Remnants
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THE THEME OF
EM Magazine’s Spring 2022 Publication IS
Remnants As you read, we invite you to explore how you interact with history.
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QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF AS YOU READ REMNANTS
1. How is your work influenced by others? 2. Why do we have the urge to leave traces of ourselves? 3. How intentionally left are these traces, and how much do we accidentally leave behind?
4. How do we embrace or reject history in our everyday lives? 5. How overwhelmed by history are you?
6. Why do so many of us have such an urge to salvage things?
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Reagan Allen MANAGING EDITOR Riddhima Dave PHOTO DIRECTOR Mariely Torres-Ojeda ASST. PHOTO DIRECTOR Maya Seri EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Sam Goodman ASST. EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Faith Bugenhagen VISUAL ARTS DIRECTOR Queenn Mckend PRINT DESIGN DIRECTOR Reagan Allen STYLING DIRECTOR Gloria Cao MARKETING DIRECTOR Tiffany Ni EVENTS COORDINATOR Tiffany Ni
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EDITORIAL Faith Bugenhagen Jess Ferguson Chloe Shaar Abigail Ross Mary Kassel Sophia Kriegel Tatum Jenkins Leah Heath Sam Goodman PHOTO Jess O’Donoghue Graysen Winchester Isaiah Vivero Drew Mitchell Mariely Torres Maya Seri Lida Everhart Marina Man VISUAL Kaitlyn Joyner Jessica Clivio Hadley Breault Grace Hwang Margarita Ivanova Gina Foley Nathan Manaker Rey Sandoval Katerina Veil PRINT DESIGN Grace Hwang Nathan Manaker
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co n t e t n s title/artist
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Show and Tell for the End of the World / Mary Kassel.........................12 Dad’s Dungaree Jacket / Abigail Ross, visuals by Maya Seri...................20 Mind and Body / Gina Foley...................................................26 The Bits of Unexpressed Love in our Lives / Faith Bugenhagen.................28 Proof / Graysen Winchester...................................................32 The Art of Missing You / Grace Hwang.........................................44 The Fashion of Youth / Chloe Shaar...........................................48 Machismo / Isaiah Vivero.....................................................50 The End? & What Remains / Rey Sandoval.......................................64 All I do is try, try try / Sophia Kreigel....................................68 Crossroads & Visiting Home / Hadley Breault..................................74 For When I Forget / Lida Everhart............................................78 Temparary Temporary / Leah Heath.............................................90 --------Parasite / Margarita Ivanova.................................................96 Lover’s Eye / Kaitlyn Joyner.................................................98 5.12 / Marina Man...........................................................100 everything you gave me, everything you left behind / Katerina Vail..........110 The Girl Who Got Frozen / Jess Ferguson.....................................114 Neither Here Nor There / Mariely Torres.....................................118 Conversations With My Dad / Tatum Jenkins...................................130 Antiques Anonymous / Nathan Manaker.........................................136 I Still Think About it Sometimes / Jess O’Donoghue..........................138 TBD (To Be Demolished) / Sam Goodman........................................152 when the party’s over / Drew Mitchell.......................................156
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You know the idea that you’re the average of your five closest friends? I’m not sure how true that actually is, but I know that I derive a lot of my identity from the people around me, in both a tangible and intangible way. A ring from a friend I wear every day, posters from middle school that cover my walls, my mom’s old KitchenAid mixer on the countertop in my apartment. I think a lot of us have this urge to salvage things, because their history helps us give meaning to our own. That’s what Remnants is about; the influence of vestiges of the past, making sense of the scraps, giving meaning to residue. Contextualizing yourself as an amalgamation of everyone that came before you comes with this overwhelming weight of history. The pieces in this issue of EM explore how we embrace, or reject, that weight. I think there’s a sweet message in the midst of all this, and I’m actually quoting a John Green video (sorry) when I say that “humans are nothing if not dependent,” on the world and on each other. So join us as we journey through echos, gathering evidence of our existence along the way. Humans can only exist in places that are haunted, and we’re going ghost hunting. - Reagan Allen, photo by Mariely Torres
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Show and Tell for the End of the World WORDS Mary Kassel VISUALS Mariely Torres
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Someday, the earth will be dust and so will I. I’ll probably be first, but with the way things are going, who’s to say. Maybe the Earth and I will part like lovers in a song. Too in love to let each other go so we make a pact and die together. As the dirt cracks beneath my feet and volcanoes erupt around me, I sink peacefully into the rocks and join my decaying ancestors who were ripped from their lovers too soon and too painfully many years before I knew what my body was for. Or, maybe I will be ripped as they were from my Mother who I kick at and spit on and take for granted, only in my last
“I squeeze my eyes shut as the news of the future threatens to shake the small foothold of safety I have carved into my Mother’s back.” moments lamenting that I didn’t treat her better. Even now with all my self awareness I squeeze my eyes shut as the news of the future threatens to shake the small foothold of safety I have carved into my Mother’s back. I convince myself that she can bear my burden. She has billions of children now, had billions before me, and maybe billions after. She is so solid and safe and unshakeable. Her weakness is millions of miles away and cannot touch me. Her death, her mortality, her humanity is something that I
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will never see with my own eyes. I will take from her until it’s someone else’s turn to replace me and do the taking. Those who would replace me will be just as selfish. With each incarnation of ourselves she gets closer to death, and we do not change. We never will. But maybe that’s cynical. Maybe the next “me” will pick up my clothes and my trinkets and wonder why I did not do more. They will look at me the way I look at you now. Shocked by the language you use, the morals you uphold, the violence you allow. I know so much more. I am so much more prepared. It will be me, it will be all of us, who do not repeat your mistakes. You tell me we’re changing the world. That you’re proud of the words I write and the shouting I do. But my Mother is deaf and blind. What does she care? She made the world and everything in it. I wake up every morning and devise how best I can make myself sick for the rest of the day. What will they see when I’m gone? If my Mother remains and I am forced to move on without her, what will you remember me by? Will it be my words? Will it be the recipe cards, the first scarf I knitted, the earrings I always wear? Probably not. It will probably be the pictures I left of myself everywhere I went. The trappings of a twenty-yearlong show and tell. I cannot choose what they’ll find and how they’ll find it. I don’t know what will remain of me, or you, or the life we’ve all built together. But, if I got to choose, what would I pick?
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Transcribed: 10 February 2022
Part One: Patrick Williams
Do you mind if I record this? No. [To be clear, there’s a smile in his voice when he says this.] If you could put three things in a time capsule to be found someday when humanity is gone, what would you pick? Hmmmm, okay. That’s hard… My first would be my mother’s cookbook. She made a 600 page cookbook with all of her recipes. Holiday recipes, birthday recipes, desserts, her great grandmother’s recipes, my grandma’s recipes, everything. And so she recently gifted us that for Christmas. Something about food is just kind of historical. It has a deeper meaning so if someone were to find it, of course they would have to make all of Lisa’s recipes. I would also include this bracelet me and all my brothers have. It would be a cute little parting. Also, whoever finds it, fuck, would have a cute ass bracelet. I think also—my mom and grandma always say DATOHATS to us every birthday, Christmas, every single time my mom flies she sends us a take-off text “DATOHATS I love you,” which means Deep As The Ocean High As The Sky. A little cheesy. No, it’s nice.
My grandma used to say that a lot to us, she’s still alive, but I think something with that. Even if it’s just a piece of paper with that written on it. I think handwriting is really sentimental. My mom’s recipe book, a lot of those are handwritten. Yeah, something being handwritten takes it to the next level.
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Transcribed: 17 February 2022
Part Two: Christina Sugimoto
Can I record? Yes. [Nothing like banter about recording consent between friends.] My question for you, is if you had three items that you could leave in a time capsule to be found after the apocalypse, what would they be? Oh, um, okay… I would put my mom’s film camera in there. I’m huge on film photography, it’s one of my biggest passions, and that camera was really special because it was my first camera ever. It broke so that was sad, but my mom used to use it so a lot of our childhood photos were taken on that camera. It was special that I got it and I was able to use it for a while. It reminds me of my mom. I think my second one would be a stuffed animal that’s been passed down through my brothers. I have two older brothers and my oldest brother’s 28. This stuffed animal has been in our family since he was a child so it’s older than me. I have it now. I don’t think it had a name growing up but I named it Mr. Bear. Yeah I mean, of course. I think it’s appropriate. I think I want to pass it down to my kids someday, hopefully. But, if the world was gonna end I would throw it in that time capsule. Third, maybe my first guitar. I’m sort of self-taught on the guitar, but my oldest brother taught me a song when I first got it, and then he left for college. Music’s always been a big part of my life and guitar is the one instrument that I was super consistent with growing up. And my mom used to play so it has family ties. I think that would be my last one.
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Transcribed: 28 February 2022
Part Three: Mary Kassel
As your interviewer and narrator, what can I leave you with? Now that I’ve waxed on the end of the world, and listened to my friends tell me their choices, what will mine be? The big question I so cruelly forced onto others I now turn on myself. So, I’ll stall a little longer. I didn’t just ask my interviewees. I asked everyone. Some people want to share a part of the world they believe is worth remembering. That will give something to whoever spends the time digging up our secrets. The answer to what’s worth remembering, you’ll find, differs greatly from person to person. Are we, individually, worth remembering? Should it be monuments or my stuffed elephant? Somehow I think they wouldn’t care. When I look back at the history that came before me, I don’t really care how or why civilizations fell. I’m not interested in why a bunch of men decided to fight a war and kill themselves and the people around them. I bet I can guess the answer. But, I’d love to live the day-to-day life of just one person. I want to know how
one girl lived thousands of years ago. I don’t need civilizations. I just need one girl. So I’ll leave you with this. 1. My favorite t-shirt. (A Vampire Weekend graphic tee) 2. My copy of The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. (Annotated) 3. Sheet music of my favorite song. (Till There Was You) If you like my answers, I don’t really care. They’re mine and you can’t change them. Of course, how I’m really remembered won’t lie in the bits I’ve chosen and will be decided long after I’m gone. One day I won’t be remembered at all. And how freeing is that? If a stranger in my postapocalyptic fantasy finds my favorite things, I hope they think they’re funny. I hope they like the t-shirt colors and design as much as I do. I hope they put it on and it fits just right in the way that’s hard to find. I hope they find a way to read the book and feel something new for the first time the way I did. They can even smile indulgently at my annotations, as if I have something to add to
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this modern philosophy. And I hope that there’s a piano laying around somewhere, or just someone one to sing my song. Something light and pretty, but also heart wrenching. I hope they get to be in love for the first time and believe they have never heard birds sing until that moment. These are silly and mundane hopes. I should really be hoping for the reestablishment of agriculture or something. However, I think humanity will recreate society. If there’s one thing we love it’s creating ways to oppress each other until we all die. So, in the inbetween parts of our brief time until the sun explodes, pick something nice to care about. Pick someone nice to color the way you are remembered. Be stupidly happy and say embarrassing things to everyone you know, and then laugh about it later because it doesn’t matter. But, hey, what do I know? I’m just a person living at the end of the world.
Dad’s Dungaree Jacket
WORDS Abigail Ross VISUALS Maya Seri
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When you became sick, I wanted to comfort you. I remember just how you looked, sitting in silence on your hospital bed amongst white blankets and propped pillows. You were hooked to a myriad of machines and contraptions and seemed to be yearning for some great escape. I knew this when you peered into my eyes. I imagined you feeling the need to claw out of your own skin—an attempt to crawl out of newly-dying flesh. But nobody could put a name to the pain you felt so instead, you cried when you watched me walk into your room. No one else would ever understand this agony, but I was with you. A mix of light and shade dipped through the window that morning, casting a silhouette of the man I used to call my dad. I didn’t recognize you, and that was one of the last moments I realized I might never see you again.
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You tried a smile when I came into the room, eyes brimming with tears. I stood there, unable to conjure up the words to tell you that I was fearful. Your arms wrapped themselves around my shoulders, weak and fragile, and this is when I knew what the very image of illness looked like. You had been in and out of the hospital for years, but I was a frequent visitor. I was waiting for the day you would take your last breath, bracing myself for the near and distant future that I may have had to live without you. When you were gone on treatment, I said prayers. I asked God if you were going to make it. There were so many questions but none of them were answered. They hung thick in the atmosphere, trudging through the unknown. Perhaps, you were losing faith. I saw that you were scared too. But when times were hard I believed in the remnants you left with me because somehow you knew I would need them someday. I reminisce when you gifted me that jacket on one knee. A dungaree, jean-like material, covered in stains and made of blood, sweat, and tears. The one you purchased at the local thrift store down the street in the eighties. The one with rips and memories and pain. This became some sort of proposal to your oldest
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daughter, who bore your name and wore yours as her own. The only family member who came to see you at your worst. But it was time for me to go. I didn’t want to leave you but I had to, and the jacket was all that was left to keep me safe. Fit for a queen, dad’s dungaree jacket became a trophy. A symbol of how far we’ve come. And all of the sudden, somehow I became hopeful that you would survive.
“But when times were hard I believed in the remnants you left with me, because somehow you knew I would need them someday.”
There were times when I unscroll your letters and let the words hit me in the stomach. When I opened my suitcases, after settling in during my first semester at college, you were there. Written in the folded arms was what you often told me: “Whenever you need a hug from your Da, put on my old jean jacket; and feel my arms around you…” Always & all ways. Dad’s dungaree jacket has holes that act as a misused hard drive. You are not dead but
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unrecognizable still. A near-death experience made me close my eyes and feel that jacket around cold shoulders. I was here and you were there. Miles away from our home, in an all-new world. Your illness tarnished our family for good. But now I wear it as a shield. I am a soldier of your fight, and your dungaree jacket is a token for all that we have been through. I forgive you. There are times I wear your jacket and think of you. I walk down the street with it hanging over my shoulders again. I consider how dad’s dungaree jacket has aged in history. I see the past, present, and how the future will unfold into oblivion. People give me compliments and sometimes I want to give it back. This gift is too big to hold. I don’t know how I feel, yet you are out living, alive and well. Maybe you have forgotten the way we are always growing into ourselves. Life is long, and this is it. This will forever be dad’s dungaree jacket, a promise to something more.
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VISUALS Gina Foley 26 | EM Spring 2022
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The
Bits
of Unexpressed Love in our Lives WORDS Faith Bugenhagen VISUALS Reagan Allen
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When on The Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert, Andrew Garfield spoke about grief: “I love talking about her so if I cry, it’s only a beautiful thing. This is all the unexpressed love, the grief that will remain with us until we pass because we never get enough time with each other, no matter if someone lives till 60, 15, or 99. So I hope this grief stays with me because it’s all the unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her.” And before you read on, let me tell you one thing: this piece is not about grief. If anything, it’s about the opposite. I heard these words and savored them. Not because I have experienced grief or hardship as difficult as Garfield’s (who was speaking on the loss of his mother), but because I experience the level of love it takes to make a statement like this. The difference though, between me and Garfield, is that I still have all the time left to make it known. *** I rarely speak directly to my reader when I am writing. Yet, here, in my last piece for EM, I am, because this piece isn’t for me. It’s for you. If you are holding this in your hand and reading these exact words, it’s likely because I have given you a copy. (And if it’s not, thank you for reading EM — we appreciate it!) But if I am correct, find your section below and read the unexpressed love I have for you. To the readers who I haven’t placed this piece in their hand; I invite you to think within. Search your mind for those familiar faces, life-assuring hugs, and partners that feel like other halves. Think about all the things you have said to them. Think about all the things you want to say to them. Use this piece as a vessel to find a way to attach words to each sentiment you are feeling. Your loved ones will be better for it.
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Mama, There are so many words, yet none will ever be enough. If I didn’t have you, I wouldn’t know love. I wouldn’t know empathy. I wouldn’t know what it takes to be a good human at heart. I wouldn’t be me without you.
Jeffrey, I call you that as a joke, because if I get too real too quick it wouldn’t make sense. Without you I wouldn’t know the power of time, of productivity, of having and sticking to a purpose that makes you proud. I inherited integrity from you. I adopted accountability from you. All I do is appreciate you. I work so hard so that one day you can recognize the you in me.
Jude, I look up to you every day, without fail. You are always so uniquely yourself. You never let others push you around. You don’t even let the world around you tell you how to be. I just don’t know if I could ever be that confident in who I am. I know you don’t see that side of yourself, but I am hoping that one day you will. To me, you are the best person on this planet.
Grandma, You are my best friend. The day I lose you—I can’t even finish that sentence, nor do I ever want to imagine one day in which I will navigate this earth without you. You have taught me to have pride in myself, to value myself, yet to not take myself too seriously. You were my first confidant, before my girl friends, even before mom. But shhh, don’t tell her.
Osito, The loveliest human being in the world. You make my earth rotate with the care and kindness you love me with. You are everything to me. You are my best friend and all in between. Every day we will spend together is a day my happiness will multiply. I want nothing but the best for you, always. I want nothing but to be by your side, always. I the opposite of hate you, siempre.
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Tiern, My real and true sister. From Texas to Boston, we stay together like glue. You are my glue. You have held me together since the beginning. You know me better than anyone and you have seen it all. How lucky am I to get to call someone from the start my best friend? I am even luckier to have and hold onto you forever, no matter the location (because you will follow me anyway).
Andrea, The better half of our whole. I know that scientists are right when they say opposites attract because me and you have worked since day one. You have taught me to stand in how I feel, not to avoid it. In you, I have a person to turn to always.
Han, Boston gave you to me. You have listened to me and reassured me, comforting me through it all. You have shared the first laughs and memories, here with me, over these three years. Now, we will get ready to make new ones elsewhere. There are a lot of uncertainties for you. There always are. But, I hope you hold this one certainty to be true. I will always be there for you. You are truly the dumb to my dumber, but together we make sense of the world better. After all, what would a frog do without his toad? My picture book would be incomplete without you.
Mad, Your solidness astounds me. When the world feels like it’s falling apart, you’ve always held it together for me. You have always known the exact thing to say to me. You have always known exactly the right thing to do. Yet, you match that all with a haphazard goofiness. You light up my life with your humor. In you, I have stability, the kind of love that is unwavering, and I want you to know that I will always give that kind of love back to you.
These are the fragments of unexpressed love pieced together in incomplete paragraphs. Incomplete, because the fragments will only continue to grow in length as each of us share more and more time together.
Nic, Thank you for being patient with me, for not letting me go. You have taught me to embrace my emotions and love in a way that fear could never stand a chance. People could learn a thing or two from the way you look at the world.
Brynn, My twin flame. Together from the start, here we are now. Can you recognize us? I can’t. But in a good way. In the kind of way that I have portions of me to thank you for. Never in my life did I think I could find my voice so easily. Defend myself and my needs so easily. Now, I can never imagine thinking about those things. And it is because of you. I will dance, cry, and experience all the adventures with you for the rest of our combined lives.
Much like Garfield, I am grateful that I have the capability to house this unexpressed love inside of my heart. Even more grateful, that I get to memorialize bits of it in this piece for the people who create it. *** And finally, to EM, Little did you know that you were the reason why I came to Emerson. Sitting on the day of my tour, on one of the newsstands in front of the elevators, I saw one of your older covers. I asked my tour guide about the publication. Flipping through it, all kinds of colors and words and photos blended together, creating one clear sign that working for you and being here, was where I needed to be. Three years later, I am here, saying goodbye.
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Proof
VISUALS Graysen Winchester MODELS Liv Lusk, Ellie Karris
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VISUALS Grace Hwang
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The Fashion of Youth WORDS Chloe Shaar
It’s Tuesday morning and I’m forcing myself to get ready for the day. If all that I can look forward to is wearing something cute and going to class, I might as well give it all I’ve got. It’s a little chilly outside, but still skirt appropriate, I’m definitely going to need some tights and earmuffs to keep me semi-warm. I add my new, favorite thrifted blouse with a tank underneath. I’m feeling playful today and decide to wear my hair in space buns and add a
few rings and colorful clips in my hair to spice it up. To top it all off are my platform slides, pink scarf, and coat. I would describe my fashion as refined streetwear. I like to play with youthful colors—I’m a big fan of pink and green. I feel myself dressing slightly more mature as I get older, but I’m constantly trying to find cutsie accessories to add to the outfit like sunglasses, butterfly clips, and beaded bracelets. Fashion is a reflection of our moods and 48 | EM Spring 2022
feelings, early 20s exploring new world
and being in your is all about yourself and the in front of you.
American kids of the early 2000s wore crochet tops with midi skirts or cargo pants, while our parents tried to mask the world around us. But when you’re a kid, fashion is completely unbinding. You can live out your imagination as a reality—if you want to dress up as royalty one day, so be it. Expressions of color, and the freedom
of subverting life’s constrictions on selfidentity makes the process of developing style as a kid truly unlimited. Different stages we pass through in our life showcase our different fashion choices. So far, the 2020s have blessed us with a fascinating era in the world of fashion. This is the first time clothes can represent one’s child-like self even in a provocative outfit. Urban chic, playful fem, preppy, adrongygonous, solely streetwear, goth fairy, everyone is able to fit into a different category or no category at all. Yesterday’s temporary tattoos are today’s face gems and body glitter. Today fashion continues to be a limitless space of expression, there is no real trend anyone is following, because every fashion style is self serving and up for interpretation. 2022 marks an aesthetic shift in both mainstream and high fashion. Gucci’s recent collaboration with Adidas demonstrates how the luxury fashion world has taken a more comfortable and approachable look. While high fashion continues to be a gorgeous art form, and while I’d love a Prada mini bag, it’s not necessarily the standard or considered “cool.” A new understanding of high fashion, curated by young people, has made the fashion world rebrand itself as people tend to lean more towards thrifting and second-hand clothing. Gen Z and other young people are taking inspiration from the people we looked up to when we were young and mixing those trends with what we envisioned our cooler, older selves looking like. Vintage is cool, and not to mention, not everyone can afford to constantly finance keeping up with the latest trends
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versus staying true to what they actually like. The fashion of partying has also taken a role into our everyday dress, being one person by day and another by night. Going-out tops are coveted and somehow when the sun goes down, fishnets become accessible to everyone. The goingout look, in general, plays with highlighting the body, and celebrating you in your truest form. Sometimes getting ready to look your best, or finding that last piece for the perfect themed house party, can be the best part of the night. Whatever you’re stepping out in you feel your absolute best and
Sometimes getting ready to look your best can be the best part of the night.” are able to recreate that feeling of royalty you first felt all those years ago. That’s the beautiful thing about fashion. Whether you’re more of a Maddy or Cassie, everyone has that one unique thing about them that’s interchangeable from the rest of the world. Embrace your fashion identity and how your inner child rings through that. Now is the time to try that weird outfit you thought of in your head, or explore a completely different personal aesthetic.
Machismo
VISUALS Isaiah Vivero MODEL Jose Barrera Aguirre
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VISUALS Rey Sandoval 64 | EM Spring 2022
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All I do is try, try, try WORDS Sophia Kriegel
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There’s confetti on the floor of the concert. A mess someone will sweep up eventually, rolling their eyes at the way color melts under the soles of scuffed shoes. The girl on the stage is singing to a crowd of thousands and they’re all screaming her name. They’re all falling in love. She’s strumming a guitar. They’re throwing roses, now. They’re chanting. They storm the stage and reach for her hand. She can’t see them over all those lights. She can’t hear them over her heartbeat. She just keeps singing. In another life, I must be someone worth keeping around. There’s a girl
and she’s made of all the strands of hair I’ve left on the train or in the backseat of a car or in the shower drain. A rag doll with a chipped smile and blue eyes. In another life, I don’t ask you to stay. You go home and call me from your bedroom, lying on your stomach with your feet in the air, and I’m not afraid of you leaving. I’m not afraid of you not loving me.1 I don’t ask questions or cry or call my mother on the walk home just to make sure she’ll still answer. I’m not sad and I’m not alone and I never go on social media because it’s just not real, you know? I do yoga and I never lie to my parents and I stop using dating apps.
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I’m a celebrity, and a stranger with a camera asks me questions outside of a restaurant. He’s asking how it’s possible that I’ve made so many people fall in love with me. He’s asking how it feels to be so loved. In another life, I skip home only half-drunk. I wash my face before bed and never forget to wear sunscreen. Someone tells me they love me and they mean it. Someone tells me they love me and I believe them. It’s not meant to be depressing. It’s just the reality of the situation. A streamer-covered floor the morning after the party. Not even a stranger staying to help pick up the pieces.
The boy doesn’t want to date because he needs to find himself. In the dark, I’m searching for his eyes and all I find is the curve of his spine, a shoulder. His limbs all wound up like twine. He’s searching for something, someone. He says I can sleep here if I want to. He kisses me on the forehead and then reminds me he can’t fall in love. He’s not made that way. When I leave, he says see you later but what he really means is goodbye. The next month, he posts a picture of a girl for Valentine’s Day and I’m wondering where he found himself. I’m wondering if he was ever lost. When he calls a month later, she’s gone. He’s sad and I answer.2 In the dark, I feel myself growing smaller underneath him. He kisses me on the forehead and I don’t wince. I just fall asleep. I keep finding strands of my hair stuck to the floor of my dorm room. I joke that I shed like a dog. I
plucked a blonde curl from the bedsheets last night and another from between the cracks on Boylston. Another in my coffee. One day (soon I think?) I will wake up. Arms stuck to my sides. Suffocating underneath a long strand of platinum. Twisted around my neck or my hands or my torso. Coughing up hairballs. Calling my mother. Asking why, of all things, she cursed me with shiny, perfect hair if it was just going to rip itself out any chance it got? If it was just going to keep leaving? It’s everywhere. I left a strand of hair on my first boyfriend’s pillowcase just so he would keep me around. At least until laundry day. I left another in the wilted leather of his passenger seat and another in the sink. Sometimes I wonder if his mother asks about me. If she remembers my name. I want to be the kind of person who’s hard to forget.3 Who keeps finding her way back.
2. Tore my shirt to stop you bleedin’ But nothin’ ever stops you leavin’ (“when the party’s over,” Billie Eilish) 3. So I will wait for the next time you want me Like a dog with a bird at your door (“Moon Song,” Phoebe Bridgers) 4. I do my best to meet her demands, play at romance, we slow dance In the living room, but all that a stranger would see Is one girl swaying alone, stroking her cheek (“Liability,” Lorde) 70 | EM Spring 2022
In the hallway of my childhood home, just a month before going away to college, I’m crying into my father’s chest. It’s 4 in the morning and my shadow is brushing my hair.4 Rubbing my back. In the dark, my father is asking “what’s the matter.” And the truth is, I keep telling him, the truth is, I’m so afraid of being forgotten. Of packing my things, the T-shirts and the toothbrush, walking out the door, and nobody remembering who I was. Nobody cared where I went. And I wouldn’t go without a fight. Kicking and screaming and clawing at the walls so they’d have no choice but to talk about me. I must have always been begging to be loved. The lonely feeling that permeates into the softest parts of myself. Into the backseat of the boy’s car, potent enough to make its way onto the family dining table. Convinced I couldn’t be kept around for lack of caring.
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Do we all feel this hopeless? Me, her, and my shadow? Are we all reaching towards something, someone, like fragile, tired children grabbing at something bigger, begging to be held.
When he laughs and tells me he couldn’t forget me even if he tried. When he tells me he loves me enough to not let mere absence make the mind dissolve my memory. I cry some more. My shadow gives us some time alone, sneaks off into the corner and calls her grandma just to tell her that she loves her. Just to make sure she feels loved. I’m making everyone at the party laugh. Slapping their knees and screaming my name. Asking me to dance, asking me to fix their hair. Asking me to take a shot of their alcohol. They love me when I’m drunk and laughing, a sad clown who’s got a great smile. I close my eyes to dance and when I open them again, everyone’s gone. It’s a solo walk back down Boylston, after all the
lovers have stumbled home. My friends, warm with their own partners. And me clutching my coat. Wrapping my arms around my own torso. I’m not a jealous person. I keep telling myself that. My headphones are playing a song I know every word to. A mantra, an affirmation. Anything to feel known and seen and understood even if only by some singer in a different state. A different tax bracket. But her words remind me that even the rich and famous have a bathroom, a floor to sink into. And tears all look the same when they hit the cold tile. Do we all feel this hopeless? Me, her, and my shadow? Are we all reaching towards something, someone, like fragile, tired children grabbing at something bigger, begging to be held.
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She’s singing: The truth is I am a toy that people enjoy, ‘Til all of the tricks don’t work anymore, And then they are bored of me. She’s crying: If he’s a serial killer, then what’s the worst. That could happen to a girl who’s already hurt?. I’m already hurt. She’s begging: Don’t you think I loved you too much to be used and discarded? Don’t you think I loved you too much to think I deserve nothing? And I’m singing with her. The stage goes black and all the people go home. The janitor sweeps up the streamers, collects the cardboard signs. We hold each other. We just stand there and hold each other.
Crossroads & Visiting Home VISUALS Hadley Breault
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For When I Forget VISUALS Lida Everhart MODELS Dylan Downes, Maura Cowan, Anais Abrego, Iain Alvidrez
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Temparary Temporary WORDS Leah Heath
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I started getting tattooed a little over a year ago and have since had a mix of professional and “unprofessional” tattoos. Getting my first tattoo felt like the snap of a glow stick — the gateway to understanding permanence and accepting it. And so two weeks after my first one, I got another, and I never really stopped. None of my tattoos have particular meaning, but every single one is a kind of placeholder for where I was at that day and time. I don’t get them to be original. I like to think of it as a sticker
“I’ m bound to run into people with the same stickers as me.” collection club and, because I gravitate towards a traditional style, I’m bound to run into people with the same stickers as me. It’s an exclusive club. Some of my tattoos are custom, specifically drawn to references I provided, and some of them are flash tattoos, predrawn designs that I chose from a portfolio. Not all flash tattoos are repeatable, though some are, and I like to think that I have a matching tattoo with a stranger walking out and about in this wide world. And we are just two meteors gliding past each other, never to meet.
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mad n’ sad — february 2021 My first two tattoos were done in a basement in East Boston. I wanted a crying heart purely because I love American traditional tattoos. This was my first realization that conceptual artistic descriptions look different when visualized by client and artist. But I like that my crying heart has the artist’s personalized look. After getting the first one, I made a finsta story post asking what I should get with it. My thigh just looked naked with it’s little crying heart all alone and it needed a friend. I used to have these ideas that once I started getting tattooed I would contain my tattoos to just that limb. That went out the window when my ex-roommate recommended I get an angry heart on the opposite leg “to make the sad heart cry.” So now I have two hearts spanning both my thighs, one crying and the other outlined with barbed wire, midscream.
bum flowers — july 2021/ september 2021
My first professional tattoo was done at Regeneration Tattoo located in Allston, MA. This tattoo was highly anticipated and forced me to be the most patient I have ever been in my entire life. Inspired by Instagram queen Mei Pang’s symmetrical peony ass tattoos, I wanted the same concept but with Chrysanthemums. I chose my artist, Steve, because I had seen him do chrysanthemums before. He also had a preference for taking on Japanese style tattoos. I had to force myself to eat breakfast the morning of my appointment because I was anxious. I’m always anxious before. My roommates sat across the dining table from me and saw me off from the front door as if I was never coming back. Or maybe that I’d come back forever changed in a personable sense. We started and finished my left side the day before the 4th of July 2021, and at this point, the 4th felt like a dead holiday and the weekend an ordinary one. We finished the right half of the tattoo two months later and shortly after, he was booked out for the rest of the year.
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black panther — august 2021 My panther tattoo was pure impulse and I got it in between doing each side of my ass tattoo. I don’t really remember why I chose a panther but again, I gravitate towards traditional tattoos. Danny, a different artist at Regeneration, was the first tattooer I had to have a consultation with prior to the appointment. The word “consultation” frightened me. I was so scared he was going to tell me this was a bad idea after reading my email attached with my Pinterest reference photos. I have a habit of not telling people in my life about my tattoos until after I get them as a way to block outside opinions. Plus I like the secrecy. The consultation lasted all of five minutes and he thought it was a great idea. We sized the side of my thigh and I slapped down a deposit on an appointment. We finished the tattoo in two sessions. This was one of the easier ones and I am still afraid of consultations. A new lesbian-owned tattoo shop skirted past
gwyg — october 2021 my radar over the summer: Said & Done Tattoo. And what other way to check it out than to do a Get What You Get tattoo; the rules are simple, (1) show up, (2) fill out paperwork stating that you agree to have your body permanently altered, (3) put a quarter in a gumball machine (4) permanently tattoo whatever comes out of said gumball machine. I, being not very picky, was ready. As my artist handed me the quarters I said, “I hope I get something either very funny or very cool.” To which she replied, “If you want something funny you can come back and we can give you something funny.” My first try I got a dragon head — very cool. My second try I got a peach — kinda funny. I was sold on the dragon head though, placed slightly above my right ankle on the side of my calf. This was the most ticklish tattoo I had ever received, this was also my first below the knee tat. When explaining to my parents that it came out of a gumball machine, they didn’t fully comprehend the permanence of it. They still kind of don’t. Which is understandable.
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coffin — halloween 2021 It was Halloween. There was a $100 flash sale going on at Regeneration and I promised myself, after missing out on a previous flash deal, that I wouldn’t miss the next one. I messaged the artist first with the intention of getting a skull lightbulb tattoo before later changing my mind to the coffin. I remember wanting to die of embarrassment because he read the DM request for the skull-coffin before I deleted it and changed my mind an hour later. I felt like I looked like a crazyindecisive person, which I like to think I’m not. In fact, I like to make decisions all the time. Indecisive friends are my favorite friends because then there’s me.
l-o-v-e — november 2021 At this point I was getting a tattoo every month. This tattoo came from a flash sale for charity so it felt justified. Said & Done was hosting a flash day where all funds would go to the Lilith Fund, a non-profit organization that assists people who need abortions in Texas. This flash sale was in October 2021, one month after Texas increased their state restrictions on obtaining an abortion. Tattoo appointments were booked quickly for this flash weekend, and I, unfortunately, was too slow. But I was still able to get one of the flash designs tattooed the following month. And now I have a somewhat to scale pair of spiked brass knuckles in between my panther and crying heart on my right thigh. The word “LOVE” is written in each knuckle hole and every time I look at it I think of the song “L-O-V-E” by Nat King Cole.
arm day — january 2022 For the entirety of 2021, I had a personal rule that I would not tattoo my arms or get anything in color. I broke the former in 2022. This artist I found was an apprentice and I liked his flash. I had seen his work enough on others and I, too, wanted to be practice-skin for a growing tattoo artisté. I chose a peony-like flower with an eyeball in the center from his Halloween flash. I was first intending to get it on my inner upper arm for ease of concealing. But I decided on a bigger size while sitting in a vintage chair in his studio. He recommended putting it on my inner forearm and I agreed. He also let me choose the music and we listened to Doja Cat’s album Amala (deluxe) for the majority of the appointment.
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As of today, I have been tattooed by five different people. Sometimes I feel bad when I think about loyalty to an artist, especially when I go to different people and return and they realize that I’ve acquired more art on my body. Maybe it’s the anxiety, or maybe it’s just me. But I like the idea of having a collection of different artists. When going in to get my panther tattoo, the artist placed the stencil near where a part of my chrysanthemum tattoo was peeking out. The artist asked “who did this one,” to which I replied “Steve!” another artist at the shop. My artist was so elated he said “I get to be next to Steve?! Nice!” And that made me feel like my body was a hall of fame.
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VISUALS Margarita Ivanova 97 | Remnants
Lover’s Eye
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5.12 VISUALS Marina Man MODEL Yaru Li
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The Girl Who Got
WORDS Jess Ferguson VISUALS Kaitlyn Joyner
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“Friends break up, friends get married. Strangers get born, strangers get buried. But I’m right where you left me.” I’m a memory hoarder. I remember full names and birthdays of elementary school classmates who probably haven’t thought about me since leaving school. I recall anecdotes friends tell me about their lives in passing. I hold onto every card and note I receive, even from people no longer in my life. I don’t delete texts off my phone until I absolutely have to. I think frequently about high school and the clubs and teachers I spent much of my time with, people who shaped my current interests and personality but who I haven’t seen in years. I’m not quite sure why I keep these scraps, these remnants of my past. When Taylor Swift released the song “right where you left me” as a bonus track on “evermore,” I immediately resonated with the subject of the song: a girl who can’t move on from her past despite everyone else carrying on. I used to think it was normal, this hoarding and fixation on the past, but I realized most people immediately discard these mementos without any forethought. What does that say about me?
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“Everybody moved on. I, I stayed there.” Am I stuck in the past for holding onto these memories? Do I verge on stalker status for keeping everything of remote sentimental value? Is this some kind of coping mechanism? I’m not sure, but I’ve made my peace with it. Even if these people or
“As much as our relationships reflect who we are, they also reflect who we will become.” identities are no longer an active part of my life today, they were at one point and shaped me into who I am today. Of course the friends I’ve had for years and my family have impacted my life greatly—but so did the best friend I had in third grade, the friend group I lost touch with during the pandemic, and the teachers I spent hours
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with after school. As much as our relationships reflect who we are, they also reflect who we will become. Every encounter—positive, neutral, negative—has taken form in some way. If I hadn’t been friends with a particular person or been involved in a certain group, my life would have taken on an entirely different trajectory, and I’m satisfied with my life today. So really, I have these little, seemingly inconsequential memories and people to thank.
joyous moments have still taught me a lesson or made me into a stronger, more resilient person. I guess I hold onto these memories because it’s a way to memorialize every phase in my life: I can look back at a card from my freshman year best friend and immediately transport to that moment in time. My memories and mementos serve as a metaphorical time machine.
It’s not so much that I miss my friends from elementary school, it’s that I fondly look back on those memories and the joy they brought to my life for that moment in time. And even the not-so-
While I stand by the importance of these little moments, I can’t help but wonder what it would mean to let go. Taking a trip down memory lane is nice every once in a while, but
“you left me no choice but to stay here forever.”
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I can’t establish permanent residence there. I have to step out of the time machine and get back to living. There is so much life to live, and I don’t want to waste that by staying in the past thinking about old relationships and what would’ve happened if I had stayed friends with them, or done something differently. While I relate to “the girl who got frozen” from the Taylor Swift song, unlike her, I won’t stay here—the past—forever. It’s there when I need it, and I can leave it as I choose. I still am who I am, and a card from 2015 won’t change that.
Neither Here Nor There VISUALS Mariely Torres MODEL Meghan Hockridge
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Conversations with my With My Dad WORDS Tatum Jenkins
For my sixth birthday, my godmother, my Auntie Jane, gifted me a soft, lime green and brown photo album. Inside, underneath crinkly plastic sheets, lay photos of my dad. Before this moment, I knew very little about him, and this book unlocked a whole life for me. My dad in a teal green and yellow baseball jersey leaning against a car, waiting to lose in the Little League World Series. His frame in blue scrubs and crutches, back turned to the camera, a slice of thigh present in the folds of the garment from a slippery walk at Harvard Business School, just miles from where I go to school now. My dad has the same kind, spirited face he had when he was three — warm brown eyes that turned a little darker as he aged, wide, yet thin smile across his face, dark hair slightly curled at the edges,
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as if it couldn’t decide to be curly or not. My godmother put my kindergarten photo next to my dad’s for comparison; I find traces of him in myself. Same eyebrows hugging against the bone protecting my eyelids, same bright eyes, and the same indecisive hair. We are so similar, even when I pretend we’re not.
I walked into the wood and maroon-carpeted funeral home six years before for my Papa’s service; it felt like the worst kind of déjà vu. Aunt El, my Papa’s sister, open casket, face up to a world she didn’t belong in anymore, in a room filled with several flower arrangements. After the condolences and the last prayer to her earthly form, the Jenkinses gathered in small circles to catch up. All the Jenkins women look similar — dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin. You automatically know we’re family by some sort of weird sixth sense. I’ve always been compared to my dad more than to my mom, and I’ve always felt a sense of pride in that. The fact that I was an insider to the Jenkins family, to how my dad grew up, is still special to me. But being close to his family isn’t the same as being close to him.
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My first memory of my dad is the first time I saw him crying. I walked up the log brown stairs to the front door and saw him standing in the void of the doorway. He was never home this early. The only thing different from his usual work uniform of black pants, a collared shirt, and a navy vest was his eyes: veiny, pink, swollen, and damp. He usually looked so puttogether like the tech president he was — consistent uniform and smile and same tiredness lingering in his shoulders when he walked through the door at 5 p.m. “What happened?” I asked carefully; I didn’t want to make him upset. He explained that one of the founders of his company died. I think he walked away to his office after that. All I know is that this is the first memory I have of my dad.
Fourteen years later, I am crying on our beige leather couch in my dad’s arms. My boyfriend and I broke up and it ripped out something from inside me. Instead of saying anything, my dad put his arm around me. He put me to bed early, understanding the exhaustion of grieving love. The next day, my Nanny, my dad’s stepmother, called me, and told me that
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when my dad experienced a breakup in college, he came home. My Papa almost carried him inside because he couldn’t carry himself. That’s the closest I can come to explaining how that heartbreak broke me. I could only explain it through my dad.
By accident, two years in a row, he got my mother the same Mother’s Day card. My dad is a huge fan of the sentimental card and this particular one spared no cliché —
flowered,
gushing with sentiment, and stuffed with every shade of pink. My mom dug out the one from the previous year and we laughed while my dad looked embarrassed at his mistake. I didn’t see it as a mistake. It meant that year after year, he feels the same about her. We went to the store that day and bought more of that exact card, so that the tradition can continue.
My mom sent me another photo album curated by my godmother that contained almost every newspaper article he had ever been featured in. At the very back was a Delta Tau Delta newsletter from 2014 with an article highlighting my dad’s achievements as an alumni. At the very end, it says, “BJ currently lives in Los Gatos, California with his wife, Julie, and their two
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children, a daughter, Tatum, who is 13, and a son, Trey, 11.” It doesn’t talk about how much time we gave up with him for him to get here in this newsletter. It doesn’t talk about how his daughter, now 21, is still trying to figure out who he is after all those lost years at work, how she looks for him in every person she loves, or how his son, now 19, just joined the same fraternity because he might be chasing after whatever pieces of his dad he can find. I’m not resentful and I never have been. I’ve always admired my father’s hard work, but sometimes I wish I had more memories with him from those first ten years. Maybe that would’ve made me never write this; maybe I wouldn’t see my dad as a mystery, but as something different.
My dad taught me how to ride a bike embarrassingly late in life, at least that’s how I felt as an eight year old. I would break out into a sweat when someone in my second grade class would talk about riding bikes, harboring the secret of my inability. Though I was reluctant to learn, my dad wrangled me on a bike, gripping the top half of my bike seat behind me as we practiced on the flat part of our steep driveway. After what felt like weeks, I thought I would give up on bikes forever until one day, he let go. He let go of the seat and
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I Still Think About it Sometimes VISUALS Jess O’Donoghue
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TBD (To Be Demolished) WORDS Sam Goodman VISUALS Reagan Allen
I stole my father’s sweatshirt before I flew for Boston. Its burntorange fabric smelled like California free and wild, and suburbia hot and dry, clear sky, miles from city smog. The feeling of an early morning car ride and linen, fresh out of the dryer. Mother tucks and folds my bedding and I am safe and I am warm. Now that is home. Then, the warmth goes and I am on my way. To Boston. It smells. Like the city. And students line the bleak walls of our esteemed institution. Smoke break. Huddled together, they discuss artful things (as young people do) and I huddle with them in my burnt-orange.
Now, this is home. I stand beside tobacco clouds — of which I did not (yet) inhale — and when Tremont winds claw at our paper-thin cheeks, I wrap my hands around a new friend’s flame. The smell seeps into my hot and dry, clear sky, car rides and I return to my linen to find a new stench. As I bounce from childhood bedroom to dorm room, I think of the smell of stale smoke seeping from the chapped lips of the city’s boldest and bravest. I have lived among them, yet somehow with one foot in the door, one foot out. Not on the periphery, rather waiting in anticipation for my next opportunity to fly. Home.
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I once wrote on demolition, foundation, framing, furnishing. On axing wood to using raw materials, building something new. Now I have done the “something new” and am ready for destruction again. So before I get too comfortable with the smell of smoke between my nails, form a habit I cannot kick, I will leave behind scratched-up walls and dust and dirt. An old mini fridge I have no reason to keep. I will leave my magazine position to someone new and I believe everything is accounted for. Some of what was once a dream, waiting to be unpacked, will be reorganized in boxes again, most of it thrown into piles of trash.
And in four and a half semesters of college, I learned about four and a half things: 1. On demolition: You have to be broken down to be built again. You learn a hoodie will not cut the February cold and sometimes the only way to walk is alone. When you are at your lowest, you crash through the basement, back to the ground, the open sky whooshing above you. 2. On foundation: When you think you are grown, you have more growing to do. I packed away 17 and did the same to 18, 19, and suddenly, I have forgotten. Why do I feel haggard and jaded, rotted at something-years-old? Why do I feel like the floor has crumbled beneath me? Though you can rush to patch up the deteriorating floorboards, you are probably better off just picking up the jackhammer. 3. On framing: People disappoint. Bleak, but true, nonetheless. When I first arrived, just before I reeked of smoke, I asked myself when the new people around me would become “my people.” As teenagers, college students, twenty-somethings we expect those around us to be load-bearing beams, handrails, and guideposts. In reality, all we can offer one another is drywall. I built a paper-mâché shelter to keep me safe and, as the blueprint unceremoniously predicted, those walls quickly crumbled.
4. On furnishing: Decorate to destroy. As a professor of mine once jokingly asserted to his class of on-campus students, “the crap you buy for your dorm rooms is built to break.” Again, brutal but true. Tchotchkes shatter and posters rip. Paint chips and nothing sticks. Walls resist the pretty and perfect. They know what lies just beneath. It will take half the time to tear it down as it did to tack it on. 4.5
On demolition: Burn it down, start again. When the final flame is extinguished, pick through what is leftover. From the fire, through the ashes, look for what remains. Decide if it can — should — be pieced back together. And after you audit your collection, after you have tossed what you no longer need, get right back to building again.
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the party is over VISUALS Drew Mitchell MODELS Tori
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Copyright © 2022 EM Mag. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from EM Mag except in the case of crediting both em Mag and the artists. Should you have any questions pertaining to the reproduction of any content in this book, please contact emmagonline@gmail.com. Cover photo by Mariely Torres Book design by Reagan Allen, Grace Hwang, and Nathan Manaker First edition printed by Flagship Press in North Andover, MA. 2022 Typeset in TT2020 by Fredrick R. Brennan and Marion by Ray Larabie Website: www.em-mag.com Instagram: @emmagazine Issuu: EM Magazine
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