“How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another.”

In Which Alice Finds Rabbit, digital collage, ©2022, Jen Payne. Quote from Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

MANIFEST (zine) #7: Water

The water and its shoreline has been home to all of the creative people you are about to meet in this issue of MANIFEST [zine]. The theme – Water – was inspired by the release of Water Under the Bridge: A Sort-of Love Story by Jen Payne, and is a collaborative effort featuring work by friends and fellow creative spirits Tara Buckley, Joy Bush, Jimine Camille, Anne Coffey, Juliana Harris, Rhonda Longo, Nancy Fitz-Hugh Meneely, Kristin Merrill, Mary O’Connor, and Laurel Valli.

• Click here to read more about Issue #7

This issue of MANIFEST (zine) includes a full color, 24-page booklet, inserts, and a curated, collaborative Spotify playlist. Cost: $8.00 or subscribe and get 4 issues for $25.00

READ OUR SPRING NEWSLETTER to find out what else is new at Three Chairs Publishing.

Yesterday, I was privy to at least three conversations in which someone said, “I don’t know, it’s supposed to snow tomorrow.” It was said in that way we usually say it here in New England — “I don’t know, I might need to run to the store, make sure the shovel is ready, flip up the wipers on the car, figure out what to do if work and school are cancelled.” Said like that, except with a little less conviction.

Less conviction not just because the climate crisis has changed the predictability of our winters, but because the toxic cocktail of technology and the pandemic has changed how we manage those treasured Snow Days.

Remember? You’d wait by the radio — dating myself — and listen for the alphabetical recitation of towns that had closed school for the day. Waiting and hoping to hear your town before whooping up with a cheer and heading back to bed or turning on the television.

Remember? You’d hear the forecast and run to the store to stock up — [check all boxes that apply] wine, chocolate, cookies, macaroni and cheese, pop-tarts, brussels sprouts, pot roast, ice cream. Then hunker down with a good book, some DVDs, a warm blanket, and your cat.

These days, more often than not, Snow Days mean comfy clothes, Zoom, and eye drops because we’re about to spend the next 10 hours in front of the machines. We’ll do remote school and remote work, we’ll catch up on other things, we’ll surf the internet and email and social media ourselves ad infinitum. All of that, while some part of our soul is hoping the power goes out…just for a little while at least. Please?

The other piece of conversation I’ve heard at least three times lately? “I’m just so fucking tired.”

Oh my god. Me too. Aren’t we all? Just. so. fucking. tired.

And not just tired sleepy tired. But tired overwhelmed saturated burnt-out exhausted almost-hopeless-but-I’m trying-really-hard-to-keep-the-faith, dear-god-not-another-Zoom tired.

[Breathe.]

Breathe and then consider this…

Most ski resorts these days make their own snow. Not just because the climate crisis has been steadily shortening the snow season for decades, but because snowmaking supplements natural snow. It allows ski resorts to improve the reliability of the snow cover and to extend their ski season beyond the winter months — so sayeth Wikipedia.

In a sense, Snowmaking for ski resorts is what Snow Days are for all of us. Good old-fashioned Snow Days supplement the meager amount of time off we allow ourselves by giving us a no-excuse-necessary moment to stop, rest, and regroup. Snow Days — those glorious unplanned days off —improve our reliability and extend our productivity more than technology wants us to think.

In so many ways, technology has been a saving grace during the pandemic. It’s allowed us to work from home, connect with friends and loved ones, order supplies, and stay safe. But it’s also skewed our sense of time and time off. It keeps us on constant alert — the chimes, buzzes, and dings making us a pack of Pavlov’s dogs anxious for the next task, the next command, the next IMPORTANT THING TO ADDRESS, with very little reward.

That’s why you have to create the reward for yourself.

Remember the proverb “make hay while the sun shines”? How about “make snow when the sun wanes,” or when you’re so freaking exhausted you can’t even remember proverbs?

Make snow. Make a Snow Day. Everything will still be here when you shovel yourself out tomorrow. I promise.

by Susan Braden, CT Insider/Shoreline Times, February 4, 2022

Reconnecting with a long-lost love online is not a new story — but it’s one that still captures the imagination of many people.

What if? — that’s the big question that Branford writer Jen Payne aims to answer in her new novel, Water Under The Bridge: A Sort-of Love Story.

Set in the early 2000s, the story is told through a series of emails between two former loves who find each other online after years of leading separate lives. And it’s a story readers can relate to, the author said.

“I think it’s one of these things where people reconnect after however many years,” and think, “‘Well, what’s going to happen?’” Payne said.

The epistolary novel is reminiscent of the hit ’90s rom-com You’ve Got Mail with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, produced nearly a decade before social media popped up on anyone’s radar or screen. Long before smart phones and tablets, people communicated online via their home computer. In the movie, Hanks and Ryan fall in love through email.

An epistolary novel is one written as a series of letters, in this case emails, Payne said.

Payne’s novel is a personal story which she calls “creative nonfiction.” She describes the book as part “conversation, a memoir, a love story.”

While Payne was going through this email exchange in real time, she knew it would make a good book — whichever way it turned out. So she saved all the emails all these years.

When she started to write the novel, “it had a life of its own,” Payne said.

In the book, Payne captures the first ripples of excitement, her fear of embarrassment and the emotional rush of what it might be like to reconnect with someone special from the past.

Payne wanted readers to see themselves and recognize “those moments when you fall in love — either you fall in love with a person, you fall in love with a situation, you may fall in love with a new baby.

“Those moments that create great change for us and how it opens our heart,” she said.

While a true story, Payne said she was “creatively interpretative” in her use of the actual emails — they have a poetic cadence to them. She never names either character.

Catching up with a lost love is a universal theme, she said. When Payne gave a copy of her book to a fellow writer, Payne recalled her friend’s eager response, “She said, ‘Oh, that happened to me, too!’”

Payne recalled a relative of hers who “met up with his high school sweetheart at his 30th reunion and ended up getting married — so you never know,” she said with a smile.

In an excerpt from “Water Under the Bridge,” Payne writes about her nervous anticipation of meeting with her lost love:

“Was he checking his email as often as she was? Did he feel like a teenager, too? She was kicking herself for the silly reaction to him – the sudden leap of her heart, the grin on her face.”

The book also marks a time in Payne’s life when she wasn’t writing, but working as a graphic artist in marketing.

“People know me as the writer, the poet, this creative person,” she said. “Before this moment I wasn’t any of that. I wasn’t writing, I wasn’t creating.

“This is the moment that changed me,” she said.

Payne, a graphic designer who owns her own public relations firm, is well known on the shoreline — she has done publicity with her company, Words By Jen, for local organizations for years such as The Branford Land Trust, Branford Compassion Club, Branford Community Gardens and Guilford Art Center. She is an active member of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven and the Branford Arts and Cultural Alliance, as well.

The former member of the Guilford Poets Guild also is known as a writer and continues to write poetry. She has written and published four other books LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, Evidence of Flossing: What We Leave Behind, FLOSSING, and Waiting Out the Storm— under her own imprint of Three Chairs Publishing.

Payne handles nearly all aspects of publishing, and outsources where she needs to for editing and printing: “I have really good resources,” she said.

Payne purposely left a few pages of the book blank, with just the date printed on top — these are to show when the writer is awaiting a response to her email that did not come that day — lending a sense of time passing.

“This is designed to take you almost physically into the experience of reading the emails. Every email is on one page,” she noted.

Payne painstakingly chose the artwork for the cover, and found the artist, Sarah Zar, online at Etsy. Payne so loved her work that Zar will be exhibiting art in her show, “Bigger on the Inside” in the lobby at Guilford Art Center where a book-signing will take place.

“We’re excited to host this event and exhibition,” Maureen Belden, executive director of the Guilford Art Center, said in an email. “Jen is a wonderful writer, and happens to be GAC’s longtime graphic designer, an art form at which she also excels.”

Belden added, “We’re also looking forward to featuring the work of cover artist Sarah Zar, whose richly detailed images and objects complement Jen’s words.”

Another one of Payne’s favorite creative endeavors are her printed “zines,” called “Manifest (zine)” that she creates from the page up — from writing, layout and design.

Payne calls these zines “a hold-in-your-hands art installation,” which are “part mag, part artist book, part chapbook.” The booklets feature an arresting potpourri of writing, mixed-media collage work, photos, quotes and “pieces of creative whatnot” all produced on 80-pound matte paper that feels silky to the touch.

“It’s so much fun to work on these,” she enthused. Payne works on the physical mixed-media collages in a studio in her home; she does all the photography in addition to the graphic design.

“I have for a long time thought about doing art installations — like physical art gallery installations,” she said. But, she added, “I just didn’t have the time to do that.”

“I came up with the idea of doing these zines as a way to present the written word and the visual image in a tangible way,” she said.

Payne unabashedly loves printed books and materials. She seems to touch her zines like they are small treasures as she describes what she loves about print.

“It slows us down. It keeps up in the moment of holding a book and turning the pages and seeing the words in from of us. It’s a different experience than looking at your tablet or you looking at your computer screen with your email pinging and your social network binging over here — and you have all these distractions.”

And she has found fellow paper lovers: “Oh my goodness — yes! Book people. Zine people. We all love paper.”

“Some folks will tell you that print is dead, but I know many who would definitely beg to differ,” she added.

Payne will sign copies of her new book at Guilford Art Center from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday, February 12. Guests can also enjoy an art exhibit by Sarah Zar, the artist who painted Hurricane Woman on the book’s cover. The event is free and open to the public. Masks are required, regardless of vaccination status. See www.guilfordartcenter.org for current COVID protocols. Snow date is February 19.

Saturday, February 12, 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
BOOK SIGNING & ART EXHIBIT
at Guilford Art Center
411 Church Street, Guilford, CT

• Book signing with writer Jen Payne
• Art exhibit by cover artist Sarah Zar
• Free and open to the community

WATCH FOR DETAILS, COMING SOON!

In his clever, colorful book Zoom, illustrator Istvan Banyai invites the reader to see the bigger picture. Zoom in, zoom out – what do you see? what do you think you see? what are you really looking at? What are we really looking at in these warped and ever-changing days?

Come along as we zoom in and try to figure out what it all means.

The LEIXCON ZOOM issue of MANIFEST (zine) includes a full color, 32-page booklet, fun inserts, and a curated Spotify playlist. Just $8 for one issue, or subscribe for $25 and get 4 issues. Click here to find out more or just …

The Annual Subscription rate of $25 includes four issues of MANIFEST (zine), and starts with the December issue LEIXCON ZOOM.

You can pay through PayPal using a PayPal account or any standard credit card. If you prefer the old school approach, please send your check, made payable to Jen Payne, P.O. Box 453, Branford, CT 06405.

Hi. It’s Jen again. Coming to you here at the end of another year all ramped up for resolutions and intentions and manifesting…NOT.

Did I tell you the story about my 2021 Vision Board? The one on which I pinned a photo of a roller coaster? OK, Universe, I meant “Try Exhilarating Fun Things” not the roller coaster that was the past 12 months. Seriously.

And about that 2021 word? EXPANSIVE? Nope. 2021 found me contracting and happily hiding behind the anonymity of COVID. You know: face masks, social distancing, and the like.

Granted, the Vision Board wasn’t a complete bust. I excelled at resting, for example. I began and maintained a twice daily meditation practice. I spoke my peace more, let go of more, and played more. And at the end of every day I was grateful for however it had unfolded.

But despite all of that, I am resistant to go through the process of Vision Boarding again. It sounds like a form of torture, doesn’t it? Especially here at the end of or beginning of another unpredictable pandemic year. Talk about roller coasters.

What? You mean no New Year’s Resolutions? No list of intentions? No lofty goals? Yes…and no. I have some great ideas, sure, but I’m also pretty happy with things just as they are right here in this moment.

I suspect my final two Amazon purchases of 2021 speak more to my intentions for the new year than any Vision Board ever could. So I’ll leave you with those for the time being, with wishes for a GOOD, CLEAN (and Healthy) 2022.

With love,

Jen

If I read as much as it feels like I didn’t, I suspect I would have surpassed my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal. I’m not really as far off as I thought…numerically, anyhow. According to my Goodreads 2021 report, I’ve read 35 books this year, 70% of my goal of 50 books.

But truth be told, my practice of reading is off by more than 70%. My attention span feels pulled thin by this pandemic; my sit-still tolerance more often taken up by Netflix binges instead of novels.

Still, when I did sink into a novel, I sunk deep. So deep I didn’t want to come up — and didn’t, for weeks. Think The Starless Sea and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, or The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley. I would gladly spend weeks again within their pages.

On my nightstand now, The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, author of one of my all-time favorite books A Tale for the Time Being. A good way to step into a new year I think — good book in hand, yes?

In my mind’s eye reading looks and feels like the yummy painting, The Moonlight Bed (above), by Jacek Yerka. A comfy spot, good lighting, creature comforts, and a big stack of books. May YOUR new year be filled with the same! Happy reading!

Manifest (zine) #6 – Lexicon Zoom

What I love most about MANIFEST (zine) is how each issue takes me — and ultimately you — on a journey of connected thoughts, images, and ideas. Thank you for joining me as we explore topics like change and transition, solitude, time, storytelling, and finding refuge in these turbulent times.

The idea for my new issue — LEXICON ZOOM — came to me during a morning meditation. It has twisted and reshaped itself several times since, but I am pleased by the magical happenstances that took it in different directions. And I am delighted with the final piece…I hope you are too!

So ZOOM in and let’s see how “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

LEIXCON ZOOM includes a full color, 32-page booklet, fun inserts, and a curated Spotify playlist. Just $8 for one issue, or subscribe for $25 and get 4 issues. Click here to find out more or just …

The Annual Subscription rate of $25 includes four issues of MANIFEST (zine), and starts with the December issue LEIXCON ZOOM.

Part lit mag, part artist book, part chapbook, MANIFEST (zine) is the eclectic creation of writer / poet / artist Jen Payne. Consider it a hold-in-your-hands art installation featuring writing, photography, and artwork, along with bits and pieces of whatnot that rise to the surface as she meditates on themes like change and transition, solitude, time, storytelling, and finding refuge in these turbulent times. Each issue also includes a curated Spotify playlist. Layered with colors, textures, meanings (and music), the result is a thought-full, tactile journey with nooks and crannies for you to discover along the way.

You can pay through PayPal using a PayPal account or any standard credit card. If you prefer the old school approach, please send your check, made payable to Jen Payne, P.O. Box 453, Branford, CT 06405.