The Blinking Cursor

The blinking cursor gives me a restless feeling.  It breathes, moves, beckons, and begs me to make it move across the page with a single letter, then an entire word, and soon a full sentence.  My fingers twitch above the keyboard, wishing, hoping for an idea, a thought, a moment that will cascade into an amazing and beautiful image.  It could be beautiful.  It could be amazing.  But the restless feeling eats away at me.  It flutters around and knocks against my skin.  Write something.  Say something.  It must be profound.  It must be the most amazing thing that has ever been written.  So I pause.  I stare at a blank page, at a blinking cursor.  I realize that I have nothing profound to say.  I have nothing new or original to offer.  I will never write anything ever again.

But the possibilities of a blank page and a blinking cursor tempt me.  The words you can pour over an empty space, the world you can create just by placing one letter in front of another, pulls me back every time.  Maybe this time I can do it.  Maybe this time it will be amazing.  Blood-red leaves will blow across the page, ripped from the trees on a brisk autumn day.  A freckled girl will emerge from the line of trees and tramp through the knee high piles of leaves.  She will wade through the bleeding foliage.  The sun will blind her, and for a moment she will be unable to see, a single hand raised to block out the light. Across the open field, tall with grain ready to be harvested, a single figure will stand, dark, as if the figure were merely a cut out from the scenery, a void.  The freckled girl will freeze in the red sea.  Her breathing will increase, shallow breaths struggling to remain hidden under her dress.  She will not give herself away.  Then her worst fear will be realized.  The cutout figure will turn it's absent head and stare at her.  Then she will turn.  She will run.

These images do not come, the words do not pour out from me.  I am still afraid of not being able to write a single original thought.  And then suddenly I remember.  My unceasing march of self-defeating thoughts tumble and fall into the break that cracks into my mind.  Everything has already been written.  Everything has been said.  All I can do is bring my perspective to it.  That's all that any of us can do.  So I go back to the flaming leaves and the freckled girl racing through the forest.  She clambers over rocks, up the side of a hill, and ends at the edge of a cliff.  The valley below puts a pit in the bottom of her stomach, as if she has no control over her legs and the sprawling valley is the reason.  She imagines jumping and how the that pit in her stomach would wash through her entire body, and her breath would never come back into her lungs.  She shuts her eyes and backs away.  Then there is silence, as if someone has cupped his hands around her ears.  She slowly looks back toward the forest and sees the void of a figure, pulling in the light and noises of life.

Down below in the valley, people look up, straight up into the sky.  A scream alights on the high autumn air.