Thirteen years ago, I bought a hexapus-shaped bracelet or, for the scifi-minded like myself, it’s actually Cthulhu-shapped.
It was also thirteen years ago that I first wrote My Friend, Cthulhu (one of the stories in my 2019 picture book Horror Stories for Weird Children, illustrated by Rebeca Prado). It’s hard to say which one came first, the bracelet or the story, but in my mind, the two of them are somehow connected, and they also represent the beginning of a more professional pursuit of writing.
My small wrist-bent-Cthulhu lost one of it’s tentacles a few years ago. It’s a cheap metal bracelet I bought at ModCloth before it became part of the Bezos conglomerate, só it’s actually amazing that it has lasted só long. I see this broken tentacle much like I see my broken will to write, to create art.
When the tentacle first broke, it left rough edges that would constantly scratch my skin – I even have a small scar because of it. However, with time and use, the edges started to soften up until it became smoother. The rougher edges will still hurt me from time to time, but only if something goes wrong or I move my wrist in a weird way. It’s still difficult to write like I used to. I know I will never do work in the same way I did before, that’s just the nature of things. But I’ve been slowly getting back to writing in the past two years, and now I feel like I’m in a good place with what I can or can’t do – even if it sometimes still hurts.
Welcome to this new journey with a new home: beca zine. This is my own little space in the internet where I’m free to post and talk about whatever I want with no pressure. I’m calling it a zine because it’s a personal handcrafted collection of many things, in all the different ways I express through art.
If you’d like to receive the bi-weekly roundup of posts in your e-mail, please sign up for Hey!, my newsletter. Or, if you’d like to do as the ancient Phoenicians did back in the old days (the early 2010s), you can just bookmark the homepage in your browser – or maybe add it to your RSS of preference. One of the things I miss the most about the “old internet” is how I had websites I’d enter in the morning to see whatever it was they were offering.
Anyway.
I’ll see you soon.
Leave a Comment