Tonight, E tells me, “do something you enjoy,” and “come back before it’s too dark.” So I take the spare key, swing onto my bike, and hit the trails.
I could think about the smells of roasted sugar-summer air, or the colors of retreating sun. But it’s 8 o’clock. All I really think about is that my face is now a death sentence for the unsuspecting flea and mosquito parade just beginning. I fear for my nostrils, keep my head down.

Despite the distractions,  fresh air helps me think. And on a bike or a walk is when most ideas come to me. Some are terrible, I should admit,* but tonight I decide I am going to resurrect my childhood dream of becoming an “artiste” (I still can’t spell) which has morphed many times, but is not completely lost– so long as I do not let it be. I decide I am going to write a zine.

On Dreams

Children—classmates, and kid-neighbors, little cousins, and daycare buddies—all of them future firefighters, inventors, astronauts, presidents. Many of them now slipping so silently into turtle shells of adulthood apathy. It’s me too. I have a stinky, confining shell, it’s illusion of safety and responsibility too easy to believe. I want out. I want to dream

To let a dream shift and change with time, I think is almost necessity, but to lose it altogether? Nothing less than living in fear, or worse, apathy.

And this is why I’ve decided [finally and with no compulsion or sanity whatsoever] to write a zine. “What’s that? And “Why?” (you probably won’t, but possibly might ask).  I’m not entirely sure. I just know that a zine can be anything, though it usually comes in the form of a smallish, hand-made/self-published booklet. Maybe I should call this a chapbook? Doesn’t really change a thing either way. The best part about all of this… I’m going to do it here, sharing this process with whoever wants to see it– because writing is a conversation. So I fully expect that what I initially write and what I eventually print, fold, staple and probably never sell, will be a constantly change form. And boy does this excite me.

* I once had a mini-dream to tweet for big bird. Not mimicking a bird-call, but  creating 144 characters about the life of an over-sized, misunderstood golden condor.  I thought it would be fun, semi-ingenious, appealing to the masses of millennials who worshiped his (its?) synthetic feathers. Tweeting on the struggles of life without giant bird seed, the joys and perils of livin’ on the street? Somehow, I never got around to it.