Small worlds: my zines

Austin Kleon uncovered the world of zines for me a couple of weeks ago—and the timing couldn't be better.

Self-isolation further fostered my need to make things with my own two hands.

I'm lucky to have the flexibility to work from home, and stay safely secluded with my family, but isolation and screens wear on you.

Zines give me an opportunity to extend my imagination beyond the four walls. While my hands are busy cutting, gluing, and arranging bits of magazine scraps, my mind wanders far away from the coronavirus and the change it forced onto all of us.

For my first zine, I took a very lackluster approach. I didn't plan its flow or content. I opened an old edition of the Economist and picked visuals that struck me, and stuck with me. I first built the last page, then the first, and then had to find the way to connect them through the middle.

What came out of the process, was a gloomy story of a man who is different, and disliked for it.

Zine-ing like there's no tomorrow. It's a great way to upcycle some old editions of @TheEconomist. Thanks @austinkleon for the inspiration! #stayhomemakezines pic.twitter.com/d4fRm2mX7v

— Gavrilova (@marijagavrilovv) March 22, 2020

There was more of an intention behind my second zine. I had a cut-out of a fish, or a screaming girl, and some building roofs. I put those together. Then I went looking for a poem to inspire the rest. I went for Yoko Ono's book Grapefruit, because she'd surely have something strange enough to follow the story of a girl flying on a fish. And she does indeed.

A floating city 

The second level world 

Upstairs on the clouds 

Mountains and rain roaring underneath 

Like venice, we have to commute by 

boats through air currents to visit 

eachothers floating houses. 

Cloud gardens to watch all day

A floating city
The second level world
Upstairs on the clouds
Mountains and rain roaring underneath
Like venice, we have to commute by
boats through air currents to visit
eachothers floating houses.
Cloud gardens to watch all day @yokoono #stayhomemakezines pic.twitter.com/tcI6nQGX0b

— Gavrilova (@marijagavrilovv) March 28, 2020

The swans

I captured a photo of this swan couple during a walk today. They are calmness, they are grace, they are commitment. Black and white, this sight makes me think of my dear old neighbor who lost her husband of sixty years this week, and of her pain.

The words of W. B. Yeats fill the gray skies above the swans:

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

My favorite photograph of Susan Sontag

I love this photograph of Susan Sontag with her son, David.

Their relaxed demeanor, her loving gaze, they know each other well as friends and family.

Sigrid Nunez, a woman whom David dated and who lived with them for two years wrote about Susan and David's relationship:

[S]he always insisted that she and David were different from ordinary mothers and sons. She liked to think of herself as David’s “goofy older sister.” It wasn’t neediness that made her want to keep David with her, she’d tell people, but her enormous love for him.

Susan Sontag loved lists. This one about raising a child, she put out in 1959, when David was seven years old. 

1. Be consistent.
2. Don't speak about him to others (e.g., tell funny things) in his presence. (Don't make him self-conscious.)
3. Don't praise him for something I wouldn't always accept as good.
4. Don't reprimand him harshly for something he's been allowed to do.
5. Daily routine: eating, homework, bath, teeth, room, story, bed.
6. Don't allow him to monopolize me when I am with other people.
7. Always speak well of his pop. (No faces, sighs, impatience, etc.)
8. Do not discourage childish fantasies.
9. Make him aware that there is a grown-up world that's none of his business.
10. Don't assume that what I don't like to do (bath, hairwash) he won't like either.