Paper Procreation

Creative endeavor often begins with paper. The novelist, playwright, and poet; the composer; the painter and sculptor---each commence with a blank sheet of paper. During Covid confinement, I also turned to paper for inspiration, seeking to metaphorically portray it spawning and nurturing creation, from ovulation and gestation to birth and fully formed progeny. In the process, I experienced how paper has a life force of its own—its own particular physics—that resists manipulation, even as it remains malleable. Paper reams and splayed books insist on unfurling in their own way, and crumpled wads of paper insist on their own projectile designs—more complex than one could ever engineer.