Deface Something

Sometimes you just have to deface something.

What I’m talking about here is the legal destruction of something on your own terms, for your own artistic benefit (or outlet)—not, say, spray painting an overpass, as a redneck might do, to declare your love or defend your sister’s honor.

For example, we recently purchased a box of facial tissues that was way too “pretty.” I like pretty things—new books, lilies, a clean house—but this was just nauseating. It was a white box with very delicate-looking roses and whatnot on the side, resembling something in an eighty-year-old woman’s house. All that was missing was maybe a doily and a fat old cat.

So my daughter and I totally defaced it. We used a few Sharpies and made aliens, scribbles, a skeleton, whatever we felt like. It was a cheap way to turn something so utterly hideous into something that we liked—okay, something even more hideous to some people, but at least it was ours. And given that it will take up residence on the back of our toilet tank for at least a month, shouldn’t it reflect us and not the factory from whence it came?

I first got the idea of defacing things from Keri Smith, the Wreck This Journal guru. I purchased her Living Out Loud, in which she discussed the importance of not fearing the blank page, getting something down on paper, and getting past the fear that it needed to be perfect. One little exercise instructs to write down the word “precious”—and then deface it.

Yeah! Not only do I hate that word (with the exception of its use as the dog’s name in Silence of the Lambs, in which it’s eerily ironic yet fitting), I know exactly what Smith is talking about. How many blank journal pages have I sat and stared at over the years, intimidated by the heavy expectation staring back at me? Fill me with your brilliance, the sheets intoned solemnly, while Gregorian chanting filled the room behind their hollow sounds. Faced with the tasks presented to me before meeting with the Southern Oracle, I would run away screaming.

Today, I’m no longer afraid of the blank page. In fact, I fill two thick journals a year—and there aren’t many “precious” pages within them. Defacing the page is one of the most liberating things in the world. So go ahead and deface something. You’ll feel better.