Mostly Good Ideas, aka Shanti, has published another zine! it’s called ‘Portents I Ignored’ and it’s about moments when nature might have been trying to communicate with me, but if it did, I missed the message. Or I just have no idea what the portent meant…. It’s also about

• The blurry edges of memory
• Being 18 in Thailand
• Liminal spaces
• thinking you might have magic powers
• Communion with the natural world

Although you might have to read between the lines to notice these as there are not many words. It features:

• lots of clouds
• a snake
• a violin
• a dead thing
• electrical storms
• claws
• my very best attempts at handwriting.

It’s a hand-illustrated magic zine, which means it’s made from one piece of paper — I was VERY inspired by Zinefest in Auckland last weekend — which was a lot of work. I tried out doing a more collaging style, and also coloured pencils, and also thought lots about watercolours, but settled on this because it is simple and it looked better than my first attempts. I don’t think I have a very settled art style yet which is a bit frustrating, but it’s so interesting to learn how to think visually, and I have a few ideas now for other illustrated zines, although I’m still in the pretty stupid ‘I can’t draw’ camp. I think this is a silly thing to say! (one of the next zine ideas is advertised in the classified ad section at the end of the zine so I guess I have to do it now).

Making this also meant I got to use the bone folder and cutting mat and craft knife I bought for zine making a few weeks ago which is very thrilling and makes this feel like a worthwhile investment, as well as the nice pens. Overall, however, it was a lot cheaper than the low carbon adventure zine, especially because I’ve been printing it on our flat printer (although I may add another printer later) and used the wonderful free app Spectrolite for formatting, with some help from Canva.

For at least the next couple of weeks, I’ll be distributing the zine in physical form, so won’t be immediately uploading a copy to mostlygoodideas.nz, but if you’d like one or are desperate to see the digital version, email me! I’m planning future editions, and especially hoping to include more New Zealand portents, so please report below if you’ve encountered something spooky, something liminal, something beautiful or something broken – I would simply love to crowdsource responses.

I have lots more to say about understanding nature as profound or just thoughtful, what my upbringing on fantasy books taught me about how to see the natural world, why the nature I chose to portray in the zine is mostly in grand magnificent places and not the New Zealand suburbs where I’ve lived for the past seven years, how spookiness and theology do and don’t intersect, the corrosive photocopy-of-a-photocopy effect of remembering things over and over, why protecting wildness is always worth doing… but I might save them for an essay or a conversation, and let the zine speak for itself. Enjoy!