Nov 4, 2009
POSTED BY Jay Babcock
Everyone at Rise Up Singing knew who bombed the New Land Trust building. Mr. Tofu Scramble said it was an intergovernmental squabble. Ed, Logic’s Only Son, said it was immigrants.
“They got their own radio station with fucking tubas and everything,” he said.
Mirror said she had a friend who applied for an admin job with New Land Trust and was denied an interview for refusing to claim a gender on the application.
“She could have totally done it.”
Mitch the cook, thought it was eco-terrorists for sure. Kelly, the fill-in dishwasher agreed but then they split over whether it was an anarcho-primitivist cell or the Redwood Action Collective. That’s how the betting pool got started…
Download:
ZAZEN, Chapter 7 — “Cherry Blossoms” (pdf, 75k)
ZAZEN, Chapter 6 — “Aerial Map of Carnage” (pdf, 76k)
ZAZEN, Chapter 5 — “1 800 buy COAL” (pdf, 88k)
ZAZEN, Chapter 4 — “Asian Market” (pdf, 56k)
ZAZEN, Chapter 3 — “New Haiku” (pdf, 64k)
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 7 of ZAZEN will be posted Wednesday, November 4. There are 30 chapters in all.
Previously on Arthurmag.com: