I've been planning for the past couple of weeks to write a few notes on the new zine project. They began with an idea for a future project scrawled in my notebook after I stumbled on a funny pinterest board--a woman with a remarkably stylish imaginary daughter. It was pure comedic genius. It took me a while to actually sit down with it in earnest, but this past April during NAPOWRIMO, I tuned my attention specifically to that project and began making some progress, particularly since I intended those to be included in a longer mss. I was working on about mothers and daughters, something that was finally taking shape after losing my own mother (and includes the hunger palace and plump pieces)
"Sometimes you have to call it what it is, blind luck. that what tethers the body never took. Never shook itself free of the tree."
As for real kids, I had long ago made the decision I wouldn't be a slave
to biology, that if, in my 20's, I didn't want them, there was always
time to adopt or foster if I was too old by the time I had anything like
the stability (romantic, fiscal, mental, career) necessary to do it
well. By the time I hit my late thirties, I pretty much decided
child-rearing wasn't for me. Perhaps I had too good of a childhood and
never felt like I, in turn, could provide someone else what my parents
had provided me. Also that I wasn't prepared to make the sacrifices
necessary to the endeavor. It wasn't a hard choice, and there was a bit
of waiting for signs (getting accidently pregnant would have been a big
one..lol..) to see if I was being too hasty, but none came. By the time
I reached 40, people stopped expecting any of the usual things from me
like traditional marriage and kids, and kinda stopped asking.
Despite my intentions to delve into what it means to be a intentionally childless woman in a world that finds this anomaly, it actually wound up being less about that and more about creativity and what little control we have over things we make,kind of like kids once they are out in the world. I often joke that my books are my children, and this project gave some tangibility to that without me even setting out to do that at first. So in a way it became much more meta than intended and I liked it even more for that.
I really wasn't thinking about visual elements when it was written, or even if there would be any. but in early May, I started a series of collages that somehow developed into what would accompany the text pieces and a zine project was born. Somehow, they were perfect--a little creepy, a little haunting.Probably just like any child I would have--real or imagined.
(to get a sampling of the poems, check out this issue of Occulum, where a chunk appeared or the White Stag editor's issue)
