the very first day i ever cut up a book

by lauren

avid bibliophile

aged 45 1/4

it was a few years ago, after our local library's annual blow-out used book sale which takes place in *3* multi-roomed buildings of the local national guard armory. (so it's BIIIIIIIIIG, ok? we're talkin' thousands & thousands of books!) (heaven!) i happened to be there at the very end of the last day of the sale.

which is how i saw the boy scouts. about a dozen of 'em, with stout cardboard boxes and handtrucks, swarming the periphery of the ancillary room in which i browsed. vaguely pondering their presence, i either asked or overheard that they were waiting for the sale to end, since their troop had been promised the unsold merchandise.

"how nice," i thought to myself, "these fine lads are going to take the leftover books to hospitals and shelters and nursing homes, and bring the joy of reading to the lonely and less fortunate amongst us!"

ummmmmmmmmmmm.........NO.

they were taking them to a paper pulping facility in north jersey. the covers and bindings would be discarded, and the minced, liquified, bleached & sterilized mass once called *pages* would be sold to companies who use recycled paper in their products. the scouts were getting something like $5 for every 100 lbs of pulp, which they'd earmarked for camping trips and other pricey endeavors.

now, up to this point, i had always resisted the books i craved for *immoral* purposes--by which i mean, the ones i didn't want to read, i just wanted to make cards or...well something ...from their pretty text-filled pages and lovely vintage illustrations. i wouldn't even let myself contemplate fully what i *would* make because that would be DESTROYING BOOKS!!!!!!!!!!!!! i mean, ya might as well be a crazy nazi illiterate with an offensive banner and a well-stoked bonfire, right??!?!?!

until i heard about the pulping.

(gulp.)

in a flash it occurred to me that the volumes surrounding me were, in the next few days, going to cease to exist, no matter what i did or didn't do. they'd either become cut-price toilet paper & grocery sacks, OR...just maybe...i would make a few of them into...... well...... art? and somehow that made all the difference to me. i bought a couple of books. i tried to choose ones that had bits i liked, but were kind of messy and falling apart anyway. ones missing covers, or which had pages coming out, or with lots of notes in them. (you know, ones that already looked less like books, and more like a collection of pretty paper!) i took them home. i framed some illustrations. i made a small collage, and then a bigger one, and then a lot more. and yeah, technically, i AM "cuttin' up books"...but i genuinely feel like i've saved some really lovely words and images from true destruction.

speakin' of words and images, here's a page from the other night i cannot resist showing you, but DO NOT tell lhj, ok?! 'cause things like this make him cringe and then BLUSH!!! :)

(miscellaneous postie notes; heidi swapp ghost letters & heart; scrap of making memories glitter paper; provocraft roller stamp; colorbox & staz-on ink; sharpie pen; staples; tombow mono roller)