momento by Carina Allen

memento 2013-2015

contents FALL 2013

3-6: an ode to freshman year

FALL 2014

7-8: women

SPRING 2015 9-12: floating SUMMER 2015 13-22: queen of the castle 23-32: field girls 33-38: city sky scraping 39-48: floating by FALL 2015

49-58: caramel

all work ÂŠ carina allen 2013-2015

an ode to freshman year, pt. I my spine will be split in half until both sides are just left with a pile of sorry bones a bruise beneath my knee that darkens daily, blood soaked purple like the tips of my fingers, peel off a layer of skin each day, they say it takes seven years to become whole again but i’ll still never be untouched by the ones who’ve laid their fingers across my skin i slave over machines weekly to remake a body that i fill with smoke on a friday, on a saturday we go out in search of dark rooms with bitter drinks so we can gain some guts to do things we’ll forget while we lose our livers trying to live a life that is a right of passage for the young i don’t know if i’ll ever find where my body belongs where this pile of long limbs and locks feels at home so what? if i can’t cure a backache i don’t know what i can do

II. cracked lips and cracked heels red eyes and red knuckles green rings around my fingers i scrub and pick and rip my nails off one by one till my fingers bleed happy my red shoes are part of me happy i made at least one boy stop and ask “who was she?” because it’s strange to hear a voice that isn’t old or your own say that you’re pretty spent a day buried in blankets not sure how i get so tired but the rings under my eyes are evidence that i’m kept awake by something 1:34am and counting but i’ll just sleep in because i can lotion smells like summer and cocoa butter smells like winter and i used to smell like patchouli and roses but who even comes close enough to notice i always thought i was good at doing things for myself maybe i’ve forgotten how to

III. thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something close to comfort that comes from the electronic blue glow of a car at night and the pale orange of street lamps along a roadside while you drive, windows ajar, letting smoke out and cold air in. sound bounces off the windows and walls through bones and muscles and every hollow in your body if you let it and each note and each beat falls into the atmosphere like a rain drop, or a star; a planet with smoke rings that echo in the air until they dissolve, leaving a sensation in your chest even after theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re gone. neon lights feel right as does a sunset because the way they fall on skin turns your skin into something soft and the cold air flushes cheeks and my nose runs on to my sleeves but the numbness in my fingers is still enough to wind film and press a shutter because god, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let me forget this moment.

women

models: mikayla bishop, caroline lacy, carolina saverin

floating “So you’re going to take him on Saturday right?” I looked at my desk calendar. “Walker” was written in blue pen on the square for the upcoming Saturday, March 10th. “Yes.” I started circling Walker’s name with my pen. “What are you going to do?” “I don’t know, something.” “Something?” I stopped circling. “Yeah, something. We’re going to do something. He’s my son, we’ll find something to do.” I felt the inclination to raise my voice, but I had worn out all of the energy I had for dealing with my ex-husband long ago. “Why don’t you take the kid to the aquarium? He learned about sea urchins in class the other day and can’t stop talking about them.” “Maybe.” “I think he’d really enjoy it.” “We’ll do something, don’t worry about it.” I could hear him sigh. “Okay.” “I’ll pick him up at ten.” I waited a moment for him to respond, but I heard nothing, so I hung up.

I opened my wallet and handed the woman my credit card. She swiped it, handed it back to me with our two tickets, and motioned us towards the entrance. Another blue-vested woman checked our tickets, gave us the stubs back, and let us enter. Walker held my hand lightly. At the age of nine he was a timid, but bright kid who was interested in outer space, animals, and drawing. He led us into the aquarium towards the Amazon section, questioning why the rainforest was a section included in the aquarium. “The rainforest isn’t underwater.” He stared into the tank of piranhas. “No, it’s not. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t water in the rainforest, and lots of animals that live in the water. Like those piranhas.” “Oh.” He kept his eyes on the tank. We walked down the long halls with floor to ceiling glass windows that peered into fake rainforest scenes and leafy lagoons. We watched snakes, fish, and colorful frogs in their makeshift habitats. We saw electric eels in a colorful freshwater tank and Walker asked me if they could light up, if they were really electric. “Not all electricity is used for lights. Eels use their electricity to protect themselves from bad guys who want to eat them or hurt them, you know. It protects them from predators.” “Predators.” “Mhm.” “Huh.”

“Two tickets please.” “One child and one adult?” I stood at the ticket booth with my son beside me. Ready for discovery, he stared at the blue-vested woman behind the booth. “Yes. One child and one adult.” “That’ll be $43.65.” My eyes widened for a moment as I let out a faint grunt of disbelief. When did a building full of water get so expensive?

We continued through the exhibits and Walker continued to ask questions. We reached the coral reefs where the sea urchins were and instead of me giving him answers, Walker taught me about sea urchins. I sat on a bench while he stood in front of the spiny creatures and told me that they belong to the “echinoidea” class, which he pronounced with a valiant effort. He told me that they feed on algae, and that their mouths are on the bottom of their bodies. He was a smart kid. He had a good memory when it came to things he cared about. He spent longer looking at the sea urchins than he had looking at any other exhibit. They were kept in a large pool with small eels, batfish, and sea horses. He was just barely tall enough to peer over the glass railing into the round pool. At times he bent down and put his face to the clear barrier, observing the sea urchins in their pseudo-realistic environment. I stood nearby, browsing the small placards that profiled the animals. I read about dwarf seahorses and how they swim vertically, not horizontally. I learned that the dwarf seahorse is the slowest moving fish in the world, traveling only five feet per hour at its fastest rate. “Look at the seahorses, Walker. Did you know they’re the slowest fish in the world?” “Really?” He walked over to where I was and looked back into the pool to try and find a seahorse, to see some proof. “Yeah, it says right here. Dwarf seahorses are the slowest moving fish, with a top speed of about five feet per hour.” “Wow. That’s really slow, right?” “Yes. That’s very slow.” “Aren’t seahorses the ones where the daddies have the babies?” “The momma seahorse puts

her eggs in a pouch on the dad’s belly, and he just holds them for her until they grow a little bit bigger. Then the dad leaves. Sometimes he even goes to another momma seahorse and holds her eggs for her.” I realized as I was speaking that the true familial model of sea horses might be too harsh of a reality for an nine year old, but what he had already seen from humans was enough to reshape any idealistic views he might have once had. There was no harm a seahorse could do. We continued our walk through the aquarium and Walker wandered wide-eyed through the different habitats. We entered the center of the aquarium where there was a life size replica of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling. “Wow. That’s so big!” Walker gazed up at the whale. “It’s the biggest animal in the world.” He looked at me, and then back at the whale. He started walking around the room to get different views of the replica. I looked at the whale and thought about how it must feel to be so massive. I wondered how they get it to hang from the ceiling. Replica or not, such a large creature would surely snap any string or cable they could use. Aquariums have resources, though. They have whale-displaying experts. Finishing up our visit, we walked by the Giant Ocean tanks that held over 1,000 different animals. Some were green sea turtles, some were barracuda, and some were fish that sounded like they were in a band, like the trumpetfish and guitarfish. These were listed as some of the “new” fish species to come to the aquarium. I guess the experts ran out of

names so they were turning to musical instruments. I walked slowly through the exhibit with Walker, letting him follow the pathway at his own speed. He read the placards and looked into the windows, searching for every fish that he read about, wanting to see it living beyond the laminated sign. He took his time at some windows, and sped through others. I walked at my own pace, taking in the colors of the underwater scenes, and following the pace of some of the slower animals. Tuning out the hum of other parents and children mumbling in the background, my walking became a slow meditation. I made my way through the dark halls with my fingers gently dragging across the thick glass. The oil from my fingers left marks on the surface. Children’s handprints faintly decorated the bottom half of the tank. My fingertips lifted drops of water off the glass, the stream I created growing swifter with each step. I walked laps around the aquatic pathways, pulling my hands across the glass and conjuring more rapids to the surface of the clear tanks with every trail I completed. As I treaded the same path nearly ten times over, the other visitors in the aquarium started to drift into the main section of the aquarium and off into the upper levels. My hands wore down the layers of the tank until they were as thin as rice paper. The pressure increased until the thinned walls burst, and the tunnels of the aquarium were filled with water and aquatic creatures of all sizes. It was no longer the Amazon Rainforest or the Pacific Reef. It was just water and animals. I was picked up by the waves and rushed by rapids through to the center of the aquarium. Once the water spread and settled across

the lower level of the aquarium, the quakes in the waves relaxed, and I began to enjoy the immersive aquarium experience. I floated on my back with my ears underwater, any noises of other aquarium visitors muffled and distant. Fish and eels and seahorses and turtles swam around and below me, their varied paces constantly shifting the warm, saltwater waves that gently rocked my body. I was now level with the whale, floating beside him while the water lapped against the underside of his belly. I looked up a few feet at the second floor. Everyone was turned away, engaged in their aquatic learning. I closed my eyes and floated until I was rocked to the whale, bumping into his belly. I broke my float and starting treading water, looking at the whale replica up close. I swam around to the mouth of the whale and peered in. I grabbed hold of the whale’s jaw and hoisted myself up. I crawled in the whale’s mouth and looked around. It wasn’t damp, but rather dry, and hollow. I became the only source of water inside the dead animal, my clothes and hair dripping onto the whale’s interior. I saw that the replica was only a replication of the outside of a whale, not of the inside of a whale. What a concept for an exhibit. Walk inside of a whale! Feel what it’s like to be eaten by the world’s biggest animal! But that was not what this was. The designers, assuming no one would ever walk inside the whale replica, did not bother to model the interior accurately. I walked to the end of the 98

foot whale, and stood inside its tail. I sat down. I closed my eyes and meditated. I was not one for meditation normally, and I wasn’t sure if I was doing it quite right, but I knew you were mean to clear your mind. So I cleared my mind in the tail of this whale and wasn’t brought back out until I heard Walker’s voice. “Mom?” He stood at the edge of the whale’s mouth, the light pouring in from behind him, illuminating his silhouette. His voice echoed through the whale’s body and reached me just a moment after he spoke. I stood up and stepped through the whale towards Walker. As I came closer, he looked at me as curiously as he had looked at the woman in the ticket booth and at the piranhas in the rainforest tank. Puzzled, but content. “Let’s go, honey.” I wrapped my arm around his shoulder and looked out at the now transformed aquarium. Before I could grab him, he slipped from my arm and sat down on the mouth of the whale, scooting himself off of its jaw and into the water. “Walker!” I reached to grab for him, but he was already swimming away. “Mom it’s okay! I took swimming lessons over the summer, remember? I’m a great swimmer!” He was. He was quick and although his kicking was violent, the animals seemed un-phased by his rowdy human swimming. “When did you take swimming lessons? You never took swimming lessons.” I started to raise my voice to reach him, as he swam further to the edges of the aquarium.

“With Dad! At the pool! I guess you weren’t there.” His voice trailed off as he ducked underwater and I lost sight of him. He quickly popped back up, but I still managed to lose my breath in a panic for the moment that he was submerged. “Walker, come on. Come back here, it’s time to go.” He turned back to me, dismayed, and reluctantly swam back over to the whale. As he swam back, a couple people started to notice the scene we were making. A woman with golden hair and a sweater that matched her skirt leaned over the railing of the second floor and called out to Walker. “Honey, did you find your mother? Are you alright?” He grabbed hold of the whale’s open mouth and spit some salt water out of his mouth. “Yeah, she’s right here! She was in the whale.” The woman looked at me, with a look of disgust and disappointment. I gave no response. “Come here, let’s get you out of here.” She motioned for Walker to swim over to the edge of the second floor balcony. She had her husband hold on to her while she threw her son’s sweatshirt over the edge of the railing, leaning down so Walker could just grab hold of it. She hoisted him up, and pulled him over the balcony. She looked back at me. “Come on, now.” I stared at her for a moment before looking back down at my feet and the water. Her gaze had shifted, she now stared at me with an implication that I was holding her up, she had better things to be doing.

I sat down on the whale’s tongue and slid myself back into the water. I swam over to the balcony, and her husband reached in and pulled me up. He clumsily yanked me over the edge of the railing, and let me fall to the ground once I was over the barrier. I stood up and wrapped my arm back around Walker. “Thanks.” I quickly glanced at the two of them. The husband nodded, and the wife’s stare remained as angry with me as it had been the whole time. She then left swiftly and took her husband and son with her, rejoining the rest of the aquarium visitors who were admiring different fish tanks and reading about aquatic life. Walker looked up at me and grabbed my hand. “It’s okay, Mom. I went to look at the jellyfish. Did you know there are over 2,000 kinds of jellyfish?” “No, I didn’t, honey. That’s very interesting.” “They don’t have brains either, or hearts, or bones!” “Wow, I didn’t know that.” He smiled up at me. “It’s time to go home though, sweetie. I hope you had a good time.” “I had a great time.” We proceeded out of the aquarium, dripping a small trail of salt water on the ground as we exited. “Have a nice day.” A blue vested man said as we exited. “You too.” I said as I gave him a quick smile on our way out.

queen of the castle model: elinor brelis

field girls models: corey potter and charlotte morril

city sky scraping model: madeline collins

floating by model: victoria campbell

caramel makeup by: michaela bosch model: ashley soong