Kathleen opens this zine asking “what life have I chosen and what life did I get?” then gives us mini-narratives of what she addresses as her destiny. She travels across Canada, and we glimpse snapshots of circumstances she plays up as nearly magical, but Kathleen only seems to let us part of the way in. Summarizing her trip from Victoria to St John’s as a trip where she had “strengthened [her] spiritual identity, and reached higher levels in awareness of universal connectedness,” she never fills in the gaps to make the story complete. What happened on this cross-country jaunt? There’s lots of time spent outlining where she is right now, emotionally and mentally, instead of giving context or even just rehashing a road tale. A richer set of stories, rather than a series of apparently happy and profound results that have catalysts that are vaguely eluded to, would be a lot more intriguing. The last few pages are spent building an anti-capitalist, “indie” manifesto of sorts, where people “share freely…value [themselves] deeply…stay up all night dancing, leave their doors unlocked and have tons of potlucks.” While there is value to writing about immediate lived experience as grounds for shaping a politic, this call to arms isn’t very moving, especially in the context of the sparse stories that preclude it. (Sarah Pinder)
perzine, kathleen, Radaction.livejournal.com, [email protected]