Call for Submissions
A woman, alone in a corner of New York City, America, seeks refuge in her neighborhood park. There, in the crevices of the trees, the gaze of the wild creatures, she experiences the wonder; of being held in love.
A man, from his apartment in Chennai, India, watches the unusually strong monsoon flood his home city. His own building had long ago self-organized to address floods. It has become the new normal: in November, the monsoons are higher and harder than "normal;" people are evacuated; homes and livelihoods are lost. This year, near him, a newer apartment building, not so far away, collapsed. Later, the residents learned that it was built on top of an old river. In the midst of the "disaster", the river came back to life, reclaiming its own path.
A Wind, howling, uproots trees that fall upon powerlines, and thousands of homes lose their beeping electronics, their heat, their light. Old spirits awaken in the darkness: an older person hears a song she had almost forgotten, and she smiles into the clear night sky.
Eco-Eroticism and Chronic Disasters.
That is our main theme for our upcoming journal. We've shifted the release date from Winter Solstice to Imbolc (Feb 1), which seems entirely appropriate for this Journal. After all, Imbolc is when the seed in the ground shifts, and points towards new beginnings. All submissions need to be in by Jan 20.
We invite you to submit: art, poetry, prose, non-fiction, photography, music, conversations.
We will certainly consider themes that are not directly on the larger theme but feel appropriate to publish given our overarching work of ReMembering and ReEnchanting.
Eco-eroticism - not just the human love of nature, but the powerful movement of Eros within all beings, dancing at the root of life. During the Pandemic, many people found solace, as we have so often done, in the More Than Human World. People's eyes, ears, and hands turned towards their non-human neighbors, eliciting multiple forms of love. Love that strengthened us, two-legged creatures, as we found ourselves unraveling from what once was and not yet fully re-woven.
Chronic Disasters: Not just one wind storm but hundreds. Not just one season of fire, but season after season after season.
We find we need to hold: both joy and suffering. To look into one without the other is dangerous. To engage with great suffering, we need great love. and - they are not all that separate.... To look into one, so often, we find ourselves in the other. To love the ocean, to feel it enrapture you, wave after wave of joy is to, more often sooner than later, see the plastics along her shore, the remnants of oil spills, the bleached corals. To look into nature often entails seeing that which has been harmed by the legacies of colonization. Nor is that the end of the story!
I'm very much looking forward to what kind of beauty we can bring together and offer into the world; ways in which our seeds are shifting, listening to the wider light.