Il libro bianco

If you have spoken to me several times, and if we had happened to discuss writing, drawing, painting and art you would have heard me speak about the fear of the white canvas, and the white paper. I take pride in taking ownership of that fear, of perhaps mastering it so much that it has become one of my powers. 

My fear of white canvases and empty screens is now my power. I have mastered it. 

You enter my room, it is all white. White curtains, and white sheets signal new beginnings every day, and emptiness the nights that follow. My relationship to white has always been troubled. 

If you have known me, and had the chance to see one of my journals you will also realise that none of them are white. I always write on beige paper avoiding the perpetual whiteness that is there. The lines have to always be there, they ground me.

Let there always be lines. 

I have journals filled with writings and notes from the early age of 10. In Sharjah, Dubai, London, Venice and Rome. I have journal entries with coffee stains in Paris, and one I remember writing on a pavement in brussels. 

I have scribbled a lot but on lined papers hidden together in secret journals that I take everywhere with me only to keep under my pillow at night.

I write in my journals and look at the white screen everyday. 

I counted the words I have written in my journal so far, ( 1, 2, 3, 10, 100, 5040), and appreciated every letter I had to count with my pencil and my mouth, oh the pleasure and the plight of the ol' fashioned ways. 

I decided I will publish some of my writings in Italy, and some others about my time in Iraq. Perhaps also write a little about my natural move back to the capital of the only home I have known. I decided I will spend the next months or so, resisting my fear rather than combating it once and for all. 

resist temptation mari(y)am, don't kill it.