Another night, another staring contest with a blank page.
I sat at my laptop with my fingers resting on home row.
And sat.
And stared.
I was ready to put those elementary school typing lessons to use, poised to strike if inspiration came. This stance was very familiar to me. I spent more time in the ready position than I spent actually doing what I was readying myself for.
I always found myself in front of a blank page I could never fill. It could be a Word Doc on the computer, a sheet of staff paper, or a page in a sketchbook. Every time it was the same intense desire to create and the same inability to do it.
"Tonight will be different," I remembered thinking several hours ago. Tonight was no different. I wanted to dramatically slam the lid of my laptop shut, but I wasn't that committed to the frustrated artist image. Do you know how much it would cost to replace a shattered screen? I actually don't, because I've never shattered it before, because I'm careful. But I assume it would be a lot, and I don't have that kind of money. Instead I closed the lid carefully. I shoved my feet into my slippers and began to shuffle my way to the kitchen to distract myself with food, half-punching the light switches along the way.
I can't write. Punch. The hall lit up.
"If I could just write something, anything, I'd be satisfied," I lied to myself. I knew that wasn't true. If anything ever made it onto the page, I couldn't be satisfied until I thought it was perfect. Nothing ever was.
I can't draw. Punch. The stairs lit up.
I untied my robe and re-tied it tighter, wrapping myself in comfortable self-pity. Other people were creating left and right, and I was stuck with a head full of thoughts I could never quite articulate and ideas I could never quite realize. I never made any progress and I never had anything to show.
I half-heartedly smashed the kitchen light switch, banishing the darkness. Well, almost all the darkness. There was a patch that remained, and it was sitting at the kitchen table. I stopped and stared.
It was a roughly human-shaped figure, but ragged around the edges. An elongated hole like a cigarette burn through car upholstery took the place of a mouth. The figure was flawed somehow. Something about it was off, and the fact that I couldn't pin it down made me increasingly uneasy. It seemed low budget, like it was created by someone who didn't expect anyone to look at it directly. This was a dark figure that would normally be looming behind you or hovering at the edge of your vision. Its ominousness came from the sense of it lurking just out of sight, not from the flawless execution of its details. Face-to-face and in the bright light, it wasn't so scary. But regardless of this darkness's normal gig, here it was at my kitchen table.
You'll never be as good as them, you know, it said in a voice like ripping cloth. As good as who? It didn't matter. I knew what the darkness meant, and it knew I knew. Slowly, keeping my gaze fixed on the figure, I walked to the breadbox and pulled out a slice of brioche. I had never seen this darkness, but I had heard its deprecating voice before.
I've seen you staring at your computer screen for hours, like you think it will blink if you stare long enough. You want to have a staring contest? You're never going to win. It had seen. Even when the voice had been silent, it had been observing. As I approached the table to sit down the scent of stale cigarettes and the inside of a dirty dishwasher reached my nose. I'm not a smoker, and my dishes were clean. This smell was leaking out of the darkness. I sat down next to it, and it continued to speak with chilling calm. I've seen you get up in the morning, look at what you've done with disgust, and throw it all away. The darkness knew me, knew all my failures.
