This month is the beginning of Seeker's sixth year, and I meant to get busy and create some new backgrounds, because as nice as Denise's backgrounds are, they've been well-used through these five years. But I went on a three-week road trip and only occasionally got on a computer to check e-mail. So I will work on them a bit at a time.
But that really is not important. What is important is that Seeker has been on-line for five full years, 60 issues, and every one is still in the archive. Thanks to the large amount of server space that I pay for, I have room to keep them, even though Harry wonders why. Occasionally an earlier author will check their works and send me a new address or link to update the old article.
Denise Ruiz began it all and I've pasted in the July 1995 Letter from the Editor, in which she explains how it started.
July 01,1995
A little bird inspired this magazine. No, I'm not joking, he really did. I was visiting a friend one chilly spring night, talking until well past midnight, trying to divine just what had happened in my life...where I had taken the wrong turn...why all my striving seemed to come to nothing. I wondered what had happened to my dreams, when I had taken the path I was now on, and why. I trundled my thoroughly dejected self out onto the porch, to sit and brood a while. Brooding always makes me feel as if I am doing something serious and constructive with my thoughts, so I was understandably miffed when my dark mood was interrupted by the unlikely sound of a bird singing.
I was sitting near a busy main road with traffic providing a continuous background noise, perfect for brooding, but the bird's song rose above it all, clear and sharp. Annoyed, I frowned up into the barren tree providing a perch for the pest. As the song shifted and changed I realized that the little singer was a mockingbird. He had taken the songs of a number of his brethren and added them to his own, repeating them over and over. There were no other birds nearby to listen or to answer, but it seemed to make no difference. He warbled out his beautiful melodies anyway. He became song. Nothing else existed for him, or seemed to be needed.
I was impressed by his tenacity, and found myself asking him aloud, "How is it that you can sing with so much joy, alone, in the dark, in the cold, in the midst of this uncaring chaos, with no hope of an answer?" A small voice from deep within me startled me with an answer. Because he is a mockingbird, it said. He is what he is, and singing in the night is what he does.
A place in my mind opened up suddenly, and as I examined the meaning of this new thought I found myself grinning foolishly into the dark.
As with most answers, it was simple and had been before me my entire life, waiting for the right question. I realized that I didn't need to change. I had already tried that, unsuccessfully. What I needed to do was "become" and then to let myself "be". In the days that followed I searched this new open place in my mind, identifying the things I had been forcing myself to do that were against my true nature, and finding once again the dreams, values and joyful work that proclaimed what I really "was".
I came to know that the power of the song was not in the hearing, but in the singing, and that the most wondrous songs are the ones made up of many voices, all singing the truth of their own being. It is these songs which prompt us to ask the proper questions, and with a little luck perhaps bring us to the realization of our own true answers. It is my most profound hope that Seeker will become a mockingbird's song...many voices singing in the dark in the midst of chaos, because they must...opening a mind or touching a heart here and there, as that tiny grey nightsinger did mine.
Denise had several stalwart friends, made through the role-playing rooms on AOL, who wrote for the fledgling 'zine, some for a long time: Brandon DeGeorge (music reviews and Jack's Beanstalk), David Langer (Blind Crow's Journal), Novareinna (who soon became the folktale-teller and still continues in Tongues). Since David is my son and lived at my home part of the time, I would occasionally get calls from someone named Denise for him, and I always checked out what he wrote in each issue, to see what he was thinking about. In spring 97, David told me that Denise would be interested in seeing what I wrote. Well, I hadn't written much except in church newsletters before then (and poems), but I read much, so I decided to write about the books that I enjoyed.
She once told me that she "latched onto me" right away, and I know that I latched on to Seeker. A year later, we switched places, I becoming the editor and she becoming the columnist of "Transmutations." A year later she bowed out as webmistress, and now I do it all. I didn't actually meet her until last month in my travels in New England, and we both agreed that if I got tired of editing, we had to find someone else to take it over.
There is a sort of sifting flow of people sending pieces for a while and then not, or just dropping one or two in the box. Denise said that she sees a definite tone to the mag that she feels wasn't quite there when she edited. Then, she has a different slant in her life, which is participating in role-playing games via the internet, which does not interest me at all. But I'm thankful for it and for David's equal love for the games, as that is what led him originally to the role-playing rooms and Denise.
What is pleasing is that some of the writers in Seeker are publishing books of poetry and fiction and building their own websites. What has been gratifying is that folks who write well are willing to support a magazine that is not able to pay them. Perhaps other publications are able to if they take advertising, but I don't wish to have advertising banners blinking on our webpages, and I am not a fundraiser.
I feel the spirit of Seeker is to provide space for the fledgling writer to stretch those wings, while the more polished writer hones the craft. I am grateful to all the writers who have permitted their words to be posted in these pages, and I trust we will continue on this journey of seeking.
Cherie
Editor