Thoughts.com Blogs - drawing a blank

   how does one "draw a blank"? i mean, in order to draw a blank, just don't pick up your pencil. "hey, joe. i spent all sunday afternoon drawing a blank." "you mean you watched football?" "Precisely!"

   drawing a blank is like writing poetry. it is more about outsides than insides. poetry looks for the music inside the words, but must be attentive to the space outside the words. poetry is truth with bumpers like a rolls royce. can cars wreck and poetry suck? you better believe it, and the less attention paid to the outside space, the more likely the wreck. something like 70% of car wrecks happen in the place they are supposed to be safest: their parking lots. that's right. most driving errors occur in a place where we have the objective of not driving. in the same way that trying to park where there is already a car may inspire your car to change shape a little, the wrong word in the wrong place can turn poetry into ugliness. let's look at some examples off the cuff and see if i can illustrate what i mean.

not poetry: "you smell like an old turd."
poetry: "i can tell right away that you are a rare bouquet."

not poetry: "you drive like a blind tard!"
poetry: "your unique and creative driving skills fill my life with many thrills."

not poetry: "gosh, you excite me. let's do sex."
poetry: "all i think i might like to do has me so close i'm inside you."

   you are beginning to get the point. sometimes the blanks we draw aren't really blanks at all. but they are so unclassy that they would have been better off being a blank. "better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." if i didn't quote that exactly, sorry dead person who said it. but you know what? you know exactly what he or she meant when they said it. most of us have had that moment in love where we felt the need to assassinate the quiet and we say something incredibly romantic: "did you know that the methane from cow poop can get you high?" (WHAT? this is the minister's daughter you idiot! COW poop? COW POOP???????? WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST DIE INSTEAD OF GETTING UP THIS MORNING, YOU BUTTHEAD?) then you find out years later that she thought it was the funniest thing she ever heard. ::sigh:: she wouldn't have found MY methane exhilarating. anyway, if i had not blurted that out, i might have later used it for humor. i just have such trouble being quiet.

   the difference with poetry is that you stop to think. "how many ways can this be said and said beautifully?" nothing about me is beautiful. so i must draw on my surroundings to find such thoughts. or, to appear classy and thoughtful, i could just smile and seem deep. but no. i blurt out the thing about cow poop, and there you go. off to make poetry and watch, "Jane and the Dragon," the greatest cartoon since underdog. peace.