Bea Ganz (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
psalm23verse4) wrote2021-04-29 02:36 pm
psalm23verse4) wrote2021-04-29 02:36 pm
diary entry • one
I believe I've always had a crippling fear of the blank page.
Renate gave me a new notebook as a moving-away present, a Paperblanks with a beautiful, shimmering, shining reprint of the Gutenberg Bible on the cover. I don't think I've ever owned such a fancy notebook before, even so it's still lying untouched in my desk drawer, two months after we got here. Not a single word have I penned down.
Because the blank pages scare me, whenever I flip it open. I'm afraid of ruining them with my words, as if my words won't be good enough, or that my handwriting will get shaky near the end, or my pen will blotch a sentence halfway. Imperfection. I'm horribly scared of imperfection.
You could probably compare it to how my office is still an unfurnished, white-walled room down the hallway where we store all our empty and half-emptied moving boxes. The nakedness of that particular room is overwhelming, I look at it and I'm crushed beneath its weight. There's nothing. There's nothing, because I'm scared of making a wrong decision in regards to color schemes and shelving arrangements. I'm afraid of picking the wrong chair for my visitors to sit in or the wrong paintings for them to look at. My old writing desk has been brought along from Heidelberg, that's one choice less to make, but it's been placed in the farthest corner of the basement until I get the rest in order, it's of no use, really, like that.
When it comes to whiteness and emptiness, I know there's only one helpful answer, it's "fill it". Rather have wrong, ugly words and art that parts the waters, an armchair that you kind of drown in, than this horrible void inside that's much too easily overtaken by darkness and despair. You must guard yourself with your imperfections. You're only human.
That will be my first entry in this notebook whose utter perfection, whose clean, white, empty pages root me to the spot like an untreated phobia.
"Guard yourself with your imperfections. You're only human."
Renate gave me a new notebook as a moving-away present, a Paperblanks with a beautiful, shimmering, shining reprint of the Gutenberg Bible on the cover. I don't think I've ever owned such a fancy notebook before, even so it's still lying untouched in my desk drawer, two months after we got here. Not a single word have I penned down.
Because the blank pages scare me, whenever I flip it open. I'm afraid of ruining them with my words, as if my words won't be good enough, or that my handwriting will get shaky near the end, or my pen will blotch a sentence halfway. Imperfection. I'm horribly scared of imperfection.
You could probably compare it to how my office is still an unfurnished, white-walled room down the hallway where we store all our empty and half-emptied moving boxes. The nakedness of that particular room is overwhelming, I look at it and I'm crushed beneath its weight. There's nothing. There's nothing, because I'm scared of making a wrong decision in regards to color schemes and shelving arrangements. I'm afraid of picking the wrong chair for my visitors to sit in or the wrong paintings for them to look at. My old writing desk has been brought along from Heidelberg, that's one choice less to make, but it's been placed in the farthest corner of the basement until I get the rest in order, it's of no use, really, like that.
When it comes to whiteness and emptiness, I know there's only one helpful answer, it's "fill it". Rather have wrong, ugly words and art that parts the waters, an armchair that you kind of drown in, than this horrible void inside that's much too easily overtaken by darkness and despair. You must guard yourself with your imperfections. You're only human.
That will be my first entry in this notebook whose utter perfection, whose clean, white, empty pages root me to the spot like an untreated phobia.
"Guard yourself with your imperfections. You're only human."