3.

There is something of my faith in the blank page, such that it isn’t belief — as perhaps many might understand it — so much as an incredulity concerning that which is added. It really is more like doubt, or perhaps scepticism.

I might’ve enjoyed your soup just fine — I take no issue at all with the hot water part. But let me stay with the blank page a minute: It is part of my art to imagine myself an unblanker of them: I like to decorate, I like to write, I like to experiment with marks & media. A memory may arise, get added: cleaning the old enamel cooker top, losing my patience with some cooked on goo, going at it with the scouring pad: I get rid of the crust but I scratch the enamel. It makes me sad — there is no going back — this old thing will keep deteriorating until it is useless & with this mark I have basically inscribed this fact, drawn myself a picture of it to look at every time I cook.

There seems little doubt about this mark. Perhaps because the adding is in part a taking away? More likely because it already accords with certain beliefs I have concerning Reality — common ones induced by common experiences: what is done is done & any form of undoing must begin by accepting this.

Might end otherwise, mind.

The smile in that sentence is a sign of my faith. It is these kinds of marks that I find most convincing. More convincing than any logic, you understand? Quite beyond reason. Yet subtle enough. Not idiotic. You could reason about it, just I would only find it convincing if it had that smile, if it was able to lay its hand on me in a certain way. It’s reassuring, but only really because it neither is nor is not reassuring. It’s true. Somehow the page is still blank. The smile was already on it.