I just finished reading a novel called Crossroads by Nancy Moser. It's about a woman named Madeline who makes a decision as a little girl to always live in the small town of Weaver, Kansas. But as she grows up, and people to go war, and businesses start to move out of town to survive, and others start to move to be near family, she sees the only life she ever imagined slipping away from her—so she buys up the entire town and gives it away to people she thinks would be a good fit for the community. The plot goes deeper than that, but I want to talk about one specific scene in the book that made me think.
About a third of the way into the book, a 16 year-old character named Ryan, is struggling to gain perspective. His family has just moved to Weaver to start over after the tragic death (in a car accident) of his sister Lisa. Ryan is a Christian, but he's angry with God, and he's not so sure that he wants the people of Weaver to even know that he's a Christian. In this particular scene, Ryan is staring out his bedroom window and contemplating what to do next.
Here are his thoughts: "This life in Weaver was a blank, empty page. Yet, maybe blank was better than the past pages that were full of scrawls, scribbles, and cross outs. Pages ripped and bent. Yellowed. Water stained. Blank was better than that. The trouble was, he had no idea how to fill the page…"
Blank pages have always appealed to me too. And the thought of filling them with imperfections has always bugged me. I've always been the type of person who only records ideas, and concepts, and plans once I've thought them all the way through. No need for cross outs. In fact, they are ugly and somehow I've always considered them to be the evidence of a cluttered mind. Ironically, in a different context, earlier in the book, Madeline says the same thing, "Strikeouts and messiness on the page indicate strikeouts and messiness in a life."
I'm not sure what changed my mind lately—maybe it's been my willingness to accept the fact that life is messy—but I find myself writing lists, and thoughts, and brainstorming work projects (all in my trusty moleskine notebook) with little regard for perfection or even completion. In a sense, I've given myself permission to record my jumbled thoughts and in the process I'm recording a history of my decision-making process—cross outs and all—which is quite satisfying to look back upon to see how they eventually all came together.
