letter from the guest editor: finding space

by Tavis Gray

Here we are at the beginning of another month in this odd year. Perhaps, like me, you met this morning a little uncertain, somewhat uneasy, for what is one to do? September begins with rest. There’s no running start. The summer’s laziness, its heat, has brought with it no momentum, no kinesis. We’ve been poolside, we’ve been underwater, and now we must let go of buoyant things. We tear off our white jeans and stand naked before a season busy with shortening days. We wake with the alarm. We put on a light coat. We stare into the inevitable. We return to routine.

But what if we didn’t?

Remember in school (try not to) when you would start every essay with a quote because you thought it was flashy and devilish and the perfect dodge from the responsibility of summarizing your own thoughts first? Well, here we go: 

“Act so there is no use in a centre” - Gertrude Stein, “Rooms”

This September at The Fluf is all about de-centering. As in: what do we see when we look past the center of our vision, our everyday, our season’s sameness? What exists in our periphery? And how do we get there? This month we’ll explore where we might go when we aren’t so worried about staying on the path.

We’ll start by investigating what happens when you allow your life the space to expand. Isn’t that often the problem? Ceilings, constraints, narrow roads—the walls that wish they stood closer. What if we decided to craft a window? What if we jumped out?

This week, stay with us as we consider the horizontal, explore breaks from social media, and dissect the emotional apparatus of a “perfect” getaway. And plenty more to come after that.

Here comes September!

Wishing you absolutely no centre,

your guest editor