Focus My Ass

My head hurts, my throat feels all bloody and my nose is a faucet. I’m trying to focus through. My aunt decided that I should stand up in front of a bunch of people I don’t know and give a speech about my uncle who was killed when I was five. So yes, I’m trying to focus and trying to come up with what to write. And it’s even harder to do when I’m sick. And it’s even harder to do when the speech I have to write is in Hebrew. And it’s even harder to do when all I have to work with is five years worth of super fuzzy memories and super fuzzy newspaper clippings circa 1987. Focussing on the fuzz… right.

My aunt chose me to give that speech because she says I’m a good writer. But this is different. This so-called good writer needs to read her writing to a bigass audience made up of complete strangers. That is what freaks me out, because when the written word translates into spoken word, I might as well be mute. The only time I ever gave speeches was in school, in front of classmates, and it was for grades so I managed quite well and scored high. But now, I may very well trip over my words, stutter my way through whatever it is I plan to put down on paper, and do it all under the scorching sun of southern Israel.

The rally where I’m set to make a complete fool of myself is on September 27. Still trying to focus and I’m sick as fuck.

I’d rather be doing something creative like working on my daughter’s photo album. Picabook is where it’s at.

I’d rather be reading. Stephen King is totally where it’s at.

I’d rather fucking sleep. My bedroom is totally and completely and desperately where it’s at.

But alas. I’m at work. Sick. And trying to focus on something I’m hopelessly fuzzed-out about.

Help me.

Peace, love and holidays shmolidays.

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IZM Zine Unveiled

I promised you some photos of my IZM Zine so here they are!

Also, I posted the zine on my Etsy shop so you can buy it here.

In case you have an awesomely bitchin zine of your own and want to trade, do contact me! I love me some trades and zinesters kick ass.

About the IZM Zine:
32 pages
Size A6 (1/4 page)
Black and white
Text-heavy (handwritten and typewritten)
Little to no computer used in the making of the zine

 

Amazine indeed!

Peace, love and zineroots revisited

Mizine: Accomplished!

International Zine Month 2018 recap:

My goal for this month was to make a zine. That I did. And I couldn’t be more thrilled!

The zine is 32 pages long and features some of the elements I used to add in my pre-motherhood zines – text-heavy, handwritten and typewritten material, simple drawings and graphics, creepy backgrounds, and simple (and rather sloppy attempts at) collages.

Some of the missing elements are cartoons, low-grade poetry, and a clear and uniform theme, unless you count IZM as the running theme since all of the pieces were written in July. Also, the cover is in black and white whereas most of my other zines have a color cover. But I like it like that.

The only thing that NEVER changed is the feeling I get with zine-production. I detailed that feeling in my zine and also in many of my previous posts. Looking through my archives at any zine-related posts, you may find words such as elated, transcendent, inspired, amazing, amazing, amazing, incredible, fucking awesome, kickass, ownage, epic, boss, rad, rules everything, and LOVE. Lots and lots of LOVE!

This morning, as I put the finishing touches on it, I took a step back and looked at the mess on my dining room table – stripes and bits of paper scattered everywhere, a Sharpie, a pen, a typewriter, a glue-stick with the cap off to the side, a pair of scissors on top of everything, a pile of paper, a stack of completed zine pages and a stack of half-completed ones.

I threw my head back and laughed out loud.

“I fucking love this!!!” I said within my fit of giggles.

So yes. IZM rules everything and I fucking LOVE it!

But now that it’s August 1st, I have to get back to the business at hand, mainly reading an obscene amount of Stephen King and taking care of my daughter. And tomorrow is Jerusalem Pride, so I’m going there after work and hang out with the beautiful bunch of sweet and wonderful people draped in rainbow flags and Israel flags. And the ultra-orthodox haters can fuck off and lose their tuques in fucking Baghdad for all I care.

I hope you all had as wonderful IZM as I had. And if you did and you managed to produce a zine or a few zines, drop me a line because I’d love to trade.

Pictures of zine will come later. Stay tuned!

Peace, love and aching fingers.

Zinesters Shall Zine

Zine-production, oh how I missed thee!!!!!!

The tap-tapping sounds of the typewriter, the smell of the glue, the stripes of cut paper falling all around, the sticky fingers, the zine coming together with total punk rock DIY perfection… Motherfucking A! What a feeling!

Today was Writing Thursday, but instead of sitting down to continue my random musings on my husband’s laptop, I decided to take advantage of my free morning to start my IZM 2018 zine layout.

There were a few things standing in my way and I tried to get them out of there as fast as I could.

1. Dinner: I’m planning Ravioli for tonight and as such, I need to make the sauce for it. I use fresh mushrooms that need to be peeled and chopped. And since that shit takes me forever, I couldn’t leave it for tonight because then we would sit to eat super late, by which time both my husband and I are starving and my daughter is super hangry and super tired. So taking care of the fucking mushrooms struck a whole fucking half hour from my morning.
2. Lunch: I had nothing already made so I needed to make me a sandwich for this afternoon. Strike another 30 minutes.
3. Dishes: Cooking breeds a mountain of dishes. And if I were to leave these for tonight, the mountain would only get higher. Stike another 15 minutes.
4. Sleep: Since I already knew this list of things would need to be done before I can get on with my writing Thursday, I also knew I’d have to wake up early to get it done. But alas, the call of the pillow was far too powerful and I slept in until the ungodly hour of 8:20 when I had to see my daughter off to gan and have breakfast.

After doing all this shit and setting up my workspace, I only sat down by my typewriter at 10:20. I pulled my beautiful machine, my pretty shiny red Rosie, aka Rose Madder, out of her box, slipped in an A6 size paper, set the margin and started making a whole bunch of noise.

As I was working, I was delirious with joy, laughing occasionally, flashing back to a time in my life where I had all the time in the world to make a whole bunch of paper art magic. And here I was now, back with my typewriter, my scissors, my glue stick, my papers, my backgrounds, all neatly set up.

I was still madly typing away, with the tips of my fingers slowly developing bruises, when the clock struck 11.

With angry Amon Amarth playing in the background and the DIY rush flowing through my veins, I stood up fast, nearly toppling my chair, pointed at the clock and screamed:

“FUCK YOU, CLOCK!! FUCK YOU!”

I had no more than 30 minutes left to revel in zine production before I had to start getting ready to go to work.

Of course, I lost track of time and of course, I missed my bus. But nothing could destroy my mood this morning. I can’t wait for my next free morning (which I’m planning for Sunday) for my fingers to get bruised up some more!

Peace, love and zinester at heart!

Wreck & Roll

My International Zine Month is slowly becoming a DIY Month, like I had back in 2012. Although not as elaborate, I am still finding myself doing different things. Aside from zine-making, I am engaging in the utter destruction of Wreck this Journal (more on that later).

I am also keeping up with my Writing Thursdays. This morning was yet another brilliant morning. I sat on the living room sofa with my husband’s laptop on my lap, typing away about anything at all that made my heart go pitter-patter.

Of course, I am also keeping up with blog-writing and journal-writing. Plus, I’m trying to add some drawings into the mix.

Yesterday morning, I met up with my friend for art morning. I bought my copy of Wreck this Journal by Keri Smith a while ago but never got around to decimating it, so I thought art morning would be a good time to get going. If you search “wreck this journal” on Google Images, you would understand why I found it so appealing. The ways that people use to destroy their copy are above and beyond anything that you could imagine. Using paint, crayons, scissors, glue, glitter, washi tape, needle and thread, hair, and absolutely anything, they turned the book into nothing short of a masterpiece!

I don’t know if I could produce anything as amazing as what I saw, but I thought of giving it a shot anyway. If anything, it might turn out looking like a zine, which is fucking fabulous!

I also don’t know how long it would take me to ransack the fucking thing, but I wish that if I managed to create (i.e. destroy) anything decent, I’ll post the results on here. In any case, destruction is another form of art I want to do this IZM/DIY month.

Peace, love and on with the jackhammer!

Wake Up, Destroy!

With absolutely no relation to the title of this post, my 31-Day Zine Thing project is coming along nicely. Although I’m writing some pretty mundane things, it encourages me to make my month slightly more interesting by planning every week ahead of time and filling my days with fun shit, so that I could actually have something worth writing about. My usual list of fun shit includes reading, writing, Tai Chi, sleeping, music and art. So I try to write mostly about these.

I wish I had more time to write on my typewriter though, but the only time I can do it is at home. I mean, I can’t very well carry my heavy-ass Rose Madder to work, now can I? Carrying my daughter destroys my back enough as it is.

This morning, after my Tai Chi routine, I thought I may have some time left to write, but then my stomach got in the way and I just had to make myself an elaborate breakfast, complete with scrambled eggs, fresh veggies, cream cheese, yellow cheese, whole wheat bread, and apple juice. I’m not complaining, it was great, but that basically meant I had to spend more time doing the dishes and have no time for anything else as a result.

Yes. That’s what it all comes down to. On a regular day, I actually have to choose between writing and eating. That is a very real decision that needs to be made on a day-to-day basis for me. I really did just say that. I wanted to write but my stomach got in the way. Pathetic.

Whatever. I hope I find time later on this month for both writing and eating.

Peace, love and when your toddler won’t stop singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, you know you’ve owned the whole parenting thing.

Ink and Blood Are One

For almost all of last week, I’ve been hardcore reminiscing. It was triggered by my plans to organize my DIY bookshelf full of my old diaries and high school agendas. As I was organizing, I found myself looking through some of them, skimming, reading, admiring the elaborate collages and drawings filling the pages top to bottom, left and right.

I kept on reminiscing as I was writing about it on my blog and in my zine and as I was reading my old posts. And it reached its peak on Thursday when Marilyn Manson’s cover of “Sweet Dreams” came blasting through my earphones. I flashed back to my confused wayward adolescence remembering how the freaky artist, the god of goth, the worst nightmare for parents worldwide became my ultimate salvation.

I was terrified and thoroughly disturbed the first time I saw the video for “Sweet Dreams”. The trashy smudged makeup, the different color eyes topped by no eyebrows, the crumbling run-down spot they chose to shoot the video, the close up of Manson’s scarred and slashed abdomen, all these elements scared me to the core, but I couldn’t turn away.

I tried to convince myself that this is something I should hate and ought to avoid. I tried. I really did. I drew Manson several times with the tagline “Check out that freak!” I watched his 1997 performance at the MTV Video Music Awards with my friend telling her “look at this freak. Who listens to that music anyway?” But when she switched the channel saying “Okay enough of this crap,” I regretted it. I wanted to keep watching but didn’t know why. If I hate it so much, why do I love it so much?

Soon thereafter, I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I had fallen for the fallen angel. My list of favorite artists changed. Manson had vanquished the top spot and Michael Jackson was relegated to the very bottom with a resounding crash. The posters in my room had turned dark and morbid. I plastered the walls with Manson’s trademark eyes and lack of eyebrows. Every visit to HMV or Music World left me with one more Manson record in my repertoire.  First was Remix and Repent, then Mechanical Animals, then Antichrist Superstar, shortly followed by all the others. I squirmed with delight with every “I AM THE GOD OF FUCK”.

My parents were mortified.

Everything I created, all my art, my writings, my poetry also turned dark and morbid. Manson’s influence was undeniable.

This past week, as I was looking at my drawings and read my poems of ages past, I thought how sad it is that I can’t draw as easily and as perfectly as I once did. I lamented my lack of time to write anything of substance and depth as I once did. My mind, fueled by Stephen King’s On Writing, which I read recently, frantically searched for ways to make time and set up an environment for me where I could reclaim my long-lost sense of creativity and my flawless prose. Back then, all I needed to do to write something brilliant was close the bedroom door and let it all out – no rules and no limits. I could even do it during some boring class. Bury myself within myself and sprinkle the page with magic.

But now, I’m filled with inspiration with no means for release and no way to use it to my advantage to fight the motherfucking end of words. The end of words which was my biggest fear, even worse than death itself, has grabbed me by the neck and I simply cannot wriggle myself out of its grip.

Fuck. This just made me cry.

I need to fucking write. I can’t take this. Even if my prose sucks. Let it suck, I don’t care.  End of words be damned, let go of my fucking neck. I need my oxygen, my ink blood, my life force.

What the fuck am I gonna do?

Writing for five minutes a day is far from satisfactory.

Peace, love and suffocation.