Ghost Page

My fountain pen ink bleeds through my Morning Pages, sheets of re-used office paper because I'm frugal like that. Lately, I keep a sheet of cardstock beneath the current page and it now bears a ghost of all those Morning Pages.

This delights me.

It looks like indecipherable code, the work of infinite monkeys, or a mysterious masterpiece page of boiled-down, concentrated thoughts from hundreds of pages. Unlike a written page, it is open to interpretation and incapable of direct meaning. Like a Rothko. Kind of like a Georgia O'Keefe. Understanding is elusive, so, I set aside trying to understand and sink into a primal sense of delight, wonder, maybe acceptance. I dream into the cardstock's ghostly image, my mind making connections as it pleases rather than trying to reach some destination.

The cardstock then becomes a metaphor for writing: I choose a direction and let the pen lead the way. My mind wanders on and off the path like a dog off the leash. The creative product is often as surprising and difficult to comprehend as the cardstock's drops of ink absorbed through all the pages that have come before.

I haven't decided if the cardstock is art. My first thought is that it's a byproduct with no creative thought going into it, but the more I consider it, the less sure I become. I love how it looks and how it is "created" three Morning Pages a day over weeks and months. I'll keep considering it, making metaphors of it, maybe finding enough meaning in that to consider it art. Regardless, I'll keep writing and enjoying all the aftereffects of that.