Selfdom

selfdom

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SPRING 2020

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Eileen Polat

MANAGING EDITOR

Riddhima Dave

PHOTO DIRECTOR Maya Pontone

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Matt Mckinzie

DESIGN DIRECTOR Chloe Krammel

DESIGN DIRECTOR 2

Reagan Allen

VISUAL ARTS DIRECTOR Coco Luan

STYLING DIRECTOR Serino Nakayama

DIGITAL DIRECTOR Haley Brown

EVENTS COORDINATOR

Emily Curtis

ASST. PHOTO DIRECTOR Mariely Torres

EDITORIAL

Nada Alturki Faith Bugenhagen Erin Christie Sam Goodman Leah Heath Mica Kendall Carly McGoldrick Carly Roberts Allyson Roche Meredith Stisser Engel Williams

PHOTO

Yuhan Cheng Andy Czucz Sean Jacobson Keely Martin Eloise Parisi Samson Pojdl Lipsky Zhou

BTS PHOTO

Thaler Bishop Jake Cabreza Fay Ishac Maria Vu

VISUAL

Grace Hwang Laura Hoppenbrouwers Torres Kaitlyn Joyner Madison Marzano Queenn Mckend Florian Okwu Nadezhda Ryan Ali Sy Graysen Winchester

STYLING

Gloria Cao Olivia Cigliano Lichee Dai Zoe Blue Kahnis Jiachen Liu

SOCIAL MEDIA Eliza Fu JillyTowson

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EDITORIAL

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Where are you, Sam? Words by Sam Goodman Visuals by Nadezhda Ryan

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Moss Grows Fat on a Rolling Stone Words by Carly McGoldrick Visuals by Ellie Bonifant

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Strange Encounters Words by Leah Heath Visuals by Ali Sy

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“It’s a Twin Thing” Words by Erin Christie Visuals by Laura Hoppenbrouwer Torres

Searching for Selfdom in Film Noir Words by Mica Kendall Visuals by Coco Luan

Hairdom and I, Hairdom and Us Words by Nada Alturki Visuals by Jake Cabreza

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Living an Itemized Life Words by Meredith Stisser Visuals by Queenn Mckend

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Speaking in Celluloid Tongues Words by Matt McKinzie Visuals by Graysen Winchester

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What Remains Words by Keely Martin Visuals by Allyson Roche

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Emptied Albums Words by Faith Bugenhagen Visuals by Madison Marzano

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Remedying Loneliness & Self Words by Carly Roberts Visuals by Mariely Torres

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Do You Feel Like Time Is Running Out? Words by Engel Williams Visuals by Kaitlyn Joyner

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Desired Shapes Visuals by Lipsky Zhou

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Sweet Tooth Visuals by Keely Martin

Destinations Visuals by Samson Podjil

Televised Nostalgia Visuals by Florian Okwu

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Bathroom Behavior Visuals by Maya Pontone

Ambedo Visuals by Eloise Parisi

Visuals by Graysen Winchester

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Visuals by Grace Hwang

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Kink Visuals by Sean Jacobson

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Cut Their Wings Off Visuals by Yuhan Cheng

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The Seven Deadly Sins Visuals by Andy Czucz

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Mirror, Mirror Visuals by Kaitlyn Joyner

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Visuals by Queenn McKend

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Visuals by Coco Luan

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Dear mom,

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Remember when I would have trouble going to bed as a little kid so you told me to sleep upside down? Not physically hanging upside down like a cocooned bat, but putting my pillow where my feet usually go to give myself a new perspective to sleep in. Magically, it worked. I remember in the 2nd grade, a classmate was telling me that they were going to bed later than usual and it was making them feel drained during their school day. I told them what I knew best, “sleep upside down. That’s what my mom told me to do and it works for me.” It only took a second after I explained myself to be bombarded by a room of eight year olds telling me that sleeping upside down could never work and putting my pillow where my feet go is gross. My teacher even chimed in to say that you probably just told me that to give me a new reason to believe that would help me focus on sleeping. I never thought I’d feel like that much of an idiot. My mom would never try to make me look like an idiot! (Well, you did make me believe that if I keep sucking my thumb then it will shrink when I was a kid, and I believed that till I was 12. But I don’t think that was entirely your fault). In that moment I just never thought I’d be ridiculed for something that I thought was helpful.

One morning, my roommate came into my room to grab some papers, and asked why I was sleeping on the other side of my bed. I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping so I am just doing what I think would help. I told her since I was a kid I would sleep upside down when I can’t fall asleep and it usually helps for some reason. She told me she does the same to help her fall asleep. Wow I guess I’m not crazy. This was something I have thought about for a long time and I wasn’t necessarily afraid to tell people, as if it were a secret I’m keeping, but I weirdly felt like I was still going to be alienated by people who didn’t understand or like it.

That’s why I wanted this magazine to be about selfdom. Everyone is tethered to something, a sort of indulgence, fascination or habit that they’re shamed to think is a faux pas. That’s what fears us from sharing it with the world because were attached to how people around us would make us feel if they knew. I think that just makes our world more vanilla. I often feel our private thoughts, interests, mannerisms, and experiences are similar to strangers and if we said them out loud more, we’d notice their are more fandoms out there than there are selfdoms. I say let them out! Let them roam free! They can use some fresh air.

Love always, Eileen April 22, 2020

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Where are you, Sam? 8

WORDS Sam Goodman VISUALS Nadezhda Ryan

In a reversal of Steinbeck, I always found in myself a dread of east and a love of west.1 I’d take rolling hills over endless plains, cloudless blues skies over heavy grays. Yet despite my love for the Los Angeles sun, I’ve always feared its heat.2 I decided to move west to east in the pursuit of higher education. I flew 3,000 miles; in that flight was freedom and in that flight was fear. I went east hoping my mind would be opened by a collegiate community of young artists. This was the time for discussion and discovery and intense discourse around topics I couldn’t even imagine yet. It was a time for exploration and selfactualization— I could come to truly know myself.

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Once I arrived, I met a boy who had pierced ears and tight leather pants. He wore black boots with a 2-inch platform; he floated above the ground. I tracked his steps with my eyes. I looked nothing like him— I moved into my dorm wearing a green t-shirt and athletic shorts, not knowing leisurewear was one of the liberal arts school seven sins.

I didn’t know where the boy was from or anything about his interests, passions, or hobbies, but I deeply admired the way he blended in with the rest of our peers. He, like many others, adorned himself with flashy clothing and his dorm walls with artful photographs of his hometown and graphic prints of his favorite artists.

He and our peers all seemed to fıt in perfectly with one another. In an effort to look different, each presenting an alt-style and persona, they all ended up looking the same.

College was a costume party but I was never told the theme. The dining hall was a runway and my clothes did not match the brand; I was comfortable being casual.

In this time of rapid change, when I felt particularly lonely, I thought I needed to appear a certain way in order to avoid total disappearance. To attract any sort of kinship, I had to reconsider what it meant to be me.

So, I studied my peers and reworked and rebranded until I was acceptable for the outside world. A renaissance, but certainly not the Golden Age. Gilded.

Despite my prior aversion to ear piercing, I booked an appointment with a piercer 20 minutes out of the city. I had my ear punctured and displayed my metal proudly, unaware that it was slowly growing infected. The silver bar that sat in my cartilage hid my rotting insides.

With this new accessory and an improved wardrobe, I would wait until I was attractive enough for my peers. I know now that I would’ve died waiting.

When these changes went unnoticed, I began to doubt my reconstructed self. I altered so much in an effort to stand out, only to feel more invisible than before.

I looked in the mirror and did not know who looked back. I was no longer the child on move-in day, the boy wearing green. I could never be him again. I could not reverse time and reoccupy the self that I now understand as fleeting and precious: he who was inquisitive, curious, and ready to feel the sun’s heat. I was older and I hated the person who stood before me, the person I turned myself into. I hated his rotting insides. Smile lines sat ironically on his upper lip. I couldn’t bear to look.

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I refused to accept this as me. But if I could not go back to being the boy in green and I rejected what stared back in the mirror, I was just not. I lost all understanding of me. Everything that once informed my identity was gone. I destroyed it.

I spent a week in limbo, sitting alone in solitude, thinking and writing and soaking in a pool of cold sadness. I needed time to consider my self. Hours turned into a day and a day turned into three without seeing another person. Eventually, I got a call from a close friend.

Where are you, Sam?

When I reached deep into the emptiness of my consciousness to uncover the answer to the simple question, I found that the tendons connecting my mind and body had been severed and reality suddenly seemed incomprehensible.

I was nowhere because I was no one.

I fell behind in the chase after my own self and despite 17 years of being, I was no longer.

Where? Are? You?

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In that question lays the ultimate task set forth by the human experience: the striving for supreme self-understanding. Can you ever truly know thyself?

I hung up the phone to return to solitude and my mind collapsed in on itself. The simple question spurred what I now understand as a panic attack, a symptom of my later diagnosed Existential OCD. Pacing the room, I could only understand myself as existing in nothingness. I forced myself to reconsider what was real and what was a facade.

Existential thoughts overwhelmed my already anxious brain and I questioned time and space and my presence within it. Hours went by without me noticing as I went in and out of consciousness.

I stared at photographs of my former self, convinced that the people in the photos never existed and neither had I. I had no past and would have no future.

My actions had no consequences because I was unperceivable. I could scream and no one would hear and walls could fall because they could be pushed.

I called my father to make sure I, at one point, was.

All I could trust was what I saw in my own writing. I existed through the words I scribbled.

They all think I’m crazy. No one believes me. I will suffer forever.

12 I’ve seen what is not there.

What lurks behind the darkness— What we all fear most— What we cannot see.

It’s nothingness.

I think and think and think.

I am not.

I was never.

I will never be.

I look into the mirror.

I cannot recall.

I fear death.

Worse than losing life is losing yourself within it.

Where are you, Sam?

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Despite these persisting thoughts, I remind myself I once was. I have been the child who feared the heat of the sun, its kiss on my cheeks, its warmth in my hair.

I know I am. I know because I smell the air, acrid and stale like cold soup and wet socks. I know rain and I know the way I become wistful when I feel it coming. I see lamplight melt down the walls. I feel my heart pumping blood through my veins. I feel my head throb and my fıngernails grow from their beds. I taste blood that has dribbled from my nose onto my dry, cracked lips; I don’t wipe it but let it soak into my skin. I let myself rot. I let my wounds close.

I have been burned by the scorch of the sun.

Endnotes 1. Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. New York City, The Viking Press, 1952.

2. Shakespeare, William. “Cymbeline.” Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. England, Edward Blount and William and Isaac Jaggard, 1623.

DESIRED

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SHAPE PHOTO Lipsky Zhou STYLING Serino Nakayama, Olivia Cigliano, Lijing Dai MAKEUP Olivia Cigliano MODEL Yuhong Cai BTS Maria Vu

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VISUALS Grace Hwang

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- to - live - an - itemized - life WORDS Meredith Stisser VISUALS Queenn Mckend

There are few things that imbue me with as much satisfaction as the violent drag of a ballpoint pen across a to-do list. That sense of accomplishment is a high I chase every morning. I wake up and crawl from my bed to my dorm desk, and markup a yellow index card with: -take vitamins -drink 1 hydroflask -stretch -get dressed -civil rights hw -call mom -apply for internships -go to roche bros.

The visual of the completed list is divine.

A metaphorical diploma, I graduated from this day, from these tasks, I escaped the perils of unproductivity yet again, ha! My personal subscription to capitalist demands for constant motion. These lists give me a sense of control, a feeling of feigned productivity in the simple act of creating them. At their core, they serve as one of the many distractions I feed myself to satiate the hunger to analyze the menial nature of any life, to protect the complete illusion that we have purpose and obligation. The list keeps me sane, I am 25 a collection of lists of completed tasks, of secrets and passwords, of fears and goals.

My lists allow a sense of self-curation.

A solid sense that I would otherwise be denied. I carefully congregate all of the manifestations I pursue onto tidy 3x5 notecards, or on the corners of notebooks, the backs of napkins, perhaps cataloged in my secret Pages documents that I only open at 3 AM when I’m under the influence of love or other drugs. I build a home around myself.

Walls of paper and scribbles and checkmarks.

I keep lists of things I’m going to put in my apartment (when I get an apartment), lists of the kind of person I will allow myself to fall in love with, (as if that is healthy at all), a list of every place on Earth I want to see before I am buried inside of it. Some of my lists are unhealthy, lists of everything I’ve eaten on a given day to remind myself of my calorie count, lists of all of the things pressing on my anxieties. In a chilling way, the lists I make construct the person that I am. I best express the essence of myself when I offer you a peek into my obsession, my addiction to the perpetual incentives built into living an itemized life.

So, here are my lists.

places i expect to have a meet-cute

-the elevator of the walker building -explorateur (the relationship to ensue would be toxic but- anyway!)

-reaching for the same tomato at an outdoor farmer’s market -in the seat behind me in a movie i go to see by myself -my best friend’s wedding -on a train to brussels -on a plane to oregon

celebrities whose approval i crave

-anna kendrick -rihanna -ilana glazer -anna marie tendler -maya rudolph -adam sandler -zooey deschanel -jaboukie young-white -eugene levy

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best songs to scream sing

-you and i by lady gaga -if u seek amy by britney spears -rocketman by elton john -what’s up by 4 non blondes -tiny dancer by elton john -since you’ve been gone by kelly clarkson -you oughta know by alanis morissette -put your records on by corinne bailey rae -skinny love by bon iver (believe me) -before he cheats by carrie underwood -if it makes you happy by sheryl crow -i’m with you by avril lavigne

-drink a cherry vanilla coke -dye my hair orange -join a nudist community (if only for a day) -star in a theatrical production, get discovered, and live my fÄąnal days a silver screen queen -tell everyone i have ever loved that i loved them

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character tropes i would happily adopt -the cool aunt -the sitcom “friend in their own universe�

-the heroine

character tropes i refuse to adopt -the lonely spinster -the housewife -the villain

things that scare me

-when i look for excuses to drink -black holes -tidal waves -my parents getting divorced -tobacco induced head rushes -mitch mcconnell showing up at the end of my bed -arm implant birth control -losing -writing

best fruits to eat naked and let the juice drip

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poems i will write

-i don’t know the color of your eyes -this edible ain’t shit (a satire) -tide pools -to be kate dicamillo -the intricacies of a shadow box -a cool, yet to be titled, profoundly feminist one?

-mango -peach -orange -grapefruit

groceries

-gerolsteiner mineral water -bohemian barbecue hippeas -mangoes -mochi -menstrual cup (i accidentally melted the fÄąrst one) -flowers -face mask

29 plants i have killed

-aloe -parsley -every flower bouquet i’ve ever owned (but that’s normal)

plants i have kept alive

-ivy -my hanging plant (i do not know the genus/species) -cactus

movies i say i’ve seen but i have not -crash -sweet home alabama -free solo -kill bill (all of them) -stepbrothers

things i wish i did more often

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-read for pleasure -read at all -ice skate -sit quietly and think -see the sunrise -watch the sunset -cook

-danny phantom -sheen estevez -silvermist (the water fairy from pixie hollow) -ash ketchum -mewtwo (the pokemon) -larry the lobster -aladdin -prince zuko -robin hood (the fox version)

places i have cried

-every math class i have ever taken -the university of new hampshire -the boston public library -my bed -their bed -times square

secrets im willing to tell

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people i miss

-krysten walker -my grandmother on my mother’s side -my grandfather on my father’s side -me, but me when i was 7 -the man who sold flavored vinegar at sowa -my second-grade teacher mrs. duhaime -the woman i sat next to on a plane from berlin who gave me crackers and lotion

mistakes i have made

-that one guy from bu -not joining the marching band in high school -putting my crispy wave plant in direct sunlight -my eyebrows in 2013

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things i will put in my apartment when i have one -pile of books that appears unintentionally stacked but is very intentionally stacked -beaded curtain -lava lamp -1 scruffy cat -cher poster -french press (purely decorative) -large orange le creuset pot

places i would like to live

-madison, connecticut -mystic, connecticut -camden, maine -inside the base of the willow tree -copenhagen, denmark -prague, czech republic -new york city *sigh*

reasons i’m afraid to fall in love -aren’t you supposed to be?

names for theoretical kids

things i do not want right now -kids -HPV

things i’ll probably have in the future -kids -HPV

-theia -bizzy -escher -louise -vera -oscar -claude -mia -maya -eloise -dante -ninette -leda -bo -bennett -brooks -poppy -lottie -bear (im serious) -julian -jude -wolfe (no really though)

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hungover thoughts - how do i start a day that i began at the wrong end of my bed with full ass jeans on -i’m doing great sweetie -someone should euthanize me -i do not remember one thing, i said, to one person, all night

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clothing i need to collect

-big cargo pants -long yellow gingham dress -tan knit pants -lavender lingerie

habits i need to kick

-picking at my face -psychoanalyzing the people i love -instagram addiction -pining for the approval of an audience

my favorite little phrases

-decidedly wobbly -hop on the back of my bike -emotional jumper cables (this refers to a hug!! how cute is that!?)

-hypersexed phone obsessed -all destinations nothing underwater

animals i identify with -otters -pizza rat -raccoons -cats -fuzzy little pigs

-coffee -orange -2 sugar wafers -tomato soup

So now you have seen all of me. My mania for lists begins and ends nowhere. I see no reality in which I don’t exist between the lines of these bulleted pages. I am a collection of numbers and dashes and phrases and stars. My muscles are made up of scratched out accomplished items. My messy hair is the unfınished catalog of lifelong dreams I have yet to tame. I take inventory of the world around me and the world that I wish to construct through these lists.

These lists can be isolating and maddening—and quite often are.

They can abide by the neoliberal tendencies of a need for perpetual productivity, they can trap me. Yet, knowing they hold such power allows me to use them for the counter-effect. I can use them to free myself. They instill in me the sense of being ever unfınished.

There is no end to what can roll off of my pen and onto 3x5 yellow index cards—my medium of choice. A list can be two items long, it can extend for decades. To live an itemized life is the choice of a mooncalf, inductive, and yet I do so, entirely without regret.

to do

-fınish this -absolutely everything else

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SWEET TOOTH PHOTO Keely Martin STYLING Serino Nakayama MAKEUP Zoe Kahnis MODELS Dora Hewitt, Sophia Bulbulia, Qiyue Zhang BTS Jake Cabreza

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MOSS GROWS FAT ON A ROLLING STONE WORDS Carly McGoldrick VISUALS Ellie Bonifant

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I turned nineteen last July, alone. Dad called to wish me a happy birthday.

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After school let out, I avoided going home. Most people I knew were returning to the comfort of their childhood beds for the summer months, but I spent that time in Boston, cramped in a four-bedroom apartment with three strangers. My intent was to escape another monotonous summer in Ohio, as being chauffeured around by my mother or picking up shifts at the near-abandoned movie theater down the street from my parents’ house didn’t seem like viable options.

My days in Boston were scored by the sounds of sizzling pavement in the hazy afternoon heat, the Green Line screeching along the aboveground tracks on Huntington Avenue, and whatever Phoebe Bridgers track I’d been playing on loop. I did that frequently: listening to the same song again and again until the lyrics just seemed to spill out of my brain and into my mouth, and until my pulse fell in time with the drumline. If I learned anything last summer, it’s that there’s nothing more sacred than sad-ass lyrics sung to a good tempo.

On my birthday, the second of July, my usual cityscape was disrupted by the sound of Dad’s aging voice. We hadn’t spoken in six months.

When he called, I was belly-up in my apartment listening to Stranger in the Alps on the floor. I got the familiar lump in my throat that made my words tremble upon picking up, and with every attempt at inflection, I sounded like I was about to sob. I avoided crying, though, until hanging up.

We traded pleasantries, and with a similar tearful shake in his voice, he told me that he had planted green beans in his garden. He wanted me to have some when I visited in August, he said.

Odd, but characteristic of Dad. That weepy throat lump, as well as the stubbornness so as to not speak to someone for so long despite missing them so desperately, secretly, must be genetic.

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I’m damp. I’m six. I’m sitting in the back of Mom’s red minivan, and my thighs spill out from my one-piece swimsuit. They stick to the cracked faux-leather seat as I sit; I dread the moment that I stand and my thighs and the seat beneath me shluck apart.

The air is warm and my bleach-stained beach towel reeks of chlorine. I tie my hair into a ponytail all by myself, though the underside falls out, and the shorter hairs that frame my face dry into small ringlets. I have freckles again. It’s July.

Mom hangs her arm out of the drivers’ side window as we cruise along Cass Road. Kacie, in the passenger seat, pushes a tape into the player and pulls two crumpled sheets of paper out of the glove compartment. She passes one to Mickey.

He doesn’t bother to show me. I can’t read.

The song starts with a familiar chord progression, a sort of smattering of keys, and falls into something I recognize.

A long long time ago / I can still remember how / That music used to make me smile “American Pie,” Don McLean. Mom forces us to learn the lyrics on our drive home from the swimming pool.

“American Pie” is Dad’s favorite. He never comes to the pool with us, but he’ll sing that song while he’s behind the house, watering the garden, or while we shuck corn on the porch before dinner. He’ll do it after having a bit too much to drink, or as we stumble back to mom’s car after a trip to the movie, late at night. I wrap my fıve fıngers into a small fıst around his pinky as we navigate the parking lot, and he croons.

“We’ll listen with the words one more time,” Mom says. She pulls the driver’s side visor to the side, shading her eyes from the sharp light of the setting sun.

Kacie and Mickey are getting pretty good at “American Pie,” but I, six-years-old, illiterate, and completely incapable of coming to recognize eight minutes of old-school pop culture references, am hopeless.

I still am, sort of. Some of the verses trip me up to this day.

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Dad is a natural storyteller, though sometimes I’m not sure if he’s genuinely good or if it’s just his material that makes it seem that way. One of Dad’s earlier stories was about a guy he worked with a long time ago who died, after deciding that he hated everything about his life, including his wife and kids and job and house. He stood on the train tracks by his house and waited. Let himself get run over. Made himself unrecognizable, probably.

Dad talked about doing that to himself once, but I don’t really remember the context. If he ever goes out for one of those long walks and hours later, the police fınd some poor, unidentifıable son-of-a-bitch who flattened himself out on the tracks on the other side of town, we’ll know.

Mom’ll know. I think she’d just want a call fırst.

When I came home in August, there were no green beans. They’d been eaten away by something, Dad said. Rabbits, maybe. He said he hadn’t fenced-in the garden. I can’t help but think that he was lying, or at least that he had forgotten.

Maybe he’s just getting old. Mindless, I remind myself. It’ll be me one day.

I’d like to think I’ve inherited some of my worst traits from my father. Among them are my tendency to get angry at small things, the ability to down dark liquors quickly, my habit of gaining ten pounds with each passing year, and a private affınity for folk rock. Even my aptitude for spending hours flipping through cable channels with the sound turned off, eyes glued to the bluelight of the television screen, I owe to my father.

He’s mindless, as I can often be.

I didn’t realize “American Pie” was really about anything, let alone Buddy Holly’s death, until recently. Dad mentioned it during one of his drunken songbird sessions—he’d interrupted the second verse, or third or fourth and maybe fıfth, to explain the references I’d never picked up on.

“Moss grows fat on a rolling stone. I actually have no idea what the fucker’s saying here. Did anybody even care about the Rolling Stones when this song came out?”

“American Pie” came out in 1971. So did Sticky Fingers. Dad doesn’t care too much for the electric guitar.

Dad can’t drive a car. He doesn’t have a cell phone. He spends most of his time commenting on political news on the Internet. I don’t think he voted in the last election. He’ll sometimes disappear on long walks for hours at a time and not take any form of identifıcation with him, despite Mom begging him to do so. I think she’d be content with a phone number scribbled on a scrap of paper in his back pocket, but she can’t get even that.

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Moments in Boston in February are scored less and less often by my favorite contemporary brooding women. More frequently, I’m listening to 70s Americana in private, wondering which part of my genealogy draws me to the acoustic guitar and stripped-down vocals more than a synthesizer and a high-hat. I wonder if Dad sings Don McLean while I’m away and who he thinks of while doing it, or if he thinks of anyone at all.

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PHOTO Sean Jacobson STYLING Serino Nakayama, Lijing Dai MAKEUP Serino Nakayama, Lijing Dai MODEL Olivia Christie BTS Jake Cabreza

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DESTINATIONS PHOTO Samson Pojdl STYLING Serino Nakayama MAKEUP Serino Nakayama MODELS Shaw Zhong, Joey Polvere

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SPEAKING IN CELLULOID TONGUES WORDS Matt Mckinzie VISUALS Graysen Winchester

when those specials fırst premiered I have a bad relationship with old Christmas cartoons. on television, and made sure It has nothing to do with the holiday itself; in fact, to imbue my formative some of my best childhood memories are associated with Christmastime experiences Christmastime. Put on It’s a Wonderful Life or Elf or It Happened with that same media. I on Fifth Avenue, I’ll gladly watch. But never, ever, put on one of still get nostalgic thinking the “Cartoon Classics.” about winter nights in our I must clarify such a moniker: the “Cartoon Classics” do not den, sitting on the forest include How the Grinch Stole Christmas or A Charlie Brown green carpet that smelt Christmas or Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. Yes, these are of Nonnie’s cigarette all “classics,” but when I write “Cartoon Classics,” I refer smoke, gathered eagerly specifıcally to the stop-motion animation specials that around our bulbous play on ABC Family every year, the ones most people Sony TV (before the have stashed away in their cupboards in dusty VHS advent of flatscreen) as slip cases. The big ones are Rudolph the Red-Nosed Mom would pop in our Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and Frosty VHS. From a sea Frosty the Snowman; A Year Without a Santa of static, our favorite Claus (featuring the Miser Brothers), The Little characters would Drummer Boy, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, and emerge — breaking Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey into song, fıghting are also included in the batch. yuletide foils, fılling that I must also clarify: I have no qualms with tiny basement with the cartoons themselves, and their unbridled joy. pop culture longevity (despite their Eventually, Frosty antiquity) wholly validates their would fade to black. timeless entertainment value.

Our beloved characters They’ve been embraced would disappear into across generations, a noiseless abyss, and passed down like family an empty void would heirlooms among materialize, bordered on the progeny, a all sides by a blue banner. connecting line That was the cue to plug through our my ears, to shift my eyes to diverse holiday the green grain of the carpet traditions. even as I yearned to uproot M y myself and race out of the parents room. Beyond eyesight and were earshot, a twangy guitar broke kids through silent airwaves,

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followed by woodwinds, shrill like nails on a chalkboard, as strange shapes (in various shades of blue) forming an abstract “R” and “B” burst onto our TV screen without warning. Just as abruptly, the words A RANKIN/BASS PRODUCTION followed, before the jingle slipped into a minor key, purply and thunderous, propulsive as it hurtled into a black fadeout, our den engulfed in darkness.

Thinking about it still gives me goosebumps.

Thus, I wasn’t terrifıed by the cartoons, but rather, the production company logo that followed them. The mixture of discordant sounds and strange iconography, that unlike the cartoons themselves had not aged well since its late-60s inception, was abrupt and sinister, startling to my naive brain. Mix it in with worn-out VHS static, casting strange light across dark basement furniture, and you get on that basement rug, three-years-old, paralyzed a nightmare scenario for the and petrifıed as fıve seconds of arbitrary fılmic senses. madness played out on screen before my tiny Looking back on this experience ears and unexpecting eyes. as a 20-year-old, it seems silly.

For the longest time, I thought I was alone in my A 5-second corporate logo, phobia. scary? A graphic and some font, Fast forward ten years. Suddenly, I’m 13 years really the stuff of nightmares? old, it’s Christmastime again, and while I don’t I can now watch the RANKIN/ feel the need to turn off ABC Family in the living BASS logo without fear, and yet room, hearing that damned logo thunder in our hearing that jingle and seeing TV speakers still lights a fıre in my stomach. those shapes still puts me back Joan Didion once said, “I’ve always found that if I examine something, it’s less scary.” That December, I became Didionesque in my pursuit of this fear: to stare at it, untangle it, grapple with the enigma in order to free myself of its domain.

It began with Google searches. “rankin bass logo scary” “rankin bass logo creepy” “old TV logos nightmare.” Scattered keywords to get me somewhere, anywhere, beyond my solitude.

Then came the Wikipedia pages, YouTube videos, and Reddit threads. Suddenly, I had found my kindred spirits, all of whom shared the same fear of the RANKIN/BASS logo growing up, for all the same reasons.

Many commenters had actually been children when the specials fırst premiered, beginning in the late-60s. As one blog post read: “For those who don’t understand why this is scary...the ‘70s were a scary time for kids!! You had a big man

in a bear suit threatening nightmares if you left a campfıre burning... You had a lady who could see and name all the children in the world through a ‘magic mirror’... Then the logos right before you go to bed! They’re like the Boogeyman’s letterhead!”

Another commenter reckons with the logo’s jingle in technical terms, by way of explaining its “scare factor”: “It’s the harmonies and the flute, mainly... the abrupt, staccato F major 7 chord: F, A, C, and E.” Another post reads: “Many of the logos, such as RANKIN/BASS, came at the end of prime time shows before kids went to bed...the fanfare and odd logos triggered a feeling of fınality in the child watching it.” Finally, this simple, yet completely validating assertion: “This my childhood phobia with scared me so bad when I was little. Up an examination of the eerie until recently I thought I was the only Screen Gems production one.” graphic (which played after TV Finally, I could understand my fear, shows like I Dream of Jeannie, and for the fırst time, I wasn’t navigating Bewitched, and The Flintstones), it alone. A year later, a documentary broadcast during those same called The S from Hell premiered at years as the RANKIN/BASS logo, Sundance, further substantiating and similarly discussed in the aforementioned Reddit threads and YouTube videos.

But what are the broader implications of this fear? What does its unspoken ubiquity reveal about how we, as a collective viewing culture, consume media starting at a young age?

Of course, the scare factor of these late-60s logos (three are discussed at length in online forums: the RANKIN/BASS logo, the Screen Gems “S from Hell,” and Viacom Productions’ “V of Doom”) is directly tied to their sociological imagination.

Counterculture reached its acme at the turn of the decade, chiefly responsive to

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a Vietnam war draft targeting the baby boom generation, and broader systemic inequities and injustices pertaining to race, gender, sexuality, and class. Mass media reflected the chaos-catharsis mélange: music became increasingly avant-garde, big-budget movies adopted jarring arthouse techniques (look no further than Easy Rider’s cemeteryset acid trip), and television found itself catering to myriad, fractured demographics: teenagers fıghting the hegemonic culture, their shocked parents clinging to a Levittown image and value system, young children lost in the disarray.

Amid the broader societal unrest, sound designers and engineers began experimenting with new instruments never before heard, as well as old ones brought back into the mainstream echelon after a half-century of jazz, swing, rockabilly, and big-band radio-play. Suddenly, synthesizers, woodwines, and flutes were jetting out of America’s TV speakers without warning. Graphic design was in a similar period of innovation, and during the late-60s went through a kind of “puberty” — illustrators and font-makers stuck in antiquated, mid-century tradition while simultaneously charging ahead into space-age modernity. From all of this, what do you get? TV logos comprised of strange text and eerie sounds, all wrapped up in an era’s awkward moment of transition and reckoning: inexplicably odd semiotics radiating from America’s television screens as a kind of microcosm of the broader sociological “growing pains.”

But as a child of the 21st century, wouldn’t there be some distance between myself and this specifıc context? Sure, the logo hasn’t changed since the late-60s, and it hasn’t aged particularly well either — its music and graphic design still ooze commodifıed counterculture-era zeitgeist. Even so, having not grown up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I did not have to fıeld the kind of sociocultural distractions delineated above... ...or did I? Born at the dawn of the new millennium, my perspective as a youngster (like all Gen Z babies) was marred by the external-world leitmotifs of the Internet and the War on Terror, and as I came of age, mass shootings and police

b r u t a l i t y.

Technology and mass media concurrently blossomed, in accessibility and exceptionality, at a rate never before witnessed, and as I write now, we roam about the broader capitalist-globalization superstructure, inseparable from our heart ratetracking cellphone-wristwatch composites and in-home computer pods that respond to arbitrary vocal cues: always on, always listening. Pervasive media tactics influenced by (and inextricable from) external-world disarray and collective societal fears (as witnessed on full parade in something as seemingly innocuous as the RANKIN/ BASS TV logo amid Woodstock, Manson, Altamont, and Nixon), are now part of our normalized, dayto-day discourse.

In the throes of fear and fascination on that basement carpet, perhaps I w a s feeling those multigenerational reverberations rooted in my parents’ upbringing. Their experiences as children of the counterculture era, watching RANKIN/BASS Christmas cartoons, or Viacom and Screen Gems TV shows, manifested in the genetic footprint, shaping my media consumption as a child of the new millennium.

Here I make a subjective assertion, spoken in abstraction.

Perhaps this is not the case for everyone who witnesses these old TV logos, yet who still experience a timeless reaction of aversion. Is it, then, our primal response to capitalism and consumer culture? A repulsion at the sight of corporate gain tacked onto something as innocent as a children’s cartoon, permanently coloring our formative viewing experiences with unnatural money system

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motives? If so, will all entertainment logos age this way?

Will our children shudder at Universal Pictures’ 2012 100th Anniversary fanfare, or the sights and sounds of NEON and A24?

One thing is for certain: I wouldn’t be where I am today without that RANKIN/BASS logo. It constituted one of my biggest and most inexplicable fears as a youngster, but it made me realize, at that tender age, how deeply visualaudio media shapes its viewers: scarring us, inspiring us, and forcing us to reckon with ourselves and the world in which we live. It is the early stimulus that sets the stage for every stimulus to come.

Now, at 20 years of age, I make fılms. No longer a phobia, RANKIN/BASS nonetheless fascinates me, as fear melted into intrigue, and eventually, into my obsession with the power of the moving image. I fınd now my life is defıned by those same signifıers that once frightened me: I see in aspect ratio, I breathe videocassette static, Tri-X fılm rolls are consumed like fruit rollups for the soul. Such a way of life must be attributed to the visceral horror RANKIN/BASS lent me as a three-year-old.

For always, those small screen scaries play impetus to the careful deliberation behind every aesthetic choice I make — as an artist who will forever speak in celluloid tongues.

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STRANGE ENCOUNTERS WORDS Leah Heath VISUALS Ali Sy

It was my turn to spend time with my father, and so we went out to do what he loves most: attend a basketball game. I loved going to these types of events. I don’t much care for sports, but if I could eat junk food without limit, I was in. Basketball games always meant cotton candy, popcorn, light up sabers, and usually drive-thru food before or after. Staying up past bedtime was every fıve year old’s dream, and nights like these 73 made it so.

At half-time my dad would ask if I needed to use the bathroom. After two refılls of orange soda the answer was “yes.” We went down the stairs of the stadium, into the large area that held all the concessions. I went into the bathroom by myself while my father waited outside. Coming out of the stall, I remember seeing all these beautiful women with short skirts and long spray-tanned legs, nowhere near popping out a child. But there I was, precious and alone, and they seemed to think it was really cute as I washed my hands.

We all walked out together.

“Your daughter’s really cute,” they said.

My father thanked them and we walked back to our seats, my hand in his. He asked: “Didn’t mom teach you not to talk to strangers?” He didn’t seem upset, just one eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, but I don’t know what that word means.” I shrugged, and after we sat back down, I continued to devour more popcorn than my stomach could hold. The suffıx “er,” tacked on at the end of the word “strange,” makes the entire word sound as foreign as the person it is supposedly attached to. And

connection. I just blindly agreed with what my mom had taught me. “Don’t talk to strangers.” My comprehension of the term still felt trivial.

I believe that people at their core are harmless, at least the majority are. I don’t worry about being stabbed everytime I walk out of my front door. There is such a thing as minding one’s own business. That doesn’t mean we all follow it.

I’ve had quite a many strange encounters in the DC, Maryland, Virginia (DMV) area to be exact. There always seems to be an elderly black woman around ready to prod me into telling her what high school I went to, because I look that type of familiar. Though especially in airports or bus stations, eyes seem to bore

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into me.

Here’s a few examples: Boston Logan International Airport: I’m sitting at my gate. I have one hour until boarding, and I’m eating a Honey Ham on wheat sandwich from Starbucks. An elderly lady sits eighteen feet away from me, fıling her nails and staring at me. I feel uncomfortable and continue to eat my sandwich. Not a word is spoken between us.

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport: I have just checked in my luggage and am heading towards TSA. I’m going down an escalator and a young airport worker is coming up the one right beside mine. He’s staring at me, and I’m trying to not do the same to him. I keep glancing at him though, and each time I look, he’s still staring. As we get to the passing point on our escalators he says, “Sorry, you just look really familiar.”

Syracuse Amtrak Station: An older man, wearing one shade of camo green, with white converse and a thick New York accent, asks me if I’m a Saggitarius. I am. He’s shocked even himself, and goes on to compare me to an eel. Yes, the fısh.

Because I’m giving off “an energy.” We were both on our way to Rochester and boarded the same Greyhound.

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There’s something about being perceived that makes the veins under my arms turn to worms...crawling...urking. I can feel the eyes staring into the mass of my hair. Something that seems to be an open invitation for people to stare, and half the time that stare comes with the threat of being interjected with a vocal response.

Sometimes it’s things like “you’re beautiful,” or “what’s your name?” All of which I don’t usually respond

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to. If I do feel the stares, I’ll put my hair back into a weird bun. It seems to work as a “don’t talk to me” mechanism. I think it’s the framing of my face.

My hair is one of my main, recognizable traits. Near the end of last year, I was walking on the street with my luggage when an old friend saw my hair. I hadn’t seen him for half-a-year, due to him being in a different state, and it was a pleasant surprise to see him randomly on the street. “I thought I saw your hair.” He said. Things like that, I like. I don’t mind when people stop me as long as it’s genuine.

Grocery store checkout lanes are also a place where looks get passed around.

Especially by babies or small children. But mostly babies. Their eyes bore into you and their heads are so heavy that they seem to lean backwards. Usually their gaze captures their guardians’ attention, directing them to what they are staring at. However, I feel like grocery store checkout lanes are an exception, where it is a socially-acceptable place to look. But also to be looked at.

Though not talked to. Don’t do that to strangers.

The art of glancing is something I’ve had to become familiar with. I’ve always felt as if it was a personal problem that I make the random glance of eye contact with strangers that result in interaction. I’ll try and try again to not do it. Though glancing is kind of my way of checking in and making sure everyone is oriented around me as they were before. No sudden movements are ever made. More often than not it can also be played off as just looking out of a window behind you, and not at the person trying to gaze into the back of your head.

I was formally taught to look people in the eyes when I talk to them. It’s become impossible for me to converse by yelling from different rooms, or behind closed 77 doors. Conversations can be a lot more simple face to face. Can you tell I’m a caller and not a texter? It’s polite to look at someone while they are talking, it shows attentiveness. Your eyes don’t have to bore into each other like cyclops, but that attentiveness as you look at the person talking is appreciated.

Still, if you are a stranger reading this, please don’t stare at people. Now you know how it feels.

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CUT THEIR WINGS OFF

PHOTO Yuhan Cheng STYLING Serino Nakayama MAKEUP Gloria Cao, Esther Liu, Lijing Dai, Serino Nakayama MODEL Ronald Crivello-Kahihikolo BTS Gloria Cao

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TELEVISED NOSTALGIA

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VISUALS Florian Okwu

THE SEVEN

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DEADLY SINS

PHOTO Andy Czucz STYLING/MAKEUP Gloria Cao, Olivia Cigliano, Lijing Dai, Zoe Kahnis, Esther Liu, Serino Nakayama MODELS Mia Yang, Vanencia Niamoko, Grace Guarascio, Olivia Watry, Sophia Kriegel

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INNOCENCE

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GLUTTONY

ENVY

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LUST

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PRIDE 100

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SLOTH

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WRATH

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TAINTED

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PHOTO Maya Pontone STYLING Serino Nakayama MAKEUP Esther Liu MODELS Erin Vadala, Vivian Wang

BATHROOM BEHAVIOR

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WHAT REMAINS WORDS Allyson Roche VISUALS Keely Martin

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My intense fascination with estate sales began two months before I started college.

I spent those days consciously trying to store in my memory the affectionate touch of summer sun on my skin, the constant and imminent sense of discovery that lines each unexplored street of Los Angeles, the lazy rhythm of my daily drives, and the sweet tinge of freedom that bursts in my heart when these blend together; all of this in attempt to fıgure out what facets of home will be the ones I will long for when I’m gone.

It was on my sister’s 14th birthday that all of these elements were put in line, when my family decided to follow signs that read “ESTATE SALE” into a previously unfamiliar neighborhood. While my dad mentioned taking me to multiple sales throughout my childhood, there’s only one that I can recall.

At a neighbor’s house, a few homes down and across, I overheard a man talking about how he was dealing with selling his deceased father’s things. No details stick in my mind, but the situation itself lingered. I remember asking my dad if we could buy a Yahtzee board game and he told me it belonged to a dead person.

He did not buy the game for me, and said it was because there were “probably pieces missing.”

Encino Hills, July 12th, 2019: The mass amount of wallpaper like flesh, breathing with green vines and leaves, yellow petals and rays of sun, blue seas and stars. Always matching eccentric pieces of furniture from the 60s, each room seemed to follow its own color-scheme.

Every lamp, bench, and coffee table shouted the words“authentic” and “old,” taunting the truth and dignity of anything manufactured in the past 10 years. The backyard had no lawn, but was covered with tan pervious concrete and charmed by a simple pool defıned by sharp angles. Islands of trees cast bending shadows over scattered potted plants and lawn chairs. I wanted to drown in the layers of this home. I bought a book and a desk-clock.

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But on this July afternoon, I entered a cottage-like, mid-century home in L.A.’s Encino Hills, and felt things for a house I had never felt before; I thought about a recent homework assignment where I was tasked with describing my dream home, and how I couldn’t come up with anything. No architectural styles pulled me in. No specifıc colors or shapes piqued my interest. In terms of favourites, I felt homeless because no suggestion or answer felt truthful. But when I walked into this radiantly yellow house tucked away behind a garden, this house that hung low to the ground, its roof like a clothes hanger attached to the crisp blue sky, I discovered my dream.

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I became obsessed with Estate Sales because I felt like I got hints as to what could be through the process of sifting through. Far removed from the actual humanity that once inhabited the place, I could occupy a space that allowed for peaking and prowling, an act that felt invasive, especially when induced with melancholic wonder. In Emma Cline’s short story, Los Angeles, she writes about taking a walk and looking into each home in the L.A. neighborhood, “each one like a primer on being human, on what choices you might make. As if life might follow the course of your wishes.” It’s the same privilege, but with even more exposure, that I feel gifted when strolling carefully through a home. Gathering information about someone’s life through the items they own, where and how they’re placed, deliberating on what is performance by those producing the sale versus what has been untouched aside from the bright colored sale sticker plastered over it— all at the forefront of my mind when walking through.

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Hollywood Hills, July 20th, 2019: A compact Spanish-style home, with a cream and burnt sienna facade like fondant on a carrot cake, lies charmingly stuffed along a winding, narrow L.A. road. I was DM’d the address from someone on Twitter, and was told that it was the home of a recently deceased Old Hollywood actress. Boxes overflowing with movie posters, theatre posters, and flyers spill out onto the floor, making it hard to move around the space. Playbills spanning decades of productions from Follies to Damn Yankees to A Chorus Line. Oscar campaign handouts for 1976’s Carrie, Father of the Bride 2, and loads and loads of dusty scripts. I bought two handfuls of rings, earrings, and bracelets.

While rifling through things on her desk during an interview, Florence Welch once said, “I like the past in objects.” This sentiment rings throughout my mind while meandering through that Hollywood Hills home, because everything in the space, knowing that it belongs to a dead person, becomes dead. It has transitioned to history and reads like a textbook about a time that was before, not even a time that was just yesterday, perhaps. The space no longer a home but a museum, a look into the past, a hint at how someone lived. The items, collectively, are imbued with the spirit of the person that lived there, but this spirit appears in a different way to me than to those in mourning. While the china

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sets may have meant a lot to this particular stranger and her family, it’s the combination of Jewish Ways of Life, To the Lighthouse, Death of a Salesman and an antique edition of Little Women that speak to me. Why were the fırst two housed in a closet, while the latter were in the living room? Why were Kite Runner and a DVD screener of The Crown next to each other on the guest room shelf?

There is a detachment in my understanding of this person who lived here and owned these things. The separation that comes from that ignorance can be comforting. It’s not my act of dehumanizing that person, but rather the act of piecing together a big person with little things;

kitchen supplies, paintings, shoes in a closet, and china dolls.

What is a lifetime besides just the act of collecting? Experiences, relationships, knick knacks and keepsakes. Each of these parts of life indicate part of our identity, and we imbue ourselves into these phenomena. But once the objects in our lives are given away, we don’t remain in our things anymore— not in the way we might have hoped. Walking through estate sales, people’s things are so exposed, but are their lives exposed? These symbols seem to say everything and nothing about us. Each indication I draw about the previous owner of these paint palette earrings and a series of porcelain knights

relies on assumption. Is it wrong to make assumptions about the dead? It’s fun until I see used plates left in the sink. The mundanity of plate settings becomes gut-wrenching. A 60ish-year-old woman asking about the price of half-empty cleaning solution makes my breath suddenly weary; something about the home abruptly feeling unfınished and incomplete always appears shocking because it seems hidden under the musty wallpaper, the linen, perfectly-made bed spreads, and curated garden plants, until it becomes explicit in something that seemed to be interrupted and curtailed.

As I write this, one of my professors assigned the reading of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, a book I purchased at the estate sale that launched my fascination— back in that blissful, fleeting summer. I read the book the week after I purchased it, fılling it with notes and earmarks, post-its, and highlights. While revisiting it, I came across a passage that I dressed with messy scribbles and stars. It follows the death of one of the novel’s main characters, and, in typical Woolf fashion, addresses the intangible in the physical.

“Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom, and

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among the shrouded jugs and sheeted chairs even the prying of the wind, and the soft nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing, snuffling, iterating, and reiterating their questions—”Will you fade? Will you perish?”—scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the air of pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed that they should answer: we remain.”

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IT’S A “TWIN THING” WORDS Erin Christie VISUALS Laura Hoppenbrouwers Torres

As my twin sister and I stood, arms linked, bodies draped with rented white robes and matching graduation caps, we posed for pictures on the front lawn outside our school, the ever-prestigious Sacred Heart Academy. High school was done, and it was a moment when I should’ve felt relieved, even proud of myself, for making it through the past four years at a rigorous college preparatory, unscathed. At that moment, behind my grin, all I 126 could think about was the fact that my sister had earned the title of “4.0 scholar” and I had just barely missed the cut-off. I felt ashamed.

Having a twin is like having a built-in best friend, someone who is there for you throughout every step of your early life, both physically and emotionally. In many ways, it’s a wonderful thing and something that many people wish they could nightmare. have for themselves. In Throughout much other ways, it’s of my adolescence, the fact that I a living was a twin dominated my sense of self, my sense of self-worth, and often in a negative way— that’s the consequence of being a twin that isn’t as immediately obvious as sharing a face with another person.

Once I was old enough to realize that “twin telepathy” jabs and being thought of as just one of the “Christie twins” were affecting my sense of self-worth, everything else began to crumble. Was I nothing more than my sister’s sister? Did anyone even care enough to fıgure out which one is which?

As small tikes, the two of us looked so much alike that my mother would have to fınd ways to tell us apart: she would paint the nails of only one of us, intermittently (though, a problem was presented if she forgot which of us had painted versus unpainted nails). We would wear matching outfıts, as all twins seem to when they’re young, but maybe one of us

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importance if I couldn’t somehow rival my pigtails and the other, a ponytail. There were minute differences, but to most sister. I was afraid of falling to the wayside, people, we were simply clones. and I felt the need to “prove” myself.

I quickly got used to responding to the Even writing about it now, it sounds wrong fırst name. ridiculous that I was so worked up In the case of anyone’s coming-ofinternally over this imagined external age, we form our identity based on pressure. Our parents never pitted us our environment, our interactions with against each other—they never placed others, our likes and dislikes. Being a bets on which of us would succeed best, as twin, that relationship is immediately if at the Kentucky Derby, placing a sum of cemented into your sense of self, making money on the most prize-worthy steed— it almost impossible to develop any kind but there was still an inherent sense of of independence in those early years. competition, prompted directly by some Psychologists have studied René paranoid insecurity that I couldn’t escape.

Zazzo’s “couple effect” in relation to I soon became overwhelmed by this adolescent twins and identity.1 Zazzo’s mental blockade. main discoveries reveal the negative In an article from The Telegraph,3 British effects that living in a couple—in this mental health charity Young Minds warns case, as a twin—have on personality, and that this constant sense of competition and the roles and functions within said couple. comparison can have negative implications: He notes that identical twins are restrained “If you are a twin or a triplet, then there is this in their self-identifıcation because they real fear and anxiety that you are going to be live for a long time as an echo of each intrinsically compared to your [sibling].” As other, otherwise called “mutual confusion.” they say, this can lead to the development of This sense of confusion that results when anxiety, depression, and other mental strains. individual identity formation is limited can For me, this became a reality. I wanted so lead to turmoil. badly to be considered my own person, a Sibling rivalry is a tale as old as time, and in person of value, that I made everything into a the case of twins, it’s increased ten-fold— battle of the fıttest: not only are you siblings, battling for your Which of the two of us scored the most parents’ affection and validation, but you’re goals during any given lacrosse game? also in the same peer group and duking it Who could run a mile faster in gym class? out on academic, social, and extracurricular Who earned better scores on the SAT? levels. “Since outsiders habitually relate Who received the most academic-based to them as a unit or a fıxed dyad, [twins] fınancial aid when we applied for colleges? expectedly have conflicts with their twin Who spent more time in therapy? in an attempt to defıne or declare their Though my sister eventually stopped individual selves,” says Joan A. Friedman, going, I spent much of high school in and PhD, a self-proclaimed “twin expert” and out of therapy sessions, grappling with my psychologist.2 Competition is a healthy sense of inadequacy. Being a twin and facing issues with mental health doesn’t way to enforce mutual growth, but not have a direct cause-correlation; in my when it becomes a detriment. case, though, the fact that I was a twin Internally, I had convinced myself that and had placed so much pressure on I couldn’t exist as an individual of equal

myself didn’t make matters any

easier.

As we grew older, my sister and I developed separate interests, hobbies, styles, and friends. It became easier to tell the difference between the two of us, which helped. In the back of my head, though, I couldn’t shake the vice-like grip of my insecurities. That was, until I had the chance to exist on my own.

When we went off to college—me to Emerson College in Boston, and her to Syracuse University in upstate New York—I immediately noticed change: most people didn’t know that there was another person with my exact DNA walking around, and that sense of comparison was no longer there. Freshman year, though a blur to me now, was a total reset. I had to learn how to exist without my sister as a crutch—I couldn’t look for her in the dining hall when I didn’t have someone to sit with; I didn’t see her walking down Boylston; I didn’t live two doors down from her anymore.

At fırst, it was jarring. I felt incomplete. Being a twin was so ingrained into how I perceived myself that without that part of my identity physically present, I didn’t know how to act; for many twins, I’m sure this is a shared experience. It dawned on me: I had spent so much of my life existing as a part of a duo that it felt strange not to have my sister by my side, even if 129 that constant presence had in part inspired some of my earliest adolescent angst.

Once the shock subsided, I realized what an ideal opportunity this was: I had the chance to rebrand myself, to present myself as my own person for the fırst time since my debut into the world. Not to say that I was free—because, despite the challenges being a twin presented, I’m glad to have been able to have my sister by my side—but I was relieved to be able to exist in a narrative separate from my “twindom.”

I was no longer considered inseparable from the fact that I was a twin. I didn’t have to worry about being called my sister’s name anymore.

Currently, whenever I mention that I have a twin, it’s a “cool fact” to bring up in passing as opposed to an infallible part of my personality. I now have the chance to change the narrative regarding my own sense of self; I don’t have to be regarded as a twin anymore (if I don’t want to be). With that sense of freedom, I fınd my “twindom” as less of a burden, and more of a blessing—I wish I had been able to reach that point sooner.

Endnotes 1. Zazzo, R. (1976). The Twin Condition and the Couple Effects on Personality Development. Acta Geneticae Medicae Et Gemellologiae, 25(1), 343-352. doi:10.1017/S0001566000014409 2. Friedman, Joan A. “Adult Twins: Identity, Rivalry, and Intimacy.” Joan A. Friedman PhD, Twin Expert, Psychologist, and Author, 6 Feb. 2017, www.joanafriedmanphd.com/adult-twins-identity-rivalry-and-intimacy/.

3. Carr, Flora, and Harry Yorke. “Twins Driven to Anxiety and Depression Because Parents and Teachers Treat Them as ‘One Unit’, Mental Health Experts Claim.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 2 Aug. 2017, www. telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/08/02/twins-driven-anxiety-depression-parents-teachers-treat-one-unit/.

Searching for Selfdom in Film Noir WORDS Mica Kendall VISUALS Coco Luan

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In 2020, as a 21-year-old, I will exist for roughly 1,839,060 hours. Typically, one doesn’t consider the duration of time that encompasses a year. Instead, our brain can only handle one day at a time, going from breakfast in the morning to dinner in the evening. Our ingrained, homogenized recognition of time is a comfort mechanism that pushes down underlying, lingering thoughts of the future or death. But one thing is for certain: time is not a fear nor constraint when watching a full-length fılm. Over time, cinema has been considered a form of escapism, where one can fınd pleasure in delving into a fantastical or reletable form of storytelling. Although the duration of a fılm can be anywhere from one and a half to three hours, there is a sense of comfort in absorbing a fılm for a portion of your day.

Film is impactful on a humanistic level with its ability to allow the viewer to see their own life within the life of the fılm characters, beyond entertainment only.

Some of the best forms of storytelling are seen in the “coming of age” genre, where the protagonist is depicted as someone coming to terms with their identity and achieving awareness about

what makes life worth living. This theme can be seen in movies such as The Great Beauty (2013), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Paris, Texas (1984), and Hour Of The Wolf (1968). These movies all fall into the “fılm noir” category as well, defıned as “a style in cinema marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, etc” through prevalent use of “cynical heroes, stark lighting effects, flashbacks, incrate plots, and underlying existentialist philosophy.”1 The diverse protagonists of these fılms all face an undefıned conclusion, where it is up to viewer interpretation to judge if the character actually found their sense of self.

Similar to these diverse characters, I believe I still haven’t found my sense of self, but the trajectory from my childhood to my adulthood has shown substantial change. To me, my childhood is summarized by randomized fragments, pieced together to form an incomprehensive understanding of the type of person I was. For example, I remember creating imaginary vortexes during recess where I would run to one end of the soccer fıeld and pretend I was in a futuristic, dystopian world. Through bits and pieces of memories, I have a

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understanding of how my childhood was strongly influenced by the idea of dreams and translating my imagination into my actions. What sticks out the most about reflecting on childhood is how unknowingly and abruptly it comes to an end. The formative years of your life suddenly become irreversible, pushed back onto the dusty shelves within your mind as soon as the transition into adolescence arrives.

I resided in my safeguarded, whitepicket-fence suburb in Texas for more than half my life until I moved to Boston, Massachusetts for college in 2017. From intermediate school to the end of high school, my sense of identity was not one I could easily categorize. Who was Mica Kendall? It was a skewed period of time during which I was like a malleable ball of clay. I allowed my identity to be shaped by what others perceived as desirable traits.

The feeling of fulfıllment and inclusion are huge driving factors into how people live their lives, even if it means fıtting into the cookie cutter societal norm.

Fitting into glamorized societal norms relates to the pessimistic, 65-year old self-reflectionist Jep Gambardella in The Great Beauty (2013), who indulges in a grandiose party lifestyle in Rome during the 21st century. Jep falls into the unhealthy pattern of prioritizing his peers’ youthful mentality and expectations over his own mental state, which remains stuck in the past. Jep fınds the age of 26 to be the peak of his life, as he states: “I

wanted to be the king of the high life and succeed.” But without his past love, he is left with nothing except the loneliness that lies underneath the superfıcial parties. Jep’s cyclical behavior of partying throughout the fılm reaches a breaking point, at which he realizes, “I can’t waste time doing things I don’t want to do.”

Though Jep never physically leaves his lavish lifestyle in Rome, he comes to terms with abandoning his identity from the past and re-evaluating his mental and emotional state in his 60s.

In conjunction with wanting acceptance and yearning to feel “normal” within society, protagonists Mike Wells in My Own Private Idaho (1991) and Travis in Paris, Texas (1984) both face long-term journeys in order to fınd their sense of self. Through blurred transitions where time is lost in Mike’s narcolepsy, causing him to wake up in different places all over the world, and Travis’ wanderings down a desolate railroad track, not knowing four years have elapsed, both protagonists have a distorted relationship with time.

Recurring symbols help trigger both men into remembering their origin of self, as 133 they continuously form new relationships with other people.

The symbol of a black, gravel, longwinding road, alongside a wooden barn in the countryside of Idaho, reappears throughout the fılm no matter where Mike travels. Mike sees himself within the road, commenting: “this is my road.

Looks like a fucked-up face, like it’s saying ‘have a nice day’ or something. It’s a good look.” The road is representative of the countless miles he and his best friend Scott Favor spend traveling the country as sex workers for a business run by

Portland misfıts. Mike’s lack of a mother and an unstable relationship with his father causes him to fınd love during the time he spends with Scott. Even though Scott’s feelings are not reciprocal, Mike says at one point in the fılm: “I could love someone even if I wasn’t paid for it.” He comes to terms with Scott shaping his perception of love, instead of his family, even if Scott cannot reciprocate those same feelings. Ironically, Travis in Paris, TX has an opposite experience by running away from who he once was. Travis goes off the grid, abandoning his wife, son, and brother for a period of four years due to substance abuse and his failed marriage.

Travis resembles a void during this time, and has no clear direction without the presence of family, until his brother Will intercepts him in Texas to take him to Los Angeles.

Because of Will, Travis is reconnected with his son Hunter, who is now seven years old. Through a tip from Will’s wife, Anne, Travis takes Hunter to Houston in order to fınd his wife. Throughout the movie, Travis wants to prove himself as a 134 father to Hunter by asking “what does a father look like?”, trying to make up for his absence in his son’s life. The journey from Los Angeles to Houston is a metaphor of Travis’ quest for his identity. When he fınally encounters Jane in Houston, both characters realize their warped sense of self is connected through their son. In the fınal monologue, Jane affırms her sense of self through Travis as she says “I hear your voice all the time. Every man has your voice.” Even though four years of time is completely lost in Travis’s psyche, Jane reminiscences about the passing of time in relation to how Travis makes up who

she is: “I use to make up long speeches to you after you left. I use to talk to you all the time even though I was alone.

I walked around for months talking to you… It was almost like you were there.”

Jane is representative of how one may fınd their sense of self through relationships with others and the spaces one exists in, contrary to Mike and Travis becoming nomads to fınd selfdom.

Jane’s narrative goes hand in hand with Alma, the wife of sadistic protagonist Johan Burg, from Hour of The Wolf.

Johan’s identity is formulated by his hazy sense of reality, versus the dreams that dominate his psyche at night. Johan’s skewed illusions become his coping mechanism of inflicting domestic and verbal abuse onto Alma. Yet, Alma’s devotion to Johan never wavers, since he compromises her identity. Alma forming her sense of self through Johan is best described in her monologue: “Isn’t it true that when a woman has lived a long time with a man...isn’t it true she fınally becomes like that man? Since she loves him and tries to think like him and see like him. They say that it can change a person. Was that why I began to see those ghosts? Or were they there anyway?”

Alma’s strong relationship with Johan, despite all his apparent flaws, make Alma’s sense of self completely codependent on accepting Johan’s internal demons. Likewise, to adolescent Mica who believed identity could only be formulated through complacency and idealization to others, selfdom is representative of a complex paradigm.

Now in college, where my time away from home has led me on various travels and allowed me to meet a diverse plethora of people, I can confıdently affırm I am no longer the malleable Mica I once was in adolescence. As existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Satre said, “Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.” I am still continuously piecing myself together through experiences I have not yet undergone. I do not think selfdom is as easy as a lightbulb flashing above one’s head, where one has an “aha” moment and knows exactly who they are.

I think coming of age is determined by embracing vulnerability and letting people into your life who accept the authentic you over the “trophy” you.

I lived the “pristine lifestyle” in my hometown like Jep. I have ventured across the world with my time abroad in Hong Kong, similar to Mike and Travis. I have let both friendships and relationships defıne who I am, like Jane and Alma. Those times in my life have been left behind, instead crafted into my present day knowledge. Time is not going to stop, no matter how much I would like to take a breather.

Even though my existence cannot be measurable, I have plenty of unexplored time to come to terms with what makes me who I am.

Endnotes The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Film Noir.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 15 Nov. 2019, www.britannica.com/art/fılm-noir.

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MIRROR, MIRROR VISUALS Kaitlyn Joyner

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AMBEDO

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PHOTO Eloise Parisi STYLING Serino Nakayama MODELS Allison Bowlin, Victoria Interiano, Nicolai Dalmau, Catalina Carret Aguero, Diana Mucchiut, Bao Song, Maria Varela

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VISUALS Queenn McKend

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WORDS Carly Roberts VISUALS Mariely Torres STYLING/MAKEUP Serino Nakayama, Olivia Cigliano MODEL Amaya Segundo BTS Fay Ishac

REMEDYING LONELINESS & SELF

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The most beautiful part of your body is where it’s headed. & remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world Ocean Vuong

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Often, as a kid, I returned from long wandering days with bloody knees or the swipe from a hidden, rusted barbed-wire fence on my hand. I loved being alone as a girl; in my rural Virginian home I spent hours wandering creeks and pulling honeysuckle in the backwoods behind my childhood home. Nothing has given me a greater sense of independence since then, since I was able to move freely, without fear, through the farmland I grew up on—the only consequence to my aloneness was a tumble or a scrape. I know I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t had

that sense of freedom—to roam, to be. It was just me, against the backdrop of what then felt like the entire world, until one day, I just stopped moving out into the spaces around me.

Some time well into my adolescence, I stopped seeking that kind of solitude. It stopped being appealing, it stopped feeling freeing. Everything I was concerned with had to do with my friends, my family, and my crushes. The idea of sitting alone on the schoolbus or in the cafeteria was fear-inducing, the most embarrassing, and dreaded thing. It is only recently that I

have begun to enjoy sitting in a cafe alone, taking solitary drives, and eating a meal by myself at a restaurant. We often see the peopling and unpeopling of our worlds as a metric for growth.

But to defıne ourselves and our growth in the revolving door of relationships that defıne and populate our lives is just too simple—aloneness is the most radically personal thing that we have. It is the most necessary balm. It is something we have the tools for always; it is also, almost always hard. There is never a time that aloneness or loneliness isn’t complicated, isn’t part of a

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larger context, a broader tapestry of life experiences.

My friends and I recently sat down together on Valentine’s Day for dinner, each of us without a partner, each of us making sarcastic quips at one point about it. As we sat and shared our appetizers we discussed Jo March’s monologue in Gerwig’s Little Women, the scene that we all agreed had the most emotional magnitude through the fılm, when she says, “...I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fıt for. I’m so sick of it. But—I’m so lonely.”

We agreed it articulated something we had all felt before, but hadn’t found the language to fully articulate.

This past summer, for the fırst time in my life, I felt that being alone was indulgent.

But indulgent in a bad way, in a selfısh way, and while certain days I was able to hold off that feeling in my hot Allston apartment, the languor of late afternoons stuck to the scuffed wood floors, and I would prance around in shorts or in my underwear feeling content, other days I couldn’t hold that feeling off. I had communicated a boundary to a partner—space. And so, on days when I got the space I had asked for, I got hot and sweaty from the stove as I cooked dinner only for myself, and ate it alone, resting on my bed with the fan hitting my skin, cooling it—no matter how long that old feeling—

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the feeling of utter contentment and joy of just being with myself I experienced for so long—washed over me, I soon felt pangs of guilt for my aloneness and even more guilt at feeling happy for being alone. I had a partner who loved me—why did I fınd joy and relief in his absence?

Since the end of that era of my life, I have come back to a loneliness that I had forgotten. I began binge-watching Sex and the City and watched the show in its entirety in these past few months—I watched the show from start to fınish, through Big and Steve and Aidan, and I even watched the fırst Sex and the City movie.

In so many ways, the show hasn’t aged

well, but it still holds tight to its emotional centers of sex, loneliness, romance, love, single womanhood, and aging. The show celebrates the joys of being single, but also all of love’s aches and disappointments. But beyond Sex and the City’s longevity, the world of a show that interrogates single womanhood and aloneness feels offcenter at times: no matter how many times the girls have their hearts broken, there are always more partners, more people to date, in fact, infınite people in the island of Manhattan, infınite potentials of soul mates, infınite meet-cutes.

The reality is that, for most of us, there isn’t an infınity of potential soul mates,

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potential friends. The string of people who come into our lives and alter them, disrupt them, imbue them, isn’t as successive as we would like to think. If you peel back the layers of influence from enemies, friends, lovers, family members, soul mates of any kind, there is still, always, the core of self that remains for each of us. I had forgotten this, until I had seen it so plainly, and felt it so acutely.

I’m now so aware of how much of our discourse, our daily thoughts, our conversations with friends are about the peopling of our lives. Having and experiencing solitude is a rare thing.

I’ve been returning to something the poet Ocean Vuong said: “the most beautiful part of your body / is where it’s

headed. / & remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.”

It feels so radical to claim that the body carries us toward something better. I’ve embraced the idea that loneliness, that distinctive grief is borne of being alone, is still time spent with the world. Sometimes it is easy to feel content in my bedroom, by myself, and sometimes I have to remind and even convince myself that there can be joy in loneliness and aloneness. I have always only been able to return to myself in the quiet hours when I am alone. And sometimes returning to yourself is painful and hard, in breakups especially.

There’s a saying: “when you’re feeling lonely, it is a sign that you are craving yourself”—when I

am lonely, I feel like I’m losing myself in craving other people, or, more deeply, craving myself and not necessarily other people.

That urge to be with myself and reconnect to myself was something I felt that summer—I felt lonely within a relationship, a relationship that was defıned by an intense closeness, yet I often felt lonely throughout my days, even when he was with me—the relationship with myself was offcenter. My days were fılled with a certain degree of tension after months of long-distance, only relieved when we reunited.

You can’t tap into that core, can’t cultivate yourself or your sense of self unless you are alone, oftentimes painfully so. You can’t process whatever you’re

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going through without sitting with yourself. The self you are when you’re with others is completely different than the self you are when you’re alone.

More and more, there is growing emphasis placed on achieving self-love, on achieving a degree of selfreliance that can maybe only come from decades of self-actualization and wisdom. People celebrate fıerceness when it comes to independence, and this celebration is radical. The emphasis we now place on independence and self-love is radical, yet there are emotional consequences and weights to being fıercely alone. And self-love is an achievement over a lifetime. It creates, I think, discrepancies in the ways we have begun to think about our relationship with ourselves and with others.

So I call on the words of Audre Lorde: “That selfconnection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.”

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HAIRDOM AND I, HAIRDOM AND US WORDS Nada Alturki VISUALS Jake Cabreza

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My hair has seen more colors than the rainbow and more textures than an old tree trunk.My best feature? shield?

My hair.My worst feature? My Even in the country that birthed me, hair.What makes me “different?” my hair is unlike any other.What has my You guessed it.Some know me hair done for me? Turned heads my way, merely through a glance at the for one, I suppose.It has taught me the back of my head, and it makes me struggle of being different from a very uncomfortable.The thought of my young age.When one goes into fırst presence and personality being grade with hair so untame and lively, attached to anything that does not unforgiving to any hairbrush that exist simply within my mind is like dares to tackle its freedom, people wearing an itchy sweater. notice.My hair could not stand a Yet, I spend hours perfecting the ponytail.Could not stand pigtails. coconut oil to hibiscus pomade ratio My hair was meaner to me than that will give me the result of turning any school bully was, provoking heads.The same result I have spent the unanswerable question of 78 good words complaining about. why part of myself came in wild Is my hair a simulation of everything curls, while my peers swam in I have been? Is it everything I will kind ocean waves that shaped ever be? Is my hair a motivator? Is it a their “Arab” hair.

And so I took matters

into my own hands and slicked the curl out of it.Granted, I saw damage, but it didn’t matter. Hot tools equaled control and that is all I had been seeking from a fate I had not chosen for my looks.

My hair is big.It takes up space, relieving me from trying to get people to notice me:a task I never learned how to perform without my massive curls.I remember walking around in Harvard Square, wearing my natural head of curls for the fırst time in weeks unstraightened, and I am swimming in a fıshbowl.I walk into a building and through the color of my hair, the coil of if its curl, I am deemed an outsider to the world around me.

My hair has always been the biggest and most prominent factor that played into my appearance to people.It dictated how nice I looked that day, how put together, how much time I had that morning to dedicate to it, and what social status I had. I couldn’t take it anymore.I took bleach to my hair and soon enough I was sporting scarlet red ombre hairdo that widened my mother’s eyes to the rims.From there my hair has seen a sea of colors, every one of them assuring me that I still have the strength to decide what I look like to the world.

I am not my hair.

Somewhere My hair is everything. out there is a girl sitting in front of her bathroom mirror, a furrowed brow framing her eyes, hesitantly holding a section of her hair in one hand, and a bottle of ketchup in the other.

Cheryl Wischhover, Fashionista’s Beauty Editor, is one of those girls.After a hair mishap that lead to the oxidation of her blonde

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hair into a pastel shade of green, she read online that one way to easily get rid of a green tinge, without breaking bank on a 150-dollar professional stylist, is to indulge your hair in its opposite hue on the color wheel.

With a hard squeeze, the thick liquid comes splashing out on her shaky hand, and she massages it into her ends and scalp. It is diffıcult to imagine the tangy, pungent, red substance all over your head, but the fact is, Wischhover is not the fırst to do it.

She was in the woods when her hair changed color on her, but even then, in solitude, accompanied only by her husband and daughter and some faraway neighbors, she felt the need to correct the discoloration. The demand for physical perfection is that urgent.

Such urgency can be summarized by a scene in the show Fleabag where the main character storms into a hair salon where her sister’s hair was severely butchered, and sings her heart out to the hair stylist after he proclaims that hair is just hair: “Hair is everything. We wish it wasn’t so we can actually think about something else occasionally, but it is. It’s the difference between a good day and a bad day. We’re meant to think it is a symbol of power, a symbol of fertility. Some people are exploited for it and it pays your f**king bills!”

Beatriz Andrade, a VMA student at Emerson College, exemplifıes

that view. She started dying her hair when she was 11, and has continued to dye it since. Recently, she has been using it as a coping mechanism, as many women do with impulsive hair changes. “If I go through something, I decide to cut my own hair and dye my own hair and I like it because I know it’s gonna grow back,” she says, viewing hair regrowth as a second chance.

She explains that the ability to (and act of) changing your hair, styling it to suit your own personality and symbolize growth and change, gives her a “sense of control.”

Hair has become a power symbol in most societies today. What is thought of as “good or nice hair” is determined though a male gaze. Women today are fınding that impulsively changing up your hair, no matter how drastic or subtle, is one of the only ways to have full control over their hair choices and move away from the traditional notions of contemporary beauty.

Hair has proven to be more than just an accessory; it is used today as a form of self-expression, self-identifıcation, and control, embodying one’s individuality and selfdom.

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VISUALS Graysen Winchester

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EMPTIED ALBUMS WORDS Faith Bugenhagen VISUALS Madison Marzano

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covered through her smile, When I look in the mirror I see through the weight she bears a girl. She stares back at me with without letting others’ hold any eyes that see more than she of it for her. I see how this worry can acknowledge and a mouth impacts each relationship she that is trained to remain shut. shares; either she let’s it get the Her hair lifts with a slight curl, best of her and breaks her back to laying midway down her make others’ happy, or she pushes back. It used to be a honey those who want to be close brown, but as time passed away. This is her greatest defense she decided to dye it black. I mechanism. stare beyond her face, lingering Deconstructing this girl, who my gaze towards her body, the has wound up her identity clothes that she wears, all the so tightly, appears to be parts that make her, her. I don’t detrimental. Fracturing any of recognize her. her infrastructure would shake I live out her quiet pain, her her to the core. Having been inability to express herself invested in others’ for far too emotionally because she’s too long, where would she be, and fearful of herself, I live out every who would she be, today? She flaw that paints the anxiety would have no life, no purpose, of her mind. I see how it’s

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no measurement of success or failure if not for those around her.

Every comment and exchange equates to the idea of worth within herself. To understand her, one must understand and evaluate the way that others’ treated, talked, and loved her.

Looking towards this girl, I see her existence within the past. I hold my arms open as she places photographs of her as a baby, then as a kid. She pouts her small lips in front of a bush of yellow flowers in her backyard. Her bangs hang scattered over her forehead and her soft baby cheeks push up at the ends. I see the way that this girl has no concern over herself or her world. She has no inclination as to what life will hand her. Her biggest care in the world is what color stripe T-shirt she will beg her mom to dress her in.

She hands me another photograph from the night of her nineteenth birthday. She wears a

pomegranate-colored slip as she holds a number nine balloon to her face, kissing it for the camera.

Her long dark hair is pulled up and silver earrings decorate the sides of her face. She appears to have it all, celebrating life with her friends by her side.

The girl looks at me, her eyes holding some familiar stare, a gaze that tells me to look further, deeper.

She knows I can recognize what’s lingering, that beyond soft smiles lies the hidden truth: this girl does not have it all. Beyond that dorm room party, just two hours before, she was grappling with what to say to a guy she thought she loved.

She had arrived to the room to get ready, reeking of smoke. She had scrubbed with soap and water, hoping to at least get the smell off her hands. Remnants of ash sticking to the bottom of her shoes, the taste clinging to the back of her throat. She could imagine her lungs now, only slightly damaged

but the permanency still leaving its mark.

She wanted to rid herself of the tendency, so to forget, she drank wine as if it were water.

The deeper she indulged, the quicker the memory shifted into unconscious territory. But she was just celebrating, blindly and happily, not recklessly, not without abandon. Not as an aid to downplay the situation rampaging in her head.

The curtain draws to a close and the photographs flutter away. All that’s left is the girl standing before me, looking up blankly, maybe with a tinge of anticipation. I return her gaze and open my mouth to say something. She reaches up and mouths “no.” She knows I realize how much has changed, she knows I can’t recognize the start and the stop that she herself has been searching for throughout her days.

However, she doesn’t extend any regard towards me, no explanation or semblance of anything other than nonchalance. Her arms lay slack along her torso and waist, her eyes appear unafraid, but her brow furrows, signifying her state of discomfort. Now that she’s seen how I understand her, she knows she has shown too much. She has encountered her worst fear, now, and backs away from me in the mirror.

I reach out, clasping her wrist.

She turns towards me, glaring in my direction. A single tear falls down her eye and pools at her cupid’s bow. The tears begin to fall consistently, yet her gaze remains.

She unravels my fıngers, tight against her skin, not wanting to lose grip, and walks away.

She bared it all, just to leave. For when everything is shown, she knows it’s time for her to go.

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DO YOU FEEL LIKE TIME IS RUNNING OUT? WORDS Engel Williams VISUALS Kaitlyn Joyner

169 There’s this idea going around that to be spontaneous is one of the most alluring and exciting personality traits one could have. Look at every teen coming-of-age movie. A vast majority of them are fılled with teens capturing the essence of youth and defying the dreaded transition between childhood and adulthood by throwing responsibility out the window and doing whatever they want.

There’s also this idea that spontaneity should be reckless. My friends sometimes (very rarely) get in the mood where they want to do something spontaneous and “crazy”. “Crazy” usually means something highly illegal to them. And naturally, as I am the one usually clamoring for us to go out on a walk and do something unexpected, I’m pestered and coerced into doing something that fıts their criteria.

Being spontaneous is a huge part of my life because it’s a conflict I struggle with every day. I’m not content until I’m doing at least three exciting things during the week. Unfortunately, academics really smother many of those opportunities. In order to do my best in school, I have to pretend to get my life together and try to be a bit more organized. This means homework instead of taking the T to a new neighborhood at 10pm and going to org meetings during the time I could be using to reach out

and forge new friendships.

This is opposite what I ever thought I’d be doing during my freshman year of college. I always like to picture myself as the type of person who can manage to not try too hard at school but still do well while going out every night. Instead, I’ve only gone out very few times, both because I am just too busy or because I can never convince my friends to change out of their pajamas and string along with me to somewhere new.

Remember when we were in elementary school? A lot of us planned out our fırst kisses, our weddings, our careers and our dreams. As we grow older, half of us get lost in the planning, buying new planners every year and actually

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using them! The other half of us become prone to making decisions last minute, shirking responsibilities and homework before fıguring out a balance that works. I still have not found that balance. I got stuck right in between, constantly torn between two opposing traits.

I think that always having a plan for everything and a schedule for everyday life is boring. It doesn’t leave any room for sudden escapades to other states or making friends with someone unexpected. When I tried making this lifestyle work for me, everything was a mundane repetition of the last day. I prefer the feeling I get from constantly doing something new. But… that’s dangerous for me. I tend to ignore all the things I planned because, hey, you can’t be spontaneous if you’re making time to be spontaneous, right?

Despite that, I try to

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pick my days. It’s still a form of making time to flip my life on its axis, but it’s not like I can afford to ignore my responsibilities at a school I pay so much money for. Psychology Today defınes spontaneous behavior as “performed without any constraint, effort, or premeditation” There are also a lot of articles offering advice on how to be more spontaneous. It’s an interesting perspective coming from people who aren’t naturally impulsive.

I understand how it can be seen as coveted and alluring. Whenever I fınally let loose around new people, they always comment that I’m a fun person to be around. But it has its drawbacks.

When you’re spontaneous, it’s very hard to stop and force yourself to do work. On one hand, I wish I could be the

kind of person who follows a schedule down to the millisecond, but I hate doing it.

It never feels right to me and I am always so much happier if I just do whatever I want when I want to.

Still, I’d advise people to give spontaneity a try. Putting yourself on the spot can bring out hidden truths about yourself that bring new joys to life. Of course, don’t forget to keep your responsibilities in check: there is no worse buzzkill than realizing you had to do something and not being able to follow through with it.. But in the end, it’ll be rewarding to do things you wouldn’t typically do. Being able to balance both aspects will lead to you feeling fulfılled and a lot happier in your day to day interactions. It’s an adequate solution to feeling as though you’re burning through your youth without having truly experienced anything.

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VISUALS Coco Luan

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