A Scrap of An Idea

ODE TO PAPER

Plain white lined object
Floating through the air in the breeze
Leaving and arriving at different destinations
Movable, portable
Wanting nothing more than
To communicate
To relay words and numbers and symbols
Accepting different languages
Written by different hands
Light-weight
Loose-leaf
Different purposes
Different roles
Without this, little children of all ages
Grown adults with childhood spirit
Could not enjoy the gift of freedom
To make airplanes that
Fly high into the heavens
To make frogs and tigers and birds
That expand our minds
To make footballs that
Cause touchdowns in the middle of class
This dull, reusable, recyclable piece of trash
Is the binding of our society, our culture, our world
Connecting life into a whole

- MARCI PHILIPS
(We found this poem in the College of Central Florida's literary journal IMPRINTS and the Paper Sculpture art is by Jen Stark.)

I love this quote by George Bernard Shaw. "Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love." Writers can create the world as we'd like it and expose life in all of it's complexities. Let's here a big HOLLER for those artists who play with paper...whether it manifests into a sculpture, a piece of writing, or even a prayer for peace.

As Picasso said, "The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web." With that in mind, we invite you to share with us your scraps of ideas: a lonely line, a fuzzy outline of a thought, a few of your favorite words that jump off the page in the dictionary. Who knows, maybe if we free these words and ideas from our mind, they will finally find a home on paper.