Life in a vacuum

Ezra Pound, a famous poet and literary critic, once stated, "Literature does not exist in a vacuum." His point was that you can never understand a story just by reading the words on the page. It is infused with the history, politics, and art of the time, as well as the author's own life. It is not what it is, but so much more.

Throughout the years since he first uttered these words, they have been transfered to refer to Art, People, Life; essentially used to point out that Nothing exists in a vacuum. (of course, if you want to go all housekeeping small change and dust bunnies exist in my vacuum). But if I stay in the philosophical, this is actually one of my favorite parts of the internet--my scrapbooking is not in a vacuum. Had I not had a community of people to challenge me, to critique my work, to teach me, to giggle over my failures and happy dance my successes, where would my scrapping be?

I am pretty sure, it would be tucked away on a shelf with other crafts that I got bored with and only visit occasionally. Crochet, candle-making, beading, quilting, embroidery all claim spots on these shelves and tend to only jump down when a specific gift is requested. Instead, scrapping claims most of my office area. My best friends are my scrap buddies, my most tortuous daily moments are scrap stories, my neighborhood is a scrap soap, my kids are scrap models. And my vacuum, well, it sits lonely in the corner waiting for my husband to come along and show it some love.

One of our current ScrapStreet calls is to use paint. I love paint, but rarely have had luck using it in my scrapping. Still, I took up the challenge--mostly because Zack said something just to perfect and it screamed for me to try again. Here it is:



Now, let's be honest. This was one of those priceless things that came out of my 5yo son's mouth as we were racing through the early morning get to school and work rush. It was not a photo time and might have been a forgotten moment if I was living in that vacuum. But instead, it was a post on ScrapStreet. And then it was a photoshoot. And then it was a layout answering a challenge. This is often how I scrap--my pages start with the story more often than they start with the photo.