I walk a half mile from where I park to my office building everyday. It is through downtown so I pass public planters on several of the streets. With each seasonal change, crews empty the planters into trash bags and replace the plants with other plants that will also end up in trash bags in a month or two. I started gathering clippings this summer and bringing them to my cubicle and putting them in little jars to see if they would root.

I started this experiment while listening to Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna. The Bikini Kill front woman’s autobiography is excellent and unpacks a time in music, feminism, and American culture that I experienced as a kid. I knew punk and feminism existed and I was fascinated by those cool, dangerous, loud, women. But I wasn’t old enough to really engage with the movement. Once I hit high school I grew into a fully formed, disaffected, young woman who wanted to smoke cigarettes, make art, and get pissed off at the patriarchy. It was the late 90s and there was still a decent amount to be pissed about. We could hardly anticipate the forthcoming shit storm of the late 20-teens and 2020s.

Listening to Kathleen Hanna talk about a time (middle school, high school, and college years) and her experience illuminated something for me. I don’t fight like I used to anymore. I don’t protest, resist, and rage in the same way I did when I was young. This is part of an ongoing realization my husband and I have been experiencing as we try to strip our lives down to what really matters. I wanted to recapture and reinvestigate the shitty, mouthy teenager I knew was trapped under my corporate casual garb. So I started stealing plants and dirt from the city planters.

I also started writing a zine. I have not made a zine since college. I used to hang out for hours at the campus Kinkos swiping my student ID and building layered collages about women artists I admired and authors I admired, personal experiences I thought related, with accompanying poems and crappy drawings. I was so consumed with making things that it mattered very little if the things were good or not. My ears full of PJ Harvey and my heart full of big, complicated feelings. I feel that way now. Roe v Wade was overturned a few years ago. Our education system has been gutted. The Epstein files have been released. They are building data centers in our city.

Eventually I am going to finish the actual paper zine and I will make it available for people to buy. Cheap. Basically, if you pay for the media mail for me to send it to you I will. I need to feel connected again to other artists. I need to feel like I am not hollering out an open window between worlds. I need some accomplices in my tiny crimes.