writing prompt: white

The frozen expanse extends in every direction as far as the eye can see. Any motion, any word will mar than even smoothness, speech rippling across the field like a harsh winter North wind, footsteps dimpling like the pockmarked scars of an acne-ridden teenager.

Yet if I stand very very still and hold my breath, it is my very existence that is put into peril. In fact, we are in a life-or-death struggle. Any gesture or speech on my part is directly reflected like an attack on my enemy, the white sheet.

So to be the victor, I must make my adversary bleed. In this case, the puddles that gather across the white expanse are ink - sometimes regal blue, sometimes China black, and yet other times, when I'm feeling particularly ditzy, a snide attack of glitter gel in multicolour hues.

It was once said that the white page is God's way of showing us what it was like to be him. I think that's a highly interesting point of view, simply because it accurately reflects the infinite possibilities that lay ahead. A blank sheet can remain as is, can bear a single, microscopic dot, a line, a drawing, a sketch, a word, a sentence, a slogan, a paragraph, a story, a picture, in short, anything the mind can conceive.

The question becomes not what can I do with this, it is rather where should I go from here? Of the myriad possibilities, which one do I choose? Where is the path, not the only path, but the one I select, thee one to get to well, wherever. Is that the correct way to select the path, by first determining where the destination is? Or is the path itself worthy of judgment?

In the end, I don't believe the destination should be the focus; then again, neither should the path. I believe that the motion itself is what counts. The resulting words on the page, or the drawing, or the story or grocery list or whatever, are merely the aftereffect of what's important. It's the crysalid that the butterfly leaves behind, but it is not the butterfly itself. The butterfly has long flown, the moment is past, and the experience has been taken in. Well, at least hopefully, I was paying attention while it was happening, and I wasn't too too focused on where I was putting my feet.

(401)