Utterly Ghastly

Story 2: The Artist and his Medium's Revenge

I have done a thousand different kinds of art. I used to do creative writing, but then I wanted something that provided me an instant physical reality instead of spending years of my life struggling for publication. I'd try to get an agent and then get a thousand replies of "I am passing, but keep trying! This is a subjective business. . ." yada, yada, yada. Basically, what I wrote wasn't trending enough for them to get rich quick, forget the contribution it might have made to literary canon. But whatever, I moved on. I did oil painting after watching a lot of painting shows on TV late at night. But then I did one I really liked and decided that I was done with that as well. Sculpting, pottery, weaving—you name it, I tried it to fill that hole. And I kept trying all of these art forms from all over the world to fill the hole that not engaging in creative writing made in me.

Until a friend of mine from Japan talked to be about origami. I thought to myself, Now there's something I haven't tried before. I might as well give it a whirl. I cannot tell you how much paper I used and threw away while I was learning the craft. Honestly, it's more than a little embarrassing. I know there's such a thing as recycling, but we did a "recycle paper yourself" science experiment in middle school and it turned out terrible, so I decided that all paper recycling created an inferior product some time ago. It's simply not worth the hassle, and you can always grow more trees! It's not plastic which never breaks down and poisons the earth and everything. I heard that paper is biodegradable. That's why all of these grocery chains are going back to paper bags now that plastic is the demon substance, right? Because it's better for the environment when it inevitably ends up in nature?

So, anyway, I went through about a ton of paper while learning origami and I found that I loved it. I made so many little paper creations, and then I had no more space for more paper creations, so I ended up having to throw some away which was very sad. I made more in more

Barringer 3

complicated designs and it just made me so happy, I wear. It got my mind off of how I was rejected from the publishing business.

It seems my art was always meant to involve paper rather than canvas, clay, or stone. My greatest love was creative writing, and that gets turned into paper books if you're blessed. I always buy paper books instead of those e-books. There's just something about the feeling of turning a page that doesn't get replicated when you're on a tablet. Also, I swear, the smell of a brand new book is intoxicating. There's nothing like going into a bookstore, either, and taking a deep whiff of all of that fresh paper.

I had a very big environment activist friend, and note the 'had' I started the sentence with, who chastised me for using up so much paper for my hobbies and leisure activity. She said that it was "morbid that you find the smell of brutally cut down dead organisms to be so relaxing and pleasant." And then she compared me to a killer taking a trophy after killing their prize. Our friendship immediately ended after that sort of judgment. There are worse things that I could do and engage in than my love of paper, okay?

At least, that's what I used to think. One night, I had stayed up for two days trying to get this paper origami bird just right so that I could sell it to someone on Etsy, and it just wasn't turning out the way that I wanted. I had about five different drafts, and each one ended up in the garbage. I had a deadline that was coming up in a couple of days so that I could ship it and it could arrive during the estimated arrival time, and I was really getting stress so I decided to supplement sleep with caffeine. Probably not the best of ideas, I grant you, but I was doing my absolute best here.