Teda Zine Vol. 3

TEDAZINE

TEDAZINE

TEDA Zine Vol. 3

May 2024

Printed in Gijón, Spain

Cover: Katrina Dutt

Fonts: Cochin and Myanmar MN

All rights revert to contributors upon publication.

FOREWORD

Katrina Dutt | Editor

To all the closet art.

Welcome to Teda Zine Volume 3. With each edition of this zine, I see a clearer vision of the mission and purpose of this collection of art. In Teda Zine Vol. 2, I realized that I didn’t want it to only contain my art, so I opened it up to friends and family. Now, in this edition, I know why this is important: I want to showcase the artists that are inside of us all and inspire others to share their work in a low-stakes way. I’ve known that many people in my circle paint, write poetry, and make other forms of art, but rarely do I see it. This zine seeks to bring to light the art that is tucked away in sketchbooks, the poems hidden in our phone notes, and anything else created and forgotten.

Sometimes, I feel that I look at lots of beautiful, amazing art on social media or in museums, but it feels diffcult to make and share my own art. For contributors and future contributors, I hope that this zine shows you that you can make and share as much art as you consume. This is the place for extraordinary, everyday art! It’s for the art that we make but don’t know how to share. It’s for the art that deserves to be seen by others. It’s for all the closet art.

PEALESS NIGHTS

SARAH McCAWLEY

A pebble, a loose rock on the road, the one I kick into the night, as we walk forward. It lands just right. A few paces ahead of you, no more. So I eagerly watch, Waiting for you to return the favor.

God forbid you swing and miss, leaving our rock in the street’s abyss. Our pebble, one loose rock on the road.

“Pass the peas please” Grandpa Charlie would ask on a pealess night.

Like our rock-passing game, there’s an unspoken rule, and no peas in sight. Will I fnd answers in the wheel of fortune, searching for words you’d say?

“Everyone wave to Vanna White!”, through the screen, still worlds away.

Why did you leave me with no one to wave through the window to?

Don’t you know I’m a good man’s daughter and an extension of you?

Queenofkeys, king of 4squaredancing, and a jack ofalltrades: just 2peasinapod. Sitting at the piano you taught me a b c d goldfsh: 3secondmemory.

But I’ve been wading through salty pools of tears since you left, 10yrs&counting. Hurry down to catch the moonrise, soon we’ll swim through moonrays.

I’ll pass you the peas and you pass me that loose rock on the road? & together we’ll keep walking our own ways.

SNAPSHOTS FROM MY TRAVEL JOURNALS

KATRINA DUTT

For almost the last ten years, I’ve been keeping travel journals to record special memories, images, and experiences while on the road. I’ve been lucky enough to have the privilege of traveling domestically and abroad, and I was introduced to the idea of a travel journal while visiting my aunt in San Francisco. Together, we handmade little journals using decorated cereal boxes for the covers and flled them with little notes, collages of ticket stubs, maps, and other excitedly saved treasures while exploring the Bay Area. I instantly loved using my hands to transform experiences into words and art on a page.

Since then, my style has become less collage-focused and more watercolorbased because I carry a booklet of portable watercolor pages from my aunt and use watercolor paper notebooks from my mom.On each page, I try to capture the feeling of the trip with colors, lines, illustrations, and words. I love it because I get the pleasure of experiencing the travels twice—the frst in real-time and the second when committing them to paper.

EMMETT MOULTON

CÓMO PUEDO ELEGIR UNA CARA? ?

PARKIE A. ALMOST

I wish we never danced.

Because those are the memories that haunt me the most.

Skin to skin, your eyes on mine. Swaying underneath neon lights.

Love is beautiful when it begins. And viciously cruel, at its dying end. We were supposed to be one another’s always. Instead, we became each other's ghosts.

Lost in the haunting echo of our “almost.”

THE LITTLE BRIDGE

Where are the children? Why aren't they down by the water, taking their shoes off, getting their feet wet, rearranging the rocks, creating stepping stones across the stream? The bridge is for old people like me, reminiscing about the rope swing that was taken down because someone thought it was unsafe.

I long for those days when I too, was fearless.

WORDS, GARDEN ART & PHOTOS BY

POLLY M PEACOCK

THE BUBBLE

My motto is Adapt, Adjust, and Figure it Out, I overheard the old ladies say. I hurried back to the car and wrote it down.

Then I noticed a large bubble foating around the parking lot— it appeared out of nowhere and then drifted away.

Katrina’s Half-Baked Hot Cakes:

WALKING MAKES US HUMAN

KATRINA DUTT

Today, I’m sitting in a cafe by a window watching the people pass. It’s a steady stream through the long paseo that is interspersed with trees, squares of bushes, benches, cafe terraces, and a park flled with children playing. The large stone pavers are fnally dry for the frst time in days. I feel invisible, like a mannequin in a window, until I make eye contact with someone and then I become fesh and blood again.

All these people walking! Since moving from the United States to Spain, I’ve adjusted to walking and taking public transport everywhere instead of driving. It was a natural transition, something that many of us long for. (I think it would be far

more diffcult to do the opposite: move from walking to driving everywhere). During this adjustment, I’ve realized that walking gives us humanity. It’s worth moving more slowly because you can see things from a human pace instead of highway speed. You’re forced to confront your fellow citizens eye to eye. When driving is the norm, human is lost because you only see people through your window, which creates a physical and metaphorical barrier between us and them.

In the US, everything from pedestrians to trash is seen and immediately forgotten in our rush to move on, aided by our speedy machines. Indeed, our cars are merely mobile boxes, and our American Dream houses are just other boxes that separate us from our neighbors. I realized that we live in a box, drive to work in a box, and return to our box at the end of the

You’re forced to confront your fellow citizens eye to eye.

day. We like our boxes to be big, comfy, and to contain anything and everything that we want to keep us entertained and safe. Some of us want luxury in everything so that we can feel like the modern-day kings

Our senses help us perceive the world on a human scale and remind us of our human perspective.

and queens that we truly are. We even have access to the biggest box of them all: our corner of the World Wide Web. Ultimately, we want our box to protect us from the scary and ugly parts of the world that we’d rather ignore. It’s hard to blame us.

I won’t pretend that walking and taking public transport makes us one big happy family, but it does encourage us to lean on some powerful tools to preserve our sense of humanity in our shared world: our senses. Our senses help us perceive the world on a human scale and remind us of our human perspective. Seeing things from walking speed allows us to notice the details and people around us; hearing the sounds of people, the wind, or the sound of our breath reminds us we’re not alone; the changing smells help convey our changing position in space; and touching the ground through the physical act of walking uses our muscles and reminds us that we are lucky enough to be able to get around on our own two feet. All together, we are forced to confront—viscerally—the fact that we are part of something larger than ourselves.

While I can’t deny the sense of pure freedom of speeding down a highway at 70mph in the middle of beautiful, open country, I know that this kind of drive is the exception, not the rule for most Americans. When I lived in the US, I was used

to the congested around-town driving and oftentimes terrifying freeway driving that made me feel constricted and stressed. In Spain, I can eliminate the stress and feel a similar sense of delicious autonomy when I can get where I want to go on foot or by bus. Cars can be convenient and in many places, a daily commute by car is the only option.

At this point, I’m just lamenting the lack of public transportation and walkable cities in the US, so I’ll stop here. Right now, I am grateful for my car-less commutes and am relishing in my humanity.

PARKIE A. MOROCCAN VIBRANCY

“If I had to describe Morocco in one word, that word would be “vibrant.” It is a country flled with color, rich in history and home to some of the warmest people I have met.

These pictures are but a small glimpse into Morocco’s beauty, and I encourage those with an adventurous heart to see it for themselves one day!

This is the third time in the last week that I’ve been reprimanded by my little sister for not partaking in free samples. For some reason, the thought is horrifying to her. “Who walks right by free food?” I can hear her in my head even before she’s spotted the alluring little stand with a smiling hair-netted woman standing behind it. Even my grandma recently told me that she’s perfectly happy to call the Costco sample circuit “lunch.” Really?! Somehow I’m immune to the free food spell.

Her focus becomes hunter-like, intent on tracking down every last sample in the building before our designated shopping time is up.

“But why?” asks my sister, so incredulously and earnestly it makes me pause. To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure. For my sister, the little red trays with secret delights sitting in paper cups beckon to her like sirens. Her focus becomes hunter-like, intent on tracking down every last sample in the building before our designated shopping time is up. They take control of her and she can’t rest—won’t rest— until all the samples are sampled. Up and down each aisle she goes until she has broken free from the trance of the sirens. In the end, they relinquish her just like the paper cups so carelessly tossed into the trash.

For me, those mystery cups sitting on the red trays are, well, exciting to a certain degree, but only until I get close enough to tell what they contain. Then, bam! and the surprise is revealed: “beef strips,” candied pineapple, or best case scenario, half a wonton or something I’m actually interested in putting in my mouth. You can (and probably should) call me snobby—I will. I don’t mean to suggest that I’m against trying new things; in fact, I usually relish the act. Rather, I only have a mild interest in trying foods that I am pretty sure won’t

KATRINA DUTT

SNOBBY & HER LITTLE SISTER

meet my standards. There, I said it. I’m snobby!

My feelings toward free samples result from my half-hearted disdain for prepackaged foods and the fact that samples sidetrack me in my otherwise relatively streamlined shopping experience. Samples are just a means for distracting us from our true grocery goals and getting us to put things in our carts that we don’t actually need (or want). Just think about those vulnerable shoppers who make the mistake of going to the store hungry! Plus, there’s a certain messiness that comes with focking to the sample podiums (my sister is rolling her eyes at me); frst, you have to interact in a friendly manner while internally thinking about one or more of the following:

• “I’m going to eat this bite with little intention of buying it, thank you very much.”

• “This one is defnitely going to be messy!”

• “I’m so hungry I could eat that entire tray’s worth of samples!”

• “I’m ranking them internally in my head, and if this one is good, I’m fguring out a way of coming back for another one.”

• “I never knew that [insert store name here] carried this!”

• “Am I going to look like an idiot trying to eat this?”

Then, after you’ve managed to swallow in front of your audience, you must then discard the trash and feel a teeny bit guilty for the trees and plastic you’ve put into the landfll for only a measly bite. Seeing this on paper, I see how this might not make sense to anyone but me. I’ll admit that it’s quite a ridiculous way of thinking about free food, but please know that I’m incredibly grateful for having the privilege of choosing to not eat something free. Perhaps, the next time I happen across a little red tray covered with little white cups, I should listen to my sister and just take a damn sample!

THE BURIAL

KATIE PEACOCK-DUTT

I have died many times. The frst time I drowned foating to the bottom

One time it was in a car careening off the road into the abyss

Last time it was in the sudden nose dive of a plane. So this is how I end

But you have died slowly. I tried to keep you on life support but maybe you wanted me to follow an unwritten do not resuscitate order.

When did we die?

Was it the time I saw you crying at the picnic table? Under the juniper where we broke so much bread You told me, I have lost my family and it turned out there was no parsing out “daughter” from “wife” or “family”

I have raged at bones bleached by decades in the desert Trying to conjure them back to life I have camped by them, curled around them in a fetal position Why? When? Now?

I can see my friend, pacing nearby like a lion. He looks over at me and I can see the love in his eyes and a growing impatience. Let’s go, he says. It’s time. Finally, I take his hand and we walk

NEW CHAPTER

MAK VOGEL

KATRINA DUTT

CALLE SAN BERNARDO 16

CONTRIBUTORS

Parkie A.

Hi! My name is Parkie and I am an avid adventurer. I'm searching for things that inspire me and make life colorful. I adore capturing moments of my travels through photography, and I have just begun to write poetry and musings on life. I am excited to see where this new passion can lead!

Almost 5

Moroccan Vibrancy 10

Sarah McCawley

“Pealess Nights” is not really about peas. It never was. Or was it? That’s the thing. The peas aren’t there, but you ask for them anyway. It makes no sense but you crack a smile nonetheless. In the absence of something or someone, you can call them into being with a saying. Someone’s personal sayings can live in the day to day, in different situations, welcoming memories out of the past and into the present. In this poem I recall loving memories of the man whose sayings live on, imprinted forever in my heart and in my everyday life. Sincerely, “Sarah with an h, Ann with no e, McCawley same as me,” (as Grandpa Charlie said when I was born). True story.

Pealess Nights 2

Emmett Moulton

The Es in Emmett stand for Energy & Enthusiasm and they sandwich the MMmmm part of life; the Ts fnish the name with Tall Talker. My art represents the attempt to make some order out of the inherent Entropy Entrapment. I'm a lover of Katrina, bottomless sources of energy, see-er of faces, and learning to fnd out instead of reasoning so much.

¿Cómo Puedo Elegir Una Cara? 4

Polly M Peacock

Would you believe that I started making art when I was in the sixth grade? I got a chance to work on a weaving that the school was making. Now, many years later, I am making totems. I’ve done hundreds of them, but I haven’t fgured out where to work with clay in my new home in San Luis Obispo so I haven’t made a totem since I left Reno, Nevada. Maybe I need to go back to Reno to spend the summer working with clay.

The Little Bridge and other works 6

Katie Peacock-Dutt

I live in Reno, Nevada, with my husband. I started writing poetry in elementary school and then again in college, but raising children and making a living have taken precedence in the past decades. When my amazing daughter, Katrina, invited me to submit something creative for her ZINE, I decided to fnally write the poem that had been rattling around in my heart and mind for many years. Hopefully it will be the frst of many more creative endeavors.

The Burial 14

Mak Vogel

Hi, I’m Mak Vogel. I’m a playwright, actress, and visual artist from New Mexico living off a nickel and a dime in Los Angeles. I created this mini tattoo fash sheet to drop off to a tattoo artist as part of an application to become a tattoo apprentice. I chose elements that helped describe who I am as a person and the journey I’m currently on.

New Chapter 15

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Katrina Dutt is a sun goddess and mountain lover currently living with her partner in Gijón, Spain. She is obsessed with tea, local favors, appreciating moments of beauty, and enjoying the simple pleasures of life.

Katrina cherishes the art of living. With a deep appreciation for the sensory pleasures in life, she savors the tang of tart favors and the warmth of a good hug. She’s an excellent chef, talented classical pianist, ultimate frisbee player, and slow traveler. Katrina has her best thoughts when she’s out in nature, surrounded by trees, mountains, and water.

“Teda” has been Katrina’s nickname ever since her younger sister couldn’t pronounce her name properly. Somehow, it stuck!

Interested in Contributing? Want to see more of her work?

Website: https://www.katrinadutt. wixsite.com/katrinadutt

Instagram: @katrinadutt