Unclogged colors

Absence of Color

White-washed on Sunday
Dripping black asphalt on Monday
Where has the color gone?
Salt comes in white and icy blue
Trees are a spidery dark gray
Against a porcelain periwinkle sky
Dark clothes, dark boots, dark hair
Only my skin grows paler with the snow
One street on my walk
interrupts the spectrum of grays
with yellow and orange paintings of citrus fruits
Painted thickly on road-black
Pointing me on my way here.

-Written during a creative writing workshop offered by Amy Shea at Somerville Public Library

Given a prompt to write a poem that includes color, I racked my brain for any inspiration, but seemed stuck on just the white, blue, gray that surrounds one in a New England winter. I couldn't dig up the yellows, oranges, and purples that I saw on Willoughby Street until I wrote a few lines of white, gray, blue; almost as if I were unclogging those colors from my consciousness, freeing space for recollection of the bright anomalies I had encountered. Interesting that monotony takes over your brain sometimes; you would think that unusual occurrences would stick with you better.

This is the second instance in which I've actively shredded writer's block by just starting writing. The first sentence of my last post declared I had nothing to write about. Three paragraphs later I had proven myself a liar. In that spirit, I have decided to set a daily writing goal: one blog post per day. No matter what. Even if there's nothing to write about.

Apologies in advance if this little experiment results in some tedious prose; but all experts, as well as my conscience, say that this is a good thing. Of course, right? Practice, practice, practice. This is my new goal.

Window

On those days when you sit down, want to write, and can't. What do you do?

Take a picture of the blue winter sky through the dirty library window.

On a relatively nondescript winter Monday morning, the world under the new blanket of a four-inch snow, it's hard to get your brain moving.

Groggily, we arrived at the GMC dealership this morning, promptly at 8 a.m., car barely making it there, on its last gasps of engine life. Anthony Car-guy brusquely typed things into his computer, then blandly told us that we'll hear from them in two to three hours with a diagnosis. There's no question they can answer till then. Can't talk about how crazy this car is acting, unable to advance six feet before the engine powers down and chugs like a coal-fired locomotive. No commiseration about how much it sucks to get your car fixed in this weather. Just business. People in, people out.

The Enterprise guy shows up and shepherds four of us carless invalids into a tiny Renegade, squished, inside which the heat is on full blast. On the five-minute drive, no one utters a word. No one even breathes audibly, except maybe pregnant, congested me.

We shuffle into the rental office where three yawning employees step up to the counter to robotically type things into their computers about us. No one ventures a joke or a comment about the weather, and god-forbid anyone mention the Patriots loss yesterday. After signing things, we shuffle outside to a little red matchbox car crusted with snow. The svelte employee half-heartedly scrapes off the front windshield, but not the back one, I initial a paper again, and we get into the our toy car, grumbling while adjusting seats, but thankful at least that this is a vehicle that can safely get us from point A to point B. After a few wrong turns on the way to Santosh's work, resulting in 10 extra minutes sitting in traffic, we are on our way to starting our week.

Perhaps it's the snow, the settling realization that we are sort of going to have a winter this year after weeks of denial spurred by the traumatic reverberations of last year's snowpocalypse. Perhaps it's because we lost the AFC championship game yesterday, and we're in mourning, in disbelief that we don't always get to win Superbowls. Perhaps it's just how all Mondays are, and I don't notice it normally. But it feels like a numb world today. I feel numb too. Out this window, I see the white and gray and blue of the city in winter, sparkling, geometric. The streaks of condensation and grime on the window pane fuzzy up the view, clouding its beauty. Or perhaps it is speaking the truth about the whole scene that its distant quaintness belies. Nothing to see here; just the same old day in the same old city. What is there to be inspired about? Today is for getting cars fixed, sitting in traffic, signing your name on carbon copy paper, not speaking to much, and listening to the crunch of salt crystals under your boots in the parking lot.