The Sylvr Pen

If you take up the challenge to collage for yourself, I think you’ll find some revealing things happening. As you are leafing through old catalogs, mass-mailing brochures, and other junk mail, I think sooner or later you’re going to turn a page and encounter an image “jumping out at you,” grabbing your heart.

That’s what happened to me with the central image in this collage:

It’s one of the Willow Tree collection of little figurines designed and molded to convey touching human emotions and interactions. Now, I don’t think I’ve ever met a Willow Tree creation I didn’t like, but this one really grabbed me!

I call the collage “Rocking Chair Care” because it brings back so vividly the rocker my dear mother-in-law donated for the above portrayed purpose, and myself in it, holding my own precious bundle of beloved humanity. It took me right back to the time later when I sang silly songs to that baby become toddler, like…

“Rock, rock, rock in the rocking chair,
Rock, rock, rock. We don’t have a care.
We can go almost anywhere,
Rocking and dreaming in our rocking chair.”

(It warms my heart right now to put those words into print before my own eyes—and makes me smile and smile.)

So I cut out the image from the catalog. As I did, I thought of the books we used to read, snuggled in that chair or, later, in some other, bigger overstuffed one. Two books in particular: The Runaway Bunny and Good Night, Moon. In the latter book, there’s even a loving older bunny (Grandma, probably) rocking in such a chair as she knits and whispers, “Hush.”

So I simply “had” to find some images of those two books. I couldn’t take a photo of them, for they were long departed to said son’s own adult home, to read to his own little loved one. So I searched other catalogs, this time online. I found one with images of these books and printed them out, then messed around trying to reduce them to sensible size, if not exact scale.

It wasn’t hard to reproduce the atmosphere of “the great green room” of Good Night, Moon and the night sky visible through its window. I’d extracted lots of rug images from home decorating and improvement catalogs, oozing greens and blues, and hazy tones that resembled moon-lit cloud wisps. So down onto the 4×6 card they went.

I needed a moon to complete the scene. Of course. So I just cut a half-circle out of plain printer paper.

And there you have a collage with heart. My heart. 

It even inspired me later to write a blog-post-length piece about why I think those two favorite books are so excellent. Which I may publish here… Though I ought to have a new collage to illustrate that first… Hmm.

*****

Previous posts in this series:

Day 1 Collage and 31-Days Introduction

Day 2 Collage: Nothing-But-Junk Fish

It’s nothing but bits and strips cut from junk mail and stuck to a 4 x 6 inch index card with a glue stick like little kids use, then embellished with little circles stamped on with a tube lid dipped in white paint.

In fact, all those fragments you see came from pictures of ladies’ skirts in an unsolicited mail-order catalog.

Yet I think the paste-up qualifies as a design. And don’t you think it somehow captures the essence of the deep sea? I call it “Swishy Skirt Fishies.”

It’s a mini collage!

Merriam-Webster’s defines “collage” as “an artistic composition made of various materials (as paper, cloth, or wood) glued on a surface.” The word comes from the French word “coller,” which means “to glue.”

And a mini collage? Well… it’s small!

All the mini collages you will see on this blog in coming days are pasted on 4×6 cards. Most of them are made up of nothing but glue and junk mail–with maybe a little touch of pencil or paint once in a while.

Easy peasy. And cheap! And handy to do almost anywhere.

I began this small-scale venture by leafing through a pile of catalogs I was about to discard, looking for interesting images, patterns, colors, and textures, and anything else that especially caught my eye–or my heart. Because of the small scale, most of my tear-outs fit in a business-sized envelope or two. Later I sorted them into a few more envelopes, some even smaller.

Can you see what a handy art hobby this could be, even to take traveling? And what fun collaging could be to do with your kids, or grandkids? I packed up a little tote with activities and materials last month when I went to visit Granddaughter, and everything we needed to collage together fit easily into its side pocket. Too bad I went driving off, leaving the tote inside the back door! So I didn’t get to see how much fun we would have had with it. Maybe next month…!

Collage can be light-hearted, even child-like, fun. Some collage is just plain wacky, the way unrelated objects are stuck together or placed in unexpected settings. But it can involve and depict deeper emotions than that, as future posts will show. 

One way or the other, you might feel a little prodding to go sort your mail right now, and do a little ripping, snipping, and envelope stuffing. Hmm?…

*****

Previous post in this series:

Day 1 Collage and 31-Days Introduction

Welcome to 31 Days of Mini Collage and Commentary!

This year, in the 31 days of October, I’ll be sharing my new adventure in collage making. Why? Because this adventure has proven far more revealing and rewarding than I ever anticipated.

I began exploring the craft of collaging a little over a year ago, just for fun. And fun it is! But it can turn out to be much more than that. I hope you’ll come along and see what I mean.

At the top of this website’s home page you will find a link to a duplicate of this introduction. That page will include links leading to individual posts as they appear on my blog during the month of October. You can click on the links there that interest you, or subscribe to my blog and receive an email notification when a new post has been published.

Some posts will include an essay, true story, or anecdote illustrated by a mini collage. Others will simply show a new collage and a few words about it, usually including how it was made.

All the collages that appear in this series will be “mini” collages, which I’ll define and explain in Post #2. They are a super simple kind of collage that just about anybody can do, almost anywhere. But more on that in Post 2…

Hope to “see” you there!

*****

Other Posts in this Series:

Day 1 Collage and 31-Days Introduction (A duplicate of this page)

Day 2 Collage: Nothing-But-Junk Fish

Day 3 Collage: What Grabs Your Heart?

Day 4 Collage: Why I Chose to do this 31 Days–Really

Day 5 Collages: On Being Transparent

Day 6 Collage: Salute to Birds and Dragonflies

Day 7 Collage: Got it Made in the Shade

October. Already! Where did September go? Where, before that, did summer go? They all sped by faster than ever.

How do you get hold of time that pours away like sand in an hour glass with ever-widening neck? Grasping it in fists, you find it just sliding through, quickly gone.

We can’t really manage time, cannot alter its inexorable, steady course. What we need to manage is ourselves instead. “Time management” is really management of what we do through the fleeting moments.

If we blog, we can use devices like the “Write 31 Days” challenge that invites us to write-and-post something daily, to strengthen our writing commitment and build a more disciplined work routine.

But, in light of my last post, where I commit myself to not posting what I’ve just dashed off in such reckless manner, what shall I do with the 31-day challenge?

A: I decide to adapt it.

I never have committed to the “Write 31 Days” daily posting of just-written pieces, and for good reasons:

1. I treasure my weekly sabbaths. Blog writing is work, not rest. Just getting the post up there, published, sometimes involves far more unforeseen fussing with photos or tussling with technology than I ever expected. Perfect way to ruin a sabbath rest!
2. To write-and-post daily as prescribed allows no sit-time. ‘Nuf said. (See last post.)
3. I see lots of burn-out by day twenty-something, in bloggers really grasping at straws to get something, anything, published in the challenge’s final days. This (for me, at least) is not a good desperation.
4. Linking up then on an open public forum can just display frantic scribblings to all the world. In a closed community of a few writers holding one another accountable for getting writing done, such link-up could be very helpful. but instant world-wide display is another thing.
5. The need to pour so much energy daily into my own writing leaves less time for reading and encouraging others’ offerings on community link-ups. Feedback from others can likewise get very scanty. This can be discouraging, especially when you’re exhausted.
6. You never know what else is going to happen in your life during any given month. The commitment to fresh writing daily may conflict with some very needful other activities, before unforeseen.

Yet the basis of the challenge is good, helpful, disciplining. If you’ve been letting your writing slip away into nothing—as I have lately—its commitment is a very good remedy.

So what shall I do?

Modify. Commit only to what seems wise for me:

• WRITE daily (except Sundays). I just won’t obligate myself to post my new writing daily.
• Make a 31-day commitment.  The experts say 28 (mostly) consecutive days of repeating an activity, especially at the same hour, turns it into a habit, or at least routine. This month minus its Sundays equals only 26. That’s close, but still fudging. So for me a 31-day commitment (to write), extending into November seems to fit the bill.
• Meanwhile, I already set a September challenge whose results I can share for this month: to create one COLLAGE per day of that month. I can post one for each day in October, sometimes as an illustration for a written post (as above, and yesterday), sometimes on its own, perhaps with just a short commentary.

So there you (/I) have it: 31 Days of Collage and Commentary.

It brought me up short, made me gasp and blush scarlet: the big bad blooper confronting me in my own “free-written” blog post.

I’d dashed off the piece in five minutes as invited to, then online-published with an instant click, “no editing, no overthinking.” Now, after that thing had sat long out in public, I saw the miswording! My statement about a famous quote came across as if claiming I’d been its coiner!

Yow! I must have had a brain cramp in my groggy, pre-dawn scribbling, warping the thoughts in my head into a word fold-over: I’d been trying to come up with (i.e., remember) the saying, from my poorly functioning memory bank, and had typed the words “came up with” about the quote!

Now, after I cooled my red face and quickly edited the post, I firmly decided this was my last “free-write-and-instant-publish”—ever!

Thus (I hope!) I’ve finally “hit bottom” with my writing recklessness and become firmly committed to a principle I’d already known as wise about any piece I write: “Give it ‘sit time’”! (Put it aside somewhere out of sight for a given time—two weeks is ideal, but at least a day or two is crucial.) Then, before publishing or submitting, reread “with fresh eyes;” scrutinize it carefully, proof-read, and edit.

It wasn’t that I’d never experienced flashing inner warning lights and flapping red “Caution!” flags about this issue before. How many times had I sat with my finger hovered over that “publish” button, full of misgivings before I chalked them up to timidity and forced my finger down onto the spot? How many times had I gone ahead and published and then in the next half-hour or so rushed back to my blog to move the now public piece out of view into the “trash”? (If you’re subscribed to my email notices, you’ve probably seen evidence of this, when clicking a link to a post, and coming up with nothing but a no-such-post message.)

Those of us with a writing bent also have a responsiblitity—to use it… responsibly! Careless words can cause not only confusion and chaos, but even human misery we never intended or at all desired.

We also have a responsibilty to use well whatever gift we have, to put forth our best efforts, check our “facts,” polish our wording, and produce the highest quality outcome we can.

High quality is seldom the immediate result of a five-minute free write.

Free writes help greatly to get the brain gears creaking, wake up thoughts lying dormant, even reveal passions hidden or denied. What emerges in a genuine free write sometimes startles its own author, alerting her to something badly needing attention. In any case, it’s just the first step, the rough sketch, not the final painting.

How often have I heard it at writer’s conferences or in written advice to authors: “There are no great writers. Only great rewriters!”

So let me become a better writer by aiming toward great rewriting, along with craft development, method polishing, and all the rest—which all take time.

Worthwhile writing is also about truth and depth, and the white space of silence. To pen vital truth in powerful words, we need first to stop, be quiet, and listen: for the lessons of living, for the beauty and hope resonating around us, for the inaudible voice of God, experienced only through immersion in and focus on His presence, tuned in to His Spirit, and harmonized with His word. So let me end with these words of Henri Nouen:

A word with power is a word that comes out of silence. A word that bears fruit is a word that… reminds us of the silence from which it comes and leads us back to that silence. A word that is not rooted in silence is a weak, powerless word that sounds like ‘a clashing cymbal or a booming gong’ (1 Cor 13:1).

All this is true only when the silence from which the word comes forth is not emptiness and absence, but fullness and presence, not the human silence of embarassment, shame, or guilt, but the divine silence in which love rests secure.

-Henri Nouen, in The Way of the Heart