Blog – Page 42 – Sonya Ellen Mann

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Wheels Rumbling On: Notes From The Road

Posted on February 4, 2015February 3, 2017 by Sonya Mann

The following was written on January 21st, 2015, when I still intended to make a second issue of my perzine Semi Sonya.

I just got back from a long road-trip with my boyfriend Alex. It wasn’t the longest road-trip that anyone has ever taken, obviously, but for me it was really long. January 4th to January 19th, from the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle and then back again. By the 15th I was like, “GOD, I’m so tired, I wanna go home, let’s get out of here!”

Traveling can be exhausting. But the trip was also brave and interesting and I loved spending that much time with Alex. I’m glad that we went.

Last night was the first time I’ve slept alone for more than two weeks, and while it’s nice to thrash and drool without worrying about the other sleeper, I missed my warm cuddly man. I texted him good night but it wasn’t the same, you know?

Anyway, here are two of my first journal entries from the road, lightly edited for readability:

1/6/2015, early evening

I haven’t been journaling as much as I wanted to, as much as I thought I would. Road-tripping is busy busy busy, driving around and seeing people, like Adi [one of my close friends] and Alex’s family. I am tired. Plus it all seems somewhat mundane. Occasionally I notice a moment and think, “I can describe this like a scene in a novel,” but mostly life just feels… normal. Ain’t that always how it goes?

1/7/2015, 10:30am

Currently waiting for Alex’s friend to pick us up and take us out for a pizza lunch in Keizer, the town where Alex grew up. It’s a suburb of Salem, where his parents live now. Their house is walking distance from the Oregon State Hospital, where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed.

I watched that movie in my high-school psych class, after we learned about the guy who invented/modernized the prefrontal lobotomy (ice picks in through the eyes, basically). In the movie they break into Jack Nicholson’s skull and saw off part of it, which always bothered me because there’s no way that the doctors actually would have chosen the more laborious and dangerous version of the procedure.

I said “where” a lot in that previous paragraph and I think it indicates that this sprawling trip has me thinking about space, about geography. The placement of people, memories, and experiences. The process of searching, of finding, and hopefully of stumbling onto what you didn’t know you’d find. What you wouldn’t have guessed was on your path!

Alex mentioned that there are parallels between our journey and the archetypal hero’s quest. What goes against the trope is our lack of a specific goal, and the fact that we’re a duo with no protagonist/sidekick hierarchy. Of course, we’re each the main character in our own minds, but we’re determined to hold hands and walk side-by-side, or at least to switch off leading when we’re marching single-file.

I’m disturbed to find myself using military language, disturbed to notice the less romantic parallel to colonial Europe’s “discovery” of America. I don’t want to be a traveler who arrives at each destination full of ideas and even requirements, but to a certain extent it’s inevitable. I was about to say, “At least the Pacific Northwest is a lot like home,” but maybe I just don’t seek the experiences that would be novel and edifying.

Hence the importance of stumbling along the way. I am a romantic again, wanting to trip and be caught by strangers who will show me how to tread securely on local land.

Book Review: Stolen Sharpie Revolution (Plus, Short Interview With Author Alex Wrekk)

Posted on February 1, 2015July 4, 2015 by Sonya Mann

My boyfriend and I recently got back from a road-trip through the Pacific Northwest. My favorite place that we went on the trip was Portland Button Works, which is a zine distro as well as a button-making business. I had never seen so many zines in one room! It was thrilling! The shop is run by Alex Wrekk, author of the perzine Brainscan and the book Stolen Sharpie Revolution, an introductory guide to zine-making.

Serendipitously, the day before I visited Portland Button Works, I got an email from Alex’s publicist asking if I wanted to review the new edition of SSR on my blog. I picked up my review copy in person, which was cool! Meeting Alex had me a bit starstruck, because she’s such a renowned underground author, second only to Aaron Cometbus or Cindy Crabb in terms of longevity and recognition. She also bravely exposed Joe Biel of Microcosm Publishing as an abuser and manipulator. (You can read about that online if you’re interested in the ethics of your reading material—which you should be.)

Stolen Sharpie Revolution is the perfect gift for a weird, moody teenager, or even a kid in middle school. Beyond the practical how-to stuff about page layout and wrangling photocopiers, what’s important is the emphasis on taking control of your own story. Alex writes, “We all have stories to tell and no one is going to tell them for us.” The next step, after figuring out how to tell your story, is to publish it. Zines are an under-utilized way of sharing your words with the world.

I have to go off on a quick tangent here. As a beginning writer, it’s tempting to throw your hands up and say, “What’s the point? Everything has already been written, right?” To an extent that’s true, because the basic human conflicts and emotions haven’t changed since Homer recited the adventures of Odysseus. But every generation has to write the stories again. A young voice can make an old story accessible to new ears. Human stories deal with ancient themes, ancient archetypes and problems, but the language and the social mores are changing constantly. Don’t worry that it’s all been done before. It hasn’t been done by you, in the here and now.

Aesthetically, Stolen Sharpie Revolution is like a traditional cut-and-paste zine, done with a typewriter, scissors, and glue. It’s a great introduction to zine culture, and the only thing that I think it lacks is a section on desktop publishing using computers. However, that would also be vastly complicated to include, since not everyone has Microsoft Office or even the basic technical skills needed to format a zine using a word processor.

The review on Books and Bowel Movements kind of peeved me off, because Cassandra implied that Alex wrote her book like it was THE ONLY, MOST DEFINITIVE guide to making zines. In fact, Alex explicitly says that she’s just sharing what works for her. Stolen Sharpie Revolution should be seen as a window into what some zinesters do, and a starting point for learning more.

Speaking of learning more, I asked Alex a couple of questions, basically just because I could. Flora’s Forum did a more in-depth interview. Anyway, here’s my dialogue with Alex:

Sonya: How do you deal with “activist burnout”? I ask because this is something that I wrestle with, feeling hopeless and exhausted by the hugeness of the bad parts of life, and I would appreciate counsel from someone who’s held onto punk/anarchist/DIY ethics for a long time.

Alex: I have a couple of strategies but I’m not exactly sure they work for everyone. The main one is to let others do the heavy lifting sometimes. You can’t take on everyone and everything if you don’t have some space and time for yourself, so be good to yourself.

I also like to look at things in small chunks to avoid the hopelessness of drowning in the big picture. What can you do to make your house better? Your neighborhood? Your community? Recently I became a member of the advisory board of my credit union. I knew nothing about what I was doing there but I was putting myself in a new space and learning new things, like the actual difference between banks and credit unions. I was about to apply this new info to my personal feelings about capitalism.

Be an ambassador for your ideas in places you didn’t know you could. When I first moved to Portland I worked at an arcade. After after a few months my boss said, “You’ve made me punk friendly!” and offered to give me May Day off and the next day “just in case you get arrested”. Also, you can drop out sometimes and come back to your work later. Knowing AND expressing your boundaries in activism is really important. I don’t feel like I do as much as I used to, but that’s okay. I needed to learn to be okay with that. I’ve built relationships and communities where I am comfortable but also where there is room for growth.

Sonya: Near the beginning of Stolen Sharpie Revolution, you explain that we all have the opportunity to tell our own stories. Do you remember when you realized this, personally? Have you always been a writer?

Alex: I don’t think I ever really consciously thought about it until 2003 or 2004 when there was a camper I had taught at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp For Girls who was interviewed afterwards and said something like, “In the zine class we learned that we can tell our own stories because we can’t expect other people to tell it for us,” and I was like, “Wait, I said that in that class? I did say that!” To me, there wasn’t really a barrier there, it was just something I knew. I joke that I’m “DIY by Default”. I’m always looking at stuff and going, “How can I make that?” I think I got that from my mom. Getting involved in punk when I was 15 in the early ’90s was a vehicle for that. Once I found zines I thought, “I can make these too!” And it gave me something to do with all the notebooks lying around with ideas and lists in them. I don’t think I’ve always been a writer, but I do think I’ve always been a storyteller.

Pit Bull Apologism

Posted on January 27, 2015January 6, 2016 by Sonya Mann

beautiful pit bull with glowing eyes -- photo by Douglas McCoy — Photo by Douglas McCoy.

I like pit bulls. I know that I’m supposed to think they’re scary and awful, and honestly some pit bulls are scary and awful. My boyfriend lives in Oakland and I live in a similarly “sketchy” city, so I walk past a lot of angry, musclebound dogs barking furiously behind chain-link fences.

One of my friends in high school had three pit bulls, barely trained, and I endured excessive face-licking from her favorite because I was frightened to stand up to Peanut, a holy terror of a terrier. (Pit bulls are terriers. Is that classification common knowledge?) Peanut smelled bad and he was stronger than me and he was aggressive when he didn’t get his way.

But here’s the important thing: that wasn’t Peanut’s fault. That was my friend’s fault, and her parents’ fault, for not teaching him appropriate discipline. Some dogs are naturally boisterous and their enthusiasm can’t be totally suppressed, but they can be trained not to terrify guests. You can’t beat a dog into submission and you should never try, but you can firmly teach a dog that you are the authority. They must learn to rely on you when they feel threatened. Dogs need firm guidance, like little kids.

I mean, it’s not foolproof. I’ve never heard of anyone who could get their dog not to bark at the door.

Part of the problem with pit bulls is that people expect to give them the same level of training you would give to a small, ineffectual dog, and have that be enough. A spaniel or a Chihuahua doesn’t require the same level of discipline that a pit bull does, because a Chihuahua would have to work really hard to kill someone. On the other hand, a pit bull is a physically formidable animal. They were bred for dog-fighting, a despicable practice that unfortunately still goes on in secret. The ASPCA’s “Position Statement on Pit Bulls” is worth quoting at length:

“Today’s pit bull is a descendant of the original English bull-baiting dog—a dog that was bred to bite and hold bulls, bears and other large animals around the face and head. When baiting large animals was outlawed in the 1800s, people turned instead to fighting their dogs against each other. These larger, slower bull-baiting dogs were crossed with smaller, quicker terriers to produce a more agile and athletic dog for fighting other dogs.

Some pit bulls were selected and bred for their fighting ability. That means that they may be more likely than other breeds to fight with dogs. It doesn’t mean that they can’t be around other dogs or that they’re unpredictably aggressive. Other pit bulls were specifically bred for work and companionship. These dogs have long been popular family pets, noted for their gentleness, affection and loyalty. And even those pit bulls bred to fight other animals were not prone to aggressiveness toward people. Dogs used for fighting needed to be routinely handled by people; therefore aggression toward people was not tolerated. Any dog that behaved aggressively toward a person was culled, or killed, to avoid passing on such an undesirable trait. […]

It is likely that that the vast majority of pit bull type dogs in our communities today are the result of random breeding—two dogs being mated without regard to the behavioral traits being passed on to their offspring. The result of random breeding is a population of dogs with a wide range of behavioral predispositions. For this reason it is important to evaluate and treat each dog, no matter its breed, as an individual.”

Leaving temperament aside, pit bulls were bred to fuck up other creatures, so they’re better at doing it. Pit bulls are more physiologically capable; they have bone-breaking jaws. Many dogs of various breeds attack humans and other pets, but pit bulls and similarly stigmatized breeds manage to do significant damage.

Furthermore, pit bulls have a self-perpetuating reputation. People who want aggressive dogs—like drug dealers; seriously, it’s not just a stereotype—opt for pit bulls, and then encourage them to be aggressive. Or they leave the dogs out in the yard all day, where they’re bored and poorly socialized. Those are the dogs that bark at me when I walk from the train station to Alex’s house.

Lastly, the media exacerbates all of this with sensationalist, selective coverage. “Pit Bull Maims Baby” is a much more exciting and controversial headline than “Small Fluffy Dog Bites Child; Band-Aid Needed”.

So that’s my take on pit bulls. When they’re treated well and trained properly, they are sweet animals and I love ‘em. When they’re not, I steer clear but I blame the owners.

baby pit bull puppy -- photo by Beverly — Photo by Beverly.

Talking Casually About Depression

Posted on January 25, 2015April 2, 2015 by Sonya Mann

Am I allowed to make offhand remarks about being depressed, or is that too weird and upsetting for the people around me?

I don’t mean joking about being “depressed” despite being mentally healthy. I am actually a crazy person, of the sad type, and sometimes I’m suffering. That sounds hyper-dramatic but really, I suffer.

This morning I was drinking tea at the kitchen table and my mom told me, “I vote for you to wash your hair.” It’s an ongoing thing between us: I don’t care about being dirty but she thinks I’ll feel better if I’m clean. What I wanted to respond was, “Yeah, I was pretty depressed last night, so I probably should wash my hair.”

My dad was sitting at the table across from me, working on his computer. He made a joke about not realizing that votes were being collected. In such a normal, un-fraught situation, can I say what I was thinking? Is it too raw and candid? The words felt like they might be too raw and candid, too light for the serious subject. I stayed quiet.

My persistent dysfunction is a Big Deal. But it’s also an everyday part of my life. I feel like I should be able to talk about my mood like I would talk about the weather.

At the same time, I don’t want to disturb my conversational partners, to accidentally indicate that I’m in crisis. A certain amount of crisis simply attends my regular schedule. I wish I felt comfortable commenting on that.

Too Much Caffeine LOL (Once Again)

Posted on January 24, 2015April 2, 2015 by Sonya Mann

I used to worry about seizing the zeitgeist. Okay, I still worry about it: I need to write relevant things that people want to read. But it’s not hard. A couple of quotes from Heaping Torso got a bunch of reblogs on Tumblr so I’m probably pretty good, right? I don’t need to check for trending hashtags or survey the tastemakers, those nebulous powerful nobodies, in order to make art. I just have to work on things that interest me, and hope I’m naturally cool enough for other people to be interested too. I’m anxious to push to the front of the pack but it’s better to be on the side investigating something that most people haven’t touched. God, I’m gonna have a fucking panic attack. I can’t do that. I can’t be original.

Sometimes I consider moving to some irrelevant small town in Central Valley and being the beginning of an art scene, paying cheap rent and living through the glory days that my heroes talk about. San Francisco before the AIDS crisis and the tech boom. (Hopefully the cultural shortcut conveys what I mean.) I want to create a ground floor for myself to get in on. My dream is that twenty years from now I’ll be mentoring new versions of myself in a town whose name we don’t know yet.

I mentioned this fantasy to my cousin and he warned me not to dismiss what’s already in these small towns. They’re not San Francisco or Oakland, places with exciting histories and mainstream recognition, but they’re not nothing. Fair criticism; he was right to contradict me. You can’t go into a place expecting to be better than everyone else and have them embrace you; pride goeth before a fall.

But I don’t think I’m entirely wrong. Have you been to these rural towns? There’s nothing there. Fucking nothing. No bookstores, no cafes, not even churches. It’s full of Americana to romanticize, grazing horses and old rusty cars in every yard, but there’s a reason why everyone moves to cities instead of the other way around.

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