This is it. The "Altared" Book of the Self

    Well, it’s finally time; time to submit my Altared Book of the Self. It’s been quite a journey this semester and is probably the toughest semester I’ve had in all my years of school, before and during college. For a bit of recap as to what the Altared book assignment is, We are all to take a book that we do not like (putting it very nicely) and “altar” it to make it into something that we do like. We are allowed to alter it in any way that has some kind of positive expression of ourselves. The alteration should also answer the question “What is identity of self in the digital world?” As inspiration with ideas to use while creating it, we can use the experiences we got from all our previous assignments for things to add in our alterations. We also had an assignment earlier to have the cover of the book complete, which did help with time management.

    One quick note to add, I absolutely hate the book I chose. I have not said the name of it yet, but all will be revealed in time, no spoilers.

     Let’s begin with the inspirations I got from my past assignments in chronological order: starting with The Egg and Eye. I decided that I wanted to protect others from reading the book, something that was not done for me back in high school, so I sealed it shut. This also ties in with The flavor of a sand pear sounds like… in which the fruit is basically a outpouring of resistance that does not want to be eaten. The flesh and juice of the pear is blood red, so I combined these two assignments into one example for the book. I dyed some glue to look as blood red as possible and sealed the pages of the book shut. What I did for the egg was that I protected it in a box with cushions inside it. Combining these two, I am protecting the outside world from it, using a deterring barrier to keep it sealed.

In Polly Wolly doodle all the day? I didn’t necessarily create a specific example for it in the book, but I used the example to think about what the book might say about me at first glance. It has a lot of blue color on it, but has been sealed with red glue. To be honest, I’m still not sure what it will say about me, but I’m not too concerned with what people think about me based on an altered book. Don’t get me wrong, I have turned the book into something that I like now, but I prefer to let my words say what needs to be said about me rather than a book I didn’t write, even though I did alter it.

    For Rules were made… I think that coloring the glue red might be something similar to a rule being broken. If that doesn’t cut it, all the trouble and mistakes that I had while trying to glue it shut should be enough. Anything with wet dye typically becomes a big mess, so parts of my covers look like they have red finger prints. I broke my own rules for this one; I didn’t want any red to be on the covers.

For Bible dipping, we were given the word “reused”, and that’s how the cover of my book got created. I reused the cover of the book to turn it into something that I could like about it. Because when the book has its own natural cover, it’s the cover to a book that I despise. But after randomly using the word “reused” it is something that I like.

    For “Who am I and why am I here”, I used it as inspiration while making this book. It was one of the few assignments over my entire time of school that I really enjoyed, and I wanted to make something for this assignment that I could enjoy just as much. As of right now, I did kind of enjoy creating this altered book, but I enjoy the fact that I turned something that I despise into something that I actually like.

    For “You’ve got this covered!”, that happened to be the actual assignment for making the cover of the book. Since that was already done, I altered the spine of the book a bit more to resemble the cover.

   For “Media round robin”, this assignment helped to work on two classes at the same time. The actual process wouldn’t help me much with the altered book, but I did think of a way that the altered book can apply to two problems at the same time. For one, it can provide a way turn something I don’t like into something that I can enjoy at least a little bit. Two, it settles the need for the assignment. Three, I just thought it was a bit fun.

 
    For “Bliss”, the altered assignment itself is to make something bad become something good. This ties in well with the bliss assignment, as it turned something that I would never ever find blissful, into something that I could actually look back on and think of in a good way.

 
    “Fear Factor”. I don’t know what people will think of me when they see this book. I’m worried about failing this assignment. I’m worried about what I might discover about myself some time down the road after looking back on this book. I’m also worried if there was some way that this assignment might affect me negatively now, for the future. These might be strange things to fear, but I always consider my fears and the risks when I do anything.

    And now we are back to the “Altared” Book of the Self. I’ll answer the question “What is identity of self in the digital world?” I drew a small picture on a note card, and put it on the inside back cover of my book. The picture is of a person, but there are no facial features, no clothes, it’s completely filled with black. The way I see it, self in the digital world does not really have a complete appearance. In a digital world, our physical appearances do not usually become apparent, unless by an actual picture of ones self. It would seem as though we create our own self in the real world and in the digital world, but both are at least slightly different. We can decide on an identity for ourselves in the digital world, but not even that decision needs to be permanent. It’s easy to get or create a new image for ourselves in a digital sense, but much harder in the real world sense. Given the fact that it’s easy, it means that we have more of a freedom to change it whenever we desire. If we can change it whenever we desire, then what is an actual good representation of the identity of self in the digital world? To me, it’s a blank slate, a basis that can be formed whenever and however. It may be simple, but that’s what the identity of self in the digital world is to me.

    By the way, the book is Peace like a River, by Leif Enger. It hurt me to say the name of that book and the author just now. If you asked me why I hate it, I honestly could not give you the answer. I just remember that I hated the book so much, that I purged all my memories of it soon after reading it. It was a required book for a high school english class, and I passed the class but probably failed the assignments based on this book. The description of the book talks about it being a spiritual journey, which kind of surprises me on how I must of thought it was bad back then, considering that I am and was religious at the time while reading this book. Either way, the fact remains the same, I personally think that I would have spent too much on that book if I had paid for it with my own crap. I know, toilet humor can be gross, but I need a laugh of any kind with finals week starting.

    I don’t think I’ll ever have a class like this again, which makes these last few lines bittersweet. On the bright side, I can take everything I’ve learned in this class and apply it to all aspects of my life, and make my own experiences with the new perspective. I really wish Beth Lykins could have been around for the Fear assignment as well as the last class, but life happens, we all have experience with that. I might keep posting to this blog, but I’m not completely sure. So until next time, always try to look at things from a different perspective, what lies behind the first appearance might be surprising.