Of paper and ants

—A prose to cellulose

A sheet of paper: an invitation to inspiration, a sanctuary to pen and hand, a cave of words.  To others: a consuming expanse, or the frightening immensity of fruitless conception.  If to write is to live, some of us live and some of us have writer’s block.  

But it needs no explanation how relevant paper has become to the great human composition.  From the poets who trusted them with the custody of the words of deep and eloquent outcry, to the lover’s note dowsed with perfume.  Most were written in poor penmanship on the white expanse, like tiny dead ants. 

From the time I came to my own awareness, I have visited paper, and paper has come to visit me.  There I was with gummy hands and curled-up fists in my mother’s arms, scribbling on the brown space of discarded paper bags, tearing pieces away to put in my mouth.  These were my initial attempts to transfer myself to the first of many pages that would eventually receive me without judgment.  I could not control the drool, could not hold the pencil, but my lines were a thing of beauty to the adults. 

A birth certificate with strange markings gave official proof that I was alive, but not yet of age to go to school.  Per my first-grade teacher, I had to bring paper; it was part of the budget of school existence.  Dressed in my gray uniform, I drew letters that found syllables in strange curves, that found words in comically misspelled renditions, that found long paragraphs that came to harsh stops at the sight of tiny periods.  And when these did not hold to the measure for which they had been charged, I scrubbed them away forcefully with merciless erasers. 

A note from my teacher to my mother: “Your son prefers to draw in class, and his handwriting is atrocious.”  In other words, his ideas are aplenty, but his words are not sufficient to the accepted standard.  But my drawings were, indeed, beautiful words. 

In response, I drew my teacher writing a note to my mother.  The note said: “Your son is a genius.” I drew a flower for my mom for extra flan.  Paper was my friend.  And then there was color.  You can’t see in color until you have to color, you can’t see blue until both your hands and your eyes have touched it.   

I entered my teens with obese books and calculus.  Someone else had done the printing and the thinking for me.  In English class, my teacher once told me, “You use too many similes.”  So, I asked him, “Can you please tell me how many similes I am allowed per sentence?” And with the cold clatter against paper, I learned that typewriting teachers are usually vicious: “You must look at the home keys on the board, your eyes must not look at the paper.”  I probably should have cared more.   

Then a love letter written in a hundred hours with a hundred fears, torn into a thousand pieces.  Poets may seem to have a clear advantage, but I am no longer so sure. 

I will always be grateful to paper for being my friend and thinking partner. 

It is the refuge of my mind and my hands.  This will be until my death is proven by a second date on a certificate to relinquish my time here. 

For now, the sights, the smells, the sounds, and all that’s human in me will be archived in yellowing sheets.  It will be proof of my existence; it will be a letter poorly composed, with bad punctuation, but full of me.  It will be a short story that travels to someone’s heart as an ambassador of my friendship.

As I open a notebook, its skin rustles quietly under my fingers, I am confronted by a white vast emptiness, 8 and a half by 11, where many universes can fit with ease.  I know my thoughts will come.  They will start as little letters, poorly laid on the scary expanse, like tiny dead ants. 

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this on my cell phone.