A Blank Slip of Paper

Normally, my dreams are meaningless and crazy.  Not entirely so a recent dream I had.

In this dream, I found myself in a spacious room conversing with two students of architecture.  The two students were in something of a debate about the best approach to the process of design.  One of the students, a young man with long blonde hair in a ponytail, remarked: “I like a blank sheet of paper in front of me at the start of a project.  I begin by just staring at it.”

Oddly enough (here is where we launch into a more Mitch-like dream sequence) the other student, a tall young women with exceptionally short hair, started sliding all around the room inside what I can only describe as a spiral loop of pipe.

“I never begin with a blank slip of paper!” the woman loudly proclaimed as she slid past us. 

Before I or the other student could respond, I snapped awake from the dream.

For a long time a lay in my bed, puzzled by what the young woman had said.

What did she mean?

If not a blank sheet of paper…what?

After considering a few angles on what she meant, I decided she meant that all ventures, big and small, begin with more than empty space or blank slips of paper.  Rather, the space for creating things is filled with all the bits and pieces of what we admire, appreciate, or find beautiful and inspiring.  We begin with skills and ideas we have learned from others.  We begin with all that appeals to us.  Really, we start with the entirety of our knowledge at that point in our life.

That is no blank slip of paper.

—Mitchell Hegman