it into a paper airplane with lift off. And, as it (the plane) rises and falls allow the possibilities of creative expression to find their proper altitude and return them to this sender.