by Allison Lee and Justin Teoh
First, we believe congratulations are in order. A short-lived but spectacular laudation to each and every one of us for surviving six months of 2021, half a year that hasn’t seen much improvement but has at least witnessed the unwavering stance of hope. Give yourself a pat on the back. Take the day off and let things simmer down. It doesn’t always have to be this hard and it won’t always be.
Another round of applause goes to our team for having the courage of their convictions, for standing by Getting It Strait in the past year. Through bleeding words and wishing our ideas and voices will take flight like dandelion seeds, we have come so far to be here, to foster a path-crossing between our words and your soul. Our team has expanded so much since our first issue in 2020 and will only continue to improve. Rest assured we will not stop creating, even if it means having our ink run dry.
In light of our one-year anniversary, we have been reminiscing about how this zine came to life. It began with a spark, like all ideas do. It was a dull spark that required care and polish, so that was what we did. This zine has allowed us to bridge international waters and bypass geographical straits, sending sparks flying—hence this issue’s theme.
Perhaps our lives simply comprise millions of sparks. Sparks of ideas, sparks of connections, sparks of change. The intensity and magnitude of every spark varies, but it still exists, nonetheless. And when it comes to the rough patches of life that seem impossible to overcome, we would fare well to remember that friction produces the brightest sparks of them all. It is the accumulation of these daily, minute sparks that allows us to, when the cosmos demands, go out in a glorious shower of electrifying sparks.
The sparks of life don’t have to be accomplished through ceremonious achievements and aren’t only observed on mountain peaks. If you look closely, you just might spot their glimmer hidden at the bottom of red solo cups, between the pages of fiction, or even the tip of your graphite stationery.
And each person may only have their sparks at different points in their lifetime. No one deserves to have their motivations and ideas extinguished prematurely through time constraints or external commitments, even if they need three full stops to get there. To further accommodate full developments across submissions, Getting It Strait will now publish issues on a bi-monthly basis from issue #12 forward.
In the meantime, you will find no shortages of sparks in this issue.