Tony and I and a bunch of other people went to the Festival of Colors last Saturday, which was held in Knoch Knolls Park in Naperville. It was, how do you say? A pretty rocking time. Basically I got to spend an afternoon chasing little kids around trying to cover them in green and yellow flour. As you can see, I managed to get quite colorful myself.

The Festival of Colors is an Indian thing welcoming the coming of Spring. It was really amazing, punctuated by  delicious Indian food. It really made me wish that American culture had more active cultural festivals. Ours are far too passive. It seems that our culture is becoming more divided and making us feel more isolated. Sometimes all I want to do is reach out and touch somebody, make them acknowledge that I exist, and they exist, and we exist.

How is it that I feel most alive when I play on borrowed time?

Photos courtesy of Tony Thomas.

Blank pages are pregnant with possibility. You could put anything down a glaringly white (or ivory, or whatever) piece of paper, and it’s exactly that potential that is so exciting and alluring. It’s also terrifying. Why, what is one to do if one puts the wrong thing down on that precious paper? What if you make a mistake? Or worse: what if it’s stupid? This is perhaps the single reason why I respect any artist: they all are putting themselves out there and opening themselves up to ridicule. It’s definitely the hardest part of the process for me.

I know I am a capable writer, and most of the writers I encounter in workshops and what-not tend to agree. And yet, every single person I have ever been in a workshop has, in some form or another, encountered the irrational fear and shame that I have in my work. Though I am proud to say this has improved greatly over the years, especially the confidence I have in my criticism. In a shocing reversal, Wren the Critic is more confident than Wren the Writer. This must indicate that I’ve grown more confident as a writer, too.

Back to my original point: blank pages are frightening things to deal with. The boxes and boxes of blank notebooks in my parents’ basement can attest to this. I’ll fully admit I’m a bit of a perfectionist: revision-as-process is my modus operandi. Yet another thing I’ve been working to change in my approach. My academic writing is always a one step process. I’ve never done a full revision of anything academic. Ever. And I’m sure that comes out in my blog posts, as well. How many times have I gone off on a tangent in this post already?

What really made me start thinking about all this is that I bought a new notebook today. A new notebook that prompted my mother to chastise me about all the boxes in the basement. It’s no secret I have trouble marring pages. Especially in purposeless books.

But this moleskine has a purpose. I’m consolidating my life into one place: calendars, planning, writing, ideas, random notes, etc. Not exactly an original idea for a moleskine, but it’s an effective plan. I slapped some indexing tabs on (in?) it and have broken in the spine. It’s all ready for some ink.

And I did the most important thing: I marred every single page. There are no blank pages in my new notebook now, which means there is nothing to fear about sullying them more. And I’ve already gotten some meaningful use out of five pages. I don’t want to be afraid anymore.