The Catalyst Issue #1

THE CATALYST contemporary

issue 1 // winter 2014

Literary

arts

magazine

issue 1 // winter 2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS part i // creative prose, 1-22 part ii // poetry 23-32 part iii // academic research 33-47 part iv // projects 48-74

PHOTO // ALEX HOFFMAN

thE CAtALyst is A studEnt PubLiCAtion of thE EngLish dEPArtmEnt of thE univErsity of CALiforniA sAntA bArbArA.

EdItor&&'s notE Dear reaDer,

In early April of 2013, I inherited an idea and the title of a literary magazine that had not been seen since 2007.

Cat•a•lyst: (kăt ́l-ĭst) an agent that stimulates a reaction, development or change.

This project accelerates the process of communication between multiple art forms in a chain of reaction. The Catalyst represents the many inspired individuals here at UCSB as a place to share in the wealth of this dialogue.

Collaborative, interdisciplinary, and open to everyone, The Catalyst grew out of the English Department from a memory to a movement. This magazine is made by and for you: the writers, artists, readers, and those who value the Arts. To all who perpetuate the message this magazine has to give, thank you. To all who attended meetings with patience as we got our sea legs in this beach town, thank you. To everyone who sent in a submission, thank you for joining this creative movement.

Please continue to write and create. We look forward to seeing more. While we grow as a community by becoming

increasingly interconnected through collaboration, so will this magazine.

Students from various disciplines built this project from the ground up and these same students make it thrive. The power of our voice is profound, fueled with the tireless enthusiasm we as students possess as we make our way toward our future. We saw what was needed, took the idea and brought it to new life. Positive initiative made these changes happen. The work of authors and artists published here speaks for itself.

I hope after reading our first issue, you will be inspired and proud of your fellow students. Treasure this, remember your experiences here at UCSB, and know that we are the catalyst in our environment. What changes do you want to make? all the best,

thE tEAm Editor in ChiEf, dirECtor of Art And ProduCtion

Natalie O’Brien dirECtor of LAyout dEsign

Julia Marsh CoPy Editor

Parisa Mirzadegan Editor of ACAdEmiC rEsEArCh

Daniel Podgorski ProjECt Editors

Daniel Podgorski Marcos Aguilar Sean Mabry

Contributing Editors Maya Jacobson Sean Nolan Victoria Koenitzer Marissa Dadiw Helen Irias Raquel Daher Contributing LAyout dEsignErs Sarah Wilson Haley Paul Mathew Burciaga Murphy Quinn Ateken Abla fEAturEd Artists Vijay Masharani Mallory Swinchock Mingchen Shen Heather Kesner Hope Curran Alex Hoffman

Staff IlluStratorS &+ PhotogrAPhErs Morey Spellman Mariah Tiffany Amanda Excell Rose Spanbock Shelan Zuhdi Vijay Masharani Victoria Tsai Milana Vachuska advISorS& Candace Waid James Kearney Enda Duffy Ellen Anderson Tim Roof Scott Gordon

PHOTO // ALEX HOFFMAN

Part I :

CREATIVE PROSE AmELiA // LuCAs brown C o n r A d L A C k ’’s P h i L o s o P h y / / d A n i E L P o d g o r s k i LittLE goAts // PAuL mALonE ComiC

rELiEf

//

miChAEL

Lyons

P r i v A t E C A L L A wA y / / C A b r i A h r o s s thE ignominious numbEr // bEnjAmin moss thrEE PiECEs of ProsE // PritikA nAndAkumAr

AmELiA // lucas brown

PHOTOS // MARIAH TIFFANY + NATALIE O’BRIEN

\\\ I remember meeting you. You were speaking dirty French – well, it was fake dirty French, but you were good at it. I was fourteen and you were seventeen. I couldn’t figure out if I was more impressed by your ability to phonetically imitate French or your ability to sound genuinely raunchy. You weren’t restraining yourself; it was pretty loud. While I was actively hoping that my parents couldn’t hear, I was thinking, “Who let her into my house?” I guess you were with my sister’s friends, stopping by on your way home from a party.

I don’t know why, but a few days later, you showed up again. Holding a massive Dr. Pepper, you stepped out of your garbage dump of a car and stormed into my house. You were unhappy this time. I overheard you say to my sister, “I don’t want to be a person,” and then you looked at me across the room. I pretended to be confused, but I knew exactly what you meant. I didn’t know that this would become something I’d hear every week from you. “I don’t want to be a person.” Some time later, I got frustrated and told you, “Yeah, me neither. But we have

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to.” And then you smiled, because you knew that I understood.

One day, we watched Harold and Maude together, which was perfect because it’s about death. I guess it caused some emotional reaction in you, because when the movie was over, you were happily shouting at me, “We’re alive!” which was scaring me but I liked it anyway. You buried the bottom half of your face in a Dr. Pepper, and your eyes smiled at me over the brim. I asked what we should do since we’re alive, and you thought we should sleep under the kitchen table. We left a note for when my parents and sister woke up that said, “We’re sleeping under the kitchen table because we’re alive.” I’m sure they understood.

How couldn’t they?

You started to live at my house, more or less.

Everyday, you’d rush from your garbage dump car to my door, then open it and shout, “I have to pee!” in a manner which really conveyed how much of a crisis it was. I wonder if it had anything to do with the Dr. Pepper. It was the first thing you did, no matter what mood you were in - after that, it was hard to tell what would happen. One time, you came out of the bathroom and started punching me, for no good reason, and I realized pretty fast that you weren’t kidding. Twenty minutes later it ended with me pinning you on my back lawn, and my dad coming out to help, and then you punched him right in the nose. I’ll never forget how his head recoiled from the force.

I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be funny, but it sort of was. You stopped struggling when you realized you had actually hurt him.

The next time you came over, you insisted you were joining the military. I didn’t quite know how to break it to you that you weren’t military material. I tried anyway and you left stubbornly, still intent on joining. I shouted after you that they didn’t have Dr. Pepper in the military, but I’m not sure if you heard me. The next day at school I asked you what happened and you reluctantly said, “They wouldn’t take me because I’m crazy...”

I said, “Well that’s true, but how’d they know?”

You laughed and said, “I’ve got papers; my medical records say I’m crazy.”

So I asked, “What kind of crazy?”

All too casually, you said, “Borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and depression.” Then you just walked away. It bothered me all day, but it didn’t surprise me.

At that time, you were sleeping on my couch five nights a week and we killed a lot of time together.

Sometimes we’d get in your garbage dump and go places. Almost always, that car had about four old bowls of oatmeal, six old burritos, and a dozen old sixty-four ounce gas station cups – formerly filled with Dr. Pepper of course. On top of that, your whole wardrobe was in the back, mixed in with Russian novels and philosophy books. You stole all the novels from my dad’s bookshelf. I really hope you’re honored that I valued our friendship enough to sit in that garbage dump with you.

One time, we got in your garbage dump car late at night to go see your dad. After about ten minutes, we parked on the shoulder of the frontage road and got out. We jumped the fence into the cemetery and found your dad, even though it was hard to read the markers. I’m not sure what we did after that, but I know we didn’t talk much. The wind was cold, but we could take it.

Remember that time when you ran three red lights in one night - all on accident? How is that even possible? I was shouting, “WATCH THE ROAD” knees at my chest, and white knuckled.

You laughed so hard that you slumped forward, put your forehead on the steering wheel, and watched the road even less than before. I envisioned the newspaper article: “Burritos and Russian Novels Strewn Across Bear Valley Road Due to Collision: No Survivors. We did make it home though, due to the defensive driving of others.

There was the time that I got the call that you were stranded on the other end of town at 3am.

Some guy had gotten you drunk, and then ditched you behind a coffee shop where you had met each other earlier. You were picked up and brought to my place. You tried to take a shower, but forgot

5

that your clothes were still on. I knew because I heard you get into the shower no less than five seconds after walking into the bathroom. I went in and pulled you out of the shower and put a towel around you. I was mad about how he treated you.

I figured I’d cheer the both of us up with some waflles.

A few weeks later you flew to Minnesota with me and my family, and you met all my relatives.

You met my Grandpa Monte, out on the back porch of my aunt’s house. He sat there in his old leather shoes and told you about his years of being a motel owner. You told my dad that you really liked him and my dad responded, “Monte? Yeah, everyone who’s ever met Monte has liked him... except his wife.” He got a good laugh for that one.

That night, there was a huge storm: the kind that only happens in the midwest. We bravely went out on the screen porch, and the flashes and bangs were erupting all around us and we were cheering the storm on. We kept yelling at it like it could hear us.

The next day, we flew back to California. We got back to my house, and you were intently staring out the window, so I asked, “What are you doing?”

You just kept staring for a while, then said very

seriously, “Trying to die.”

I gave you a puzzled look. Then you laughed so hard you drooled. It was gross. When you stopped, you asked, “Have you ever met anyone like me?”

I shook my head.

You said, “I want you to know that if I ever leave without telling you, and never come back, that I still love you.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said, “Likewise.”

I knew you’d stay though. I don’t get to see you much, but I know you’re out there, standing in front a parking meter that says “Sanity” and you’re frantically rummaging through your backpack for some coins. It’s good to know I’m not the only one. ▲

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Conrad Lack's PHILOSOPHY // DanIel PoDgorskI

////// \\\ It was not in the nature of Conrad Lack to

be so very late.

Least of all was it in his nature to be late so few weeks after starting work with a new employer. As he alternately ran and walked toward the door, he pulled his thin hands over his wet, springy hair, which he failed to brush after leaping from his brief shower into his work clothes. In his haste, he also crossed and uncrossed his arms, incapable of deciding which pose less suspiciously concealed that he had pulled one of the buttons off his shirt while fastening it on the highway.

Pushing through the double doors of the Metamoxil Corporation sales office’s lobby, Conrad nodded at the receptionist, who gave him a sardonic grin. In a matter of moments, Conrad had successfully wound through three corridors and past three coffee machines to settle in his waiting cubicle.

While his computer started up, Conrad Lack caught his breath. Remarkably, as the morning wore on, despite Conrad arriving nearly forty minutes late, his supervisor did not say a word to him. Nor did his supervisor’s direct superior.

Nor did his supervisor’s direct superior’s boss.

Nor did the manager of his supervisor’s direct superior’s boss. Nor did the executive above the

7

manager of his supervisor’s direct superior’s boss.

What was more remarkable than this oversight, however, was that Conrad, who had ever been an upstanding and fastidious fellow, neither noticed nor cared whether any of those with a title more grandiose than his own had noted his tardiness. No, for the mind of Mr. Lack was still worrying over the same preoccupation which had gripped him through the preceding night and prevented him from getting enough rest to wake at his alarm in the morning.

And that preoccupation consisted in the terrible possibilities inherent in his own existence. For, it was at that time, the preceding night, the earliest portion of Conrad Lack’s life here recounted, that Lack popped into being with his past and present intact. And so Conrad, as he was startled to realize, was a character in a story.

Aside from taking occasional solace in his childhood memories of American history books, which he loved, and family trips to here and there, Conrad’s life from that second became a flurry of despicable open-ended possibility. At any second, another character could have been invented right alongside him. A shaky robber with a borrowed gun could have popped into

////// existence outside his room. A cape buffalo could have materialized in the yard outside his window. A sterile man of indistinct foreign origin could have come to be in a building thousands of miles away from where Conrad slumbered, with a past and present of his sterile foreign own, whose entire life had led to that moment when he would order a sterile foreign military strike on Conrad Lack’s neighborhood.

Or perhaps his character would be taken in a new direction. Maybe the things he liked, such as American history books and sugary cereals and iguanas, would suddenly become distasteful to him. Or perhaps he would fall in love with the receptionist at the Metamoxil Corporation sales office at which he had recently begun work, a pretentious woman with one eyebrow bigger than the other. Or possibly he would come up with some fantastic invention and quit his job, only to fail to accumulate the required capital with which to produce it, and so perish in unfulfilled obscurity with nothing to his name.

And, Conrad reasoned, all of that would only take into account the case of his creator being staunchly tethered to realism. If that agent were given to more creativity, Conrad could easily be confronted that very day with a sadistic genie, or a portal to hell, or a transfiguration into some kind of miserable vermin.

For it was only a past and a present that Lack had been formed with, and he feared the infinite futures. And, being the sensible man that Conrad Lack was, he found nearly every excitement his churning mind could imagine to be utterly undesirable and altogether too athletic.

When Conrad had been struggling for a couple of hours to focus enough to read his way through the handful of emails in his work inbox, one of his coworkers stopped by his cubicle to ask whether Conrad had remembered to fill out a form. Conrad jumped when the coworker arrived, fearful that his appearance may be the impetus of some grant plot, and only felt secure again when the coworker had left and footsteps

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could no longer be heard.

His department had a meeting at eleven with the development team to decide on a standard font for communications between the two offices. Conrad spent the entirety of the meeting sweating profusely, concerned that at any second he would be humiliated in some public fashion, or that he would be asked to speak before the group and fail thoroughly, or that the fire alarm would sound.

When the meeting ended, it had gone fifteen minutes beyond its allotted hour, and still no font had been definitively selected. Conrad sidled out to make the most of his remaining lunch hour. He wished now more than ever that he had awoken on time in the morning, so that he could have prepared a meal for himself, or at least packed some dry cereal. The prospect of the high activity of a restaurant or a shop petrified him. Ultimately he decided that a fast food drive-through would be safest.

The cooks at the fast food place bundled curly fries with his order, rather than regular fries as he had ordered. Yet he dared not complain, for fear that he would become embroiled in a dangerous investigation of an intranational curly fry syndicate, and thereby meet his end at the hands of an operative they dispatched to silence him.

With the food in his passenger seat, he drove back to the office. Conrad decided to eat on the bench outside the lobby, reasoning that there would be fewer interactions with people if outside the office, and reasoning that solitude was safety. But after a few minutes, Conrad deemed the chirping of a nearby bird to be disconcertingly aggressive, and so ventured within to brave the breakroom.

He was unable, however, to finish his meal in the breakroom either, for the pair of gentlemen there were loquacious, and attempted to address Mr. Lack directly. Conrad, hardly containing his panic, excused himself and sought somewhere quiet and empty.

Ultimately he found the stairwell to answer this plea. And at last he was able to finish his

ILLUSTRATION // AMANDA EXCELL

////// meal without interruption. At this time, Conrad Lack sat against the wall and breathed, easing himself toward a more relaxed state.

After a few minutes of breathing in silence, Conrad felt considerably more positive about his position. He chortled slightly at his many worries, and thought that, if he was lucky, maybe he was not the protagonist of his tale.

Maybe the story was all about the receptionist, and his passing her in the morning had been all the role he had to play. So he stood, smoothed his hair, patted the buttonless section of his shirt, and headed back to his cubicle.

In an instant that pleasant calm was destroyed, as he returned to his cubicle to find his computer frozen on its screensaver. This,

doubtless, was the flap of a butterfly’s wings which would ultimately result in a hurricane for Conrad Lack’s life. And so, with some trepidation, Conrad set off to get the office tech guy, fully aware that kismet, if not something more sinister, would make fast friends, associates, or enemies of himself and the tech guru.

Once the tech guy had forced Conrad’s computer to shut down and restart, however, Conrad found himself mumbling an apology for having bothered the fellow without having exchanged more than a few words with him altogether.

Some four and half hours later, the workday was over, and Conrad was shuffling nervously

9

>>

////// behind a small herd of coworkers toward the parking lot. He was ready to leave before all of them, but feared that they would be incited to panic behind him and he would be trampled.

Conrad backed out of his parking spot with the height of caution, moving two miles per hour backward and stopping at intervals to look around.

On the highway, Conrad was driving the nails of his lengthy fingers into his palms around the steering wheel and breathing with purpose.

Automobile accidents were so frightfully probable. He glanced at the stray button in the tray of the car door without turning his head, and thought, with a modicum of terror, back to his morning, when his desire to not be late led him to dress, in part, on that thoroughfare.

How sure his demise had then been!

How sure his demise now was!

Yet he survived, and without event returned to his home. The empty one-bedroom apartment with white walls, tinctured with dust, smelled, as it had since Conrad moved in, distantly of tuna and ash. There was no pet to welcome him home. Indeed, the apartment complex did not allow pets. He had earlier entertained the notion of smuggling in a terrarium and an iguana, but now that he was conscious of being a character in a story, he would not dare such an intrigue.

He sat in his house alone, and at times attained the calm he had earlier felt in the stairwell. Any noise whatsoever from outside his thin, drab walls set his heart to racing.

One particularly tense moment arose when Conrad became suddenly aware of the singing of his obese neighbor in her shower, as Conrad mistook it for angel song and briefly thought the Second Coming was nigh.

The evening passed without incident. For supper, Conrad prepared a microwave dinner, standing in his bedroom while the microwave ran, in case of explosion, and ate it in the dark, steering clear of unnecessary interaction with electricity for the time being. After his supper was hastily consumed, Conrad forewent his

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customary evening reading time and went directly to sleep, with the intention of catching up on the lost rest from the prior night.

He rolled fitfully, and imagined at odd times that there were figures in the room or up against his window. He had not been so skittish in his remembered past. No, he had always been downright reasonable and realistic, without much care for the nonsensical phantasms which caused most to fear the dark. But now!

Now something was guaranteed to happen. For Conrad Lack was a character, and knew that his case, like all before his, must have its story.

So the shadows leapt, or worse, they crept, and reached for any appendage Conrad forgot to mind momentarily.

At some point the horrors gained ethereality and sleep took the weary, wiry man.

The next morning Conrad awoke on-time and made it to the Metamoxil Corporation sales office promptly.

In fact, Conrad’s nightly apprehensions failed to keep Conrad off-schedule even one further day that week. The moments of calm, like the one experienced in the stairwell, became more commonplace with time.

As weeks passed, calm replaced stress; trite conversations with coworkers replaced cringing at human interaction; reading by the light of a halogen bulb replaced convulsing in fearful darkness. Things were perfectly normal again for Mr. Lack, and it became increasingly rare that he envisioned the executive above the manager of his supervisor’s direct superior’s boss transforming into a wyvern and roasting him in his cubicle.

Eventually, he only worried about natural disasters and nuclear winters when everyone around him was doing the same.

But there was something else in his calm now, something that had not been present before that self-aware night: the thoughts of the endless possible futures never faded entirely from his mind, though they became less distinct. It would still occur to him, though not instill terror in him, that something may

////// introduce a recognizable plot into his life: he would no longer think of possible lovers, but of love; no longer think of possible adventures, but of adventure; no longer think of deaths, but of death. These indications of grand concepts would meander through his unworried consciousness, and he would perfunctorily half-nod at them as they passed. * When the one-year anniversary of his nightmare introduction was approaching, Conrad Lack could hardly be sure a whole year had passed, so meaningless had been the individual days. A month prior he had finally snuck in a terrarium and installed it in his bedroom, complete with a fresh, young iguana which he named ‘Jefferson.’ Jefferson stood in place among its interactive toys and gifts dayin and day-out, moving slightly at times to eat, but otherwise stationary.

Now there was something new to his peace, which had started in the background of his mind. It began as an imperceptible germ, and it had been waxing into the noticeable realm so slowly that Conrad never noticed it coming on.

What had begun as mere discomfort was soon a vague unease with the state of things.

It would come in waves of unsatisfied near-excitement. When Conrad Lack at last acknowledged it, he did so solely because it stirred a memory from his past. One of the trips he had taken with his family was a short road trip to Cheyenne, Wyoming when he was about eight years old. They had gone to see the rodeo, the bull riding, and the carnival associated with the celebration of Cheyenne Frontier Days. In the memory in question, little Conrad Lack had become upset over something petty and threw a fit in the hotel room. Conrad, in remembering, cringed at the brattiness which had since been stamped out of him. And so his parents decided to take his brother to the carnival without him, and leave him at the hotel room. This suited the indignation of little Conrad just fine, until the

moment the door closed.

From that moment, he had not been sad, nor angry, nor confused. Rather, he had the same feeling of unease, of restlessness, of unspent adrenaline, which now teased his thoughts.

It was the feeling that he was, even as he sat and took no action, actively missing out on opportunities, on life.

As this feeling mounted, Conrad found his ideas for his own plot gaining distinctness again. Maybe he would be fired. Maybe an ad in the paper seeking a lab assistant would lead him into the realm of science fiction. Perhaps the receptionist would make a pass at him. He prayed for it.

He even found himself trying to be present in more places where plots may be instigated.

He went to restaurants and ate alone. He purposefully showed up five, or, when daring, ten minutes late to work. He invited his landlord to dinner, knowing full well that the nosy man may notice the iguana enclosure. In short, he flirted with danger. * But no flourish of ecstatic, horrifying, dangerous passion rose to meet his furtive invitations. The life he lived swirled around him in a great molasses whirlpool of bored, unsatisfying indolence, and insisted that, turn him as it might, day-in, day-out, year-in, yearout, it would not capsize him, nor turn him into waters unknown. He was paddling against the current, when he should have been leaping out of the boat. Conrad would neither bang nor whimper, only inaudibly sigh.

And thirty years later Conrad Lack passed away in his sleep, survived by an elder brother, a modest pension fund, and an iguana named ‘Lincoln.’ ▲

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lIttle goats

PHOTO // MOREY SPELLMAN

// Paul Malone

’

You Don t see stars lIke thIs at hoMe unless You travel far Into the wooDs anD clIMb hIgh to earn It.

\\\ It is my second night here. I stare up through weary eyes and count the dots in the sky, I get to seven or eight, miss one, and start again. I scrutinize the unblinking ones. My Dad had told me that those were the planets. I wait to make sure it doesn’t blink before resuming my count.

There’s a loud pop, a lonesome echo reverberates in the air sounding like wobbling sheet metal.

The stars are washed out as an illumination round lights up the sky over the village, and floats out of view down past the wall. The horizon is dimly lit over our cities at night. The flare dies and the darkness returns, my vision charred this time because I looked at the light.

the movement and lagged in our formation as he threw up and squatted behind scrub at halts. He came to me pale and dehydrated and asked for an I.V. I wasn’t the most experienced but I’d never missed a stick. I took him out to the north wall and started. I blew out one vein; set up again and missed as another rolled on me. I’d missed twice and couldn’t get a line in for him. He commonly complained about work but was always tough on mission. He had trusted me and come to me for help and I fucked it up.

Sighing, I resume my star tally, blocking it out. I counted until I heard a familiar grind and click. I wasn’t sure what it was until I smelled the cigarette. Our guy on guard was being a dumbass... you can smell smokes for miles and the cherry is in plain sight. I sit up, and adjust my beanie. Scratching at the stubble on my chin I take my M4 to the doorway. Tuetsch was propped against the wall staring into the night with the cigarette shaking in between his fingers. I sat down next to him and looked out at the desert. I didn’t say anything, he could smoke, fuck it. We stayed like that for a while.

I hear quiet rustling as the guard’s boots scrape the hard baked desert. Looking down from the stars and through the naked doorway at my feet, it’s open desert as far as I can see. A deep breath, and I drift away for a minute. My heart surges as I wake with a hand covering my mouth. Rank breath pierces my nostrils; a curved blade flecked with rust grabs at my throat. I settle down again and prop my rifle against the wall. I blink as it is snatched by a shadow then turned on everyone.

Dazed, I reach behind me, checking under the field jacket liner I use as a pillow. The pistol is warm and holstered. I put my arm back under the parachute that Luke and I cut from our supply drop. He is at my left side, asleep and breathing evenly. A glance behind shows the stock of my precision rifle and my rig sitting on top with the quiet radio. I touch the night-vision in my cargo pocket. Nothing missing.

He was probably thinking of his wife and I was probably somewhere at home when we heard jingling, small grunts, and footsteps. A goatherd materialized out of the darkness, Tuetsch ground the cigarette in the dirt. The herd is upwind and seem oblivious to us. Thirty or so small goats prance past with bells jingling. They are driven by an old man, spinning something that looked like a sling. He makes weird sounds and slaps the ground with the sling near the goats to guide them. I watch them go with relief and laugh.

Resting in the moon’s shadow are some black heaps, one moves as a man fidgets and turns over.

In the corner is a ball with fingers sticking out, our antenna. The walls are high with no roof.

Everything is how I left it at dusk. I return to the heavens. The warm wind lightly blows past me. It smells of a spice, something like sage.

I suppose it was a normal thing, but it was surreal to see them emerge from the desert and walk calmly by in the moonlight. This was one of my first missions. I’d dreamt of assassins but met only little goats that night. ▲

It’d been a 20 km night-walk in. We had enough gear for two weeks. Tuetsch got sick on

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ComiC rELiEf // M i c h a e l

l yo ns

The 7:48 train usually did not run late. It did not always run on time, that is to say, but it was never as late as it was today. Today the cloudy New York sky shrouded the Albany Rail Station permitting Tim to focus on the meeting with William Clyro that he had scheduled at noon. William Clyro was some man at some cable network who wanted to make some sitcom featuring Tim as the dad trying to make things work with his demented suburban family. Tim’s agent said this was “really the way he should go.” \\\ Tim hated the idea. He hated every goddamn bit of it. He hated sitcoms. He hated the parents, the kids, and the stupid dog. He thought canned laughter was what the elevator to Hell played as it descended. He believed all that light television was good for was for teenagers to give each other hand jobs. He despised the inane delusion that life created and solved problems in thirty minutes, with breaks for commercials. He fucking loathed catchy opening credits. But he sort of liked living in upstate New York, so he agreed to the meeting.

Aside from a potentially homeless man sitting on a bench down the platform, Tim was alone at the station. His loafered feet touched the yellow line parallel to the track as a light breeze caressed his face. Tim did not notice any of this, currently transfixed by a broken speaker hanging from a pole on the other side of the track. Something about the loose cable strangling its own head reminded Tim that life could always be a bit more distressing than being forced into family television programming. He could be dead. Or worse.

“No, really...” Tim would say, as the laughter relaxed, “...I never feared death! I mean, when I was a kid, sure, death was something that I knew existed, but it only happened to my friends’ grandmothers...and then they would be absent PHOTO // MARIAH TIFFANY

a day from school because they missed their racist, bitch-of-a-human-being grandmother with her Holocaust tattoo and adult diapers...”

The crowd was guffawing its throat sore by this point. Many audience members felt bad for laughing, but “...But, no, I wasn’t afraid of dying...mainly because I didn’t really get death.”

The days of those jokes were very much over for Tim. According to his agent, they were living in the “Post-Friends” world and his routine couldn’t sell seats, not to this younger crowd at least. It didn’t matter if Tim was cutting himself bare for the audience in each performance, like the auto-censoring collective consciousness of society he strove to destroy had shutdown and true human emotion could be shared freely; without the business, there would not be any entertainment. If Tim had any intent of maintaining the idea of being a comedian, he needed to meet and talk about this TV show.

The man on the bench was most certainly homeless and a tinny recording of a bell ring played loudly through Tim’s speaker, proving its relevance. Approaching six minutes late was the 7:48.

“And even when I did ‘get’ death,” Tim would say, “like when my shitty, God-awful, horrible twat of a grandmother died...” If he was not careful, the crowd might be the next to die. “My

arms, legs, testicles, ears, whatever, and then you suddenly lose one. You just lose it, and it’s gone! Forever! Like, holy God Almighty, what would I jerk off with?” Snigger, snigger, snigger.

Tim liked feeling as though his humor made his audiences contemplate what terrible people they were. They came to his shows looking for escapist trash and Tim spit on their expectations. Truth be told, Tim did not consider himself to be a comedian. He had always wondered why people came to his shows. They thought he was telling jokes, but really, he was just venting. Rarely did he ever write down a set beforehand. Instead, he would ad-lib the night of and simply commit what material made the crowd laugh to memory. He always had a good memory. Tim did not see how a sitcom could possibly imitate what he did all those years ago.

The mother, having settled her children into their seats, arose to adjust her overstuffed bag as it had begun to slip from its spot above the seat. Tim contemplated. There was only the one door in between the two cars and it would not have been completely inappropriate to help a middle-aged woman with her bag. To switch cars as Tim would have to for this one thing, though, might come off as overly-attentive, perhaps creepy, implying that Tim had been watching her. He would have to act casually, as though he were passing through to the next car and offer his help if she needed it. Maybe they could even start up a conversation.

“You look a lot like this one comedian.”

“Do I?” “Yeah, actually. You’re not, are you? A comedian?” Tim would laugh and say that he once was. “Oh my God! Tim Sloane! You’re Tim Sloane!” she would giggle. “Oh my God, I love you!” and then, embarrassed, “I mean. I mean, you’re great!”

“Oh, wow, you’re too kind.”

“Oh, wow.” She would smile and let out a sigh. Her kids would ask who he was and she would brag that he was a very funny man.

“Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so.” He would be charming.

grandma sucked, if subtlety, you know, isn’t your thing...” Some guy would whoop. Some guy would always whoop.

Slowly stopping in front of him was his train to Penn Station. Once at rest, the doors opened and a conductor stepped out. The homeless man stirred only slightly. Tim figured that “homeless” was probably incorrect; this station had probably been the man’s home for some time now. Ticket under arm, Tim gloomily boarded the second to last car. Inside, there was no one else present, though through the door’s window Tim could see a family, a mother with children, sitting in the next car over. She was old enough to know him, maybe even having gone to a show or two in the City. He decided to stand, left hand on the bar above his head, right in his pocket, fumbling with his ticket.

The whoop always worked to his advantage. It meant he was peaking. It also meant this crowd understood his humor. Not all crowds did.

The train started to move. Above the grinding of the wheels, Tim heard a screech. He leaned over slightly and saw the homeless man having some sort of fit. As the train pulled away, Tim watched two officers in dark blue uniforms approach the man, his fate unknown to Tim as the station was replaced with a forest of dying leaves.

“Yeah, no, fuck my grandma.” An almost perfect one-liner, if done correctly.

Tim was mostly curious about the sitcom’s name. Would “Tim” even be his name? Probably, but his last name would change to something stupid. Like Tim Taylor for Tim Allen or Ray Barone for Ray Romano. Make up your fucking mind; is it the same guy or not? Maybe for “Sloane” they would pick...Zone. It rhymed. Tim Zone. The Tim Zone. Jesus.

“Honestly, though,” Tim would say, exercising his celebrated ability to lose his train of thought, “I’ve always personally believed there were more scary things than dying. Like, I don’t know. Like, losing a limb or something was a far more freaky thing. I mean, Christ, you go your whole fucking life with two sets of everything:

15

lighting up the trees high above Tim’s head that made him feel so peaceful. He felt good, better than he had in years, but could not for the life of him figure out why. He watched the clouds slowly part as the morning sun made itself prominent. His head felt light and he remained still on the grass.

Down from the sky, Tim’s train ticket quietly landed on a branch not far out of reach. Instinctively, Tim reached out for it, for he knew he would need it when he continued on his trip. However, as he attempted to grab it, nothing happened. Curious of the source of this unfamiliar problem, Tim promptly looked at his left arm. Or, more accurately, Tim looked where his left arm had been. Instead of the appendage he had been expecting, Tim found only a stump, spitting dark red fluid rapidly across the glowing green grass. Speechless, he propped himself on his right shoulder to get a better look. The bone had not been broken off cleanly and he had already lost a lot of blood. Tim looked around for something to stop the bleeding, but found nothing he could think to fashion in such a rush. He did find his missing arm. The top of the train car had been decimated, revealing an army of broken chairs, shattered glass, and Tim’s left arm still holding on to the overhead handrail.

Tim lay back against the ground. He had lost almost two liters of blood by this point and was not feeling much of anything. Tim hacked up something red and mucous, but could hardly spit it out. He began to laugh through the mess. He looked at the destruction around him and laughed harder. He looked at the remaining bits of his left side and began to convulse with delight. Cackling over nature’s twisted sardonicism, Tim’s performance livened up the forest surroundings, making known his existence echoing throughout. Louder and louder the noises grew until they all at once swiftly evaporated, disappearing with the soft gust of wind that blew through the woods. No creature, animal or otherwise, was moved by this departure of a squandered voice. ▲

“Are you sitting with anyone?” she would ask, looking around the car.

“No, no, I was just...”

“Would you like to sit with us? I’d love to get to know you.”

“Oh, wow, sure!” He would be caught offguard by her forthrightness, but appreciative nonetheless. He would meet her kids and she would see how great he was with them. He would be charming and she would be smitten.

Tim decided to go ahead with it.

Suddenly, the train brought forth the deafening noise of its emergency brake. Tim was shaken, but kept his balance with the handrail. In the car over, Tim could see the mother holding her daughter close to her chest. Suddenly, sparks erupted from between the two cars. His eyes unblinking, Tim watched as his car detached and the family’s slowly pulled ahead. None of the family reacted to his disappearance. Tim swallowed quickly, surveying his environment. He looked to his left and right and saw only trees blur by. The rest of the train slowly vanished around a turn in the track. Tim saw no one in the car behind him. He was alone.

“No, really,” Tim would say, “not being whole. Losing part of yourself. Death never seemed so bad when you look at that.”

Maintaining its speed through the curve would result in an accident, Tim thought. He hadn’t gone to college and studied physics as his mother had wanted, but he knew that he was going too damn fast. Of course, by the time Tim could think all of this through, the car had derailed and flipped down the hill. Tim was made unconscious.

People would take a drink; light up a new cigar; chuckle uncomfortably. Tim would exhale and throw the microphone to the floor. ”Oops.” And the crowd would go wild.

It might have been the way the sun was shining in this part of New York that relaxed Tim. Then again, it might have been the way the new sun glistened off the torn metal surrounding Tim. It might have also been the harsh flames that were

16

Private Callaway

// cabrIah ross

In the baseMent of a house In the southern half of the unIteD states, everYone was PacIng.

\\\ Now only two remained to walk the march; eyes solemnly averted, feet sure. Neither would acknowledge the other because something might break. That quiet place imagined up for freedom would burst the moment shoulders brushed. The smell of smoke was too strong to deny, but you have to admire them for trying. In the corner of that musty basement, thin curls of smoke were rising from a smoldering armchair. Perhaps that was the reason they were pacing. Perhaps not.

The woman was pacing purposefully, which might be considered a contradiction. However, it had been many months since she had paced, and stress had begun to overwhelm her. Everything in her life was suffocating her. At the current moment, that included the smoke from the chair.

Her husband who paced beside her, her dog who howled from the top of the stairs, and her mother were also on the list. For a brief moment it seemed even her clothes were suffocating her, so she paused in her pacing and began to strip.

The husband froze, thrown into shock. His wife stood trembling in her underthings; revealing the soft, pink flesh she had hidden. He watched, mouth gaping, as she used her clothes to stop the chair from smoking. Neither said a word; but because of their lingering connection, or perhaps in spite of it, they turned away from each other and sat on the cold floor in the exact same instant.

The whole thing was like a dance, and the more they danced the more they felt The Truth. The Truth had been there for a long time, but the chair had only just caught fire. When that sad chair invited the husband’s glowing stub of cigarette into its cushions, they both knew something was

over. And it was bigger than them, bigger than the basement, bigger than the southern half of the United States.

What had ended was a war; a war which had provided such a sense of purpose to so many.

It had given soldiers something to fight for, diplomats something to negotiate, and protestors something to fight against. The war was wrong, just as indulgence is wrong: it was wrong but it passed the time. With the war, ended the glory; the glory that distracted from the crass realities of existence. The glory that subtracted the greed and unfathomable lust from humanity.

Surely, right now across the country, The Truth was felt in many basements. But it’s never fun to diminish pain by acknowledging the multiplicity of circumstance. The husband and the wife, in the basement with the burnt chair, were the only lost ones in their minds. They were the only ones who were struck by the end of an era. In their minds, they were even the only husband and wife.

They had been married three short years, but to the husband it was worth a lifetime. The first year might have been happy, but the rest was as though layers of rose tint were being stripped off the windshield of a rusting mercedes. He knew his wife didn’t love him, though she herself was never sure. The husband had already forgiven her for that. He hadn’t, however, forgiven himself for loving her. That was unforgivable. What a deep pity it is to love someone who will never return it.

A worse pity it is to be married to that someone.

Marriage twists love into a painful obligation, rather than the spontaneous wonder it could be. When the gods in the heavens dreamed up

17

He was home; home to his girl, home to more comfortable shoes, home to the American Dream.

But we all know that was just a dream, America.

Anna had rushed into the room, screaming something impossible and smiling with her eyes.

He loved her for those eyes. They were perfect pools of blue, too rich to be anything real. In those days she still wore makeup, and a dark smudge of eyeliner rimmed those blue eyes. Her hair had been perfectly sculpted, like a rounded wave of sand, curling gently around her face and barely brushing her shoulders. Her dress was a modern fashion that Sebastian had never seen before.

It was red, short, and very fitted; reminding Sebastian just how long he’d been away.

He tried to sit up in bed, but his bandages would hardly permit it. She smiled at the effort.

The night he gave her that rosy diamond, she smiled the exact same way. But it seemed her eyes were smiling at something else.

When he looked back on that time, it all seemed to come together. Out of the corner of his eye now, he could see her shivering. He wasn’t sure if she was crying, or if the acrid smoke drew the same coarse tears to her eyes it did his. The Truth settled in deep. He was troubled by his sudden and unbidden reflection. It can be painful to recount events honestly. There were fleeting seconds where he felt sure he knew what led them there, where they took the wrong turn.

These convictions grew stale the moment they manifested themselves. The husband sighed and allowed himself to enjoy for the last time, the closeness of her. He felt sure it would be the very last time she would dare to be a part of him.

They had a good run of it all, Anna and Sebastian. The Truth still made them burn. It turned them inside out. It made each of them feel like they were screaming somewhere in their stomachs and crying in the back of their necks.

The war was over, and America was sighing.

Luckily they had each other. So when all was through, when all was said and done, they could hold each other. The moment their skin touched, it started to rain. Maybe they really were the only husband and wife, spinning at the center of the world, after all. ▲

love, there was no hint of formality, no logic, or convenience behind it.

She thought she might have loved him once, she reflected. But even she would not deny that this love was merely a courtesy. She could never bring herself to love more than the idea of love.

She wanted romance without tears, but we all know how hard that is to come by.

The husband tried to retrace their steps; he tried to apply a degree of objectivity to his past. The attempt was admirable, but this is an impossible feat to perform. He thought back to how their marriage first came to be. The day they were engaged came after he left the war behind for good. The wife could hardly remember him as he was before the war, so sufficed the mere idea of him. Soldier, academic, lover. Many such titles came together to reconstruct him, a puzzle of a man. When she came to him, lying in the hospital, she had to close her eyes tight to escape the images of flying shrapnel. He didn’t mind. The husband would’ve rather closed his eyes too.

Since the wife wasn’t yet a wife, she was still called Anna. The husband was called Sebastian, or sometimes Private Callaway. But the moment his feet touched the ground, he vowed never to be called by that name again. He had joined the military in a fit of shame, but of course for glory.

After all, the whole world was fighting. Why shouldn’t he? Of course now it was all over.

“ What had ended Was a War’ a war whIch haD ProvIDeD such a sense of PurPose to so ManY. It haD gIven solDIers soMethIng to fIght for, DIPloMats soMethIng to negotIate, anD Protestors soMethIng to fIght agaInst.”

18

PHOTO // ANISHA SISODIA

The Ignominious Number

// benjaMIn Moss

had paid him and the age at which he had seen her last. Of the fourteen, only two became anything more than a routine life-summary. His mother, perhaps guilty for having to ask, was fond of the existential questions that teenage boys loathe: “Are you happy?”

“What are you doing?” “Where are you going?” and the like. Ambler tended to answer tersely, especially in gruff, unimpeachable affirmatives. “I’m fine,” “I’ve been doing well in school,” “I’m thinking about college” and the like.

The two other visits both involved Ambler’s father.

One, a trip to the pumpkin patch, was a superhuman effort for the survivors of divorce, especially as one of them was and continued to be a non-native of the United States. Ambler’s mother betrayed some closeted artistic talent in the aftermath. Her jacko-lantern was sleek, elegant and haunting—two spiraling eyes, the sharply angled nose of a ghoul and an arrangement of the internal candle such that the mouth was both luminous and opaque. Ambler’s father managed a grittier creation; the shallow walls of the inside were clearly defined beyond a gaping mouth and two cartoonish eyes. Contrasting styles, it occurred to Ambler in later recollection. An echo of the poor match they had once been.

As for Ambler, at that time only seven or eight, he preferred pulling out the pumpkin guts for all the world to see, collecting them into great heaps and leaving them as such.

The other occasion is remembered now only with immense difficulty. His mother had brought home pizza, the smell of which occasionally recalls a blur.

His parents had not yet conceded divorce, there was a pretense left to maintain. In the background, the sound of poorly received television and a general sense of wellbeing.

But Ambler was not a sentimental creature, so whatever remained of this moment lingered on in defiance of Ambler’s best attempts to forget.

After fourteen, though, only Ambler and his father held together, stragglers of a family. When the streaking began, on a small scale in the early

\\\ Ambler’s story wasn’t nearly as compelling as his father’s, but Ambler, like the rest of us, was confined to the details of his own life. Waiting in line for his Monday coffee, Ambler started chatting with a mousy girl of average height and proceeded to tell her everything.

“I’ve been arrested four times, two of which resulted in formal charges,” he said. “All of my arrests, though, were for the same minor offense.” This was quite true.

The only crime of which Ambler had ever been guilty was the crime of public nudity, streaking at football games more specifically. Of this he had been caught four times: 5 June 2004, 8 November 2006, 13 March 2009 and 11 September 2009, though it is important to note that Ambler was a fast and tactical man, and that on three other occasions his naked physique was seen sprinting into the distance, leaving his pursuers to grasp at the air.

“That’s why it has been hard for me to stay in England,” he was telling the girl, whom he had given just barely enough time to squeak her name.

“The streaking problem out here is even worse than in the States.” This, again, was quite true.

British customs officers reluctantly allowed Ambler’s student visa to go through, though they had wellplaced concerns about Ambler’s proximity to Wembley Stadium. He already had plans to visit in two weeks’ time. But, before he could tell Michelle about any plans at all, she was gone like a streak of lightning, her well-formed physique moving off into the distance, leaving Ambler to grasp at the air.

Ambler’s father was an Afrikaner and a dentist. He left South Africa in 1983 to avoid military conscription and the related requirement to fight for an apartheid government. After a brief time practicing dentistry in Haarlem, he came to Los Angeles in 1986 to start a family and become an American.

Ambler’s mother was a valley girl from Sherman Oaks, and in Ambler’s eyes she was the more exotic figure of his youth, especially because she was seldom around. Fourteen stuck in Ambler’s mind particularly, because it was both the total number visits his mother

19

“I think you know that’s not what I mean.”

“You think wrong.”

“Listen,” Brown was now a little less polished. The gravelly quality in his voice was unbecoming. “What does four mean to you?”

“Very little, but I imagine it means something significant to you.”

“Four arrests, Ambler. Four. Isn’t that an ignominious number? Wouldn’t you pay any cost to keep from advancing to five?” But, in a showing as rare as certain astronomical phenomena, Ambler chose to evade prying eyes, keeping the real vicissitudes of his mind and body for himself alone.

Six days before Ambler turned eighteen, his father received a call in Dutch. Ambler perked up, observed with interest, though not a word was clear.

He was intuitively suspicious of whatever Dutch he had picked up from his father over the years. How could it be anything but some ridiculous fusion with Afrikaans? No doubt his father sounded like an eccentric foreigner to practiced ears. No matter.

Ambler knew exactly what he needed to know: that his father was flustered and confused. On this occasion, his father conveyed more meaning in brief flits of eye contact than in the whole transcript of the call.

Which made the call’s duration that much more agonizing. It took almost forty-five minutes of guttural noise to break the suspense. As it turned out, Amber had lived his whole life without knowing of a half sister in Holland.. The phone call announced her death. Car accident. Funeral Thursday. Flight tomorrow night. Amsterdam. Ambler’s father sulked off. An uncommon loss for words.

Sophie Bakker, the product of a two-month affair in 1984, was seven years Ambler’s senior. At her funeral, a slideshow painted her as quite the dynamic young woman. Every other photograph seemed to depict something exemplary. If she wasn’t ice skating competitively, she was organizing for farmers in South Holland or interviewing for a tabloid in Amsterdam. Physically, not what Ambler expected.

Taller than his father and slimmer than her mother, she wore a purple-dyed pixie cut and had tattoos on each wrist. Incongruously religious, she seemed to have a collection of silver crosses, one of which would accompany her to the grave. The cleric eulogizing her must have held her quite dear. Whatever he was saying, it demanded his greatest effort. He was close to tears.

A strange thing, attending a funeral in a foreign language. Ambler was having trouble expressing

going, his father’s reprimands were too wordy to be grave. In other circumstances too, Ambler’s father always retreated into certain loquacious modes. His story was always there to tell, and he told it often.

Once, as the whole damn world knew, he had run into Desmond Tutu on a cruise ship. They were the only South Africans on board, and by the end of the voyage the cruise director was convinced that Ambler’s father was a dental advisor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This was a hilarious story that Ambler often thought about and never told a soul.

The cold of winter is not a hard-learned lesson for visitors to London, especially visitors like Ambler, raised in the sunshine of Southern California. On the morning of the match, he came into Wembley’s security office bundled up heavily. The man taking his deposition was named Brown, that much was communicated in a richly glossed name-tag, incongruously clipped to an Italian suit of fine quality. This man, Brown, seemed to derive great pleasure from Ambler’s spectacle of disrobing extra pieces. He grinned on one side of his mouth awhile, and, when Ambler took a seat, stopped grinning.

Three days earlier Ambler had received an email from the very same agency that had issued his tickets.

A quick chat was in order, they claimed, prerequisite for Ambler to receive security clearance. This was the usual residual of Ambler’s guilt, and, as far as Ambler was concerned, a small price to pay. Men fond of revealing themselves often have little use for privacy.

“I’ll cut to the chase,” Brown said, and though it pained him, Ambler excused the cliché. Less excused was Brown’smanner of speech: polished and insincere like an infomercial pitch-man. Indeed, it was clear that Brown would have much rather been selling something.

“What I’m after is a guarantee,” he continued.

“At Wembley, we are passionately committed to providing an exciting and pleasurable experience for as many supporters as we can. That’s our whole business, after all. That said, we need a guarantee. We need to know you’re after no mischief.”

“I guarantee it,” Ambler said, composed.

Brown chuckled a bit and said, “I’m glad to hear it, but it’s my job to ask a little more than that. Have you had any second thoughts about the incidents of your several arrests? I need to gauge your frame of mind, and as long as it’s reasonable I’ll have no problem giving you my signature of approval. Fair?”

“If, by second thoughts, you mean fond memories, then absolutely yes.”

20

PHOTO // ALEX HOFFMAN

buyers. From acquaintances, Ambler later learned that rejection was a lot of work for the rejector. If the buyer responds to his summons, there is not much to be done. After that, an order of rejection requires either police request or a proven threat to Wembley operation. Such proof does not come easily. There must be clear exhibitions of “undeniable hostility” and “unquestionable malevolence.” A taped recording of the interview must be submitted for review by the head of security. Sometimes, the security official requesting sale cancellation will be asked to buy the voided tickets himself. In other words, Ambler was in the clear when he walked in the door.

So, lost in a crowd, he shuffled into Wembley. The match would start later, after nightfall, but in order to secure his seat from squatters he had to arrive by twilight. His tall figure, shaggy golden hair and glasses were perfectly inconspicuous. He could never look any less than the prototypical student abroad, with a goofy American smile and a big barrel chest.

His clothes, slightly less conventional, would be spotted by a seasoned streaker, but thankfully no such person was around. The pea coat on top was ideal; warm and easily removed. The tear-away basketball pants underneath served an obvious function.

He was studied. He was prepared. After the first injury timeout, adrenaline began to flow. On the second, he would be off. To sprint in the direction of the camera man, to catch his attention—that was the plan, the ideal. For streakers, it was and is the Holy Grail. His eyes fixated on the stairs, then on the small fence below. It would nothing to hop over. He started sweating. The warmth of his coat became unbearable.

Then, the moment. A Danish player pulls up lame.

Attention is diverted to his needs. Ambler makes a dash. Over the fence and off with the clothes.

Sprinting, his eyes catch a cameraman. His arms beckon video attention. The cameraman thinks, “To Hell with it,” and defies procedure, choosing instead to follow Ambler’s every move. The broadcast goes out.

There he was, Ambler. At the center of the pitch, a white body luminous in the stadium floodlights.

Cold, very much so, but warm in the soul. The camera extended Ambler’s image digitally in a million directions; to the coffee shop, to the customs office, to South Africa, Holland, to cruise ships the world around. Home to Los Angeles. To the exotic wilds of Sherman Oaks. This was Ambler, all of Ambler.

Nothing was left to hide. The naked truth of Ambler, now, finally delivered to millions of eyes. Ah, yes.

There was nothing confining about it. ▲

himself. More importantly, the sentiments of others lost their lucidity in the language gap. Ambler could have summarized every other funeral of his life in the phrase “my condolences,” but somehow that didn’t quite apply in Sophie’s case. The mourners had a deeper way of touching his heart. Their nonsense words did nothing to dilute the emotional effect of their sadness. There was a sweetness to the whole thing for which Ambler could not account. It was like watching a gaggle of geese in their hour of grief.

Ambler felt for his father. It was shocking enough to be surprised with an unknown daughter. To be surprised with her death would have been enough to silence anyone. Neither father nor son had said more than fifteen words on their transatlantic flight.

Ambler’s father slept through many hours anyway.

It was clear, when they arrived at the airport, that he hadn’t slept a minute since receiving the news.

Then, at the funeral, he looked manic again. The airborne coma had done nothing to give him rest.

Sweat was dripping down his forehead and his eyes were focused on a point off in the distance. It worried Ambler, terribly, when his father pardoned himself and walked into the aisle.

Even more so when he approached the pulpit.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse me for speaking English. I’m doubly foreign, I suppose. I am originally from South Africa, which has made my Dutch very poor, and I would hate to dishonor this occasion with a silly Dutch accent.

Therefore, silly-accented English must be our common ground.

“I’d like to thank Reverend Hendrikse for allowing me to speak. I knew Sophie less than any of you. I never met her. I spent my life in ignorance, telling many stories, but not the story that brought her into the world. I was a young dentist in Haarlem, then.

Anita Bakker was one of my patients, and I knew when I saw her that I would like to see her more.

When she finally let me take her out to dinner, I told her, of course, about my experiences in South Africa.

Apartheid, I thought at the time, would live another sixty years! I remember...”

Just wait, Ambler thought, until they hear about Desmond Tutu on that fucking cruise ship.

Much to Ambler’s surprise, Brown issued him security clearance. In the end, Ambler’s initial “I guarantee it” left Brown with few grounds to cancel sale. Standard practice at Wembley was nondiscrimination. All sources of money were welcome, including hooligans, convicts and anonymous

21

thrEE PiECEs of ProsE // PritikA nAndAkumAr

PHOTO // MOREY SPELLMAN

“UNE FEMME DU MÉTRO” The clanging of rickety chains and loose pieces of metal, the swish of trees and tunnels and blank faces going forty miles per hour while my eyes battle to remain still. I see a woman with a still hand. Her gaze focused, her eyes steady on something ahead. It’s something remarkable, something cherished, something she has worked for. Somewhere between her light locks and impeccably tailored coat, I notice a peace about her. She must have had a pleasant day of work. She must have had a light lunch of pears and cottage cheese with one of her companions. She carries a bouquet of sunflowers neatly bunched together with a periwinkle ribbon that matches her blouse. Under her other arm there is a cylindrical object in a brown paper, a bottle of ripe Pinot Noir. Her eyes are warm. She is looking forward to something, someone. The simplicity of her faces tells me that she is wholly content. It’s almost as if the most mundane distractions will do nothing to steer her gaze. My line of sight becomes overwrought with green pastures and foggy skies.

22

LA FLEUR DU MAL I am a woman. I am beside, I am beneath, I am belonging. The weight of my flesh abounds, it pulls me down, it pulls me into the essence of discomfort. The feeling that I must turn, I must turn from what is natural and my urgent will. Who defines me? What defines me? I feel the flowers encompassing me, abounding and thus etched onto my skull like a daisy chain. I am filled with a pungent perfume that reeks of sinister seduction. I am wrong, I am Eve, I am fallen. The innocence of youth and desired love will no longer be what it once was, as I sink into the murky waters, and scour for my impending fortunes – what is to come and what is to tear me apart. As the flowers dance around me, the scent emanates from my pores, mocking my attempts to achieve what is good and noble. They smell me and label me “insolent” “dirty” “unworthy.” Have I inherited such a will, to be in constant battle with the flowers? And yet they will only forever consume me. There were once dreams of golden meadows and incandescent cottages...where have they gone? Only to the shadows.

As heavy steps stride down the red pavement, I

EPOCH

notice that no one ever looks down.

Their eyes remain focused on the distance,

“What’s done is done.” A still life pounded into

possibly a location they cannot see, possibly

wet cement, the finger lines of a bright-eyed youth

a location that does not even exist. When the

etched within the tiles of heather gray pavement, the

occasional passerby glances down at the ground,

petals of a blushing kiss pressed against a napkin in

their eyes travel, yet their mind is still set on the

a wastebasket. The world is full of imprints. Some

distance. Who ever looks down at their feet and

artful, some accidental, some purposeful, some

considers the steps of the past? Who walked before

destructive.. How can I embrace the fact that the

them? No one knows who or why or when, because

stamp of my actions will forever remain etched into

that moment was lost a long time ago. Is it possible

each thread that makes up my world, my being. How

for anyone to just remain in a state without time? In

can it be? How can it be that the second I type this

devoting my life to the present, maybe in some way

word : W, O, R, D...it remains stagnant in the past...

or the other, I could make time stand still. Rather

stagnant in the history books, stagnant on this

than watching the clock out of the corner of my LED

halfway blank page. How is it that we can go about

screen wondering where the time has gone, I could

our lives without any realization that whatever

just be. Without worrying about whether or not I

act we are currently performing will no longer be

made the right choices today, without worrying

current... within moments? What would it be like to

about where I need to be or my responsibilities, I

live life dwelling in each and every moment? When

could just be. Within my moment, dwelling on my

lips touch, fingers flinch, eyes shift, flesh meets

acts of self-indulgence, my pleasures, my time, the

flesh...Would it be pure misery to embrace every

world is at my fingertips. ▲

moment?

23

PHOTO // HOPE CURRAN

Part II :

POETRY bEtwEEn rEruns // sEAn noLAn A soft ExhALing of brEAth // josh goodmAChEr word vomit // ALLison wright sEstinA // EmiLy hunt AnCiEnt of dAys // Chris Cubbison mErCEd rivEr // mAtt mALmLund EvE // moLLy hAmiLL An untitLEd PoEm // hELEn iriAs strAngErs // brAndon PinEirA

ART // AMANDA EXCELL

between reruns // sean nolan I made myself a drink, Pomegranate-Blueberry-Iced-tea, Frigid Vodka, And a beer-glass from the freezer, Stomped upstairs And stalked the walls with my eyes.

Sipping lightly Between Reruns of South Park, The bling of a text message, And the steady drone of the box-fan.

When you are this bored You begin to hope For Mind Lightning A wisp of motivation.

You begin to see Your future In a Disconnected-Smoke-Detector You start seein’ dollar signs In the way the bees die.

Above, In the sunny light, Buzzing And sizzling still, You see your break In the clumping Corpses Crowding the glass shade And in the one Rogue stinger, Tripping in circles And stumbling about This Indian-patterned rug.

Drunk and begging for Oblivion.

You start another poem, You write another song, You make yourself another drink, And start another chapter.

Watch the bees And the reruns And the text messages And you sting it all On Paper.

So you can say I have hopes,

I have opinions, I have dreams...

Here’s my proof It’s scribed right Here.

And you edit all night, To the wash of the fan.

You farm words and the bees burn and throb against your light bulb and the reruns rerun till you’re too drunk to write a straight line

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So you follow a thoughtful pander Cross-out another oblique stanza And sit.

Wait again, For that sweet Mind-Lightning.

And the fan keeps spinning, And the bottles empty, But so is your Head.

So, it’s okay.

Still the bees keep dying Maybe it’ll make sense Tomorrow.

PHOTO // MOREY SPELLMAN

a soft exhaling of b r e at h // joshua gooDMacher

Every word for love and lust Buried in the voice of waves on black rocks My ears deafly yearn for that familiar, ancient note Her breath, a whispered name My own and every other All chocked in the silence of a photograph And I am left thinking...

That same movement in her hair and the sea.

Old rusted chairs for radiant young bodies. Empty hands.

Feet stained with tar.

An imagined look behind closed eyes.

Lips.

Teeth.

Her neck’s gentle curve.

The feeling of clouds pregnant with rain.

And finally the question, Do all sea nymphs have purple toe nails?Â

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word vomit // allIson wrIght

Words, Why can’t mine Be like axes?

Reverberating echoes of the troubled sea or skylarks tweet.

What about those unsaid?

Battered in thought, Overwrought And murdered by time’s Silence.

And after tumbling about they emerge--mangled, Abrupt.

Speechless.

Looking in vain For the right place to strike, The right sound or shriek.

When my words are finally found, There isn’t a trace of feeling.

I’d rather erupt (than redact for a big splash) Just a splutter.

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ART + PHOTO // VIJAY MASHARANI

sestina

PAINTING // ROSE SPANBOCK

// eMIlY hunt

for You, for snow

It’s either one, you know, that jumbles Your brain. The people or that art. Not the snow.

The white makes it clear, like holy water Confessing the facts: that art, Like lingerie, movies, tennis matches Can’t be loved by a requited heart.

You alone will give me a heart Attack. A coup d’etat, I see no art In the slime that once was falling snow.

Warmth from the kitchen faucet, an ice bucket faced with a box of matches Pours out of me all in a jumble Pours onto me, in all that water.

I notice your face, the shape of a heart.

Your stomach, it always rumbles in jumbled Chords of discontent. It matches Your countenance. Which may be more of a diamond. The snow Has me fuddled, lacking in the art That you, all alone, suck up like a flimsy gulp of water.

What makes your eyes water?

Everything. You’ve got an octopus heart By that I mean its all a jumble Going 8 ways. Or more, with art Like the art you’ve shown me. The art that matches The color of the stairs you walked down yesterday, covered in snow.

I want to drink that water.

I want to carve your heart Out of stone, like the art At which you stare, jumbled Accounts of war, or glory, or elk in the snow, Of love, or picnics, or stars flaming like the tips of your matches.

You said there’s no greater gift than solitude. The snow Can make it flow like water Reflecting, as you reflect on the box of matches Created by some avant-garde artist of Montparnasse, the heart Of art Of the type you think about, walking alone.

Boot laces all a jumble.

You gaze at me, jumbled, and sip on your water And talk of the snow and finger your matches And so you tell me: “With a yearning heart, that’s the only way to appreciate art.”

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Ancient of Days // Chris Cubbsion

The poetry of my days is getting harder to ignore.

A midnight game of darts over cheap wine and pale beer, followed by two slices of toast covered in Grandma’s strawberry jam.

The crease in my bed sounds when I shift to sleep, and suddenly the toilet stops running.

PHOTO // MARIAH TIFFANY

What has changed since yesterday?

merced river // Matt MalMlunD Upon a fallen pine, my toes but just grazed the sable surface of the lake whose frigid nip grew stronger with the dusk, and brought me youthful mem’ries where I laid.

PHOTO // MOREY SPELLMAN

Of wondrous journeys through the cedar groves to swimming holes where I spent idle days; Of cooling shade from canopies grown, and of the embrace of Nature’s ways.

Perched on this pine familiar from my youth, I saw a murky figure, like a dream.

By pin-pricked stars I then construed A doe did gently splash across the stream.

eve

Her passage captivated me, though faint, I recognized her nimble gait; And once she fully crossed the bank, as Nature bid, I did the same.

// MollY haMIll Empty fish bowl eyes don’t go toward that tree of knowledge a smoke voice whispers through the bruised blue and orange dusk.

But she doesn’t listen, she’d rather take the fruit of knowledge pare it with a knife and let it float in her evening cocktail.

The cosmos refracted near the ice cubes nebulas flickering on her half smile.

PHOTO // MARIAH TIFFANY

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PHOTO // MARIAH TIFFANY

an untitled poem // Helen irias This morning I spilled a cup of tea The golden stream flowed across the wooden desk, and Began branching into tributaries In every direction One veered right Paying no mind to the notebook obstructing its path Simply soaking in, Morphing the words into indiscriminate swirls of ink Another chose to charge straight ahead Tumbling over the edge to become something new A puddle that would soon be a stain Should I take no action to prevent it A third rippled in my direction Claiming my white shirt as its own I contemplated the overturned mug Now empty and purposeless And cursed the careless gesture that Must have set this chaos in motion And it is for that reason That I’m afraid to say what I feel.

Strangers // branDon PIneIra

There is something about the stillness of strangers that makes meeting today much more like guessing.

You, with the brown-blue eyes and the blond-red brown hair whose fear directs your brisk theatrical stride with a weary, defensive confidence that clenches the fists of men, ready to beat upon the world like the drumming of their footsteps, with a hidden preoccupation that raises a young woman’s hand so gently and purposefully to her brow that when she brushes a piece of hair out of her eyes it is like a match being struck in slow motion, lit by the friction of other people’s stares, do you remember your education? where you were always being taught that actions speak louder than words and speechless, you would go about your day wondering what the saying meant if words couldn’t exist without the act of composing?

Still, every day thereafter you compose yourself, because you are in public, where words are rare, and being permanently on record, your actions speak louder than you’d ever like them to.

I hope one day that my words will be louder, louder than the all-suppressing white noise of hotel lobbies, classrooms, and elevators, than the threat of being hurt and ashamed and the whispers of mass criticism that plague us like an unholy paradigm of schizophrenic self-judgment, I’ll break the silence between us, and we can bridge the gap with our acting words.

Maybe one day, introductions will come without excuses and conversation will be more than climbing a flight of stairs, maybe for me, it will stop feeling unnatural to return a smile, and for you, passing by a room full of novels will elicit more than tracing the dust off of a frigid, untouched spine, if only it were possible to know the stillness of strangers. and to tune out that homogenized yell that under the noise, is a library of reverently composed lives. ▲

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PAINTING // HEATHER KESNER

Part III :

QUARKS A CoLLECtion of ACAdEmiC rEsEArCh

a culture of Doubt’ bY saMuel huMY..................................................................................................................................................................35-38

’rebellIon

of the DIsPossesseD’

bY ellen jane wIrth-foster.....................................................................................................................................39-43

transcenDence anD the realIzatIon of MeanIng bY nIcholas a. norMan................................................................................................................................................44-47

Project eDItor

Da niel Podgorsk i assIstant Project eDItor

Maya Jacobson

a culture of Doubt an essaY exPlorIng MoDern socIetY’'’s enacting and combating the fears of ProPaganDa anD low culture Present In t.s. elIot’'s the wastelanD

// Samuel Humy

C

oncern for the demoralizing effects of popular culture and media manipulation is not a new theme in the United States and United Kingdom; since the very moment low culture began, the educated and the advocates of high culture have scrutinized it. Famously, T.S. Eliot wrote his poem The Wasteland partly as a social critique in response to the emergence of low culture and the rampant nationalism during the horrors of World War I that was inspired by media manipulation and government advertising. Masses previously unaccustomed to applying particular scrutiny to authoritative messages were largely swayed by the first forms of mass media. Only after a century of ever-increasing media and brutal wars, has the general population become wary of media agenda. As a norm, the current youth generation doubts what they are told from any institution, and they believe that every source is biased, and that every bit of information received is at most only partly true. News is questionable; politicians are not trustworthy; and popular culture and advertisements are formulaic and predictable.

But of course, the tenacity of media to persuade the public is unfettered, and popular culture is quickly following suit by embracing and openly declaring its own dubiousness. T.S. Eliot feared the inability to draw the line between media manipulation and high art, but contemporary popular culture has caught up with our generation’s expectation of duplicity by drawing the line themselves through the utilization of ironic ambiguity, and paradoxically, by erasing it completely.

opening description references Shakespeare, Virgil, Milton, and Ovid; Eliot himself declares this in his notes that were published alongside The Wasteland.

After the rather verbose and erudite opening, the woman begins to speak with her husband or lover, desperately trying to produce a loving reaction in him and to get him to speak his mind, but he fails to respond because the brutality of war has ruined his mind, and he descends into low culture. She implores him: “Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. / What are you thinking of? What thinking?

What? / I never know what you are thinking.

Think” (112-14).

The woman continues her neurotic fervor and the man, mentally disturbed by the war, only responds by thinking in bleak, terse responses that reflect what he had seen on the battlefield. He thinks to himself, “I remember / Those are pearls that were his eyes” (124-25). In reminiscing over a dead companion, the man also quotes Shakespeare’s The Tempest, again confirming the couple’s understanding of high culture. However, the next thought that the ex-soldier possesses falls from high to low culture.

He thinks, “O O O O That Shakespearian Rag— / It’s so elegant / So intelligent” (128-30). He begins by quoting Hamlet’s dying words “O O O O,” and then quotes That Shakespearian Rag, a ragtime song

by David Stamper (North, 51-54). Ragtime was the first form of pop music, and the descent from high to low culture within one quote performed by a war veteran, and in particular the quoting of That Shakespearian Rag which is itself a twisting of high to low culture, reflects the inability of the public to grasp the deceit of the nationalism posited by the government during World War I. The couple is immersed in the classics and yet the man, mentally ravaged by the war, has fallen to the base and shallow pulls of media manipulation and popular culture. He

The Wasteland, written in 1922 shortly after the first world war and a surge of mass media and propaganda, is a wide-ranging, massive poem that incorporates numerous themes, but one of the most haunting scenes in the work is found in the amalgamation of high and low culture in the first part of the second section, titled “A Game of Chess,” which begins brimming with high culture. The language of the

36

PHOTO // ALEX HOFFMAN

portrayal and reality in the modern world, a social critique he continued in his work, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, in 1991, bringing to light the media manipulation during the Gulf War. Questioning media and authority became widespread so quickly that The Atomic CafĂŠ, an American documentary directed and produced by Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, and Pierce Rafferty in 1982, received widespread critical acclaim. Composed entirely of archival film clips of news reels, television news footage, government propaganda, radio programs, and advertisements from the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s, the film was seen as both horrifying and laughable in the darkest humor to the contemporary public. Mass media, accepted by the nation only thirty years before, had become so disturbing and ridiculous to the public that its shock value could captivate an audience for an entire 86-minute documentary. Due to these rapid changes in mentality towards media throughout the century, the current generation in the 00s and 10s of the new millennium has grown up with the value of doubting

can no longer relate to his significant other, and he is utterly alone in his misery. In Eliot’s mind, it is the rise of pop culture and the governmental use of mass media that has torn this couple apart. The inability to critically approach the messages presented to the public created the war, and will ultimately lead to the disintegration of true intimacy and society.

Nearly a hundred years after The Wasteland, the attitudes towards high and low art and mass media have changed immensely. After the Second World War, the public was plunged into postmodernism, and began to embrace the use of kitsch as art, especially with the likes of Andy Warhol pushing the boundary of what can be considered art. Questioning authority became more and more popular during the Vietnam War, and with the growing sense of doubt among the masses came works of social criticism in the high arts as well. Jean Baudrillard published his Simulacra and Simulation in 1981, which explored the lack of distinguishability between media

37

to indulge in the new value of ironic ambiguity among the masses. Rob Sheffield, contributor to Rolling Stone, published the article, “It’s Miley Bitch: The Tongue That Licked The World,” and through the title alone one can sense the potential for satire.

Sheffield remarks that,

media ingrained in their minds more than any previous generation. Much to the would-be delight of T.S. Eliot, cultural hegemony is now recognized as an indisputable problem of modern society.

The current generation has been raised in a world saturated by media, and has accepted the need to be more skeptical of anything produced by government and mass media, and for this reason is much more adept at distinguishing between high and low culture. This skepticism causes them to accept ambiguity wholeheartedly, because it is known that ambiguity is more truthful than anything stated as absolute. Aversion to the concrete leads to a value of sarcasm, satire, irony, and other such forms of pointed mockery. The Onion, a satirical news source founded in 1988, is popular for this very reason, as is Stephen Colbert, who plays a die-hard republican on his show The Colbert Report, while in reality he is a democrat lampooning right-wing politics. The New Yorker has recently attempted to utilize parodical news reports in their addition of The Borowitz Report in 2012, which has had mixed reviews. But even The Onion, The Colbert Report, and The Borowitz Report can be too concrete for many young audiences because they are too obviously satirical; some of the pop cultural icons of the era are so ambiguous as to their potential irony that there is ongoing debate about whether or not the icons are satirical or not. Musicians like Die Antwoord and Lil B, and television shows like Jersey Shore are notorious for being viewed as serious by some and satirical by others, but they irrefutably retain their popularity despite their ambiguity, and most likely, because of it. Some audiences love the humor in the music; some actually enjoy it aesthetically; and some despise it for sinking to what seems to be a step lower than low culture, but all of these reactions increase the renown of the work and the hype surrounding it.

“Miley was the one star in the room who truly understood what the MTV Video Music Awards are all about — waggling your tongue, grabbing your crotch, rocking a foam finger, going to third with the Care Bears, twerking and shrieking and acting out America’s goriest poppsycho nightmares” (par. 1).

One might assume that Sheffield does not actually believe that this is what the VMAs are “all about,” but there has been long-lasting debate in the comments section of the online magazine post on the sincerity of the article, and both National Public Radio (Shine, par. 1) and Cyrus herself via Twitter have publicly avowed their belief that this article does praise Cyrus’s performance. Sheffield continues in his article to mock the various other musical artists in past VMA performances more explicitly than any potential mocking of Cyrus: “Justin [Timberlake] got a solo performance that lasted almost exactly as long as Britney [Spears]’s first marriage did. Life is unfair” (par. 2). And he concludes his piece by stating, “MTV made sure this year’s VMA party was a real show.

With a little help from Miley” (par. 10). The flippant style of the piece screams tongue-in-cheek, and yet there is nothing to prove its sardonic approach; this is ironic ambiguity, the same approach as pop culture icons like Lil B and Die Antwoord. Arguments can be made either way, but the debate over the seriousness of Sheffield’s article is beside the point. Rolling Stone has willingly followed popular culture as it has done throughout the magazine’s entire existence and has now embraced the latest trend of ironic ambiguity.

Yet, this bold maneuver invites a more puzzling debate: the question of whether or not mass media like Rolling Stone, advertisements, political propaganda, or television in general, whose ultimate goal is to sell something to the public, can profitably place their sales in something as intangible as ambiguity, or as volatile as irony, let alone together as one.

Mass media has caught on to this new ironic twist in youth culture, and has begun to openly embrace ambiguity and satire in order to appeal to the current generation. On August 25th 2013, MTV’s Video Music Awards caused mass controversy due to a scandalous performance by Miley Cyrus that shocked the American public. The event immediately became one of the most discussed topics across the nation, and Rolling Stone, a magazine based entirely off of pop culture and profiting from it, seized the opportunity

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Many institutions have embraced either ambiguity or irony in recent advertising, but seeing both together is extremely rare. Gocompare, a British financial services comparison website, launched an advertisement in 2012 that was deeply ironic in that it was rather self-deprecating, and the video proved to be quite successful. It featured Gocompare’s mascot singing as it usually does in its advertisements, only this time when it approached people in the street they were terribly distressed by its obnoxious singing, and eventually the mascot is blown up by an assassin with a rocket launcher, who walks away with a satisfied sigh of relief after the job is done. The video was received quite well by the public, and commentary on the video sites that contain the advertisement has been largely positive. Another trend, especially in the fashion industry and most notably by American Apparel, is the use of ambiguity in advertising. The images placed beside the brand name have little or nothing to do with the actual products that the company is selling, and if it weren’t for the brand name, one would probably have no idea what was being sold.

Studies by Hazel G. Warlaumont published in 1995 concluded that a bit of ambiguity in advertising can actually more deeply involve an audience and cause an advertisement to be remembered more than completely logical advertisements. But for the same reason that the current generation grows tired of The Onion and The Colbert Report, youth culture also has become blasé towards mere ambiguity or obvious irony in advertising: these methods are too simple.

Ambiguous images are still attached to a brand name, and self-deprecating advertisements are simply trying to be funny while undoubtedly still trying to sell something.

high culture, the creation of a work with an agenda yet open for interpretation and analysis? In this sense, ironic ambiguity brings media manipulation partially into the realm of high art by giving it depth.

To take advantage of this, institutions must follow the actions of Rolling Stone. T.S. Eliot expressed trepidation over the public’s inability to distinguish between media manipulation and high culture, and although his fear has not yet been rendered obsolete (PBS recently launched a campaign in 2013 against the deplorable state of television) and perhaps never will be, it has grown over the years to develop into a new form. This volatile and unpredictable notion of ironic ambiguity in mass media may very well succeed in destroying the separation of high and low culture, but it might also succeed in destroying media manipulation entirely due to its intangibility and lack of control. While foreseeing the death of popular culture is perhaps too grandiose, one can sense the apprehension of the institutions, and the latent possibility of a cultural shift that the future holds. works cIteD

The Atomic Cafe. Dir. Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, and Pierce Rafferty. Libra Films, 1982. DVD. Baudrillard, Jean. The Jean Baudrillard Reader. Ed. Steve Redhead. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. Print.

Eliot, T. S. The Wasteland. Ed. Michael North. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2000. Print. Norton Critical Ser. Eliot, T. S. The Wasteland. Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, Carol T. Christ, Alfred David, and Barbara K. Lewalski. 9th ed. Vol. F. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2012. 100-200.

Print.

Ambiguity and irony, separate from one another, are attempts at erasing the line between high and low culture, thus fulfilling T.S. Eliot’s fears completely because, by incorporating irony or ambiguity, mass media poses as innovative and intellectual art. But this is not enough, for to erase the line distinguishing the high and low, an institution must draw the line itself by declaring its status as low culture yet methodically remaining equivocal and seemingly devoid of agenda, leaving it entirely up to the whims of the public to decide how to interpret the message.

And yet, is this not one of the unspoken requisites of

Gocompare.com.

Advertisement. YouTube.

TheBeanyman62, 02 July 2012. Web. 2 Sept. 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=E_Pbm5QJ9p0>.

Ha, Young-Wan, and Stephen J. Hoch. “Ambiguity, Processing Strategy, and Advertising-Evidence Interactions.” Journal of Consumer Research 16.3 (1989): 354-60. JSTOR. Web. 5 Sept. 2013.

Jameson, Fredric. “The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.

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Durham: Duke UP, 1991. 1-55. Print.

Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and The Market.” Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.

Durham: Duke UP, 1991. 260-79. Print.

Matheson, Whitney. “Too Funny: PBS Posts Trailers for Fake Reality Series.” USA Today.

Gannett, 16 July 2013. Web. 24 Aug. 2013.

Cyrus, Miley (MileyCyrus). “’Miley was the one star in the room who truly understood what the MTV Video Music Awards are all about!’ —Rolling Stone” 26 August 2013. Tweet.

Sheffield, Rob. “It’s Miley, Bitch: The Tongue That Licked the World.” Rollingstone.com.

Rolling Stone, 26 Aug. 2013. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.

Shine, Cedric. “Everybody’s Mad At Miley Cyrus.” NPR. NPR, 27 Aug. 2013.

Web. 1 Sept. 2013.

Warlaumont, Hazel G. “Advertising Images: From Persuasion to Polysemy.” Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising 17.1 (1995): 19-31. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 6 Sept. 2013.

rebellIon of the DIsPossesseD feMale confIneMent In eDIth wharton’'s ’a bottle of PerrIer

// Ellen Jane Wirth-Foster

E

Medford. It appears that isolation fosters abuse, which leads to an examination of the nuclear family in suburbia, where the male figure is free to come and go while the female, represented by Gosling, is geographically isolated, and without social recourse to demand fair treatment. To demonstrate this pattern, Wharton pares down the landscape of suburbia to its simplest elements, the house and the outside, the house and not-the-house. This paring down is necessary to accelerate the decay of the characters’ relationships and advance the plot. It is an extreme suburbia, in which the female character’s (Gosling’s) festering discontent and isolation are magnified and accelerated, like the decay of the corpse in the well. The stifled aggression of the suburban setting is intensified by the lack of clean water, creating a sense of urgency that belies the timeless, dreamy atmosphere of the castle-like house. The two murders which follow (one successful, one attempted) from this situation show the violence inherent in the suburban arrangement when one partner is denied an outlet for tension, the fulfillment of his or her desires, and a means of personal achievement in relation to a larger social group.

Candace Waid proposes the essential basis for this argument: that Gosling may be read as female. In her book, Edith Wharton’s Letters From the Underworld: Fictions of Women and Writing, Waid specifies that “the female can be figured by a male character” (178), that “Gosling’s identification with the stasis and inertia of the place reinforces his role as the female in the story” (181), and that “he has internalized beyond all reason the primary attribute of women’s traditional role: the responsibility of the caretaker” (183). In this sense Gosling is both Almodham’s wife and his mother, and illustrates some negative effects of these typical relationships. Because there is an unequal balance in their partnership, the servant’s entire life in consumed by his responsibilities towards his master’s comfort, and the maintenance of the enormous dilapidated home. The manservant is later depicted as a mother figure for Medford, catering to his every whim according to the pattern previously established with

dith Wharton, an American novelist born in 1862, was the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for literature. In her lifetime, Wharton associated with many of the great names in modern literature, from Henry James and Sinclair Lewis to Jean Cocteau. Because of her familiarity with high society in America and abroad, she occupied a privileged position for ironic satire of upper-class snobbery in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. “A Bottle of Perrier,” one of Wharton’s many short stories, was originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1926 with the alternate title “A Bottle of Evian,” before appearing in her short story collection, Ghosts, in 1937. In this tale, a young archaeology student named Medford is visiting his introverted older friend Almodham, who has a crumbling old castle in the desert. When the young man arrives at the half-ruined fort, he is greeted by a suspicious servant named Gosling, who reports that Almodham will return soon. However, as the days drag on and his friend is nowhere to be found, the young man begins to suspect that his host has met with some misfortune—in the final scene it is revealed that Gosling drowned his master in the only well on the property. The motive for this horrible act: Gosling was driven mad by isolation, enraged by the authoritarian man who would not let him take even the shortest vacation from years of grueling service at this lonely desert outpost.

Some critics argue that Gosling, a male character, might be read as a female presence in the story.

Candace Waid cites a diagonal scar on his forehead as a marker of displaced female genitalia—I agree with this interpretation, and I read Gosling as Almodham’s house-bound “wife” condemned to a life of drudgery.

The two figures correspond to the outdated suburban pattern of a stay-at-home partner and another partner who is free to move abroad in the world, whose place of work and productivity is outside the home. Wharton explores the inherently violent nature of conventional male/female partnerships which is apparent both in Gosling’s indentured servitude to Almodham and in the servant’s later motherly coddling of the visitor

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PAINTING // MALLORY SWINCHOCK

winter of Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome. In “A Bottle of Perrier”, this plain background accentuates the characters’ actions. Caught in imbalanced relationships between dominating male and subordinate female, their dysfunction is increased by Wharton’s use of sparse landscape and limited resources. As is the case in many works of 19th century Gothic fiction, the setting or landscape in “A Bottle of Perrier” is abstract.

A sign that it is not strictly representational are the many allusions to timelessness and the dreamlike atmosphere of the house—it is both physically and temporally separate from our reality. We can interpret this surreal landscape as a diagram, or allegory, with places representing ideas, and Wharton’s characters as archetypal stand-ins for whole sectors of people. In our diagram, the castle is the suburban house, an oasis of “green leafage, water, comfort” which “to anyone sick of the Western fret and fever [...] [exudes] peace”

Almodham. Gosling serves Medford, even stifles him with care, yet harbors a festering resentment toward this new arrival: if Medford had not turned up at the castle, the servant could have gotten away with murder and finally escaped to Europe—to Western lands of technology and excitement as portrayed in contrast to an Orientalist East of lassitude and timeless stupor.

As it is, Gosling is trapped by Medford’s presence, and according to Jenni Dyman in her book, Lurking Feminism: The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, “both men are in compromised positions in relation to the patriarchal power” (119) of Almodham.

This compromised position is not only social but geographic. Almodham’s house is far from civilization, accessible only by “a two days’ struggle over the treacherous trails [...] and a ride of two more on a hired mount” (141). The setting is comprised of the house and the desert, a scene as abstractly simple as the bleak

41

PAINTINGS // MALLORY SWINCHOCK

tree is Almodham and the well is Gosling, the female whose entrapped energy is the source of strength for the male. The archaeologist returns to his castle to renew his strength between expeditions, whereas the man-servant is a captive host. In this case, Wharton’s choice of a desert landscape puts intense focus on this act of draining not just a well, but the only well.

The plot’s violent ending is precipitated by the lack of resources—when the “well” of Gosling’s internal resources (patience, hope, etc.) runs dry, there is no one else to whom he can turn and he must act. In another, gentler setting, Almodham’s violent end might have been delayed or avoided if Gosling had had more freedom and connections to other people, any outlet for his frustration and aggression. But in “A Bottle of Perrier” Wharton strips away all the pacifying trappings of suburbia—there is nowhere for Gosling to go, and nowhere for him to direct his disappointment except towards Almodham, his only connection with the world outside. In the desert, only the basic elements of a married couple in suburbia are left: two people linked together by some agreement, the man mobile and the woman isolated from society, and the unhappiness which results.

In her essay, “Gothic Borrowings and Innovations in Edith Wharton’s ‘A Bottle of Perrier,’” Carol Singley describes how Wharton’s story showcases “the imbalance of power and the necessary subjection of one individual to another”, and “critiques patriarchal

(141). The characters begin in typical roles of husband, wife, mother, child, and by the end these patterns are violently rejected, implying through the universal nature of allegory that the same unhappy conclusion holds true for others, though in other settings and to varying degrees.

The first relationship to explore is between Almodham and Gosling, who are stand-ins for a married couple in the story. Dyman writes of Almodham, whose “darker side represents the worst of western patriarchy [...] an authoritarian dominator and oppressor” (118). He has the luxury of escaping into his work, spending days away from home on archaeological digs while Gosling is tied to the house as its caretaker and cannot even take a vacation. In his own words, I told ‘im as much, and ‘ow a man ‘ad his rights after all, and my youth was going, and me that ‘ad served him so well chained up ‘ere like ‘is watchdog, and always next year and next year—and, well, sir, ‘e just laughed, sneering-like, and lit ‘is cigarette. ‘Oh, Gosling, cut it out,’ ‘e says. (153) This parasitic relationship is doubled in the physical features of the house—at its center there is “an ancient fig tree, enormous, exuberant, writhed over a whitewashed well-head, sucking life from what appeared to be the only source of moisture within the walls” (141). Read in the context of marriage, the fig

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This placating results from Gosling’s own cynicism, in his experience being repressed by Almodham.

Gosling responds to Medford’s requests for water with “deprecation,” “irony” (141) and “reproach” (145), because he considers the daughter’s quest for truth to be futile. Yet as Medford drinks and bathes in the polluted well-water, his awareness of the murder naturally grows until he reaches an epiphany, and realizes that Gosling is at fault ii.

Well-water and Perrier are a fixation of the text, of titular importance, and exacerbate the tension between Gosling and Medford. The following scene is an example of this tension:

power and the damaging sexual relations it spawns” (272). When stripped to its core this pattern of marriage results in violence, which still exists and is only delayed or repressed when the pattern is removed from the abstract plane of the desert and placed into the reality of our own surroundings i.

Beyond the marriage dynamic lies another dimension of violence, the same-sex parent/child relationship. After Gosling kills his ‘husband,’ Almodham, the female-marked servant directs his energies towards Medford, exhibiting manipulative maternal feelings toward his guest. Medford in turn takes on the role of Gosling’s daughter. This is marked by his exhibition of two female-gendered fears, first the anxiety for male approval and second the fear of being entrapped by the mother. We read the first fear in Medford’s thoughts, that Almodham might have “ridden away to escape the boredom of entertaining him” (150), or “simply withdrawn to some secret suite of that intricate dwelling, [...] waiting there for his guest’s departure” (150). In these passages, we see that Medford is insecure and wants Almodham to like him, and fears that the archaeologist is avoiding him because of some deep-seated inadequacy within himself. This fear gives “a sharp sense of isolation.

He fe[els] himself shut out, unwanted, “and begins to berate himself bitterly for some failure on his part to anticipate the older man’s opinions and desires: ‘Fool that I am—he probably expected me to pack up and go as soon as I found he was away!’”(151). The second fear Medford manifests is his anxiety about Gosling, who is like a bad mother in that he placates and coddles Medford, while keeping him captive and hiding the truth from him. In Wharton’s desert, the absence of clean water takes on added significance, symbolizing the truth about Almodham’s murder, which Gosling, as the mother figure, is trying to hide from his ‘daughter,’ Medford. He attempts through his “solicitude” (150) to keep her from questioning the strange, meaningless life they lead in the absence of a man, isolated so that

Gosling’s surprise widened to amazement. “Not water, sir? Water—in these parts?”

Medford’s irritability stirred again. “Something wrong with your water? Boil it then, can’t you? I won’t—” He pushed away the half-filled wineglass.

“Oh—boiled? Certainly, sir.” The man’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. He placed on the table a succulent mess of rice and mutton, and vanished.

Medford leaned back, surrendering himself to the night, the coolness, the ripple of wind in the palms.

(143) In this “place of postponements and enchantments” (148), the normal exchanges of goods are virtually cut off. If Gosling can not find a case of Perrier for Medford to drink, then he can not prevent the guest from discovering that Aldmodham is dead in the well.

Gosling therefore is cagey about water throughout the story, as he desperately waits for the shipment that never comes. He offers Medford wine instead, or boils the well-water and masks the stench of death with lemon juice. This is a delaying tactic by the mother figure who wants to keep something hidden from the daughter figure. When the mother withholds the truth, the daughter gets irritated, and the mother responds with passive aggression and a bribe, and the daughter surrenders. Food, and more importantly Perrier, is the bribe, symbolizing the material world with which the mother tries to pacify the daughter, since they are excluded from the masculine sphere of action and intellect. At first, the promise of material comforts seems to work: “Perrier in the desert! Medford smiled assentingly, surrendered his keys and strolled away” (142), provoking once again a literal surrender of self.

In another argument, Medford gives in to ominous comfort: “The night was too rich in healing; it sank on

The silly face of [Medford’s] watch told its daily tale to emptiness. The wheeling of the constellations over those ruined walls marked only the revolutions of the earth; the spasmodic motions of man meant nothing. The very fact of being hungry, that stroke of the inward clock, was minimized by the slightness of the sensation—just the ghost of a pang, that might have been quieted by dried fruit and honey. Life had the light monotonous smoothness of eternity. (144)

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himself, is what Wharton is protesting. Her story argues in favor of a new pattern which would offer the female partner a viable social fabric and more meaningful work than a “castle of romance” (143) in a “land of dreams” (146) can offer.

his spirit like wings. Time vanished, fret and trouble were no more” (144) and to the inertia of the hot weather: “The midday heat lay heavy even on the shaded side of the court, and the sinews of his will were weakening” (146). The desert setting and scarce resources of this abstracted suburbia enhance the negative aspects of this relationship, bringing to light how the mother dominates the daughter just as she was dominated by her husband. Throughout the text there unfolds a narrative of untold truth trying to come out through the water, and a theme of female enslavement by material comforts, enabled by other women.

Dyman writes, “Wharton portrays the institution of marriage and narrowly defined gender identities as repressive structures” (xiv). “A Bottle of Perrier” asks the question: If the model of couples in suburbia generates violence, then what is an appropriate space for the individual? In what social structure, and in what landscape, could Gosling have lived happily with Almodham? An exploration of this question brings us to Alvin Toffler’s book, Future Shock, in which he illustrates that the proliferation of relationships takes away from the time spent balancing the self, and makes for a life that is less stable, more reliant on others. What we see with Almodham and Gosling is an extreme example of the fundamental rupture which even one relationship can create, the incremental destruction of the self, the shift from ‘I’ to ‘we.’

Gosling has lost himself, been completely sublimated by his ‘marriage’ to Almodham, and even after his murderous rebellion is still defined by his relationship with another character, Medford. Wharton, through her use of place, hints at the necessity of self-reliance as a defense against the destructive nature of personal relationships. In “A Bottle of Perrier” she presents, through the misfortunes of her characters, a world where the best way to survive the chaos of human relations is to turn inwards and balance the male and female within oneself without relying on conventional gender roles and relationships. The allegorical nature of the abstract landscape extends this lesson in selfreliance beyond this cast of characters to all people, encouraging a flexible gender identity as opposed to tradition patterns of male domination over submissive females, and suggests that pairing people off into isolated zones of intimacy also cuts them off from the larger social context, allowing their negative qualities to flourish unchecked and leaving the injured parties without aid. The isolation of the house, and of Gosling

A second reading of Almodham and Gosling by Candace Waid shows evidence of a mother/child relationship between them. In this example Gosling is the self-sacrificing mother who receives no thanks, and rejects her role. Candace Waid writes, “Wharton suggests that unquiet ghosts emerge from repressed cravings; those who sacrifice their own needs eventually kill the ones they are caring for, or, in effect, themselves” (Waid, 184). Throwing his master down the well is a reverse birth image, a delayed abortion of Almodham and the whole relationship, of Gosling’s own role as a protector and nurturer. In Wharton’s work, both marriage and parental relationships are portrayed as mutually destructive—here the process of decay is again accelerated by the lack of resources and outside connections, the extreme isolation Gosling experiences in the house surrounded by sand. ii This physical imbibing of the polluted well-water is Medford literally consuming the truth of his situation.

In this sense, Wharton gives us a vision of truth which crosses the line between reality and magic, some objective absolute truth which can not be hidden. When the servant is standing over his bed crying, Medford wonders whether Gosling was “weeping for Almodham, already dead, or for Medford, about to be committed to the same grave?”(148).

This question is only possible because our daughter figure has consumed the water, thought boiled and masked with lemon, and has the truth inside him. Evidence for this is the inconsistent narration, in which Medford seems to reach an epiphany in the courtyard in the final scene, yet has already reached the same conclusion twice earlier on.

This indicates a building apprehension, just as he ingests more and more of the water, as the truth is revealed. i

works cIteD Dyman, Jenni. Lurking Feminism: The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. New York: 1996

Critical Essays, Afred Bendixen and Annette Zilversmit, Garland Publishing, Inc. New York, 1992

Feodorko, Kathy A. Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton.

The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa: 1995

Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock; Random House: 1970

Nettels, Elsa. “Gender and First-Person Narration in Edith Wharton’s Short Fiction” Compiled in Edith Wharton: Critical Essays, Afred Bendixen and Annette Zilversmit, Garland Publishing, Inc. New York, 1992 Singley, Carol. “Gothic Borrowings & Invocations in Edith Wharton’s ‘A Bottle of Perrier’”. Compiled in Edith Wharton:

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Waid, Candace. Edith Wharton’s Letters From the Underworld: Fictions of Women and Writing. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991 “Edith Wharton: Current Bibliography, 1999-present”, The Edith Wharton Society. http://public.wsu. edu/~campbelld/wharton/newbib.htm

transcenDence anD the realIzatIon of MeanIng the epiphanic moment as a response to darWin’’'s notIon of tIMe

// Nicholas A. Norman Winner of the 2013 William and Marjorie Frost Award

T

he human mind is aware of nothing more certain in life than the presence of time, and the inevitable conclusion that awaits us as a result of its forces. The notion of a finite existence prompts us to seek and fulfill a meaningful life, and indeed, as Charles Darwin says in On Natural Selection, “Nothing is easier to admit than the universal struggle for life” (Darwin 1). While Darwin’s theory on natural selection focuses mainly on the struggle for existence between beings, and the resulting biological and genetic implications thereof, there is also another key component to his theory: the notion of constant change. According to the mechanics of Darwin’s theory, change (over time) is the only constant. Here, the question then becomes, ‘Is there a basic, fundamental essence of ourselves that remains unchanged by time, and transcends the spatial and temporal laws of nature?’

This issue lies at the heart of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which imagines and applies Darwin’s ‘struggle for existence’ rather as longing for meaning, a search for this essence. Woolf uses what can aptly be named the ‘epiphanic moment’ to illustrate that by transcendence one realizes the nature of this essence. In short, the epiphanic moment works as a response to Darwin’s notion of time and change, and moreover, demonstrates that permanence, and therefore meaning, can be found in discovering essence.

immobilization, and resistance. “No” signifies a shift from complacency, and what seems early in the text to be a type of subdued lethargy, to a suddenly radical and powerful assertion of being that digs its heels firmly into the fabric of time. This negation also triggers a shift in how Mrs. Ramsay positions herself in relation to her family. Rather than affirming her connection to her children and the world around her through “yes,” Mrs. Ramsay instead asserts a skepticism that distances her from her family, and reconfigures the structural dynamics of her relationship to her children to assume a more aloof stance. In effect, Mrs. Ramsay’s negation provides the critical framework for the development of the epiphanic moment, as it directly counteracts Darwin’s notion of time, and enables Mrs. Ramsay to temporarily isolate herself from the role she plays in her family and its obligations.

Her need for isolation proves to be essential, as Mrs. Ramsay says, “For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of [...] To be silent; to be alone” (Woolf 62). Isolation provides Mrs. Ramsay with a respite from not only the burden of motherhood, but also from “the mutual relations of all beings” (Darwin 19). The Darwinian notion that we are all, in some way, bound to each other, whether through our genes, friendships, or conflicts, makes it impossible to exist solely by and for oneself, because the physical and mental forms of self depend directly upon their connection to others.

And indeed, it is because of the inextricable nature of human relations that the ‘struggle for existence’ arises. Therefore, when Mrs. Ramsay is alone, she is liberated from the constant struggle, and “free for the strangest adventures” (Woolf 62). She is able to exist free from the burden of holding her family together. This liberation process is first achieved

The epiphanic moment begins with Mrs. Ramsay making a negation: “No, she thought [...] children never forget” (Woolf 62). The use of “no” produces two shifts, the first being a reverse in the direction of temporal movement of Mrs. Ramsay’s character.

Whereas “yes” (Darwinian movement of time), spoken by Mrs. Ramsay in the first line of the novel, implies forward motion and continuity, “no” rather invokes the opposite: stagnation,

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PHOTO // MARIAH TIFFANY

Woolf provides a narrative that illuminates what it’s like to live in that constant struggle for existence.

To The Lighthouse enables the reader to experience what living constantly among the entangled bank actually feels like.

by removing the superficiality and trifling attached to the mutual relations she is forced to constantly maintain: “All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated” (Woolf 62). The use of “glittering” and “evaporated” evokes a materialistic, surface-level quality that seems to suggest Mrs. Ramsay’s relations to others is merely a thinly constructed veil, a cheap visage with little or no depth. Woolf’s attention to surface detail becomes more important as Mrs. Ramsay continues to make her way ‘down and in’ later in the scene. Here, one also observes how form reflects the content of Mrs. Ramsay’s character. The tightly packed clauses and excessive comma usage effects a congested, almost claustrophobic feeling that reinforces the notion that Mrs. Ramsay is oppressed by the obligations to her family. Additionally, the claustrophobic syntax mirrors the themes of struggle and strife evoked by Darwin’s entangled bank metaphor. Yet, one key difference that separates Darwin’s text from Woolf’s is how each author imagines and represents the struggle. Darwin deals chiefly with the theoretical and philosophical issues of life’s struggle, whereas

It is the visceral quality of Woolf’s language that also serves the higher purpose of capturing and describing the highly surreal process of exploring the landscape of inner-self. As Mrs. Ramsay begins to reflect upon her inner-self, the focus switches from temporal movement of Mrs. Ramsay’s character onto a spatial shift, as she moves ‘down and in:’ “one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others” (Woolf 62). The act of shrinking evokes the motif of spatial movement by reducing surface area in terms of internal being. It is important to note here how Woolf brings attention to the process of spatial disintegration and classification. The fact that Mrs. Ramsay realizes the “wedge-shaped core of darkness” by moving inwards through her own space informs the notion of Woolf’s dualistic

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model of reality: an external (visible) reality, and an internal (invisible) reality. The former is wherein our physical beings exist, and is characterized by impermanence and Darwin’s constant struggle; the latter is the mental space, constituted and actualized by our memories, thoughts, and emotions, wherein the forces of time and change do not necessarily apply and permanence can be achieved. Woolf’s dualistic model of reality thus functions as the principal force that separates Mrs. Ramsay’s inner being from the external world, and introduces the possibility of (and necessity for) transcendence. It is precisely because of the dual nature of reality that the need for transcendence arises, to deconstruct the illusion between internal and external reality, and realize meaning.

she sees later in the scene. The juxtaposition works in a similar way to the negation Mrs. Ramsay makes earlier: one affirms the existence of something through the presence of its counterpart. By understanding her essence through the presence of light she observes and by feeling the implication it has within, Mrs. Ramsay is thus able to realize the form of her being. Additionally, the “wedge-shaped core of darkness” as a descriptor evokes specific qualities with regards to the texture, surface, and shape of being. Rather than portray the aesthetics of being as radiant or effulgent, Woolf instead provides a more hermetic and cloistered representation that casts being as something more isolated, withdrawn, private, even secret—”invisible” to the external world. Alas, affirming the existence of being through the epistemology of vision follows a three step process: first, the sense of touch as an extension of eyesight feels, and therefore affirms, being; next, juxtaposition reinforces the affirmation of being through the presence of its counterpart; and finally, the privatization of being allows one to consecrate it as their own. This final step gives rise to another discordance between Woolf and Darwin’s representations of being.

The illusory construct notion to which Woolf raises one’s attention also seems to allude to a certain degree of experimentation she conducts with the epistemology of vision as it relates to being. The fundamental question Woolf poses is, ‘If one assumes hypothetically that ocular proof is the basis for knowing that something exists, and proof of being (essence) lies within and is not directly observable, then is there proof that our being does in fact exist?’ Based upon the aforementioned experience in which Mrs. Ramsay realizes her essence not by seeing it but by reflecting inward and feeling it as an abstraction, one could reasonably argue that Woolf’s answer to the above question would be that one need not necessarily see something in order to prove it exists. For Woolf, it seems that the sensation of touch works almost as an extension of eyesight. This abstract (modernistic) reimagining of the sense receives its practical application in one such instance when Mrs. Ramsay condemns the illusory nature of a dual reality: “one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish” (Woolf 62).

At first, it seems that Woolf’s representation of being echoes that of Darwin, who states, “When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings [...] they seem to me to become ennobled” (Darwin 116). One easily takes quick notice to how both Woolf and Darwin assign an extraordinarily high value to the concept or notion of being. But the less obvious factor that separates Woolf from Darwin relates to the third step in the above model regarding the consecration of being. For Darwin, the single being constitutes part of a greater whole, and that it “will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species” (116). This utilitarian perspective reduces being to a mere link in a chain that extends on infinitely through time via the process of natural selection. Alas, it seems that the Darwinian representation of being has no sense of individuation of exclusivity attached to it.

The phrase “must feel, our apparitions” is a subtle play on words, which conflates the sense of sight (apparitions) with touch (feel it), and alludes to the previously described ability of being able to see something by feeling it. Mrs. Ramsay is able to translate this synesthetic experience, and thus give form to essence, by creating juxtaposition between her “wedge-shaped core of darkness” and the “light”

To beat the drum of an old cliché, individuals are all just cogs in the machine. Woolf counters the Darwinian representation of being, first by

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concretizing being as something sacred belonging to the individual, and then by going one step further and taking a more harmonious stance in relation to the process of natural selection and the constant struggle for existence. For example, as Mrs. Ramsay reflects upon her “wedge-shaped core of darkness”, she thinks, “There was freedom, there was, peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability” (Woolf 63). The keywords “peace” and “freedom” both evoke a sense of liberation from the constant struggle similar to the previous discussion of Mrs. Ramsay’s desire for isolation. “Stability” also reinforces the aforementioned notion that Mrs. Ramsay is temporarily stopping the movement of time by throwing a wrench in its gears, and freezeframing a moment in the catalogue of time. But the most pivotal phrase in the sentence is “summoning together.” This phrase implies a reconciliation of two extremes, a synthesis of fierce individualism (radical consecration of being) and Darwin’s ‘cog in the machine’ perspective. Simply put, this phrase seems to take a stance somewhere in the middle that treats being neither as sacred private property, nor as part of some greater process. Moreover, the phrase also implies a joining between the internal and the external, leading to the deconstruction of the illusory construct of reality (transcendence), and finally, the epiphanic moment.

relations, the “things you know us by”, she is able find what actually lies at the bottom. She is able to finally know the essence of herself. Woolf reserves using the word “eternity” until Mrs. Ramsay reaches a fully developed state of transcendental being, when the walls between internal and external finally collapse: “Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at— that light, for example” (Woolf 63).

The epiphanic moment instructs both the reader and Mrs. Ramsay that essence is harmony, non-duality, and oneness. The epiphanic moment awakens Mrs. Ramsay, through the process of transcending the self-imposed illusory construct of a dual reality that stems partially from the illusion of a personality, to the idea that essence is that space of cosmic unity wherein we ourselves become meaning, and no longer search for it. In that state of cosmic union, we are the essence, the embodiment of meaning itself, the cause from which all effect springs. It is in these states of profound oneness that we therefore discover permanence, a type of spiritual security that rests on the safety of knowing that our essence will survive our biological death, and live on in the realm of cosmic union. And so, we can look to the future and welcome with open arms the inevitable conclusion that awaits us: to become part of this wonderful, ethereal realm that knows not the definitions of time nor change, and finally awaken to what, not who, we really are. ▲

The duality between internal and external reality slowly begins to dissolve, as Mrs. Ramsay positions herself between the two opposing forces: “Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity” (Woolf 63).

Notice how Woolf pays close attention to the way in which personality serves as an inhibitor to Mrs. Ramsay. By linking personality to Mrs. Ramsay’s discontent, Woolf creates a subtle commentary that seems to suggest ‘personality’ is merely the artificial construct to which other people hold us and by which they know us. In other words, people (including ourselves) only know us for the “personality” that presents itself on the surface, and not for the essence that lies within. As a result, the ‘illusion of personality’ prevents us from ever knowing who we truly are. Yet, as Mrs. Ramsay sheds the mutual

works cIteD Darwin, Charles. On Natural Selection. New York: Penguin Books, 2005. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse. Florida: Harcourt Inc., 1927. Print.

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Part Iv : â&#x20AC;&#x2122; p roJects

a collectIon of MeDItatIve essaYs anD creatIve nonfIctIon

BONDS

mEditAtions on frAgiLinA // nAbrA nELson A meditation on inspiration and Fragilina by Attilio Piccirilli 27 oCtobEr 2013, morning // yoshi LEAvEssEur A meditation on memory and journaling two mEditAtions on Loss // PEtEr foLsAPh Two meditations on the perception of time and the discourse of death momEnts // mAson hiLL A meditation on waking and reality our EyE // brookE Lyon A meditation on the sky, understanding, and Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Project eDItor

Daniel Podgorski

MeDItatIons on fragIlIna

// nabra nelson

“The instant wherein that supreme quality of beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is apprehended luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by its harmony is the luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure, a spiritual state very like to that cardiac condition […] called the enchantment of the heart.

The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful.

What the beautiful is is another question.”

James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Fragilina. made me want to know more. Her raised arm and downturned face made me wonder why. Her whole being was anticipation, a moment captured in time that was not introduced nor concluded. Her matterof-fact presence and simple permanence made her all the more seductive. I wanted to know all of her story.

That word rolls off my tongue like music. I want to repeat the soft chorus, over and over again, biting my lip, releasing, curling my tongue back, relaxing my jaw, puckering my lips, biting the tip of my tongue and pulling it back, feeling my vocal chords hum with the last syllable and releasing it with a sigh.

There is something about that strange woman in The Met. I remember when I first saw her. She was kneeling across the room, so small, in a room full of figures, some gold-plated, some standing, extravagantly, larger than life. Passing tourists ogled her with eyes unfit to appreciate. As I approached she gave no heed of me, simply allowing me to look.

I took her in, the smooth curving figure and soft face, all turned away from me coyly.

I rotated around her, taking in every particle of white marble that made up the waves of her sides and the lines of her arms. Her almost kneeling legs

I can still smell the remnants of her perfume on passers-by from time to time.

In twelfth grade I created a movement piece about inspiration, based on Fragilina. Now, I am writing a short script about statues, inspired by Fragilina.

She inserts herself into my mind in a way I cannot ignore, as an ephemeral essence of pure inspiration.

I can tell you how inspiration feels, I can show you how it manifests, but I cannot explain to you what it is. It is a question that pervades my mind often, perhaps because it has a physical being for me in

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PAINTING // AMANDA EXCELL

free lollipop from the dentist, appear as word vomit on paper and perhaps as stumbled movements on a stage reaching for a meaning and tripping in the attempt.

I can tell you how inspiration feels...

It resides in my heart. There is its core and there it pushes against my ribcage until I let it out as a fireball, uncontrolled and burning all around me until it finally dissipates, its fuel fizzled away in an unexpected burst. It comes suddenly, wherever it wishes and disappears almost as fast. I can feel my brain’s struggled attempts to foster the warmth of its remaining embers as my eyebrows pinch together and my fingers hover above a silent keyboard with staggered bursts of musical clicking, suddenly settling back into a frustrated quiet.

Sometimes it is just the word “Fragilina” in my head repeating, and I can hear the gears in my mind clicking away ready to start a fire.

I can show you how it manifests...

Here. As this essay. I can show you a piece I wrote a few weeks ago or some thing I did once. I can print out a few pages and you could hold it in your hand. It is scattered about my computer in various folders and sub-folders and a few pages are likely somewhere on a bookshelf in LA. It has a physical form like the burnt edges of a stovetop. But it is the fire that made it which interests me, not the messy remains. I write more in hopes of exhausting this fuel that resides within me in order to perhaps find its source, wrestling with a comparable desire to forever draw from its seemingly bottomless reserves of artistic pleasure. The sweet bursts of creative ecstasy are gone and instantly I want more, but like an endless orgasm the thought is more appealing than the impossible reality.

Fragilina. Her presence makes this strange concept almost tangible; however it is not the 500 miles from California to New York that separates me from her, it is an entire mind full of pseudo-answers and muddled ponderings.

The answer to this intriguing question of inspiration lies, perhaps, in a recess of my mind that I can subconsciously perceive and draw from but cannot actively investigate. It is like a broccoli floret stuck between my teeth that strains my gums, puts pressure on the whole right side of my jaw, and commands my entire focus, but no mirror angle will reveal its location and my tongue’s strained and twisted movements fail to bring it to sight. Then, after focused minutes and fleeting hours, without knowing how, it slips away from me without a trace, except for a mild pain in my jaw and a sore tongue.

Fragilina’s after-effects, as tangible and useless as a

Fragilina is a figure which runs past me in the dark. She is a white blur in the blackness of a badly lit sidewalk. She is a penetrating light that I can see at noon as I sit in the itchy grass. She is the fleeting beauty of inspiration that artists have sought for centuries. She, however, is intimately connected to me, like a lover that stimulates my soul and awakens my mind. She is a thought that I cannot escape, that I must ponder and wonder about simply because the journey is a necessity and the question is unfalteringly unanswerable. ▲

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27 October 2013, morning // yoshi LEAvEssEur

It’s strange, looking back at old journals. The most striking thing is how the cast of characters shifts.

In March and April, his name was mentioned twice, as that guy who was there, he knows her. But from August to present, it’s All Him All the Time.

The two old scrawls jump out at you every time you turn those pages, and you realize: it’s happened again. A reccurring character has become part of the main cast and the question of ‘Will they or won’t they?’ is on almost no one’s mind. Answer: ‘They won’t.’

Or a character has an entire arc. Life made you think they left suddenly, but looking at these old pages, it’s more of a slow simmer. Reading back, you can pinpoint the exact moment something went awry. “Today my friend gave me a look that made me angry.”

You watch your apathy descend into something beyond just boredom. “I don’t care,” written seven entries in a row. “I can’t care,” written five.

You write “you” to make it seem like you’re not so alone in the world. You realize that you yourself are a cast member, hope your arc in someone else’s journal is about to begin. That you’re the reccurring character on the brink of stardom.

You get in touch with an old friend, a best friend. Their name hasn’t come up lately, and you missed them more than you thought. They tell you about their life and maybe you jot down a sentence or two for context. But below that, it’s, “Here’s what was missing.” ▲

So And So has it all together. Nine months pass: lines on his arms and a note in your inbox. “He didn’t do it,” you write three days and several phone calls later. But in the journal, it’s only two pages away from, “I think he did it.”

Time and pages, they never add up.

It’s funny that way.

And then the most striking thing becomes you.

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two MeDItatIons on loss // Peter folsaPh

Lcould she? I told her that my dog died

On Time

oss! What did she know of it? What

and she got sympathetically sad and told me she was sorry.

I told her I wasn’t sad, just keenly aware of loss. And, as if only to prove that she had no idea what I was talking about, she told me she understood and that my dog is probably in a better place now.

But I wasn’t thinking of the dog when I said it: I was thinking of soft-lit primary school classrooms peopled by round, young faces, and myself at that age in that sweet carelessness. I was thinking of my parents in another couple of years, with all

On Talk

hat a dishonest discourse we have surrounding death. I found myself in W a number of forums after the death of Lou

Reed, and all of the love for his tremendous music came alongside the same tired phrases. So many wanted him to ‘rest in peace,’ a sentiment which Reed himself once referred to as “the microwave dinner of posthumous honors.” I could not help wondering how old that phrase must be, that sickeningly optimistic phrase, that envisioning of death as rest. What an artful, anachronistic lie. How delightful it is to think of mortality’s expression as an eternal splendid night, as opposed to a return of nothing.

Another commenter said simply, “See you on the other side.” I could not help smiling at such quaintness.

I spent the day listening to Velvet

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of my siblings out of the house, and that part of our lives gone never to return. I was thinking, again, of the void, of them losing themselves; of finally, ultimately losing myself, losing my experiencing as well as my thinking.

And what did she know of the permanence of each moment’s loss as it passes? Of the handful of water we call life as it leaks to the ground? No religious person will ever understand loss. And I envy them that—if you will excuse the expression—God how I envy them that!

Underground and Reed’s later solo tracks.

The man was legendary; it is an unfortunate day indeed that his consciousness ceases to be an element of existence. But I would never cheapen that day by insisting that he is flying in some beautiful cloudscape or snoozing calmly. I mourn the dead. It is no coincidence that religion lends us the image of the dead burying the dead.

Even if that passage is meant as a more pointed criticism of shirking spiritual responsibility, it carries with it the implication of the active dead.

Consciousness is barely even the autonomous self which for hundreds of years existential philosophers utilized in weaning themselves off of religion; it is the manifestation of certain neural connections. That is all it has ever been and all it shall one day cease to be. ▲

PHOTO // MOREY SPELLMAN

// Mason hIll

MoMents

Whenever I wake up, there’s a moment where I’m suspended between the dream world and the world which we claim to be our reality. In this moment, there is no passing of time or space, no awareness of being alive or dead, of having knowledge or falling into a complete state of oblivion.

In this moment, I am peacefully contemplative but not at peace, because I am subdued by the sheer gravity of black holes, red blood cells, blue whales, orange stars, yellow mustard seeds, the golden process of life, the gray process of death. In these moments, I am in awe of the universe and struck by all the possibilities that

o u r tiny, insufficient brains fail to fathom.

But a moment like this is suspended for longer than a simple fragment of time, for there is no ticking of seconds in these moments. And although these moment are suspended in space, maybe near a glowing ball of hydrogen and helium or in a reconstructed image of my first grade classroom, they don’t have any substance in reality. Or do they? Who is to say what is really real, or what is just a hallucination that our brains tell us is real?

The mind is simultaneously a miraculous gift and a wretched curse because it can dream

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of unknown mirages and vivid terrors. It can think of double negatives and rely on logic and intuition to know things, without letting us be fully aware of what it is, exactly, that we know.

But these thoughts, these feelings of knowing something, these moments, are they real? Are these vivid images and emotions— strung together to create a fabric of pictures, sequentially thrown into motion, created into a running field of lines, colors, textures, feelings—are they real? Are they a rushing day dream? Are they even a dream at all, or something else? When someone like MLK has a dream, is that feeling, thought, or ideology something real? Of course it is. It’s real to the people involved in the movement because they feel its realness in the depths of their being.

They turn the dream into actions. But then is the dream itself real?

Does something real have to be tangible?

Does it have to have an emotion? Does it have to exist in this dimension? Does it have to cross the barriers of space and time? Are there even barriers of space and time? Not in these moments between the unconscious and the conscious. These moments are simultaneously dead and alive, a paradox of simultaneous conflicting entities, being my reality but not having any tangible material or substance.

What is a thought made of, chemically? Can a scientist make a thought appear in a Petri dish?

A feeling? An ideology? A concept? Where in the brain can you pinpoint a memory, a hallucination, one of these moments? What do you even call them? Dead? Alive? Fabrications?

Hallucinations? Just simply moments?

Maybe.

Maybe just a moment between being asleep and awake.

Are these moments just something I can brush off and start my day thinking it was simply the fog before the sunrise? No. Not really. I have never felt a stronger emotion than in these moments. Not in all my 694 million seconds of life, of fogless sunrises. There have been so many seconds in my life, yet they all just amount to mediocre dullness that someone taught me to relate to an emotion. No. These moments between being asleep and being awake are special.

They have pure bliss, deepest terror, sheer awe, complete humbleness, breathtaking beauty, obtuse narcissism, self-shattering

self-consciousness, contempt, appreciation, nakedness, wholeness, pity, pride, disgust, lust.

Never have I felt so many strong, conflicting emotions. Never have I been so confused as to what they mean, or why I feel them in these moments surpassing time, space, and reality. These moments feel the most real, most complete, most honest, but then I simply wake up. The moment flees, bounding off as my world comes into focus from a haze of splintered emotional debris. My alarm clock ringing, my roommate snoring, the feeling of my fleece blanket on my skin, the smell of freshly cut grass wafting in from the open window, the diminishing remnants of emotion coursing through my body, fading. Moments like these blur into what we call reality, making the start of my day, all that I see or seem, feel like another dream in and of itself. Sometimes I press snooze. Sometimes I just go back to sleep. Sometimes I lay in bed for hours, just contemplating what it means to simply be and try to reason with the unexplainable.

But most days, I disregard these moments because it’s easier to forget them since nobody can explain them. The human brain’s mental capacity is not able to comprehend so many conflicting, opposing entities, not able to probe the depth of every emotion, not able to understand everything. If our minds were omnipotent, we would destroy our planet faster than we already do as we try to conquer the galaxy, the universe—not just other nations or a certain business market. We’re already faced with a labor of Hercules as we struggle to fix what we’ve destroyed on our planet. But if we knew everything, would we try to repair ourselves or destroy ourselves completely?

That’s something I don’t want to know.

Sometimes possibilities are the biggest unknowns and need to be left unexplained.

Sometimes, you just have to forget the unexplainable, get out of bed, move on with your day, and hope that as the sun is setting on the shores of a happy, successful lifetime, there is something up in the heavens that will shine light onto every unknown the universe has; that everyone’s personal Nirvana is reached; that every Heaven is obtained; and that every rebirth is what unlocks the key to a happy moment: just another simple moment, a moment you never want to wake up from, a moment that stretches into eternity. ▲

55

our eYe

A meditation on the sky, understanding, and Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

// brooke lYon

I

of night after my brothers and sisters had fallen asleep, I looked up through my poet’s eyes. My head was heavy with thoughts I wanted to hold in my hand instead. The notes I took read “June 19, 2010 4:07 am The stars are the future. They represent change but maintain consistency. They stimulate imaginative thoughts of big opportunities, but reveal how small we are from their vantage point, against the development of mankind across the world forward and backward in time. And yet, amongst myriad complexities, there remains the presence of Neverneverland, our inner child, free spirits, and the pleasure of the simple things. All just above our heads, for everyone in the world to see, and wonder upon together.”

sit, bathed in fluorescent light, sung to through the white buds that sit in my ears, transferring the words from the screen into my own looping font on the page. They look better. Less legible, but more concrete. I hate reading from screens. I look back at the words he wrote.

One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime.

A sunset off the 101 flashes on my inward eye. A memory of a photo I took—a photo I always feel inclined to take, and more often than not, do. The cotton candy clouds frame the sun-dyed blues of the ocean and the sky as they kiss at the horizon. The picture, an attempt at possessing continual access to the sublime. A reminder and a reason to call it my own. To claim it.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

I wonder if I’m a poet, and decide not all poets write poetry, but they all see it.

Laying on the boat alone in the darkest part

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DRAWING // MILANA VACHUSKA

What he finds in the woods I find in his words.

I am not a transparent but a transcendent eyeball, staring through the inky signifiers he left us for understanding humanity and nature and through my literacy alone I feel a peaceful awareness between myself and the universe. It is the looping of the font on the page that connects us past, present, future, plants, animals, stars. Under the fluorescent lights I write his words, my font, our truths.

Our truths stand definitively against the bright white page; a script, code, embodiment, a representation or dactylic painting of the most beautiful act: the mind’s recognition of its counterpoint in another. ▲

I want Emerson to know I think like he does.

That I did when I was 17, before the English major and the American Transcendentalism class. I crave the nod he gives the vegetables that understand him. He understands me.

In the woods, we return to reason and faith.

There I feel that nothing can befall me in life – no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

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radionuclides

raDIonuclIDes - Internal conversIon, new exPloDIng energY reaDY to gIve lIfe to a branD new eMergIng center

This project is dedicated to all of the aspiring literati out there, and will continue on to future issues. For those who love the written word but have never shared it, then this project is by you and for you. This is a gathering of the authors and poets hidden around us, hidden inside. The writers in this project have not been published before or mastered the workshop writing experience.

They are taking the first step by putting their words out there. All forms of creative writing are welcome. Writers who have recently graduated, who have taken a leave of absence, or who are sadly coming to the end of their time at UCSB, can identify with the idea of finally considering being published within the context of this process being very new to them. We have aspiring writers, talented Chemists, musiciansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;maybe just people who have a lot a feelingsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but believe me, they certainly fit in. In fact, they BELONG here, with the desire to make art with language whether they know it yet or not. Discoveries are in the process.

This is the Unlocking.

PHOTO // MARIAH TIFFANY

Project eDItor

Marcos Aguilar

the man with the tattooed face // laura Moreno

I had been living and studying in Granada, the small Andalucían town in the South of Spain for around four months when I saw the man whose entire face was tattooed.

The night was cold and my breath moved in white life away from my face under the street lamps. I was marching down the empty sidewalk because having a rhythm to an action makes it somehow pass by quicker, and so my shoes clicked high and even amid damp yellow leaves, fanned out and ground-fallen. My apartment was painted light orange and was two stories above a gelato shop. It was heated and had white curtains hanging above the balcony windows.

Every so often I’d look up to a person growing larger against the receding sidewalk in front of me and I’d prepare myself for the impending encounter, drawing away from my own advancing cavity of the world where my brain fleetingly worked free of any other present outside influence.

Sometimes you exist in this veiled aloneness, lost within your warm thoughts, and the bubble is suddenly popped by an unexpected, intrusive presence. A window opening by your shoulder with an old woman watering dying flowers, a tap on the back while reading in the library, the door of a room bursting open the stillness of yourself. But that night, the cold kept me listening and feeling the silent vibrations of stone buildings and empty dry air, alert to the strange frigid static of lambent

darkness.

Since I first arrived in Spain, I found the polite smiles exchanged between myself and a stranger on the street, the kind of interaction that I was so accustomed to back at home, to be completely different here. What I had always understood to be an ingrained set of social manners didn’t exist in my new world, and every habitual grin I extended was confronted with a long, unrestrained stare. The hunched, three-legged old men with their canes, lurching onward with swollen noses and moist lips were the worst. With every attempt I had during my first few weeks in Spain at showing some sort of respect for the elderly, I would always end up awkwardly fleeing from the upturned eyes and mouths of those old, old men, scuttling forward as if my smile were some kind of twisted invitation.

I’d leave them immobile and aged, moving rapidly away from those wheezing, over-zealous things, struggling to present a still standing vision of life.

I was scared of them, overripe, rasping, people I had only understood to be grandparents or barbers or professors. Then again, each time I failed to learn my lesson and keep my head bowed, I was somewhat impressed by the lingering carnal will of these old ex-matadors, their pride and unwavering masculinity rippling around them towards all the youth and beauty of their past. I didn’t understand at the time.

Every sidewalk had its chain of uncomfortable

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moments and exchanges, every road and bus stop its scene. But this impulsive grin never disappeared no matter how many times it wasn’t reciprocated.

Once the first few weeks passed and I stopped thinking of these cold responses as a reaction to me personally, I learned to accept the routine repetition of awkward encounters, standing out in my simple, open stare. That night in the cold my eyes remained squinted against the painful winter air, but I’d still smile feebly at each person who passed in rushed indifference.

I clicked onward. It was a very long street. But after a series of quick, empty encounters, I walked without disturbance and allowed the cold to lull me into a deepness, not of thought, but rather of regulated movement, like a quieting, rocking baby, or maybe the breathing of a bear entering hibernation.

And then, in one of those unanticipated moments of abrupt surprise, sucked from the tunneling stream of inward existence, I looked up to the materializing figure not so far in front of me, approaching in great, swaying footsteps, and I looked up into the strange, peeled eyes of sunken blue that opened wide to challenge the sting of cold air, and I think cried quietly because of it.

They were looking at me. His eyes were emanating some quivering, fanning ray of intent knowing warmth and slanting curiosity, that shifted my dulled world of the night and in a moment evoked the one thing within me worn down, making it new and good again, and like a buoy pulled underwater bursting forth, I smiled.

And then I realized through my grin, the twisting green lines that framed the sad, penetrating eyes that seemed to have seen not only the earthly ins and outs of life emerging and smote and enduring, but also the things we know behind our own eyes, the thoughts of it all. Like a firework of faint shades flowering about his cheeks, the nose with a bull’s piercing down to the bow of his upper lip. Like vines that bloomed pictures and words and faces and religion and love and mistake. Like some kind of marked dragon. Or like a labyrinthine past of lifeblood I’d never know anything about, but that had all of it, traveling along the ink punched lines, swirling through magic eyes.

I hadn’t stopped smiling. Or walking. We passed each other at the rate of two people moving at brisk speeds towards ordinary, daily responsibilities on a crowded street, and the hold of warping, pulling contact passed like water. His face was a map.

That strand of time now breathes on within me, for whatever strange link twisted in the passage of winter air coiled between our eyes and beyond. The man with a face whose flesh was entirely covered, but whose being swelled outward toward me that night – past, or rather through, the tattooed shell.

It wasn’t so much a connection of the heart or soul, a rush of sudden emotion that we often times experience with total strangers, that unmistakable, singular confirmation of momentary companionship. That culmination of movement, timing, and the slow, dawning revelation of his outward being was dreamlike, and the moment expansive.

Because in the blue eyes, I felt something submerged that I didn’t know, and might never know anything about. An alien life, somehow transmittable, but nevertheless unknown, inexperienced. A great, dividing, changing wall of circumstance and sensation and existence. The blink of togetherness exchanged in the street lamp light was no communal understanding always imagined and romanticized as the core grasp of two humans sharing a kind of bond. This tattooed mystery of a person looked into me, into my eager, open-eyed youth, so rosy-cheeked and whitetoothed and free-skinned glowing in the firm night, from another plane of life, another sphere of knowledge, breaching momentarily my own and seeing all dimensions of it in some foreign, miraculous way.

And I smiled. Smiled unrestrained and not out of a wavering inclination toward politeness, but from an overwhelming sensation of nostalgia, for a life for me never to be known, and in the warm distance of his gaze that moment was wistful, and then gone.

I walked home slower after it happened.

It’s rare to see something completely, outwardly bizarre and you come away from the experience not wondering why, but simply letting the incongruity settle. This reaction happens when you see something that is not only astonishingly weird, but beautiful as well, for whatever similarly strange reasons we ourselves understand something to be beautiful.

The flattened yellow leaves were scattered about, across and along the sidewalk that night. Some of them met my crushing footfall. Some of them lay still, sound and intact, in the rawness of the impartial cold. ▲

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PAINTING // AMANDA EXCELL

el dedo // jesse ferrIs

At the time Giovanni spoke very poor English.

David (pronounced Da-veed) was good with Spanish, and Jimmy didn’t speak much but he had an ear for it. The dogs didn’t know or care, especially the puppy who made it known that he wanted to come along.

They tried to leave him at the campsite, but when they left, he chased after the Suburban. His tiny legs carried him up the small dirt hill toward the cantina; he was one hell of an ambitious little guy.

All three by now knew the pup was coming with them as David handed him to Jimmy in the backseat.

He promptly rested his head on Jimmy’s leg as he stretched out and fell into a sleepy stupor. *** El dedo, ‘the finger,’ was more than a rumor, as both David and Giovanni had been there many a time and had plenty of stories. It was a full day excursion they said, and with fresh sandwiches and a full cooler they were ready for the haul. The fish camp had seen a stretch of small surf and a pulse of larger crowds, so they were ready to hit the road and ditch civilization for a day.

David drives slower than most, nearly 15 kilometers an hour, which is about the speed where squirrels and rabbits can pass. But speed wasn’t the point this day. With the dogs nodding off and laughter between the shared stories—both in Spanish and English—they knew where they were going, though they really didn’t care when they got there.

The grade of the road was such that one dip or rut hit too hard would guarantee the undercarriage of the car getting knocked loose, especially through the arroyos before the turnoff.

Jack and Flaca enjoy the scenery more than anyone else—which is saying quite a bit, considering David and Jimmy’s past adventures in this zone. It’s the Conejos, the rabbits, that catch their eyes, and while Jack is eighteen years old and only watches these days, Flaca turns into a Mexican jumping bean when the cottontails come into view between the cactus and scrub. They are two of the best dogs you could ever travel with.

“Flacita! Flacita!” David will exclaim in an excited and inquisitive tone to get Flaca’s attention. More often than not Flaca will jump out the open window to go chase the rabbits, not waiting for David to open the door for her. It’s all about the chase because the rabbits are so damn fast. The one time that she got one, she stood over it and looked back at us as if she was about to cry. She didn’t bite him too bad initially, so she gently nudged him with her snout until the little guy hobbled away under a rock. Being used to coyotes and bobcats, he probably made a good recovery.

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been on roads of all kinds, all throughout Mexico, and this one ranked up there as one of the worst.

There were cris-crosses and nary a distinguishable landmark other than the long mesas sitting low on the eastern horizon, which donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do much good on a west and east line when you can just follow the sun.

The one large singular bent cardon cactus marked the one hard right turn, and with that you could feel the drop in temperature along with the tinge of saltiness of the air that meant that you were closing in on the ocean. Still, it was a desert forest of cactus and scrub,

*** If you had never been this way before you would have no chance of making the correct turn off of the main road. Main road and turn off are both relative terms, and in this case, it meant a barely graded dirt road onto a hardly recognizable pair of parallel ruts.

These ruts, however, led to the ocean, and the fact that it was the middle of summer meant that moon dust, not mud, would be the select grade this dayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and that was just fine.

The terrain was slow and ass-kicking. Jimmy had

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“No shit, huh!” he yelled back just as he was in the middle of a two-foot slide as some rocks broke loose under him.

All the while David was lagging behind, as he had to carry Jack down the steepest middle section.

Giovanni by now stood at the foot of the jetty, safely on the beach as he looked back up with amusement, watching Jimmy and David and the dogs slowly stumbling down.

“Pinche Gueros,” he grinned as he laughed.

Pinche Guero means fucking white guy in Spanish.

But when said in the right tone and context by the right person, is actually a compliment.

much of it taller than the suburban itself. It was that drop in temperature, though, that made you know you were getting close. It was the only barometer.

The anxiety was building and even the dogs could sense it and were getting restless.

The vista opened abruptly to reveal the 300-foothigh cliffs that went nearly vertical to the rocky shoreline. The turquoise blue meeting the barren brown of the desert only added to the dramatic shift in landscape. In less than a minute the road turned into a flat pavement of small stones and crushed shells that hugged the cliff line precariously. Once around the monolith of Punta Domingo, the road followed in a similar fashion about a mile farther up.

The cliffs grew in size but now dropped down a bit softer onto a sprawling beach that spread northward as far as the eye could see until it fell under the distant fogbank.

“It’s a little stop and shop, Jimmy,” David said with a glimmer in his eye. It was one of his favorite fishing spots along this stretch of coast.

He pointed down.

“See way up the coast there? That longshore drift all the way from the estuary all gets backed up right here at the finger,” he said with the glee of someone who just stuffed his hand down his pocket and pulled out a crumpled up 50 dollar bill.

“Ahooo, time for a fucking beer,” Giovanni bellowed in his broken English as he tore apart the back of the suburban to start unpacking. Although he was as anxious as a teenage girl at a Justin Beiber concert, he was still methodical. One had to be, as it was a rocky 20-minute hike down the giant shale cliff. The dogs were already waiting at the trailhead, impatient, except for Matt Johnson, the puppy who didn’t know what to think. All he could do was follow Flaca’s lead. But for the most part he just sort of wandered around aimlessly.

The hike down was definitely worth the steel toe boots that David had loaned Jimmy. One of Jimmy’s weird quirks is that he never brings closed toed shoes south of the border with him. This usually works out just fine, except that David laughed at him when he asked if he could make the trail with his slaps on.

Halfway down the trail, Giovanni had to stop and wait for Jimmy as Jimmy had to stop and wait for David, Jimmy came to realize that the loose shale was not to be taken lightly.

“Con Cuidado, Yimmy,” Giovanni yelled out.

*** Once they were all gathered on the foot of the jetty, nobody needed any help from there. The dogs were running around in circles like they were cranked up on coke and the boys had all their gear laid out, contemplating the conditions while they sipped their beers.

“Brown and red,” Giovanni rambled excitedly as he wandered up the rocks to go cast out. “Trust me man.”

Both David and Jimmy had their own favorites and theories, and they both put a few varying lures in their back pockets when they looked up to see Giovanni bringing in the first fish of the day on his second cast.

“That’s why you bring a local, bring the good luck,” David smiled as he lumbered up the lava rock to cast his lure out.

The brisk ocean breeze took the edge off of the midday summer heat and made the sun glimmer off the water seem to dance. The consistent sets of waves rolling through were perfect for corvine fishing, as the fish like to feed as they cruise through the wave crests. After only an hour, they had already brought in about eight each. The dogs were having a field day; Jack and Flaca were well rehearsed in grabbing the freshly landed fish tight in their jaws and taking them to the enclosed tide pool that served as the holding tank. They were the only people on the jetty, and in terms of geography, it was a safe bet that they were the only people for 30 miles or so. Their only companions were the steady roll of the waves, yet they were hardly alone. ***

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him to this seclusion, but they both knew that their temperaments were all too similar.

David is a storyteller, and a good one at that. A lawyer by trade stateside, he is the kind of person that when he starts talking people tend to listen, not just for informative sake but because the man is pretty damn funny.

That’s where the pup’s name originated.

“I’ve always wanted to name a boy dog Matt Johnson!” he exclaimed, thinking back to when the pup first started showing up at his campsite. Matt Johnson, is, of course the greatest fictional surfer of the modern era, so it was fitting for a Mexican beach dog to inherit the name. He was a damn good pup too, taking notes from Jack and Flaca all day.

By mid afternoon, Giovanni had migrated to the end of the jetty by himself while David and Jimmy bullshitted the day away, which they were both very good at. By this time, with plenty of fish in the holding pool, fishing became secondary.

When someone twice as old and therefore usually twice as knowledgeable speaks, it usually pays to listen; Jimmy is smart enough to do just this. David can spin a yarn with the best of them, and as a man of experience, he never has a dull topic.

“I’ll tell you, Jim, the single greatest thing to ever happen to my sex life in my twenties was making out with Heather Locklear,” he said with nostalgic excitement. “I didn’t even have to try after that.”

The backstory of his bartending days at the PierHouse in the South Bay seemed to always give a good foundation to his stories. Then there was the bachelor party in Cabo, and most of us know what goes on in a situation like that. Jimmy hardly ever talked when David got going on his stories, as one led to another and that was just fine for the both of them.

They were both still pulling in fish, but they were almost indifferent by now. The dogs weren’t, and oftentimes Flaca would simply rip the fish from the lure and all David or Jimmy would have to do was cast right back out. Jack, the old boy by now, was resting under the umbrella, obviously content watching Flaca and the pup running about.

“I know I’m preaching to the choir, David, but I just love the fact that if we were doing this back stateside we would have about five tickets between the two of us.”

David just smiled softly and laughed, and they tapped their beers together in cheers. It was the casual way for Jimmy to thank David for bringing

*** The dirt road back to town was still the same distance, although it felt like it only took fifteen minutes. But then again, that’s how trips usually go.

The dogs were sacked out and even David, who is high energy as can be, was tranquil behind the wheel.

The full cooler of fish and the pile of empty beer cans told the story, while Matt Johnson rested on Jimmy’s knee and the three boys shared stories back and forth in near sedated tones.

Although the fishcamp of Chapala was barely a blip on the map, the single store was as stocked as it needed to be for the tiny town, and there was plenty of cold Tecate. Though they were not far from camp, they figured that since the pit stop was right on the way it seemed like a no-brainer.

By the time they got into town they were all pretty drunk. David knew the road well and Giovanni’s brother was on town police and, more importantly, nobody cared, so it worked out just fine. There being no surf that day, within an hour they were showered and sitting under the shade palapa in front of David’s camp, enjoying the low late afternoon light and the tinge of lime in their Tecates. The civiche was prepared and the filets were ready for the grill.

Though they didn’t much care about that, as the crew would come when they pleased.

They couldn’t help but think of the old Mark Twain line that traveling is better than arriving. Though they loved the rustling of the campsite they couldn’t help but think of that.

“David, want a beer?” Jimmy asked flatly, though he already knew the answer.

David looked up without responding and caught the beer that Jimmy threw him. He walked back to his chair by the fireside and leaned back staring at the faint sight of Orion slowly appearing in the southern sky.

“Don’t be nostalgic, Jimmy,” David shot out of the blue, obviously noticing his mannerisms as he raised to cheers his beer with the rest of the boys. “There’s always tomorrow to do it all over again.” ▲

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VI DEO

GAM ES

ART // MINGCHEN SHEN

with sEAn mAbry

ART // MINGCHEN SHEN

T

his is an exciting time for video games. As I write this, the medium grows along too many dimensions to count. Classrooms, from kindergarten to grad school, are not only studying video games themselves, they’re using them to study everything else. Pop culture and counter culture alike are scrambling to figure out what video games can say and do. Furious, glorious debates are popping up everywhere: What makes a game a game? What has gone wrong with “gamer” culture? Who gets to make games? For whom? Do games tell stories or do they create experiences? These are all fine questions, and each deserves days worth of discussion.

The fiction and essays collected in this section all have their place in that maelstrom, but in their own ways they are all personal accounts. Our writings do include theory. We do think critically and write carefully. But we also live. We live and we play, and sometimes we wonder which is which. Perhaps what we’ve written here will help answer that question. Or perhaps, quite wonderfully, it won’t.

We invite you to read on and see for yourself.

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gorIlla rIsIng // Matt MalMlunD

Deer gaMe // lIz bushMan

Dear esther was better when It was uglY // sean MabrY

MerMarlIn // MIchael loPez

on the sIMs // chloe babauta

gorilla rising // Matt MalMlunD

Multiplayer gaming has quickly evolved from four friends sharing one screen in one room to armies of disparate players with two or more screens each, collectively engaging in full-on warfare. With that in mind, it’s time that we utilize this technology to simulate a fabled stand-off: society vs. giant gorilla.

This deserves conceptual game justice. We are at the point where hundreds of players can work cooperatively through basic onscreen commands and light headset communication, so why not have them cooperate to take down a giant gorilla destroying a mall? Think Dead Rising but backwards: online players take the role of pedestrians, and must survive the onslaught of one ultra-powerful character – the gorilla.

I couldn’t tell you if the gorilla would be the cunning, barrel-throwing type à la Donkey Kong, or if he would be the misunderstood misanthrope like the King of Kongs. Either would be so cool.

The gorilla would easily annihilate all but the most strategic players, possibly dozens at once if agitated by an attack on his life. A rage meter could help keep track of just how dangerous the gorilla gets, since that would no doubt grow throughout different stages of a game. Although he would be an impossible foe to face alone, the gorilla would be far from invincible. Since malls are full of all kinds of wacky stuff like roller coasters, electric circuitry, and flammable gases, there would probably be a variety of creative ways to take out the giant beast.

Players who wouldn’t just relish in the chaos of mall-raiding could use teamwork to hinder and eventually defeat the gorilla. Players would be able to operate in small squads through walkie-talkie frequencies, but also shout basic action commands to nearby players. Squads or nearby players could coordinate the use of various resources in the mall to create traps or weapons to use against the gorilla, or perhaps they could just find vehicles and attempt to survive longest. The mall would be large enough that players could easily go 30 seconds or more without encountering the gorilla, and encountering it would not always entail death. Death would carry a considerable re-spawn time, except it would be less in unfair circumstances (of which there will be

so many). The designers’ ultimate goal would be to give the player freedom to choose whatever role one could conceivably occupy in the face of a gorilla apocalypse. This could lead to some interesting mass play-throughs -- perhaps everyone wants to either flee or raid the mall, both of which would have some appealing outcomes in terms of stats. Usually though, success for the individual player would just mean not dying that much.

Imagine a player experience like this: you spawn in the tranquil moments before the attack. Everyone is more or less walking around idly, and everything is normal save for some faint rumbling, which grows slowly, until suddenly everyone is in a sprint, and some have already died from falling debris caused by the gorilla’s break-in. You and your friends have already learned a recipe for an explosive item, and are going to coordinate through walkie-talkies to make several of them. You look to the mall kiosk map, and find the ingredient you’re looking for well before the gorilla comes and randomly levels the second-story balcony you’re standing on. This fortunately allows you to escape, but when your team reconvenes it is still one squad-mate short. While waiting for radio response from your probably dead friend, several raiders who anticipated someone would gather ingredients in one place begin to gun your team down for supplies. In your escape, the gorilla comes and crushes you and the raiders with both fists. Now what’s the plan?

As this anecdote suggests, providing direction for an entire mall full of people playing in separate rooms would be the hardest challenge to overcome, especially since the freedom to not cooperate would be a major part of the game’s appeal. But any competitive elements of the game would still require a focus on teamwork, which would also provide sociological insight on group mechanics and virtual identity. Regardless, the large server size would ensure that a fair amount of people could also have aimless fun without necessarily causing grief to the game. For the sake of seeing if it’s even conceivable, I would be highly interested to see this game created. Plus, it would be seriously so cool.

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ART // VICTORIA TSAI

DEER GAME // lIz bushMan

It’s a scene familiar to every MMORPG player: the ubiquitous forest. Every game has some version of it, filled with flora and fauna and loads of adventure and exploration—just in case the player wants to pick up a load of potions ingredients or commune with nature for special elf-powers. With that in mind, it’s easy to overlook “The Endless Forest” as some sort of... actually, I’m not really sure how most people would classify it, since most of the reviews I’ve read have criticized it for its lack of gratuitous violence.

I’ll be fair—I’m not what one would call a “serious gamer.” Besides a few PC games in my youth ranging from that stupidly boring submarine game Silent Hunter to the whole gamut of the Neopets arcade (plus a few hours stolen on my cousins’ GameCube during our infrequent visits to LA) I haven’t done a whole lot on the gaming front. My approach to TEF was mostly “What do you mean it’s a game about ‘being a deer?’” and then promptly becoming obsessed with it.

The Endless Forest is a MMORPG in the sense that it is multiplayer, you play it online, and your avatar looks nothing like you. However, unlike other MMORPGs, there is a complete lack of conflict and absolutely no goals. This is because in the game you are a deer. You are a deer in a forest that has a looped map with no edges, there are no natural enemies, and you have no way to verbally communicate with other players. As for the “massive” part, the most I have ever personally seen on a server tops out at 100—but I think that has more to do with the fact that there are only just over 50,000 registered players, and most of them just pop on for half an hour at a time.

Now I’m guessing that the people critiquing it for all these things didn’t actually play the game, because the game is (spoiler alert) horrendously fun. Once you’ve registered your deer and gotten the pictogram that represents your in-game identification (it floats between your antlers), you spend a month skipping around as a wee fawn, exploring the forest and using the body language options to socialize with the other deer. You learn how to cast spells affecting players’ appearances, you pick flowers, you swim in the pond as a frog, and you explore everything.

I was introduced to the game by a friend and was fortunate enough to have her around to explain all the oddities. “What the hell are they doing?” I remember asking at one point as several deer around us did some sort of in-place trotting that made them look like robot soldiers marching to their own doom.

“Dancing,” she told me, “It’s the last button in the brown actions tab.” I clicked the dance option and listened as some twangy music reminiscent of drunken wood nymphs piped out of my speakers while my fawn bobbed along with no regard for the beat of the music. From then on I immediately started to dance after the requisite greeting for new deer. Fortunately, many of the other players seem to follow my reasoning that deer dance parties significantly promote amicable relations, and they have never left me dancing alone like that one jerk at every party.

Probably the most curious aspect of TEF is the effect of not having goals—or at least, not having goals you can achieve by yourself. There is nothing in the game for you to buy and no areas that can’t be

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accessed at the outset. On the other hand, the masks, colored pelts, unique antlers, and shape-changes can only be achieved through the help of other players willing to cast magic on you. This creates an entirely different atmosphere; instead of blankly grinding for experience or stressfully slashing your way through a slew of enemies, you find yourself sneakily casting magic on sleeping deer or hanging around with the other deer skipping through the forest, and at the end of your time you top it off by searching for the perfect spot for your avatar to curl up and go to sleep in when you quit. It’s surprisingly soothing, like a zen rock garden, but more escapist.

There is a lot that can be said about this game— such as the weather changing due to the whims

of the two creator gods, or the occasional giant mushrooms, or the crazy Halloween celebratory Big Zombie Deer—but really, the best thing about it is the simplicity of it all. Look at the baseness to which the game reduces the player: they bow with elaborate formality as a greeting and use the ‘nod your head yes’ or ‘shake it no’ options (which are still open to interpretation). This baseness puts the game on a different level entirely from other gaming experiences. It is a quieter world in the Endless Forest, and it is enough to remind you that sometimes it is not about how many rampaging orcs you hack up in the pursuit of XP. Sometimes, all you need to do is sniff strangers’ faces and frolic in fields of flowers by an abandoned church.

dear esther was better when it was ugly // sean MabrY

Dear Esther is one of my all-time favorite pieces of art. Dear Esther is a passable “art game”. Let me clarify: Dear Esther was originally released in 2008 as a mod for the popular first-person shooter HalfLife 2. It was developed by thechineseroom, a studio that began as a research project at the University of Portsmouth. On February 14, 2012, a new version of Dear Esther was released on Steam as a standalone title using the latest version of the Source engine to deliver an experience with much more visual polish and smoother gameplay. This version was helmed

by Robert Briscoe, a former DICE employee who worked with the original team and incorporated the concept art of Ben Andrews. The 2008 mod is my favorite art piece. The re-release is the “art game”.

interpretation, including most of the “plot” I’ve just given you.

The letters are randomized each time you play, save for a few location-specific letters. There are more possible letters than there are chances to hear them, so different playthroughs can yield surprisingly different scripts. The letters slip frequently between the literal and abstract, and often mix up names and locations from the past with things seen on the island or found in the research done by the island’s historians. The interactivity, then, comes not from moving around the island but from trying to make sense out of it.

The big difference between the two versions is that 2008 Dear Esther is ugly. It almost exclusively uses textures and objects borrowed from Half-Life 2 and covers most of the exterior locations with thick fog - which is a classic developer’s trick for hiding rough or unfinished scenery. The rocks and trees of Half Life 2’s sunny Eastern Europe look out of place on a dreary, autumnal Scots island. Save for a few notable set pieces, like the crashed cargo ship or the occasional shack, the island is quite empty, and the mod’s overall color palette is decidedly drab. But it works. Partially because the beautifully simple piano tracks and occasional otherworldly sounds do a lot to make the scenery feel like more than it is,

Dear Esther tells the story of a man (the narrator) who has come to a mysterious island in the Hebrides looking for answers after losing his significant other, Esther, to a car crash. Throughout his time there, he writes letters to Esther, trying to articulate his bizarre experiences and piece together the uncomfortable memories of their past.

The player hears these letters read aloud as they explore the island, which suggests that they play as either the narrator himself or a later visitor who comes across his writings. The game leaves much to

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IMAGES COURTESY OF // CHINA ROOM

but more importantly, the ugliness of old Dear Esther sets the right mood for the story.

The first time I played it I remember curiously scouring for spots where I could or couldn’t go and wondering if something was going to jump out and surprise me. The further I went the more it became clear that I was the only one on the island, save for a few hallucinogenic teases of Esther. I found myself more and more absorbed in the tragic history between her and the narrator. There was nothing else to do or to look at, so I listened, and the few visual clues that I got were worth careful thought and examination. It felt crushingly lonely, and my heart rattled with the sense that I was experiencing something meaningful and important, whatever it was. After a good few playthroughs, I realized there was a beautiful parallel

forming between myself and the narrator: just as he was trying desperately to understand the island so was I trying to understand the game. The island kept morphing beneath his feet and taunting him with both the familiar and the strange. For me, the game seemed to be doing the same as it let the music overpower the narration, as it glitched, as it offered me different versions of the plot. The game wouldn’t give either of us a final answer, so I had to decide on my own. Settling on my own understanding of the island is still one of the most meaningful choices I’ve ever had to make in game. When I walked away from the original Dear Esther, I was changed.

The remake of Dear Esther doesn’t nearly capture the same effect. The old look is gone. The fog has been wiped away to reveal a lavish cotton candy clouds

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and a decadently large moon. The pathways have all been simplified and all the land is strewn with lush foliage and neatly arranged stones. All the stones and trees have been remodeled; they don’t remind me of Half-Life 2 anymore. There’s color everywhere: purples, oranges, reds, blues, greens.

They’ve added in details that didn’t exist before, like little streams and lit candles that actually trail tiny wisps of smoke. It’s all so gorgeous that I find myself forgetting to listen to the audio, which used to be the best part of the experience. Worse, this beauty brings with it a sense of homogeneity: every element of the game’s design has been carefully balanced into a unified artistic vision, resulting in a product that screams “See this? We totally know what we’re doing this time.”

And that’s the most damning thing: the new Dear Esther knows exactly what it is. It says so right on the store page: “A poetic, semi-randomized story like you’ve never experienced in a game before.” Back in 2008, people had a much harder time describing it. Most of the descriptions I can remember from back then said more about what it wasn’t than what it actually was. Fans of the mod focused on the complete lack of action and stripped down controls. The developers made it a special point not to mention the randomization trick until you had already played the mod; I only found out about it by checking a special readme file after my first playthrough. There was a certain helpful obscurity surrounding the mod back then that has since disappeared.

When the developers decided for certain that Dear Esther was an art mod, they weren’t content to simply stop at updated visuals. Rather, they decided to change certain key moments of the original that I thought were central to the experience. The tunnels under the island used to be cramped and dark, making a nice claustrophobic contrast to the open outdoors. In the remake, these tunnels are more spacious, making room for pretty stalagmites and glowing mushrooms that keep everything well-lit.

The sea cliffs in the very last section were once so strewn with white chalk drawings that my friend and I both fell off a high cliff trying to read them all, forcing us to backtrack. Then there’s the part with the car.

In the original Dear Esther, there’s a part in the underground tunnels where the player falls into a big pool of water and finds a submerged car with its lights shining right at them. For me, this was the moment where it finally became clear that the island had supernatural qualities, since there’s no

physical way a car could’ve just fallen through any of the island’s tiny tunnels. I admired the subtlety of this twist, since it used a completely rational object that only became absurd when I took a moment to think about how it got there. It left room for interpretation. When I had my friend play through the mod, I watched him do this funny thing where he fell in the water, scrambled onto a dry spot, paused, then quickly dove back in and inspected the car. In our discussion afterwards, he explained that he thought there might’ve been people in the car, and he had actually felt a moment of guilt for getting out of the water so quickly. Suddenly I had a whole new way of thinking about the mod: considering it as an object that reveals more about its viewer than it does about itself.

In the re-release, this section is completely reworked. When you fall into the water the game automatically has you sink deeper and deeper until you end up at an underwater version of the M5.

There is a hospital gurney and an IV drip in the middle of the road and everything is covered with sea moss and rust. It’s the spot where Esther got hit by the drunk driver. There’s even a sign by the road to confirm that this is the exact spot on the M5 that the narrator describes. By making the section more abstract they’ve made it more obvious: there’s no way an island in the Hebrides is literally floating on top of the M5, so it has to be an illusion. I suspect that if I played this part with a friend we’d get nothing more out of it than a mutual nod to confirm that the new version is the polar opposite of deep and mysterious: it’s neat.

“Art games” draw heavy criticism from game critics for their attempts to deliver a message instead of an experience, and Dear Esther has become the go-to example of that mistake. I hope and assume that when critics make that claim they are referring to the re-release, and I have tried my best here to explain what makes the 2008 mod so successful.

Either way, I fear that too many people, including the developers, never realized the true magic of that mod. Worse yet, they all seem to have learned the wrong lesson from it. I’ve seen plenty of other games borrow the art direction or the style of narration, but I want another game that will force me to explore and craft my own meaning. I want another game that will make me feel my own heartbeat even as my hands rest on the keyboard. I want another game that makes me think so hard I can feel the pressure in my temples. I want another game that dares to be incomplete, thereby provoking my most basic human feature: the urge to create.

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mermarlin // MIchael loPez

ART // MINGCHEN SHEN

Everling tells the guild: Mermarlin, welcome back Rugbern tells the guild: wb Boogie tells the guild: hey mer Truancy tells the guild: merrrrrrrr Mermarlin tells the guild: Hey guys Truancy tells the guild: Long time no see Mermarlin tells the guild: Sry, not really my choice u know?

Rugbern tells the guild: We know u didn’t leave us ;) Truancy tells the guild: Or did he...?

Mermarlin tells the guild: hey so what have I missed Boogie tells the guild: An expansion and Everlings whole epic quest line Mermarlin tell the guild: Oh shit Ev I’m sorry Everling tells the guild: Np. We took care of things without our big bad pally Boogie tells the guild: Lol there were no undead Mermarlin tells the guild: What are you saying -_Boogie tells the guild: I’m saying duel. Good vs evil. The war to end all wars Mermarlin tells the guild: yeah me and my month old gear vs you and your fresh epics Boogie tells the guild: No one said life was fair

Truancy tells the guild: This isn’t life Boogie tells the guild: Well it’s not fair either “Nat, hey, Nat. Are you awake?”

Mermarlin tells the guild: er. Afk guys Truancy tells the guild: boo Everling tells the guild: here we go Boogie tells the guild: Again “Nat?” Nat crawled out from his makeshift cave, a blanket tucked under the mattress and hung over the bedside.

He opened the door and stared up into his mother’s eyes.

“The school called, Nat.” He blankly surveyed the tired lines of her face, the bags under her eyes. The slight swelling and redness was a cruel contrast to the hazel of her irises; she looks inhuman he thought.

“Do you want to tell me something?” He heard her anger and did not care.

“Do I need to take things from you? To ground you?

Maybe turn off that game?”

Nat replied with a scowl. His dispassionate stare was now harder but also brittle and sharp, defensive.

“You hurt that little boy. And not only did you

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hurt him, you scared him! You threatened him!” She smashed her hand against the door, and she said with a trace of a snarl, “What the fuck is wrong with you, you little monster? Say something!” She shoved him. Nat’s small body stumbled back. He planted his foot back like he did when the boys pushed each other at school.

“Say something! You like to pick on people? Huh?” She shoved again. “Huh?” Again. “You’re a tough little man, right?” Again, the last time. Nat closed his eyes and swung at her. He kept his eyes closed as they began to tear up. There was a confusion of sound as his mother crashed against the door for support. She gasped, panted. Was she okay?

Nat opened his eyes. She was rubbing her jaw. He looked down at his hand, still in a fist, at his knuckles with a touch of blood on the two largest ones.

“Get the fuck away from me! Don’t touch me!” His mother slammed the door closed and beat her fists on the other side, the impact falling lower and lower until she was weeping on the floor.

Nat hunched down and crawled into his makeshift cave. He reached for the remote under his pillow and maxed out the volume. His chat log on the screen was full of flashing green.

auctions, and advertisements from crafters as Nat’s player character stood under a tent in the corner of Bastione. He sent another tell.

To Kanilea: I’m in bast. Can you meet me?

To Mermarlin: Sure. It’s gonna take a few though To Kanilea: Np As Nat waited for her to meet him, he muted the TV. There was such a stillness that it frightened him and he turned the volume back to max. Bold, adventurous flurries of music swept across the desert city and ran with the sand through its open halls, neatly quarried guild halls, walls and towers, and all through the flapping tents of the Merchant Quarter out to the stables and the Parched Plain. Nat fell into the coarse textures of the game world and waited for his friend to meet him. It was strange that their avatars should meet face to face for a conversation that could carry across any distance, in the game world or the real one.

To Mermarlin: Nat? Thanks for sharing your name.

I’m Lily To Kanilea: ty To Mermarlin: Sure, just please don’t start asking for locks of my hair or anything. I know ur a sick puppy ;) To Kanilea: Lol are you in bas?

To Mermarlin: Yeah. Ur probably under that tent you like in the Merchant Quarter To Kanilea: You know me too well Geist tells Mermarlin: Group for sand wyrms? We need a tank Mermarlin tells Geist: no ty. Happy hunting”

Boogie tells the guild: Mer! Truancy tells the guild: Mar! Rugbern tells the guild: Lin! Boogie tells the guild: Mer! Truancy tells the guild: Mar! Rugbern tells the guild: Lin! Mermarlin tells the guild: Relax ppl Boogie tells the guild: Finally :p let’s make up for lost time and farm to buy you some better gear. So we can duel Mermarlin tells the guild: “‘m not up for any dueling Everling tells the guild: Pussy Mermarlin tells the guild: Cmon guys. It’s been a rough day Kanilea tells Mermarlin: Hey Mer, wb :) how have you been?

Rugbern tells the guild: Pssssssssssssss Truancy tells the guild: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEE Mermarlin tells the guild: I’ve got to catch up with someone. I’ll farm tomorrow Boogie tells the guild: And duel? :) Mermarlin tells the guild: Yeah. Whatever.

To Kanilea: I don’t even know how things could be so shitty To Mermarlin: Don’t talk yourself down, Mer To Kanilea: My name is Nat.

Kanilea—no, Lily—jaunted up to him, bowed, and waved. Nat’s avatar returned the greeting.

To Mermarlin: Wats up, Nat? :) To Kanilea: Thats a good question. I don’t even know He stopped to imagine the apartment beyond his closed door but couldn’t. Tears ran quietly down his face.

To Kanilea: Am I really a sick puppy?

To Mermarlin: Yeah of course u are ;) To Kanilea: no really. Is there something wrong with me? Does everyone see it?

To Mermarlin: Um, Mer, is everything ok?

To Kanilea: My name is Nat To Mermarlin: Are you alright Nat? To Kanilea: I’m scared To Mermarlin: Ur scaring me

There was a long pause filled with spam chat,

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To Kanilea: I’m sorry. I think I’ll log To Mermarlin: wait To Kanilea: It’s ok Lily. I’ll ttyl To Mermarlin: Hey, Nat, does this have to do with you being gone for so long? If you need something, I’m here. You just have to do more than scare me like this. You have to explain.

To Kanilea: I got into a fight today. Family drama To Mermarlin: :( To Kanilea: I don’t even know why I did it. I just swung. I didn’t even feel mad or think, oh I’m gonna hit her, I just did it To Mermarlin: ...her?

To Kanilea: I hit my mom To Mermarlin: Omfg Nat she’s got to be 50 u could have killed her. Wtf. Seriously. I don’t even want to hear this. I’m blocking you To Kanilea: She’s 29. I’m 12. I’m sorry To Mermarlin: What’s going on?

To Kanilea: I don’t even know. It’s quiet outside To Mermarlin: No. Like what is really going on?

What are you scared of?

To Kanilea: Her. Me. Just me. I didn’t want to do it but I did. I don’t even know why. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Sometimes I would think about things like this but this time I wasn’t thinking aobut it.

It just happened. I really don’t understand it To Mermarlin: Did she hurt you?

To Kanilea: No. Not really. She was just talking To Mermarlin: It has to be more than that To Kanilea: I got in trouble at school. She was yelling at me about that To Mermarlin: Does she yell a lot?

To Kanilea: No. Mostly she is quiet. She doesn’t usually say anything to me anymore. But that’s becuz I don’t talk to her anymore either To Mermarlin: Can I ask why?

To Kanilea: Yes, but right now that’s too complicated to talk about To Mermarlin: Ok. To Kanilea: I’m not afraid of her. I’m afraid of me.

I have such ugly, terrible thoughts sometimes. I choose not to act on them. But look at today. I didn’t get a choice. It just happened. I’m so worried that I’ will just get angrier and angrier every day and do something To Mermarlin: Like what?

To Kanilea: Ugly things. Things people go to jail for To Mermarlin: We don’t want you to go to jail, Nat. Are you safe right now?

To Kanilea: I’m the one who’s dangerous. I need medicine or therapy or jail or something. I’m dangerous. I’m a little monster

To Mermarlin: Youre a little boy, Nat To Kanilea: “I did something little boys don’t do To Mermarlin: Youre still just a kid. Calm down.

Listen to me. We are friends right?

To Kanilea: What do I do?

To Mermarlin: Call someone from your family To Kanilea: Who? To Mermarlin: Anyone. Just call someone right now. Whoever you are closest to To Kanilea: I don’t want to go out there.

Nat muted the TV with shaking hands.

To Kanilea: It’s too quiet.

To Mermarlin: Do you have a phone?

To Kanilea: It’s out there. I don’t want to go out there. It’s too quiet. I won’t go.

To Mermarlin: You need to call someone. You need to go out there. Is the volume on? Turn it up. Just trust me Nat. Call someone Nat turned the volume up and wrapped himself in the blanket which was his cave wall. He read and reread Lily’s messages. Before he opened the door, he peered underneath it. He could not see anyone in the hallway. He opened it.

The sweeping music echoed in and against the thin walls of the apartment. Nat edged around the corner and searched for the phone on the counter top down the hall. He could see the base plugged into the wall but not the phone itself. With a final glance at the text on the TV screen, Nat went to search.

He hummed the game music as he felt along the counter top. His fingers blindly, tentatively felt for the phone on the other side. The counter was wet from the faucet near the sink. He did not find the phone, but he used his wet fingertips to clean away the blood on his knuckles. They were still red, as red as his eyes but more sore.

On the other side of the counter, he spotted the phone. He dialed his uncle George.

“Hello?”

“Uncle George.”

“Nat?” “Come to my house right now.” He hung up.

The phone rang before Nat had even put it down.

He clicked the button to hang up. When Nat turned around, he saw his mother in the darkest corner of the kitchen. She was sitting at the table working her jaw, drinking something with a straw from a cup full of ice.

He met her eyes, savage with emotion, and ran back to his room where his uncle George would find him not much later, fervently typing on his controller.

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on the sims // chloe babauta

Since my pre-teens, I’ve spent a lot of my time playing The Sims. I’m the oldest out of six siblings, and I’ve always been a bit of a control freak. I’ve been known to boss all the other kids around, get mad at them for being loud or annoying, and expect them to do what I tell them. Just recently, I told my 15 year old brother to cut his nails, and he said, “just because you tell me to do something means I need to do it? No.” I’ve always had such particular expectations for how I think everyone should act, how everyone should treat me, and how everyone should treat each other; since childhood, I’ve been a huge complainer. So when my parents introduced me to a game in which I could control everyone around me, I fell in love. Playing The Sims was always magical for me: I was able to create my own world, create my own characters, customize everything --from their aspirations to their outfits-- and control all their actions.

It was like playing with dolls (which I’d outgrown), but for grown-ups.

Over the past few years though, I’ve noticed that the amount of time I spend playing The Sims correlates directly with how dissatisfied I am with my real life. I’ve always needed some form of escapism, and The Sims was perfect. I could forget that I didn’t have a boyfriend in real life, that I didn’t have anything interesting going for me, that I didn’t have any real talents I could build up as quickly as I could in the game. It was a lot more difficult to learn how to actually master playing the guitar, play chess, or be naturally athletic; I was horribly untalented in all those areas. The world of The Sims is so immersive and I’d get wrapped up in the lives of my sims, spending hours from sunrise to sunset living vicariously through them. I could spend hours on end in sims time strumming a guitar, playing chess by myself, or pumping iron to build up my skills so quickly, without having to do any real work. I used cheats frequently so that I could live the most extravagant lives possible and get money without having to work for it, so I could spend my time actually playing with my sims instead of letting them going to work and having to wait around for them. “Motherlode” and “kaching” were my best assets.

But out of all the aspects I could control in The Sims, romance was my favorite. That was where the magic really happened for me. I found it so hard in real life to tell my crushes how I felt--when I first started getting really into The Sims, I had feelings for a boy in my class in 7th grade. I still had a huge crush on him for the next 3 years and kept those feelings to myself for most of the time. Falling in love in The Sims was a much easier way to live out my romantic fantasies without having to expose those repressed feelings. I knew the correct combination of social interactions I had to carry out with another

sim in order for them to fall in love with mine, which got rid of the risk or possibility of rejection. Throughout middle school and high school, I sometimes focused on obsessive celebrity crushes instead of pursuing real relationships with my peers and created my favorites in the game. I’ve had dozens of sim husbands, including Gerard Way, several variations of Billie Joe Armstrong, Robert Pattinson (during my Twilight phase), and Rivers Cuomo. I even went on to make sim versions of one of my boyfriends while we were in a long distance relationship (I say this all at the risk of sounding very creepy, but he knew about this too).

Since I started college, I’ve grown to love my life enough not to need the validation I used to get from playing this video game. I don’t mean to say that it’s unhealthy or a sign of mental instability to need to play video games, but in my case (or for anyone else with some form of control issues), it’s important to step back and realize that life isn’t a game, and I do not control it.

As I’m growing older, I’m beginning to realize that I’m not able to control the world around me, but maybe I don’t really need to. I don’t need to tell everyone what to do because I have no right to control other people’s actions. Moreover, the only person I can truly control is myself. Trying to get other people to do whatever I want is selfish, stressful, and a huge waste of my time.

In reality, I may not be able to hand-pick the physical features of my romantic interest, create a perfect house at no cost, or become fabulously rich without working for it beyond typing a few cheat words into a text box.

I can’t control how quickly I age or exactly when I’ll have children or get married. I’m learning that life isn’t as simple and controllable as it is in my simulated world-I found that I couldn’t select a cookie-cutter track to a career path in reality as I did in the game. It’s taking years of wandering, making mistakes, and self-discovery for me to figure out what I’m truly passionate about. And there are no cheats--at least not if I want to life an honest life. But my reality is beautiful, with its inconsistencies, spontaneity, and all. And with this realization, instead of turning to my perfect second life to get away from my messy reality, I will breathe in, and I will be grateful for the uncertainty that comes with surprises.

Although I enjoy the escapism and fun that comes with playing The Sims, I find myself playing it a lot less than I used to. I’ll miss the hours of fun I used to have with this game, but now it’s a lot less fun for me. What good is it to keep myself restricted to the confines of an imaginary world when I have my beautiful reality around me? The risks and uncertainty make me feel alive in a way The Sims never could, and even if I might miss the memories, I won’t look back. ▲

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TH E CATALYST // ryan yamamoto This is the bottom of the ninth down at the half, the next on-deck team meeting.

This is for the unspoken poets and unpublished Pulitzer Prize dreamers.

This stands for the childhood pot-and-pan musicians and for the singers who treat the shower like recording studios.

You are not alone.

This is a rallying cry for those who paint on cave walls but are too afraid to let them see the light of day.

For every scribble, doodle, and deleted file sitting in your recycling bin.

We are on the verge of something.

This is a flag flying for the kids who make their own worlds.

For the ones who feel like a duplex next to a building skyscraper.

How do we find our home in a place where, all too often, our art culture drowns in debauchery?

It’s like finding a swimming pool in Hell or finding a college student without confidence issues.

Take this deep breath before the plunge and the calm before the storm, And dive in.

For we are all made up of blank sheets of paper and unsharpened pencils, making us an addition problem that has no finite number of solutions.

The finger’s on the trigger, the send button, when you’re terrified of submitting something not good enough.

We who submit too frequently to the feelings of “Not Good Enough.”

We’ve got 86400 seconds in each day so

what are we going to do with them?

We, who exist in the space between atheists and gods and make our own reality.

The shoulders of giants never seem smaller than when you don’t know you’re standing on them.

They whisper: “We Are Here We are with You All You have to do is find Us.” This is for you, Heart that never learned to speak.

When the haze clears We are standing there.

We are no longer empty-handed torchbearers searching for Prometheus.

acknowledgements The English Department here at UCSB is a stellar example of a community that values the strength of the interdisciplinary alloy. The faculty of this and other departments has been overwhelmingly supportive, with confidence in these students.

A.S. Finance Board has given us an incredible gift in aiding the printing of our magazine, as A.S. Program Board and the Isla Vista Food Co-op have generously volunteered resources for our launch event.

On a serious note, this magazine cannot continue without help.

The printed arts are of a different era. The beauty of a printed publication is not something we can give up. If you are a student interested in fundraising, or a possible investor, please consider us. Our goal is to keep this here for good. If we can gain support in numbers, we will be able to stay. The investment and the generosity of Tim Roof at Haagen Printers/Type Craft Inc. has been a blessing that has made this first print possible.

Special Thanks: The University of California Santa Barbara English Department Faculty: Candace Waid, Enda Duffy, James Kearney, and Department Chair: Bishnupriya Ghosh.

John Arnhold & the Arnhold Program, Arnhold Fellow: Lindsay Thomas, Fellows of the Arnhold Program.

Tim Roof & Scott Gordon of Haagen Printing/Typecraft Incorporated and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

Ellen Anderson & Ye J. Ahn of Isla Vista Arts, Nick Alward, Natascha Skerczak, DJ Palladino, Cecilia Schneider. Joe Palladino.

Melissa Cohen & Ashley Audycki of the Isla Vista Food Co-op.

Melanie Supple, Grace Lapinid, and Coleen Sears from the Office of Student Life. Associated Students Program Board & Finance Board, Bennett Piscitelli & KCSB, Isla Vista Community Resource Center, David Cundiff, Brooke Lyon, Taylor Lowery, Will Stark, The Bottom Line. Lilia Goldenberg & Active Minds, Diane Byun & COSWB, and Ed & Melani O’Brien.

Many thanks go out to the pioneers from Spring 2013: Marissa Dadiw, Anisha Sisodia, Haley Paul, Kyra Klopp, Eddy Monge, Lulu Dewey.

The editorial committee of students in the English Department has selected these writers to be published as of Week 8 of Fall Quarter 2013. Due to space availability, material was divided between the Winter and Spring Issues.

In acknowledgment and appreciation of the writers featured in the upcoming Spring Issue: Kyra Klopp, Marcos Aguilar, Mariah Tiffany, Dylan Chase, Chris Cubbison, Kathleen Byrne, Kasey Carroll, Katie Battock, Alexandra Hurd, Marissa Dadiw, Caitlyn Grisham, Diane Byun, Simone Dupuy, Emma Voss, Thomas Skahill, Caitlyn Curran, Giuseppe Ricapito, Joseph Legotte. Art: Whitney Castro, Anisha Sisodia, & Megan Fisher.

Blind readings will be conducted twice during Winter Quarter for the Spring Issue. All submissions are selected on a rolling basis.

Printing sponsored by the UCSB English Department, the Arnhold Program, and A.S. Finance Board.

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