Lit Bits - 11/5/14 Durable Goods

And the prodigal Joe makes a glorious appearance!

A recent discovery threw me back on The Forked Road. I’ve spent the summer and fall free of social media, and with that came my absence from my contributions here (alas, some distant Friday from now, part two of a never-finished series on biological art will rear its head). I had always intended to return here once I finished my current book, but here I am now:

While cleaning up around our room, my lovely and beautiful girlfriend rediscovered my collection of Durable Goods microzines. For those not in the know, Durable Goods was a bi-weekly bit of poetry and literature that was created by our very own Aleathia. Printed and hand-cut and hand-folded and mailed out, all by her. It was a bittersweet rediscovery. The work in the little booklets are great, and each came with a lovely card with an inspirational quote handwritten by Alea. I even appeared in issue 45 with a little prose poem titled “Piano Girl”; three or four years later, I still don’t hate it (a considerable achievement). Still, something wasn’t quite right…

Of the two dozenish zines graciously sent to me, only five had been opened.

Out of nowhere, I had a stack of unopened Durable Goods running from the 40's to the final issue, 68. I was simply shocked: how could I have simply tossed these aside without even opening them? I’m a mail fiend! I tear into whatever postage remotely has my name on it (I share a name with my father; companies don’t always get the memo). It was, and still is, highly disturbing to me that I so blatantly disregarded these wonderful bits, precious gifts.

In the past hour, I’ve gone and opened every single zine; read each handwritten note; made a nice, neat stack in numeric order; and placed them gently in a small plastic bin on my mantle to be read, then better stored, in the near future. I then immediately sat down to write this.

As a Lovecraftian aficionado, nothing quite stimulates me like finding lost, obscure texts. I decided to share this on Lit Bits day for the perspective of this being a wholly exciting discovery: new poetry to read, more work to internalize, cannibalize! What wonders await me! I only regret not having been privy to Durable Goods at its inception, to have the complete collection.

Now, alas, I don’t feel I deserve it anyways.

Pushing my self-woe aside, I'll now take the time to applaud Aleathia for everything she does, and has done. I'm glad to be back on the Road.