ARCHIPELAGO 2017-2018
TIME PASSES !1
Editors’ Notes Every year, without fail, a new theme brings about a smattering of art, writing, and creativity that breathes colour into the magazine’s pages. The endeavours of the contributing students feature not only within the magazine, but throughout the events in the school year.
poetry, art and writing were so high and I was so excited every time a new submission made its way into my inbox. And thanks must also go to the ONLS who took time out of their busy schedule to write for this magazine. These ONLS were writers, editors, and members of the Archipelago Society in the past, and I could only hope to fulfil the high standards they had set before me.
Time passing is a truth that will always follow us. Time passing happens too swiftly for some, and too sluggishly for others. The fleeing moments can be precious or of little importance. We choose to look back at certain moments with either rose-tinted fondness, sadness, or cool neutrality. Time passing may be a cause for sorrow for some, but it can also be a cause for hope. The human interpretation for time is ceaseless and boundless, evident by the scores of literary work, art, and philosophy dedicated throughout the centuries. Having the pleasure of witnessing the submissions we’ve received for the magazine, I can say that the breadth of imagination, creativity and finesse of our writers are just as ceaseless and boundless. There are too many thanks in order.
Great thanks also go to the students and writers of NLCS Jeju. It was a true pleasure to liaise you by email, and your submissions were beautiful to see. The idea of a collaboration with NLCS Jeju for the magazine was born 2 years ago, and every year the submissions have brought different colour and perspective into these pages. My final thanks go to the Archipelago Society itself for supporting me, and to Dr Roberts for his enthusiasm, initiative, and guidance. Without them, this magazine would not be possible, as they work tirelessly behind the scenes. As such, thank you. I am honoured to have worked with such inspiring people.
Firstly my thanks go to the writers of NLCS London. I was amazed by the range of submissions we’ve received from all ages, and the creative interpretations of the theme. The standards of
To the readers: I sincerely hope you will enjoy this magazine. Lun Zhu Editor 2017-2018
It is a fine thing to find myself writing for another edition of Archipelago. Like last year’s magazine, this edition brings together work from five constituencies: the staff and pupils of NLCS London; the staff and pupils of NLCS Jeju; and ONLs (in this case including one of the founders of Archipelago, Rebecca Marks). The magazine is better for this diversity: one of the animating principles of Archipelago since its inception has been that different points of view should be shared. The inclusion of different kinds of art and different kinds of writing about it has always been representative of this. This is the first edition of Archipelago to be published online, a development which, it is hoped, will open Archipelago to a wider readership while decreasing its effects on the environment. I look forward to seeing what innovations next year’s committee will make. My thanks go to this year’s committee and especially to the editor, Lun Zhu, for their work in bringing this together. Dr G.Roberts
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Such a rich variety of creative interpretations colour this edition of Archipelago, the publication of which has been made possible both by the school community’s wealth of talent, and the dedicated work of the 2017-2018 Society. Archipelago’s aim of bridging the arts makes this a truly unique magazine, and so I am greatly looking forward to taking on the role of editor. Kate Greenburg Successive Editor for 2018-2019
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. An extract from the first stanza of “Burnt Norton” by T. S. Eliot
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Contents
Essays:
‘La Cathedral de Rouen: A Word on the Cover’ by Lun Zhu “Countdown” by Kat Zaichenko
Pg 5 P5 6
Poetry:
“Cycling in Japan” by Kate Greenberg “The Passage of Thyme” by Ananya Basu “No Sense of an Ending” by Becky McMahon
Pg 7 Pg 8 Pg 9
Essays:
“Walls and Floors are Nothing Without Doors” by Eliza Marovitz “Coast” by Aaska Banthiya “Miss Havisham” by Kaitlyn Chan “Time Passes: Post-Colonial Colonialism” by Kam Dhaliwal “Kazuo Ishiguro: The Nobel Prize for Literature” by Jungmin Seo
Pg 10 Pg 11 Pg 12 Pg 15 Pg 16
Poetry:
“Time Passes” by Kam Dhaliwal “Search for My Tongue” by Sujata Bhatt “Time Passes” by Maia Dixit “Payday Passion” by Ananya Basu “Air Hockey” by Charvi Jain
Pg 18 Pg 18 Pg 19 Pg 19 Pg 20
NLCS Jeju:
“Time” by Kyuri Kim "A Walk Down Memory Lane” by Seoyoon Elysia Bae “Friendly Change” by Yeonjoo Son Artwork by: Ivy Park, Hyunseo Noh, Ellie Koo, Glory Choi, Yaejun Yoon
Essays:
Pg 22 Pg 23 Pg 25
“Enlightening The Dark Abyss of Time” by Dr G.Roberts “Since We Were 3” by Mia Borgese “The Butterfly Effect” by Alexandra Morgan “Time Capsules from the Archives” by Lindsey Ingate
Pg 28 Pg 32 Pg 35 Pg 37
Poetry:
Pg 38 Pg 38 Pg 39 Pg 40
“Tutankhamun” by Patrick Gray “It’s Too Late” by Livia Parker “Time The Ruler” by Karel Ohana “The Other Tattooist of Auschwitz” by Kate Greenberg
Essays:
“Anything but Shortsighted” by Mr D. James-Williams “Time Pauses” by Rebecca Marks
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Pg 41 Pg 42
La Cathedral de Rouen: A Word on the Cover Rouen Cathedral in France is an impressive sight in photographs, and even more impressive in life. A Roman Catholic church built in the 4th century, it is a monument to Gothic architecture and time. This building has been burned down, ransacked by Calvinists in the 16th century, endured the fury of hurricanes and storms, struck by lightning, and bombed by the British and Americans during World War 2. This church has had William the Conquerer walk upon its floors, and French kings had been baptised and buried there. Today its delicate black spires still pierce the sky defiantly, and the stone sculptures still stand beautiful, proud and cold. The front cover of this magazine was one of the thirty pieces of art painted by Claude Monet in the 1890s, a series named “La Cathedral de Rouen”. Each of the thirty paintings captures the way light falls upon the cathedral at different times of the day and year. Whether it be the soft light of morning that so gently burns through the shrouding mist at dawn in spring, or the deep cloudless blue of a summer’s afternoon, or the lily-orange of a descending sunset weaving a lovely tapestry of colour upon the walls. To paint all of this, to make the days blur to mere paintstrokes, to immortalise time upon a canvas, Monet was possessed by a fierce and unwavering determination. He rented lodgings on the street across the cathedral and painted the same subject over and over for the course of a year. It was a challenging task, even for Monet, as the ever-shifting and swiftly changing nature of light and time seemed to elude even the most skilled of hands. Michael Howard in the Encyclopaedia of Impressionism writes on Monet: ‘As always, the pictures gave him intense difficulties, which threw him into despair. He had vivid nightmares of the cathedral in various colours – pink, blue and yellow – falling upon him…’
Rouen Cathedral-Setting Sun (Symphony in Grey and Pink)
Rouen Cathedral-Full Sunlight
Rouen Cathedral-West Facade Sunlight
With Monet himself writing: ‘Things don’t advance very steadily, primarily because each day I discover something I hadn’t seen the day before… In the end, I am trying to do the impossible.’
Rouen CathedralFacade 1 (Dawn)
Rouen CathedralMorning Sun (Harmony in Blue)
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Rouen Cathedral-Effet du Matin (Harmony in White)
To us, Monet succeeded in producing beautiful works of the cathedral. The canvas of these paintings are no doubt encrusted with layers of paint upon each other, each a testament to his efforts in trying to capture the light before time snatched it away. To me, Monet’s frustrations are echoed in us from time to time, when we too try to chase after something that dangles so teasingly from the fingertips of time. Lun Zhu
Countdown
The dominant subject of the art piece is a skull - a universally recognised symbol of mortality. Shakespeare used Yorick’s skull as a vehicle for Hamlet to explore death. Pirate ships are imagined bearing a skull and crossed bones as a flag to inspire fear. Dutch Vanitas masters in the 16th century used a skull to suggest the inevitability of mortality. Today, the scientific symbol of toxic substances is a skull. I have used the skull for similar purposes. The use of chiaroscuro to highlight some parts of the skull and obscure others suggests the mystery that surrounds mortality. It is the penultimate question of existence – what is death like? After all, every creature in existence faced, faces or will face death so it is only natural to be curious. The choice of using a calendar for the surface was inspired by the theme of ‘Time Passing’. Each individual day of the month is displayed, though some fall victim to the obscurity of paint. It is important to link the idea of time with death as a reminder of it’s inevitability. Rather than interpreting the piece as a depressing imagery, the viewer is encouraged to take it as a reminder to enjoy life’s pursuits and joys while they have them. It is a prompt to value what you have. Kat Zaichenko
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Poetry
Cycling in Japan And sakura sighed. Pink breaths pricking the wind passed by like slow-waltzing bullets, which were tangling up branches with the stars. A glorious tower of bluebell: rosy windows to celestial bodies and corpses. A heap of lilac parasols, girlishly giggling under the amber hum. The sky fiddled and fumbled with giant fingers. Braiding streams through the banks of bark stitching blushes into snow-crisp cheek sewing a little boy into the stomach of its grains. Consequently, he grew. He grated the sun and slashed the spring into his hand. So that magnolias blew up on his metacarpals, so that fuchsia glossed his fingernails, so that the soil slept in his skin. Gleeful birds pecking at his skull and stringing it into a weave, cradling it into a nest. and out flew the chicks, whose wings were sewn by his wisdom and whose beaks were carved from his brain: a ribbony rush of blossom unblossomed which seamed, like some electric cable, foetal apathy to wrinkled knowing, known, none. Unborn sons were peeled from up, and down, unfurled, and pressed into the arms and legs and collarbone crooked a thousand perfumed petals, a thousand reminding slaps: “Remember the planes, those jars of pickled justice. Remember the year when the marching band of blossom fell late, soaring in hazy hate but scarring in sharpest lines of self.� Lulled, dulled into sleep: pollen welded into bone and bone into breath. It fell in their palms where they found, a little boy man, flora, fungi. Kate Greenberg
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Poetry
The Passage of Thyme A strange affliction plagues my palette; I dare not take a risk— I break out in hives when nearing Chives and Parsley purses my lips. It would not be Sage to take my fill of Dill or Caraway, Tarra-be-gone, please no Anise, to Bay I say “Good day!” It would not be a Caper to chance Cumin, and fever is a hint that Ginger will linger, green-faced from Mace, please keep off the Mint! Lavender, Rosemary, Mustard, Lemongrass—these colours I cannot taste, Clary constricts, Basil bothers my belly, Fennel funnels my breath away. My digestive system fails, it’s true, when my bowels each herb outclasses, But there is one exception to this rule: In the end, Thyme passes. Ananya Basu
‘An Allegory on the Illusion of Time’ By Paul Bond
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Poetry
No Sense of an Ending The easiest place, to begin, is the base - or is it? (Eyes met, lingered, then sauntered off. Stark. Where are the fates?) Opaqueness, binds it (us) together, perhaps deep sea green (a bit, but not much, like your eyes) (You see it all like bluesy smoke-room accordion, voices in a church hall. I see the rows of seats, each leather-backed, each dark red, each drenched in summer’s adhesive. Sticky thighs) Dark red could work. Horse hair basking in liquid glory, (caressing and stroking) the canvas reverently. It is half past (Two months were more than enough We glided formlessly, every route had the same destination Journeys meshed together) A burgundy hue Skin freckled with pores, poured with freckles, it was hard not to overwork the crescents sunken below the eyes: Purple and green (Lying awake listening to the drumroll of your chest) (Every day stitched in golden thread. A tapestry of warm laughter and back scratches) Flecks of watery whiteness rolling down the brow, collecting in a silvery pool on the tip of your nose. Capillaries etched around it, cats cradle (The feeling of construction with each hour passed A project, a mission, a polar expedition I jumped onto your back and we trekked there My blanket was trailing on the ground and I think I dozed off at some point) Oh, but it was finished and harmony was ubiquitous That orchestral silence, where the violins are behind your pupils, if you look very closely A glowing slab, a sacred tablet One wishes, from time to time, to be able to look at the finished product, extend your finger and have its doll-sized hand grip it in solidarity with your cause, to hear its first cry (Cries don’t just erupt like that, they teeter on the surface, and then fall in lugubriously. Imagine crying molten pebbles, I didn’t need to. And no one should deny that each thing is true, and part of the fabric of life. I did.) Who would sneak into the living room when we were in slumber, and set the canvas alight? Black and brown curled together Coalesced, the pool was drained, and dripped down charcoal ravines We awoke to a blasphemous smell. (With no cruel precision, but naive swiftness, someone was unpicking our tapestry. Threads hung loose, arteries were bled dry. We faded) and it was lost. Becky McMahon
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Short Story
Walls and Floors are Nothing Without Doors The room had been faded by the summer sun. White floorboards bore the yellowed rectangular shape of the now absent flat weave carpet. The bed was still there, or at least its frame, straight ribs of metal linked together by rusting screws pushed into the corner. She ran her hand across the bed’s cold metal edge, reminiscing over anxious sleep and dog-eared paperbacks. There were so many books, worn by restless fingers with circular coffee cup stains on the cover. They were still stacked chaotically against every corner of the room, some pushed under the bed and all collecting dust. She imagined her daydreams as a little girl stretching over the cracks in the wooden floor and weaving around the door frame. They stopped before the corridor outside, arching and breaking so as to avoid leaving the room that contained them. Then they disappeared. The bare walls and the sun-bleached floors blurred into a gentle white as tears welled in her eyes. They fell, snail-trailing down her cheek. She rubbed the salty water away until her skin was raw. ~~~ When the train passed every half hour the house shuddered, and the plates rattled in the cabinet. At first, he paced manically, back and forth from the window. Each time, he looked out as he approached it. He focused past the telephone wires that divided the landscape of beige suburbia, the tracks, and a blank, white sky. After four trains passing he attempted to settle himself on the couch. After pouring himself a drink, he sat completely motionless, counting the minutes in his head. Still, the train passing by was a reminder that she hadn’t come home. He counted. One to sixty, that’s one minute, one, two, three. Over and over until the train came, like clockwork. Just as he got to 30, the liquid in his hand began to shake against the sides of the glass and the plates rattled against the cabinet. The doorbell rang. He opens the door immediately. She follows the buttons of his shirt with her eyes to where fabric has bunched at his neck from doing it up wrong. He looks bad. Well, not bad, he’s beautiful, but he looks concerned. “I’m sorry”, she says,” I didn’t mean to stay away for that long”, as the memory of white walls streaks through her. Her face is still cold from being outside when he tenderly wipes away the smudged eye makeup from her cheek. He leads her into the room. As the front door shuts, he fails to hear the next train coming down the tracks. Eliza Marovitz
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Essay Piece
Coast There was something about the coast I couldn’t quite place my finger on. The transitional zone between land and sea, it seemed almost alien, separate from the rest of the world, bearing its own species of salt-crusted, rust-lipped cars, pastel buildings with foundations gilded in seaweed and a brown muck that came from the sea. And of course, in the corner, at the edge of the cove, the now empty restaurant. With its frosted smokescreen and peeling wallpaper. Folds of smoke smelling like seabass would rise from its chimney; it was once filled with jostling and restless teenage waitresses trying to make money over the summer, trying save up for something that wouldn’t even matter in the end. The rotting bench outside was surfaced by hollows where the insects had eaten the wood, where children would sit, licking flavoured ice, the sugary water melting and drying on their cheeks. It was sad to see all of it still, a reminder forever that all good things must end, but I didn’t care so much. It scared me, in the back of my mind, the coast. It seemed so strange that one minute there would be the safety of the warm land, playing in the lapping, foaming waves, the next the danger of the sea, of disappearing under an ominous blanket of water and never coming up. I always thought that that would be the worst way to die. Resisting ferociously using every ounce of strength and grit you had in you, until you sunk and the water pushed your lips apart and ran down you into your lungs, filling them up. Better still they say than how everyone in the town died in the war. Blasted by a bomb or pelted by gunfire in the field if they went to fight. I will always feel guilty that I got to leave; never will it be fair to me that other people stayed behind to do their jobs while I got to escape. I can’t believe people didn’t realise through all of it. Our enemy is whoever tries to kill us, not any one country, but the people who make us fly planes so that we die before we deserve to. Even when there isn’t much left to live for, like fools, like children, we will submit to the wisp of hope that is still inside us. We strive to grasp it; we will do anything, we will fly the planes and run across the fields, in hope of an escape, hoping to return to our perception of safety once more. So, it is sad, how there is nobody cooking in the restaurant in the corner of the cove, or waitressing and saving money over the summer, just the sun and moon, beating down on the ever-flowing waves that come and go. Aaska Banthiya
The very famous “Persistence of Memory” By Salvador Dali
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Short Story
Miss Havisham I did not quite know why I asked a boy to come. Estella was enough, the only one left to stay by my side. But she tired of this lonely lifestyle – Estella reminded me of myself, full of myself, looking at the world as if it all rested on the palm of my hand. How naïve I was. It was a beautiful day, the day I met him, radiant in the fresh morning air. He had a princely air to him, even as he knelt, solemnly asking for “just a penny, please”. He shone to me, and for weeks I peered at him from my morning walk, deigning him a glance once or twice. But his sheer presence was like nectar, making me greedy for more and more, and I could not stand it when any young lady came within a few steps of him. I was forever torn between my need for him, and my absolute fear that my approaching may scare him off. I was so young back then. I came up to him, day after day, offering him more and more. I hated how other people looked a him like he was trash, even the filthy beggars across the street. Soon enough, I knew I loved him. It was a passionate love, and though we had never spoken, nothing more than grateful thank yous and mumbled good mornings, I knew him. I knew he would talk to me kindly, treat me like a princess, orbit me as though I was his everything. So I began to speak, beginning with a simple ‘how are you?’. The sun shone that day, I remember, and it was bright, pavestones glittering, shining slightly with fresh dew, the coins I placed on his strong hands sparkling like rays of hope. From there, we talked and talked every morning. And on a terrifying, stormy day, he kissed me. A chaste kiss, nothing more, but enough to show me his passion as he held me tight, the rain splashing as the drops drummed against the small green canopy, a rhythm repeated with our fluttering hearts. Everything was right in that moment. A month later, we were to get married. It did not matter to me that he was poor or that my family would consider me a disgrace. It was to be perfect, and I spent what felt like years to find the perfect jewels, the perfect dress, and the most ravishing shoes. I had no warning of the events that were to pass. As I was pulling on the dress in my dressing room, the walls almost too far apart and the room too big, news came. A message from my parents, enclosing a sum of money, the keys to the house I was in and a note warning me never to speak to them again. I had expected it to be thus, but the small pang in my heart refused to clear, as though someone had pricked the organ with a needle. A falter in the jubilant music of my soul. But I thought to myself that it could not be worse, correct? Moments later, as I was pulling one of my beautiful, pure white shoes on, the clock at twenty minutes to nine, my groom-to-be strode in, hunched over slightly, a nervous sight. These were simply effects of his old life, I thought, not anything large. But when he opened his mouth to speak, and then quietly left, my mind was changed. “I don’t love you, and I never will, Havisham.” The resounding silence was so thick I could hear my heart shatter. It was like glass, the reflection of who I am shattered completely in a single instant. I caked a servant to stop all the clocks, and the horrendous ticking that emphasized my hollow breast, and I could not even comprehend what had happened. I stayed right here, half dressed, for years. I was convinced that he would return, stroke my hair – thought he never did – and tell me it was a lie. I sat there and decayed. How naïve I was, trusting in a low life like him. My niece, Estella, came to stay with me, and I sat and taught her the rules that now govern me. To never trust suck lowlifes, to always stay above them. So high they could never drag you down.
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Perhaps I was lonely, or bored of Estella. Perhaps I thought Estella needed to practice talking. But I called for a boy and I was brought one. I later found he was coerced into this by a simple relative, someone who was nowhere close to my rank, a filthy man, corrupted by the world. I can only pray Estella will not grow to be so naïve.
Kaitlyn Chan
“The Assembly of Gods Around” By Giulio Romano
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"Time for me, is something like water. Water erodes, destroys the form while building new ones. Like the rain, time is cyclic, so in my drawings there is a double reading, one from left to right and the other from right to left. The characters seem dominated by water movement, while resurfacing. That's my perception of time, different from yours and vice versa." - Patricia March
By Patricia March
Antonio de Pereda, “Allegory of Vanity”
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Essay Piece
Time Passes: Post-Colonial Colonialism One would have hoped that with the collapse of colonialism and the exposure of its abominations and horrors, attitudes would have changed with regard to the respect to be accorded to any person, regardless of their racial origin. However, being a British ‘person of colour’, as is apparently the current fashionable phrase to be attributed to a person whose assumed race, it appears, must be categorized to suit the sensibilities of ‘people not of colour’, the voices of those who are the product of tyrannical colonialism will not be silenced. Their aching for their culture, language, faith and humanity reverberates through poetry, the oldest, and perhaps most exquisite, form of literature. For example, the dishonor of a nation of so many who had so little with the colonization of India cannot be forgotten by its future generations throughout the Indian diaspora. Proof of this is witnessed in the poetry of post-colonial Indian English poetry in which the tearing out of the Indian tongue is symbolic of the indignity heaped upon a people abused for ‘having colour’, for having a different language, for the love of their culture. Time passes but memories linger. Kam Dhaliwal
“A Dance to the Music of Time” By Nicolas Poussin
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Essay Piece
Kazuo Ishiguro: the Nobel Prize for Literature I still can’t quite believe that Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on 5th October 2017. I specifically take note of this date because of a timely coincidence. I had delivered my Extended Project Qualification presentation on ‘To what extent does Ishiguro’s Japanese heritage influence his writing’ only the day before the announcement, in which I began with the question: “How many of you have heard of Kazuo Ishiguro?” If I had given the speech, say, on the 6th of October, that question would hardly have been necessary. Ishiguro moves fluidly between genres, from crime fiction in When We Were Orphans to fantasy in The Buried Giant, whilst persistently exploring the fallibility of memory. I would argue that his thematic consistency creates a voice that is deserving of the Prize. However, considering that I am rather biased towards Ishiguro, I do not think that I am in a position to explain the decision of the Swedish Academy. Having spent much of Year 12 immersing myself in Ishiguro’s novels, and trying to make sense of his reticent yet evocative prose, my admiration for his writing has only grown. I harnessed my EPQ around the question of his cultural duality, which stemmed partly from a belief that, despite the stereotypically British setting of his most acclaimed novel, The Remains of the Day, there was a trace of something inherently ‘Japanese’ in the characterization of Stevens, the obsessively professional and emotionally awkward butler. Moreover, his other novels, which include A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, and The Buried Giant, are all preoccupied with the themes of self-deception and the conflict between memory and reality. My initial thesis tried to explain this by considering Japanese culture, but once I realised that this approach was rather inhibiting, I delved deeper into the writing itself, and tried to place it in the wider context of nineteenth-century European novels. Although I have now ‘finished’ the EPQ, I continue to ponder over the issues that my extended essay left incomplete – or rather, was obliged to ignore. I have been warned on countless occasions about the danger of relying on autobiography in literature. Indeed, if we allow the author’s personal background to dominate an interpretation, we would miss the subtleties of the text. However, I was and still am fascinated by Ishiguro’s unique Japanese-British profile. Every newspaper article on Ishiguro mentions the fact that he was born in Nagasaki in 1954, but moved to Guilford at the age of five. Interestingly, the family’s intention had always been to “leave for Japan the following year”, so he never felt the need to ‘become’ an Englishman. Despite this, the recorded interviews from earlier in Ishiguro’s career clearly demonstrate that he wanted to distance himself from his Japanese heritage. For example, in a February 1982 episode of The Meridian hosted by Mike Philips, Ishiguro asserted that A Pale View of Hills, the narrative of a widow reminiscing on her brief friendship with an enigmatic lady in Nagasaki, was “not about the Japaneseness of people,” and quite stubbornly countered the interviewer’s claim that “it is clear that the novel is written by a Japanese.” However, on 7 December 2017, while listening to Ishiguro’s Nobel Prize Acceptance speech, I witnessed a significant shift in his attitude. From the very opening, he admitted quite candidly that in the autumn of 1979, “Had you mentioned Japan, asked me about its culture, you might even have detected a trace of impatience enter my manner.” He then introduced the concept of an “urgent act of preservation,” which he later explained as a “wish to re-build my Japan in fiction, to make it safe, so that I could thereafter point to a book and say: 'Yes, there's my Japan, inside there.’” His previous reservations in regard to his Japanese heritage seemed to
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have dissipated – he even explicitly confirmed that “I'm now sure that it was this feeling … that drove me on to work [on A Pale View of Hills] in that small room in Norfolk.” That single adverb of time – “now” – means so much to me. Time passes for all of us, but amidst my research, I had somehow forgotten that it also does for Ishiguro. I may have stumbled upon the 1982 Meridian interview in the winter of 2016, but that was something that Ishiguro had recorded when he was 28. What I am essentially trying to explain is that while Ishiguro spent his 30 year literary career trying to make sense of his attachment to and alienation from Japan, I had the opportunity to absorb his profound reflections on dual-heritage identity over a compressed period of time – something closer to a year. Ishiguro ends his Nobel Lecture with “I give my thanks”; I can only express my gratitude for him with the same words. Jungmin Seo
“When Vandals Entered Rome” By Karl Briullov
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Poetry
Time Passes Suffocated. Time will pass. Humiliated A future of hope Diminishment Forecast flourishment. Belittled Bear no ill will. Torn down destructively By a barrage Of cutting criticisms Daggers of disparagement Lashings of non-literary utterances. Unstoppable. Interspersed tirades of typed deprecating discourtesy. Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Time passes. Be thankful, time passed
Search for My Tongue
Kam Dhaliwal
You ask me what I mean by saying I have lost my tongue. I ask you, what would you do if you had two tongues in your mouth, and lost the first one, the mother tongue, and could not really know the other, the foreign tongue. You could not use them both together even if you thought that way. And if you lived in a place you had to speak a foreign tongue, your mother tongue would rot, rot and die in your mouth until you had to spit it out. I thought I spit it out but overnight while I dream, it grows back, a stump of a shoot grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins, it ties the other tongue in knots, the bud opens, the bud opens in my mouth, it pushes the other tongue aside. Everytime I think I’ve forgotten, I think I’ve lost the mother tongue, it blossoms out of my mouth.
“Kronos Carrying Time” By Irene D.M
Sujata Bhatt
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Poetry
Time Passes In the Spring we used to leap and twirl and spin in the seas, we used to cartwheel amongst the daisies and climb the highest trees
When the blossom turns to flowers and the sun rose higher and higher, we would sit in our floppy hats and dungarees, roasting marshmallows by the fire. But then the days grew shorter and our friendship started to break and snap carelessly as a twig thrown into the crackling fire. And suddenly you were ‘too cool’ for me with your oversized sweaters and ripped jeans. And this one between us, which used to be warm and glow is now cold. As cold as one of the snowflakes falling in my wintry dreams.
“Harbingers of a Vanishing World” By Paul Bond
Maia Dixit
Payday Passion Her love will last as long as the stars, the sky and the queue of cars on the A4 at 8:05 but she wants to measure with a piece of string his commitment; a plastic ring that sings will do, because the string is a chain with keys to villas in Spain, golf clubs and Ferraris he cannot ever drive, because Valentine’s a car park machine eating change, and with his salary there’s a limit to Bay E and a short-stay ticket, so, for her, a brief pause is all the love that he can afford. Ananya Basu
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Poetry
Air Hockey The growing buzz of idle chatter, slot machines clicking, punctuated by the occasional Dammit, man, I almost had it! Ice cubes pressed up against hot lips, sweaty palms on glossed wood counters, their owners following pitifully behind staggering up with sheepish smiles. Barkeep, hit me! Three nil to you, but we both know you cheated, we both know who’s calling you at night. Lights flash like thousands of disco balls set off spinning in my mind. Metallic music, me at six years old, Mother propping me upright, saying, Sort yourself out, Ashleigh, Nobody likes a crybaby. Three - one. Redemption on my mind, heat on my tongue in my veins like thick gummy worms. Mummy, I feel sick. It’s your fault, stupid girl, you shouldn’t have eaten all those sweets. Squirming. Three-two - what was that you said last week? That this dress makes me look fat, that I never put the car keys back in the right drawer. We both know you move them. Three-all. Your lips lie to me from millimetres away saying Ash, we’ll get through this together, I’m here for you. I’m sorry I get angry sometimes, I really am, and I can smell the sickening scent of drugstore lipgloss on your mouth that I do not own. Three-four. Three-five. Three-six! The lights are spinning faster, and there it is in your eyes: that hunger, that need to hide your Rolex watches and claim that I’m so irresponsible, stupid. Do I not understand the value of money?
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Poetry It’s time I learnt my lesson, you’re not going to take care of me forever. But really, did you ever? Three-seven. Game over. Charvi Jain
“Measure of Time” By Samuel Bak
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From NLCS Jeju…
Time Without an eye stalking its course How Fast will clock hands go Simply will the time flow In Rumpled space Growth of a star Speed of her light Travelling afar. But mockingly will we change its trail, Make brain-thick tendrils frail. How Ticks never have a scheme Complex each second seems How Oft we forget the stress Having clocks of vibrant theme: Melting of a comet Birth of a star A baby’s cry Pinch of bitter Spoonful of delight Grief by a tombstone Deluge, and a scar. As the eyes indulge in the sky Posing wisps mark seconds gone by. Azure is this sky of mine Vermillion tomorrow, Grey tonight.
By Glory Choi (NLCS Jeju)
Kyuri Kim
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NLCS Jeju
A Walk Down Memory Lane It all started when we were ten. I discovered that the passionate feelings I had for you wasn’t just a hallucination. What I had was real. Being young, I kept it as a secret. Hoping one day, you would feel the same way. For years I’ve wished on shooting stars, wanting to tell you about my sentiments instead of the stars. Nine years, I’ve done my waiting. I was afraid that if I waited any longer, I would lose the courage that I had built up for so long. When I finally spoke, you had a smile on your face - a smile that I knew would light up even my darkest nights. There was no way that I was going to let you go. You called me and told me you would pick me up at eight. You won’t believe how excited I was. I wanted to impress you, and I still remember having to hike in high heels. You laughed as we went up and offered to carry me up the mountains. There were hard times - like when your mother had to undergo her seventh surgery - then, in the end, passed away. Watching tears fall from your face, I secretly promised that I would always be there. Six unanswered calls. I couldn’t understand. I was there when you needed me, and now I was all alone when I required a shoulder to cry on. When you said you had things to do, I believed you. We fought more than I can remember. But five times, you left me deserted in the place we once confessed our love to each other. Have you forgotten? The truth is, throughout the four months you and I have been together, it felt like we were walking down different paths. There were three words I yearned to hear from you, but now I’m scared that another three words will hurt me. They said when you love someone, it seems like there’s only two of us in the whole world. I thought you and I became one. Your heart had beaten in time with mine. Then I realised there was none at all. In the blues, a helping hand come for me. It reaches out to me in the dark. We waltz together; the darkness seems to fade away and is replaced by golden glows. You don’t hesitate to say those three words. As you whisper it to me, I can feel them being engraved in my heart. Four weeks pass and I feel like a new person. Chains made of the memories of my past lover had let me go. Now nothing is stopping me. People tell us that it’ll be hard. We both experienced the bitter end of love and they think that there is no way to get us to love again. Few wounds won’t get the best of us. They are wrong. We cope better because of that. Whether we are six-year-olds or sixty, we trust each other and rely on one another. There is nothing that can break apart what we have. Seven is a number that symbolises perfection, safety and heavenly aspects. If so, my love can be represented by the number seven because it’s perfect and keeps me secure. It may be a gift from Heaven.
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It’s eight in the morning. I wake up with scruffy hair and pyjamas on. When I see you standing in the doorway, I run and hide. I only come out when you tell me that I always look beautiful - even when I’m not trying. There are only nine days left before our wedding. It’s so close, yet a vast gap exists between now and the time we are officially together. My heart feels like it’s going to burst. The thought of us bonding for eternity makes me ecstatic. You take me to see the stars at night. Away from the city lights to see the glowing crystals sewn into the sky. Our eyes meet, we get lost in each other’s eyes. Ten seconds. That’s all it takes. It’s long enough to make us realise once again: we are in love. True love. Seoyoon Elysia Bae
By Jiyun Kang (NLCS Jeju)
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NLCS Jeju


By Ivy Park (NLCS Jeju)
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By Isabella Park (NLCS Jeju)
Friendly Change
Before now, I thought I was a baby Everyone just called me so I just believed it with no other suspects. But, now I figured out that I’m a baby. One day I asked my mom “Mom, am I a baby?” Mom replied with a little concern “Absolutely, you are my baby. You’re always a baby to me.” “Always?” I asked. She replied, “Yes always.” Now I became an adult. I had to make a decision on my own. I had to be responsible for all of the things that I’ve done. The other day, I questioned my mom “Mom, am I still a baby?” Mom replied without a moment’s of hesitation “Yes, you’re my baby. You’ll be always my adorable baby to me” “To you?” I asked She said “Yes to me, of-course” Today, I have more new family members. I had been a son, and became a husband and now a father. All of these changes brought tons and tons of obligations. This very day, I visited my mom “Mom am I your dear one?” It was no answer to come back to me I said, “Mom do you know what?” Paused, and spoke “You were my number one pride, love, best mom, wife and daughter. To my precious families, friends all over the countries; let’s live happily ever after in this blessed country you’re living in. Yeonjoo Son
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NLCS Jeju 

By Hyunseo Noh and Ellie Koo (NLCS Jeju)
By Glory Choi (NLCS Jeju)
By Sarah Kim (NLCS Jeju)
By Debbie Lee (NLCS Jeju)
By Yaejun Yun (NLCS Jeju)
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Enlightening the Dark Abyss of Time In the minds of medieval and early modern Europeans, history was a closely bounded thing. In one direction, it stretched as far as the creation of the world, as described in the opening chapters of the Genesis, which was reckoned to have occurred only a few thousand years before the present. In the other, it stretched to the second coming of Christ and the Last Judgement, when the world would end and only heaven and hell would be left. This too was reckoned to be close. In the sixteenth century, many critics of the Catholic Church saw the Reformation (the schism which gave birth to various Protestant and Reformed Churches) as the end of the thousand-year reign of antichrist described in the Book of Revelation, which was thought to herald the end of time. There was also a widely-held view, based on prophecies in the Book of Daniel, that the world would end after the last of four empires—identified by early modern scholars as the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman. Since only the last of these was in existence (the Holy Roman Empire being believed to be the continuation of the Roman one), the end of the world could not be far off. The idea that time was coextensive with human history could be encountered almost everywhere in the period. In medieval England, mystery plays were performed at religious festivals like Easter, depicting the whole course of time, beginning with the creation, moving through the life of Christ, and ending with the Last Judgement. In churches across Europe, Doom Paintings allowed worshippers to contemplate what the Last Judgement would look like. And fine artists presented the same idea. In his masterpiece, The Battle of Alexander at Issus, the sixteenth-century German artist Albrecht Altdorfer depicted the moment in 333BC when the balance of power shifted between the Persian and Greek Empires. This was, in the effect, the middle point of history. This view of time changed as a result of the Enlightenment—the gradual deepening of scepticism about traditional religious authorities which began in Britain and the Dutch Republic and made its way across Europe between the late seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries. In many ways, the Enlightenment was in many ways the child of the Reformation: though some of its central figures were hostile to religion per se, many were not; instead, they sought either to base whatever version of Christianity which they subscribed to on firm foundations or reconcile Christianity with the new discoveries of researchers. These efforts had unintended sceptical consequences, and two fields were particularly important: historical scholarship and natural philosophy, the latter of which is now known as science. Both reshaped how people thought about time. On the historical side, there were problems with the Bible. The Old Testament gave the ages at which figures from Adam onwards fathered their children (so that the ages could be added up to provide a date for the creation relative to later biblical events) and referred to events which could be dated relative to the present using other historical sources. By combining these sources, the creation could be dated relative to the present. There were different versions of the Bible to choose from, though, and none of them was unproblematic. The Masoretic text (the Hebrew version of the Bible) allowed a dating of the creation to 1656 years before Noah’s flood, but there were inconsistencies about the ages of figures in Genesis and ambiguities about how years were calculated in ancient Hebrew calendars. The Septuagint (the Greek version of the Bible), on the other hand, was more internally consistent. There the figures in Genesis were recorded as having had longer lives, so that an earlier date could be reckoned for the creation (6pm on Saturday 22nd October 4004 BC, according to the seventeenth-century Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher (1581-1656)). But towards the end of the seventeenth century, it became increasingly clear that the best available manuscripts of the Septuagint were unreliable. Another problem came from non-European historical sources. Ancient Egyptian annals recorded dynasties which were earlier than the creation (on a Masoretic or Septuagint dating) and when Catholic missionaries reported back from China in the 1650s it appeared that the Chinese too had histories stretching back too far. Biblical scholars tried to wriggle out of the problem, suggesting that dynasties listed in sequential order had in fact existed conterminously, but this was not what the sources said. Nor did it seem plausible, as the extent and sophistication of human civilization around the globe became apparent to Europeans, to imagine that mankind could have fanned out from the Garden of Eden and populated the world in the time allowed by biblical chronology.
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Essay Piece
Doom Painting, St Thomas’s Church, Salisbury (anonymous, last quarter of the 15th century)
In the other direction, belief in the imminent end of the world became less common after the upheavals of the Reformation and the religiously-fuelled wars of the mid-seventeenth century. Apocalyptic views could still be found—indeed, they still exist today—but they were less mainstream. Life for many people in the eighteenth century was more stable than it had been for their parents and grandparents, and the end of the world seemed less likely to be nigh. There were also specific challenges to traditional beliefs about it. The English writer Anthony Collins (who may, unusually, have been an atheist) wrote in 1728 to point out historical inconsistencies in the Book of Daniel and argue that the prophecies in it were far more plausibly interpreted as referring to events contemporary with its creation than to the whole of human history. Controversial though his arguments were, they were supported later in the century by one of the most respected historians of the period, the imposing author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88), Edward Gibbon. And then there was the small matter of science. After the foundation of the Royal Society in 1660, numerous scientists sought to reconcile the biblical account of the creation with the best available empirical evidence. One problem was the existence of fossils. It was widely noted that fossils could be found of plants and animals that no longer existed, but this was usually explained by arguing that these were the remains of lifeforms destroyed by the Flood. This left some difficulty in explaining why fossils could be found throughout rocks at different levels, and even at the tops of mountains, rather than in a single layer. According to the scientist John Woodward (1665-1728), even this could be explained in terms which were compatible with the Bible: the solution was that the entire earth had been dissolved into a kind of slurry, so that different lifeforms were mixed together throughout different rocks. But this did not explain the existence of mountains, which were widely thought to be imperfect and therefore things which must have developed rather than being part of the original, ideal scheme. It was clear from observation and historical evidence, however, that mountains changed too slowly for them to have come about in a few thousand years. Here things began to give way. In a work
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published in 1705, the scientist Robert Hooke (1635-1703) suggested that the surface of the earth was in a continual state of flux and that the processes involved played out over much longer periods of time than previously imagined. His arguments bore the frightening implication that the Biblical account of the creation was not factual but allegorical, a literary retelling of events which it did not literally describe. As the eighteenth century wore on, mounting evidence made it harder for literal readings of Genesis to be sustained and allegorical interpretations like Hooke’s became more common among educated readers.
Albrecht Altdorfer, The Battle of Alexander at Issus (1529) Similar debates raged throughout the Enlightenment, and gradually a light was shone into what the twentieth-century historian Paolo Rossi has described as the ‘dark abyss of time’, the billions of years before the dawn of history which, until the early 1700s, were wholly unknown to the European mind. This changed forever how people in Europe saw their place in their universe: before, it was common to think that time and history shared a common structure, with time beginning and ending with human civilization and centring on events like battles; since then, time and history have come apart, with one being the domain of physicists and the other the domain of historians. Moreover, though history is still thought about in terms of events which are important
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to humanity, time is no longer thought to have any intrinsic structure or purpose, instead stretching from an arbitrary beginning billions of years ago to an equally arbitrary end in the distant future, when everything will be cold and still.
Frontispiece to John Woodward, An Essay Towards the Natural History of the Earth (London, 1695)
Dr G Roberts
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Since We Were 3 Characters: Lily (L) and Jack (J) ITALICS means said at same time Scene 1 L (MONOLOGUE): I’m not sure when it happened. I’ve known him for a while, since we were 3, maybe even 2. I didn’t see it coming. No one knows; well, only I do. I can’t tell anyone. If he found out, I don’t know what I’d do. But what I do know is that I’m falling in love with Jack. Scene 2 L: Do you…have a type? J: That’s a weird question – why? L: Oh, just wondering. J: Well, it’s not really something I think about. L: No? Really? J: No, I like to think that I don’t have one really; I’m open to everything. L: Everything? Seriously? J: (Laughs) Yeah! What is this interrogation for? L: (Laughs nervously) Um…ha ha…just…wondering. J: (Lifts eyebrows questioningly with a smile) L: (Alarmed, no smile) Nothing! (laughs to cover outburst of nerves). (Looks away and pretends to be her mum saying—) ‘Lily’ Oh what’s that? Is that mum calling me? I’ll just be a second. (Stands up) Don’t…move (PAUSE: runs away) J: (Breathes, as if to say something; stares at door questioningly; shakes head and smiles fondly) L: (On other side of door) Mum’s calling me, mum’s calling me! Nice one Lils (Laughs shake head) (Sigh), nice one. Scene 3 J (MONOLOGUE): Have you ever seen the movie called ‘Love, Rosie’? Well, it’s about a guy called Alex and a girl called Rosie, and they’ve been best friends since… forever, like me and Lily. So anyway, near the beginning of the movie, Rosie and Alex are getting ready for some event together and Alex says that “Boy-girl friendships are complicated.” (PAUSE) But I disagree with that. I think they are only complicated when the people in the friendship have feelings for each other. And…um… I guess that means my relationship with Lily is…complicated. I’ve tried to tell myself that my feelings aren’t real, tell myself, ‘We’ve been friends since…since the start of time… I…I can’t…like her… can I?’ So, anyway, in the movie, Alex and Rosie eventually confess their love for each other and everything is happy; he helps raise her little girl and they all live happily ever after. … But that’s a movie, it’s not realistic, it’s… fantasy … which is why I can’t tell Lily. I mean, there’s no guarantee she’ll embrace the idea of us being together, like Rosie does, because this is real life. I don’t even think she likes me! ...no…no, I can’t risk what we have, our friendship. So that’s why I have to leave as exactly that… our friendship. Scene 4 J: So, that guy, Evan…? L: (smiles) Yeah? J: Evan, the one who sits next to you in maths? L: Long fringe, kinda cute? J: Yeah, him… wait – you think he’s cute? L: Yeah, he’s cute. Don’t you? J: Er, yeah sure he has a … nice…nice… features, he has a – he has nice features. L: Yeah! (Nervous laugh) and so do you… have nice features. J: Um, thanks… You too. (RIDICULOUSLY LONG PAUSE) So (Clears throat, sits up) So Evan’s cute? L: Yeah he is, what do you think of him? J: He…has his…physical faults but overall a fairly good looking person.
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Drama L: Yeah, um he has a good body, really broad shoulders… quite like you. J: Oh thanks. So do you… I mean, no I mean you have small shoulders because you’re a girl, WAIT no that’s isn’t what I meant, I meant you have average sized shoulders, that’s what I meant, wait no it’s not um.. (Clears throat again) … So what did Evan talk to you about anyway? L: Well, he asked me out this weekend. J: What did you say? L: Well, I said no…because…. (smile fades) because um…. Yeah I just said no. J: Yeah, that’s good. He’s not really what I imagine your type to be, anyway. L: (Smiles) Oh yeah? What’s my type? You? J: BOTH PAUSE AND STOP SMILING (Laughs nervously) No, pfff, piss off, me and you? No, that’s, that’s ridiculous. BOTH LOOK SAD AT THAT COMMENT, LOOK DOWN Scene 5 J (MONOLOGUE): Do you know what I realised today? Lily, she’s not gonna be available for ever. I mean she’s amazing and beautiful… what made me think that she’s going to be there forever just waiting for me to confess my feelings? That guy, Evan, made me see that if I don’t tell her soon, she’ll start dating someone else and then I’ll have missed my chance. So that’s why I’ve decided, I am going to tell her… L (MONOLOGUE): I am going to tell him. I’m going to ask him if he likes me and then I’ll tell him. I mean, sure, this could go so wrong and everything we have could be destroyed but… Jack’s perfect and I am willing to take that risk. I’m going to confess…. J (MONOLOGUE): I’m going to confess…It’s…it’s not bad, what I’m feeling, it’s not bad…but then why does it feel so wrong. Next time I see her, I’llINTERRUPTED OUT OF MONOLOGUE… L: Jack! J: Lils? What’s wrong? L: Um, I need to ask you something. J: Yeah, actually me too, but you go firstL: (Hesitates) No, no you go. J: Oh—Okay, so there’s something I’ve needed to ask…for a while now…and… L: M-hm? J: (Avoids eye contact) I have…I have (Looks at her face: PAUSE) Um…you just… my mum…she told me to…um…to tell you that… you left your hoodie at my place…um…yeah. L: That’s it? J: Yeah, yeah it—it wasn’t… too important actually. So, er, sorry what were you going to say? L: Yeah…I…er…actually…it …wasn’t too important…I…it’s…(Sighs) no forget it, it’s fine. J: Oh, okay. L: I’ll collect my hoodie tomorrow. J: Yeah…sure. L: (Tturns to walk away) See ya. J: Yeah, bye. (Watches her walk away for 3 seconds, but then turns to walk TO EDGE OF STAGE) L: (Turns around, breathes in as if to call his name, sighs, turns back around, and walks TO EDGE OF STAGE) J:(Turns to check if she has turned around and looks extremely defeated and disappointed when she hasn’t and continues walking away) When they both stop walking… Both (TO AUDIENCE): I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.
Mia Borgese
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“Flower clouds” By Odilon Rendon
I It bends far over Yell'ham Plain, And we, from Yell'ham Height, Stand and regard its fiery train, So soon to swim from sight. II It will return long years hence, when As now its strange swift shine Will fall on Yell'ham; but not then On that sweet form of thine. Thomas Hardy (The Comet at Yell’ham)
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Short Story
The Butterfly Effect Photo 1 – Taken 23rd August 1966 – The Butterfly The only colours in this photo are the various shades of grey, yet it is the most colourful. In it two small girls are standing, one being myself, and one my sister. It is the last photo I have where the smile on my face is completely genuine, and not forced for the sake of the photo. Lily had reflected on her face the exact same smile as mine. It was creeping past our ears, wrinkling the skin of our pure, innocent and untouched faces. A smile is supposedly a portrayal of happiness. This photo shows us finding this simplistic feeling in a simplistic matter. We were smiling at a butterfly dancing past. Simply a butterfly. A delicate creature. Now I cannot look at a butterfly without my eyes flooding with tears. It brings back memories of her. The time she was still around. The time when I never thought that she would ever dare to leave me. But she did leave me. She left without ever having the chance to say goodbye. In a way this photo is deceptive. It cannot portray a true image of what happiness is if none of us had ever experienced what the opposite was before. We may have encountered with the feeling of sadness when we had an argument over who got to play with the skipping rope, or who got to eat the last slice of cake, but at this time true sadness was an unknown territory. Photo 2 – Taken 19th September 1967 – First Day of School This is a photo that always looked slightly peculiar, as if it was missing something, as if something had been cut out and filled in with empty space. The truth is that there was something missing. Lily. At the time she was in hospital. I never quite understood the details of her illness, but all I knew was that she would not be present for my first day of school photo. I am situated on the very far right of the photo, wearing a navy blazer with sleeves hanging over my hands. Lily was always slightly taller than me, and to save money I was made to wear Lily’s old blazer rather than having a new one of my own. I may have been smiling in this photo, but it was not a portrayal of happiness in any sense. It was a forced smile, and if you look closely you realise that the skin around my mouth was not wrinkled. Apart from that one could glance at this photo and see an innocent girl, quite short for her age, roused and excited for what the day ahead holds for her. This is the last photo that exists where Lily’s soul still remained on this earth. Photo 3 – Taken 25th December 1969 – (no title) Christmas is said to be a time of joy for everyone. A time of celebration with your family. A time where one can only feel jubilant. Yet, we only felt the opposite. This day was so long ago, yet it remains vivid in all my dreams, in my nightmares, and in my memories. It was the day when she left this world, to be taken to a better place. The picture shows my mother with eyes so full with tears that they are barely recognisable. I do not even know who took this picture, or why I have it. There was no reason to take a photo on a day where our minds were contaminated with sorrow, on a day where we lost one of the most valuable people to us. The doctor told us that she would survive to open the Christmas present that I got for her as a small token of my unquestionable love for her. The doctor lied. She left without even having the chance to say goodbye. From that day on, I never felt true happiness again. I no longer had a companion to smile at butterflies with. I no longer had a friend to have frivolous arguments with. I no longer had a sister to share a true feeling of happiness with. Photo 4 – Taken 6th June 1992 – The Wedding Photo There is a very large gap between this photo and the last. How the world has changes from the sixties to the nineties! One sign of modernity is that this photo, unlike its predecessors, is in colour. So many people think of the sixties in black and white and more recent times in colour because that is how the images left behind look to us now. But for me it is the other way round. The colour went out of my memories in 1969. This photo presents an event. Most say it is the most important event in one’s life. A wedding. It was my wedding. I was getting married. The picture shows James holding my hand, and the glimmers of our new rings as the main visual point on the
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photo. We were both smiling, but again this is another deceptive image where the smiles do not show happiness. They are just another set of forced smiles, yet another fraudulent image. I may have known that my smile was forced, but little did I know that James was forcing his smile as well. He did not want to marry me for who I was. If he loved anything at all, it was only money. He did not love me, nor can I say that I loved him back. I was misled into thinking that marriage would help me forget all the pain and tears of the place that is called the past. But the past never leaves. It follows your footsteps. It forever lingers in your mind. So the wedding was not the day established my love for another. It was the day I made one of the worst mistakes I could make. Marrying into loveless marriage, with a man who proved himself worthless to me. I stayed with him for seven years, until I came to the realisation that being alone was better than having to cope with him. The man who stole my money. The man who stole my hope. The man who left the past as my only companion. Photo 5 - Taken 4th May 1999 – The remains of James This is no longer a full photo, but the remains of what used to be one. It was once a photo of James, one that was taken the day before I decided to leave him. 5th May 1999. That day I attempted to burn this photo. I watched the embers enclose around the photo, as if it were about to destroy a part of my past. But my past is a part of me. I cannot get rid of the past. I cannot hide from the past. This is why I collected the remains. Burning the photo completely would achieve nothing. The photo has become a part of me, even though one can only just about make out a face from the colour that emerges from the black cinders. It is the face of a liar. The face of my mistake. Photo 6 – Taken 23rd July 2016 – Smiling sisters, my cousin’s children In many ways, this is no different to the first photo. It presents two smiling sisters, my cousin’s children. Even when you observe the photo closely, one simply cannot tell the reason for the smiles. All I can tell is that they are smiles of true happiness. Their faces are pure and untouched, their minds uncontaminated, just like my sister and I once were. But they will not be able to remain like this forever. Time passes, and they will come to realise the flaws of the world they live in. Photo 7 – Taken today – Serei Saophoan, Cambodia A bucolic photo, of nothing but a simple, pure, yet unfamiliar sunrise. Life gave me two choices. I could either spend the rest of it grieving over the past, or I could try to achieve something better. Time moves forwards, not backwards, so I have to move forwards with the time, not backwards. I have decided that I am going to live in the present rather than the past, with my eyes able to see not the black and white future I had imagined, but a bright, colourful, enlivening future. I travelled to Cambodia, leaving the misery of the past behind. Of course I cannot completely banish the past from my mind, but I can keep it in a section of my thoughts which I will rarely step into. The children here at Serei Saophoan give me smiles. Not forced smiles, but smiles of happiness, of true happiness. I have the chance of a new beginning, where the slate can be wiped clean. By coming here I may be helping the children, but I am rescuing myself. There is a butterfly at the edge of this photo. A butterfly whose true colour and beauty are apparent. A butterfly that I can gaze at without tears pricking behind my eyes. Not grey eyes, but blue eyes. I followed the path that time led me on. Time is what saved me from the past.
Alexandra Morgan
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Archive Piece
Time Capsules from the Archives Since NLCS was founded in 1850, we have always maintained tradition, passing on information about the school and its quirks from one generation to the next and from one headmistress to the next. From the traditions of the founder, we get the carol service and, most importantly, Founder’s Day. However, these are not the only things that Frances Mary Buss has left for us; in 1879, she buried a time capsule entitled, “Account of Prize Day 1879”.
HRH Prince of Wales 1879
HRH Prince of Wales 2005
Despite computers and documents providing effective means of passing on information between generations, both Mrs Clanchy and Mrs McCabe buried time capsules, in 1987 and 2012 respectively, to commemorate significant events in the school’s history. In 1987, a new building was built and in 2012, we celebrated the diamond jubilee and the royal wedding. However, by 1987, the things which were left in the time capsule had changed slightly, as they included newspapers, rolls of film and postcards of London, which by then looked extremely different to how it did in the previous century. By 1987, even the time capsule itself had become sturdier and modernised, being buried under the new building itself rather than simply underground. By leaving time capsules, the students of the past connected with those of the future, creating concrete links between pupils attending in different centuries.
Time Capsule buried by Frances Mary Buss in 1879
Within lie brochures from the day and pictures commemorating events which took place, everything preserved carefully despite it being buried underground for 100 years until it was uncovered by Madeline McLauchlan in 1979 as per Miss Buss’s request. The information details how the girls would perform a selection of classical music pieces, not unlike the concerts we hold today, followed by hymns and the awarding of prizes, similar to the awarding of school colours today. There is also a letter written by Miss Buss herself, entreating one of her friends to attend the event, showing that it was a prestigious occasion to be present at. The scrupulous detail of what is included makes it easy for the girls 100 years later to explore the contents and make sure all is there that should be! Prince Charles’ visit to our school in 2005 was not the first time a had Prince of Wales visited; his predecessor came to open the new building on 18th July 1879.
Time Capsule being buried in Herbaceous Border in 2012
Lindsey Ingate
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Time Capsule being buried under the New Building in 1987
Poetry
Tutankhamun Unwind me from these sheets, friend, to reveal something sadder than… the value of ruins ruining value, the path not taken taking the path taken away, the cry of a dead body language carved out of turn... your self
It’s Too Late
(a stranger like me)
each cycle the knife comes round, stretching, cracking pearlescent bones. paper-thin flesh rips under duress from the hands. inky pools slither through the cogs the dark, dark corners of your non-existent soul. tick tock, tick tock each little sound hammering away silently at your eardrums, letting bits flutter to hard ground. claustrophobic with a night light, stuck inside the clock. tick tock, tick tock, tick k k k k
Patrick Gray (Head of English NLCS Jeju)
Livia Ursini Parker
“Passion flowers and Two Hummingbirds” By Martin Joseph Heade
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Poetry
Time the Ruler The cluster of irrepressible knots in my stomach are clutching it with a tight, clawing hand: writhing around, a fluid emulation of my anxiety. Echoed by the ceaseless, admonishing voice of time; A constant reminder of my inexpungible crime.
I need to sleep now, 5 hours 17 minutes remaining, yet the clicking dictator is again deceiving; I’m going to places unprecedented - I am not leaving. I am faced by the familiar greeting of the malignant, insatiable hand which yearns for more, fishing up a tumult, which are my troubles from before.
Arousing insecurities, rebuking decisions, My mind is generating its own troop of enemies yet terminating this perpetual war- the knot has a grip on me. I’m full of flaw.
I succumb to the wills of my gnawing stomach, Drowned in a sea of imminent worry, Vanquished by a façade of my enemies, I fall into a pit of dreamless slumber - the hand is gone.
Erected with no wrinkles and no emotions, it cackles, A blank expression (no transparency) to conceal the mockery, No communication, save the tiresome slap into inescapable reality. This grandfather, this cuckoo, I just want it to stop-watch.
The uncertainties are released, No longer obstructed by the omnipotent devil I am going à la recherche du temps perdu.
Penetrating into the holes of the ceiling, Experiencing grave disillusionment, The canons of my eyes drill into the sombre sky: Constellations in the recollections of the irrevocable events of today.
I become enlightened by the lucid reality: Time is opportunity; an omnipotent leader: An altruist, not a deceiver. Those soldiers of thought descend into frenzy, A torrent of relish to defeat the anxiety.
My eyes seep into the heavens and implore with ascertained conviction: why is my life dictated by the temperament of a hand, of a simple face with no heart nor faith?
Karel Ohana
Regret and Remorse and Dismay my stomach in decay, my brain in disarrayand then the epiphany. The audacity of that timekeeper; With its sheepish grin, Furtively it observes and it ticks And it rivets my nerves. Those soldiers of thought extend to realms inconceivable Not hindered by religion or philosophy or politics. Capricious Time doesn’t wait.
“Wreckers Coast of Northumberland” By Joseph Mallord William Turner
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Poetry
The Other Tattooist of Auschwitz “What a stupid time we live in! Everything is upside down. The cemeteries are up above, hanging from the sky, instead of being dug in the moist earth… Here, we have nothing. Nothing, Kathleen. Here we have an arid desert. A desert without even a mirage. It’s a station where the child left on the platform sees his parents carried off by the train. And there is only black smoke where they stood. They are the smoke. Happiness? Happiness for the child would be for the train to move backward. But you know how trains are, they only move forward. “…And you speak of love, Kathleen? And you speak of happiness?” Elie Wiesel, The Accident She would tell me about the other tattooist of Auschwitz. He crept into the barracks and grabbed her very eyeballs and syringed into her pupils six million ashen nights. And she would cry to me how it hurt so much, does anybody even know how much? To see the world finally, really really to see? When she finally walked free, she walked into a world of blind men. And it nearly blinded her, for she was accustomed to the darkness. “But you, you are my moon.” She would whisper in my ear. “The star of my scars The pearl of my pain.” And I knew this, I knew the tune and texture of her story, my story. But truly to try it on; to walk its words. To put my head beneath the freezing froth of its waves. Simply I was soaked with sadness when I went under, and I didn’t face the drying sun after I lifted my head up, because the sky was just a ceiling of Prussian blue, and waiting there a thousand faces, clutching me with those pupils, those awful huge pupils that had seen naked night and death undressed. What are six million to you? One day in January, perhaps April too? Then left behind until next year, in a woollen world of what would and could and should Have been. But I will make it wooden. For yes they are of yesterday, but of yesterday they are thoroughly. But At least though, sometimes, thinly, Within a word Or on a wick Or down a cheek Kate Greenberg
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Essay Piece
Anything but Shortsighted Louis MacNeice is often dismissed as a minor poet of the 1930s, a lesser member of the Auden Group of left-wing poets, whose poems were considered to be laboured, sentimental and lacking in originality. He is rarely studied at either university or school-level - although his poems do occasionally appear on A Level and IB Unseen papers (which, given the quality of unseen poems nowadays, may be seen as the ultimate achievement of failure). Critics and academics accuse MacNeice of sentimentality - and perhaps it is this quality of his poetry that I've always found so endearing. MacNeice doesn't always try to do something new; instead, he repeats ideas that can be found in art and literature throughout history. There's a vivid awareness of the passing of time in the poems and this leads to an awareness of the impossibility of retrieving what is past, of the inevitable erosion of heightened emotions such as love, of the ways in which our dreams collide with a less-elevated reality, and of the ephemeral nature of being. This erosive process of time can be seen in poems such as 'The Cyclist' or, more powerfully perhaps, in 'Les Sylphides' - in which the voice shifts from an observational perspective, to that of the interior world of the male lover to, eventually, that of the wife. This poem captures 'life in a day' with the wonderful image of 'he took his girl to the ballet' .... I imagine him in a fedora and raincoat .... But MacNeice also shows that by virtue of being human and being endowed with consciousness, we are not only burdened with an awareness of the finite character of mortality, but are also privileged with the capacity of the infinite possibility of the imagination. In 'Meeting Point', for example, MacNeice acknowledges that love has the capacity to allow us to momentarily escape time, asserting: God or whatever means the Good Be praised that time can stop like this, That what the heart has understood Can verify in the body’s peace God or whatever means the Good. Similarly, in 'The Sunlight on the Garden', as in 'Snow', simply a moment of beauty and love has the capacity to transport the speaker into the realm of the infinite. MacNeice may not be experimental like Auden; he may well be sentimental; but I think that sentimentality is crucial to being and that in living without it life is rendered less rich or even cynical. Mr James-Williams
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Essay Piece
Time Pauses For me, like many old NLCS girls no doubt, the phrase ‘Time Passes’ evokes those dusty, board-room-like classrooms on the top floor of the Old House. I say this because my sixth form Virginia Woolf classes were held in one of these. At the time we were studying Woolf’s To the Lighthouse – an examiners’ favourite, and quite rightly so. As you may know, this novel contains a short mid-section, or as Woolf calls it, a ‘corridor’, named ‘Time Passes’. This, I imagine, is the origin of the current Archipelago theme. Because of this, I suspect there may be a number of Woolf-related articles in this issue – and, if there are, they are doubtless more insightful and interesting than any of my old Pre-U essays ever were – so I will try not to dwell on her too much. The reason that I bring her up against my better judgment is this: she is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear ‘Time Passes’. For me, those words immediately evoke that classroom, its dust-clouds, and the lethargy of ninth period. Upon hearing them, I involuntarily visualize the scribbled marginalia in my dog-eared Penguin Classic. Though time has invariably passed between now and then – in my mind’s eye at least, it has gone backwards. Just as in Woolf’s non-linear, multi-perspectival, novels (Jacob’s Room, Mrs Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, The Waves), in real life, too, the past frequently interrupts the present. I mean to say that it is interrupting right now, at this very moment, as I visualize that classroom. So, though time passes every second for us internally, both in the mind and in the literary text, time also pauses, rewinds, and expands in surprisingly elastic and nonlinear ways. No novel – bar To the Lighthouse – represents so utterly my feeling of nostalgia for North London’s dusty classrooms more than Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. If you have read it, you probably already know exactly what I mean; if you have not yet read it – try to rectify this before you turn twenty. I heard somewhere that Holden Caulfield (our protagonist) is best understood from a teenage perspective. I’m not sure whether I agree with this or not; however, his distinctive narrative voice – at once angst-ridden, cynical, and slightly annoying – certainly does seem to polarize his readers. These characteristic (some would say juvenile) qualities are important – not simply because they tell us a great deal about Holden’s internal landscape, but also because they directly contradict the most important quality of his voice: how beautifully retrospective and nostalgic it is. These separate aspects of Holden’s character pull against each other: in one sense, he is a burgeoning adult, full of bravado, who knows everything; in another, he is a lost child, forever mourning his brother Allie, terrified of joining the ‘phoney’ grown-up world. The passage of time is, therefore, both a theme and the major driving force behind the narrative of Catcher. The protagonist, in response to growing older, reaches into the past, searching desperately for permanence among his own memories. Of course, Holden eventually finds this permanence to be unattainable – only his dead brother Allie is exempt from time’s passage, forever frozen in the ink poems on the fingers of his left-handed baseball mitt.
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In chapter sixteen, referring to the exhibition at the Museum of Natural History, Holden remarks: ‘Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway.’ Whenever I revisit North London (especially through the regal reception entrance) I feel as if I am entering one of Holden’s big glass cases. Though I no longer study there, and the people who I studied with left a few years ago, it sort of remains exactly how I remember it. That said, it’s not quite the same – it could never be. In Holden’s words: ‘You could go there a hundred thousand times, and…Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that, exactly. You’d just be different, that’s all.’ Time’s passing is evident not in changes in the onlooker’s surrounding, but in changes within the onlooker themselves. I am no longer a student at North London, and I have to wear a visitor’s badge in that place where I once so completely belonged. That said, when I stand in that place, my mind’s eye conjures up a plethora of colours – daffodil yellow, brown, blue, slate grey – and smells – cheesy pasta, white spirit, the fresh tennis-ball scent of the PAC – which I suddenly see and smell with as much vivacity as I did five years ago. It is important, therefore, to think and write about time with flexibility. Of course, time passes day to day: but this is not all that it does. Moments remain immortalized in the mind; and, once we write them down, they remain forever on the page as well. Rebecca Marks (Co-founder of Archipelago and nostalgic ONL) 13.02.18
The detail of the pattern is movement, As in the figure of the ten stairs. Desire itself is movement Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring Except in the aspect of time Caught in the form of limitation Between un-being and being. Sudden in a shaft of sunlight Even while the dust moves There rises the hidden laughter Of children in the foliage Quick now, here, now, alwaysRidiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after. Extract from final stanza of “Burnt Norton” by T. S. Eliot
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“NLCS” By Rebecca Marks
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