Gift-giving magic

[whisperpeir]

There are 19 or so people in me + my partners' immediate families, and each winter I like to think of a similar yet personalized gifts. One year I gave everyone a zine that reminded me of them from Micropublishing, another enamel pins, and my most extravagant year I made scarves. It's practical to pick the same kind of thing for everyone, but that's not why I do it.

I pick similar presents for 19 people because I want to create magic.

The best gift I've ever received was a simple scarf made by folding over a strip of patterned fleece. It's comically long with cut fringe and a small felt octopus hand stitched at one end. I've never loved a piece of clothing more, even the pair of spectacular pink faux-snakeskin doc martins I thrifted at 16. Praise be the dumpster, that was a great find. The scarf is better.

This incredible scarf, the best gift, was handmade by a generous friend of a friend. They gave it to me in wintertime well over a decade ago, maybe pushing two decades if I'm honest. As I remember it, they'd made one for each member of an entire friend group, every scarf with a different animal.

The bighearted giftgiver and I spent maybe three group outings together, but they somehow knew my favorite animal and took the time to create something for me with their hands. They repeated this generosity a eight or so more times, linking us all together in a small, special way.

The only reason they took the time to make somethiing specifically for me, or at least the only reason I can think of, is that I must have been in a romantic relationship with the friend that linked us at the time. Looking back, I sigh for spending so much effort on the unkind ex when there were warm, sparkling people like the scarf maker so nearby.

The point is that this wonderful octopus scarf is made more lovely by the fact that someone thought of me—both as an individual and a member of a community—while they planned and crafted it. This is the kind of magic I aim to replicate each year. I never achieve it, but the attempt is always enjoyable.

This year I'm curating a mini collection of poetry for each family member. Inspired by a not-card company, I figure about 24 pages is good, stapled using a clever eraser trick (YT tutorial). If I start collecting poems now the projcet won't get overwhelming in December. Time to get a'reading.

What my privatized stress looks like today, see last list item

Well, those are some thoughts for you, friend. Here are some links I came across while searching for zine inspiration on Wiby:

• "I learned [arcane methods that don't work very well] because I enjoy, very much, the way they feel on my brain."
• Girls on Film via Quarantine Zine Club
• Guided order of magnitude visualization could be an excellent soundscape.
• "Punks and anarchists are notoriously conservative." From Homocore issue 4, June 1989.
• "Zine making to me means creating our own channel to express just about everything we wanna say and were never given a chance. It's so empowering. Especially coz in a lot of occasions it gives a voice to marginalized groups whose voices (and lives) have never been considered by mainstream society in general. Zine making is a way to exist, really."
• "Mark Fisher called this the 'privatization of stress' and pointed out how pathologizing individual instances of anxiety or depression makes it a personal inadequacy rather than a common form of illness that is largely unaddressed and actually exacerbated by capitalist values and priorities." From emreed.net which led to Everything is Going to Be Ok.