I don’t draw the justice card — it just never comes up for me. But if I want it I can just find it.
I like that this Justice isn’t blind. Or they are, but also one set of eyes sees.
I’ve started wearing two pairs of classes: readers over the ones for long-distance vision. With six eyes I can relax the up-close world into focus.
Recently I read, “A tree grows in the presence of, it doesn’t seek.” I don’t remember where I read it, and if you know who said it, I hope you’ll remind me. They were talking about actual trees, it wasn’t a metaphor—though as I’m writing this I can feel it becoming one. Language’s valences shift according to when we’ve last eaten, how much we’ve slept, etc. We grow tentacly in language’s omnipresence. And I think we seek ideas we mistake for things, because language makes that mistake easy. Sometimes I feel like I’m dragging a jangling, garish tangle of costumes and found objects and knickknacks through an image to see what I can net, or to be able to look back at the image and see if I’ve managed to scatter some debris through it in an interesting (to me) way. It sounds chaotic and sort of a rough thing to do to an image, but I think that’s what I’m doing.
Dragging the world back through the world, that’s how writing feels for me lately…
I read that humans will trade pain for useless information and maybe that’s so we can add some iridescence or glimmers to our tangle, which we inevitably scatter and catch on things as we move through the world.
I wonder if you have a tangle or a glimmer or a costume or an artifact or a fabulous confection you’d like to share? In my last “newsletter” (sheesh I feel self-conscious every time I use that word, that’s okay) I offered a copy of Public Library and in return people sent me their own zines and prints and things, and it’s wonderful to have a little collection now. And the connection that comes from giving and receiving. So, if you have zine material, I wonder if you’ll consider sending it my way, and Josh and I will lay it out and print it and send copies back to you and/or help you distribute them in the ways we can.
We may be slowish to do this, but we’ll do it.
Reach out if this interests you, andor send some material along and any ideas about how you’d like it to look. Think low-budget, not-on-socials social media people can put on their shelves between other books after they’ve read it and forget about it and then remember it when they’re packing to move, and feel delighted to remember it and know they still have your words/images/doodles in their tangle.
One last bit of news for now: I’ll be teaching an online class for Lighthouse, “Autofiction: The Hybrid Self,” starting in October. More when I have dates and registration information.
I hope you’re well, staying cool and serene.
<3,
Evelyn