Altered Book: Fahrenheit 451

The Big Read is an idea sponsored by the Valley’s libraries. Each year a book is chosen and libraries sponsor events to encourage people to read that book. One of the events involves artists–I was one of the artists chosen to alter the book for a display at one of the libraries. This year’s book is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

What makes the book interesting is that the 1953-written book has elements of  current reality–a society obsessed by television and celebrities, a fear of intellectual discussions at social functions, a minority kicking up a fuss about books, which are subsequently banned from libraries, and my favorite, a love of wearing earbuds and being plugged in to programmed music.

In my approach to altering the book, I chose the idea from the final scene of the book, in which people become living books. Readers live in books, so I created a row-house made of books. In the image below, the central house is Fahrenheit 451, surrounded by other book houses.The pages of the central book are stuffed with message tags.

Altered book, Fahrenheit 451. © Quinn McDonald, 2009

Each house represents a genre: mystery, science fiction, art and poetry. Because love of nature was banned in the story, the two houses on the left represent winter and spring, and the two books on the left represent summer and fall.

Altered book detail, left side © Quinn McDonald, 2009

Altered book right-side detail. © Quinn McDonald, 2009

The tags are all quotes about books, all  from famous people. Ray Bradbury’s own quote, “You don’t have to burn books to destory a culture, Just get people to tstop reading them,”  is there, as well as Salman Rushdie’s quote, “A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it or offer your own version in return.”

Detail of book tags, © Quinn McDonald, 2009

In the heart of the book (I chose page 98 deliberately, as 98.6 Fahrenheit is the normal temperature of the human body), there are flames on one side and a matchbook on the other. The matchbook has a burning match on the cover, and the inside “matches” are the spines of books that have been banned in the past.

Right side detail, matchbook © Quinn McDonald, 2009

The matchbook itself is surrounded by paper flames that have already consumed the page of the book.

The tags are removable for easy reading, and can be used as bookmarks. I hope the book is displayed in a way that allows people to touch it and play with it.

Banned books as matches, detail of altered book, © Quinn McDonald, 2009

I read the book when I was about 10 and just discovering science fiction. My first big literary shock was discovering that Bradbury had made a mistake, paper bursts into flame at 451 Celsius, not Fahrenheit. Yes, I stuck a piece of paper in the oven to see it burst into flame.

It took me a long while to accept altered books. The thought of ruining a book was overwhelming. But the lure of transforming a book that was scheduled for the shredder into a piece of art won me over.

The satisfaction of planning out a concept and carrying it through was really satisfying. I am honored to have been chosen for this project. And yes, I do custom altered books to honor a special event or person.

–—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also teaches people who can’t draw how to keep an art journal.

Living a Wabi-Sabi Life

Wabi-Sabi—Appreciation of the Imperfect and Impermanent
You are looking in a shop window at a beautiful dress. Suddenly, you see the reflection of a young woman behind you, also looking at the dress. She reminds you so much of your younger self– fresh, eager. You smile at the recognition of the wonder of this moment.

That fragile moment of recognition is part of the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi– the beauty of things impermanent or incomplete. It contains a profound appreciation for things modest and humble. As an

Bonsai and shadow © Quinn McDonald, 2007

aesthetic, it honors things imperfect and unconventional.

A Different Approach to Success and Abundance
Wabi-sabi is the release of control. It avoids beating up the creative soul for not achieving perfection. Recognizing and embracing our imperfections allows room for growth. The only result of demanding perfection is certain failure. Perfection is impossible, and while we live in a culture that loves people who are “passionate” and “give 110%,” we seldom feel passion for our daily lives, and it is impossible to give more than all. Perfection is a cruel boss. It leads to giving up, depression and anger rather than eagerness for growth and improvement.

Living a wabi-sabi life means letting go of the stress of competition, relentless achievement, and replacing them with a willingness to let life find its own pace. It allows for space to trust that opportunities will appear, and a willingness to let the world unfurl without having full control over every activity. It is a life stripped down to what is valuable, rather than randomly acquired. It is not living without, but rather within.

In a wabi-sabi life, you recognize all things are impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete. Once you open the door to imperfection, a creative force rushes into your life, making it possible to risk, to try different solutions, to explore your creativity fully. Which leads to living a creative life–work and business combine to create a full, rich and abundant life.

How to Live a Wabi-Sabi Life
One of the hardest things to do is live in the moment. We are always planning—what to have for dinner, what time to pick up the kids, what to do if that promotion doesn’t come through.

Bittersweet © Quinn McDonald, 2007

We live our lives in the past, reviewing our mistakes, and in the future, planning on contingencies and how to handle what will happen next. The current moment is empty as we rush to control—ourselves, our lives, the lives of our children. We try to control our creativity, what we make, even our intuition.

Certainly planning helps organize our time and leads to action. But when we begin to plan for every possibility, guess at every motive, fill every second of the day with planned activities, meetings and obligations, we exhaust ourselves and our families.

We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Often we can’t influence the future. What we think of as failure is simply a lack of knowing. You don’t always have to know. And you don’t always have to be in control. Take off that heavy obligation of knowing and controlling and take three deep, slow breaths. Then decide right now. In this moment. To live and grow. And leave perfection behind. And let creativity take root in your life.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach. She teaches journal-writing classes, including Wabi-Sabi Journaling and raw-art journaling (c) 2007-9 All rights reserved.

QuinnCreative Newsletter Returns

Some months ago, I stopped publishing my newsletter, Imagination Works from QuinnCreative. There were lots of good reasons: The newsletter was ten years old, I’d originally kept the addresses in an address book, because I sent a paper newsletter. Once I created an online one, I knew that some people weren’t getting the letter anymore, those who

Raw-art-journal entry, Inktense pencils on paper, © Q.McDonald, 2009

got it at work often found it in the spam filter. OK, I’ll admit it was a lot of work putting it on my website, and fads change–people didn’t want a newsletter through email, they wanted it on a website, now people don’t want to be forced to click on links in emails to take them to websites they think might contain mal-ware.

Once I discontinued the newsletter, the emails started.  “What happened to the newsletter?” “Where was that article you wrote on failure?” “I went to your website and there’s no newsletter!”

My mistake. There are many reasons to start up the newsletter again.  A lot of people don’t want to read a blog every day, don’t want to troll my website to see when a new class is coming up,  and want to know about living their creativity out loud as artists, writers, and just plain people. So I’m bringing back the newsletter with a really simple title: QuinnMcDonaldNewsletter.  It’s not fancy, it’s simple writing through a Yahoo Group.

You can go here and sign up:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Quinn_McDonald_Newsletter/join

Anyone can sign up. It will come the first and third Sunday of the month, via this Yahoo Group.

Tip of new logo for Quinn's Raw-art-joujrnals

Sundays so people who are in the “Sunday Slump”–that uneasy time of week at the end of the weekend and before the beginning of the work week–will have something interesting to read.

I don’t sign anyone up, I don’t spam anyone. I’ve sent out invitations to a few people who have told me to bring the newsletter back. If you want to receive the newsletter, please go sign up. It will contain links, stories, ideas on living a creative life. Because I still believe that we don’t find meaning in life, we make meaning. The newsletter will be delivered through a Yahoo Group, but it is a newsletter. No photos, no websites, no fancy design. You won’t be required to do anything. I chose Yahoo Groups because it makes it easy to subscribe (and unsubscribe) and for me to mail out.

Yahoo Groups also creates automatic archives, which I could never do, and it was a constant source of questions. Now people can search the archives for previous posts.

Thanks to all for letting me know what you want. I sure hope this is it!

The Pencil © Quinn McDonald, 2005-9

Traveling Journals: Changing the Rules

When I decided to create four traveling journals, I kept the idea pretty close to the 1000 Journals Project because that was a good model. As the journal entries unfolded, several interesting events took place:

Red traveling journals

1. Creative Insecurity. The person who started one of the journals has a great deal of art talent. In a class, one of the participants said, “I’m glad I’m not following her.” I didn’t understand, so she explained, “Well, if I saw this great art, I’d feel bad. What could I do that would be as great?” I had never thought of the journaling experience as being competitive, I had thought of each person contributing something new and different, a new perspective. But I’m sure that competitive perspective is not unique.

2. Not enough journals. With four journals, I can’t have a class work on them. If a class has a dozen people, no one will have enough time, and keeping the ones not working on the journal busy will short-change the one who is working on it.

3. Time constraints. Each person keeps the journal about 10 days. Mailing takes about three days. I have people from Australia, Bosnia, the Phillipeans and other countries signed up. The waiting list for one journal is already four months. A long waiting list was one of the problems that people told me about with the plan.

4. Lack of meaning-making in the concept. Circulating the journals is an administrative task that I don’t find compelling or packed with meaning-making.  I have to ask people not to create pages that are too thick to keep the book from closing comfortably. I hate restricting imagination and creativity.

What to do? I asked participants in the creativity incubator, I thought it over, and came up with some great alternatives. If I circulated loose pages, most of the above problems would be solved. If I circulated loose pages to create on while people were waiting for the books, and encouraged people to do both, the resulting creative rush could be exciting and fulfilling.

If I gathered the loose pages and created inventive ways to bind them, well, then, I could also have a creative experience. This sounded like a workable idea. It also changed the art experience to a completely different journaling experience than the one created by Someguy, the person who ran the 1000 Journal project as an art experiment.

Solution that re-tooled the project:

• You can still sign up for the red traveling journals. You sign up for them, and I
  

  Re-purposed book

  manage them, scanning and posting the pages as they come in and sending them out again to the next person on the list. You can see the list of where the books are, and who will have it next here. You can sign up for more than one journal.

• You can also sign up for loose pages. You won’t have to wait for them, because I have them pre-cut and ready to go. You can create FAT pages (layer papers, add photographs, use multi-media techniques) or FLAT pages (writing, drawing, watercolor, thin collage) depending on your style, art, ideas, and imagination. You can use one of the themes from the red traveling journals (travel, dreams,  or Summer in the Sonoran) or make up your own.
• There is only one rule: Because I will use different binding methods, some of which I haven’t invented yet, you will need to leave a half-inch margin all around the edge of each page. You can run color or collage up to the edge, just keep words and important image parts one-half inch aways from the edge.
• The re-purposed book. One idea I have is to re-purpose books. I’ve snagged some books from a future in the landfill. I’ll cut out the pages, leaving a margin. I’ll send you a few pages along with some art paper. You can choose to use some, all, or none of the existing book pages. When you send it back, I’ll re-attach it to the pages I cut out. A re-purposed book!
• Re-inventing the book. Another idea is that I will choose pages that relate to each other and find inventive ways to bind, stitch, rivet, or otherwise attach them to each other. This gives you the joy of creation and it gives me the chance to explore the meaning of “book” and play with the form. Everyone is happy.

I’m excited and eager to see how this adventure unfolds! I plan to continue this program as my main creative work for the foreseeable future, so if you are reading this and wonder if I’m still running the program, ask.

Sign up. You do not have to be able to draw to participate. The only requirement is a hunger to communicate with people from around the world in a culturally interesting project. You can read more about raw art journaling on my website.

You can sign up for the red journals, fat or flat pages, or both by sending me an email: rawartjournals [at] gmail [dot] com. Or use the link at the bottom of the left column or top of the right column on this page.

—Quinn McDonald is an artist, writer and certified creativity coach. She is managing this project our of her own funds and hopes to take the completed books on tour to museums and libraries. You can contribute to the project by using the button at the bottom of the page, here.

Four Seasons in Arizona

When I tell people I live in Arizona, they say, “Oh, I wouldn’t like that. I have to have four seasons.” It always makes me smile. We do have four seasons, even here in the Valley of the Sun. Most people don’t know that in winter, the temperatures at the Grand Canyon hover around zero degrees. And most people don’t know that is snows in about 60 percent of the state, and that the roads around Flagstaff and Window Rock can be closed due to snow.

Most people think of Phoenix’s Valley of the Sun as representative of all of Arizona. But even here, in the Sonoran desert, we have four seasons. They are subtle, and you have to pay attention to nature. Sitting in your house is no way to experience our seasons. You have to get out in them.

Spring starts in early March. The lemon, orange and grapefruit trees bloom, filling the air with rich and invisible perfume. If you love perfumes that contain orange blossom, come visit in Spring. You’ll smell the real thing. At night and early morning is the best time. Drive past an orchard, and your car will fill with the fragrance.

Datura plant

Fig trees start to leaf out, as do Green Palo Verdes. The golden yellow blossoms fill the green-trunked trees. Ocotillo, those tall, long-thorned bushes, begin to set their tall red spiky flowers. The days get longer by about 3 minutes a day. Every plant that blooms, does. The mountainsides are covered in wildflowers. Birds migrate through to their summer homes. Hundreds of hummingbirds and sandhill cranes drift overhead. It’s perfect for hikinig.

Summer starts in May. It lasts till mid-September. Days are hot. You quit carrying black purses or wearing black shoes

Palo Verde with green trunk

because your purse contents melt and your feet fry. You take CDs out of the car and put insulated containers of water in the car every time you drive. The air is not always clear, and it can be really dry or murderously humid, depending on the monsoon season. Monsoon season starts in June and brings sudden, fierce thunderstorms. There are also duststorms. You don’t hike during June, July, or August.

By early May, you have painted your older citrus trunks with a special white paint, which acts as sunblock. Without it, the older-stock trees’ bark pops off from the overheated sap.  People wear sunblock too, the higher the number, the better. Pools become a necessity. In August, pools often go above 98 degrees during the day, but still feel deliciously cool, compared to the air temperature.

There are grackles, doves, and a few stubborn hummingbirds, but few other birds.

Fall starts in October. You plant tomatoes and other garden plants that can’t take

Canyon Lake in fall

summer heat. Apples are ready for picking. Berries and watermelon are local and delicious. Your citrus trees are filled with green fruit. The migrating birds come back, and you hear different bird calls early in the morning. Trees stay green long into November. Nights start to cool down. We don’t have Daylight Saving Time, so it gets dark earlier, but not artificially early. We don’t have much of a twilight. Sun goes down, and it is dark about 15 minutes later.

Winter starts in December. It’s cool enough to sweaters and sometimes even a jacket. No more pool, no more sandals. The air starts to clear regularly, and you get full, high, bright blue skies. Trees lose their leaves slowly, over a month or so. But tomatoes and other container crops ripen, and you can have warm days. Rains start. The mountain tops get capped with snow, at least those over 5,500 feet. You have to rake the needle-like leaves of Palo Verde and the big fig leaves. Oranges ripen by January, but not all at once. You will pick and eat fruit off your tree through February.

Changing weather sky

One of the complaints I had living in Connecticut was the sheer amount of clothing you had to put on in winter–long underwear, socks, three layers of sweaters, a scarf, hat, gloves, sometimes boots or overshoes. You had several coats and more than one pair of gloves. I don’t miss those. I still have several scarves, but I don’t have several coats anymore. And I like my four seasons in moderation.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and naturalist who teaches art journaling and communication.

“It was meant to be.” Really?

“God doesn’t give you more than you can bear.”
“If it didn’t happen, it wasn’t meant to be.”

I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe some all-powerful force changes all the traffic lights when you deserve it, and makes them all red when you don’t. I don’t believe an invisible man with a big beard sends cancer down on someone just to prove they can bear it. I don’t think children suffer and die in their parent’s arms because “it was meant to be.” I don’t believe in luck.

That kind of thinking makes a god too much like people, doling out favors to some, denying others. I believe in a bigger power, a god that gave us nature to learn from. Last summer, as the trees in my Washington, D.C. neighborhood died a day at a time because it didn’t rain, I never for a moment believed it was divine will. I believe people who are not using the earth wisely are changing the climate and the trees are warning us. By dying, one by one, until we get it.

I believe we ought to climb out of our SUVs, come out of our climate-controlled houses, stand on our front stoops and sweat. Look around and see what we have done. Humans perpetrated a lot of these things that were not ‘meant to be.’ Suffering that was born of our own making, not given to us to see what we could bear. That would make us not responsible for the stewardship of the earth, and in my simple way of thinking, that is our first responsibility.

Go grab what you have and fix what you can. You might not be in control, but you don’t have to rely on luck, and you don’t have to blame the almighty when things go wrong.

I don’t think people were born to suffer. I think we were born to be creative. I don’t have an answer for suffering, but I don’t think it has a purpose. I think we all die, some of us earlier, some of us later, and it’s good to know that at a young age and be ready. Tell people you love them. Do good. Fight for justice. When you come to the end of your life, you’ll know you’ve spent it well.

--Quinn McDonald is a writer who learns from standing on her front stoop and sweating. Even when it’s cold. (c) 2009 All rights reserved. Image: Journal page from my journal.

Wabi-Sabi Journal Prompts

Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese aesthetic that values the time-worn, the aged, the imperfect. It is a philosophy and a way of accepting and giving up control. Bringing wabi-sabi into your life allows you to make room for daydreams, for accepting a simpler life and for valuing the riches already in your life.

A wabi sabi journal is one filled with authentic you, the one that hungers for simplicity, nature, the organic flow of life. Here are a few quotes to help you open your mind to Wabi-Sabi. They make great journal prompts.

You are the person you are when no one is looking.

Anger is only one letter short of danger.

No one can give you abilities. For example, an Olympic athlete works with a trainer to develop her abilities, but the trainer only helps manifest what was inherent all along. Likewise, no one can give you happiness. At most, others simply help manifest the joy that was always within you.

Happiness does not mean ‘absence of problems.’ There has never been a life free from problems. It is not the presence of problems, but how we tackle them that determines the quality of our lives.

Blind faith is no faith

One does not win by making others lose.

–All quotes from “Open Your Mind, Open Your Life.” edited by Taro Gold

–Image from Still in the Stream, a site reflecting on Wabi-Sabi in nature.

--Quinn McDonald is an artist, writer and certified creativity coach. In March, she will teach “Wabi sabi journal writing.”  Visit my other website: Raw Art Journaling.

Poem: A Song On the End of the World

Recently, I thought about how our culture got into the mess we are in. I looked at competition as a cause. The kind of competition that doesn’t demand the best of us as individuals, but demands winning at any cost. And I began to wonder if part of that drive was the inability to be quiet, to be alone with ourselves. And, then, as if by magic, I came across this poem.

When you read about the poet’s life—what he must have seen and experienced—and then read this poem, it gives you a good point to start thinking about what is important as we go through life.

A Song On the End of the World
by Czeslaw Milosz
Translated by Anthony Milosz
* * *
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.

* * *
—Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach. She has started to read poetry again, and is finding stillness there.

Sun, Moon, and Stars: Journal Prompt

Tonight the full moon rose in the sky like a silver charger–huge and bright. The moon won’t look that large again for many years. It made me think about how often we see images of sun, moon and stars in our lives and notice them.

Sometimes we recognize them, sometimes not. Often, we aren’t in touch with the natural images around us, and we don’t feel the importance of the connection between our hearts and nature.  Grab your journal and write about your connection to nature. Do you notice where the sun is when it rises? How at this time of the year it is in the Northeast, but starts to move more to the East? How many stars can you see in your night sky? When was the last time you were out at night and not walking toward your car?

Sun

Moon

Stars

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach.

The Hard Edges in Life

My father was always studying, taking notes, learning. So much so, that my predominant memory is of the back of his head, bent over a book. He spent each evening reading, studying, working on projects he brought home from the office. At home, his workspace was also our dining room. We knew to clear the table quickly after dinner, slide the table back into the slot in the wall,  and leave my father to his work. He was neither a tyrant nor a pal. He was, in fact, a rocket scientist.

Taking care of the edges

Occasionally, he would become briefly involved in one of his children’s lives. One afternoon, I was destroying a slice of bread, tyring to get cold peanut better on a freshly-baked slice. He surveyed the scene, took in my frustration, and said, “Take care of the edges, the middle will take care of itself. ” He was right.

The sturdy crust helped the edges hold onto the cold peanut butter, and as I carefully applied it up to the edges, the stiff  peanut butter  warmed and made it easy to spread to the soft middle.

Turn out that this advice works well in the rest of life as well. Fitted sheets attached by the corners pull the wrinkles out across the middle of the bed.

Start the glue on a collage at the edges, work it carefully toward the corners, and the middle won’t be overworked and buckle.

Start a story at the edges–with research, character development, a plot line, and the middle of the story won’t be a problem.

And while we are talking about problems, they, too, are best solved from the edge in. When we jump in without thinking of the cause, trying to fix the heart of the issue, we allow it to pull at the soft belly of our pain. Work at the edge, at the cause, and by the time we get to our pain, we understand it better and are ready to let go of the pain and see the growth.

My father has been dead for more than 28 years, but I never scoop peanut butter out of a jar without thinking of his clever aphorism that has served my sandwiches–and me–well.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who helps people through transitions in life and re-invention. She is also a life coach and workshop leader. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) Quinn McDonald 2007-9.  All rights reserved