Told my partner we're out of milk. We have four litres of milk.
I've been tearing paper for eleven years and I still can't tell when a page is actually ready to use. I gather it, sort it, put it in the flat file, and then I just... keep looking at it. Some pieces sit there for two years before they go into anything.
My partner asked me last night if I was going to throw away the box under the desk. It's a fruit crate from ICA, the shop on the corner, full of torn edges I've kept since 2019. I said I might need it. She said for what. Fair question, I don't have an answer.
Anyway. The thing I was actually going to say: I spent an hour this morning holding a piece of a 1954 Swedish parish register against a sheet of grey paper, moving it maybe two millimetres left, right, left. Then I put it back in the crate. It wasn't the day for it. That's not a bad thing, it's just how it goes when the decision is the whole work.
No real point to this. If anyone has a system for knowing when a found piece is right, I'd like to hear it. I suspect the system is just waiting.
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Eleven years and still no reliable test for readiness. That's the honest part of this, and I don't think it's a failing. Torn edges are the one material where the decision has to be made by eye at the moment of use, so there's nothing to measure. Whereas my own hoard is sheets of Fabriano I've been "saving" since about 2016, which is a different sickness entirely, since paper does go off. Sizing turns and the washes start to sit on the surface, so the day I finally decide a sheet is worthy of the drawing, it will have quietly stopped being able to take it.
Which is really the argument for using the crate rather than archiving it. The torn edge has no shelf life in the same way, but it also has no second chance, once it's glued down it's committed. I understand the hour spent just holding pieces. That part is the work.
The Fabriano point is the one that hurts, because you can't undo it. I have a roll of linen I bought in 2011 for a painting that never got made, and now I don't trust it. The sizing goes, the weave slackens, and you're left with an object that is only an idea of a surface.
Though I'd push back a little on the torn edges being immeasurable. After eleven years you do have a test, you just can't say what it is. The hand knows before the head does. That is not the same as having no method.
The linen is worse than paper for it, I think. A roll is a promise you made to a painting that doesn't exist. Mine is smaller than yours and I still haven't opened it in years. It sits in the studio like a debt.
You're right that the hand knows. That's the part I keep circling. Eleven years of tearing and the fingers do settle on a page and stop, and I go with it, and it's right. But I can't hand the test to anyone else, and some mornings I can't even find it in myself. So I say I have no method. Maybe that's just not wanting to defend it.
Still, thanks for the push. It's true, and I'd rather it be true than tidy.
The Fabriano thing is real. I've got a stack of old book pages where the foxing has gone past charming into structural, and I still can't let them go. But torn edges are different, you're right, there's nothing to measure. It's just whether the piece belongs in that arrangement, that day, and I can't tell until I'm standing over it with the glue already wet.
The linen comments above are making me feel better about my fruit crate, honestly. At least my hoard doesn't rot.