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The hero of the modern myth is the victim, the emblem of the modern self the pronoun. We seem to have forgotten that we are survivors of innumerable spasms of space and time, creatures who never would have given up the gills for lungs if we attached identity to gillness. Not so with lichens. When I was a child, lichen meant to me the magical green garlands draping from the pine trees, which I made into wreaths and mustaches to roam the mountains of Bulgaria as a miniature Orlando. I had no idea that Usnea longissima is just one of… read article
You wouldn’t know it, looking at the tiny elderly woman in the white lab coat bent over a table in a halogen-lit government office, you wouldn’t know she had spent her youth doing science with her whole body: extracting herself from a deadly mudflat with stubbornness and applied physics; narrowly escaping permanent tendon damage after severe sunburn on the tops of her feet during a daylong barefoot tide pool expedition; managing to return ashore by manually rigging a rudder after her boat’s steering apparatus had broken and left her stranded in the open ocean; surviving blood poisoning in the pre-penicillin… read article
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way,” William Blake wrote in his most spirited letter. “As a man is, so he sees.” Because how we look at the world shapes the world we see, every act of noticing is an act of worlding. The Latin root of notice is to begin knowing, to have an instrument of recognition, and yet human consciousness is a prediction machine that recognizes only what it already knows, sees what it expects to see, lensed through its anticipations… read article
Growing up in Bulgaria, in a city teeming in stray dogs and cars, I was deeply distressed by the sight of each dead animal in the streets between home and school — deaths I could not prevent and could not bear. To cope with the aching helplessness, I developed a private superstition: If I touched each of the vertical bars on every fence along my walk, no dog would die. Sometimes I ran to touch as many bars as possible in as little time as possible, the impact bruising and callusing my fingers. Dogs continued dying. I continued doing it.… read article
“One must be a seer, make oneself a seer,” Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses.” As more and more of our senses are being amputated by the blade of our image-centric culture, reducing the vast and delicate sensorium of human experience — moss on a rock, a salty summer evening at the ocean’s edge, a lover’s kiss — to a purely visual representation on a two-dimensional screen, it matters all the more that we train our vision to see beyond the veneer of the visible. It is hardly surprising, given the co-evolution… read article
More in literature
If something feels wrong, it is useful to articulate very precisely why that is
Ridgeline subscribers — For the last ten days I’ve been walking around London. Mostly in a little corner of it in the northeast part of the city. But can you even call a part a “corner” when the city extends in every direction without stopping? Whatever you call it, I’ve been in my little northeast section (if not corner) spending mornings reading and writing until I’m cross-eyed and then afternoons walking the streets over and over again.
Jay St. Charles is a legendary bowyer based in Fall City, Washington. While he was born into the world of archery and grew up in his father’s archery shop, Jay eventually became a master bowyer, carving bows under the brand of Pacific Yew Longbows. He lives on a small homestead above the Snoqualmie River Valley, nestled in the foothills of the Cascades.
The antithesis of slop. It's been a few years since I'd attended the SF Zine Fest. Friend Scott Boms had a table with his Matter Editions wares, and it's a 10-minute walk from home, so Jen and I had to go. Held at The Hibernia, it was a treat to actually go into this historic building that I've wondered about for as long as we've lived here.[1] It's a beautiful venue inside, and lots of people were milling about outside, having just gone in or waiting to meet friends to head inside. Masks were required (which we already had), and they were giving out plenty of KN95 masks. Transmission is high at the moment, and I just recovered from my second bout with Covid two weeks ago. Bustling with people! Inside, the venue was delightfully packed. Good energy in the air, and it was pretty tight getting around to seeing makers and their wares. A huge variety of zines in all shapes, sizes, and styles were present, and it warmed my heart. Having made a few zines in the past, it really inspired me to pick up a long-gestating project of making some zines or book-shaped things with the photography and words from the Weightshifting newsletter overland archives. Scott's table, and a photo of the two of us taken by Jen. We found Scott downstairs, chatting with people, and interjected with hugs. I had just received his Lost Memories zine last week, so it was a delight to add his fresh-off-the-overnight-press spiral-bound release, The Tower That Ate People. More people kept coming by, and with the vibrant crowd continuing to grow, we started to make our way out. Matter Editions latest — The Tower That Ate People. (And C3P0's eyes are worked in here). As we passed more tables on the way out, Jen and I remarked to each other that this felt like “the antithesis of slop.” So many young people, getting zines, getting into art. So many hand-drawn, hand-made pieces of art all over the venue. That energy again present in the air, feeling like I was back in my own teenage years in the 90s, when technology was just a means to propel our own innate creativity rather than usurp it. Photocopiers, basic computer graphics for layouts, cut and paste collages. That felt liberating. Today's technology feels imprisoning. Good job, SF Zine Fest. I fucking loved it. That would be over 17 years now. ↩︎ → This looks better on the web → Reply via email Thanks for reading and using RSS!
