Perzine, S. Edworthy, [email protected], c/o The Zine Tree Collective, Box 49, 223 12th Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta, T2R 0G9
You know that one friend you have who’s a little too perceptive for their own good? The one who pauses to gaze into the distance before saying something smart? The heart of the end. (a psychogeographilosophy) is that friend, thanks to S. Edworthy.
This perzine is a bona fide read, chock-full of sincere thoughts and theories on what I call, Edworthy’s Big Four: Calgary’s flux, ancestry, queer visibility and social action. The writer organizes thoughts and theories into roughly 30 groupings, identifying each by theme, including familial roots, social sexual identity and the end of the world.
“This zine is a message about the end of the world, for Calgary and anyone,” writes Edworthy, who neatly pieced the zine together using journal notes, text-messages, emails, and excerpts from web sources. Having recently returned home to Calgary, after 10 years in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Edworthy feeds the zine with questions about change — from place to policy — resulting in 40 pages of sustenance for the mind and soul.
In “Back in time,” the author takes a moment from reminiscing about her nana’s 87th birthday to honour grandparents in general, who possess “inherent worth like trees, wild animals and mountains, especially in contrast to our fast-paced, disposable, post-industrial lifestyles.” Jumping ahead to “Queer. Straight. Alliance.,” the writer pedals out to Strathmore for the Gay Rodeo. Amid buttless chaps and feather boas, Edworthy is taken with the older gay cowboys holding hands, comparing them to the intensity of staring at the sun — “so bright and powerful” — all the while knowing it’s wrong to stare.
What comes through most of Edworthy’s writing is a selfless appreciation for the zine, the topics at hand and the reader. Whether writing about people, politics, or everyday presumptions, the writer serves up insightful discussions that revolve around the whos, whats, whys and hows of the subject matter, and shift the focus away from the writer herself. (Nicole Morales)