Drawing a blank

I know what it’s like to be caught with my drawers down. This is not my preferred method of drawing attention to myself. I would rather be drawn and quartered. Perhaps from an eviscerated position I could better draw upon my internal resources. But in the end, it’s a draw: All positions come in a dead heat. But this here and now is where I draw the line. Completely drawn down, I can only draw water from this, my stream of consciousness.

Please draw me away from this insanity. You can help. Just imagine me for a moment: The night draws nigh in the Saharan Desert. Drawing what could be my last breath, I draw up into fetal position in the shade of a non-existent bodhi tree. It could have taken this Ficus religiosa 3,000 years to grow. But in my mind the tree draws on in an instant. And just as instantaneously, I draw a sigh, deeply, in homage of its heart shaped leaves.

Draw the image in your mind’s eye: See me as I simply watch my imaginary friends, no longer surrounding me, drawn off.

In the distance I see the Little Prince, asking St. Exupery: “If you please, draw me a sheep.” Well, Antoine might have been able to draw on his pilot salary or draw a sword in self defense, but to save his life he could not draw a sheep. The box he did draw, complete with peep holes for viewing the inner sheep, drew out the crowd of my phantasm friends.

Among them is Pierre Jaquet-Drox, the 18th century ingenious creator of automata. Pierre held in his hands one of his creations: The Drawer. This little child doll, a kind of ancestor of our computers, was able to draw four images: a portrait of Louis XV; the royal couple Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI; mon toutou, my doggie, with that title added to the portrait; and Cupid drawing a chariot drawn by a butterfly.

Liu Bolin, a contemporary Chinese artist known as the invisible man, stood next to him. Drawing on my intuitive genius, I am able to sense his presence although I only see desert sand and dark sky. Perhaps that is a moon and star, or he might have drawn these celestial bodies over his eye orbs.

Our word “draw” comes from the

Old English

root that means “to drag.” Not a drag, more like a drag race, I am drawn, drug, moved continuously toward a force, up and out. I hear myself begging: “Draw me.” But who is there to hear? Who is there to draw, to drag, to drug?

Another friend draws nigh, into my mind’s eye. Ah, it is M. C. Escher. He holds in his hands my favorite drawing, drawn in 1948, “Drawing Hands.” In

this image one hand is what the other is doing. Does he hold the drawing, or does the drawing draw him, trompe l’oeil travesty?

Perhaps it is all merely harmless, drawn out of all proportion, overdramatically drawn. Perhaps it is beyond the telling.

But I know this: Drawing a blank is not impotence.

It is, rather, the full spaciousness of the ever possible, dimensional beyond drawing. It is the white of all lights and the black of all pigments. It is the waiting canvas, drawing the impossible with ease.

Before the season of jolly being, there is the draw of pondering, the drawing near of animal breath and starry skies, the drawing nigh of sheep and heaps of unwashed men who watch them. And drawn, too, are wise kings and things beyond telling.

What is more drawn blank than a baby mind, needing no unlearning? And what better to draw than the water of wonder or the wine of drawn boundaries erased? 

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all those who care to read. Our Rx ma y be wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but emanating fr om within this shado w is hope that readers will feel free to respond. Who k nows: You may even inspire the muse. Make contact if you dare.