The Moon Zine #24 - Big (Aug 2017)

Issue

#24

/ Big

Aug

2017

Dear Readers and Moon Luvers, Well, it is big.

This issue looks a little different from our previous. Isn’t it exciting?! We switched up the orientation because we like to shake things up.

For future themes, submission deadlines, and anything else, be sure to check in with us online. (See last page.)

Like our previous issues, the numbered pages are original submitted content.

Other pages are altered by yours truly and unique to each edition of the

issue. Thank you for taking a chance and picking up our zine. Hold on to it, or pass it on to the most hulky zinester you know, as The Moon Zine is one of a kind.

With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, The Moon

meet the staff

Lauren Kellett - finally found access to that cool hill on highway 55 Josh Saboorizadeh - Large flat screen televisions are unattractive.

Julie Davis - The universe is shaped exactly like the Earth.

Wes Harbison - back to school Allison Sissom - Big Thief

staff picks: world record

Lauren - Most Milkshake Dispensed Through the Nose, 1999 (1.82 oz) Josh - Tightest frying pan roll Julie - Largest collection of Guinness World Records memorabilia- 2,164 unique items owned by Martyn Tovey Wes - The largest group of people to pop bubble wrap together: a group of 2,681 boy scouts Allison - Fastest Turtle: Bertie, 0.92 feet/second

The Big Sleep

by Craestor *********

1

by Steven Cline ************

2

Baba Bozorg

by Josh Saboorizadeh ****************

BIGSPLASH

by Callum Green **************

3

Eliza

by Steven Cline

Eliza drags her nails across the back of the freshwater salamander. She returns a few months later and finds the illuminated country has been sacked.

“What is the next disintegration?”, asks the orange malcontent.

“Microscopic crabs flittering outside the body of the stillborn lover.” she quietly responds.

The orange malcontent jumps for joy and waddles down the road. He comes to the decaying tar pit places himself in the center. As the tar sucks up his nostrils and he breaths his final breath he happily thinks to himself “No trouble for the piper, ma'am, no trouble at all.”

Start Again

by Rebecca Glendining *****************

4

Moving

by Bill Fishback

When they first asked us to move it they more or less asked me, and assumed I could find some friends, or at least a few strangers, Uber drivers in the off-season, stray corn detasselers. But when they first asked me I wasn't sure.

There were three problems: 1. It was going to take at least two to eight people. Fifteen at most. I aint bad at logistics but to get all the crew at the same time is another thing. And yet another -- to find a soft drink everyone can agree on, since the structure was already sweating in this heat.

2. I work in advertising, so the only callouses I have nowadays are my guitar callouses. Not as strong as I was a few years ago. Will need to find help in the industries. Again, unsure why they asked me for this.

3. I have no access to dollies. Those seem like they'd be helpful. I can't be positive, but I am pretty sure.

So, basically, I got a call from a call asking to move Estate Tower 123 about thirty feet to the west. This was due to some future construction, and also because the gradual humidity was causing the side of it to lean a bit. We've all noticed that over the years but we all trusted it.

Apparently we were right for noticing it.

Now, the thing about moving a building with two-fifteen people. If you've never done it before, is that you have to be careful. I mean, you really have to watch your 5

step. And lordylord, I would not wear sandals unless it was really hot.

Imagine your first Lego set if you had one, and if you didn't, imagine you did.

Basically they gave all of us -- and by the time the day started I was only able to rally six workers with kerosene-soaked sandwiches -- pickaxes. We had to move the pieces slowly.

So, pick out along the mortar, keep going. Pay attention. You're not a window washer, pay more attention, no stop there, no keep going.

Stop, no stop stop stop stop stop.

It was like guiding a stranger backing up a U-Haul, or playing Jenga. We ended up getting the first third or so out on the first day, which we felt proud of. It was a big job. And as consolation, their glass offices were now in the park. As were their bathrooms. Proximity is key, I told them.

I won't lie. It did take a long time. And I'm still unsure why they asked me of all people. I based all of my building, relocation, and rebuilding knowledge on my previous knowledge of Lego architecture.

All in all, it didn't take forever, and I mean, I just kind of guided the whole thing. There's something whimsical about directing something like Christo, but these are real offices and real people with real jobs pissing in a real park.

That was what really did it, too.

I thought the time flew by, but I guess the city didn't. To be fair, I coulda gotten a MBA in that time.

Anyways, the city got tired of the office workers pissing in the park, so we just filled the park up with glass cubicles, so they all had to face each other, and this really made them second-guess themselves when getting to to relieve themselves, which is really where we all have something in common. It also closed the park indefinitely, so that part was taken care of as well.

We settled on giving the workers the park and the dank, old public restrooms. For those brave enough to shit in them, some of them still had wi-fi.

In turn, a few of them got an easier place to park. In the interest of time, we just laid out a one-level monthly parking lot where the tower was. Easy.

We even left all the pickaxes and other shit behind one night on accident; other people seemed to take em for themselves so when we went back to get em all, we didn't have to leave out cars. We got McMuffins and went home.

by Steven Cline ************

by Steven Cline ************

6

by Presley Nassise ***************

7

by Presley Nassise ***************

by Presley Nassise ***************

by Presley Nassise ***************

Metatarsals and the Giant

By Katherine Beckner

When your bones are spread next to mine, I wonder how you got so tall.

When they are spread across states and years, you are every hollow tree I ever found.

I feel like a child climbing up you.

You feel like a child being climbed.

When you die, I will ask for your bones.

I will ask for your forearms.

I will say they’re too beautiful to burn, and I won’t let anyone touch them.

When I die, put me in a hollow tree and burn it down.

8

Aerial of a Wastewater Treatment Plant

by Aaron Owens *************

Meramec River Meanders

by Aaron Owens *************

11

Aerial of East St. Louis

by Aaron Owens *************

by Julie Davis ***********

12

Chapter 3: Photographing Big Things By: Aaron Owens

So you want to photograph big things, make the large seem larger, the huge seem huger? Well, here are some tips for capturing the enormous that should help get you started.

As we have discussed in earlier chapters, the art of photography lies in the translation of the 3D world into a 2D medium. A successful photographer can create the illusion of depth using a variety of techniques and knows which tricks will best communicate meaning. In this chapter we will discuss three techniques photographers use to communicate to their viewers the grandness of their subject.

1. Equipment. Wide angle lenses have been developed for the express purpose of capturing the large. If you really want to capture the grandeur of those Coastal Redwoods or the vast emptiness of the Nevada range, you should probably look into purchasing a wide angle lense. This will give your photos what I call the “GoPro Effect.” The typical action/lifestyle camera comes equipped with a wide angle lense fine-tuned to give your adventures a truly epic look. Those action bros you follow are not very good at photography; they just bought themselves the right lense. If you weren’t so cheap you would have one right now and be able to show off your wonderfully secluded camping spot under the branches of that 300 ft. redwood named “Iluvatar.”

2. Scale. Since you are a miser and unwilling to spring for the purchase of an additional lense, you might try using scale to capture that tree’s bigness. Nothing communicates the size of one thing like putting it next to another thing. You know that grove of trees looming over you, pressing the accumulated weight of time into your purposeless soul is big but a picture of only the trees will fail to communicate their suffocatingly foreboding nature. What you need is a person in the picture. Your fiance would have been perfect. If they had not abandoned you last week you could have placed them under the trees, looking skyward, filled with love for you and agape at the ancient branches. This shot would have communicated to viewers the proper scale, as it would place the enormity in a familiar context. But, alas, you are alone. I would suggest you ask a stranger to take a picture of you in your ex-fiance’s place, but there is no one here with you 13

and even if there was, you haven’t been able to speak to another human without erupting with emotion for the past six days. That is why you came here after all, to be reminded of your size and place in this world, to be alone with things larger than yourself and your problems.

3. Perspective. Traditionally, when other methods are unavailable, I would suggest the use of perspective to attempt to capture size in a photograph. The cheapest and loneliest of the methods, perspective would simply place you nestled inside the trunk of the tree looking up. In your case I suggest you put your camera away all together, sit amongst the needles on the forest floor and search your insides for a different sort of perspective. Sure you were abandoned, sure it was likely because you are cheap, sure happiness seems progressively harder to find as you continue to amass what increasingly feels like an unbearable weight of disappointment and regret and time continues to press you ever further towards death.

But...you are not dead. You are alive and standing under an ancient life, one whose rings date back 1000 years, whose ancestors scratched the backs of dinosaurs and whose origins, like yours, trace back to a primordial swamp and the most profound of mysteries. Go have a cry in its roots. Cry for yourself and your regrets. Cry for the cruelty of humans and our collective inability to float our better natures. Cry at the foot of your brethren until you have spent yourself and your hot face, crusted with the salt of tears and oceans has no more water to give. Now reach through space and time into the heart of these trees and find yourself. You are the product of near infinite chance stretching backward into unknowable darkness. Like the trees above, you are impossibly big, interconnected with eternity and better than you know. Put your camera down and look up.

CALENDAR fun thing another fun thing oh here’s one more

14

Murphy

by Bob Boston ************

15

Outside The Box

by Bob Boston ************

16

No Man

by A.K. *******

17

The Parts We Haven’t Read Yet A Play in No-Acts

By Jeff Denight

Lights up. A boy and a girl, on the precipice of the Volcano.

GIRL: ​ The guidebook says… (Pause) GIRL: ​ Sorry… Lost my place.

GIRL: ​ This view…

VOLCANO: ​ (Interrupting.)

GIRL: BOY: GIRL: ​ (Reading very fast.) ​ It says at this very place, at this very hour, on this day of the month, this month of the year, when the planets and stars were in the very position they are now-- except in the past about 6,000 years --the ancient people of Xxylpallyup-- Sorry… that might not be the exact pronunciation. --Those ancient people would toss a virgin into the Volcano to appease the god inside.

BOY: ​ Seems kind of sexist.

GIRL: ​ (Flipping through the guidebook.) ​ It doesn’t say the gender of the virgin.

BOY: ​ Sexist because it’s the sexual history of a person.

GIRL​ : (Flipping through the guidebook.) It doesn’t say the virginity is sexual. Or that the sacrifice is a person.

GIRL: ​ We don’t have to do this.

VOLCANO: BOY: ​ (Sigh.) No, I’m ready. One… two… !!!

Girl tears out portions of the travel guide.

BOY:​???

GIRL: ​ Just make sure it’s only the parts we haven’t read yet.

They tear out pages and toss them into the volcano.

BOY: ​ Did it work?

GIRL: ​ (Flipping through the remaining guidebook.) It doesn’t say.

GIRL: ​ One way or the other, it’ll be big. We can’t miss it.

They wait. A very long time.

Blackout. End of play.

18

Haikus

by Sean Ballard

big is perspective the bumble bee to the ant flight to the human What will I be when I grow up? Will I be big?

Tall, wide or well known?

Hollywood movie A young boy’s wish is granted Tom Hanks feature film

Globetrotter

by Ray Hall **********

19

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Credits & Notes cover image: Gojira (1954) - Behind Scenes 1, author unknown, via Wikimedia Commons microzine: by Allison Sissom

Thanks eternally to: Everyone who has submitted content and/or helped us collage The Moon Zine, and those who have downloaded + printed their own copies, making The Moon Zine's world bigger and better special thanks to: South City Art Supply for collage space and printing services

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"The supermoon is a 16-inch pizza compared with a 15-inch pizza. It's a slightly bigger moon; I ain't using the adjective 'supermoon.'"

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

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