Author Information
Creative block
I wake up. I look at the alarm clock on my nightstand. It’s early. I stand up and open a window. I see the sun already shining, feel its warmth on my face, smell the fresh morning air, and hear the birds singing. I brew some coffee and taste its rich and yet well-balanced flavor. I take out a piece of paper and a pencil and sit at my desk. I think about what I’m going to write, and once I get an idea that seems worthwhile I try to pick up the pencil, but my hand goes right through it. I try with my other hand and the same thing happens. It seems like my otherwise solid hands have suddenly sublimated into a gas. I go to the thermostat to lower the room’s temperature. I hit the downwards-arrow-shaped button with my elbow until my hands turn into a cohesive liquid and then into an ice-like solid. I go back to my desk and try to pick up the pencil; however, I can’t move my fingers and the task becomes impossible. I angrily bang my hands into the desk and they break into a million pieces. Literally and figuratively broken, I sink into the chair, throw my head back, close my eyes, and meditate about what has just happened. After a while, I put myself together, only figuratively now, and see that my broken hands have melted again and the piece of paper is now soaking wet. Suddenly, I get an idea. I take out an old watercolor paint kit with my mouth, go back to my desk and start painting. I move the paintbrush around, filling the paper with color with every stroke, until it suddenly catches on fire. I drop the brush and look towards the window. I see my faint reflection on the glass. It seems like my whole head has caught on fire. I look back towards the desk and realize that the piece of paper has caught on fire as well. I try to cease the fire but the piece of paper blows away after a gush of wind comes into the room. I stand up, and run towards it, but a shift of gravity prevents me from doing so. Everything starts floating around and I swim through the air towards the piece of paper, attempting to catch it. It leaves the room, then the house. Gravity seems to be at Earth’s normal nine-point-eight meters over squared seconds for everyone and everything else outside home, but not for me, not for the burning piece of paper. I get weird looks from the people around me. Some of them point at me and yell things like “what the bleep” and “the bleep is going on”. I keep following the piece of paper until we get into a warehouse. The piece of paper stops; I stop. The water from the paper is finally evaporated and the paper turns into ashes. I go back to my feet and my hands return to normal. This was all for nothing. Suddenly, the boxes around me start exploding and I get drowned in tiny pieces of paper, perhaps from books or notebooks; some of them are blank, some of them have full words, half words, full pictures, half pictures. Some make sense on their own, but most don’t. I take a few of them in my hands and look at the whole of it. It makes perfect sense now. This is just what I needed. Then I wake up. This time for real. Or perhaps I’m still dreaming. One can never be too sure. I look at the alarm clock on my nightstand. It’s early. I stand up and open a window. I see the sun already shining, feel its warmth on my face, smell the fresh morning air, and hear the birds singing. I brew some coffee and taste its rich and yet well-balanced flavor. I take out a piece of paper and a pencil and sit at my desk. I don’t write, or draw, or paint or anything frivolous like that. I create.
