⠀⠀⠀⠀ Cowen • Grey skies • Listography / issue 001⠀
The Mistery IV byFrancis Di Fronzo, 2020
what's this?
I've been inspired by witchitalk and pluto22. I want to try and code in a zine that coheres what i've been thinking of myself and my hobbies lately
table of contents
New Harmony by Paul Klee, 1936
COWEN;
or, TREES
I've been a frequenter of Cowen Park/Ravenna Ravine for a year and a half now. It's nearby my home, a quick handful of blocks. The trees in the ravine are tall, most sound is absorbed, and you feel nothing like you're in a city. Even while underneath the bridge is it hard to hear the traffic above, though it's no highway in the first place...
When i'm in there i feel i get to be at some kind of peace. I'm excited by the way the branches bend overhead, by the streams along the lefthand side of the path, by the mushrooms that crop up at this time (id'd turkey tail on log). It's hard to be alone in there, as many people use it as a walking path... but it feels set apart anyway, it feels a little distant from everything. The air is fresher. My boots track mud. Tree limbs are covered in mosses. Some fungi make a pine look like a spotted white-tailed fawn.
I usually take a camera with me, amounting to a selective folder of Cowen-Ravenna pictures on my public blog. I still have the prickly feeling of performing down there, or maybe just of being shy- i don't love when people can see me taking pictures. The air, the tree density, it makes me feel a little safer than outside the ravine. I'm getting repetitive... i love trees, i love greens, epiphytes, streams, other bodies of water. Other woods and connected plant systems...
MUSIC 
Not exactly sure of the playlist-to-be. I'll figure it out when i've got headphones on again. Been listening to a lot more indie music that i remember my riot grrrl friends in high school liked more than i did, at the time.
I had top surgery on November 7, 2025, and my clearance day for eight weeks (do whatever you want with your body, no restrictions) is January 2, 2026. I've been feeling pretty awful couped up like this. A lot of insecurities and dread, a lot of anxiety. It's also Seattle's winter, a notoriously awful time for the mental health of anybody. SAD hits like a truck up here. The sky is dark, well into night by 4pm. I've been getting ahold of myself some hours and some hours not. I've been feeling the urge to sleep through everything again... mostly because walks aren't very accessible right now, but i used to do this. My sleeping habits ruined my "life"*.
I'm in therapy and it's kind of useful, honestly. Whats not is living under these conditions, but what am i to do about that?
I'd like to go back to college. Went originally for liberal arts w concentrations in sociology, literature, and philosophy. Now i'm thinking earth sciences might be more my style. I've really been wanting to farm. Also feeling slightly less intimidated by academia because so many people who get a bachelors degree wind up being pretty stupid. Very little retention can get you by.**
*It didn't ruin my whole life, it ruined what was established for me at the time. In part, but no small one.
**Am i being a bitter ass? Maybe. Maybe, but i know i'm not completely wrong. Studying is religious to me, it's why i'm a failed jewish convert- study takes a lot of energy, i've got to live for it, but for now i'm stucking living for rent. I badly wish schooling were free, or at the very least housing... the idea of balancing work and school sounds horrific. I feel like burnout, something i am horrifically familiar with as-is, is an inevitability for me. I do not want repeats of different kinds, but similar failures. Failure is too strong a word, maybe.
Forest by Jan Hafstrom, 1968
I really want to feel free. Once my body is healed to the point where i don't have holes in my incisions and i can move, i can walk for hours, i can lift and carry objects for more than a brief time... there's buses i can take to many woods around here. There's volunteering i can do in the event my job just sucks. There's studying at home, there's working on myself and trying to lessen the panopticon feelings i've surrounded myself with. Hard. I'm obsessed with the panopticon. There's always progress to be made, and i make it. People help me. There is a core to me that remains, changes, mutates, loves, figures-out. Surgery has made me freer in the long run... another reason i dropped out was binding. My day can go uninterrupted by that process, that insecurity. I want to learn to love others, make close friends, make zines. I want to be part of the scene, not just observing it. I want to be part of the scene beyond a wallflower. Dancing, moving, shooting, meeting. Let myself come and go. Be
books
lunch poems
frank o'hara poetry, casual, playful 
SONG
Is it dirty
does it look dirty
that's what you think of in the city
does it just seem dirty
that's what you think of in the city
you don't refuse to breathe do you
someone comes along with a very bad character
he seems attractive. is he really. yes. very
he's attractive as his character is bad. is it. yes
that's what you think of in the city
run your ï¬nger along your no-moss mind
that's not a thought that's soot
and you take a lot of dirt off someone
is the character less bad. no. it im
y
roves constantly
you don't refuse to breathe do you
1959
keep reading online
the lost writings
franz kafka fiction, short stories, fragments I can swim as well as the others, only I have a better memory than they do, so I have been unable to forget my formerly not being able to swim. Since I have been unable to forget it, being able to swim doesn't help me, and I can't swim after all.
keep reading online
this is water
david foster wallace essay, philosophy, life
Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible - it just depends what you want to consider.
If you-re automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on
your default setting - then you, like me, probably will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.
But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options.
It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful,
but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the subsurface unity of all things.
keep reading online
my wicked, wicked ways
sandra cisneros poetry, womanhood, vulnerability Peaches-Six in a Tin Bowl, Sarajevo
If peaches had arms
surely they would hold one another
in their peach sleep.
And if peaches had feet
it is sure they would
nudge one another
with their soft peachy feet.
And if peaches could
they would sleep
with their dimpled head
on the other's
each to each.
Like you and me.
And sleep and sleep.
keep reading online
games
ZORK
The iconic 1977 text based game.
Adventure, Exploration, Fantasy
There's not much to the mechanics.
You are given prompts and type your commands to play.
>i've never actually beaten ZORK
There's just so much to do.
And so many ways to get lost.
>there are plenty of guides and walkthroughs online
>i come back to it every now and then and usually get lost for a few hours.
>i particularly enjoy taking out a pen and paper to draw a map as i play
Seriously. It's
very easy to get lost.
There are tons of text based games out there nowadays, but I haven't explored those yet. I'm still lost in ZORK.
>
play here
before there were bittersweet memories, there was just... melon journey! an incredibly sweet and whimsical experience. i first played this in high school and despite it only taking around 30 minutes to complete it left a big impact on me.
you play as someone in search of their friend and help the people of hog town with their troubles along the way. i adore this game. in 2020 the original rpg maker 2003 game got a limited run gameboy cartridge release!
(i want one so bad.)
websites 01110111 01100101 01100010
the moorhen homepage - this site has thousands and thousands of nature photographs. they upload new pics daily and have an image of the day going as far back as 2005. it's fun to scroll through and look at different pics taken on my birthday throughout the years.
tree.fm - tune in to a random forest and take in the sounds.
silent hill museum - view the textures and 3d models of silent hill 2! you can rotate them, view their skeletons, mess around with them.
the synesthesia battery - find out if you have any form of synesthesia and contribute to research by taking tests to categorize the range of your synesthetic experiences.
01110011 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110011
. . . . .
you've got mail!
from: pluto
subject: positivity
i wouldn't consider myself a positive person. far from it.
i get comments sometimes that my site is positive or uplifting and i can't pretend i don't see why.
i like to focus on the little things. i like to look for beauty in everyday moments because i'm desperate to find ways to enjoy being alive. still, "spreading positivity" isn't exactly what i'm setting out to do.
at the risk of sounding like a major edgelord, i've always felt that life was a curse bestowed upon me. bad luck, troubled childhood, endless mental health struggles and no end in sight. i never asked for this.
the thing is, life is beautiful. it's unbelievably fucked up and harrowing, but it's beautiful.
i don't need to thank the universe for putting together the specific set of atoms that made me this person, but i can't resent it either. the fact is i am here whether i like it or not. and now that i'm here i can't simply ignore the fact that life is incomprehensibly and overwhelmingly beautiful. i don't necessarily think it's positive to acknowledge that. it's just a fact.
i don't have any major plans, career goals, or things i want to achieve before i die. i just want to take it all in, as much of it as i can. i want to see lots of things and do lots of things and feel lots and lots of things.
someday i'd like to see the northern lights. currently i like noticing little flowers growing in the sidewalk.
that's all i really wanted to say. thank you for checking out this zine, and if you've read this far, thanks for hearing me out.
-pluto
