THE POINTED CIRCLE: ISSUE 40
Letter from the Editors
This issue of Pointed Circle is, as they all are, significantâhistorically and otherwise. We are celebrating the longevity of 40 years in print. This fortieth edition is a creation born from an intimate team and compact time frame. When our editorial crew came together to discuss what we wanted this historical issue to beâwhat we wanted to captureâwe were all over the board, quite literally: our ideas were scrawled and splattered across the length of a 30-foot white board, spelling out every chaotic thought buzzing through our brains:
Transition, Rebirth, Spring, Burning flowers,
Dumpster fire, Riot cops, Fentanyl, Revolution
We thought about our city, in flux between public perception from afar (itâs burning! itâs anarchy! itâs all over for us!) and the reality on the ground (these apartments are unaffordable! this brunch is unaffordable! these cherry blossoms still bloom, despite clouds of toxic gasses!). This city, and us as editors, all exist in the contrast between these dueling realities. We tried to capture this juxtaposition in the journal, both in the visual art and in the written work we gathered from a collection of truly talented people. To quote the brilliant sci-fi writer Octavia Butler, âIf you work hard enough at something that doesnât matter, you can forget for a while about the things that doâ (âThe Evening and the Morning and the Nightâ). Luckily for us at Pointed Circle, this âthingâ we have been working at so hard for the last two months matters to us a lot. In a world where awful things exist, we have used hopelessness and fear to drive us instead toward community, learning, vulnerability, listening, and growing. This is not to say we arenât hindered by cynicism at times; itâs just that we donât let it defeat us. We choose art and storytelling, and at the sake of sounding ridiculously cornyâwe choose love. We hope to inspire others to choose the same.
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