This month at the church’s writing group picked three possible subjects out of basket. They were, hindsight, chagrined, and Vietnam. The first slip pulled out was blank and they group wanted to reject it but I countered, that I was capable of writing at length about nothing so they kept that as a possible fourth subject. So here is my reading for the group:

So I reread our leader’s email about what the subject for this month is and found that my recollection of what was said last time wasn’t complete.  I recall hearing that one slip of paper had nothing on it, while the leader’s email clearly states that one slip was blank.  She’s quite correct and I’ve spent a whole month thinking of nothing rather than blank.

I want to be clear here, blank and nothing are not the same thing.  Okay, maybe it’s only important on my planet, but here in my mind, the difference is staggering.  I really wanted to write about nothing, but blank is also an interesting subject.

Now I don’t want to discount the other topics.  The word hindsight does open some interesting avenues of discussion.  The one problem I have with the word is that I can’t get my brain past a favorite joke when I think about hindsight.  The joke goes, “Someday we’ll all look back on this and plow into a parked car.”

Perhaps I should be a bit chagrined about that joke.  I’m not, but I should be.  Chagrined isn’t a word that’s not part of my day to day vocabulary.  I mean, I do get chagrined from time to time, but thanks to my powers of denial, I rarely have cause to use the word so anything I do write about the subject should likely be discussed with a therapist rather than a writing group.

Vietnam is a big topic.  While I was only a child while the war was happening, I do recall it and it’s affects on friends and family.  Later in life I did meet a few people who were there and I’ve read a lot of the history.  One of my favorite stories is about my older brother who became eligible for the draft in 1970 and went to college to avoid it.  Then he got a high number in the draft lottery and managed to avoid being drafted all together.  This is the same brother who in 1976 joined the California National Guard and served 25 years as a mortar man.

There’s a lot of things about Vietnam I don’t understand so I thought I’d write about what I truly know, and that is nothing.  Then when I sit down to write I find I was wrong about the subject and by eliminating the first three words on the list I now have to write about blank.

As in my mind’s a blank.  Luckily for you, I have a degree in literary criticism and I’ve studied Derrida and deconstructionism which gives me great skill in writing at length about anything to prove that it means nothing.

Now, I’m not trying to discuss nihilism and the belief that life is meaningless.  Life has a meaning and the meaning of life is blank.  As in fill in the blank.  You get to choose.  Personally I’d avoid anyone who regularly reads Derrida or deconstructionism as they will prove to you that anything you come up with is meaningless.

Sorry, I didn’t come here to discuss the meaning of life, I sat down to write about blank.  Let’s start with a dictionary definition.  It means things like: an empty space (like on paper), a material prepared to be made into something – a blank key, or a cartridge loaded with propellant but not a projectile.

Actually blank in the firearms context is a perfect example of the difference between blank and nothing.  A blank bullet is something not nothing.  One of my favorite definitions is, “an empty or featureless place or space.” The example phrase given is, “my mind was blank.”  That perfectly describes the normal state of my mind, blank.  Not nothing, just blank as in waiting for someone to fill in the answer or the amount if you’re willing to write on a blank check.

A related concept is the computer world where we differentiate between zero and null.  In computer code null is nothing while zero is a number.  The way computers work is that you can have zero of something, or you can have nothing.  For example you can have zero cookies or nothing.  I know it’s hard to wrap you mind around but think of it this way, cookies is something, a concept, an object, something you can hold … you can have as many cookies you want (well, at least until your mom finds your hand in the cookie jar).  In mathematics and computer science this relates to a set of something or a category of something in which you can put a number of things.  One of the numbers you can put in is zero.  If you have nothing, you don’t have a set, a concept or a hope of a pleasant sugar high from even one cookie.

Similarly, blank is that empty set that you can put things into.  A blank mind can be filled, a blank wall can receive a picture, and a writer can fill a blank page with great imaginings — all sorts of wonderful stories and great thoughts become possible.

So if you really think about it, the blank piece of paper in the idea basket is just really an invitation to free your imagination and write about anything that comes to mind.

I just wish I’d had that thought before I sat down to write about nothing. I just might have written something.