Novice - Tabula rasa

Tabula rasa.

I'm going to change the meaning of this.

I realize I think of it as empty, sterile,white paper.

Today I'm looking beyond the paper, the screen, all variations of the blank slate. I'm even looking beyond psychological and philosophical definitions of the mind.

I'm looking at tabula rasa as my audience. As who I write for. It's liberating.

I'm not concerning myself with who reads what I write. Maybe I'm getting narcissistic in my old age.

But it's not that I don't care about you.

It's just that when I think of you as an audience my words change. The words I wanted to write are discarded, deleted.

And it's not that I don't want to communicate in a meaningful way.

I want to see what happens when I publish my thoughts. Unedited. I want to see what happens to me.

Do I feel naked?

When I push the thought of an audience aside, my eyes gazing without preconception at tabula rasa,
I feel...well... holy.

A microcosm of creation.

Then, little sparks of light shining like stars on the night sky pop up. My husband, my friend, my sister writer.

Tiny constellations.

Faint at first, then brighter. Then some fade from view again spinning round and away.

And then a vast dark seemingly endless sky is my audience.

Tabula rasa transformed into deep space...dark void...swirling...

I'm starting to feel the difference...there's no wrong way, right way, good way, bad way...tabula rasa receives me...

Novice

Wait! Think before you post.

A world is out there, a real world, an abysmal world. There's more people than you can count.

What's the worse thing that could happen?

I am invisible. I am silence. I am a whirl of color and mood, unfelt.

No, the worse thing is the mirror cracks and the laughter dies and no one knows it happened.

There's worse things than that. Much worse.

It always comes down to that. A baby dies. A child is lost. A refugee is left behind, in the water. All are cracked mirrors, with laughter a grey ash at the bottom of a well, and no one sees, or hears, or feels.

Except on the news.

A novice writer finds the place inside where the mirror is clean, laughter bursting out of the warm loaf of your belly, and the world knows you.

Listen. Nothing worse can happen. The sound of apocalypse is gone. You can write and press the orange word Publish...and see, you are swinging from the vine with the monkeys, up over the giraffes and past the elephants trumpeting across the wide, wise savannah.