Oct 27, 2009
POSTED BY Jay Babcock
I got the job at Rise Up Singing through Credence. He dated a cook there a few years back, a girl named Jimmy. It has a ‘we all work in hell but that’s okay cause we don’t have to take out our piercing’ kind of theme…
The owner’s name is Franklin. He started Rise Up Singing when every business on the street had bars on the windows.
“I like to think of myself as a coworker with lots of experience rather than a boss,” Franklin said.
I like to think of myself as a boss more than a slave but mostly I prefer to not think about it at all because when I think about it, I can’t stop.
“Okay,” I said…
ZAZEN, Chapter 2 — “Pregnant Rats” (pdf, 81k)
ZAZEN, Chapter 1 — “Burning Ants” (pdf, 79k)
The Story: It’s the very near-future, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest—or a neighborhood near you. 27-year-old Della Mylinek has suffered some kind of breakdown after failing to stop the construction of a local Wal-Mart. In an attempt to regain psychological, financial and emotional stability, she’s moved in with her brother and his pregnant wife and taken a job waiting tables at a vegan restaurant. But her anger remains, and one thing leads to another…
“Zazen” Keywords: geology, veganism, the apocalypse, urban planning, yoga, sex parties, bombs, anarchism, aging new-left revolutionaries, strip malls, paleontology, dark hippies, transcendentalism, lavender hair dye.
The Author: Vanessa Veselka is a writer and musician living in Portland, Oregon. She has been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, a student of paleontology, an expatriate, an independent record label owner, a train-hopper, a waitress and a mother. Her work has appeared in Bust, Bitch, Maxmum Rock ’n’ Roll, Yeti Magazine and Tin House. Zazen is her first novel. She is online at vanessaveselka.wordpress.com
The Serial: Chapter 3 of ZAZEN will be posted Wednesday, October 28. There are 30 chapters in all.
This is great stuff! Thanks for having this on the site, Arthur. Where can I get a copy of this book? Is it out? When’s it coming out?