This week I tried to spend some quality time with my journal. I added page numbers. That actually surprised me. If you would have asked me to guess, I would have thought the book was much thinner. As soon as I has a page count (183), my mind began whirring, doing the math to see how many pages I would have to do a week to complete the book by the end of this book group. The number I came up with is 22.875. Which is so not going to happen. The fun of working on the journal will continue for me well after the group moves on to it's next book.
I'm enjoying the process and not worrying about how many pages I have to show a week. That is very unlike me. I'm a very results oriented person.
Several pages were started this week but not a lot was accomplished. That's okay. Right now, I'm setting aside materials for my page of circles, office materials page, and fruit stickers page.
Last night, I was in the kitchen going through the paper recycling basket for possible office material options. I had just finished making a pile of goodies, when Sweets came in from work, picked up this pile that looked like, uh, trash, and threw it right back in the recycling. So this book has turned me into a garbage pail rummager already.
I came across a good place to find fruit stickers but had no where to put them. Opening up my cell phone, I stuck them on the little plastic piece that covers the screen. Sweets always makes fun of me for keeping it on the phone. Ha! Now I've discovered a very important use for it -fruit sticker transporter. I'm going to be all bad ass and include vegetable stickers, too. It was also all so very clandestine and subversive the way I nicked the stickers. I felt very naughty and exhilerated at once. See what a rule breaker I am becoming already!
The page for crumpling was crumpled. I dropped it to the floor and it bounced a little. The paper airplane page took a very short, sad little flight, I think it was too heavy in the front. Sweets thought the paper was a bad weight for plane flying.
The page I've worked on most is the write the same word over and over page. It's coming along nicely. I convinced one of our vintage typewriters to faintly type the word. After beginning to feel an exasperated "what next?" as the page still looked too white, I looked up morse code and braille for my word choice. I considered using it in other languages but I think I prefer the challenge of using all the same letters. The dots and dashes of the morse code and braille aren't a distraction because they aren't letters. I did use the tip of a ball point pen to push the braille letters up from the back. I like the way they feel under my finger. One surprising thing about that. I am a lefty but used my right had to "read" the braille. I wonder if tapping in to different sensory experiences reroutes some of your physical patterns. My friend, Anne Marie, is visually impaired, I will ask her about is when I see her next. I'd also like to give her the book to find out if my braille letters are legible to her. I don't feel like the page is done, so I'm not going to show it this week. I think it needs color. I think I need to make a bit of a mess.
Perhaps the biggest news this week is... wait for it ... I broke the spine. Carrying it in my bag now, I found the urge to grab it while I was at the gas station. To me, the gas station is a nasty place. I hate the way it smells. It drives me crazy that we are reliant on it. So in a place that makes me feel yucky already, I did a yucky thing. I took the book out, opened it toward the center and just folded it back and around. For a few moments, I pressed it to my chest, partially to encourage the spine to break and partially to console the book over the shock." I thought we were friends," I imagine it looking up at me with wide, wet eyes. But really, I think I was the one who needed the consolation.
The crack isn't really visible but when I run my finger along the spine, I can feel it. It's a scar that won't ever go away like the one on my knee after falling off my grandparent's shed steps. It will always be there to remind me of the past when I absentmindedly run my fingers over it.
For more shocking wreckage and inappropriate use of fruit stickers, check in with the rest of theWreck This Journal group's week two progress.
