My mythical six week holiday
has begun and I shall use it to write, or at least I would use it to write were
it not for my suffering from a rash of paper. I am plagued by paper, masses of
it everywhere threatening paper fleas at any moment.
Ever surface in this house
has paper on it. The kitchen table plays host to an assortment of objects: bits
of Lego, a roll of sellotape and a cardboard minecraft cube but most tellingly
four note books. The spice cupboard provides
a surface on which objects are piled precariously, bank statements, letters, birthday-cards,
envelops, the boy’s exercise books, cooking books, the dogs brush, a tube of shuttlecocks and
more, but mostly paper. The paper is
becoming unmanageable.
A few years back I began to
dedicate three or four days each summer to the clearing of paper, in much the
same way that Anna Karenina’s lover timetabled one day a year to the sorting of
his finances. I sorted, I alphabetically filed and I shredded until the wheelie
bin was so full that I stood the boy in there to stamp down the paper mound.
Last year the shredder broke. The paper has piled further, I have bank
statements going back to 2002 and wage slips from 1998.
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| illustrated by http://andyartisand.carbonmade.com/ |
In Saul Bellow’s “Herzog”,
Moses writes to the president bemoaning the fact that American Citizens are
being turned into Clerks. Moses might
have had a cardboard folder like I do that categorically states “filing is everyone’s responsibility”.
This was presented to me by the National Health Service when I departed with my
new born son. I dutifully filed it.
I can handle a little bit of administration, I am after all a teacher and I do have a tendency to collect bits of paper, right now there are three note books on my desk, there is a clip board of A4 paper containing storyboards for some long forgotten project, a short story written by an ex student, some information about marking City and Guilds Functional Skills and an article on why Gone Home is so Immersive. As an artist my husband also has lots of paper, sketch books, cartoons and so on and the child has amassed a huge amount of paper from his own creative endeavors, and from school: teacher’s awards, school news-letters, Cub Scout news-letters and information leaflets.
I can handle a little bit of administration, I am after all a teacher and I do have a tendency to collect bits of paper, right now there are three note books on my desk, there is a clip board of A4 paper containing storyboards for some long forgotten project, a short story written by an ex student, some information about marking City and Guilds Functional Skills and an article on why Gone Home is so Immersive. As an artist my husband also has lots of paper, sketch books, cartoons and so on and the child has amassed a huge amount of paper from his own creative endeavors, and from school: teacher’s awards, school news-letters, Cub Scout news-letters and information leaflets.
I don’t have a problem with
the creative paper. I do have a problem with unending leafleting, a bombardment
of credit card offers, internet service provider offers, and endless bank
statements, which are getting bigger and now include one extra piece of paper
which is all but blank apart from containing my name and my account details.
The bank statements are printed on thicker paper than the wage slips and won’t
go through the new shredder. I tried to set fire to them in the garden, but became afraid that a piece of burning bank statement might blow away and cause a major
incident.I poured a cup of water over the bank-statements and now have an ashy mess, in a biscuit tin, in the yard.
In “The Artists Way” Julia
Cameron suggests that we should not let chores get a hold over our creativity, so
now the bank-statements are at the foot of the stairs awaiting a safe disposal
method. Unfortunately I also have an ironing crisis to battle and it refuses to
be ignored, the ironing is right next to me, next to the computer and it is
monstrous in size.
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