Of my manifold blessings, none’s more thrilling than an empty page.

            Having slept well, I’m pumped to produce – what? The empty page winks like a snowfield before footprints. I need only don parka and boots and sally forth. I can go anywhere! – anywhere my feet will carry me. And it’s a snow day, so no responsibilities, no assignments.

            I hesitate, luxuriating in the wealth of possibilities, which must shrink to a single track the instant I commence. To head anywhere one cannot head everywhere. For now the sky’s the limit, no barriers, no “No Trespassing” posters scowling from tree trunks, not even a tut-tutting clock. I feel capable of marvels, knowing full well I’m not.

            Young dogs dart into dawn this way, sniffing fast as they can.

            With a sigh, I begin – lest I waste the day. The idea of “wasting” time is human; no other creature winces beneath its lash. Other creatures go where they go, unharried by notions where they might have: what is is enough. Humans are haunted by the subjunctive: woulda-shoulda-coulda pursue us: what I might have done!

            Destinations map. There may be a few ways to get from here to there, but not countless. We pick our path and begin our trek. OK, a paean to my empty page, I’ll give it a try – now what?

            So with lives. They begin in a radiance of maybes. Every baby is Jesus in its cradle – or Mozart – or Napoleon – or Babe Ruth. Eager parents extrapolate predictable developments into exorbitant promises. One by one these possibilities vanish. Yeh, your kid is smart, maybe top of their class, but a one-in-a-million phenom? Sorry, mom.

            Imagination makes lives disappointing. The higher you dream, the more paltry your output. Do you imagine Michelangelo – or Shakespeare – or Beethoven was satisfied with his result? The Pieta – or Hamlet – or Eroica – was OK, a cut above, but a patch on what it might have been. Biographers speculate about their subjects’ verdicts on their spans. Did they rest easy in the end, having done so much? No! There was always more, better, dangling before them like Tantalus’ plum, that achievement that would sate the heart.

            My white page watches me like loved ones in the viewing stand. My teeth are grit, my jaw jut. I will ace this one, see if I don’t. I can feel them watching. I do not look up.

            Aspiration is what makes humans splendid and absurd. I preach humility. I wrap myself in its obvious sense. We do not matter in eternity’s eye, none of us, so relax. Of my eventual nonentity and yours there can be no doubt: why rue what can’t be helped?

            This coaching is dead on. It’s the right way to think, conducing to the right conclusions. Vanity is insanity – I know, I know. But this barrier of sense does not prevent crazy dreams of magnificence. “All my life,” confesses one bum to the other in Waiting for Godot, “I’ve compared myself to Christ.”

            The snowfield is marred with footprints; the empty page fills. The critic supplants the dreamer. Maybe a nice bit here and there, but in truth no great shakes. (Shakes in this idiom derives either from shaking a cask into its worthless staves, or shaking a dice cup to no good effect; to me, the Shakes here evokes the MAN.) I’m a piker in the world of words, no alpinist. But oh, for those few minutes, how the dream of that empty page enlivened! How I tingled at the vision of the word to end all words.

            I’ll try again tomorrow.