La Galeria Zine - Moments

A collaborative project by the Wepartist Village

Introduction A collection of daydreams, each memory curated to weave together a story of its own.

A callenge to pause and ignore the movement, take in the moment, and bring something new into the present.

To stop making sense of what’s around, listen to the sounds, take in the view, and greet the journey with a smile.

This is where life lives.

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Writer

Pages

Artist

Jess Gawrych Emily Wang Dorothy Huyn Hazel Encarnación Camille Padilla Amanda Green Phillipe Chatelain Brendan Pailet Laura Lynn Johnston José David Muñoz Shea Garner

4-7 8-9 10-11 12-13 14-15 16 17-19 20-21 22-23 24 25

Elsabe Milandri* Tracy Ren Morgan Braaten Maria Magdalena van Wyck* Cristina Jayo Eva Mayha Davis Nadia du Plessis* Andrea Velázquez Laura Lynn Johnston Sam Taylor Gabi Hastings

*In collaboration with KIN Shop www.kinshop.co.za

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i have roamed towards shells and the crabs that live beneath them, writing to you from the ocean. here i happen to pass by sea turtles, clown fish, tuna, and the occasional whale. it’s as busy a world as ours, and so never-ending too. the abyss will engage with you. i’ve made a bed of the sand, and a jewel out of coral, call it “living past the shoreline.” the city never sleeps here, and i can hear the bustle of life above, as i skirt around avoiding the capture of death nets, trying to scoop me into the market. i avoid the boats and their journeys to markets. for lunch, i have a seaweed salad and i make phone calls via conch at the same time. schools of fish glide past, attune to the structure of waves. i am a fish out of school and i return to caverns untouched, near the cliffs that mark darkness much deeper than the average submarine’s reach. i wonder how long it would take for an anchor to reach the bottom of all that depth. i know if i dive deeper i cannot be reached, but solace lies in the certainty of the surface above me. there is yet time to return, and time to swim on.

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The moments that make us come alive the most are the ones deeply filled with intense emotions.

Sometimes, they’re happy and illicit feelings of laughter, joy, and excitement. Other times, they’re daunting and take us to places of pain, sadness, and fear that we never want to be again.

We have a tendency as humans to internalize the negative feelings and try to avoid them at all costs.

What we don’t realize is that by doing so, it causes us to become numb to everything that is positive in our lives.

So I must ask you, friend...

In this very moment, do you feel alive or are have you become numb to all that is around you?

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SO I MUST ASK YOU, FRIEND..

OR HAVE YOU BECOME NUMB TO ALL THAT IS AROUND YOU?

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I GET A LITTLE HIGH TO NUMB THE PAIN YOU MADE ME FEEL THAT DAY YOU HAD THE BALLS TO ADMIT THAT D I S T A N C E WASN’T FOR US. WITH A PUFF, I STOP THINKING OF YOU AND THE ICY WORDS THAT PIERCED MY THEN WARM HEART. I BEGIN DRIFTING TO MY OWN WORLD — SIMILAR TO ALICE’S — AND I FIGHT AN EVIL QUEEN TO FEEL THAT I’M WORTH SOMETHING. YET THE HIGH FADES AND I RECKON I’M NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU OR ANYONE.

SO I GET A LITTLE DRUNK TO NUMB THE PAIN YOU MADE ME FEEL THAT DAY YOU FINALLY HAD THE COURAGE TO SAY YOUR LOVE WASN’T STRONG ENOUGH TO ENDURE

M I L E S. AND I DANCE AT A BAR AND

HIS EYES STARING AT MY HIPS MAKE ME FEEL BEAUTIFUL AGAIN SO I GAZE AT HIM INVITINGLY. WE DANCE ALL NIGHT UNTIL HE INVITES ME HOME AND I SAY YES BECAUSE DAMN, HE’S HOT — MUCH STRONGER THAN MY EX. SO WE GO TO HIS DORM ROOM, HE PUTS ON A CONDOM, AND NICELY ENOUGH MAKES SURE I CUM BEFORE HIM. I WAKE UP AS THE SUN RISES AND LEAVE HIS PLACE BEFORE HE’S CONSCIOUS AGAIN BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT HE WANTS, I GUESS. AS I WALK HOME MY BODY IS SATISFIED BUT MY MIND STILL THINKS — YOU’RE WORTHLESS BITCH.

WHEN YOU’RE 19 AND HATE YOURSELF IT’S BECAUSE YOU DON’T GIVE YOUR MIND THE CHANCE TO GET TO KNOW ALL THE DIFFERENT WAYS YOU CAN FIND LOVE. SOMETIMES WE HAVE TO SEE A THOUSAND SKULLS AND LISTEN TO A HARP PLAYING LA VIE EN ROSE AS YOU WALK DOWN THE STEPS OF LE SACRE COEUR TO REALIZE THAT HAPPINESS IS NOT FOUND IN SEX, DRUGS OR ALCOHOL BUT IN WRITING, MUSIC, AND FRIENDS.

NOW AT 23 — I GET A LITTLE HIGH BECAUSE IT RELAXES MY MUSCLES, I GET A LITTLE DRUNK BECAUSE I ENJOY THE TASTE OF A GOOD LAGER, AND THE COMBINATION OF BOTH

MAKE ME A BETTER RHYMER.

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Upon tequila contemplation I periled that I had written the story of my life At age twenty-one And prevail condemned to live it It’s a new age But every night the moon is out Watching laughing powder on dust craters Learning how to trust later, and trust favors Fiending for a follow from rough haters Like this life is not worth the labor Life is not enough And with me, don’t hesitate to fly Always hesitate to die though Keep reaching, never pleased with high notes Face to sky like I’m weeping on a life boat. while life erodes me rounding me to zero in the nothingness of which I find myself a part here but nothing, or closer to it than much else close enough to the beginning still proximity is all encompassing

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The circuit fuse exploded as I attempted to write this. It wasn’t anything to express concern over; the verb used in that previous sentence makes it sound far worse than it actually was. The real consequence was it sent me on a procrastinating Wikipedia quest, into the true function of fuses. This is how I choose to kill time; by learning something seemingly random. I’ve found it particularly effective to dodge personal questions as to what you did on a particularly lazy day by rambling on about when civilization might have invented the pillow.

So here’s the thing about fuses.

An electronic device works by having a flow of current. Sometimes, electricity doesn’t get the memo and tries to bring too much of itself into the device, which would destroy the circuit. Picture that large group of repulsive people trying to wedge their way through the door of your local trendy bar; it’s in everyone’s best interest to not let all of them in. The fuses’ job is to regulate the amount of electricity that flows into through the circuit, and make sure too much of it doesn’t go through. It is the bouncer, in this awful metaphor.

So what happens when that large amount of electricity shows up?

Brace yourself, we’re going to get into some light science.

So when that large amount of electricity shows up, and can in no way be moderated or restricted, the fuse activates its purpose. The way it works is that to conduct electricity, the fuse has a strip of metal in it, which is designed to melt when exposed to too much electricity. When the metal melts, it breaks the circuit, which is the technical term for when my lights went out. By doing this, the fuse is effectively destroyed. But in exchange, the circuit is saved- something that clearly would not have happened had the fuse not been there. There, now that wasn’t so bad, right?

Here’s where things get odd.

This kind of mechanical piece is known as a “sacrificial part”. They are intentionally designed to fail, in order to preserve the rest of the system. If you’re like me when you read this, your mind instantly jumped to how the fuse would process this if it were at all sentient, right? I mean, imagine what it would be thinking. To be a fuse means that you would have to accept that your existence could end every time you show up for work; but in exchange for your sacrifice- everyone else gets to survive.

Or another way of looking at it, the fuse has to understand that in order to do what it truly wants to do, there is an almost incredibly high risk of failure. That thing it was designed for, that it has known was always its true purpose, could end in disaster.

And yet, it does it anyway.

I don’t know why that makes me feel something…

But it does.

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nightlight.

When we’re together it feels like it’s just you and me and we’re crouched under the covers after “lights out” clutching our flashlight hiding from the rest of the world.

You never realize how dark it is until someone snuffs your candle out and you have to grope around blindly in the dark.

You swear you put the matches next to the coffee machine or in the cupboard above the fridge or in that dish beside the sink but it doesn’t matter now.

I hope the day never comes when our flashlight burns out too.

But I suppose not even batteries last forever.

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Make cool shit.