notes & things | election night edition

It's been warmer than usual, but still rainy and endlessly gloomy amid the shorter days. Today, it felt like a needed a lamp on even in the early afternoon to really see anything. Tonight, J is making soup as soon as he gets home and we'll be feeding our anxieties with that and a loaf of crusty and comfortable bread slathered in butter. I won a bottle of fancy riesling at horror trivia night last week and we plan to crack it open if things are looking good at the end of the night, though I am hesitant lest we jinx any propitious developments so maybe we will wait on that.

There is continually a moment when I click over to the news from whatever else it is that I am trying to do (work, write, put the groceries away) and those swathes of red states, even the predicted ones, make me remember how clueless I once was about basic sound sense and goodness in people. Like many kids that came of age in the glistening and sparkly 90s, the world seemed to be on such a good path toward sounder government, kinder government. I even understood, even if I did not agree, on many of the hot button issues that divided political parties, things like taxation and abortion (though what I used to think was a legit concern over when life officially began has been revealed again and again to be a way to control women.) Sure, I bit my nails and fretted when Bush was elected in 2000, which seemed like a backward step, and probably was compared to how if things had shaken out otherwise I also understood that every action has an opposite reaction. Obama's win made conservatives froth at the mouth and apparently completely lose any good judgment or ethics they had. The rise of social media allowed dysfunction and misinformation to spread wider than before. It became okay to be a monster, something reinforced by the events of November 2016.  You'd see in chat rooms, at rallies, in the (mostly) men who bullied and catcalled and swaggered their way through the first four years. 

Last election, I was careful to step lightly and not hope too much. It seemed more of a return to sense, wrought tooth and nail as it was out to the bitter end. I was too busy laughing at the foolishness of January 6-ers to be horrified in the moments splashed on screen, but that came later  as it sunk in how close we had come to the unraveling of democracy right there in full view. When J and I went to see Civil War this past spring, I spent the entire night in a deep depressive funk I couldn't get out of for days. I see a lot of disturbing movies on a regular basis every week, but that one rattled me to the point I didn't even want to talk about it here. 2020 was also a return to a better version of the timeline, but still much of the same when so many of us longed for something new and progressive, and maybe we will eventually get it (AOC has that same shine that Obama did in the early aughts, and I hope she stays the course.) I am a fan of Harris, and she has all the experience and qualifications to make this happen, but there is always the fear at the back of my head that we will never have a female president in my lifetime. I dared hope in 2016, but I am measuring my expectations tonight.  I still blame social media and the fanning of media outlets who tell lies like the truth at worst, or at best, fan the flames for clicks for the mess of it all. 

Still, I got a little kick of excitement at each projected state that comes in blazing blue. There is so much we won't know till a couple days have passed, so it's hard to be either hopeful or despondent tonight. Illinois feels like a sea of sanity in a red wash of midwest idiocy and apparently a mix of the very gullible and the very horrible.  Outside of the racists, homophobes, and anti-intellectualism, there are those who believe everything Fox News tells them regarding immigration and the economy, mostly convincing them that one is related to the other, when it's the usual villains in big business who price gouge and limit resources for all of us, especially since covid (including immigrants who should have an easier, not more difficult, time of it getting citizenship and entry in an ideal world, longer tables over higher walls and all.) There are factors I will never understand as to how we ever got in this position, but even more, how we find ourselves in it again.  I keep repeating under my breath every five minutes what they told us last time, Trust the System and hope for the best.

notes & things | 11/1/2024

November has slunk in amid warmer than usual temperatures here in the midwest,.though after a couple of snowy Halloween's the past few years, I will take the milder weather. Our plans for the drive-in were thwarted by a pipe repair issue in the apartment, so we decided to stay closer to home and see Terrifier 3 then get pizza then come home to watch J's ongoing introduction to AHS.  

I did manage to finally get the ghost box artist book edition under wraps and release the e-zine version, which you can always read for free HERE. I am always torn between wanting to make work freely available (because, hell, in this economy) but also give people who want to get a physical thing the opportunity to get something tangible or collectible.  In terms of other soon-to-be shop offerings, I was able to get the final tweaks done in the layout and design for RUINPORN and am eagerly awaiting the proof copy. No word on when that is shipping, but I did get a notification that the finalized stack of Elizabeth Devlin's chapbook Milk Spine I ordered a couple days before that one went out this morning, so it is sure to follow soon. Her book turned out lovely with the perfect binding and I plan to do more for unusually sized volumes in the future in addition to my own project and the handmade volumes. Since the color and image printing was so good with granata, I might also use it for books with a lot of art going forward, which while a little costlier, the difference is made less by the amount I end up spending on color toner for those books.  I plan to just charge a little more to offset the printing cost difference. The covers and interior paper were glorious on Devlin's book and all the ones I've done so far on my own. 

As I've mentioned, November will always be a rough month. The sparkle and spooky of Halloween fades, the Christmas glitter isn't quite set yet, so I always felt a plummet in my mood as daylight savings took hold and the trees gave up the ghost on their leaves. Always, I am tired at 5pm, and never know quite what to do with myself now that the days are so short and I find myself struggling with my energy levels and just needing naps I never need in summertime. I'm definitely a night person, but as in 8pm and after, when I am most productive and awake. Good things have happened in November--my move back to the city, my job at the library, my first book acceptance, moving into the studio initially. Of course all shadowed by losing both parents in the same span of weeks, albeit five years apart.

I feel a little loose around the edges for a few weeks, at least til the holidays are over and we're in the endless drag of January through March. There are some good things coming up, including some more musicals like next week's production of Little Shop...out in Skokie I am looking forward. We may hit the drive in tomorrow night as well if we feel up to it since they have an entire weekend of horror programming planned. 

I am working a little on some flash fiction-ish pieces (or at least that's what I think they are, they are a little longer than my usual prose poems but not quite a lyric essay. I will probably share some of them as the month goes on. 

scenes from the ghost box

October's bonus zine has arrived just in time for Halloween, along with the accompanying limited edition artist book you can find in the shop., featuring poems, fauxtography, illustration, and more...

Or, you can read the free-zine version, HERE....

2024 horror roundup

Though technically the year isn't over and there are still a few more highlights on the horizon, including the upcoming HERETIC and NOSFERATU, but I thought I'd post a roundup of my faves so far in honor of Halloween that have been released in theaters this year. Since we have subscriptions to both Alamo and AMC, most of these were seen there, some more limited in screenings than others. Some of the things I was most looking forward to this year, like BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE or the remake of THE CROW, I wasn't all that thrilled by or skipped b/c of bad reviews) but these are the best among what I did manage to catch.  

1. STOPMOTION

This one obviously involves some amazingly creepy animations, as well a slow and yet fast descent for its main character into the macabre. 

2. LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL

Delightful with cheesy 70s pastiche and a horrifying storyline.I was surprised I loved so much since demonic possession films are not usually my favorite sub-genre. 

3. MAXXINE

I've been waiting for this one since i fist heard it was coming back when I was writing for Game Rant. Set  in seedy 80s LA, its a good topper for the trilogy with X and PEARL. Mia Goth is also one of my favorite new final girls. 

4. THE SUBSTANCE

This movie....I don't quite know what to say except you have to see it for yourself.  Gore soaked, out of control, delightfully unraveling, and every second more shocking than the next overlaid with commentary on the beauty and youth industry.  

5. BLINK TWICE

This may be my favorite from the year and not at all what I was expecting when I went into the theater. It also had one of those most terrifying reveals followed by a terribly satisfying ending for a psychological thriller / horror film. It's one of only two we went back to see a second time (the other was THE SUBSTANCE above.)

6. LONGLEGS

The very creepiest Nicholas Cage outdoes himself in this strange tale of an FBI agent trying to solve a string of inexplicable murders while being stalked by the person responsible. 

7. SPEAK NO EVIL

I hated the Norwegian version of this passionately, but warmed immediately to this one, which had a much more satisfying ending amid slowly building horror and weirdness of unfamiliar people and places. 

8. LISA FRANKENSTEIN

A nostalgic romp with the tale  girl that brings a dead boy back to life filled with 80s music, decor, and fashion. What's not to love?

9. CUCKOO

Set in the beautiful Alps, this one seems like its too pretty to have such horror lurking underneath, but all sorts of weirdness and scientific experimentation  prevail. 

10. STRANGE DARLING

More of a thriller than horror, but there was lots of blood. This one is told wonderfully out of order, resulting in a glorious disorientation that only makes it better.  

cover design sneak peek | ruinporn

 

the houses we haunt

Several days before my father went into the hospital and never walked out, I wrote a single word down in a notebook in all caps as I was working on a home decor article. 

“RUINPORN” 

The piece was on beautiful abandoned homes intended to inspire your interior design. Mostly the images I found to accompany the piece were filled with delightfully chipping paint, lowly decaying wood, paneless windows, and beautiful light, sometimes filtering in through ceilings that no longer existed. Shrubs and vines encroached through windows and wound around stair banisters. They were the kind of places you imagined were inhabited by ghosts that  shook the broken chandeliers and rattled the doors barely on the hinges. Sometimes there were relics–an old book on a shelf. A dingy bathrobe hanging in the closet. The spaces  were far more vast than any house I’ve ever lived in, but appealed to me for their open and dilapidated spaces. Their vacancy and beauty.

The small house my father left behind was filled with so much.  Broken furniture. Half-eaten bags of chips in the pantry. Over a couple of months, we emptied out as much as we could. I spent the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a few weeks later, cleaning out his office, which had always been stuffed to the gills after my sister moved out.  It was a space my mother routinely pretended did not exist behind the closed door, filled with large dressers and desks, all full and littered with random things like old clock radios and Cubs hats. The room, as I found it that fall, was filled with scads of paperwork and bills. With books and magazines he’d likely never read.  An entire drawer full of remotes from devices he no longer owned. Small notebooks filled with tallies of golf scores, grocery spending, and horse racing stats in his messy, mostly unreadable, handwriting.

The house, itself, perched on land once owned by my grandmother, was not exactly as grand as the abandoned spaces in my article photos. An 80’s ranch whose details told its age after 40 years of a family living very much within it. Hollow core doors were broken and warped. The carpet, while it had been replaced at least a couple times, was stained. There was a spot in the floor near the front door that was soft from bad sealing under it.. The years had been hard on her, as had we. The doors I’d broken slamming them in teenage rage. The hole me and my sister put through the living room still visible despite patching. The door jambs scratched with more than a dozen cats who had lived and died there. The kitchen drawers, mostly busted and barely opening for over a decade. 

 

*

Five years before, I had lost my mother, not as suddenly as my dad, and after a rough year. But still somehow just as much a shock.. A year later, I finished a book about our relationship called feed, dealing with the complexity of growing up in an environment that fraught relationship between a mother and daughter,  both my own and through things like fairy tales and myths. Strangely, for my father, there didn’t seem to be a book on the horizon. That particular relationship being much less wrought with artmaking material. Or at least I thought at the time. 

What emerged instead were poems that were modeled on decor writing headlines about haunted houses. About how we leave the ghosts of ourselves behind in the spaces we inhabit. 

While I could not have told you at the time what I was writing them for or towards, later it became clear that that particular loss had its fingers all over them. I was already calling it ruinporn long before I compiled the manuscript.

Having been a person who has lived in remarkably few houses compared to others my age, I always found myself weirdly attached to them. They crop up in poems occasionally and often in dreams.  My grandmothers’ little red house. The trailer I spent the first four years of my life in with its wood paneling and green shag carpets. The small house in town we lived in before the last with the enormous oil drum behind the garage and the backyard where I’d spend entire afternoons on the swings with my headphones. The tiny Lincoln Park studio I lived in through grad school with its bathroom only accessible through the closet. The gorgeous Rockford apartment with the sleeping porch and farmhouse sink I had to leave when I didn;t find a job swiftly enough to pay for it the summer after.  Even the cinder block dorn room I inhabited for a semester in North Carolina.  They strangely feel tethered, even after all this time. To my own history. . Sometimes, I think, to my body. Even this apartment, which I have lived in for more than two decades, moving about its rooms. Where I’ve written countless poems, made art, made love, made a mess.  Me and my fiance occasionally talk of getting a bigger place with an office for both of us. With a bigger kitchen for him and an outdoor space for both of us. But I dont know if we will or can just yet. Or even if I want to.    

*

At the time I lost my father, I was just finishing up the first year after leaving my full time job in a library to write freelance work and devote more time to the shop and press I ran on the side. It was a year of change. Of fear. Of relief as I cobbled together numerous gigs and got my footing.. That November’s losses, however, knocked the wind out of me.  Parentless for the first time, I was adrift and vulnerable to all sorts of nasties. Untethered was the only word that seemed apt in those months afterward for how I was feeling.

Being the person I am, I dove into work, into the holidays that were now unrecognizable to me. I barely remember the months after the new year, but I was writing a good bulk of the poems from RUINPORN. They are filled with advice for living in a haunted house, even when you yourself are in the haunted house. Fittingly, that fall before I had bought a fun Halloween sign on Amazon that said “She Herself is a Haunted House.” . I felt that very much that dark season as we cobbled new routines and new traditions from the broken pieces of the old. 

In the past two years, I’ve watched other people my age begin  to go through many of the same things. Ailing parents, frantic rushes to hospitals, calls that rattle the middle of the night. Actually sometimes much worse than my own. I suppose parental loss is something which afflicts everyone if you live long enough. Some younger, some older, but by the time you reach your 40s or 50s, that clock is ticking. Before each loss happened I imagined I would never be able to survive it. And yet, I did. 

ruinporn feels like a reckoning of sorts. A book I would not have imagined writing even a decade ago. A grappling with grief and writing. With loss and that adrift sensation that makes your bones shake sometimes. Not all the poems are about houses and ghosts, but other are about destruction and rebuilding in a post-pandemic world.

As for my father’s house, the bank wound up owing more than any of us could pay, and since neither of us wanted it, back to the bank it went.  The last few times I was there, I was convinced it was haunted, not by ghosts or the supernatural, but by memory and grief. And it's strange to think all houses, or at least most houses, are haunted in the same way. The places we build lives in that eventually crumble under our feet like sugar when shaken. 

notes & things | 10/20/2024

Tonight, the air smells like bonfires and there was a ring around the moon. While not as chilly as a few nights this past week, I found myself craving hot cocoa. I realized, as I rummaged in the cabinet, I have finally reached the end of the box of the raspberry cocoa packs my dad bought me the large bulk box of Christmas 2021, the last one he was alive for. It made me a little sad as I heated the water and stirred the cup. As we edge up on November, my mood is sure to plummet, no doubt, unless I can keep myself sufficiently distracted. Losing your parents in the same month , albeit several years apart, can make you hate November. 

After a short round of D&D and dinner with friends today, I found myself alone for a few hours at home while J hosted his usual Saturday night karaoke. I was determined to push off my other writing work til tomorrow to get the wrangling mass of RUINPORN edited for the final time, as the design schedule is creeping up on me if I want to at least have things finalized by the end of November.  So much happens before the official layout begins, since its easier to make rearranging and changes in the text before I start sizing and formatting the final version for printing. I have gotten speedier with each new book, much in the same way of chapbooks. the bulk of any chap these days is edits and back-and-forth more than the initial design. There will also need to be 2-3 passes through before I finalize, then possibly 2 or more after I have a galley in hand. To avoid ordering and paying shipping for proofs, its best to have everything but minor tweaks in place now before I upload. I am using the same printer for a couple upcoming chap projects that needed different trim sizes than I can do at home (one, a very boxy 8 x 8 inches) and its much the same process, just in collab with the author. It's not something I can afford to do with every chap, but its nice to have the option. I am also very close to having everything from GHOST BOX in hand to release both eth e-version and the artist book/box project that will be available in the shop, possibly by Tuesday. There are some fun elements going in, including the above lil' baby Ouija boards I found on Etsy that are so fun.  There is still more coming for #31daysofOctober over on IG, so look for the launch of it there. 

This week will be busy with tattoo appointments and Shakespeare productions, and a couple films, including Cronenberg's The Brood. With just a couple weeks til Halloween, I reserved our rooms in McHenry for the drive-in outing, which actually spans two nights, one a triple feature topped off with Halloween: Season of the Witch. Meanwhile, those nights are starting to feel more encroaching as we round out the month, each night requiring the lamps earlier than the last. 

notes & things | 10/15/2024

Octobers are always far too short. Spooky season and we turn to horror movies and pumpkin-flavored treats. Decorate with skulls and fall things and suddenly its over as quickly as it begun. The days getting shorter and the dread of November following fast on its heels. There have been falls where the month was so busy, I look up one day and realize that the trees have changed their color, or worse, that the leaves of some are nearly gone. Months when the steady shortening of days seems incremental until that plunge into darkness come the daylight savings changeover. 

Still, there are horror movies aplenty. A screening of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I had probably not seen since my teen years and that what stood out this time was the masterful set decoration, whose attention to detailing was not at all what you would expect from early 70s horror. An eager second viewing of The Substance, a brilliant takedown of the beauty and youth industry that unravels into gore soaked madness at the end. Phantasm, which I hadn't seen since I was a kid, a late 70s bit of weirdness. The week before my favorite slasher film, Sleepaway Camp and the first time I've ever seen it on a screen and not a scratchy dubbed VHS. We have more planned for the month, including a Halloween trip out to McHenry for drive-in horror, and a Wednesday night viewing of the original Candyman at the Logan late nights series.  

Where there haven't been movies, there have been plays. Noises Off at Steppenwolf last week and tonight, Into the Woods. This, after all, is my favorite musical of all time, cemented when I was 17 and saw it at a theater conference downstate and it surpassed Les Miz I had seen a couple months before. While that was a very traditional proscenium theater, tonight's happened in the black box lower theater at The Chopin. It had the feel of a cabaret performance, piano only, in an old attic filed with chandeliers and gilt mirrors and charming old chairs and sofas for seating. I loved the play even more for that. Kokandy, a small company, is strictly musicals, and every production I've seen has been amazingness. (in the summer, Alice by Heart, and last winter, American Psycho. )  The benefit of having some nights free from work, J's nights being more open, and just having more discretionary income as a freelancer than I ever did as a full-timer, is that we get to see all the plays we like, up next Pericles at Chicago Shakespeare and Little Shop of Horrors out in Skokie in a  couple weeks. And of course, Les Miz in December, which I am extra stoked about. 

Work continues on the vampire poems, as well as a few flash fiction pieces I am wobbly and uncertain on. Today I had a moment convinced of my own brilliance when writing a poem that was, mere minutes, later, a spiral of self-doubt die to a rejection from a fun little horror journal I had found of Instagram. It was actually for one of the flash pieces, and had less to do with poems, but it only bumped the funny bone of  my tiny poet ego.  Fiction is still sticky and new and doesn't quite have its wings just yet. I will write something I love and come back later and hate it. Poe is on my mind a lot every fall, especially when I'm doubting my abilities,  and I always remind myself he spent his whole life churning in alcoholism and self-doubt and look at the endurance of his work even now.  We are also coming up on Plath's birthday, which always reminds me that she barely lived into her real adult productive period. At 30, she had created so much already, but was still a young poet forever and eternally. 

There have also been long marathon writing days and pot roast and blueberry cake. Production days for the chapbook series that leave my arm sore from using the paper cutter. The kind of fall nights where its colder, but the window stays open and you add more blankets. The last few times we've gone out, its required a real jacket after months of a cardigan at most. Tonight the kind of damp cold that had me climbing into bed early after we got back from the theater, sleeping a few hours, and then of course, because I went to bed too early, awake in the middle of the night writing this post and listening to the radiators clank their way to warmth for the fist time this year.