The Scrap Drawer: Quilts of Attention

A Methodology for Artful Living in the Rubble

The Scrap Drawer is a monthly quilted letter assembled from the things I keep: memories, photographs, a page of a book I've tabbed, a scene from a movie...

The form mirrors the shape of each month.

Some are intricately pieced; others, a whole cloth. I stitch them together in an effort to soothe the questions that ache.

This is a monthly practice of cultivating attention—a way to make sense of a fractured world by honoring each scrap, searching for the place of small things within the whole.

Dear Someone,

I’m sure you’re well aware of the problem with everything.

I know, it is terribly overwhelming, but I believe that everything is something worthy our attention. However, everything can not be faced head-on. Catching the gaze of everything will certainly turn one to stone.

The good news is, we have creativity to help us find a new angle to safely assess our situation. Rather than going into battle blind, we should look for a way to find everything in reflections; shop windows, puddles, someone else’s eyes.

Someone, I hope that these letters have not been overwhelming for you. They are often overwhelming for me as their writer. But, everyone needs some kind of methodology for the processing of everything. This is mine. You’re welcome to try it out for yourself, if you’d like.

Beyond an aesthetic practice, I see these letters as a real, utilitarian quilt; not made from cloth, but out of my attention.

I have been deeply haunted by everything, and have been on a long search for my way out of paralysis. I’m happy to report that sustained attention and presence do work, though these skills are certainly not easy to nurture when everything is competing for your gaze.

While previous scrap drawers have used cultural references, ephemera, and fragments of literature as material, today’s will consist of fragments of my direct vision, by way of some photographs I’ve taken recently.

It is hard to say how to deal with the brokenness of our world; I’ll admit that most days it seems futile. But, no matter how small and tattered a fragment is, it is a good practice to tuck it away for safe keeping. You may be surprised what it reveals about the whole.

Do you have any scraps to add? I’ve created a form for you to share yours here, if you would like.

Here are some scraps from the month of July 2025.

On a recent walk, I took note of a little girl being scolded by her mother for lingering around a flower for too long. I sensed myself in her crying.

The same voice in my memory rushes me out of moments of reverie, too.

I’d lost touch this capacity for reverie until later in life when I began to search for my creative voice. I tried painting, drawing, and textile art, but it was photography that returned this childlike fascination with the visual world.

Photography never enticed me as a creative medium. I came of age in a world with smart phones, and it seemed to me that any photo worth being taken had already been taken. I’m happy to say I was wrong.

I began taking photos on film after giving up my iPhone. Without the world in my pocket, I realized the fullness of the world in front of me, unmediated. I also came to realize how cameras on these devices are designed to take an average of what’s in front of the lens, reflecting back to us a flattened version of reality that isn’t necessarily true.

But a photographer doesn’t have to rely on averages; they choose what elements to bring forward or backward into the picture plane. They decide how much light comes into the lens.

Nurturing my artist has largely involved making peace with this hurrying hand. This hand is the archetypal mother, who is so busy, with so much to do, she is understandably frustrated with the child’s lingering.

But lingering is the role of the child; to hold up the small fragments of the world and ask “what is this thing?” All so the mother can say

“flower, bumble bee, helicopter seed.”

And she will continuously answer these same questions until the child knows, but it helps her to not forget the importance of every thing.

Everything keeps me up at night. Junk journaling provides some relief about what to do with it all. Whenever I open my drawer of scraps, I know I can find a place and purpose for them.

One morning, when I’d been up all through the night, I took myself on a walk with my camera during golden hour, which proved grey. Instead, I gathered this gingko leaf and mouse trap packaging off the sidewalk.

At a certain point, a hawk swooped over my head with a small bird in its talon. In an attempt to save their friend, a dozen birds of a similar color swarmed around the hawk in an attempt to save their friend. I watch a plume of feathers float to the ground, and the little birds sigh.

Nature in the city is concealed throughout the day when I’m usually alive in it, but at this hour, she revealed herself to me. She is brutal, but also beautiful in the courage of those little birds.

I think that whenever I see troubling news from now on, I will focus my lens on the little birds rather than the hawk.

My partner David has this habit of bringing little things in from outside to place them on our table as if to say

“Do you know what this thing is?”

We never discuss these things in words, but we have a little shelf we dedicate to our findings.

He brought in this wasp nest this month which reminded me of a a crochet lace doily my mom sent to me in the mail, which I arranged in this photo.

I like knowing that in the same way the wasps shaped this honeycomb structure out of wood pulp, someone once crocheted this doily in a similar shape out of an earthly material. Just to make something pretty for their table where they place their photographs and special things.

On a trip to the antique this month, I used a kid’s instant print camera to photograph everything I saw that intrigued me, including these old phones sitting on a shelf.

Even when phones were restrained to the wall, everything must have started to feel cumbersome.

I grew up in thrift stores, antique malls, and yard sales. This was the favored past time of the women who raised me, and I have the same obsession with rummaging, even while I’ve run out of space for new trinkets.

With my toy camera, I felt a little more free from the burden of wanting to save everything from obscurity, knowing that in a small way I could keep anything I wanted as a little symbol of our collective past.

When I visit the antique mall, I find comfort in knowing there are others like me who will take the time to rummage through a bin of old photos of strangers. I like knowing that one day my photographs might be found here in this scrap drawer of the universe, waiting for someone to take it home and find a place for it in their life.

A truck that drives around my neighborhood saves discarded things from alleys. There is always a new assemblage of things affixed to the roof to admire. On some days, the bed of the truck is piled so high with things, I don’t know how it all stays on board. It’s been filled with aquariums and old dolls, toys, televisions, and vacuum cleaners. The rosary dangling from the rear view mirror tells me this must be a sacred practice for the driver.

It may not seem like much, but I think this kind of attention to the sacred detritus of the world holds immense possibility for change, even in one’s personal cosmos.

The technology that mediates our attention has fractured it. What will you do with the scraps? What practices do you keep to honor the everything of your life?

I’d really like to know.

Jeremy

P.S. If my work has resonated with you, please consider dropping some spare change in my cup, here. Any little bit will help. :)