San Pedro de Atacama, December 2022

I’ve a need for a white page. So many things I’m supposed to be working on, to be writing, to be reading, and what I want is the space where nothing is yet said. A voice can appear on such a page, my voice, or a voice that is mine. My god, or a god that is mine. Hardly religious, and yet obedient to the power of the gods who drive me, who speak in my head. Hardly religious, but I’ve been known to walk into church purely because I’m angry with a god who has been playing with my body, I’ve stood there, cursed this god, or that god, and told him, or her, that it’s unjust. I don’t believe in a conscious god. That’s Spinoza, right? I like Jung’s idea of us having a self-generated god, formed around some instinctual archetype, a god that cannot live independently of ourselves, and who can’t really be shared. But reading Jung, I get a sense of paranoia.

My worship is therefore the blank page. A swirl of incense, a lit candle, open the windows, say hello to the plants. The blank page draws me in. Either the ink flows or the computer’s keys patter-patter. Words come where none were before. I can do this in two languages, dos idiomas, nothing changes – except in Spanish I wrestle more with the limits of my vocabulary. I tussle too with the English. To patter-patter is not a verb. I just don’t know how to describe the percussion.

The whole of humanity is within us. Where did I read that? I read so much that I have no idea where to attribute my ideas. I don’t want to claim originality. My thoughts are a cross-pollination sometimes ideas germinate, take root, sometimes they dissipate into nothingness, merge with the air that we breathe. The idea is that by healing ourselves, we heal humanity. Could any one of us heal ourselves? I find it difficult to believe that it is possible to be and not to wreak havoc on our world, for as much as the whole of humanity might be represented within, it exists outside, and we have to live alongside it.

Yet, I like the concept, the idea of ending wars by starting with those we’ve created, tiny wars, emotional wars, wars in the mirror, in the glow of the fridge, in the pain held in our lover’s eyes. Wars that happen on the blank page about the existence or non-existence of gods. Or should I call them imaginary friends, or fictional characters. No, fictional characters and imaginary friends are formed way too consciously, although the energy behind them comes from deeper within, they don’t quite garner the same level of reverence.

The inviolable pull to the page, to the blank space, to the possibility of what words will form, that pull is something sacred and indescribable. Here’s a force, perhaps we could say a spiritual force, a magical force, an instinctual force, godly? I arrive. Blank page – the trench where I sit with myself and face the complexities of humanity that my body holds. The whole of humanity represented within this single being. There is a purpose to all of this, but the purpose is hiding. Wars happen for what reason? I can’t imagine. Power and control. Fear. Territorial claims over resources. I am fighting for my own energy, the finite life which falls like sand in the hourglass. Ever less.

Scarcity drives wars, but my life is full today. I lack nothing because all is within. I can see it there, feel it there, the ink spills over. When the hourglass is flipped, the life will belong to someone new. The sand never leaves. Meanwhile, the page fills with words, entropy on one hand, order on the other. I type with both hands simultaneously; while my right hand grips my pen, my left flattens my page. Coordination. Sand keeps falling, it is the price of the words. I have no idea how much sand remains in the glass. I know I have many words as yet unsaid.

Face the blank moment.

Pages fill. I don’t know if I am any closer to understanding the humanity within or the humanity without, but there are gods whispering in my ear (from the inside or from the outside), gods I don’t believe in, and through them, I know this is where I need to be.

Praying through my fingertips.