The virtues of an empty canvas ~ Malinda Words

What are the essential ‘carry-ons’ when it comes to traveling? Many answers to that question. ‘Nothing,’ is one. ‘The bare minimum’ is another. It could be responded to with demand for a qualifier: depends on where you are going, for what and how long. A legitimate response.

Let’s narrow it down. It’s a holiday, let’s say. Even then we need to know where to and for how long. If you want to travel abroad and plan to stay away for a week, a month or longer, what you need to take with you could be very different from what could be called essential if it was a one-day or two-night trip to the Knuckles. The mode of transportation makes a difference. The kind of place you plan to spend the night at makes a difference.

And the kind of person you are makes a difference.

So far we are thinking of material things; clothes, toothbrush and other toiletries, a laptop, mobile phone, a camera perhaps, books, files and other stationary, food, water etc. We take such things in lesser or greater amounts. Some travel light. Some do not, even if it is a day-trip and doesn’t involve traveling a great distance.

I’m thinking of non-material things that we carry when we travel. For example, expectations. It can take the form of a list of things to do or places to visit. Sometimes it is more like a must-do list. Some travel but take with them the baggage of all the worries they have, even if the intention is to get away from them. Some pick up anxieties along the way.

Some leave the clutter behind. They travel light. It is as though they have opted to carry a blank piece of paper, an empty canvas.

The truth is that everyone carries a canvas when traveling. Some of these canvases have maps drawn on them. Some have lists. Then there are canvases that are already painted with images of things anticipated — not the sensations, but the places or the ‘things-to-do.’ When this happens, the space available for colouring diminishes. The journey, if at all, will only get imprinted in the spaces remaining on the canvas or its colours will merge with those that are already there.

It is a color problem in a way, or rather a problem of carrying and using colouring instruments. When you have them, you feel compelled to use them. If you don’t, and that’s perhaps the ideal situation, then that which is seen, heard, tasted, touched and breathed has the opportunity to combine in delightful ways to narrate upon canvas the most remarkable elements of the journey.

Journeys are often anticipated with relish and one might say this is inevitable or that it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is not easy to discard the mind’s clutter. And so we travel from A to B, be in 10 miles or a 100, blind to the magic that may await gaze and therefore pause and delight along the way. The canvas just doesn’t have space because the A and the B are gigantic icons painted with bold strokes using a broad brush.

Of course this does not mean that the journey will not be memorable. A and B could arguably have their own charm and stamp this over whatever one paints on the canvas or whatever overcomes impediments of color and line to occupy some space on it, marginal perhaps, unconnected in all probability, but evident enough to fuel nostalgia. And yet, it seems a poor harvest in relation to what was anticipated or, more correctly, what fertile soils, adequate moisture and abundant sunlight promised.

There’s color waiting to be gathered — wind, sunlight, random conversation, byroads and other uncharted things. There are invisible brushes that dip of their own accord into this amazing palette and make play on a canvas in ways we have not imagined were possible. They can pick one color and write down a story that had never been written. They can mix and match. They know that white is also a color that gives breathing space to the story and leaves the reader breathless. An empty canvas is easily turned into a chest which can be filled with unimaginable treasures.

It is good to travel light. It is good not to carry anything at all. An empty canvas has no weight but upon it perspectives can get transcribed. When this happens, we return home with rich metaphors elegantly arranged, but however voluminous the harvest of the journey we carry not one extra ounce. Indeed our burdens are somehow made to feel lighter.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 282th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

04 December 2023

The virtues of an empty canvas

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