A picture landed on my journal and I tasked myself to write something about it. The problem: it was just a full frame coloured with a beige tone. Nothing else.
I felt challenged. What is this thing? It could be anything, there’s no information apart from the colour.
I kept looking at it, writing a few sentences. Only to erase it all in disgust.
Boring. Stupid. Stupid and boring.
Then the block hit.
The girls woke up and I skipped breakfast with them. That was a first.
“I have to do this, I’ll join you in five” I apologetically told them after having at least wished a good morning.
Thirty minutes later I was still staring at it. Nothing.
Frustrated, I was nearly ready to give up when my wife entered the room. Or worse, I would have kept trying putting aside everything else. I could be quite… intense sometimes.
“What’s up? Are you OK? We were waiting for you, your daughter called you fifty hundred million times!” my wife asked me, concerned about my odd behaviour.
“It’s this image, I have nothing to write about it. It’s pissing me off” I replied, looking at her and giving her a reassuring kiss.
“You’ll figure it out, there’s a story about not having a story. Most lives are like that if you think about it.” she said, while leaving me to my thing, showing full support.
My focus was now on her words. She was right!
So I wrote:
“This could be anything, or nothing. It’s all about perception anyway. I choose to see a beach. The beige is sand and sunbeds and the white buildings that in the early morning take that tone. It’s very peaceful, the sunbeds are closed and on their side so that they wouldn’t be soaking wet in case of rain. The sand is clean and cold. The palm trees wave at me. I smile back. Today is going to be a good day. The day my baby boy will see the sea for the first time and one of the hopefully many days I will see my baby boy doing something for the first time.”