I’ve mentioned before that I’m an ephemera collector, inasmuch as I’ve saved everything I’ve found left inside of books for a number of years now – from title cards to bookmarks, to things that aren’t bookmarks but nobly performed as such.

Working at a library for a decade has had these rewards, but none so significantly unusual as the things that come in alongside the boxes of books. See, when people get rid of books, they seem to activate a tidal wave of a purge from their lives and strange things get swept up along on the tide. Old locks, seasoning packets, photographs, flower seeds, diapers and diplomas are some of the more common things that we find at the bottom of donation boxes. Dead animals are not too uncommon, if this is a box that spent a winter in the garage before it found its way to us. I don’t collect those, because despite what this blog would imply, I have my limits.

Insects and beautiful bird skeletons aside, of course.

In a box of recent donations, we found an old journal written by a kid named Evan. It’s a Star Wars : Episode I journal, and it contains three days in the life of a child, from October 6th, 2001 until the 8th. Every page has a short observation about something that occurred to him that day, and a small illustration of the thought. After that is a large section of missing pages, torn for the book for some mysterious reason, probably just as interesting as the remaining contents.

I don’t know if many people would be impressed or be as enthralled as I am, but I think it’s an amazing glimpse into these few days, and the breadth of this kid’s thoughts in that time. They range from Legos, to his friends, and even a reflection upon the World Trade Center attacks – which is perhaps the most resonant thing of all, not so much in the observation itself, just that it was observed at all. In terms of ephemera, what’s more ephemeral than a unique record of passing thoughts?

The whole thing in punctuated by a large drawing in brown marker, though I can’t tell what animal it’s supposed to be. At the moment, it’s the most interesting thing in the book-related ephemera collection, and not just because it shares my love of Legos and Nintendo – but something else fascinating also came in around the same time.

This envelope. Sure, it’s just a collection of doodles without any real destination, but somehow it manages to almost completely encompass the whole world of awesome. It has evidence that this doodler is an artist of some skill and intent, but the inclusion of a robot, a ninja, a dragon and a UFO in the same image probably could never be beat, even if I dedicated the rest of my creative life to capturing the idea of Awesome more concisely. The horse in a suit, the large turtle, the hummingbird and the portrait of the old man make this a wholly surreal piece, plumbing the depths of the subconscious and the id.

In fact, Surrealists were known to engage in ‘automatic drawing’ regularly – just letting their mind wander and allowing their hands to follow. It was the classic equivalent of these telephone doodles, which I would argue are even more pure because they’re even MORE automatic than sitting down with the intention to draw. Either way, I want to meet this guy and draw the hell out of a sketchbook together. I’m assuming this is a male artist because of the inclusion of ninjas and robots, which disproportionately skews towards the male demographic. If this is a female artist, consider this my marriage proposal.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 2:00 am and is filed under collecting fyi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.