A while ago, I posted a series of pictures of me cutting apart a letterpress couple for my final project on Facebook and Instagram.
This process was slow, and painful, but ultimately necessary for the book and the effect I was going for.
I wrote a post on Facebook explaining how it was a representation of what I am going to do to them in writing, and how it was a painful process yada yada.
Well, as I was printing this couple, I had some scraps of paper that I wanted to use, and I really liked the work that I’d put into the couple, and the way they’d turned out, so I used my scraps and printed a bunch of the couples. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, so at the end of the semester, they came home from school, and went in a drawer with the rest of my Book Arts stuff, where they were quickly forgotten.
Well, I found them, as you may have seen if you’ve visited my Etsy page.
I cut the silhouette couple into a square, went to the store and bought some watercolors, and added some color. This was one of the results. What you will notice if you check my Etsy page, however, is that the other result has fewer pictures. The reason is a whole story, one that you will get soon. But what it taught me, is that this couple is just the gift that keeps giving with its symbolism.
This is what the other version looks like now.
It’s dirty, it has a small chunk of paper missing, and it is bent. So what happened to it? It fell down the cracks in the deck where I was trying to take pictures of it. I thought it was lost forever. There was no way I was climbing down into the spiders’ nest that is the window well of my room to crawl under the deck all the way to where I dropped it. I can’t even imagine what I would run into on my way.
I take that back. I can imagine, and that is my problem. There were just so many awful possibilities.
That was on a Tuesday. It rained on Wednesday. On Thursday, my adorable nieces and nephews came over, and we went out back. It really bugged me that one of my masterpieces was just out of reach. So I found a stick, and proceeded to try to get it out. I drew the interest of my niece, and eventually my nephew as well.
Well the stick didn’t work. But I suddenly realized I had a marshmallow roasting stick (is it still a stick if it’s made of metal?) in my trunk from my recent camping trip to Bear Lake, so I grabbed it.
Now the problem became making sure that the paper actually got retrieved, and my neice and nephew didn’t skewer each other. I coaxed the pointy object back to my own hands, then approached the situation. Fortunately, I came up with an idea, and it seemed to work. Unfortunately, my mom was responsible for pulling the paper back through the cracks of the deck, and the wood was laid close enough together that her fingers couldn’t quite do it. My brother took the skewer, and after having watched my first attempt, he decided he was capable of replicating it. I then ran around to pull the paper out once it was close enough. And it worked.
What this piece of paper taught me, was that art is beautiful in its imperfections, just like life is beautiful in its imperfections. Something isn't ruined just because it is covered it dirt and grime, it's bent out of shape, and has a chunk missing from the edge. It is those scars that make it unique and beautiful. I have ten of these couples sitting in a drawer in my room, but this one will always have a meaning that makes it worth more than all of them combined.
This idea of imperfection becoming beauty has been something I have struggled with, and has made several recurrences in my writing. As far back as Fall 2017, I wrote an Ars Poetica for my Creative Writing Class about the imperfections of this couple and their story. While the page-long entry conveys my struggle and my thoughts at the time on it, I think the perfect summary of it can be found in the last line:
"This is a story, the blissful in the storm. Things will never be perfect"
It has been a little too long for me to remember whether or not I intentionally left off the last period of the entry. In all reality, it was most likely a mistake...that happens to be one of the things I'm bad at. Some how I forget the last period of a piece. Then again, perhaps that imperfection is yet another thing that makes my writing unique and beautiful. If I forget the period, the story continues, and perhaps, as the writer, that is exactly what I need. I need to know that the story will continue even after I've finished writing it.
But beyond that, we must remember that we don't have to be perfect. In fact, we never will be perfect. There will always be something we can do better. The goal is that we do everything we can to be better. As a perfectionist, that is something I struggle with, but I'm working on it.
Let's all try to see the beauty in life's imperfections.
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