Cover image: "Untitled #35" by Jacqueline Staikos

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Note from the editor

Welcome to the 13th issue of Wild Roof Journal

Thank you once again for joining us!

I’d like to begin by announcing something special for our 2-year anniversary. We have a giveaway currently running, and you may see the details and enter here. You can enter via Submittable or PayPal for a cost of $10. In mid-April, we will draw names for a series of prizes, including a custom-designed handmade mug from WRJ collaborator Nicole Bethune Winters. You can see some examples of her amazing work at her shop page. In addition, there will be photo prints, original drawings, 1-on-1 feedback sessions, and subscriptions to WRJ given out as well. If you have any questions, please send a message to wildroofjournal@gmail.com.

Secondly, I’d like to offer a beautiful quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away in January. This passage from the book You Are Here contains characteristic Zen Buddhist illustration of a simplicity coextensive with depth. However, it also displays an alarmingly practical and lighthearted insight into approaching life’s challenges:

If you look deeply at a flower, at its freshness and its beauty, you will see that there is also compost in it, made of garbage. The gardener had the skill to transform this garbage into compost, and with this compost, he made a flower grow…. The flower is also going to turn into garbage; but don’t be afraid! You are a gardener, and you have in your hands the power to transform garbage into flowers, into fruit, into vegetables. You don’t throw anything away, because you are not afraid of garbage. Your hands are capable of transforming it into flowers, or lettuce, or cucumbers.

And perhaps the role of the resourceful gardener here is not so far away from the role of the artist, the cultivator of sentences and poems, sketches and paintings.

As you encounter the pieces in this issue, I believe it’s safe to say that their creators are engaged in a process of growing something beautiful, even nourishing, from the scraps and fragments of life that many others may discard or ignore or push away.

With those items addressed, let’s get on with the issue!

Aaron Lelito – Founder and editor in chief

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