A Nest is For Dreaming- on making zines

Do you still have fool-hearted dreams of what you want to be when you grow up? I bet they are beautiful and silly and a little scary. I bet they are maybe not too different from what you dreamed about as a child. I like tending small, not too realistic but also not impossible dreams, minor arcana versions of selves that might exist- librarian, national park ranger, pop up bookstore owner. One small dream that makes me especially happy is that I write American Girl Doll books, the kind that you purchase with your brand new doll, the one that gives chronological topography to her inner life. The kind of book I hated until having a kid who loves them.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since kindergarten when I was asked to draw a picture of myself as a grown up: in the picture I sit at a desk with a huge smile on my face in a room full of cats and books. I was so wise to know this deep truth, or maybe when we’re young we are so close to the truth it lives in us fully.

Last night my daughter and I started working on a zine. It is not the first zine we’ve made or talked about making- there was an idea of making one about a scary monster legend that a not very kind child at her school was telling her about. The zine would be both a how-to manual for confronting the monster, while at the same time confronting the bully who perpetuates the myth.

The zine we started was about how to care for a nest when a bird has built one above your doorway. It is about the egg laying cycle of sparrows, but also how to make room for something that others tell you is invasive or doesn’t belong.

It has felt scary and hard to write poems lately. Making a zine though, is so much like making a poem. It is about the thing but also not. It needs community and it also creates community. But what is beautiful is how a collective of voices can blur into one under the soft awning of anonymity.

And guess where we learned how to make the zine- an American Girl Doll Book.

If I ever write one, it will be about the character and her hopes and dreams and what she survived. But also a manual. A trail guide. A blueprint for now. A love letter to the imagination, reminding us what is possible. Care, community and creativity is not going anywhere. We will keep tending and protecting and nurturing. An AG doll told me so.

https://www.42ndstreet.org.uk/support/read/how-to-make-your-own-zine/