There is, I think, a certain hypnotic quality to a fresh word pad document. The white emptiness is like a rural field after a blizzard, a blank and white brightness that hasn't been crossed or touched. It's cold and clean, pristine, at least until the warmth of the sun and strangers who have places to go turn it to churn and mud. It's the closest thing this world can get to purity, the proof in cold powder that then freezes and refreezes into hardness and ice as days come and then go in that rare alone.
Even after that, the untouched volumes persist in puzzling patches, and as spring draws ever nearer and the white gives way there's still this haunting notion that for a time acres still lifeless and undisturbed exist even though the trees bloom anew and birdsong breaks through the soft voice of the wind and it's counterpoint of long shadows and silence holds a fragile wall against invading change.
I think also though, that just so, it amounts to about as much nothing as it shows to the world, for the cruel masters of time, space and energy demand that all things must change. Just as the snow fell and ruled that faraway field for a time, dazzled those who dare not tread the depths of it, blue skies and warm days must take it back and before you know it you're bowing before wild flowers and rippling grass.
Everyone knows the fifty two. It's that jerk riding the unicycle that always surprises you. Some nights he's on the ceiling laughing and the world is spinning, though I suppose I deserve that. The rest is up to you.