HNT #27: Zine Symposium

A couple days ago I posted photos and said a little about my first time tabling at the zine symposium. Today K. sent me a photo she took of me there. A couple (a few?) years back I was interviewed for an article on GLBT Buddhists in Just Out. I was nervous before, but relieved after. It felt good to be more out. I knew though, that the sort of people who would read Just Out would be more accepting in general of my choices in life.

Bringing my non-monogamy in the form of a zine to the zine symposium is yet another step in being more publicly out. I found the community of zinesters quite accepting, as it is full of people who bare their innermost thoughts in a way they know will never be censored.

My library is one of the first to purchase and catalog zines for checkout. Others got zine collections before us, but none as far as I know had made them part of the card catalog and available for checkout. The next step to outing myself more would be to get my zine in the collection, if that's possible. That's a hard one. I work there. In a public card catalog, there would be no more selectivity to my self-revelations. I know, this is pretty public too...but someone has to be looking for this, and I try not to attach my full name to this. I also need to think about the effect it could have on Steve and K.

Tabling at the zine symposium was a test of sorts. People would ask me questions that required me to find the essence of this my dual spiritual path. They would ask the questions, but were they the student or the teacher? Is there a difference? They challenged me, I challenged them.

They asked, of Buddhism and polyamory:

"What is the connection here, in a nutshell."
"Liberation can be found," I responded.

"What is the Great Activity?"
"Love." oops, oh, they were asking about the subject of the zine.

"I never thought to put Buddhism and polyamory together."
neither did I! it's just how my life played out...
I said something about trying to show they're compatible.

There is something naked and pure about selling your ideas to strangers. You sit, looking up at the browsers walking by. They pause. Some take a sticker. Some have eyes only for the zine. Conversations develop, sweet open faces. We are in this together, no barriers of publishing houses between our words and each others' minds. We are not strangers, we are funky iconoclasts who recognize our differences in each other. It is easier to reveal here in front of a computer screen. There we give each other the gifts of acceptance and vulnerability when we meet in person.


Happy HNT, all. Click on the Half Nekkid Thursday button in my sidebar for more HNT revelations.