Provisions
Provisions
Getting ready to undertake a difficult journey.
Up Top
The Artifacts
The first artifact of smoke and mold is here. The Diviner, a broadside featuring work by Catherine Kim, from her story “The Infinite Forest.” Purchase to support us and hang a little piece of this ephemeral journal on your wall.
The Classes
I’m offering two new classes to round out the year: Humans Have Left the Chat is a one-off experiment in attempting to write an ecosystem as a conversation; Notions: A Sewing & Writing Workshop explores stitchwork in literature from Dickinson to Morrison, and encourages participants to crosspollinate stitch and syntax in meditative exercises. Click through for more info, and I hope to see you there!
The News(letter)
I’ve officially quit my full-time job to devote my time to writing, editing, and my own publishing & teaching practice (that’s how I’ve come to think about all this now — I write, I teach, I publish the work of others, and somehow through this alchemy a small mycelial network is formed && growing). I’ll have more to share on this in future posts. But if you’d like to support me in this endeavor, you can tip whatever you feel appropriate below. I’ll try this for awhile, in lieu of enriching substack. And if you can’t tip, don’t worry, you can still read. Please still read.
I guess I just can’t bring myself to produce ‘paid content’ after all. I am a failure of a millennial capitalist — hurray!
The Provisions
What would you need to set out right now, from where you are?
What stories would nourish you? Ones where the hero completed their mission successfully and found the glory they were looking for? Or ones in which the traveler failed, objectively, but found something unexpected along the way and they're doing just fine now. Would it help to have a map? Even if you didn't know your destination? Or if, when you got there, all the names had been changed and the roads led to new places or had been submerged by the rising waters?
Would you travel as yourself or under a different name? Not for purposes of disguise but to better inhabit the mentality of one who sets out versus one who remains. Not that there is any shame in remaining, only that setting out and remaining require different preparations. To set out you need a certain amount of distance, provisions, means or a lack of resources. To remain you need some reassurance that things will continue the way they have been, or better.
Would you travel alone? Would you seek out others on the same path as you, considering there may be safety in numbers? Or are you in search of a path whose primary offering is silence and solitude to afford time for contemplation.
To what bird would you look for omens? The eagle, the raven, the osprey? What small and inconspicuous stones in your path would carry small messages from distantly imagined kingdoms? If you got lost, what moss would you rest your head upon? If you got lost, how would you know when you were no longer lost?
What I’m Reading
Bonsai, the very short novel from Alejandro Zambra, his first published in Chile in 2006, and the shortest book I think I’ve maybe ever read that has had such an outsized impact on my desire to write and how to write it all down. Finishable in an afternoon, for those of you exhausted, and a spellbinding union of form and content.
Publishing Opportunities
always fee-free to submit unless otherwise noted
The Puritan is open for submissions of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction until December 25. Pays $35-$200CAD.
TriQuarterly is open for submissions of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction October through December.
Emergency INDEX is an annual print publication documenting new performance in the words of its creators. Deadline to submit is October 10.