Blank Space

It's a dandy little notebook

Sometimes it’s better to be content with blank space, and the present tense. This is the last sentence of my English paper to be read aloud during class number 2. Here's how it all started. First assignment in English 568 is to "write about a thing." Sounds easy: I'm surrounded by things. Then the caveat: "Steer clear of memoir."
                 It's always something. Just when I thought I'd discovered the key to the universe--the simple regurgitation of my vast store of personal experience and encyclopedic cache of knowledge and wisdom--I'm admonished to write about stuff happening right now. No delving into the old brain box to retrieve war stories, anecdotes, parental/employment/marital or social tales and trials. Look around, find something interesting, and then write about it. What's so hard about that?
                 Here's one thing the assignment has shown already: that old, moldy stuff is interesting alright, to me, mostly. This can be a real break point in a writer's career, when he or she realizes that to write means to, as the old railroad crossing signs used to say--maybe they still do--stop, look and listen. Stop referring to one's past and all that happened then, because it's entirely possible that as painful as it might be to acknowledge, no one cares about that stuff. Look, for those interesting things in the here and now, and know that there are plenty of things people really want to read about. Listen, to those same people, and they will often tell a writer exactly what those things are that they'd like someone to write about. There are the following, for instance:
         The silly season and its affect on real people as we go to the polls.
          Social issues such as gay marriage, Tea Party nincompoops, the effect of climate change on things we never considered like new vacation destinations.
         Illegal mushroom farms, contraband cigarettes in NYC, the legalization of equality, famous acronyms you thought you knew and didn't. Why there are no more paper boys. The list goes on.
          Summarizing, memoir is fine, and has an estimable place in the canon. But non-fiction is bigger than personal history and past lives. Blank paper can be the most exciting journey of all.