iLiza's eyes

When I used to take art classes in high school, I remember the fear of a blank canvas being common. Students, including myself, would express their anxiety at the thought of starting their piece; they would feel intimidated by that daunting expanse of whiteness that could soon become their greatest work or their most miserable failure. I remember feeling that too. Going to the art store was fun and inspiring, but placing the canvas or paper down on the kitchen table and standing above it, with a pencil poised in my left hand, was a different story. A canvas, in the moments before you place your first stroke, becomes a bleached beast that rears it's body upwards and taunts your very attempt at transforming into something beyond it's pure, colorless perfection.

I don't remember how I used to start my art. I can't recall exactly that first stroke that I made of each painting or drawing. What I remember is the moment of terror before and the moments of intense focus and concentration after. I remember wasting my body and my back slaving over canvases that used to be white or blue or yellow. I remember putting in the last stroke and making the decision to never put another one on. But the jump in, the second when I began to stain and destroy the blank available space is lost to me: perhaps my brain blocked it out because the memory was just that scary.

I feel the same feeling today when I start to write. When I click "new document" and a white canvas pops in front of my eyes to say hello. I find my name is the easiest thing to write first--ironic how I'm willing to claim it as my own before the damage has even been done.

And I feel the same with life, with the great expanse on the horizon that calls out to me post-graduation. Someone told me last week that I should take advantage of the time after I graduate to take a job that's really cool and interesting, something that I will be passionate about and enjoy. I imagine that like staring at an array of colored pencils, freshly sharpened in a box, and needing to pick the best color to start with: they are beautiful and exciting and they make me smile, and yet they represent either my greatest work or my most miserable failure. Perhaps I'm silly for worrying about the future so soon, when I haven't even finished my Junior year of college, but I find it taunting me even from so far away. The white bleached beast thrashing and seething in its own perfection, looming ahead of me, just daring me to make my first mark.

posted by iliza @ 5:35 PM