When I started thinking about what surfaces are precious my first thoughts were: notes or objects from family and friends.  I ruled out family because I was not going to write on my grandfather’s family tree or letters either of my parents have written (although Noel’s tracing paper would have solved that!).  Similarly I wasn’t going to write on letters from any of my friends.  It strikes me now that I could have printed out some of my long email exchanges w groups of friends, but I don’t think that would be fair to them to share publicly their words, even if I chose some fairly innocuous emails.

So I opened up my drawer where I keep notebooks, stationary, stickers, and other miscellaneous items.  The choice was obvious! I chose to use a page from my collage book.  I’ve had this notebook now for I think sixteen years, and I have somewhat consistently collaged in it for those sixteen years.  It’s about… 4/5 filled up.  I can go through it and note different fashion trends: ah the stacked glitter lipgloss!, those shoes are so mid aughts, I guess daisies were big that year, and so on.  So this notebook is important to me as something I have had for a large portion of my life, and as a place to be artistic in a fun, low stakes way.

As for what to write, I decided to do something journal-esque.  It’s sort of stream of conscious, sort of word collaged.  The subject matter was not so important, I just didn’t want to put that sort of pressure on it because then I wouldn’t write anything on it! Not dissimilar to creative writing: you can’t always wait for that “brilliant” line to do some writing, especially when the brilliant lines often come in the midst of writing (or at least for me).

–Amanda