Wreck This Journal – Week 6

Another entry in Jamie Ridler’s “The Next Chapter Book Club” wherein we are working through Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith.

As promised last week, I was going to find fire for my journal, to balance out the water of the swim.

Took all week, but it happened.

But first, I decided the Journal should go on an amusement park ride.

So I tied some rope around it and took it for a swing.

This week’s wrecking was just full of surprises. Full, I tell you.

Surprise #1: How heavy the book felt as it swung (swinged?) around.

Surprise #2: How hard it was to find a spot in the backyard that would allow full swinging, and some wall-bashing, without hitting the house or plants (neither of which I wanted to do).

Surprise #3: I really, really didn’t want to let the book bash up against the wall.

I started with the rope pretty short and slowly let more rope out to see if I could get it to hit.

Surprise #4: When it finally hit the wall, it bounced off and hit me in the face (fortunately not with the binding so it didn’t hurt).

I tried a second time to swing it and let enough rope out to have it hit the ground at the bottom of its arc…but again, I just couldn’t bare to do it full force.  Hence, no pictures of the effects, since there’s really nothing to show for it.

Maybe I’ll try it again some other day.

On to FIRE!

Now, kids, don’t try this at home unless you have taken the proper safety precautions:

Journal? Check.

Fire? Check.

Hose? Check.

Is the water turned on? Check.

Are you far enough away from anything that absolutely must not catch fire? Debatable.

Let the burning begin…

Surprise #5: Paper burns. (Okay, so of course I knew that already, but knowing it and seeing it in action are two different things.)

Surprise #6: I lose almost all coordination in the presence of fire.

I thought I would be able to get a nice shot of the page mid-burn, but not so.

Watching the flame get a bit bigger than I wanted, and eat the page more quickly than I expected, I found myself not remembering what button on the camera to press to take the picture. Let alone how to frame the shot beforehand.

I took that one picture, dropped the book on the ground and sprayed it with the hose.

And then I burned it some more.

Some observations from this week…

Observation #1: I’m finding the purely destructive (i.e., burning, bashing, tearing) tasks more appealing lately.

Observation #2: How much energy it takes to move from wanting to wreck, to actually doing it.

Observation #3: How much being stuck in a seemingly unrelated area of my life can drain me of all ability to express myself creatively. It’s all connected.

Happy wrecking!