Earth Is Huge & We Are All On It - Issue 1 by Earth Is Huge And We Are All On It

Issue 1 05/31/2014

Contents: Introduction

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

By Georgene Nunn

Creator Bios

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I felt like throwing up—short fiction; contains suicide, sex

…………..

2-3

4-6

By Amy K

Cool Tat—visual art

.………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7

By Chris Baird

Establishing the CPTTP—short fiction

…………………………………………... 8-9

By Ryan Ptomey

VROOM VROOM MOTHERFUCKER—comic …………

10-11

By Zachariah Brown

a man dies—short fiction; contains death

………………………………………………..... 12-13

By Elizabeth Mills

Montreal—short fiction; contains self-harm, body horror

……………………... 14-15

By Coyote Victoria Knockwood

Birds—short writing

……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 16

By scrublord

Lacrimal Cup—digital sketch By Georgene Nunn

Afterword & About This Zine

……………………………………………………………………..... 17

Introduction If we’re being honest with one another, as I

of being exposed to a litany of subtle hints and

believe it’s only right to do, I haven’t the faintest

outright demands that it’s best if someone like

clue what I’m doing or where this will ultimately

me—perhaps someone like you too—should

go. I do know that the earth is huge, and we are

have a seat, just pipe down, let the important

all on it, and I hope that’s as exciting for you as

people talk.

it is for me. But as I’m discovering: we don’t need to have all

Some very smart people have lead me to believe

the answers to sit up and say how we feel. We

that in addition to challenging exclusion from

don’t need to ask permission to exist. We can

mainstream spaces, it is important to create

come together and find ways to redefine

spaces to celebrate the things the mainstream

important, not just for ourselves, but for

isn’t. Spaces where weird isn’t weird, it’s simply

everyone willing to watch and learn. We don’t

life in all it’s messy glory. Spaces wherein the

deserve to be driven underground; we, like

queer, the curious, the questing, &c can dry the

everyone, deserve a chance to fly.

spittle of the world’s giant cursing mouth off So together, the ignored, the hopeful, the

their wings in the warm sunshine of people who

unusual, the shy, can start creating this new

are excited that they exist.

space with the hope that it will help us soar. I I myself am highly accustomed to doing two

look forward to making this space a reality for as

things very well: not taking up much space and

long as I can and getting as many people—

not upsetting people. In the last few years I’ve

exciting, interesting, fucking weird people—in

come to realize that these two traits have their

front of as many eyeballs as I possibly can.

positives, but are also a symptom of the sickness Thank you and welcome. 05/30/2014 GHN

that settles on one’s bones after years and years

Your work IS good enough. You are valuable and the things you create are valuable! 1

Contributors: Introduction, Afterword, and Lacrimal Cup—Georgene Nunn Georgene is the editor and coordinator of this zine. Read more about the project on the Earth Is Huge magazine tumblr. She freelances by day & talks a lot of shit on twitter at basically all hours, but is generally harmless and friendly. Email giania+zine@gmail.com to contribute or ask questions about the zine.

I felt like throwing up—Amy K Amy is a journalist. She is currently in talks with bugs and the birds who eat them. Twitter: @sexyprison

VROOM VROOM MOTHERFUCKER—Zachariah Brown Art: zozxox.tumblr.com Comics: bitchimananime.tumblr.com Zine: tookawaiitodie.tumblr.com Establishing the CPTTP—Ryan Ptomey An English major born an raised in Kansas City. A fan of music, beer, and many other things. You can find me on Twitter as @WriterRyan.

This piece originally published on author’s personal website.

a man dies—Elizabeth Mills Elizabeth is a writer from Massachusetts and can be found regularly screaming or writing snippets of fiction on Twitter. She one day hopes to look stunning in a dress. Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/redfivetwo

Montreal—Coyote Victoria Knockwood Coyote Victoria Knockwood is a two-spirit Mi’kmaq artist, musician and writer. Born and raised in Alberta, she currently resides in Montreal on her way to Mi’kma’ki. Heavily influenced by Cree stories heard as a youth, Mi’kmaq stories and the works of authors like Clarice Lispector and Franz Kafka, CVK seeks to share her view of the world. Msit no’kmaq. Twitter: @2SpiritSexPunk Cool Tat—Chris Baird Chris Baird is dead. He draws comix. chrisbairdisdead.tumblr.com

Birds—scrublord One time scrublord got high and watched two ducks have sex for like two hours in which he later described as 'a busy day’. Twitter: @scrublord

Earth Is Huge And We Are All On It by http://earth-is-huge-mag.tumblr.com/ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All works in this publication are subject to this license except where otherwise specified. Cool pictures of earth seen from space come from the Wikimedia Commons, as provided by NASA. Fonts are from Apostrophic Laboratories.

I felt like throwing up By Amy K

contains mentions of suicide, sex

I had a dream that I was sitting cross-legged in a black room, holding the moon in the palm of my hand. the earth was there, rotating around and passing through my arm if she needed to. No stars. The moon, herself, no bigger around than a coin, sitting with such weight as if she were very dense. there is no sun but we are still glowing with his light, and it is no trouble seeing, although we have our eyes closed. The moon was so young, and that's with shocked me. Nobody was born yet. simultaneous to the moon in my hand, there was this awareness that I on the earth am underneath this same rock in my hand. We talk, and she knows who I am, and she knows that I am sitting underneath her in a different time than when I sit beside her now. We are both learning how the world works. We are young together, and it is good. *** A homeless man broke into my hometown movie theater and hung himself by the neck on the stage right side of our largest screening room on the far end of the building. I don't know whether or not he realized the girl who opens mornings would find him, in all his still and all his suggestion. My idea of a good time was to take his leather jacket and throw it at my best friend Billy who worked with me, there. Then Billy threw the shoes at my head. When I was swatting at them in the air, a couple of my fingers brushed the clammy inside of the shoe and I felt like throwing up but kept it inside. This uneasy feeling started building. Later that evening I made my sister smell my fingers even though I washed and worked all day. She, 12, said that she still smelled it, though I don't see that, not one little bit. "Avery!," Dad said like he was swatting a dog with a newspaper. "Don't do that to your sister!" "but dad. she asked." "Honey, it's gross," mother gently informs me. "I know it's gross. I told you I feel like throwing up!" "Dinner table, sweetie." "yes, yes, alright mother" I said, but still I couldn't stop thinking about the dead guy. the sanctity of the dinner table, even my deep quiet space in bed wouldn't stop me thinking about him. but Confucius said that it does not matter how

slowly you go so long as you do not stop, and I suppose that's right. and something keeps me on that dead guy, so I suppose I'll stay on him till he affords me a spoils to my hunt. "Spoils of the hunt," where did I hear that recently? I asked them, "Doesn't spoil mean to rot, and isn't hunting when you go get something fresh?" Who did I ask? As I get older, the connective fibers that wrap around memory begin to wear thin. My memories tell me my impulses. My impulses are wearing thin or something. I am 16. It is the year 2010. My name is Avery. I have fucked up genitals. I am neither girl or boy but I present myself as feminine for convenience' sake. I would love to go around telling the world that I'm intersex, that I feel asexual most days, that sometimes I masturbate for hours... and see it as a basic human right! which our royal overlords somehow illegalized during the medieval ages,

... that I see myself as an empathic circuit indispensable between women and men societally... and that my dehumaniza-

tion my objectification has hurt me and continues to hurt them more each day... that I love fingers in my butt! That I love my diary. I want to scare, but not in actuality. Really I just wants to help because I see what others don't... I wonder if all intersex people see what I do, between worlds...? I've never met another not that I tried *** All evening I'm thinking about the dead guy. What did he want? Where was he hangin out last week? Did anybody ever care about him as much as now? When will he fall away from my point of focus? And what will replace him there? *** Billy and I kissed and it sounded like the whirrr of childhood finally stopped spinning under my asshole... *** walking down Main Street in the chaos of summer. I'm listening to my headphones loud, in a black T-shirt and jeans. the sun is kicking my ass and the sky is blue and I have sunburn on the bridge of my nose. The point in between my eyes is pale from wearing sunglasses too much. My sweaty butt is kicking my ass. I would not mind dying. I think I'm unafraid to die. note to self don't drink hot coffee in the afternoon during summer you dummy, I love you ***

My Family Unit lives on a small border town near Niagara Falls. We say it's a coastal town because we are at the widest point in the river and all these old people get such a kick out of it. "Tide is coming in," they say, standing beside that huge angry torrent. "Tide's coming in, just watch, tides are very slow," and then nothing but the riverflow. They'll sit there waiting for you to make a joke back. But that's too much pressure for me to be able to make a joke. Of the five times I've been put on the spot like that, of the five times, I always try to keep quiet, but on the fifth time I cracked my silence and did this long drawn-out sigh. I told him (my grandpa) everybody in this town loves the tide so much but nobody fuck-king knows what a tide is. Each man is an island and each island has its own tides, and every person in this fuck-king town is so hermetically fucking sealed off from their selves that if they saw what their tides carry back to them, back and forth, back and fuck-king forth, if all these fuck-king people saw what they dump in their own tidewaters, all their gasolines and fuck-king plastic waste, they would shit right in the river, they would shit, I was telling him,

or I would have if he hadn't cut me off at my second "fuck-king" with a "calm down Avery." I love a "calm down Avery" because it's usually followed by some words like, "every man is an island, an island populated by women," and from this I can gather that my grandfather actually respects women, and I'm happy to learn this about him. I'm happy to learn that learning... things like this... makes me happy... because it means that I do establish basic connections that other humans do... and I'm happy to basically be human, although the idea gives me more grief than not, most of the time.

Continued...

I felt like throwing up (cont.) By Amy K

contains mentions of suicide, sex

Since Billy and I kissed, I can't stop thinking about his penis. He grabbed my chest more roughly than I expected. At that moment I resolved to suck him off so good that he respects me as a person more, whatever that means. I want to blow him so teasingly and so right that he can't help but blow it exactly when I want him to... on my face! I like to imagine giving him poignant eye contact... He grabbed my tiny tits with a rough hand that I have only known "in passing"... usually when he got clumsy... or gets clumsy... usually in the past, when he's been clumsy, he shapes right up to my attention. But it's like sex flipped a switch in his brain that flipped all kinds of random switches through his body like in his stupid strong hand, or his chest that didn't feel my chest pull away from being tight against his. I'm going to blow him to set the world right again.

Going to blow him to see the world right again. take some of that power he took from me. balance. *** that idiot Billy I tried to blow him and he said he had too many emotions. boys. I'm sick of being so femme. but if he's my only alternative. no fuck that I know there's more in between boys and girls than meets your eye. but this suburbia shit is too much to fit all inside my head. sometimes. other times it's neat and tight and fits just right... I dunno. Our suicide made the national news. Everybody in town said next they would start showing off our local celebs. fucking completely overlooking how morbid the whole thing is. most big news outlets overlooked it too. They suggested it (morbid morbidity), but most headlines said "homeless man breaks into movie theater and ends his own life," not "movie theater swallows psyche and life of depressive homeless" or "industry capitalizing on pure novelty takes over homeless man's

functionality," or, "satellite nature of human life overshadowed by intrusive perceptual non-duality"... "communal disintegration approaches point of debilitating strength" I don't bleed but my heart flows each 29 days. Sort of crappy I don't even have anything to show for all the energy I crap into the atmosphere. Nothing to show but my hot bod.. I guess I'm glad though because I've seen pads and tampons and I dunno. School sucks. ———————————————————————————————

Cool Tat

By Chris Baird 7

Establishing the CPTTP By Ryan Ptomey Prior to 2036, very little was known about time travel. By the late 2020s, most physicists had completely given up on the idea, and any further discussion on the subject was both limited to and driven by pop culture depictions in movies and television. The pursuit had been abandoned after countless failures, but even then it had never been taken seriously. Most concurred that, were time travel possible, travelers from the future would already have revealed themselves to us. Other points of conjecture suggested that time travel would necessitate incredibly rare phenomena, such as a traversable wormhole. Brief hope arose from experiments involving CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (fig. 2-3), but these would ultimately prove fruitless.

In 2022, the Lausanne Incident sparked a change in global opinions on time travel experiments. Many leaders of the UWNA had already expressed concern regarding the potential for time travel technology to be abused should it fall into the wrong hands. When an as of yet unknown error obliterated a significant portion of the city, leaving an empty, perfectly hemispherical crater with a 5 mile radius (fig. 2-4), the United Western Nations Alliance was quick to ban any further experiments. While the Sino-Russian Federation continued its own experiments, western physicists had to be content with entirely theoretical approaches to time travel. When the SRF’s largest time travel research facility in Irkutsk was lost to an explosion with a yield comparable to the infamous “Little Boy” (a nuclear fission bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in the early 20th century) in 2024, the rest of the world were quick to cease their own experiments as well. By 2027, serious physicists completely abandoned the idea of ever discovering a realistic means of achiev-

ing time travel. Some still gave it thought, but these men and women fell either into the category of hobbyists or “crackpots”. On June 2, 2036, the first recorded instance of time travel was observed when a traveler arrived from the year 3036. That traveler was Jean Durand (fig. 2-5). Durand not only revealed that time travel was possible but also set in motion the events that would lead to our current understanding of both time travel itself and the nature of parallel universes. As we came to learn, while time travelers can choose their temporal destination, the process deposits a person in the same place in a separate parallel universe. Furthermore, due to the Mycroft Effect (fig. 2-6), it is impossible for a traveler to re-enter any universe in which they’ve already existed. Thus, affecting change in one’s own universe initially appeared impossible.

However, with the help of the UWNA, Durand was able to establish Travelers’ Day every 2 years on June 2. Much to the chagrin of the British royalty, it was necessary to designate a portion of the grounds of Buckingham Palace for this purpose in order to maintain a consistent location that had remained standing for at least a millennium. Through the first decades of this practice, Durand and the additional travelers who arrived after him were able to ascertain that there are only 12 parallel universes (fig. 2-6) as opposed to the unending number proposed in the Theory of Infinite Universe Splitting (fig. 2-7) that had been touted by Simon Crowley. This discovery helped to establish the Common Protocol for Time Travel Practices (CPTTP).

Using the CPTTP, eventually a system was created that would allow positive changes to be affected despite a traveler’s

inability to return to his own universe. While certain things had somehow consistently developed independently across the multiverse, there were still enough differences to make things difficult. By guiding each universe along an even more similar path, we were able to effectively guarantee that a traveler would arrive in a past nearly identical to the one in his or her own universe, thus enabling course correction to take place in all timelines. - selected from A History of Temporal Understanding (Rosenbaum, Collin M., Phd. Kansas City: Walking Fire Publishing, 2102. Digital.)

———————————————————————————————

Image credit: CERN

VROOM VROOM MOTHERFUCKER 10

By Zachariah Brown 11

a man dies By Elizabeth Mills

contains death

A man falls down three flights of stairs and breaks his neck after getting tossed out of an elevator for continuous leering. *** A man opens up his fridge, takes a look at boxes of expired takeout, and decides fuck it, you only live once. After choking down questionable lo mein and three discolored sticks of teriyaki, he takes a shower. The tile of his bathroom was white twenty years and several tenants ago; it gets slick when the water runs hot. He slips on it after getting out of the shower (after silently staring at the wall for thirty minutes and feeling a chill coil around his spine,) splitting

his skull on the cracked porcelain of the sink. *** A man runs through the park at eleven thirty in the morning, chased by three dogs and, almost halfheartedly, their owner. His sneakers are falling apart, the soles loose and near rotting, and he stumbles frequently. One of the dogs, a mutt with dinosaur parentage, nips at the man’s exposed calves. He trips, then, and slides across grass while the dogs bark and cavort around him. Later, after brushing off the owner’s strenuous apologies and realizing how late he is for a dentist’s appointment, the man cuts through a construction site and is killed by a falling piece of concrete.

*** A man chucks a rock at a wasp hive and manages to outrun the agitated horde. Weeks and a dozen drunken retellings of this story to strangers in dimly lit bars later, he comes across the same hive, busted open and empty on the ground. He marvels at the construction, the holes and passages and material, before going home and feeding his fish. The man dies in his sleep while dreaming of omnipresent buzzing. *** A man wakes up hungover and alone, his head freshly shaved and his stomach violent. An hour later, he stumbles out of his bathroom and manages to fry a few eggs, dousing them in salsa and steak sauce. He’d picked up the recipe from an old girlfriend, back when they’d both been freshman in college. He wonders where she went and if she’s having a better weekend than his. (She owns a chain of successful bookstores and is seeing a florist, a woman from England who is terrible at playing the guitar and loves it all the same. They’re spending their Saturday morning with coffee and quiet conversation.) The man washes his dishes and feels a familiar soreness in his back. He grimaces before stretching until his spine pops. In thirty years complications from cirrhosis will kill him. ***

A man fumbles in the dark of a dust held attic, searching for a box and coming up empty. It’s the middle of summer, one washed out by humidity and cloudless days. He’s been crouching and scrounging for what feels like hours and stands up fast, slamming his head against a wooden beam and collapsing to the floor. The heat takes care of the rest and a pair of detectives find his body six months later. *** A man opens the wrong door and is fired, with promises of worse should he talk about what he’s seen. He goes home and thinks on his options, falling asleep after six beers. An electrical fire on the sixth floor takes out his entire building – someone left their toaster plugged in. The man suffocates and dies. ***

A man chokes to death on a cheese filled pretzel while his television broadcasts a preseason baseball game (a grand slam is hit as he finally lets go.) *** A man and his dog are involved in a seven car pile-up (the dog survives and is taken in by his sister.) *** A man accelerates into a Jersey barrier after taunting and sneering at a hatchback driven by a teenage girl. The front end of his car crumples immediately and his airbags fail to deploy. Several of his ribs are bruised by the seat-belt and his head comes within inches of ricocheting off the steering column. His car spins a few times before coming to a

stop, leaking fluid from where the engine used to growl and cough. A minivan tries to stop short but T-bones him instead. The man dies while a line of geese flies by overhead. ———————————————————————————————

The dance of Death 1914-1918 Death awed - Percy Smith—1920 (public domain)

Montreal By Coyote Victoria Knockwood [Author note: This piece contains depictions of self-harm and body horror, please read at your own discretion and safety. Dialect used is Listiguj except my where knowledge was limited] Montreal When you don’t drink, the smell of a Saturday night is overpowering. The metro is strong with the wrong kinds of spirits. I sit nervously, with my elbow on the edge of the window, hand in my hair, hat in my lap. I’m wearing a denim jacket with the sleeves rolled up just past my elbows. I sewed pockets on the inside to hide my knife and to have a place to put my phone. My hat sits on my lap, the underside of the brim painted with the words SHE/HER/ELLE, to

compliment the patch on my denim that reads DON’T ASSUME MY GENDER. Nkij always taught me that I had to stand up for myself. She taught me how to throw punches. I would see her shadowboxing, and I wanted to learn. As a teenager it was more useful than any of my schooling. I spend a lot of time scowling, stoic with a furrowed brow in public now. It’s hard to shake the idea that someone talking to me is going to throw a punch a couple words in. So I sit and scowl with a furrowed brow on the metro. It’s late. My watch tells me it’s around 22H30, but the coil makes it run a few minutes fast. I’m on my way to see kaquej. That’s not her name, but it’s what she calls herself, and prefers others to call her. She is older than me by at least forty years, and her skin is pale, like mine. Always two long braids hanging over her shoulders. I’ve never been inside of her apartment, an old building in Saint Henri. There are two folding chairs and a heavy wooden table on the

sidewalk, chipped and cracked and covered in various graffiti that she talks over, and I listen. Lnuwi’t’k kji’toq klusuaqan lnueiei. I try to do the same, but nkij never taught me our language, and even nukumi doesn’t speak it anymore. Tonight I’m going to see kaquej because of a dream I had. I sat in a great field, on a dirt road, with water to one side. Kitpu’l landed in front of me, wings spread wide, then relaxed and stood facing towards me, looking just over my shoulder. In the dream I didn’t look behind me. The two of us sat several feet apart for a very long time. There was a light wind, but it wasn’t enough to move my hair. I don’t remember what I was wearing. The train slows at Place Saint Henri, I put my hat back on and stand up, wavering slightly as the metro stops. There’s a large bald man, wearing a thin gold chain standing in front of the door. I place my feet directly in front of his, and make direct eye contact. The doors haven’t opened yet. He looks at my hat, somewhat puzzled. Then the doors slide

open, and he moves out of my way, eyeing me warily. Only a few other people step off the train onto the platform. I make my way up the stairs and can feel something move beneath my skin. One level. I can feel it coming closer to the surface. Two levels. There’s a clear outline underneath the flesh of my right forearm. Street level. I start walking quickly down St Jacques, making sure I’m alone. The shape in my arm squirms a bit, and I draw my knife. Ducking into an alleyway, I dig the knife into my wrist, gently. I pry around the edges of the outline. After about a minute of softly cutting, jipji’jl emerges from my arm, shakes off some blood and takes wing into the night. Probably some kind of pi’jkwej, off to hunt. I clean the blood off my knife, sheath it and place the cut out flap of skin back in place.

I check my watch. 23H10. Kaquej will be bringing her chairs inside soon. I decide to keep walking, but at a slower pace for all the blood loss. My skin is healing quickly, but I still feel a bit dizzy. When I finally make it to kaquej’s table, she’s not there, and neither are her folding chairs. A black feather is stuck into a crack in the table. I take it in my left hand, between forefinger and thumb, and place it over top of my bloodstained forearm, and then run my fingers over it gently. It sticks to the still wet blood, sparkles, then begins to fade. The outline of the feather stays in my skin, but the rest is healed completely. Looking up at the big brick building, I see that no lights are on. The streetlight above me flickers a bit then returns to a dull yellow glow. The wind picks up and threatens to knock my hat off. A low groan rumbles from a couple blocks over. Parc Emile-Berliner, near the tracks. But it’s not the low moaning of metal on metal, it’s as if a great throat is opening for the first time, hungry and confused. After so long a time, to suddenly have a voice and not know how to

speak. It grows deeper, and the wind grows stronger. St Jacques is empty. My arm hurts. The streetlight above me flickers again, this time burning itself out as the ground around me rumbles, and the groaning shifts to become a howl, a scream. Pain. I bite the inside of my cheek, and step into the street to cross over to the Parc. The streetlights fade as I get closer, traffic lights no longer glowing with bright red, yellow or green, but a deep and faint purple. They start as spots and become trails in my eyes. In the centre of Parc Emilie-Berliner is a great pillar of smoke, tinted a bad bruise, billowing into the sky. I stand, mouth agape, as this thing rips something out of the earth and sends it above. Awestruck, I take a step forward, and ***

I wake up near the tracks. I lift my arm to see what time it is. 09H04. I pause, the face on my watch is cracked. The skin on my left arm is torn up, as if the flesh was twisted to the point of severing. My right arm is the same. That’s when I notice the sound of excited chirping from behind me. “Montreal,” I think and close my eyes again. “Montreal.” Glossary of Mi’kmaq Terms Jipji’l – A bird Kaquej – Crow Kitpu’l – An eagle Lnuwi’t’k kji’toq klusuaqan lnueiei – (Singular) they use the native word(s), if they know it/them Nkij – My mother Nukumi – My grandmother Pi’jkwej – Night hawk (Una’maki dialect) ———————————————————————————————

Birds By scrublord When I was younger, I thought birds were dumb. That

they don't have any thoughts at all, but we know that

they were stupid balls of feather that could somehow

isn't true. When you are free, you don't worry about con-

break through the realm of impossibility and fly. What

strictions. Why would you?

kind of bullshit is that? Humans invented the internet,

I know where I would go to if I could fly. Far far away

ice cream and war, yet birds are the ones that can fly?

from where I am now. But it isn't a place, exactly. I want

That changed as I grew older. I realised my resentment

to fly to a feeling. I know that sounds like the kind of

towards birds was nothing more than jealousy. Ever

song you'd hear sung live at a Republican Rally while

since I had developed the neck muscles to look up and

white dudes talk about guns. I don't want to go any-

the clarity to look into the sky, I wanted to be up there

where so much as knowing I could if I so wanted is com-

with the birds. With this knowledge, I could begin to un-

forting.

derstand that birds are basically the best.

I think, on some level, we all want to fly. But do we de-

Birds are the most powerful creatures alive today. Noth-

serve to do so? Can you say that we are as pure as birds?

ing else can fly and poop at the same time. They are like

Or would we abuse our flying privilege to have sex in

tiny Gods, swooping around, eating trash and minding

midair or poop on people we don't like? Is all human

their own business. When have you ever saw a bird be an

endeavor just an attempt to reach a point where we can

asshole? Never. It just doesn't happen.

reclaim the skies from our Bird Gods?

People don't have the best track record of flying anyways.

I don't know. Thanks for reading.

Iron Man can fly, despite the fact he's a drunk and also

————————————————————

Robert Downey Jnr. Superman can fly, and what has he ever done to deserve that? Pilots claim they can fly, but it isn't their own propulsion which makes them fly. They are basically sitting in a giant metal bird and pretending that their lives matter. Flying gives freedom. The freedom to go where you like is a powerful thing to have. How many times have you wished you were somewhere else? That you could pack up everything you own and just get out of there? Birds can do that, due to a combination of flight and also because they don't own anything. They just are. What tethers you to this spot? Work? Responsibility? Laziness? The paralyzing fear that this is as good as it gets and you are too terrified to even take a step out of

Natural History Birds—cuckoo (public domain)

your comfort zone in case it is all downhill from here? Birds don't have these thoughts. Some people may argue

Lacrimal Cup

By Georgene Nunn 17

Afterword This art and writing was brought to you by

on dry rocks or earth. It is made up of prefix

some very talented, and intelligent people, and it

petro- meaning “relating to rocks” and ichor,

is my utmost pleasure to present it to you here

meaning “the fluid that flows like the blood in

in as neat a form as I could put together in

the veins of the gods”. Ichor can also pertain to

about two days.

any bloodlike fluid, and has older use related to the discharge from wounds.

I hope that there were things for you to enjoy in this first issue. I hope that something contained

Scent memory is a pretty powerful thing, and

herein gave you pause. I hope that you will share

rain is something everyone experiences in their

with your friends. I hope that you will join us

lifetime, so petrichor seems like a good

again at the end of June for Issue 2. And I

candidate for drawing from memory, from rain,

definitely hope that you will consider

and from scent.

contributing to a future issue. The roots of the word itself, stone, and ichor, are Each of these issues won’t necessarily have a

rife with potential also, invoking chthonic awe of

central theme or topic, but each month will

the earth and the gods we have drawn from it,

have a prompt, to help if the muses aren’t

as well as the awe of the heavens bringing rain

forthcoming.

and the gods we seek in them.

June’s prompt is: Petrichor

With this basket of potential in hand I leave you to your work. I know you can do it.

Petrichor is defined as a pleasant smell of rain

About

~GHN 05/31/2014

Earth is Huge and We Are All On It is an online zine that intends to publish monthly. Fiction, non-fiction,

poetry, comics, stand-alone visual art, and anything that can be put on a page is welcome here. We seek to create space for all sorts of ideas and all sorts of people, and in particular want to create a welcoming environment for those who find themselves existing in the margins of society. Any brief study of historical texts will show that marginalia is where all the really interesting stuff lives. Visit us on tumblr for updates, calls for submissions, progress reports, and more: earth-is-huge-mag.tumblr.com Email giania+zine@gmail.com with questions, submissions, fan mail, hate mail, etc.