Greetings of the long-anticipated 2012 New Year! And for those following the lunar cycles, I wish you scaly Dragon greetings, and offer Seattle lion dances from both 2011 and 2012.

Mid-winter I enjoy reviewing my previous year and setting goals for the months ahead. Here’s a peek at what I’m up to, plus juicy links for you to sample:

Culture, Food & South Seattle Neighborhoods

My favorite projects of 2011 include writing for South Seattle neighborhoods like White Center and South Park. The best perks of these projects are a) eating good food on my lunch breaks, b) working with awesome people, and c) meeting Seattle merchants and hearing their stories. I use what I learn from each merchant interview to write business profiles, feature articles, and other collateral. Content I write is used for print and web promotions offered throughout the neighborhood and the greater Seattle area.

In White Center I help grocers spread the word about fresh, healthy food available within walking distance. With more than 30,000 residents speaking 50+ languages, White Center boasts many delicious globally-inspired local eats, as well as specialty grocery markets where folks can find ingredients for Southeast Asian, East African, Indian, Latin American, and Eastern European cuisines. (Learn more about activities in White Center neighborhood at the White Center Community Development Association.)

Just a few minutes’ ride from White Center is South Park, an old Seattle neighborhood with a uniquely urban-industrial heritage. Our goal with Catch the Culture is to attract customers to the 30+ retail stores and restaurants along 14th and Cloverdale. These businesses are feeling the squeeze from the closure of the South Park Bridge in 2010, which typically brings some 20,000 vehicles of customers per day to the neighborhood. South Park is a square-mile oasis of nearly 4,000 residents with a school, a farm, community centers, family homes, hundreds of unique businesses, and a pretty stretch of shoreline along Seattle City’s only river, the formidable Duwamish River (we’ll get back to the Duwamish another day – there’s more to say about this river than one paragraph will allow).

PS – That fabulous South Park logo (as well as the Brainripples logo) are the work of graphic designer Kathi “george” Wheeler at Noise w/o Sound. Whether you need design work for print, web, signage, whatever, george is the genius you want. Unless you want something boring and plain–in that case you’re looking for someone else.

Stories, Poetry & Midnight Madness

Whenever I get busy, I write poetry. A work-weary brain can be conducive to the weaving (and mis-weaving) of words. Each year I like to use January through March to mine poems from the previous year’s journals, and select usable pieces for revision and submission. I think I have about eight candidates worth looking at this month.

I may have forgotten to share here that my poem “Shore” won the Spring 2011 poetry contest for issue 3 of Line Zero (“Springtide” also appears in this issue). I’m grateful for the publication in a new indie arts journal, and I’m even more grateful to have discovered the Line Zero community. As my writer friend James Buescher used to remind me, I’m “not a joiner.” But joiner or no, I feel like I’m in good company in the Line Zero pages.

Last summer I made time (read: skipped sleep) to participate in another Clarity of Night Short Fiction Contest hosted by Jason Evans (which, by the way, is a lot of fun for writers at every level). I’ve since taken my flash piece Solarrivum and rewritten it as a complete short story, which is now in its final stages of editing and actually kinda pleases me (which in turn makes me suspicious that it still needs drastic work). Soon I’ll begin the joy of submissions; I have my eye on a couple speculative fiction/slipstream journals. Speaking of which, feel free to join me sending good vibes for the speedy revival of GUD Magazine.

In January I started my latest fiction-in-progress, a story set in a Twilight-Zone-worthy cityscape. I have the basic structure and cast, and I’ve sketched the main character to get a sense for his needs. For this story I’d like to write a few cutthroat characters, so among my winter reading is Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet – an excellent choice I recommend to anyone seeking good examples of strong character voices.

Rot, Mud & Other Good Dirt

2011 left me with almost no time for garden and forest romping (as evidenced by a severe lack of blogging here at Brainripples). While I did get out into the wilderness for occasional recess, I didn’t even plant my cold frames last spring. That’s about to change. Greens, radishes, onions, and carrots are my usual pre-spring starters in the ground, and I’ll need to get a jump on corn and squash in the cold frames for transplanting to the hills once the warm weather returns in May/June. With any luck I will also find the time (and the necessary bandwidth) to blog from the garden in 2012.

Speaking of nature blogging, The Festival of the Trees has sprouted adventitious roots in the rich loam of the home blog. No longer a roving blog carnival, the Festival of the Trees accepts all tree, forest, and wood related submissions for consideration at treeblogging.com. Poet/Editor/Brainiac-at-Large Dave Bonta is diligently keeping the Festival alive, and he’s found some really cool stuff in recent weeks. Case in point: Goths up trees. Nuff said. (No, one more thing – if you want to see another cool project of Dave’s, check out Qarrtsiluni literary journal where he and Beth Adams are Managing Editors).

Which brings us to other good dirt. The compost pile I started moving in 2010 never made a complete relocation, but I did plenty of relocating to make up for it. After a busy 2010 I started 2011 renting the upstairs of a farmhouse in Hobart, where I stayed for six months to be closer to Seattle work. Making time to care for my health continues to be a priority, and I seem to be relearning how good health enables good writing (somehow the rhythm of writing hypnotizes and the mind can forget the needs of the body, like when I continue writing even though I had to pee some 90 minutes ago). It may seem as if an unwavering diet of persistence and sleep deprivation is a recipe for great writing, but to take that path the writer must gamble finished work against impending burnout, and these days I aim for finished work as often as possible (a habit I attribute to the sound recommendations of Seattle storyteller Anita Marie Moscoso). Finished work requires persistence and steady pacing, even if sleep deprivation is still on the docket.

Recently I read an older article in the Guardian about Philip Roth, yet another accomplished author of whose work I have not read enough. Among the best ideas I gathered from the article are Roth’s habits of writing while standing at a lectern (I’ve considered this for months now but have yet to try), and walking one-half mile for every page he writes. This winter I think I’ll count “bring in and stack the wood” in lieu of my half-mile, although if I apply that math retroactively to my current WIPs I’d have to say, there’s a lot of wood to bring in yet (especially if I want to get ahead of the next good snow storm).

Wanna help me shape my spring reading list? Share what’s good on your bookshelf this season, or tell me where I can read/view your latest work.

Here’s to a most excellent 2012 for all!

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Winged Heart, Day of the Dead Altar, Photo by Andrew Storms "St0rmz"

Smiling Skulls, Day of the Dead Altar, Photo by Andrew Storms "St0rmz"

Click here for the complete Petaluma 2008 Day of the Dead photo set

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leafy rainbow

Behold, the colors of survival! This Japanese maple is making its best showing of fall colors in 10 years.

a small pirouette

This tree’s early life included the combined challenges of multiple transplantings, puppy root-chewing, a stint of neglect during the Pennsylvania years, and finally a major hack job following a strange infection. Much healthier now, this tree reveals this season’s wonderfully slow autumn in the Pacific Northwest.

there's no such thing as too much color

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…guess the man in black will have to do.

Take it away:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA

Guess the trick’s on me today!

Would you settle for the Edgar Allen Poe Museum, complete with library of selected works for you to read?

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October already, and that means Halloween! Since my last project update we’ve launched Catch the Culture, an online resource featuring new stories about family-owned retail businesses in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood.

During my non-existent free time I’ve  kept busy with the usual combination of poetry, gardening, and exploring. You can read a couple of my latest poems in issue 3 of Line Zero.

In lieu of the blogging I wish I had time to do this season, I’ve prepared a few Halloween tricks and treats for a 10-day pumpkin countdown, starting Friday October 21st! Got something cool to share for Halloween? Post your favs in the comments.

PS – got a blog? love trees? Festival of the Trees  needs submissions and volunteers for upcoming editions!

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Seattle Neighborhoods

Perhaps you’ve noticed my tweets about South Park Seattle and other neighborhoods? That’s because one of my favorite projects right now involves writing for neighborhoods around South Seattle. For these projects I get the opportunity to meet with local merchants and learn their stories. Then I do my best to tell those stories for print and web use. Our goal is to help attract new customers from around the Puget Sound area by sharing the unique goods and services to be found in these communities. Did you know that there are over 30 languages spoken in homes throughout the Duwamish Valley? There’s a load of history surrounding the Duwamish River. I’ll try to share the best things I learn along the way.

If you’ve missed the tweets and want to learn more about South Park Seattle, I recommend these starting points:

All About South Park

South Park Arts

King County: South Park Bridge

Duwamish Longhouse & Cultural Center

Washington State Encyclopedia

Poetry & Prose

The solstice is just a couple days off, and I feel good about staying on track with my writing goals for 2011. Sometimes it has been a challenge for me to set aside significant time for working my own creative material. Life happens. This year I’m spending more hours writing and editing my stories. I’m powering through spiral-bound journals with greater velocity. I’m also taking more time to submit one or two finished pieces—at least once a month.

For the poets in the audience: among my foci this year is prosody, and if you’re interested in honing the music of your poetry (or if you’re just among the curious who would like to learn ways to read and enjoy poetry) I suggest these reference materials as starting points (which I borrowed from Kitsap Regional Library bookmobile—love your library):

Rules for the Dance : a handbook for writing and reading metrical verse by Mary Oliver

The poem’s heartbeat : a manual of prosody by Alfred Corn

I also checked out this book, but had to return it before I had time to read: All the fun’s in how you say a thing : an explanation of meter and versification by Timothy Steele. If I get back to it I’ll let you know what I think.

It wasn’t the refresher course in the rules of scansion that excited me about these books. What I did enjoy was each author’s use of examples, philosophical musings, and allusions to the evolution of language. It’s always a good to be reminded of the intimate relationship between poetry and breath. (It’s also nice to remember that I’m not the only over-analyzer on the planet.) If I had one wish about these books, it would be for less emphasis on poets and poetic forms that I already know. I’m on the quest for similar books which address poetic traditions and forms from other regions. If you know me, you know I’m not much of a gal for tradition. But there is much to be gained from the careful study of those predecessors who had way, way more self-discipline than I do.

Reads & Critiques

So what else am I reading? The stack is tall, but my favorite interest this year is slipstream. I blame it on the folks at GUD (review here) and a cappella zoo (review here). Years ago someone told me I was writing magic realism, which was before I’d even heard that it was a genre folks wrote to. Now that I’m a more of an active reader, I’m curious to learn about the evolutions of speculative fiction and slipstream. What I know is that I love well-done specfic and slipstream, and I’d like to learn to write a story that’s as effective as it is ethereal. If you’re interested in slipstream, I recommend this title (originally recommended by a cappella zoo): Feeling very strange : the Slipstream anthology, edited by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel.

Part of the reason I’ve returned more than a few unread library books is that I’ve gone into critique partner overdrive. It started last winter when I wanted to add a couple people to my critique exchanges to help keep me active. May rolled around and I had somehow accrued 10 critique partners, including one full manuscript exchange (not a short story but a rather ambitious novel). What I love about critiquing is not just reading newly-forming work, and not just challenging myself to share feedback that’s useful, but the act of the exchange itself. I think it makes me feel alive as a writer to trade with someone else who’s hacking away at the same mountain, hoping to strike a vein. Just remember, all ye who venture to pursue the full-manuscript critique: it’s worthwhile work, but you must be prepared to donate a significant chunk of your life to get it done.

Ongoing Projects

Do you love trees? Sure you do! Blog, pod, vid, whatever medium you like, share a tree, orchard, garden, or forest from your neck of the woods. Then send us the permalink at the Festival of the Trees. Our monthly blog carnival is hosted at a different blog each month and celebrates trees in all their forms. The upcoming issue is our fifth birthday! That’s right – we’ve been blogging trees with folks from around the world for five years. Join the party at Dave Bonta’s blog Via Negativa.

If you’ve been reading my blogs these past years you know that for me, health and garden are intimately connected.  While I didn’t finish moving the compost pile (did I mention that life—and the occasional flood—happens?), I did stick with my other health goals from 2010. I don’t do my qigong every morning, but I’m pleased to be in much better health this year, most especially because it means I can stay productive in my work. My new 2011 health goals include restarting my yoga/dance routine. I’m renting the upstairs of a farmhouse with big open floors, so it’s a great time to dust off my books from the Evergreen days and get my form back. The rental is located on a short neighborhood street with lots of trees, so my other simple goal is short, daily walks. I love being a writer, but it does require a fair amount of sitting. My final word for you all this summer: make time for recess.

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Birds also keep my gardens alive and interesting (thank you to all the birds whose purple poops have borne new volunteers to my flower beds). Wherever I live or travel, I discover new birds whose calls and silhouettes are inseparable from my favorite memories.

Today I’d like to draw your attention to one of the longest-living blog carnivals, which celebrates the ornithological: I and the Bird. Blog readers and writers alike share a true friend in blog carnivals. These online periodicals consist of collections of links to many different articles, photos, videos, podcasts, and other online media, all of which illuminate a single, special topic (such as trees, plants, or invertebrates).

If you enjoy the company of feathered friends and have a few hours to spare this summer, Mike of 10,000 Birds welcomes you to volunteer as a host for a future issue. You don’t have to be a birder or keep a birding blog in order to participate – just a desire to look up, listen, and share what you learn.

Even if you don’t have time to volunteer, you can help keep I and the Bird alive and soaring with three easy steps:

1)   blog about birds

2)   send in the link

3)   spread the word

In this spirit I share the following images of the Great blue heron (Ardea herodias) at Big Beef and Seabeck Bay, as seen last Wednesday. I might have a diligent amateur’s success with tree photography, but I’m hopeless when it comes to birds (or anything else that doesn’t stand perfectly still for a photo shoot). Luckily for me, these herons were hunting for breakfast, and were not planning to move until the perfect catch swam by.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to sport a great, sweeping beard like this one?

Or to have the endurance to stand still for hours in the chill water beneath these mountains, waiting for lunch?

And herons aren’t the only birds dining in the estuaries…

Click here to read the latest issue of I and the Bird: “A few of my favorite wings” now online at Madras Ramblings, or submit your links today for the upcoming issue to be hosted at Twin Cities Naturalist.

Mike over at the Pacific Northwest Slugyard has some nice photos of nesting Great blue herons.

Looking for more bird resources? Check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the annual Great Backyard Birdcount, and the National Audubon Society.

Know a better (or more interesting) resource? Tell us in the comments.

And remember – blog birds, send in the link, spread the word – I and the Bird!

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welcome to the party – grab a shovel!

A happy intersection of events resulted in the planting of 15 trees at the homestead this March. Our new saplings were procured from the Pierce County Conservation District annual native tree and plant sale in Puyallup, Washington. I discovered their sale only just this year thanks to the magic and happenstance of the Internet.

These trees were lovingly planted during a wonderful spring rainstorm on March 14th, and with all the wet and wonderful forces of the waxing moon in Cancer to inspire them. Five Birches and ten Spruces are now growing where evergreens were removed some 15+ years ago by the original property owners. Our land is well suited to these tree species because it has lots of healthy, wet soil with good drainage.

If you follow the trio of trunks of the tallest hemlocks to the ground, you’ll see where the new trees are now tucked. The land dips down in the foreground, which will give the new trees a few years to get some height before the 10-year-old White pines, Douglas firs, Red cedars and Hemlocks overshadow them. The t-stakes visible in some of the pictures below were probably used for a horse corral; they will be reused in the future when we embark on the Great Chicken Adventure.

15 trees & 15 celebrations

1. For Mothers & Grandmothers: Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera)

2. For Fathers & Grandfathers: Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis)

3. For the Festival of the Trees #58: celebrate tree celebrations!

4. For Berry Go Round #39: (because I missed the deadline for BGR #38)

5. For Arbor Day 2011: shovel-dance in the rain!

6. For the Spring Equinox: get out and dirty while robins sing the sun up.

7. For the International Year of Forests 2011: Forests for People! Reach into the Earth and connect.

8. Reparations: replace trees sacrificed for the foundation of a happy home.

9. Reparations: replace trees sacrificed for the satellite dish of an awesome internet connection.

10. Gratitude: give thanks for the gifts of health and friendship and work and fleeting wisdom.

11. Humility: give thanks for the gifts of lessons learned and challenges faced.

12. Friends Departed: sustain the memories of those who have shared their love and are now beyond us.

13. Friends Arrived: seed a little hope in the shade beneath a rock, see what grows out.

14. Justice: for the trees cut down each year, I plant these trees as a small offering of restitution, and with the hope that others will plant location-appropriate trees in kind.

15. Just Because: because there is simply no such thing as ‘too many trees.’

Come out and party

with me! Soil your fingernails,

dig in, plant a tree!

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Happy Spring to my northern friends, and Happy Autumn to my southern friends!

Learn more about Federation Forest State Park and the White River Watershed near Mount Rainier.

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November 2010 was marked by our first road trip through the Great Basin region of Utah and Nevada. For the Thanksgiving holiday we rented a vacation home in the Pinyon-Juniper woodlands outside of Cedar City, Utah.

The home offers dog-friendly trails among cedars (Juniperus osteosperma) and piñons (Pinus edulis), which we enjoyed with a fresh, cold snowfall at our elevation of 6,000+ feet.

These two tree species and their companion shrubs form low, wind-twisted, sun-hardened canopies, and grow in what sometimes appears to be 90% rock.

Shaggy-barked Utah juniper is known locally as a cedar, and is the namesake of Cedar City in southwest Utah. The bright blue-red berries are in fact the fibrous cones and an important food source for local wildlife. A fresh lick of white snow makes blues, reds, and greens shine bright against the sky.

Piñon, as I learned from locals, are harvested for pine nuts by members of the community to be sold on the commercial market. (How often have you thought about the effort that goes into that little packet of pine nuts from the grocery?)

There is a bit of plant lore available for cedars here, and piñon here. I would like to know more of the local stories about these trees, and I plan to do additional reading. (Future blog posts will include a list of the books which I collected at info stops during the road trip.) If you have a resource suggestion for southwest Utah plant lore, I invite you to share in the comments.

The cedar-piñon canopy is low and somewhat fragmented, which makes for a fun tree-fort-like forest. Clumps of trees form dense, shady stands which you’d have to belly-crawl to explore beneath. At the highest point on the trail lives the queen of the hill:

She presides over 360-degree views of the Great Basin rhythm where mountain follows valley in successive, colorful symphonies. The more time I spent in this region, the more I felt a growing (and welcome) sense of quiet. The Great Basin is a good setting to empty oneself and prepare to be receptive to new thoughts or projects.

We saw a lot of snow and drove a lot of ice during this trip, including a “blizzard-like” event in Cedar City, complete with blowing, swirling snow. Morning snow track reports revealed the nightly comings and goings of jackrabbit, deer, elk, raccoon, and a feline, although I doubt I was lucky enough to be tracking a lynx. (Note to self: must improve track identification skills).

I caught a few glimpses of jackrabbits which makes me believe that the locals were the black-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus Californicus), but I cannot be sure. In fact, had I known at the time that many hares turn white in winter, I might have had better luck spotting them! (The hawks clearly knew what was what, as we saw many hunting from the highway, plus one dino-sized bird, the identity of which remains a mystery).

Read more about cedars here and here, more about piñon here and here, and play with the Utah Tree Browser here.

Blog about trees and send your links for the next issue of the Festival of the Trees, hosted by Rebecca in the Woods.  We’re looking for hosts from June forward. Got a blog and an interest in trees?  Volunteer to host an issue of the Festival and grow a graft to your community of bloggers. Hosts from all disciplines and persuasions are welcome, as are fresh takes on trees and forests.

Plant geeks, high thee hence for botanical bounties à la Berry Go Round 37, courtesy of returning host The Phytophactor. (PS – Berry Go Round has open slots for hosts in 2011 as well. Volunteer your blog and your plant prowess!)

Forthcoming at Brainripples: more Utah road trip reports in coming weeks, some look backs at the 2010 garden,  and satisfying book recommendations.

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I was invited for a guest blog interview this month which you can read here. Learn more about TreeStory through introductions to main characters, and with the clip below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfRbzLR-Km8

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Thanks to the excellent support and documentation at WordPress.org, I’ve made some subtle but important changes to Brainripples. They may not seem like much to you, but I’m awfully proud of having figured out the nuances of keeping WordPress in its own directory while you, dear reader, see only www.brainripples.com.

All links which previously included ‘ /home/ ‘ are being corrected throughout the site.

I suppose if I was REALLY smart, there’d be some fancy redirect, and you’d never know the difference. Next time, perhaps.

Update your links for your favorite blog channels and RSS feeds as follows:

Forest | Arboreality

Blog: http://www.brainripples.com/category/forest/

RSS: http://www.brainripples.com/category/forest/feed/

Garden | AppleJade

Blog: http://www.brainripples.com/category/garden/

RSS: http://www.brainripples.com/category/garden/feed/

Studio | Brainripples

Blog: http://www.brainripples.com/category/studio/

RSS: http://www.brainripples.com/category/studio/feed/

All Blog Channels at Brainripples

Blog: http://www.brainripples.com/blog/

RSS: http://www.brainripples.com/feed/

Thank you, faithful readers!

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The #aros project is curated by UK writer/artist Fiona Robyn and her partner Kaspa. Their invitation to writers begged daily tokens of small stones, which they define as “polished moment[s] of paying proper attention.”

I enjoyed this daily meditation not only as a part of my journaling routine, but also for the pleasures of hopping in the stream, splashing around with a few fellow writers, and listening to #aros flow.

UPDATE March 3, 2011: You can now purchase a book of selections from the January 2011 #aros project, in which my contribution “slender moon [...]” appears: pay attention: a river of stones.

Below is the tributary of small stones I shared via micropoetry tweets @JadeBlackwater throughout January 2011. Hashtags have been retained to show the texture of the day when each stone was palmed. Line breaks have been restored where ‘ / ‘ was used in the feed.

——

6:45 AM, Dec 31st

pre-dawn

morning star

preceding

even

old moon

#beforedawn

——

6:46 AM, Dec 31st

a shimmering

bulb

in the blackness

alders

shiver

in silence

#beforedawn

——

6:46 AM, Dec 31st

I shade my

eyes

look

south

still no

moonlight

#beforedawn

——

6:46 AM, Dec 31st

but wait!

a tree-line

twinkle

a sliver

of late flame

#beforedawn

——

8:33 AM, Jan 1st

range

hood

fan and glow

dusty blue

new

year dawn blooms

#beforedawn

——

1:22 PM, Jan 1st

now

the pink

announcement

now

the brown

darting blink

#beforedawn

——

7:48 AM, Jan 2nd

settled cold

quiets

coffee

steams over

waiting

correspondences

mercurial gems

#beforedawn

——

2:37pm, Jan 2nd

late light

low white

catkins waggle

tides of birds

pluck, repluck

#lowwintersun

——

7:48 AM, Jan 3rd

forest

dons the morning

shawl

crocheted

of frosted

breath;

too icy

for my

unwooled

skin

#beforedawn

——

6:32 AM, Jan 4th

burn ban in #kitsap

I pine for my stove

bundled in the dark

——

3:56 PM, Jan 5th

praise for overcast

skies! greys, sweet eye-balm

slathering quiet

#lowwintersun

——

11:43 AM, Jan 6th

flash of black

alighting raven

breaks concentration

——

10:23 AM, Jan 8th

great blue heron glides

afore the windshield

six fixed eyes follow

——

5:17 PM, Jan 9th

slender moon

suspended

between power lines

——

8:40 AM, Jan 10th

morning news

felicitations

rock on sis!

——

10:40 AM, Jan 10th

hilltop snow

sunrise sleet

rooster crows

——

6:47 AM, Jan 11th

dreams defrost

crackling and snapping

icy stars

#beforedawn

——

2:46 PM, Jan 12th

iced streets slush

in morning hush grey

ribbons wring across foothills

——

12:28 PM, Jan 13th

soft forgotten words

practiced syllables

tonguing memory

ichi ni san shi

go back through the draft

——

7:17 AM, Jan 14th

rain rattle

shake the world awake

drip tempo

#beforedawn

——

1:00 PM, Jan 14th

hemlocks hurl, howl, sway

scrub and brush awash

with windy dewlight

#windstorm #powerout #kitsap

——

4:56 PM, Jan 17th

“Now rose-pink!” cries the painter

“now mountain cobalt-white!

now scoop away all color

make room for coal-dark night.”

#dusk

——

6:02 PM, Jan 17th

beckoning sketchbook

cedar fingertips

skritch-skritch-shadashad

#afterdark

——

8:35 PM, Jan 18th

glowing yawn

chilled shadow

full tremble

#fullmoon

——

7:06 AM, Jan 19th

lunar mischief lingers on

morning breath exhalations

smoke detector reveille

#beforedawn

#wellnowiamawake

——

2:42 PM, Jan 25th

red alder

your swelling catkins

in first blush

#lowwintersun

——

5:12 AM, Jan 28th

morning wind

chimes a new system

brisk star chants

#beforedawn

——

5:16 AM, Jan28th

roof spine crack

early notebook ink

stray door draft

#beforedawn

——

8:06 AM, Jan 31st

dawn blossom

sweet low hanging fog

rose-colored grasses

#sunrise

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A cappella Zoo

Editors: Colin Meldrum, Michael James Wilson, Amanda DiSanto, Micah Unice

The hardcopy of A cappella Zoo Issue 5 for today’s review was provided by the editors at A cappella Zoo.

Read selections from A cappella Zoo 5 here.

Follow @acappellazoo on Twitter

(And for more fun, read an interview with Editor Colin Meldrum by Jim Harrington at the Six Questions For… blog.)

If I had to describe a theme or a common thread for A cappella Zoo (AZ) issue 5, it would be this: voids, and that which fills them. AZ5 reads like a volume of the Never-Never Encyclopedia of the Esoteric: pages of places both peopled and unpeopled, people without places, people displaced. The contributors for this issue ponder voids of unknown, and speculate on the voices heard within. The result is a collection of literature which ultimately places the sketchbook and pencils in my hand this week – these works are adequately vivid and tangible to fuel your own creative engine through those long, dark nights.

The curtain opens with Showtime by Nancy Gold, winner of the Apospecimen Award for Fiction. Gold’s piece sets the tone for subsequent selections by deftly weaving emotion and imagination with a spindle of belief – the belief that we can be more than the sum of our parts; that our hearts are vessels meant to be filled. This is the first of many pieces which playfully create images that are both impossible and perfectly conceivable. (Read Showtime and just try not to look at your ankles and ponder a few tiny wings about their knobbly bones.)

I never read journals front to back, which is why I next bounce forward to Movie Man by Melissa Ross, telling of “a boy born in the projection booth of a tower in the sky away from the Earth as we know it;” first we are cast into the sky, and next drawn into the intimacy of Earth’s shadows.

In Borges’ Bookstore by David Misialowski smacks of one of my favorite Burgess Meredith Twilight Zones: “Time Enough at Last” (see also Jorge Luis Borges). This maze, void of reason and physical law, wraps upon itself into a complete, neat package. Speaking of neat packages, poetry lovers might like to begin with : sign language : by Joseph A. W. Quintela (whose work I seem to find everywhere these days).  The unique composition of this poem is a perfect complement to austere images of solitude, plains, and big, wide sky, cleft open by shared experience.

This completeness is a quality I appreciate throughout AZ5: stories which, while wildly catalyzed, still anchor themselves in some clearly-formed thought. No matter how outrageous our surroundings, each author still affords us a compass with which to navigate the realm. Pestilence by Jason Jordan is such an excellent example: a form of tethered madness.

Many of the AZ5 contributors counterbalance the darker shades of humanity with artful prose and poetry, or a bit of wicked humor. Perhaps the most disturbing yet effective piece is The Crushing by Phillip Neel, which I may have otherwise stopped reading because of the nastiness of the descriptions, had it not been for the clever and poignant entrance to this particular void: that dirty of dirties, the DMV. I’m glad I kept reading – the payoff of this piece is what ranks it among my favorites for this issue.

Similarly The Snake Charmer’s Teeth by Mike Meginnis still haunts me weeks after reading, wherein a cruel story is sculpted with both elegance and requisite gentleness. What the Calf Daughter Knows by Rob Cook is both brutal and beautiful. This persistent poem stands out bone white against the void: completely unignorable.

It’s tough to pick a favorite, especially when I find a journal like A cappella Zoo which is good enough to reread many times. However, the sentimentalist (or perhaps the Japanese lit lover) in me found the deepest connection in A Tale of a Snowy Night by Naoko Awa, translated by Toshiya Kamei. In this story, space is not a function of distance or time, but of empathy. Naoko grounds us in crisp imagery which is as familiar as it is fantastical. Aren’t we all, in some small way, a crate of hopeful apples?

Einstein Plays Guitar by Tania Hershman is also a rewarding read: a well-developed snapshot of those graceful and fleeting whispers of true knowledge. Birds Every Child Should Know by Kate Riedel is another of my favorites from AZ5. I wasn’t sure what to think of it at first; but the more I read Birds, the more I feel the weight of each angelic, warmly feathered lump. In this piece we glimpse the unknown aflutter with spirit, the glittering moments we share with others that spark us on an entirely new path.

Thank you, Theodore Carter, for the tears I cried upon reading the final lines of The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob. With much of speculative fiction favoring the apocalyptic, it’s always helpful to recall with specificity that which we might lose in the aftermath.

If you wish to truly be suspended in the void, begin your journey through AZ5 with Sleepmaps by Barry Napier tucked firmly in your back pocket. Personally, I love dream-inspired art; this poem spares no effort in reaching for the most tangible sensations of the dreaming world, such that I too “never want to wake.”

I want to thank the editors of A cappella Zoo for preparing such an effective cross-section of mind-opening literature for issue 5. Each piece is clearly selected for its creation of both precipice and foothold. What I like most about reading specfic – especially GOOD specfic – is that constant feeling of discovery in each page. I love experiments in literature which keep me guessing and thinking and unraveling, and that’s exactly what you’ll find in A cappella Zoo: a bit of the unknown, made knowable.

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