Drawing on the shower door

Call it a compulsion. Like Neanderthals etching their memoirs on a cave wall. Well, maybe it’s not like that. But my impulse to draw on the shower door feels primal, like an itch. It’s there so I scratch. I draw and doodle the most simple forms: waves, circles, tulips or hearts. On some level it feels rebellious. Maybe because as kids we got in trouble for writing on the foggy school bus windows: “Jana smells” or “I ♥ X” which was code for “I love Chris”.

This morning I tried to write out Roman Numerals on the glass shower door, just to see how far I could get: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII …I got stuck at 9. Then remembered to start subtracting: IX (10 minus 1) not VIIII (5 plus 4). How juvenile, I thought to myself. But then it turned into a fun quiz once I remembered the pattern. I wrote XXVII and XIX and XXXVIII. I don’t know about you, but I feel guilty doing math in the shower. Here I am, going back in time like an ancient scholar writing an outline for a scroll while the hot water carelessly goes down the drain.

And I can’t help but think that while we do these doodles all the time, rarely do we appreciate our urge and our ability to create something from nothing. Whether you’re a Neandethal or scholar or Buddhist sitting on a rock next to a waterfall drawing a lotus flower on a piece of rice paper.