"Pencil Drawing Its Shadow"

In this fine example of postmodern sketch, the artist demonstrates his meager skills by using a pencil to draw a pencil as it draws its own shadow. Freudians will be quick to see phallic symbols throughout the piece, but critics disagree over whether this stems from an intentional depiction of virility and creative energy or a subconscious sign of subdued masculinity and repressed lust. This drawing was drawn on a blank note card provided by Eric, who has also provided most of the comments on this blog.

I was perplexed today by a preponderance of pens. Everyone around me on my first day of College Algebra was holding a pen. I felt very insecure with my sharp number two pencil. Was I surrounded by math wizards who know they will never make an error to erase? I am prone to false starts in math; I would never attempt to calculate in ink. This is not merely a matter of my miserable mathematics, however. Any time I am to put words to paper, I need a pencil in hand — certainly wood, preferably cedar. Plastic pencils have too many pieces and tend to fall apart when I use them. Pens I use only to write checks and sign my name. Otherwise the permanence that pen-points effuse just doesn't suit me.

The pencil is an almost magical device, empowering creation at one end and destruction at the other. The two are inseparable with me, for my writing always implies erasing. This is a symptom of my inability to ever make up my mind. I am endlessly tweaking my statements, coordinating my conjunctions and canceling my commas, scheming up new tropes or repositioning a preposition. The right word often comes to me only after I have written the wrong one, and my most interesting thoughts tend to elude me until I get the dull ones out of the way. How would I manage without my eraser? Work is always in progress; a finished work isn't work at all.

I am also fond of the variation that pencils permit. I speak of shade, of tone, of nuance. With a pencil I have every shade of gray at my command. My lines can be bold or they can disguise themselves into the page. Ink is monochrome, and by extension monotonous.

Even so, it seems that others prefer their pens. I don't mean to put them down. I would not advocate that everyone do as I do or like as I like. I am simply curious as to what other people see in ink that I don't — not to make this a Rorschach test. Which do you prefer, pencil or pen?

Having nothing to say is an interesting phenomenon. It's a sensation I'm rather familiar with, being a very taciturn sort myself. Even so, it's not something I've really thought about much before, so I'm not sure I understand it well. What's really happening when people seem to have nothing to say? It can't be strictly true, can it? People are always thinking, so my guess is that people always have something to say. Whether or not they think they have something to say, however, must be a function of whether or not they judge their thoughts to be worth saying. This is a subjective decision, of course, influenced by all kinds of variables: relevancy, quality, audience, interest, concern for consequences. And many of these variables are subjective factors themselves. Having nothing to say, then, isn't really a condition. It's a judgment, a decree, a statement of will. To announce "I have nothing to say" is, quite simply, to resolve so.

I wonder how often this resolution is conscious, and how often not? Certainly people think about what to say on many occasions, but not always. Some people blither on endlessly without once pausing to consider whether they need or ought to say what they do, and others lock away every thought without even being struck by the notion that certain ideas might be voiced. These people aren't making conscious decisions. They've just fallen into habit, I suppose, and so formed an automated say-it-or-not policy after years of psychological conditioning. So this is a resolution made consciously and unconsciously, every day perhaps. There are always people talking and always people not talking, and at every moment each of these could be doing the opposite. What triggers one to do one thing and one to do another? Do the people who talk the most really have the most to say? Or is it rather the ones who talk least whose minds most teem with thoughts squirming to be let go? I've no idea. I have nothing to say.

I'm walking, slowly, on a campus sidewalk. Around me, others are walking too. They are walking faster than I am, not swiftly, but steadily passing me as they go hither and thither about their days. There are many of them, and most of them are moving together, as one. They flow down the sidewalk together as if a liquid, occasionally damming up behind an obstacle before finally funneling through doors and filtering into their countless destinations. I am only a stone in their river, and as they wash past me on all sides, I too am prodded slowly forward along their course.

I begin to walk faster, until I, too, am one with the liquid mass. It is a new world. At my own pace I had been but one among many, but now we all walk together, a thousand chattering friends in the great hall under the sky. Our conversations come with us as we go; we share tales of the day thus far and make plans for the night to come. We smile and joke and laugh, and we become oblivious to all of our surroundings. It is almost as if we, the walking, were still, and the world was moving briskly beneath our feet.

Read the rest of this entry »