Day 4: The Glory of White Space
Most people don’t know me as a little academic, sitting encased in my overstuffed chair with a non-fiction tome in one hand, pencil in the other, making notes in the margins and *thinking* about things, head lolling sleepily off to one side. Writing papers about sacred space, about cultural landscapes, about atomic bombs and the landscapes we save and the ones we destroy. Frankly, I don’t know me as that person anymore either. That was a lifetime ago. A Wyoming landscape ago. At least a couple of chapters ago.
The biggest transitions, or chapters, in my life have included getting divorced when I was 27 and moving to Wyoming to go to graduate school; heading off to Italy three times in two years to travel and then to live; changing careers after teaching English in community colleges for eight years; and now.
Right now I’m between that page at the end of the chapter where there’s white space, and the next page that starts the chapter. In that white space, so much can happen. Plots can shift. Characters sit in limbo. The author has the opportunity to redirect. There’s a little tension in that white space while the last chapter has a chance to settle and the next chapter has a chance to form.
I love the stories about the people who have always known exactly what they’ve wanted to do in their lives. The ones who chart their course and head off, seemingly knowing exactly where they’re going. The firemen who say they knew when they were 5 that they wanted to fight fires. The writer who knew at 12 she was going to write. The actor who saw his first performance at 8 and planned to take the stage the first chance he got.
I love those stories because those people just seem to know exactly where they’re going. It’s the yin to my yang: I have no idea. And I kinda like it that way. It’s also why I love the stories about the poet who worked in a hotel for years, then worked on a ranch and then started teaching and then just picked up a pen and tried a poem and then another until he got the hang of it. Or even the one of Grandma Moses who didn’t start painting until she was in her 80s. She spent her whole life working at other things until she found herself in a one-woman art show.
Those are stories about that white space. It’s the place where everything is rich and full of promise. How wonderful for some people to know exactly what they’ve always wanted to do and head off to do it. How equally wonderful to have no idea and head off to figure it out, one chapter at a time.
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
