Windows of Opportunity

I’ve always been fond of the phrase, “windows of opportunity.” But, now that I think of it, I’ve never meant it the way most people do.

When I picture windows of opportunity, I picture a home. No matter how down and out I’ve been, my homes (even when said home was a 90-something Grand Am back in my early twenties) always have more than one window. But the true home of a person is in the heart. The mind is its rooms. And after trying very hard for a long time to not dwell in mine, I find it is a vast mansion with innumerable rooms and infinite windows. These windows are opportunities, places of clarity where our hearts transmit signals out into the vast Universe to beckon to the things we want and need and where the Universe shines beacons to let us know It hears and blessings to answer us back. And in the house within our hearts, we can have as few or as many windows as we like. We can have all, some or none of them open. Opportunities can come in of their own accords or be raked in by some divine or diabolical wind. And sometimes the things that seem divine at first turn out not to be so much, while the things that appeared dark at the first hold the most pleasant of blessings at the last.

I was at Artists & Craftsman Supply picking up a new pencil and sketchpad a couple of days ago when a window of opportunity opened before my eyes. A teenage girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, with who I presumed were her parents came into the pencil aisle. They were on the hunt for a pencil for the girl, it seemed. A single pencil. I felt a gentle breeze within me—a window opening—and stepped back to observe, disguising my observation in deepest deliberation (or indecision) of my own choice in drawing utensil.

In the aisle, there are cuts of thick, rough paper (perhaps of the watercolor variety) affixed to the shelves at about four to five feet from the ground. You can use these to test the pencils to see how they mark.

“Go on, try them out,” the woman tells the girl enthusiastically.

The girl requires a bit more encouragement, however, before she even takes one of the many pencils into her hands. After another shot of encouragement, she makes a mark—lightly—on the sample paper. But doesn’t like the pencil.

“What don’t you like about it?” the woman asks. “Is it the weight of the pencil, the lead, the paper?”

The girl shrugs, says it’s something about the way the pencil feels, maybe. Maybe the way the pencil grabs the paper. After a few such fragments of explanation, she resigns to another shrug.

I couldn’t blame her. I don’t think in words by default myself—mostly images and sounds. The only time I think in language is when I’m writing, and it’s often difficult for Writer Self to translate into words Artist Self.

The woman, boiling over with enthusiasm and meaning quite well, launches a barrage of questions at the girl. The girl, in turn, had little in the way of answers.

I couldn’t blame the girl. While I watched the exchange play out, I remembered myself at her age. “How can they expect her to choose just one pencil?” he self asks.

“They’re parents,” I respond. “They see children as the futures of worlds and teenagers as the past tense of themselves.”

(My teenaged self falls silent after this but gives the harshest side-eye to the clear paradox here: I’m no parent, but I see the past tense of myself in this girl. Good thing for him, I’m not so black-and-white.)

Finally, the girl and her parents move on to the next aisle to peruse watercolor pencils, the decision of THE pencil left unmade. “I want to get you some of these,” the woman tells the girl. “They react with water and you can use them to….”

When most people speak of windows of opportunity, they are talking about a finite moment where one might do something or where something might happen. Like the moving platforms in a Super Mario Brothers game aligning just right or like a genius grasping a spark before it catches fire.  And people seem to think of this window as inherently limited: They speak of A window of opportunity—in the singular—and as though once the window is gone, it’s gone forever.

It’s a limited way of looking at things, really. And such a happiness-killer.

I’m not sure what the family’s plan was for returning to the decision of THE pencil. Or if there even was one. I remember myself at that age, with little understanding, much less support for my artistic expression. The only way I would have been able to choose a single pencil and know it was the right one was if I drew it from a magical stone with a placard that read, “Excalibur” beside it. And I would have needed some assurance it was actually meant for me and not someone else. But the fact of the matter, I now know, is that we want different tools depending on our moods and modes. My Writer Self would erase every word he lays down if I allowed him to chronicle in pencil, so it’s strictly ink and computer, eyes off the screen for the first draft. Period. Back in my teens, I was always too scared of laying down marks that were too dark to take back when I drew. It was one of the reasons I hated drawing with charcoal back then. That and the fucking mess. So I wanted hard graphite that made the lightest marks, and I sketched as softly as a soul. But that isn’t how one makes art that feels, which is what my Artist Selves do. And one thing they do not feel is fear. We like to sketch on smooth paper and to mark lightly or darkly as the work demands to express its feeling. We love to use charcoal, because it burns in things in ways you can’t take back. And because of the fucking mess.  

I know these things, however, from years of experimentation. Trial and error. Of not choosing THE pencil but A pencil. Or, better still, ALL THE PENCILS. I may be limited by knowledge or cash at times, but these can always be expanded. The important thing, especially when you’re just starting at any craft, is just to try different things. You do that by giving yourself access to the broadest array of choices possible. And trying as many as you can.

Plucking pencils at random and testing them by making uninspired marks on rough paper (particularly if you don’t enjoy textured or toothy paper) set horizontally at about the level of your collarbone all while some queer-looking stranger observes—you probably will not choose THE pencil. Your chances of winning the Hunger Games with just a toothbrush and a Groupon for a single Crossfit class are probably better, in fact. Expecting ourselves to choose THE pencil—or THE pen, THE brush, or THE chicken plate, or career, or whatever—is some deep and unnecessary pressure, lovers. It’s falling for the marketing of How to be a Grown-Ass Adult. It’s buying into the idea that having, doing and being the best are the only things that matter. And the problem with that is that we often arrive at the best by sheer experiment or by refining “good” to be “better” and “better” to be better still. When we develop tunnel vision around “the best,” we lose sight of any number of possibilities—opportunities—that could serve perfectly well or even better, especially were circumstances to change.

The kind of pencil you want, you see, depends upon what you’re drawing and what you’re drawing it on. And a sword can do only so much in the face of sorcery.

But if you focus only on finding your Excalibur, you may miss out on all the other opportunities life has in store.

So, after the girl and her parents left the aisle, a stranger leaped through a window of opportunity. He picked up one of the tins of pencils with assorted graphite grades for drawing and shading. And then he thought, “Well, what good are pencils without paper?”

The girl had said she didn’t like the way the lead had grabbed the coarse sample paper.

“It’s the other way around, isn’t it?” my child self asked.

It is. But people draw with the pencil, so we tend to see it as part of the active thing. We often miss the opportunities in paper.

These days, we doodle in a 11” x 14” hardbound Canson book with booty-smooth paper.

“Let’s get her one of those, too,” the stranger decided.

After he finished paying for everything, he separated his purchases into two stacks. He took the small sketchpad, pencil, and kneaded eraser. But the hardbound booty-smooth Canson and the tin of assorted pencils, he sat aside and asked the lady behind the counter if she would do him a strange favor…

In hindsight, he wishes he would have left a note along with he book and the tin of pencils for the girl. It would have told her to keep creating. And to smile more. And to never limit herself. No matter what. He wishes he would have told her that Excalibur—THE pencil—is a trap like perfectionism, that all the pencils will do at some point in time as the projects change, the papers change, the feelings change, and she, in turn, changes… But, right now, A pencil is all she needs. It’s a start. It’s the start of everything.

But it’s good that the stranger didn’t leave that note. Our brains are hardwired to seek meaning, you see—our circuits seek the Source code behind everything. And yet, to know all things, to have all things explained, vexes us. It makes us feel caged, locked in, anxious. This is because it removes the possibilities—it kills opportunity. Creativity transforms us when it allows us to make our own meanings, when we realize the lead is the gold, that the dancer is the dance, that words, once spoken, cannot be taken back. It’s the stuff of magic, lovers. It is what elevates creativity to sorcery.

Besides, had he satisfied the urge to explain all of this to the girl at the store, the stranger may not have had the urge to write it all down. And then he would have missed the opportunity to make more meaning—to share this with you.

And, because it is impossible to say without inciting at least a chuckle in even the dankest of souls:

Booty-smooth.

Booty-smooth, booty-smooth, booty-smooth.

You are most welcome.