Change of scene to Substack

Hello Reader,

I have moved all of my writing and content over to Substack.

Please find my current writing over here from now on: 

https://rimimonster.substack.com/

Sam the Squid in The Selkie

My first piece of published fiction in The Selkie (www.theselkie.co.uk) called Sam the Squid can be read here

A surreal, dark story about a woman who is also a squid dealing with depression.

Potluck zine

© Rhia Cook

I have a piece of writing published in a dedicated food magazine called Potluck zine. The piece is called Our Rice Relations and you can read it here. 

This zine's issue 5 was all about ritual. How food, recipes and meals can make memories and tell stories. It was a delicious publication to be part of.

If you'd like to get a copy then you can order here. Part of the profits from each magazine sold is donated to The Trussel Trust - the UK's largest food bank organisers.

All illustrations by Rhia Cook @rhiacookmakes.

© Rhia Cook

All My Relations

Photographs of my great-grandmother Ito-san (top) and my grandmother Obaachan (bottom) when she was young

I have a piece about my Japanese grandmother Obaachan published in a zine in America called All My Relations. It's a new publication about ancestry, memory and the meaning of family.

My piece is called Where have the waterways gone? on p.79-83. You can read and download the full issue here.

If you like the writing and artwork in the zine then kindly send a donation via Ko-fi saying in the message that it's for All My Relations. The donations get paid out to BIPOC, gender diverse, and disabled creatives.

Disconnected || The Creative Pandemic

I wrote another blog post for The Creative Pandemic called Disconnected, about moving house and not having the internet. You can read it in full here or further down below. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @thecreativepandemic

DISCONNECTED

The feeling of being disconnected.

I have not had this in a while, maybe when lying in a hospital bed and thinking about all the fun that my friends were having out there, in the summery sun-kissed world. 

(I have moved into a house with the love of my life – I feel like I should precursor this mope with my own context, by the way, I am happy.)

At the moment we have no internet and are busy moving-in; painting, decorating, searching, planning, eating, etc. My mind is taken up by all manner of things like, ‘Where the hell is the dustpan and brush?’ and, ‘Why is this microwave so complicated?’

And yet, when it comes to the witching hour, a term I heard from a friend who has recently given birth, which is when daylight warps into dusk and babies find it disturbing and cry, I get the heebie-jeebies wash over me too.

It’s a certain sinking feeling you get, as if you were in a cavernous auditorium and the lights are being switched off one by one from the back. It’s the encroaching darkness that dampens my mood. It’s why the Danes have hygge, right?

I feel even more out of joint from my normal routine. I have no internet, so can’t check my inbox for unread mail. Usually this means nothing to me, but this is not the deep truth because they do mean something to me, they are my normality. 

I usually unlock my phone out of habit like sighing deeply after climbing a hill, and when I see those red notifications my pulse rate lowers, then I carry on. Even if I return the device to the crevices of my pocket without checking them, it does the trick.

I was never aware of this sort of dependency. I watch my drinking, I watch my sugar intake, but do I watch the number of times I light up my phone for no reason? Pretending to check the time and date although I can’t seem to hold it in my head for more than the split second it took for the light to flash on and off. But the colours of my friends on my wallpaper brighten up my boredom to give me a hit of happiness in these gloomy times.

 

Stars over Porlock // Bold Types 2020 Finalist // Glasgow Women's Library

An essay inspired by a holiday with friends was shortlisted for the Bold Types 2020 competition held by the Glasgow Women's Library. It is called Stars over Porlock and you can read it here, or in full below:

Stars over Porlock

The night sky in Porlock was one of the best skies I have ever seen. I can’t tell you what constellations we were under, except for the Plough, with its axial handle jutting out across many light-years. Everybody was in good spirits, some were sat on the lawn with their coats spread beneath them, others were standing barefoot on the soft green grass. We were all looking up, my mouth was hanging open and I held my boyfriend’s arm wrapped around my waist. A bleat from a sheep travelled across swathes of farmland to us. 

    Perhaps this was the happiest holiday of my life. We were all about thirty years old, escaping to the country from grimy city life. It took three days for my snot to not be grey or flecked with pollution. My pores sang in the water! The water in Porlock was delicious and my first cup of tea there was like a beatification. I thought, how can this tea be so delicious (it’s unbranded?) then I found out it couldn’t – but the water could. Coming straight off the granite rocks; clear and mellow like drinking crystal liquid and my hair became softer and fuller too, like a well-groomed poodle’s.

    The stars were phenomenal. It was dark in Porlock and our house was cut deep into the valleys of Somerset. You could hear the distant roar of the sea rolling back and forth over the shingle beaches. In daylight, you could gaze across the garden down to the agricultural lands and then to the salt marshes, then onwards to sea. A flutter of sparrows rose into the air chattering in a frenzy. On the lawn we played Mölkky, a leisurely game where you throw a stick at a clump of other sticks (the Finn’s know how to have fun); Genny made us a tray of gin and tonics and towards the end of the holiday, a jug of sangria to ingeniously use up the surplus saccharine wine.

    The house held up very well. Full at the seams from the beginning with food, booze and friends spilling over into bedrooms assigned for couples, we eased into it, like a cat stretching out after a yawn. We gave each other pet-names like “Grandma Georgia” and the “Chaos Queen”. People took up their well-beloved roles, like Aidan who became the group’s map-bearer on our long country walks. Gee was the charming one, with all the quick-wit and haughtiness of a lifelong tenured butler. Everybody played a part and yet, we were not pigeon-holed. Caring, stubborn, excitable, cynical – all mad – highly entertaining and filled with a mutual respect for one another. How we managed this I’m not quite sure, but Georgia said to me at the end of the holiday aghast, ‘I thought at least someone would have a barney!’ No one particularly talked about work or politics and when they did someone would be good enough to shuffle the conversation along, to avoid any sparks turning into forest fires. Or maybe because there was a pandemic going on, there was less scrutiny or assurance given to such matters, they just didn’t seem important enough. We all felt grateful to be able to go away together with “more than friends” but “less complicated than family”.

    After the trip was over, I was telling my boyfriend’s father about it. He is a good listener, always nodding at the right tempo and reacting to titbits of my story. He has grey hair, a tall frame, and emanates those leadership qualities people long for in boardrooms. Halfway through my retelling of Porlock, something must have clicked in his brain and he began to delve into a memory of a good friend whom he had known since the Seventies. This friend is handsome, intelligent, a delight and on his fortieth birthday he hosted a big bash announcing to the world that this was his wedding day – because he would never marry! Champagne and confetti. The father chuckled, regretting not having more reunions like that when they had had the chance. He told me more about his friend who in the end did get married (a surprise to everyone who was at his birthday party), he had a daughter with his wife, but soon after they divorced… 

    While he told me this I was thinking in the back of my mind, ‘The 1970s is when Tarantino’s film was set; that’s when Patti Smith was getting famous; Joan Didion’s essays are about then.’ It struck me that when the father recounted things from his past, I conjured up a pastiche of different forms of media I had consumed. Famous photographs, movies and music, the nostalgia effect; and in turn, when one day I tell a younger person in the future about my holiday to Porlock, they will be reminded of something they saw once about a pandemic and a referendum; some protests and art.

    I felt then the future was slightly out of reach, my finger’s grasping at floating fresh threads. Everything was becoming and everything was remaining, all at the same time, the world was still and changing. When I am old my memories will be films to the young and their future, relics to someone else after them. I felt the world in a state of continuous flux, like the vivid landscape shimmering and the rolling waves pulsing – but the stars cut into the veil of eternity will outshine us. I let go of my breath and thanked the heavens because it made me feel at peace.

FEAR || The Creative Pandemic

I had a piece of writing feature in The Creative Pandemic titled FEAR, you can also read an earlier draft of it below. It's not very cheery; about the morose state of mind I found myself in when second lockdown was announced. 

FEAR 

I am afraid that this will last too long. 

Too long to be able to call what we once had normal. 

What if I refuse to adapt and live in denial; go in for hugs and be palmed off on to the pavement; what will they think? 

What on earth do they think? I think sadly to myself at home alone in my kitchen: nobody wants this so – what does that mean?

Eventually, we will become reckless and touch hands to face, to cough and splutter and inadvertently kill off the sick and elderly. How un-caring would that be, and could we live with ourselves after that kind of revolution?

I’m disgusted to even think of it and slam my glass down on the Ikea tabletop. I am not worse off, I’ve not been directly hit by this pandemic, so why am I sitting here being morose when there are people far worse off, dealing with poverty and a lack of space and being displaced. 

It puts me in an angry state, I feel caged in and helpless, I feel stupid and lethargic and incapable of doing anything good in the world. This whole thing makes me lose hope. 

I want to talk about the fear of not knowing. 

Not knowing whether what you are doing is right or wrong, or how you even feel about it in the grand scheme of things. People hope the government is doing the right thing, but of course they can’t be because no one knows what the hell to do, no one understands, there’s too much opposing data, too many questions that bring rise to more questions. 

Unlike a maths problem where there’s a cribsheet and fun to solve, the situation is forty thousand dead in eight months and the numbers are mounting. 

EXT. TREE LINED STREET - DAY

The diagnosis of covid is not black and white.

It’s much more complicated than what the public think.

Why aren’t we listening to the doctors who say that lockdown is going to cause more damage to public health than no lockdown?

Fatigue. That’s the big issue.

You mean post-viral fatigue syndrome?

No, the public’s feeling of fatigue.

 

INT. BASEMENT FLOOR KITCHEN - NIGHT

When was the last time you felt alive?

This very morning when I woke up alive and breathing, awake.

Is that what living is – being stuck in your locale, not communicating with society out of fear of infection? Is that really living?

When you put it like that, then no.

That’s what I’m talking about, man.

 

What if we learn to live small-y. Buy kittens, knead sourdough, prune plants and learn to forage mushrooms.

Get into home-schooling and cycle to work, get to know your neighbours and not rely on quick fixes to solve our mundane problems because we’re too poor to be click-baited all year round, out of season.

But what about the daters? 

I heard us couples became smug in our lockdown bubble o’ bliss. What about those of us who have to find a soul-mate, or someone to cuddle up to when the outside world seeps into your core. 

Penetrated by those desperate quiet stares of strangers sat across from you in train carriages, lips and softness smothered by a stretched piece of cloth. All you can do is swallow and hope that this will soon be over.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @thecreativepandemic