Save Your Crisis for After Lunch

The following is the Letter from the Editor featured in Issue 003 of The Reprise, which in turn borrowed excerpts from “Living a Big Life (Part I)” posted at this blog site here. The full magazine can be found at inesmeow.com/magazine.

Andrew Keymaster Published on April 14, 2025 FUJIFILM, X-Pro3

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, 1971
Tweet

Dear readers,

It’s my pleasure to welcome you to the first 2026 issue of The Reprise. This theme is Town & Country, with my prompt to contributors being “how our environments shape our lives, fashions, and sensibilities.” What inspired this was a desire to explore the ways artists at different stages of life interpret their surroundings and the impact those have on your psyche. From satirical prose to econo-cultural criticism and personal reflection, the work provided for this issue is sure to impress.

What strikes me is the adage my father started sneaking into our conversations as I was coming of age. He would say “wherever you go, there you are.” As a teenager, hearing something like this is akin to crossing an electric fence wearing a shock collar. Confusing, in a way that implies you have absolutely none of the power and all of the pain. As a veritable child planning out the next 5 to 10 years of elite education, career building, and sophisticate travel, I didn’t quite understand why this comment from my dad felt like a warning. It wasn’t until I started attempting spiritual escape that I realized it was, in fact, a warning. For someone struggling with perspective and a lack of gratitude, I couldn’t understand why changing things wasn’t changing things. I desperately clawed for some proof that I was making the right choices, that my hard work or my lofty aspirations would make up for my complete unconsciousness and sense of incompleteness. At every milestone, every achievement, every fulfillment of my insecurity-fueled momentum, I continued to be myself, not the Perfectly Me version I was hoping would appear and at every finish line, I felt utterly disappointed.

With time and practice, this has changed. Knowing that “wherever I go, there I am,” is a blessing when I recognize myself along the way, not hoping to finally do so at a destination. I’ve stopped looking for answers in new places or for life to come at me per a maniacal 5-year-plan. The answers, and life itself, come from me. We shape our environments simply by recognizing ourselves with candor and allowing ourselves to understand that crises of our faith are often as simple as being hungry. Instead of hating your town or yourself when you’re scared, try having a sandwich.

xoxo, Inés E. Atterbury.