Lost Weekend

I lost myself this weekend. I wandered for hours, every day of the three-day holiday. I slipped through a doorway that took me outward, to an expansive place. I became lost in a project of memory, so involved in thoughts and images that, although I was in my house or on my porch, I was not fully in those places.

Having made multiple trips to the local hobby shop--mine is Michael's, out on  Western and 91st Street--I finally sat down with a couple hundred photographs, with empty album pages, craft paper, and accent stickers. Also at hand were the detailed route notes and map from my England walk, and my journal. I pieced together the trip, day by day. It will soon be a month since I returned, but while retracing my steps I felt the recollections gather close, as if it all happened a few days ago.

I don't consider myself a visually oriented person, at least not in an artistic way. Craft-related items intrigue but intimidate me, and my art projects back in grammar school definitely were not placed prominently in classroom displays. But this trip was important as others have not been, and I knew that if I let even another month go by, I would begin to mix up events and days and photos and sequences. Retracing my steps would help preserve the journey. And to do it justice, I needed to add notes here and there, include paper bits I'd collected. A straight photo album wouldn't work. So I might as well approach the project creatively.

After struggling with the first couple of pages--choosing which photos, in which order, on which art paper, in which configuration, etc.--I became absorbed. The energy of that natural concentration held through afternoons and evenings. I organized my memories while The Lord of the Rings trilogy played through in its entirety. I trimmed photos and affixed borders through multiple programs on the classical music station, which gave atmosphere to the otherwise quiet back porch.

It was the sort of creative flow that must be interrupted in order to realize that you're hungry and never bothered with lunch. The kind of absorption that draws you away from the minor anxieties that can nickel-and-dime your energy and keep you awake through the night. This weekend, when I got tired, I went to bed and slept.

This evening, at around 7 p.m., I finished the project. What satisfaction! Now I can share the story with others in an organized way. I don't have to worry about mixing up groups of photos and forgetting which church that was or why I took a picture of this particular wall.

Putting together this scrapbook has reminded me what it feels like to enter the creative flow--and the experience highlights how rarely these days I experience such total and blissful concentration. Well, I guess that means it's time to make some plans.