Shine on you crazy diamond

So I’m sitting here at my desk staring at the work I started last term and trying to figure out where the fuck to start again. Sometimes a blank page is the most frightening thing in the world, I used to think.

The truth of the matter, should there be one, is that a blank page is freedom incarnate. You can go anywhere, do anything with it. Now, when I think about it, I don’t recall the last time I approached or even saw a blank page. This is one of the reasons I want to take off from schooling after this term. Every apparently blank page I’ve stared at for the past four (maybe eight, maybe twelve, maybe sixteen) years has had some predetermining factor behind it. This will be between 750 and 1,000 words. This will be nonfiction. This will be poetry. This will respond to the statement, “The Iranian Revolution of 1979 has disappointed most Iranians, including many of its original supporters, but it has created an Islamic regime that, ironically, both inspires and threatens the Arabs of the Middle East region.” Those pages are in no sense (beyond the visible) blank.

Usually, that’s fine. It’s great to have prompts when you are trying to construct an understanding of a subject area. I’m just saying that blank paper is frightening in the same way a beautiful, stable, and intelligent person loving you is. Sure it comes with a lot of difficult questions and negotiations, but in the end it is what you want. Usually.

So, I’m sitting here and I’m staring at pages full not only of prompts and potential, but of my own useless and ineffectual scribblings from last term. Where to I take them? Where do I start? What the fuck did I write? Do I still agree with it? Should I start over and use those pages merely as notes to go by?

Screw it, says I. Putting pen to paper is a cheap bar fight compared to the long campaign the words that follow tend to be.

I watched the movie RKO 281 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120801/) last night. It was a bio-ish pic about Orson Wells and the creation of Citizen Kane. Wells was 26 when Kane had its day in the theaters. I guess my question here is; what the fuck am I doing?