An Anachronism in the Making

 In 2012 I wrote a poem I never finished, titled Perhaps. 

Oh, I made the start of a series of mini zines of it, I edited it, I reimagined, revisited and revised it- but I never truly finished it. 

"Perhaps" started in a small square book I made- pocket sized, and was written by hand in a scrawl wherever inspiration struck me over the course of a spring month or so. If ever I stalled on what to write next, I just wrote the word "Perhaps" again and saw where it went from there. 

It was one of those poems I considered to be my magnum opus- and I still hold some of the different versions (which never got the exposure to the world that they deserved) in high regard. 

But this blog post is not about "Perhaps" it is not entitled "Perhaps" and I still have not given up on my to do list that "Perhaps" will have its moment. 

This post is about "An Anachronism in the Making"

That's more like it.

In 2016 I was in my art and writing revival mode. Somewhere in this time I wrote what is still my favorite novel I have written. I was prolific with mail art and took up oil painting. 

And I decided I was going to write a poem in the same vein of Perhaps. The title, An Anachronism in the Making, referred to the fact that seemingly as soon as I felt any feeling it was destined to become irrelevant. Everything I looked forward to, everything I held dear, would be forgotten, irrelevant or soured in time. 

2016 was also the time period where I could not make myself leave the house alone so saying I was a little caught in my own head is an understatement. 

I'm not going to reread it and tell you it was awful. I skimmed it, or a page or two of it, to see that it was- very caught in my own head and past. It was not even a little bit the heavy, but whimsical, record of fleeting thoughts, feelings and experiences that Perhaps was. In fact, I would wager it tried to hard to be Perhaps without recognizing what actually made the first poem successful- hint it wasn't the color scheme. 

So, recognizing it wasn't working, I "tossed" this draft, kept the name and held my breath that someday I was going to write my great poetry manifesto. Or, alternately, use the title for my first poetry anthology. 

This Fall, I decided "fuck it" and went ahead and wrote:

I wrote this zine on an alphasmart neo- which for those unaware is basically a keyboard with a tiny screen and nothing else. I wrote it wandering around the apartment and sitting on every available surface. 

Each time I sat down to write I wrote 1 segment, or 2 or 3, each individual. The theme that emerged was: i am trans. i have feelings about this. i am in love. i sure do miss seeing the sun. guess i gotta get disowned one of these days. oh the sun is back. i have an opinion about portland. let me admit dysphoria i never talked about before. i am doin a thing. 

It ended, fittingly, when I decided it never would end, and that I needed to just cut my losses, make a zine and move on until I had more things to say. It captured September of 2020 for Me and Me alone. 

 

 

I don't consider this to be my Magnum Opus. I don't consider it to be anything at all except a thorough documentation of feelings I felt in September of 2020, nothing more, nothing less. Which means I did exactly what I set out to, nothing more, nothing less.

 this zine can be found on my etsy if you would like to admire the rich black inks of my new printer.