addiction

We cleaned our apartment today.  It was a monumental event, especially since I can't remember the last time we cleaned it.  Or rather, the last time I cleaned it.  (Thank you honey.)

It was today that I realized I have a serious problem.  It began to spiral out of control when our local library closed for renovations.  The next closest one was tiny and junky and had terrible hours.  So I began trolling the internet for cheap books to get my fiction fix.  I stalked amazon booksellers and bought stacks of books from them.  Then I got an ad in my inbox:  get 5 books for $20!  Days were spent drooling, scrolling through amazon wish lists and databases, reading reviews, deleting and re-adding.  I negotiated with my inner accountant, and came up with an agreeable bargain.  And last night I got a package of a lot of books.  My shame prevents me from admitting how many.  But I began to realize that my addiction is more than just having or owning; this addiction feeds on searching and list making and reading about.  

Last week I talked my husband into letting me check out books from the university he works for.  He lets me for a little bit every once in awhile until he realizes that I have brought home thirty books and his work is looking for him to return them.  They have a lot of good books.  Fiction, books on writing, psychology, art therapy, theory.   And they have something like eight libraries.  One whole library for art books.  Let me say that again:  One whole library for art books.  Sigh.  And don't get me started on the Harvard Bookstore.  Stacks and piles and shelves of really good, really smart books for those crimson smarties. 

Today I emptied out the box of books.  Books were pulled out from next to the bed, piles were picked up from the living room.  I have books shoved above every row of books on my bookshelf.  I have books hidden under my bed.  I carry them around.  I pile them up.  I think about them.  I order them by subject matter and then jumble them up again according to how badly I want to read them.  I daydream about owning a library with shelves so high you need a ladder on wheels to reach the top shelves. 

I think I'm currently reading seven books.  At the same time.  This is a problem.  Or is it?  Truth is, I will finish many of them.  I won't finish some of them.  Maybe I'll finish them years from now.  Maybe they were never worth finishing.  Maybe I'll get what I need and move on.  I never lend books, I have a hard time giving them away, and I don't even tell people that I read a lot.  I don't join book clubs, because I can't read a book just because someone else is reading it.  Although:  the best class in college I ever took was on Albert Camus and George Orwell.  We inhaled a book a week and talked about it, Socrates style.

When I think of books, I use words like inhale and eat.  I wish I could just open up my head and dump the contents in.  Or swallow them whole.  My need to read is insatiable.  I am always hungry and there is never enough.  I wish I could still get prizes at the library for reading ten books, fifty books, a hundred.  But there is never enough time:  I have to do annoying things like work or clean.  Or maybe if I put down my computer for five minutes.  But then, I'm still reading, right? 

"Knowledge comes from crafted bindings and pages, Buffy, not ones and zeros."

Some of the books I'm reading:  this, this, this, and highly recommend this.

Creative Bootcamp: the Prequel

For the Creative Bootcamp, I will be using my altered book that I started a looong time ago after this.  Like every project I start, the altered book fizzled after a promising beginning.  The thing is, I love it and want to keep adding to it.  So I am.   Images are from the altered book.

This book is simply amazing.  It has a heavy green cover, the pages take paint really well.  The book is an atlas, exactly the type of book I would flip through when I was a kid, identifying places on the maps, reading about far away places, and learning about import/export businesses like it was my job.  And as an altered book, it has lots of potential:  maps, lists and sweet cheesy illustrations from the seventies. 

I have no clue what to expect, so I started prepping some pages for journalling...

The Altered Book Project

Last weekend, we drove by a gorgeous red farm house with a huge pile of books lined along its picket fence and a sign that read "Free Books." While I love sorting through a pile of free books, I'm never quite able to find what I'm looking for. Usually there are a lot of paperbacks, cheesy books on romance, finances and self-image. I daydream about finding a treasure trove of hardback books with old, library book covers, those textured fabrics and imprinted lettering. If the pages are yellowed with an old font, even better. And I covet books on maps, science, with technical drawings and antiquated instructions. This pile of free books was better than expected! I took home two bags of really spectacular finds, a hard back Lord of the Rings set, two atlases, and one old school Weight Watchers cook book, among many more.

I've been looking for a find like this for awhile because I've been planning to make some altered books, both for myself and with my clients. An Altered Book is literally a book that has been modified into a piece of art. It can be sliced into, pages glued together, cut out or folded up to make envelopes, secret hiding places, drawers and holes. The pages can be added to, painted, decorated, decoupaged, stamped, sewn, burned, torn, and can become something completely beyond what its original purpose was. The original book can be non-existent.

As a book lover, the idea of altering a book is a bit crazy. It feels wrong to do. However, the therapeutic symbolism of it is a powerful metaphor. By taking something old, unusable, something in bad shape, or out of date, and taking control of it, morphing it into something beautiful and unexpected, is transformative. In addition, the inherent narrative of the book can support the telling of the narrative of a person's life, piecing together an individual's journey. Here, a person gets to literally re-create their story. And taking control of my narrative, my life, is incredibly important. The altered book can be like a journal, and there is no right or wrong way to do it, only experimentation. A page can be worked and reworked, removed if necessary. I love it, I love seeing what comes from it, I love the freedom of it, and I love the unexpectedness of it.

And now that I've found this secret stash of gorgeous books, I have no excuse but to get started. That beautiful green atlas will be the first one I get started on, and I'll post updates here. As for those other books, I think its time to get started on planning a Altered Book group for my clients.