Drawing a blank - #129

Everything's an origin story.

Somewhere in my mind, it had been decided long ago that the origin of drawing a blank was artistic. It meant sitting down to create art only to find nothing appeared on the page. You had drawn nothing. You had drawn a blank.

That is not the origin, though, as far as we can claim to know the origin of things. If the copy and paste of internet sites is to be believed, the phrase originates from Tudor England and Queen Elizabeth I's lottery, established in 1567. The lottery was drawn from two lots: one of names and one of prizes. A name was drawn and simultaneously, a prize was drawn. Except some of the prize slips were blank. You won nothing. It was a lottery after all. So you drew a blank and came away empty handed. (Decidedly different from blank slate or tabula rasa which is more of a beginning state than an end one.)

• Run out of steam, exactly as you’d think: steam engines. The fire’s burning too low and there’s not enough steam to power the engine. 

• Tapped out, now here I thought this would be related to boxing, but tapped out is apparently 1940s slang for being broke and came from the idea of ‘tapping’ all your acquaintances for loans. 

• The well’s run dry is thankfully as obvious as it seems, assumed to have entered idiom status after Benjamin Franklin used it in Poor Richard's Almanack in 1757. 

• Hitting a wall comes from cycling.

• Burnt out, of course, obvious: that which cannot be lit again. 

You can likely see where I am going with this, and I presume, if you’ve been reading, where things have been going for a minute. The fire is flickering, the loans have been lended, the water has been used, the cycling has cycled, and my name was drawn prize-less. 

Newsletter’s origin (I think we can all take a guess here) is someone writing a letter with news. It is not in fact a weekly mandate for information and entertainment, despite what my self-inflicted never-ending deadline would have me believe. And I’ve got no news. I’ve got no news! The snow is melting, the house is standing, the season is offing, the animals are snuggling, and the sun keeps rising. 

The snow is melting, yes. It melted entirely from the roof, leaving bare the vent pipe that snapped in half last year under the weight of ice and snow, still very much snapped in half. The chimney cap that went missing after one particularly bad storm is indeed still missing. It can’t have gone farther than the rain barrel went last summer so maybe we’ll find the cap at the arborist’s. That’s where the rain barrel went, following wind and duty. Maybe we’ll find it when the snow melts.

Other things appear under the melted snow: a shoe, a dog toy, bits of plastic and old screws, a chopped log stolen from someone’s wood pile by someone else’s strong-jawed dog. But also, grass, somehow already green amongst the black and dead stalks of mint that somehow always come back to life stronger-willed and deeper-rooted. The stone paths, rerouted and upended by industrious ground dwellers. And then, always, with each layer of melting snow, shit. 

Dog shits of every size and quality. And as they appear, we collect them, lest they collect on us under boot like an ink stamp. These ones are Bob’s dogs, these ones belong to Dash, this one is surely Lily’s, and with the faintest and strangest of longings, this one had to have been Cooper’s, resting frozen under the season’s first snow. In the tin they all go, various dumps headed to the dump. 

The house is standing, so far. We didn’t replace the doors and windows, so the wind winded its way through the floorboards every storm, but we minded our business instead of it. And sure, without the chimney top, things land in the ash below, but we have to mind the entire chimney soon enough. The snow hasn’t given away all her secrets yet anyway. 

Other things are landing, like subfloors and flooring, three years of an unused room finally getting use. And used it will be when it’s really set up, when it’s heated and sealed and primed and painted two weeks from now. 

The season is offing, still. Driveways are empty and the dust awaits its turning. School is still closed and businesses even longer. Only one coffee shop remains open in town and it’s the one that only opened in December. “Excuse me, can I ask where you got that coffee?” some five people can and have asked. Parking is abundant and trails are still muddy. 

The animals are snuggling, of course. Jibs came bursting into the bathroom as I prepared for a bath, and for a moment, he was Cooper and I was six months younger. I cried and I cried and I picked slender Jibs up into my arms and held him for the memory until I felt fur on my ankles and saw a Link. Link with the growth, Link with the mystery, Link with the insatiable curiosity for the bath. I put down my dog and picked up my cat and then put down my cat and picked myself up and over the edge of the clawfoot tub. The two of them sat on the hide on the floor, watching as I sunk into the water, paw to paw. 

The sun keeps rising, and so do I. And by rising I mean rolling onto my hands and knees and lifting myself belly down from the bed. The baby is ready. Babies born after 34 weeks have the same long-term health outcomes as babies born at full term. I am 34 weeks and he is 36, which is why I’m drawing a blank, out of steam, tapped out, run dry, and hitting a wall  — because I am the fire, I am the bank account, I am the well. 

Outside has the look of a used paper bag, of rested oatmeal, of grime on the windshield, of dirt baked in. So do I. We are both enduring, with no news to report, waiting for the bloom to begin.