CATATONICALLY SPEAKING

As I get older, I become increasingly more selfish. But the selfishness I'm laying claim to is of a positive variety, rather than the stifling selfishness that is so pathologically predominant in our world. By positively selfish I mean that I do things in my work and social life in order to enrich my own sense of being in the world. For example, at the school where I work, I often have my students create original artwork related to a piece of literature we have been reading. I assign this primarily because I think visualizing a written piece is a key way to more deeply understand and embed it. But another big component as to why I do it is because students are colossally creative and their artistic renderings give me great joy.

Similarly, I founded Clockwise Cat because I thrive on ingesting others' creativity. I have always been rather artistic myself, especially in the domains of fashion, home decoration, and of course, writing. Assimilating others' creative efforts enables me to enhance my own. So while I certainly have an altruistic aim with my webzine project – showcasing your written and visual products that boast novel
properties and insights – I would say I do it more for myself than anything. So sue me – I'm in this gig for myself, baby!

The idea for Issue Nine was to create your own theme. I was greatly gladdened by the submissions I received and the myriad themes related to those submissions. Theme-wise, we cover topics from death to nature and every nuance in between. This speaks to the bewildering variety of thematic topics that grace or perhaps even besiege our lives.

This is an uncharacteristically (mercificully?) succinct Catatonically Speaking, as I am exhausted from compiling Issue Nine and writing so many rants, reviews and satirical musings. Clockwise Cat is immensely gratifying work, but also enormously fatiguing. To that end, we're going to an every-other-month publishing schedule starting with Issue Ten, which will be out in mid-July. We've been publishing about every six weeks anyway (as opposed to monthly, as we originally intended). So this new schedule will give me another two weeks or so to get each issue together. That way, I can breathe a bit between work, social life, and the zine.

Keep sending in your awesome art and righteous writing, though, and if it's really that scintillating, we'll continue to shine a glaring spotlight on your artistic Einstein.

May you create your own arresting themes for your days and nights, and may you selfishly indulge those themes to your heart's full happiness.