Ouroboros

As well as the many other changes Gallery of Owls is undergoing, like our sleek new website, it is also important to let you know that Gallery of Owls is no longer curating or producing GZEAN, and will no longer be associated with the name GZEAN.

The last and final zine curated by Gallery of Owls was GZEAN 1st 2nd which was released and sold at Walsall Artists Book fair in June 2010. This issue concluded a series of 6 zines curated by Gallery of Owls (GZEAN 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 1st 2nd).

We are sad to let it go, but feel that we would like to concentrate on other projects and are looking forward to the future. Many thanks to all who have been involved in creating and making GZEAN successful in the past.

I am walking down Leicester High Street. The street is completely empty. I see a young girl in a doorway asking for change. I tell her I don't have any. She looks upset. I walk away feeling bad. There is a white tiger asleep in a doorway. As I pass the tiger it wakes and looks at me. I keep walking. The tiger gets up and begins to follow me down the road. I try to quicken my pace without making it seem obvious. The tiger also speeds up. I panic and begin to run. The tiger starts running. Suddenly the street is full of people. I hope the tiger will leave me alone and eat one of these people but the tiger just keeps chasing me. I run around a building. The building is made from glass and the tiger can see straight through. He chases me around the glass building.

"Why are you chasing me?" I scream. I point to a fat man. "Why don't you eat him instead?"

The tiger smiles.

"Nobody else is scared of me" he says.

I see my friend Lorna sitting on a bench. I ask her to help me. She just looks at me and smiles. I look to the bench for a weapon to protect myself. There is only a drill and a single drillbit. I ask Lorna to put the drillbit in so that I can drill the tiger if he attacks. She looks at me:

"It's okay. He ate someone last week, and the week before, and the week before that. I have some film footage on my camera if you want to see."

She gets her camera out and tries to show me a film of someone being eaten alive by the tiger. I scream at her to give me the drill. She laughs and points at the camera. The tiger is close. He smiles, licks his lips and pounces.

The town is completely dead. It is silent. All of the buildings are completely trashed: windows broken, shutters twisted, massive holes in walls. A humming sound emanates from the old library. I crawl in through a broken window. It is dark inside. I walk towards the noise. There is no light except for a dull yellow at the far end. I head towards it. As i get closer i realise it is a figure. The figure has its back to me. I try to creep but the broken glass and rubble beneath my feet make it impossible. The light is getting brighter, the noise louder. I am close. I want to see its face. I reach out to tap the figure on the shoulder but it disappears. I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see the figure. The figure has its back to me. I reach out to tap the figure on the shoulder but it disappears. I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see the figure. The figure has its back to me. I reach out to tap the figure on the shoulder but it disappears. I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see the figure. The figure has its back to me.

Anytime I would have ventured to the caves of the unknown would have been a time of joy for me and my fellow explorers, but knowing us it would have been too much of an effort to even consider the time frame needed to commit to such an event. I realised during my time in the fleet that I had never really allowed myself to get close to the people around me, my actions never specified my needs enough and I was overdue many thankyou’s.

It fell into my lap from above, the small booklet I had seen earlier that day in the market, my surprise was that was that were no conditions. Unbeknownst to me I had purchased it while making crumbs. Sipping from a flask that some might have assumed was alcohol, I indeed would never have expected it to have been coffee. When I walk down one of those imaginary canal walks I see gravel.

How do you think they manage it without getting so many people to help them in the process? My wonderings often kept me from focusing on my real surroundings. Ate an apple to be sure that I had not left anything behind, my pills were still in the back seat of the megane. Flowers headed my way until they stopped at the crossroads were they were inevitably cropped. Head boy is such a sore state to be in especially when you’re not of this world.

My enthusiasm rarely reached those around me without the prospect of first caching a cold. The Wold was somewhere I had come to think of as my home or home from home, if you can call it that, never thinking I would stumble upon the ancient ruins, I gave way to my hunger. Creeping hooves made this harder for me to understand, understanding is a hard thing. How can you ever really know what that means? Mary Victoria was no longer in a state of light.

To heed ones actions before they are taken for granted is a wise move, where do you find these grey metallic beakens? They are often seen lying on the floors on forests, among the rotting leaves, I had no other purpose to visit them until I found out about that. It was not a sunny day, yet lacked lustre, and as I ambled through the undergrowth I spotted what it was I had come for, it was no smaller than my thumb but moved with great energy, it was not laying there anymore. I ran away and the leaves rushed through my head. Don’t fall in a hole, I thought to myself, for holes are no place to get caught up in while your already in such a mess. I wouldn’t have thought that I would worry about those kinds of things, but you have to make sure your brain is out of gear, otherwise you may end up concentrating too hard on something that does not require that kind of concentration, and as a result, you are likely to fall under the spell of the crafty people who wish you to fall into there traps. Not to be paranoid of course.

Graplin hooked into my next adventure, I was in need of a fire, where I could rest my self and think of the very thing I never would have thought of. Tracks of fire were all I could see in front of my eyes that night, before I succumbed to sleep. Follow it along the line that had been drawn. No body wanted to know about that  kind of thing, I needn’t have. The clerk handed me a towel through the slot in the window, I had trouble feeding it back through. His nose switched as though he had inhaled some curry powder or trapped something small in the vice. I was fascinated by the amount of times I could draw from this same experience. Over and over again it happened and I had encouraged myself to trust this instinct to the point that there was little else I could do in the situation but bawl my eyes out. Carrying on in this way would be no mean feat, I had already underestimated my counter parts and they were already leading me into the trap, I couldn’t escape, I think, I think I had no choice or at least not if I wanted to obtain the prize. My foot seemed to sink into the fabric slowly creating suction or a vacuum or whatever they call it. An air bubble formed around my mouth, a bird called, my hair caught on fire. I would not like this to happen.

As the sun shone through the window the regular appearance of air flew past and my ears were empty. What do you make of that. Is it meant to mean something? My holidays were finished for now. When you engage in this kind of game, you are bound to hurt someone or something. This had been recommended to me a while ago, by an old friend, whose opinion I regarded highly. No birds ever sought what they could not get, yet they are allowed to fly pretty high, and this I thought, was somewhat of an injustice, considering I had always been taught to go for things, but had never had the ability to fly. It had three legs and five toes, no teeth and words beginning with F. this in no way made it eligible for my attention. I was stubborn to the core about that. Questions? Added to the pile were some distinct what ever’s that were no longer prize possessions of a man they sometimes called Jim. No way I had prepared for that. My eyes streamed with disbelief and my hair was lank with animosity.