ASTHMA ATTACK

"When you have an asthma attack, you can’t breathe. When you can’t breathe, you can hardly talk. To make a sentence all you get is the air in your lungs. Which isn’t much. Three to six words, if that. You learn the value of words. You rummage through the jumble in your head. Choose the crucial ones—those cost you too. Let healthy people toss out whatever comes to mind, the way you throw out the garbage. When an asthmatic says “I love you,” and when an asthmatic says “I love you madly,” there’s a difference. The difference of a word. A word’s a lot. It could be stop, or inhaler. It could even be ambulance."

 

From The Girl On The Fridge by Etgar Keret 

My Mighty Wallet

Exactly one year ago around this time I was in New York City. It was a short trip and I didn’t have much time to visit museums but one of the ones I didn’t want to miss was the MoMA-  “a place that fuels creativity, ignites minds, and provides inspiration”. But I have to be honest here and I know there are some awesome art pieces at MoMA and I enjoyed some of them, but my main motivation to go there (despite being exhausted from the night before) was to go to the MoMA Store. I really like cleverly designed products that bring some creativity and beauty to everyday-life objects and had already thought about ordering some of them through the online store.

One of those products that had caught my attention after reading about it in the swissmiss blog was the Mighty Wallet - a “tear-resistant, water-resistant, expandable and recyclable origami construction”-  and was happy to find them there. They didn’t have a lot of models at that time so I decided to get the D.I.Y -  with a writable surface you can write or draw on - in the hope to get inspired one day soon and personalize my own wallet.

It’s been a year since then and the Mighty Wallet was unopened in my desk until this weekend when coincidentally 1. I needed some motivation in my life and wanted to invest some creative energy on something 2. was at home sick and 3. the wallet I bought 6 months ago (on a second trip to NY) is finally completely broken. I also decided that the Copic markers I’ve had decorating my desk for some years could be of some use.

So, with no actual training in the development of creative projects I started with random designs to include some of ‘my favourite things’: patterns of geometrical forms, bubbles and water in my favorite color palette of steel blue/turquoise/cyan. 

The bubbles had to come from somewhere so I put a couple of bubble monsters there. And finally I added some extra color in the form of a scary water creature (aka fish) to remind myself that there’s beauty even in the things we sometimes (irrationally) fear.

I like the end result: original and simple but very personal. All it’s left is to get some money to put in and test how practical it truly is.