Just give me coffee and no one will get hurt

If you know me, you know that I am a coffee lover. I probably fit the description of an addict. Tho, I am reluctant to apply that term to myself as I know recovering addicts and I do not wish to down play their struggles and triumphs by using the word frivolously. 

However, I love my coffee and when the world is getting me down, I don't go downtown, I get a fucking cup of coffee. 

I remember a day when my son was about 2 1/2. That morning everything that could have gone wrong did. The kid was a brat, the grocery bag broke in a wet parking lot, zippers stuck, library books were late. A huge plethora of first world problems had me wishing I'd never gotten out of bed, attempted to make it to play group on time or bothered doing... well anything. 

Driving home, with my child screaming like his arms were being chewed off by squirrels in the back seat, the only thing going through my mind was, "Just get home and get a cup of coffee and everything with be fine. Everything will be okay after a coffee." 

Everything will be okay after coffee. 

And it was. 

That there was probably a sign. But I've been aggressively ignoring it ever since and enjoying my coffee every morning and it makes me happy. 

2 birthdays ago my lovely husband, who does not have the same love affair with coffee as I do, bought me a coffee maker/espresso maker. 

We call it, "My Precious." 

Even though I am the coffee drinker in my house, it is my husband who makes the espresso the most and insists on buying really, really good (read costly) espresso. 

I'll feed my dependency on cold instant coffee left over from yesterday and all murky from milk if the power was out and the water pipes had burst, but not him - he needs the good stuff, or don't bother. 

Therefore I must say that he was most unimpressed when I very purposefully splattered some of the wonderful espresso he brewed for me yesterday all over my wreckage journal. 

He left the room. There may have been tears...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! Or Happy Holiday's if you prefer. 

We had a wonderful holiday and are enjoying some quiet down time. 

I've been contemplating 'The Rules' given that the beginning of the book. Rule 2 says to 'Follow the instructions on every page' and then Rule 4 says 'Rules are open to interpretation'. (see side bar photo)

I chose to follow Rule 4 for this one. 

The instructions on this page said to 'Wrap Something with This Page'  but given that it's Christmas I decided to make it a Wrapping Paper page, it just seemed more festive. The page now contains a piece of (almost) every gift wrap that covered presents. There's also a few gift tags. 

Doing the paper airplane on the previous page is now going to be tricky though... 

Christmas Eve

TA DA! This is what I created from destruction
this morning. My sister gave me the Charlie Brown
Tree and this was perfect for it. 

This one felt right for today, the day before Christmas. I was awake early and sitting by the Christmas tree colouring was very relaxing.

Wrecking the book to make something pretty and fun was pretty cool. 

Make a paper chain. 

Colouring is very soothing

The back. 

Cut out the strips. Tape worked better than glue, btw. 

TA DA!

Ouroboros

The royal icing has dried in the book. It makes a great crunching sound when I bend the pages of the books now. I suspect that flakes of icing will fall from the book for the next while as it purges itself of the sweetness.

Also an update on the jalapeno pepper that got served up for lunch: I forgot to remove it and it is now completely dry and cemented to the page. Kinda spooky.

I was colouring in my journal this evening and my son noted the words on the first page: To Create is to Destroy.



He didn’t understand what that could possibly mean, so we discussed the concept of growth from destruction.

We talked about Jenga, the game where you build an ever taller building on increasingly shaky foundation. We talked about how sometimes you just have to destroy the tower to build a stronger one and that’s how life, creativity even civilizations are sometimes. (deep)

I told him about Ouroboros, the serpent that eats its own tail. In Norse mythology he is Jormungandr, the monstrous child of the mischievous god Loki. 

At Ragnarok (Armageddon) Jormungandr, who surrounds the world, will eat himself, crushing the earth as he does, destroying everything.

And yet, it is not necessarily a literal death, but a metaphorical one. A death of old ways, old thinking and an opportunity to begin again.

My son was familiar with the name Ouroboros, because it is the name of a city in one of his favorite cartoons: Lego Ninjago. In Ninjago there is also an evil snake named the Great Devourer, who the Ninja’s defeat by tricking it into eating its own tail.

The Great Devourer had stolen the golden weapons from the Ninja’s and used them to create a new and better weapon.

“So he had to destroy them to make something new?”

“Yeah,” my son said. You could see the light bulb go on. 

Please note: I might have the story wrong, there was a lot of Ninjago, Minecraft and mythology talk this evening and it got a wee jumbled. 

In Hermetic and Gnostic traditions Ouroboros is a symbol of the unity of spirit, soul and body - One the All. It is also the symbol of the never-ending cycle of life, death and rebirth. Ouroboros represents coming full circle.

Creation out of destruction out of creation out of destruction.

Excerpts for this entry from a paper I wrote this past spring. The paper is about Dragons, Pilgrimage, The Hobbit and of course Ouroboros. You can read it in full by clicking on the “OK, that’s a lot of words” link under Pages, cuz it is a whole lotta words.

My precious, my precious. 

Royal Icing

I had to enlist the help of my 9 year old to pick which page to destroy today. There were many options. We made a gingerbread house this afternoon. It was more like a shack or derelict cabin, a gingerbread house architect I am not. 

We made a huge mess of royal icing all over the kitchen, which is really the purpose of gingerbread houses. So we could have used the "Make a Mess and clean it up" page. 

But we debated about between the "Cover this page with sticky things" page or the "Cover this page with white things." 

My son found this page this disturbing because the page is already white. It makes for a very boring page, regardless of how messy it is. 

My son squished the royal icing on, but I smeared it around and sprinkled the dry icing on as well. (more white things) 

Family bonding moment achieved! 




Meanwhile, my son has returned to decorating our gingerbread shack while I write this...

He's making little piles of poo outside the shack with chocolate chips. 

Christmas with a 9 year old boy rocks. 

Even messy and kind wrecked, it's a pretty boring page.
Kid was right!

Room at the Inn

A slightly melancholy, introverted post: take this as your forewarning.

Last night I attended a ‘Blue Christmas Service’. This was a service to provide a little bit of calm and quiet in an otherwise very hectic time of year. There are many people who, whether they want to admit it or not, find Christmas to be a difficult time. 

Some, it’s because they've recently lost a loved one, or a relationship ended, they are grieving, lonely, sad and Christmas makes it all the harder.

Some people, me included, just find the whole season overwhelming. It can feel like a lot of pressure as a mom to provide some sort of meaningful magical experience for your family every year. Whether that’s necessary or not, the consumer model, the movies and Christmas specials on TV imply it. Money’s tight, but the kids still want costly things. Charities ask for more and you want to give, but it never feels like enough. It’s a struggle, for me anyway, to not get caught up in that way of thinking.

For me, this year, I am also working at a job where I feel a certain amount of pressure (mostly self-inflicted, I’ll admit) to not only create something magical and meaningful for my family but a community of families as well.

This year, Christmas has felt like a burden and just a job to get done and over with. I hate that feeling. I hate that I hate Christmas as a result. I hate that I feel that too.

So, the Blue Christmas, a service that provided the opportunity to recognize and honour that burden and a place where it was okay for me to feel that way.

At the start of the service we were given a rock. We held that rock throughout the service, seeing it as first a heavy weight and symbol of the burdens we carry; the grief, sadness, anger, loneliness, depression. Then later we looked at the rock as our strength; a strong foundation.

We were asked to let go of the burdens we carry, not because we no longer cared, or had forgotten or even forgiven the times and people who may have caused us grief, but to lighten the load.

Lighten the load. When those words were spoken, the rock in my hand felt lighter.

For me, I found myself thinking about the innkeeper in the Christian Christmas story. Mary and Joseph are seeking shelter and there is no room at the inn.

That’s how I’ve been feeling of late. My world has seen some major shifts this autumn, my job changed and my whole family is in a state of adjustment as we figure it all out. So many thoughts and memories about the past, all tied up with this change have been surfacing that it has been overwhelming. Then there’s the pressure of Christmas.

It’s been feeling like there is no room at the inn for all of these things and yet they are also things that I cannot turn away. Like the barn in the story, I have a shed out back. I suppose I could metaphorically toss some of this stuff out there until spring.

The wreckage journal has, jokingly, been referred to as my therapy. Last night was therapy for me too. The letting go for me was about asking for God or the Universe or my own mind (whatever you want to call it) for help to find room at the inn (or in the barn) for all these things that I am feeling.

After the service, I wiped my eyes, hoped my mascara hadn't run down my face, and pulled my wreckage journal out of my bag. After letting go of our rocks, we had lit candles. I found a page in my journal and going to the table of candles I dripped wax from them all over the page.

I feel better about Christmas today. There’s still no room at the inn, but the burden feeling has lifted. A bit.

Candle wax. Didn't really make a print
on the other page tho

OMG SNOW!

Snow and Vancouver do not have a lot in common. We don't get a lot of snow in the city, it generally stays on the mountains. Except of course when we host a world wide event like the Olympics that counts on there being snow on the mountains. Then the weather gods really like to stick it to us. 

But I digress. Snow and Vancouver do not mix well. Snow here, is wet, sticky and slippery. A couple of centimeters royally screws up the streets and generally fucks over morning commuters. 

Today was one of those days. We woke to the white stuff, which made my child's head practically explode with excitement  but I was thinking about was, I have errands and my husbands on his bike - BIKE! - this morning. 

However, it did give me the opportunity to further wreck my journal by tossing it in the snow. 

"Figure out a way to freeze this page

There isn't a "rub snow on this page" page. There is this one ->

but I don't think it counts. I've got better plans for that page. 

Snow causing wreckage in this city, it weighs down power lines, power gets wiped out in pockets across the city. There are accidents on the road and people are late for work or don't make it in at all. 

I didn't find it all that difficult tossing my journal in to the snow, getting it soggy and wet. In fact, like finger painting with food yesterday it was kind fun. 

There's something there for me, but I need to mull it over awhile longer. 

So there you have it folks. Another day, another journal entry commemorating the snow in Vancouver. 

Just for fun here's a pic of my Buddha covered in snow
and wearing tinsel. 

Messy Eater

Apparently smearing your lunch all over a journal is a bit disgusting to some people.

Really, Who knew.

Today I had a wonderful lunch with some friends as Pier 7, on the North Vancouver waterfront. This is a very nice restaurant and might have been a little too fancy to pull out my wreckage journal in, but I did.

It was Lunch actually, and delicious!

I’m not sure what sort of impression I made on a few of the moms I was with, as this was the first time I had met them, when I smeared guacamole from our seafood nachos with my fingers. I highly doubt that crushing a tomato into the book, causing it to drip disgustingly all over the table has earn me some Facebook Friend requests.

But OMG it was fun finger painting with food!

But as we explained to our lovely waiter, “It’s therapy,” my friend said to him, “She’s working though some issues,” and laughed.

And, really it truly is and I truly am. I find that while creating destruction I am creating new things too. I am inspired to write, create art and to look at the world differently because of this book. As to the issues, well we all have those, if we look deep enough, and I’m able to vent some old frustration out on this book.

But, really I am fascinated about creation through destruction and enjoying coming up ideas about how I will continue to destroy this book.

OMG smearing food on this page was fun! 

I think I’ll take the jalapeño and cheese out of the book before it begins to smell though...

Impermanence

Yesterday morning I spent a lot of time thinking about my Wrecking Journal. I even made notes about what I wanted to write. It felt meaningful maybe even profound. But then I saw the news and everything in the world changed.

I don’t know anybody in Newtown, CT, but I’m a parent of a 9 year old boy. Hearing about children being shot at their school was, and continues to be, terrifying to me. I live on the West Coast of Canada, almost as far away from Connecticut as one can get, yet I couldn’t help myself; I had to walk to my child’s school and look into the building to make sure everything there was okay.

Earlier in the day, before the news,  I was musing on what Buddhists call Impermanence. It is a very important concept in Buddhist thought. Its meaning seems self-explanatory. Nothing in this universe is permanent. Eventually everything in the universe will change, degrade, fall apart or die.

Recognising this fact helps one let go of attachment. Attachment leads to suffering.

No shit. What stronger attachment is there than a parent and child?

The fleeting delicacy of life was thrown so intensely in our faces today and it has caused endless amounts of suffering. I can’t even comprehend the level of terror and horror these parents are trying to survive right now.

This isn't to say that one shouldn't love their children or that Buddhist thought is callous and uncaring. In fact it’s just the opposite. 

If we can understand and truly, deeply recognize the precious nature of life and respect that it has immeasurable value, perhaps the tragedy that befell those families wouldn't happen.

I have been thinking a lot about destruction the last few days. Thinking and planning the ways I will destroy this book. This journal has been created to be ruined. Today I struggle to separate my thoughts about the planned destruction of a book and the planned shootings of children.

Intellectually I know the magnitude of these two things are drastically different, but my heart cannot part them.

I wasn't going to destroy a piece of my journal, but I remembered this page and realized that as much as this is a book to be torn apart, perhaps I could create a part of it that won’t be. At least not for a while. 

Journals are records of our life events, this one is no different. 

Make no mistake I am furious, raging and desperately seeking compassion. 

It's nowhere to be found. 

Is that lint in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Last night I did some laundry and I found the ticket sub from my Son's Christmas concert in the pocket of my jeans. There are two places where this would fit in the journal. There is a page that is to be removed, laundered and replaced in the book,

or there's this pocket lint page. 

While not specifically pocket 'lint' it did get all mushed up and is a reminder of a good memory. In my mind it breaches the gap between traditional journals  "Dear Diary, today I went to my son's Christmas concert. He is such a fantastic child I love him more that life itself... blah, blah, blah..." and the purpose of the this journal which is wanton destruction. 

I also didn't glue it in, but used tape. Such a rebel, I know. 

Dirty

It's so clean

I decided on this page today. I found it much easier to do than tearing out another page in the book. I headed outside to rub the page on my car and then quickly scurried back inside. The Garbage truck was heading down my street. I wasn't in my bathrobe and slippers or anything, but still I didn't want to be seen as the crazy girl rubbing a book on a car, now did I? 

Potential 'Crazytown' averted by hiding inside.
Also, that's my dirty car

So I waited, patiently just inside my front door. If I'd gone back upstairs or decided to do it after I brushed my teeth I'm pretty sure I would have lost my nerve. 

After the truck passed and the coast was clear, I went out into the rain and rubbed the page on my very dirty, very wet car. 

Yah me!

bleck, it's all dirty now. :(

From the Wreckage

It is very hard to purposefully and willfully
destroy a book. But I'll try. 

My friend gave me this journal for my birthday, which is today 12/12/12. She gave it to me because she's spent the last 5 years watching me read, study, write notes, and generally live surrounded by books while I worked on my degree. She thought it would be good for me to have some 'fun with a book'for a change. 

Also I think she finds a high level of glee watching my neurosis blossom as i contemplate destroying a book. 

"It'll be good for you," she said. 
"It will be fun," she said. 
"It'll be therapeutic," she said. 

I wrote a lot of four letter words that were *nice*
before writing some that were naughty...
Can you find them?

So I'll try, and I'll chronicle my destruction of this book here, perhaps it will be therapeutic, freeing, rejuvenating and enlightening, or some other ridiculous notion. 

The first page says to "stand on it and wipe your feet." I just can't do it, It's too disrespectful to books. There's a bunch of tear out pages too. I struggle with ripping up books. not sure I can do it. 

Note the use of 4 letter words to commemorate
tearing out the first page. 

Sitting with my friends while our kids were swimming, I tried. I did a few of these pages and photographed them... 

I did eventually tear out the page beside the "write four letter word page. My friend R. took it, ripped it and folded it into a rose. 

There is something mind numbingly satisfying
about just drawing circles, circles and more
circles

Which I squished in the "Press flowers here page" (not photographed).

I've tried to date the pages and will try to date them as I do what is asked of me on in this book. 


It is easier to poke holes in a page than to tear it right out. I suppose it has to do with losing the page. Losing the memory or a piece of the book or some other frighteningly deep psychological mumbo-jumbo.

I used a pen.