obsesssssssion and PREORDER ZINE no. 1

FIRST

COVER ART by the incredible Abbie Zuidema, who is one of my favorite artists, and absolute favorite humans.

and now, obsesssssssion.

I’ve always been like this. I have always grabbed hold of the outside world like buoy’s in open seas. Sometimes being human can feel like being thrashed by waves, and sometimes it can feel like floating in the soothing velvet of turquoise waters. My mother was so intense, my mother was the ocean, and so I learned early to find the buoy’s. The Ground Round was a buoy. Youngblood with Rob Lowe was a buoy. Fruit roll ups were a buoy. I learned to rely on the hard solid shapes of the outside world to keep my balance, because we couldn’t both be ocean, that would be a big hot mess!!

An excerpt…

I plan a perfect week for us in California. I am excellent at an itinerary. I have channeled decades of too much feeling into a perfect curation. A week filled with flowers, a little trip out of the city, a graduation and a dinner party. You will be here for a week and I will build an itinerary that can hold all of our love. I am so worried about you, but I do not know what to do with this worry. I am being re-organized by having clients in a way nobody can warn you about. Being a therapist is like having an emotional affair with dozens of people, the intimacy so fierce, and I don’t quite know what to do with all my worry for you. Maybe I am guilty that I placed my attention on the care of psyches that were not yours; maybe I will never stop blaming myself just a little bit for your dying. I should have been paying closer attention. But I am excellent at having a good time, and I had discovered over the decades that plans could contain us, because without the boundaries of plans our love was too scary for both of us, because without Fodor guides, art museums and train schedules it felt like a tsunami of feeling was always only one wave away; our love a balm, and also an assault.

I learned how to fall in love with the world. I learned that the world could bring you back to safety. That ice creams with Alicia, Bartlett Farms and shell shopping with Rah, Nordstrom Rack with Robyn, and playing Sorry with Sarah, Jack, and Izzy could save your life, could bring fresh blood to your heart.

I didn’t start using the term buoy’s until after my mother died and I found myself in my very own ocean of grief, absolutely disoriented with no land in sight really, and worse, fear that I would never see land again.

Once when I was fifteen and boogie boarding with Kyla in San Diego I got swept into the undertow, and every time I thought I could break through to the sunlight, another wave would come, life is also a lot like this sometimes. I was groping and grabbing for air until I grabbed a man by the groin and he pulled me up. Lol, life is also like this sometimes.

We must build our muscles of interoception; the ability to look inward at our sensations, feelings, images, behaviors, meaning making. This is very important; I call it using our inside eyes, (because I think basically we are all really in kindergarten), but we also have to learn how to use our outside eyes. I think this practice is equally important! Then life, development, expansion, growth, joy, all of it gets to be a conscious dance between the two of them!

So here’s my hot take, I am pro obsession. I think obsession is a link between the two worlds.

The human psyche, body and heart are very intelligent systems that are always running. We, when we are “thinking” is kind of way less intelligent. We seem to think we are only processing if we are thinking about it, controlling the narrative of the experience in our minds. Yes, when epiphanies happen it means that all the information that has been kicking around for however long has finally made it up the pipeline from the reptilian brain to your pre frontal meaning making cortex. Hallelujah, you are finally in on the hot gossip that in all the years you spent searching for validation in love you were really looking for your dad. Congrats, baby girl, you figured it out!

My friend recently died. My friend who has for almost all of my life been an integral part of building my psyche, stories, and heart. And then I became absolutely obsessed with Ana Inciardi mini print machines, like epic levels obsessed. If I have learned anything about grief it is to let it happen how it needs to happen, with some parameters fingers crossed, but that’s not always how it works, but heres hoping kid. But the mini print machine was an absolute perfect obsession. Rah introduced me to it, and the joy I felt putting in quarters and waiting for the sound, and the sweet anticipation in the moments before we knew which beautiful linoprint we’d pulled, pure joy! And then I left her and nantucket and realized that they were all over the States, and my mind was officially myopically hooked and focused. Before I go on, let me say, this is the mission statement of the company…

At Inciardi Prints, our mission is to bring people joy through art. We are committed to keeping our art accessible and affordable, supporting small businesses, and building connections and community through printmaking. We believe art belongs in everyday life and that shared creative experiences bring people together.

So basically I didn’t stand a chance, and Thank God! What a gift to find at this time. My friend was an artist, she was the person who I watched draw and paint my entire life, she put everything she felt into image. I always had her eyes in my head when I looked at art, wondering what she would think of this or that. We didn’t always agree, but we used all our eyes.

I dreamt about Celeste and the images from the mini print machines for two weeks straight. I talked to my therapist about them, and filled with some comfort when I said, omg I’m a psycho, and he said, it’s such a perfect collision of everything you love, and then I also felt so secret thrilled that he saw me so clearly. But as the weeks went on and I had Ryan going to machines across the country while he is on tour, and I started trading with strangers in a Facebook group I thought OMG, what is happening to me right now? A facebook group, WHAT? I even wrote in my journal, should I be worried about myself?

But here’s the big biggest thing, they bring me so much joy that I really didn’t have that much judgement about it. Do you know how nice it is to get a pile of mail from strangers filled with thank you cards, stickers, and the print you’ve been coveting? Do you know how nice it is take friends to machines and see their faces fill with joy like they are kids again? Or having lunch with someone and handing them a little piece of art? Or knowing just how much people love you because they are running all over their cities to get you the customs prints you can’t get in LA?

And because I had curiosity, instead of judgement, I got to see all this!!! I got to follow my psyche like a treasure hunt, gathering, wondering, collecting. It is because of this experience that I decided to make a little zine celebrating the first year of the newsletter, because I wanted all of you to walk out to your mailbox and thrill with the anticipation of getting a piece of mail that hopefully allows your mind to unlocks some treasure hunts of your own. ALSO every zine come with a MYSTERY PRINT, even I won’t know what you got!!

So if you have maybe, for example, looked at pictures and reels of Belmont Cameli a little too much this week, maybe just be curious about what your outside eyes are trying to tell your inside eyes.

Go be a cute little scientist!

Love you,

xo Jen

One of my absolute favorite prints, the information clock at Grand Central where I met my mother one thousand times!!