Somewhere in Della's consumptive, industrial wasteland of a city, a bomb
goes off. It is not the first, and will not be the last.
Reactions to the attacks are polarized. Police activity intensifies.
Della's revolutionary parents welcome the upheaval but are trapped
within their own insular beliefs. Her activist restaurant co-workers,
who would rather change their identities than the world around them,
resume a shallow rebellion of hair-dye, sex parties, and
self-absorption. As those bombs keep inching closer, thudding deep and
real between the sounds of katydids fluttering in the still of the city
night, and the destruction begins to excite her. What begins as terror
threats called in to greasy bro-bars across the block boils over into a
desperate plot, intoxicating and captivating Della and leaving her
little chance for escape.
Zazen unfolds as a search for clarity soured by irresolution and
catastrophe, yet made vital by the thin, wild veins of imagination run
through each escalating moment, tensing and relaxing, unfurling and
ensnaring. Vanessa Veselka renders Della and her world with beautiful,
freighting, and phantasmagorically intelligent accuracy, crafting from
their shattered constitutions a perversely perfect mirror for our own
selves and state.
