January 3: Writing prompt notebook

My commitment is to complete a swap for every day in January, not complete a swap every day in January start to finish. That's my own loophole. My friend Mark said that fun-a-day (or any one-thing-a-day project) is really about the discipline of repetitive action - not in a carpal tunnel of the mind kind of way, but in the zen and fulfillment of sticking to a commitment kind of way. Even with my loophole, I agree wholeheartedly. If I did 31 things on January 31, I'd be a cheater. (In any case, that would be impossible because this swapping business is practically a seventh job.)

This project is very much about having some discipline and fulfilling a commitment. Especially in January, when the clockwork-like winter depression nears the witching hour, I need something regular that I can point to as accomplished, so I don't feel like a lump of too-wet clay that just oozes and farts whenever I try to effect something (that's effect, verb, not affect, noun, for you picky grammar people). That's why I was attracted to the idea of swapping as an art form. I'm not responsible to only myself, but to other people who are depending on me to mail them stuff. The nebulous receivers of my envelopes and packages offer an extra carrot, and just maybe the discipline of being accountable to other people will become a habit, and I'll learn to be disciplined all by myself. And then maybe all those ideas that have been on my "to do in 2006, no 2007, no 2008, no 2009" list will get done. Yes! 2009! Year of the ox! Did I mention I'm a ox?

This is all working up to say that I started this writing-prompt notebook in December, in order to have it done by the deadline imposed by the person who designed the swap. I got it in a little early. The assignment was to paste found words and images throughout a notebook of at least 70 pages, and mail it to my partner, whose imagination would hopefully be sparked by them, and she would immediately start free-writing all these feelings and ideas she never knew she had. I had a thoughtful time making it, especially because my partner is a Muslim journalist who lives on a farm, has homeschooled her kids, and does her best to make from scratch everything that her family needs. I really wanted to do a good job for her.


There were at least 70 prompts in the finished notebook; I'm only including three here that made me think as I worked. They all come from children's encyclopedias from the 60s or 70s, and are indicative of how prosperity-centric (if not plain old US-centric) these books that claim to teach kids about the world are. Are sunflowers and dandelions really common weeds that everyone knows? And really, weeds? I don't know about dandelions, but there must be billions of people who have never seen a sunflower. And anyway, sunflowers are crops! Huge crops!

And then there are Building Materials:

It's true, they do throw in "and can afford." But that's a little backhanded: See, we can use any material we want. Can you? This was not, by the way, part of an entry about globalization, colonialism, or the rape of the Earth. It was about houses. The book presented the ability to use any material we want as a measure of progress. Those poor, sorry people who had to use what was at hand! They had it so rough, what with the needing to be creative and feeling the economic and ecological boundaries of the world! We all know what happened to those people:


No wonder so many of these kids grew up to give tax breaks and other incentives to enormous big box stores, so they could deliver unto us all the forests in Siberia.

When I was done with the book, I took a good look at the outside and discovered it was ugly. I wanted to leave it more of a blank slate instead of pasting more stuff on the cover, so I sewed a sleeve for it. Voilà: