Synchronized Chaos invites anyone and everyone to check out my very good friend’s blog (he goes by the name Sodalis, is a young autistic transgendered person living in California.) Right now he’s working towards becoming a civil rights lawyer or professor of evolutionary biology while scraping by looking for more permanent housing (he’s couch and shelter surfing at the moment) and work. He’s very articulate here, has a certain unique sense of humor and favorite pet interests.
Would love to see people read this – well-written and interesting. Describes the complex realities of life in the Bay Area for those whose minds work differently. Perhaps drop him a note of encouragement or advice while checking this out.
Please check them out, there’s a whole “Meet the Artists” section as well as many stories, poems, and pictures. Ivory Tower’s staff creates a theme every quarter…this time it’s horror and the macabre, next quarter the environment and planet Earth. Please feel free to spread the word and/or to submit simultaneously to Synchronized Chaos and Ivory Tower if your piece concerns nature or environmental issues – so important they should get covered by as many zines as possible 🙂
Zines. They do the artistic soul and the world good. (yes, I’m old enough to play off of that old milk industry campaign slogan!)
Thoughts on the Synchronized Chaos project, quotes and links we like:
“An interdisciplinary art, poetry, literary, science, nature, cultural issues, and travel writing webzine. The brainchild of an international group of contributors and volunteer editors/creative facilitators. Inspired by the mathematical concept of chaos theory, the study of how to effectively model and predict the behavior of systems which seem random, but are in fact highly influenced by initial conditions not yet fully understood.
We’re working with the idea of not-obviously-apparent logic that seems to emerge spontaneously from randomnity. A way to facilitate and promote something we hope will bring enjoyment and inspire thought, creativity, and empathy among readers without imposing strict guidelines or themes upon our contributors.
We welcome contributions from new and established writers and visual/musical artists, and focus on quality, craftspersonship, and building relationships with and among our readership and the contributors. We aim to publish a wide variety of work in a variety of styles – photo essays, digital artwork, formal and free verse poetry, short fiction and nonfiction, humor, well-written, unique personal experience and memoir, and effectively argued perspectives on pertinent issues.
We especially welcome those contributors who may not yet have found a home for their work in the publishing world, who prefer the process of creating to the process of selling and promoting their work.
Synchronized Chaos welcomes our readers and encourages people to peruse our offerings. We strive for professionalism, to treat contributors and readers with respect, to offer enjoyment, pleasure, and beauty, and inspire and motivate thought and creativity and love.
Link to the Wikipedia entry on Chaos Theory, which contains an accurate but much less readable link to a definition for Synchronized Chaos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
And what, you ask, does writing teach us?
First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.
So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.
In the near future I will see about linking Synchronized Chaos up with the Artists for Amnesty, as we do support freedom of speech and reasoned dialogue about potentially offensive matters rather than censorship.
San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness’ Street Sheet publication, written and produced in part by the homeless themselves and in the spirit of the original underground ‘zines: http://www.cohsf.org/streetsheet/
Listings and reviews of many art galleries in San Francisco’s South Mission/Valencia Street area (and if you come up north please let me know and I’d be happy to give you a minitour of some of my favorite city art and cultural spots!) http://www.sfmission.com/galleries/
SF Museum of Modern Art at http://www.sfmoma.org/ (many online features accessible for free to those all over.)
www.dontforgetburma.org (art in the service of human rights, people all over the world have found creative ways to get across the message that the Burmese deserve their liberty from the military junta.)
Free Battered Women www.freebatteredwomen.org (artwork and stories of incarcerated domestic violence survivors, the organization publishing the inmates’ work supports a campaign to review the sentencing of people locked up years ago before we allowed testimony regarding domestic violence/self defense as a mitigating factor in courtrooms and who would undoubtedly receive much lesser sentences today.)
www.freerice.org (vocabulary quiz, cash donated to the UN food program for developing countries for every correct answer.)
www.ivorytowerzine.com – a fellow webzine, this one has regular themes and more of a specifically art and literary focus. Very good, interesting submissions. Please feel free to resubmit work Synchronized Chaos has printed over a month ago if they allow it.
One-stop carpool information site, compiles info from Yahoo, Google, Craigslist, etc. www.gotalift.com
Cheap ($25) live opera performances in San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum: www.pocketopera.org
The Chabot Space and Science Center, where I volunteer and which hosts amazing, detailed exhibits on space travel, nebulae and galaxies, and the solar system, and which offers telescopes used by professional scientists for free public viewings: www.chabotspace.org
National Novel Writing Month – public relations group inspiring people’s creative projects, get off your rear and finally get that novel on paper/laptop screen! http://www.lettersandlight.org/
This is a down-and-dirty version of Synchronized Chaos. The website’s clearly not fully designed nor as user-friendly as we would like yet but I’ve put up the artwork so our contributors might get the exposure they deserve and so everyone will have a chance to view the work and dialogue regarding the themes and ideas brought forth here. Many of our contributors have experience in other fields (scientific research, academia, business management, marketing, etc) and hope to inspire creativity and innovation in all fields of human experience.
Many contributors have included contact information and/or purchasing info for their work, and we encourage you to patronize our contributors. Also our artists and writers would love to hear from viewers – so if you have questions, constructive feedback, ideas for them, even a simple note of appreciation, please contact them using the email addresses provided. Many are seeking professional networking and/or collaboration opportunities through Synchronized Chaos. If you would like to reach someone who does not have listed contact info please leave a comment to the post and I will pass on your message.
Thanks for following this webzine and for joining with us all in the wild ride that is zine creation! We look forward to a more beautiful, professional site in the near future.
My name is Julia Burton. I’m 21. I started writing in middle school, when encouraged by a teacher who thought that I wrote well. I am from Lexington, Kentucky. I am also an artist, but am a student and still learning. I am looking for a publisher to publish my work, I am open to any ideas regarding the issue. When I write, I don’t have any pre-designed poem in mind, I usually just spit out the thoughts and emotions in my head. However there are the rare occasions where something I’ve designed in my mind makes its way to the page. I am inspired by humanity itself, and the swirling emotions surrounding us.
June Whispers Undoing
Rays of golden hair
dancing in the sky, normal morning sun
mingled with
giddy laughter of friends
Gathered people
mulling around
as we moved through
Lights dull by day, horns and clowns
blazing the way
through this morning.
oh, this morning
I was rummaging, shopping for coffee mugs
when you were falling
descending a path
There is a call
my voice shaking as I answer
something begins to sink
so low inside of me
Stones to weigh down the time inside,
what is left
but a pile of fallen rocks
Placed upon the dingy earth
with nowhere left
to stand
I too, will fall
Small staggering streets
move beneath me, as we go to believe
the blurred masses, move around me
White walls glimmer bleach
the chaplain is waiting
to show me in
My mother is still as she
clasps your belongings
her face pale, we are all pale
we’ve called it.
The room expands,
then collapses
what?
To know the spark moves on
to feel empty
We huddle like broken sticks
gripping weakly the knowledge
of you
and the moment
How we did not see
what time so plainly could
what you told us
I know only
the missing you
I can’t forget now
coffins and sodden earth
rackets of grief
places you used to be
You are all around me now
lend me strength
to live
as you did
To live
without you
in the shadows
standing in the rain
…My chemical engineering background has certainly affected my work. For instance, chemistry and mesothermodynamics classes showed me that despite how still and stable objects appear to the naked eye, they move constantly at a molecular level, guided by invisible fluctuations in energy. Impressed by this, I decided to make my paintings about movement. I paint what I know, what I have learned. Aside from school, my family members are mostly chemists and engineers and household discussions familiarize me with the latest news in the science world.
…Genesis at Epsilon and The Moments After Are More Than the Moments Before are my favorite paintings because they are my clearest explanation of how I see. Genesis at Epsilon portrays the dramatic movement of molecules and stars, which is a refreshing break from how life often appears. The objects in the foreground are much larger than the dots at the origin; it is as if an explosion has occured a fraction of a moment after the Big Bang, a fraction of a moment after God spoke the world into existence. The Moments After Are More Than the Moments Before gives the appearance of solids spontaneously forming in a soupy mixture. Viewers look at it for a longer period of time than my other paintings. As if gazing at a cloud or a lava lamp, they appear relaxed and tell me that they see a bird, or, no wait, a knight on a horse.
…I can talk about my painting process. It involves little planning. I will read or see something and immediately race to make the first mark. After that, I use rules of composition to balance the product. I imagine that my painting is a reaction about to occur. I mix colorful solutions, and watch the substances try to diffuse into a harmonious relationship. The canvas is my system. The rules of composition have a similar result to laws in a physical system. When one side of the canvas becomes too densely populated, marks rush over to the other side.
Press releases and news of upcoming shows also available on the site.
You may contact Emily at emily_chimiak@hotmail.com and she recommends “Nature Loves to Hide” by Shimon Malin, a sidestory incorporated into a book on quantum physics.
Random gentleman I met at a MUNI stop in San Francisco who let me know he was a poet seeking publication when I asked for directions. He goes by Catvonhaufecooper and can be reached at 415-331-1461. Said he’d found that when he stopped pushing things and simply looked around him for opportunities, that the very things he sought from the world arrived.
