NO CHAIN 2: Signs of Encouragement

 NO CHAIN

volume 2

Signs of Encouragement 

EDITOR’S LETTER

Resilience is built on love. I’m reminded of this critical truth by Reverend Cathy Bristow on Sharon Salzberg’s Metta Hour Podcast (Ep. 166). Rev. Bristow says, “…the practice of self-compassion, the practice of self-love as a way to heal and provide stamina and strength, to then support and help others, and to do active change or disrupting systems— I think it’s critical. It’s as important as physical rest. It’s as important as nutritional rest, to get the spiritual stamina the stillness… and the self-love.” 

These are urgent times— urgent for loving. How can we venture to rebuild this world, to start a new year? How can we hold each other? If we are merciless toward ourselves and others, it’s not going to happen. This is the time of year when people give up on their January 1st resolutions. But lucky for us, there’s no finish line to loving kindness. It’s all about practice. So, try this the next time you’re stuck: say, I’m doing it. I showed up. Let this letter be your sign of encouragement. 

AB 

Winter Seeds

                                                           QUEST ZEIDLER

(The simple, sparsely decorated living room of a one-bedroom apartment. Its furniture is all either hand-me-down or tthrifted, with no apparent sense of taste or style. The tenant, ABEL, sits on the couch. He’s in his late 20s, dressed for comfort; maybe he eats Chinese takeout from paper containers.

Reclining in an aged armchair—old, but not nearly as old as

she is—is the spirit of one of ABEL’s ancestors. Dubbed BOBE, Yiddish for “grandmother”, she’s clad in the garb of the “old country” and clearly hails from a bygone era. She occupies herself chopping vegetables, mending garments, or something else of that ilk.

The interior of the apartment is covered with a blanket of snow.)

ABEL

I should’ve gone off to sea.

BOBE

People do that still?

ABEL

No. I don’t know. I’m sure some people do. Yeah, I guess so.

(BOBE grunts in recognition. ABEL tries to find a more comfortable position on the couch. Pause.)

ABEL

What are you doing?

BOBE

Waiting for the spring thaw. Once the ground is 

soft, we begin planting.

 (ABEL makes a confused face. BOBE continues.)

BOBE

Me, I never saw the ocean. 

ABEL

Did you want to? If you could do everything again, is that something you’d change?

BOBE

What’s there to see? I saw water, I saw sand. Put the two together, imagination does the rest. (Pause.) Yes. Yes, I suppose so.

(ABEL grunts in recognition. BOBE puts down her task and looks up at him for the first time.)

BOBE

You wish to be a sailor, for what?

ABEL

I don’t really—I don’t think so, at least. I’m just tired of being in suspended animation. My fate always in someone else’s hands. (He gazes out toward an imaginary horizon. Maybe, as he speaks, the audience hears maritime ambience.) It’d be nice to wake up smelling salt in the air. Feel the waves in your stomach, live among the seabirds. Travel far, far—

(As ABEL speaks, BOBE reaches down and begins to turn a clump of snow over and over in her hands. Once she has formed it into the perfect snowball, THWAP, she clocks her descendant square in the face. Cut the ocean sounds.)

BOBE

The wind pulling you in one direction, the tide in another. You’re as free as any ship now, bubele. (ABEL opens his mouth to protest.) Listen: some seasons you plant, some you grow, some you reap, some you rest. Now? Now you rest.

(BOBE returns to her chores. ABEL thinks on it for a moment, then cuddles up into the couch and shuts his eyes. Maybe BOBE hums a tune from long ago.

When neither is paying attention, a crocus springs out of the snow and blooms.

Blackout.)

MARTY JAEGER

Housekeeping Advice from the 

Medium

                                                       AB

Maybe I’m projecting, but most memories prefer to 

tumble by smooth stones and barreling logs in the 

mix of great rivers, touching noses of deer 

and wetting claws of bears as they go. 

You don’t really want to clean the world 

of ghosts that howl from the open junk drawer or 

hiss past sliding glass on the way to bed. Ghosts fall 

from the sky in splashes. Their ashes spin 

through the gorge.  A ghost screams when you

force her down the drain. She doesn’t like

a soapy dissolution. Ghosts 

have dreams of flying like torrential rain— you 

don’t want to make violence of a drain death,

all entrails of the soul gripping here 

slit and slipped by Super Degreaser. 

NO CHAIN

a zine

For bell hooks, whose physical form is missing from the cover image, but whose work has set an invaluable foundation for the critical discourse and practice of love.

volume 2

Signs of Encouragement 

Marty Jaeger

Quest Zeidler 

Annabelle Bonebrake

January 2021

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