THIS LIFE WILL SHIFT MANY TIMES OVER LUNA RIO vol. 2
LUNA RIO ZINE HONORS CREATIVE FIRE. USING WHAT WE GOT TO MAKE THIS WORK. WE FEEL IT ALL, AND WE FIGURE OUT WAYS. THIS ONE IS ABOUT CYCLES. IN WHAT WAYS HAVE YOU TRANSFORMED? WHAT NEEDS TO DIE? WHAT HAS TO GROW? THIS ISSUE WAS EDITED AND DESIGNED BY MARGOT TERC, WITH WRITING AND ART BY 18 CONTRIBUTORS. THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS WITH US.
contributors BRENDA NGUYEN CARMEN RIBAURUDO DANIELLE GAUTHIER DIOS JADE MITCHELL JANE CAIT JANUARY EVERWEATHER KASINATOR LIZ RONAN LUNA GOD MAHAM K MARGOT TERC OSADRIS FLORES SITA RODRIGUEZ SOFIE VASQUEZ
THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO LET DIE That part of me that waits and sits back and swallows her rage I’d start by plucking it out. I’d wring it out with my bare hands twist until something snaps or I’m satisfied. I catch a pretty sky and think fuck and now what because, the void Maybe after in my bed twisting me myself and i id know i’d see it clearly and i’d know how to let this be let it all happen to me life and death heartbreak and love let it all shift again and again
. WORDS & COLLAGE BY MARGOT TERC INSTAGRAM.COM/MARGOT.TERC
LIFE AND DEATH
MANY TIMES OVER
LAST SUMMER, LATE SUMMER Last summer, late summer, my best friend draws the death card during a tarot reading. It’s the final card: a symbol of closure, of transformation, of rebirth. I have never thought of myself as a phoenix. But after everything I’ve experienced, all the times I believed I’d never make it, I remember the girls I used to be. The gawky, naïve, anxiety-ridden versions of myself that have all been devoured by great fires of change, that have escaped beyond walls of pain, that have all died to mould me into the body I breathe in today. It should scare me: that the girl I am now is not a mirror of the girl I used to be. But it doesn’t. If anything, it inspires me. If all the past versions of myself had to die to make me the best version of myself now, then let them burn. If I must feed myself to the flames one day, then I’ll turn the body into a funeral pyre. I’ll set my heart alight. Despite all I’ve let go, I need those girls more than ever; to remind me of this strength, of this survival, that no matter what storm follows, it will always weather.
WORDS BY JADE MITCHELL VAGABONDLY.TUMBLR.COM
WORDS & COLLAGE BY BRENDA NGUYEN INSTAGRAM.COM/FULLLHEAL
I once read that we do not move in circles but instead in spirals. Early into my creative development I used to resent the idea that the same weaknesses that broke me when I was younger continued to haunt me as an adult. A fear of failure, a fear of being seen, self-doubt. My therapist told me that my repressed creativity as a child may contribute to my inability to finish projects now because I still have an urge to hide my process. Often it was in my lowest lows that I was able to write the most fervently. I loved this idea of the anguished writer, the tortured artist. I thought, I have the sob story and the words. My favorite writers all had horrid pasts and famous depression. However, I was tired of waiting to slip into the cloud to get in touch with my muse. I started to crave sadness. When I look back at old journals I read my own words over and over again, “I have not been feeling well. I feel empty.� I wanted so badly to kill the parts of myself that were weak and not serving me. Just last week I found myself shouting the words that used to hurt me, an echo from the past. I drove in tears to my childhood home where everything was the same and everything was different. I used to storm out the house after an argument and sit in the middle of the pedestrian bridge that arched over the freeway where I covered myself in the droning sounds of passing traffic like a heavy blanket. This was too familiar. I drove back in my adult car to my adult apartment. It was like I finally saw that I had this instinct to run away from myself both literally and figuratively. If I wanted to break the cycle, I had to tell myself that I decide. Eventually I convinced myself that I wanted to be well. Slowly, I threw out the melodramatic notes at the bottom of my backpack. I lit some incense. I pressed publish. Now I let my ideas consume me like a fire that warms instead of destroys me. I am more comfortable with the idea that as I move through life I will see former versions of myself in new places, or that my old habits will try to creep back into my hands. Nabokov says a spiral is a circle set free. As I write this on the first day of spring I realize that all transformation consists of decay, of ugliness. I carry with me now an affirmation that my inner child is one I want to reclaim and nurture so that I, too, can be set free.
PHOTO BY JANUARY EVERWEATHER INSTAGRAM.COM/EVERWEATHER
PHOTO BY JANUARY EVERWEATHER INSTAGRAM.COM/EVERWEATHER
WORDS BY DANIELLE GAUTHIER INSTAGRAM.COM/LOCASITIITA
PHOTO BY LUNA GOD INSTAGRAM.COM/LUNAG0D
drowning feeling breathing suffocating breathing floating swimming to shore pull pull pull drowing sinking gasping drowing floating breathing DEAD... ALIVE!
WORDS BY OSADRIS FLORES INSTAGRAM.COM/OSA_LA_DIOSA
PHOTO BY LUNA GOD
the other day while driving with my friend down from the top of the mountain that overlooks our tiny city found ourselves talking about truth and memory and how someone can become totally new as long as that’s what they want. she said ‘my father never changes he’s happy with what he is’ and I said ‘I guess that’s the trick’ in some ways I feel like I change every day and that we are something like the tide, the waves crashing on the shore with each breath I become something unstoppable and fresh I collapse onto the sand and disappear only to build myself up again for another inevitable swell in other ways I feel like that is only a benign illusion of change because I am still simply repeating myself made mostly of the same substance and pretending each break is something new but maybe there is beauty in that too maybe, just like the tide we are predictable and bound by the rules of nature to not change outright but to inexorably breathe, collapse, and try again – bigger, or gentler, or to simply be whatever comes most naturally swirling down the road from the mountain we watched the lights of the city flicker through the trees and saw the moon hang bright and full over the ocean and I took a deep breath WORDS BY JANE CAIT
AGING
BY REBEL SOUL There’s no day quite the same, like fingertips inked on paper squares or the needles on every cactus, we witness sunsets from different points of views, every angle you can imagine. There’s no grasp to the moments that could have been, to the conscious first breath waking every morning, the stories & tales that only the wind can whisper to jungles & forests, all endless possibility, every whipped cloud in blue, pink, purple skies, to every noticed emotion & lost chance, to things you never thought would make you cry. There’s no way to understand Why we die? Why we dare to try? Why minds reach for the sky? Why we have a third eye? There’s magic hidden in diverse layers of life– no mountain, no sea, no city, no tree, no moment is ever quite the same.
ART BY CARMEN RIBAUDO INSTAGRAM.COM/CARMENROBOT
I never thought that I’d ever have to say goodbye. I didn’t understand why, BECAUSE every night I prayed and asked God to make you better. But that whole week of viewings and the funeral, my eyes got wetter. I still don’t understand why. I still get choked up and cry. You always called me your “Pussycat.’ I just accepted that. It became a part of me. Just like you will always be. I miss you every single day. But now it just seems it has to be this way. You are now in my memories. Like watching Wheel of Fortune with you, and not Jeopardy. You taught me all about art, And it always came from the heart. I saw true passion for it through you, Which is now a different point of view. I can’t believe it’s been 5 Months since you’ve passed on. Days go by and I’ve become more withdrawn. I’m getting help because I can truly see, I know you didn’t mean to, and that’s okay. Because I still hold on tight to what you taught me, especially crochet. Rest in Peace Grandma, I love you forevermore. Margarita Quattlander – March 10, 1938 – October 30, 2017 PHOTOGRAPHY AND WORDS BY KASINATOR INSTAGRAM.COM/_KASINATOR
HOW TO GROW step one: listen to your mother. she is wiser than you know. step two: pick and choose the important parts of her advise. ignore the criticism and old fashioned ideas. she is more human than you know. step three: create. expand your brain outside of your skull, let it spill onto paper with ink and paint, fibers and threads. it is larger and more beautiful than you know. step four: care for your physical form. it isnt so different from your brain and your heart. caring for one is caring for the other. do what you need to sustain yourself and stay warm. you are more fragile than you know. step five: listen to what is around you. feel the warmth of the sun and the soft kiss of moonlight. you are more sensitive than you know. step six: be! WORDS BY LIZ RONAN INSTAGRAM.COM/DAFFODILDANDELION PHOTO BY JANUARY EVERWEATHER
FANTASY Woke up in a dream tonight, damp and disoriented, dressed tightly in the sheets, stepping in and out of waking Shaken by each interruption, and eager to plunge back underneath the waves - not ready for any ending It's Valentine's Day and there is a lovely man at my side - he loves me, laughs with me And I want kisses in the dark with someone else, pushed up against a wall, feeling it all Shame has a home here but he's not yet arrived and I cannot regret a dream, it is the real fountain of eternal life Water everywhere and all the drops for slaking this thirst eventually, I think everything goes underwater
WORDS BY SIETA RODRIGUEZ NSTAGRAM/.COM/COLAMDO_ZINE
DESAMOR damn, when i die i wonder who’s going to miss me i don’t want to be here everyday is the same thing i can’t continue living life this way something has to change and it’s starts today same old swift just a different day you can’t run away from
WORDS BY DIOS INSTAGRAM.COM/THEREALDIOS
REBIRTH
WORDS BY BY MAHAM K. i. i am a mirror facing a mirror. the pain eats from my palm. every lover leaves repulsed. / i’m unashamed about the ways i no longer try. scalped by love, i drowse & howl. / i’m alone & the sky is unhurt. the blood in my mouth is mine. ii. the pink dawn. grief, sticky & grey. the numb drip of days. my cruel patterns, how they glisten, how i smother myself. / nothing changes. i peel my eyes open. i peel my heart open. / i can’t alchemize light, but i can swallow it. iii. i grow lavender & stone the limping wolf. i am my new mother, crowned in coral, palms soft & forgiving. / i am sore knuckles. i am blood lush with love. i am a column of flame, red & deliberate. / reborn, i rewrite mythologies, paralyze snakes. iv. at dawn i stand in a field of gold, shooting vultures as they appear. INSTAGRAM/.COM/MAHAM.K_
// FEELING LIKE I (FINALLY) GET MYSELF we repeat cycles because it’s familiar sometimes growth can be slow, but it will always be prominent if we allow it to be nineteen began with pain and revelation it was the push, the change the transformation that overwhelmed me but i allowed it to wash over me the transfiguration came through the appearance of music, photography, and a new friend all in the same day the realization broke me down sinking me almost to my knees, as choked sobs and red eyes consumed my body in a public space for everyone to witness it occurred me to then only nineteen days after my nineteenth birthday that until that moment I have always felt alone displaced, misunderstood, mistreated, threatened, forgotten, misdirected but no longer. the change immediately took charge it’s been five months since my transformation, when you say it out loud it seems like nothing at all but this is the happiest I’ve ever been there was time, my art became a burden it weighed and choked me down, killing my passion leaving me like zombie now I relish and flower
WORDS BY SOPHIE VASQUEZ NSTAGRAM/.COM/BULLSINTHEBRNX
YOU MAKE THIS YOURS AND FOR THAT I LOVE YOU
THANK YOU FOR MAKING THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE
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