Incite Magazine - December 2014

INCITE MAGAZINE

VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4 ▪ DECEMBER 2014

FLIGHT

«what is incite magazine?»

«social media»

I

ncite Magazine is McMaster University’s student-run monthly publication with a wide range of content, from essay and research pieces to fiction and poetry. Every aspect of Incite’s production is carried out by student volunteers, from content to design to photography to layout. We invite anyone interested in writing or graphics to come to our planning meetings, where we will brainstorm article ideas together and you can sign up to contribute. All skill levels are welcome! We work to foster close relationships between our contributors and editors. This allows new contributors to collaborate with experienced writers to develop their skills in a friendly and positive environment. Email us at incite@mcmaster.ca to get involved. 

issuu.com/incite-magazine facebook.com/incitemagazine @incitemagazine

«correction» In the article titled “Welcome to Mac” in the November 2014 issue, the author’s last name was misspelled. It is Trisha Philpotts, not Philipotts.

«contents»

04\/ 05\/ 06\/ 07 \/ 08\/ 09\/ 10 \/ 11 \/ 12 \/ 13 \/ 14 \/ 15 \/

PROBLEMS WITH PLUMAGE Mackenzie Richardson STORIES FROM THE SKY Elina Filice THREE LITTLE MONKEYS Mary Kate MacDonald HEADED FOR SOMEWHERE Sarah O’Connor ART Mo Brinx THE FLEETING MOMENT Jason Lau THE MOMENT Jennifer Scora

WILD IGNORANCE Emile Shen

CATHARSIS Trisha Philpotts

AIRBORNE Anna Goshua FROM HERE TO THERE Yara Farran REVERENCE FOR LIFE Salma El-Zamel

16 \/ 17 \/ 18 \/ 19 \/ 20 \/ 21 \/ 22 \/ 24 \/ 26 \/

THE WIRES Stephen Clare FALL FLIGHT AND #DISNEYWISDOM Lea Green BAD DAY Olivia Fasullo SOAR Matthew Jordan & David Yun OUT OF THE NEST...

Asha Behdinan TAKING OFF & LOSING TOUCH Jaslyn English ART Vannessa Barnier

FINDERS, KEEPERS Kayla Esser

HOME Christine Wang

27 \/ 28 \/ 29 \/ 30\/ 31\/ 32 \/

A MAGNIFICENT RUIN Rachel Liu

IMPRINTS Sam Bubnic WHO FLEE THE WINTER Jesse Bettencourt SUNFLOWERS AND UNTRIMMED WEEDS Rachelle Zalter WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW CAN HURT YOU Devra Charney & Kaila Radan I WHISPER Matthew Chau

33\/ 34\/ 35\/ 36\/ 37 \/ 38\/ 39\/

UP IN THE SKY Afshan Siddiqui THE CATHEDRAL OF THE WILDERNESS Marlene Malik

42 \/ 43\/

«executive» ART Barbara Karpinski

TRIP Sasha Berkeley

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Sam Godfrey Avery Lam CREATIVE DIRECTOR Sarah Mae Conrad

DEFYING GRAVITY WITH WICKED Omobola Olarewaju

CONTENT EDITORS Devra Charney Stephen Clare Jaslyn English Kayla Esser Julie-Anne Mendoza Imaiya Ravichandran Louell Taye ART EDITORS Lauren Gorfinkel Jason Lau Angela Ma Sabnam Mahmuda Raluca Topliceanu

TURBULENCE Rachel Katz

ALICE Imaiya Ravichandran IF THERE’S ONE THING I REMEMBER Raluca Topliceanu A MIND DEPARTURE + TELL ME A STORY Amanda Emmannuel

«contributors»

40\/ 41 \/

FIGHT & FLIGHT Ronald Leung

AUTOPILOT Sabrina Sibbald

WRITERS Asha Behdinan, Sasha Berkeley, Jesse Bettencourt, Sam Bubnic, Devra Charney, Matthew Chau, Stephen Clare, Salma El-Zamel, Amanda Emmanuel, Jaslyn English, Kayla Esser, Yara Farran, Olivia Fasullo, Elina Filice, Anna Goshua, Lea Green, Matthew Jordan, Rachel Katz, Jason Lau, Ronald Leung, Rachel Liu, Mary Kate MacDonald, Marlene Malik, Sarah O’Connor, Omobola Olarewaju, Trisha Philpotts, Imaiya Ravichandran, Mackenzie Richardson, Jennifer Scora, Emile Shen, Sabrina Sibbald, Afshan Siddiqui, Raluca Topliceanu, Christine Wang, David Yun, Rachelle Zalter

ARTWORK Vannessa Barnier, Mo Brinx, Kandice Buryta, Angela Busse-Gibson, Matt Clarke, Kayla Da Silva, Talyssa Ferrer, Leah Flannigan, Véronique Giguère, Sam Godfrey, Lauren Gorfinkel, Yoseif Haddad, Barbara Karpinski, Jason Lau, Jonsson Liu, Angela Ma, Sabnam Mahmuda, Diana Marginean, Samantha Ostapchuk, Linda Joyce Ott, Sabrina Sibbald, Franco Simões, Raluca Toplicenu, Madison Vettoretto, Elaine Westenhoefer, Shannon Wu LAYOUT Catherine Chambers, Sarah Mae Conrad, Susie Ellis, Lauren Gorfinkel, Julie Guevara, Avery Lam, Jason Lau, Angela Ma, Raluca Topliceanu, Elaine Westenhoefer COVERS/TABLE OF CONTENTS Lauren Gorfinkel & Jason Lau

PROBLEMS WITH PLUMAGE Mackenzie Richardson

A

s many people know, Charles Darwin penned On the Origin of Species in 1859. It was the first major publication that directly outlined the theory of evolution, one that continues to be refined and improved to the present day. In 1861, the first complete specimen of a new genus, Archaeopteryx, was discovered. I will not bore you with excessive details, but suffice it to say that this fossil is understood to be perfectly representative of the transition of

tree, similar to the modern flying squirrel.

Cursorialists suggest that Archaeopteryx was actually a land-based bipedal creature, which evolved primitive wing-like structures to help control its running abilities, like a modern emu or ostrich. There are certainly merits to both theories. In the 16 observed cases of non-avian flight, flight evolved in 11 tree-dwelling species, and in the other five cases, fish evolved limited flight capabilities. However, the mechanism of controlled

This fossil is understood to be perfectly representative of the transition of dinosaurs to their modern ancestors: birds.

almost always represent a net decrease in fitness. Evolution is a process that occurs slowly, over hundreds of generations: wings would not suddenly sprout from dinosaurs to make birds. The transition would involve the loss of arm and hand functionality and increased wing functionality until the species ultimately had recognizable wings. What sort of scenario would allow for a creature with virtually no arm or wing capacity to survive compared to its competitors?

At the end of the day, the jury is still out on how, exactly, dinosaurs became birds with flight. Someday, as more fossils are uncovered and the tools and technologies are perfected, we might find a definitive answer.

For now, though, the best reason why birds have wings might just be that they taste really good with barbeque sauce. ď Ž ARTWORK BY ANGELA MA

dinosaurs to their modern ancestors: birds.

Archaeopteryx is one of the oldest creatures to possess feathers (dinosaurs may have had feathers, but fossil evidence is inconclusive). Along with feathers and wings resembling modern avian species, Archaeopteryx also possessed hyper extendible second toes and three-fingered claws characteristic of most predatory dinosaurs.

The real enigma of the fossil is that Archaeopteryx, by all current understanding, was completely flightless. So how and why did birds develop the ability to fly?

A key point to remember from Darwin’s description of evolution is that, by and large, organisms that develop traits increase their overall fitness (i.e., their ability to live and reproduce) will be selected for. This is called natural selection, the mechanism by which evolution occurs. It is an important concept to remember as we consider how, exactly, birds gained the ability to fly.

There are two contemporary theories about how flight evolved. Arborealists are those who believe that Archaeopteryx was a tree dwelling species, gradually evolving wings and eventually controlled flight to increase its ability to glide from tree to

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flight exhibited by modern avian species is vastly different than those of other species.

Another interesting consideration is that the bone structure of the Archaeopteryx is most similar to modern flightless birds such as emus and ostriches. This could provide evidence that birds indeed began as land bound runners who evolved the ability to fly.

A major problem in considering the development of flight is that the loss of functional arms would

STORIES FROM THE SKY Elina Filice (@elinafilice)

how to survive a 16-hour flight in 16 steps

ARTWORK BY SHANNON WU

HOUR 1. You lap dance across your aislemates to get settled in your seat. You avoid thinking about the hours ahead. Wondering when the drink cart is going to come by, you prepare your battle station: iPod, headphones, book, snacks. You send last minute tarmac Snapchat selfies. Takeoff has always been your favourite.

the stars aren’t awake with you. You avoid checking your watch.

HOUR 2. You’re feeling all right nursing your third red wine of the journey. You’ve decided its time to acquaint yourself with your aisle-mates, your neighbors for the next almost-day. The grandma beside you flips through pictures of the grandchildren she is going to see, happily commentating in broken English. She smiles in surprise when you reply in Chinese.

HOUR 10. You read something fantastic and have no one to share it with. You can’t remember the last time you spoke words to another human. You wish your Chinese was better so you could ask Grandma more about her grandkids. You feel alone in a room of sleeping strangers.

HOUR 3. You think about the fight that you had with your mother before you got on the plane. You feel guilty, and know that she does too.

HOUR 4. You browse the on-demand movies. The wine is totally right, you should definitely watch High School Musical.

HOUR 5. Why the fuck are you watching High School Musical.

HOUR 6. All the lights on the plane turn off.

Out come the blankets, the pillows, the eye masks, the sleeping pills. You chase the moon across the sky.

HOUR 7. You try to sleep.

You can’t sleep.

HOUR 8. You stare at the wall. You lose track of time. The only thing to be seen outside your window is blackness. Even VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

HOUR 9. You think of the three planes that went down over the past week. Then, you think about the thousands of planes every week that take off and land safely that no one ever talks about.

HOUR 11. You are quietly thankful to be disconnected from the internet for 17 hours.

You think about movement. You feel as if the place you left behind is a dream, and the one you’re approaching a recent memory.

Grandma sleeps on your shoulder.

HOUR 12. This is the hour that you hit The Wall. Someone has terrible foot odour, a distressed child won’t stop wailing, you haven’t slept in 28 hours, have been living on M&Ms, and is this plane getting smaller?

You pace, up down up down the aisles. You embarrass yourself with awkward stretching in front of the bathrooms. You peek at the movies other passengers are watching, one-second stories as you walk by.

HOUR 13. Like all hours, that hour passes. Your breath is stolen by the expanse of purple clouds that stretch as far as you can see. You watch the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean. You finally sleep.

HOUR 14. And then, someone decides that

it’s morning. Every light on the entire plane is turned on. They start serving something that only the bravest of travelers would call scrambled eggs. The flight attendant judges you for asking for champagne with “breakfast”. You consider telling her that that there is no possible conception of time when you are in an enclosed vessel flying counter to the spin of the earth, that you are entering and exiting new time zones every few hours, that you are currently traveling backwards through time, and that the phrase “it’s 12 o’clock somewhere” has never been so relevant. You reconsider, and drink your champagne in silence.

HOUR 15. Turbulence hits. Maybe it’s the recycled air or breakfast booze, but something makes you keenly aware of how helpless you, and the hundreds of the strangers who surround you, are. You sip your champagne as grandma silently does the rosary.

Your chapel in the sky journeys forward at 600 miles an hour. Prayers fill the cabin like smoke from candles.

HOUR 16. For a brief moment you wish you had a few more hours - to read, to pace, to ponder. Part of you enjoys flying; thousands of feet above the ground, disconnected from the world. Grandma adds you on Facebook so you can keep in touch. You think about how much of your life you’ve spent on airplanes. You try to calculate the number of hours you’ve spent in the sky; you lose track. You’ve grown up on planes; you’ve spilled your guts to strangers and to barf bags. You find comfort here, in this transient in-between world that is always propelling you on to the next place. You embrace a familiarity of sorts, or rather, it embraces you. You find tranquility in the clouds.  5

ARTWORK BY MADISON VETTORETTO

THREE LITTLE MONKEYS Mary Kate MacDonald

P

eter Pan once said, “Just think happy thoughts and you will fly”. Yet, finding those happy thoughts can be quite a chore. Fortunately, this summer I managed to find not one, but three of these happy thoughts. Their names are Myles, Amelia, and Byron, and I was their nanny.

While the beginning of our time together was rather tumultuous and filled with tears of longing for mum, the four of us soon became the best of friends. Byron was only one year old, and with his big blue eyes, wispy honey-coloured hair, and a deep laugh like a sailor's, he captured my heart instantly. However, the feeling was not immediately mutual. Byron was suspicious of this strange girl and definitely not okay with his mum leaving. During our first days together I endlessly rocked him. I would try to find that perfect toy that would soothe his worries. I would try several different snacks that would hopefully be approved by his high-class tastes; Cheerios was the go-to. Often, these attempts were completely unsuccessful. Soon enough,

though, after many walks, games of peeka-boo, tickle sessions, storybooks, and hugs, he had a change of heart. Those once troublesome days were replaced by giggles and hugs. Trust me, there was no better feeling than being greeted every morning by his big chipmunk-like grin, and a shriek with an outstretched hand asking to be held.

Myles and Amelia were six and four respectively, and were also a little unsure about me. They had never had a nanny before and I had never been a nanny before, so we figured it out together. The solution?

Science experiments. After Myles deemed me “The Science Master”, we soon filled our days transforming the kitchen into a laboratory and researching what happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar with glitter. These two budding scientist tried to make their own concoctions, but would often settle for making a giant mess instead.

Shortly, we were able to have all types of adventures: at the park, in storybooks, and in their creative imaginative games.

When The Lego Movie came out, the kids taught me about all the characters.

When they realized I knew nothing about Star Wars, they taught me all the plot lines.

When they realized my chocolate milk skills were lacking, they taught me how to make one to perfection. But more than any of that, these kids taught me that those elusive happy thoughts come in all shapes and sizes. While I would like to say that I was the one playing teacher, I think it was the other way around.

With no prior nanny experience, these three amazing kids helped me discover something I truly love doing. To be honest, I was unsure if I would enjoy it. I am still unsure if I loved being a nanny or if I loved being their nanny. The one thing that is for certain is that those kids will always bring a smile to my face. Those three little and lovely children will always be my happy thoughts.

In my goodbye letter I included a list of ten things I learned from my summer with the family. 

Ten Things I Have Learned Being Your Nanny 1. Everything is better with glitter.

2. Star Wars.

3. Quiet time is the best time.

4. Contrary to common expression, baby steps are very big and exciting.

5. Sometimes we all need to be silly.

6. Lego is the coolest.

7. Chocolate milk fixes a lot of problems.

8. Peek-a-boo is hilarious.

9. Kid-hugs are the best hugs.

10. I am a grownup (but not in the boring way).

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INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

ARTWORK BY ELAINE WESTENHOEFER

HEADED FOR SOMEWHERE Sarah O’Connor @notsarahconnor

M

ama said that the next time she would see me would be on a missing person’s poster scattered around the reserve. I know that sounds mean, but she didn’t mean it that way. She’s just scared; she doesn’t want me to end up in a ditch or missing or as pig food. Sometimes moms can only show fear through anger, that’s what I think at least. And she only said that thing about the missing person’s poster because that’s what happened to my best friend, Missy. It’s a year later and they still haven’t found her, but I don’t think they’re looking very hard.

I’m slowly walking backwards making sure the passing cars see my sign: ‘Headed for Somewhere’. I wrote it in my nicest penmanship which is saying a lot since Mama says my writing is like chicken scratch. The writing on my sign is nice and clear, traced over and over with my black Sharpie. The letters loop and curve in a way I think looks like calligraphy, but I’m biased.

After four weeks my sign is starting to get ratty. The cardboard is tearing and the letters are starting to bleed from rain. A few cars honk at me, but none of them stop. I hold my sign with my left hand and stretch out my right arm with my thumb up, hoping that will get me somewhere. I’ll need to find some more cardboard and fix up my sign at my next stop.

I’ve been hitchhiking since I was 15.

Mama never approved of it even though she did it when she was young. I don’t blame her after what happened with Missy. Missy and I used to do it together after parties and

work which helped a little. It didn’t help with the drivers. Some of the people who drove us were… well, let’s just say you never knew what they were going to ask for in return for their ‘charity’. But Missy and I had each other for comfort, and that was something.

The road is empty. The only sound is the hush of the pine trees that hug the road. I knew I should have left on the holiday Monday when all the other tourists were leaving. I turn my back on the empty road and walk ahead awhile, looking up at the sky or down at the grass. I’m tired of star-

at keeping in contact with her family whether it was a rare payphone call or a weekly postcard. But after a month of not hearing from her, her parents got scared and called the police. Missy had told her parents she was taking Highway 16 when she left, which is the highway where all those other women have gone missing, where all those other women have been killed. The Highway of Tears.

The police haven’t found Missy yet, though they say they’re looking for her. They put up a picture of her when she went missing. It was a mug shot from when she shoplifted lip-gloss in high school. All these strangers online were posting that if she (and the other women) didn’t want to get killed, they shouldn’t have been hitchhiking. How it’s our own fault for our deaths and disappearances. But they don’t understand how most of us don’t have the money to own a car or pay a cab, or how hitchhiking is the only way we can get from one spot to another because the buses stop at 2 a.m. I haven’t read a comment asking to catch the abductors or killers yet.

There’s a car pulling over. They didn’t even need my sign; just saw me walking at the side of the road. I hope it’s a woman.

One last listen to the murmuring pines and I sit with the stranger (it’s a man) and continue drifting. Drifting and looking for… somewhere. I think I want somewhere where I can feel safe. Where I won’t be blamed or looked at or mocked when people take one glance at me. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? 

After four weeks my sign is starting to get ratty.

The cardboard is tearing and the letters are starting to bleed from rain.

VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

ing at the sad, gray road. I don’t even know where I’m going. So far I’ve just been going where my “chauffeurs” take me, hoping to end up… somewhere.

Missy at least had a plan when she left. She was hoping to get to Toronto. She loved the busy city life, and while British Columbia has city life, she wanted to make somewhere new her home. I don’t know how she was planning on affording a place in Toronto; she probably hadn’t thought that far in advance. Missy was a dreamer.

I don’t think Missy made it out of B.C., and no one else does either. Missy was good

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“THE SNAKE” Ink and acrylic on paper, 8'×4' From the series 500 Doodles

“PROJECTION” (2014) Charcoal and pastel on paper, 6'×4' From the series Switch

Mo Brinx

“REPETITION” (2014) Charcoal and pastel on paper, 6'×4' From the series Switch

My passion for drawing drives me to study the expressive qualities of line and shape. I have a natural tendency to explore, which results in experimenting with different mediums and subject matter. I work in series because it allows me to thoroughly develop my ideas. Currently, I am working on a series of large-scale mixed media drawings. The series is titled Switch because it is a switch of focus and a proactive change for my work.

For business inquires please e-mail me: MoBrinx@gmail.com.

“FORM” (2014) Charcoal, pastel, and wax on paper, 6'×4' From the series Switch

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INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

THE FLEETING MOMENT Jason Lau (@jasonlaucker)

W

hen was the last time you unhesitatingly took out your phone and snapped a quick selfie or group picture? Creating photographs and capturing moments in time hasn’t always been this easy. As a generation of Instagrammers and selfie-takers, we’re so accustomed to taking photos, but have we ever really created any?

The true meaning of creating a photograph, I believe, varies from individual to individual. To me, creating a photograph is about capturing a fleeting moment: the moment in which everything around you falls perfectly together visually and conceptually.

It is a moment that is difficult to translate into words: a scene in which all objects and subjects form a captivating composition, and the lighting and colours all work together to impart a certain feeling. Most importantly, creating a photograph is about intention, and having it mean more than the sum of its pixels. A powerful photograph produces an image that penetrates through the eyes of its viewers, into the depths of their minds, to linger and provoke certain thoughts and feelings.

You could say that the power of photography comes with an ability to slow down time in order for all of this to happen. However, in today’s increasingly digital and fast-moving culture – especially where the technologies of photography and cellular devices have melded – the concrete definition of photography has become blurred.

Cellular photography has changed the game and created many different usages for photographs other than aesthetic and artistic expression. For one, we now use photographs as a medium of communication, and they are more disposable than ever. Take applications like Snapchat for example, where users can send photographs as brief messages that get deleted in a matter of seconds.

It’s become simpler than ever to pull out a smartphone from your pocket and snap a photo of something you notice on the spot. But with this fast-moving mindset of photography, the products of our impulsive VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

We forget not only about the aesthetics of our photographs, but also the deeper meanings that they hold to our viewers and ourselves. shutter clicking are bound to turn out void of intention. In other words, photographs in the cellular age have become increasingly worthless due to their ease of production.

More importantly, they are erasable at another click of a button. And when it is so easy to create and destroy photographs, the amount of care and calculation that goes into each one is also diminished. We forget not only about the aesthetics of our photographs, but also the deeper meanings that they hold to our viewers and ourselves.

Next time you are thinking about creating a photograph, challenge yourself by making it one that encourages you to think deeper about what you are photographing, and go beyond the idea of ‘looking pretty’.

Photography is a powerful medium, and its capabilities do not stop at basic communication. It is a profound reflection of how we view the world, and it holds the power to change the things we are unsatisfied with.

Let photography be a medium that holds weight and meaning, not the temporary flash of a couple pixels on a screen. 

ARTWORK BY LAUREN GORFINKEL

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THE MOMENT Jennifer Scora

“I

t’s all about the moment,” my sister Clara would say while sitting in the tree in our backyard. I listened from the ground. I was never good with heights. “All I want is that one moment when I’ll really feel alive.”

She was always looking up, my sister. Wanting to climb higher and fall farther. I thought I would always be waiting for her, stuck to the ground.

Not anymore. I’m the one who’s up high now, looking down at the world spread out below me. It’s beyond beautiful. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. Really, one of the reasons Clara wanted to be here.

She had a list of places she wanted to go – well, to jump from. This place was at the top. “What better way is there to see Europe than from above?” she’d always said.

Now that I’m seeing it, I have to agree. I’d always listened to her dreamy monologues with skepticism, preferring the safety and comfort of the ground. “I don’t need to jump to get the adrenaline rush,” I’d tell her. “It’s not just that,” she’d say. “And it’s not just the view. It’s more than that.” She wouldn’t say how.

She’d just smile at me.

“Ready?” my mentor asks. I take a deep breath, trying to clear my mind, and nod. He makes me recite all the steps twice. I think of Clara, coming home after her first skydive. Her eyes were wide as if she were still falling. She’d told me about the moment before she jumped. When she thought that she couldn’t do it. The earth was so far away, and though she’d never been scared thinking about it, suddenly there it was, and she was terrified. But she jumped. And she kept on jumping.

She said the first time was the hardest, and that even her first BASE (Build, Antenna, Span, and Earth) jump, which was so much more dangerous, was easier.

Standing here now, I’m not so sure. The only thing left is for me to jump. Everyone’s waiting. This is far from my first time – it’s my 20th BASE jump already. But it’s

the most important one – the top of the list. This is the place where my sister always wanted to be. And the one place to which she never got.

She’d made it so far – all the way to the second place on her list. Our parents never knew, but I made her bring me along every time. I learned how to help with the jump, though mostly I just prayed to anyone who could help that my sister would survive.

There was no one who could help. I found that out on September 15th, five years ago. She crashed into the cliff when she pulled her parachute open. Telling my parents was the worst. They blamed me for keeping her secret. I blamed me, too. Living was difficult after that.

Then I had the idea. I was thinking of all the things Clara had said. “It’s the one thing that makes me feel truly alive,” she’d said to me, when I’d been threatening to tell our parents.

That’s exactly what I need, I thought. To feel truly alive.

So I set out to finish what she couldn’t. And now here I am, at the last one on the list, so scared of the fall, but also scared of the landing. The ending.

And I jump. Because that is what humans do. We are always falling. Falling towards the earth. Every time we make a mistake, every time we lose. But there’s another way of looking at it. Maybe the earth is rushing to meet us. All of our lives, rushing towards us and past us in a moment. It’s so human to think that. To think that I am the center of the universe.

But it’s even more than that, as Clara would say. We always fall, knowing we must hit the ground eventually.

And one day, it will end with us broken on the ground.

We will be defeated. And yet we still jump.

We jump because we can.

We jump because we are human. And death is only a part of that life. 

We always fall, knowing we must hit the ground eventually.

And one day, it will end with us broken on the ground.

ARTWORK BY JONSSON LIU

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INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

WILD IGNORANCE Emile Shen (@emileshen)

I

nto the Wild is the story of Christopher McCandless, as retold in Jon Krakauer’s 1996 non-fiction novel and the eponymous film adaptation directed by Sean Penn.

In it, a 23-year-old man decides to abandon mainstream society and all of its implications – jobs, relationships, money – in the pursuit of true happiness through a cross-country expedition of the great American wilderness.

It may seem like Chris McCandless had it made. He was a college graduate from a wealthy family with the opportunity to lead a secure, established life. As an 18-year-old possessing that same sense of curiosity that propelled him on his journey, I cannot see myself leaving everything and everybody I know behind to satisfy my penchant for knowing more. So, it confounds me as to why he would abandon his financial security, something I crave, for something as abstract as absolute happiness. Did he have a really severe case of #firstworldproblems, or was he justified? There are many opposing narratives of character motivation that now surround the enigma he has posthumously become, with ‘arrogant misanthrope’ and ‘optimistic wanderer’ being the predominant ones.

Sure, Christopher McCandless was a high honours graduate from Emory University. But that doesn’t make him anything beyond book smart. You have to be of considerable irrationality to give up all your possessions, burn your cash, and cut off all communication from the people who loved you. Right after he runs away from home, McCandless adopts the ridiculous name, Alex Supertramp. This new moniker gave him a means of separating himself from the life he led and the people he loved. Although I can’t empathize, I can at least recognize that McCandless was hunting for something to fill the spiritual vacancy that existed within him due to the materialistic world that he lived in.

This disillusionment stemmed largely from the expectations, lies, and values perpetuated by his parents, who were obsessed with sustaining the image of upper-class wealth. To escape from this empty shell of humanity, McCandless set out upon a journey that both makes and breaks him.

However, it was only because he had already achieved all his basic needs,

VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

which implicitly come from wealth, that McCandless was able to do this intense soul-searching. The psychologist Abraham Maslow claimed that a hierarchy of needs motivates our actions. From most fundamental to more complex, these are: physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, and finally, self-actualization. It is only after achieving the first four more basic needs that one can devote their lives to self-actualization and finding their true calling in life. Christopher’s McCandless pursuit is noble in theory, but his dwindling end hardly justifies his selfish means. The glorification of Christopher McCandless is inextricable from the glorification of his death, which is not warranted even by the protagonist himself, for it was

ARTWORK BY KANDICE BURYTA

only at the end of his journey and life that Chris realizes he was wrong to have left everyone behind. “Happiness only real when shared,” he writes in one of his last journal entries. He followed his heart ‘into the wild’, and it ended up killing him.

On the other hand, despite his distaste for the ‘sick’ society we lived in, McCandless was hardly antisocial. As he traveled across America, he made many friends along the way, from his time spent working in a grain factory in South Dakota to the hippie couple he meets in the Colorado Desert of California. He appreciates the company and assistance they provide, but was always one step ahead in ensuring that emotional attachment would not get in the way of his journey. This was especially the case when he meets and briefly lives with Russell Friz, an elderly widower. Friz becomes McCandless’s closest companion, even offering to adopt him. A lot can be revealed by McCandless’s departure letter to his elderly

friend. He tells Friz to embrace a similarly liberated lifestyle because “so many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one piece of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.” And why is this ‘adventurous spirit’ important? Because “you are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships.

God has placed it all around us.” These reflections by McCandless are as much a message to Friz as a reminder to himself, right before he embarks on the final leg of the grand tour of America to Alaska. When it gets down to the fundamental essence of McCandless, we discover that he ran away from home because he was hurt, not just blindly and selfishly looking for some abstract concept of happiness. Instead, he wanted to find something constant and stable in nature; something that wouldn’t let him down like the people in his life had. Nature could kill him, but it certainly couldn’t kill his spirits.

If nothing else can be said about his character, bravery is certainly not a trait to be discounted.

We all have the urge to run from our lives, but McCandless actually did it wholeheartedly. We can infer that this was due to some higher truth that he longed for, either due to his disillusionment from the life he had been leading, or the hurt he suffered from his parents. Although the book illustrates his life and demise over two years, the motivation that lead Chris to begin the journey never lessened in fervor, as it was rooted in coming of age experiences. It is that intensity and singularity of mindset that prompts him to leave in the first place, and this very same mindset is what prevents him from ever staying in one place too long, or being tied down with expectations for others.

Whichever narrative of the Supertramp/ McCandless saga we adhere to has more to do with our current outlook on life than what actually occurred during his voyage. And as much as we try to analyze the photographs, essays, and folklore that have come along with Chris McCandless, we will never truly know the exact reasoning for his fleeing.  11

CATHARSIS Trisha Philpotts (@BeingTrishM)

A

familiar wave of destruction tore through the halls, signalling that Larry was out on parole. It was his first night home after being incarcerated for seven months on assault charges that Donna has yet to forgive herself for. Between the sound of books sailing across the living room and plates crashing to the floor, I could hear a loud and repetitive exchange of insults, threats, apologies, and more insults.

My mother, Donna, and her boyfriend, Larry, fought so often and for so many years that a quiet night in our house was an irregularity. I almost admired Donna for her tenacity. Standing at 5'3", I could never understand where she stored all that rage. Larry, on the other hand, was a 6'1" ex-football player who had taken up women and alcohol after he got injured on the field.

Larry entered our lives four years ago, when I was twelve, just months after my father “went to be with God,” as Donna often told me and my sister. Back then, I feared Larry with every fibre of my being. He’d call me ‘sissy boy’ as he hit me across the head, demanding that I fetch him another beer. Donna said it was just his way of bonding, having grown up with only brothers. She always had a way of turning his vices into virtues.

I rolled onto my back and covered my face with a pillow, hoping to drown out the commotion below with my headphones. I was interrupted by a soft knock at my door, its delicate innocence contrasting the tension vibrating throughout the house.

Before I had a chance to answer, my door swung open.

“Jason?”

I slid the pillow from my face to find my eight year old sister Ainsley standing in the middle of my room.

“What is it, Ains?”

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

“Go back to bed, baby girl, there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ll protect you.”

A sense of assurance washed over me as I spoke the words. I wished Donna had spoken to me years ago. At 12, I had been tall, lanky, and uncoordinated, and Larry found humour in pushing me around whenever he got the chance. I would grab my skateboard and run whenever I heard his keys turning the lock, and spent my evenings with the neighbourhood kids until the streetlights came on. I held out hope that by then Larry would have passed out from

drinking one too many.

But that was then.

“You low life, good for nothing, worthless piece of shit!” Donna wailed.

Larry would often meet these insults with a few of his own, and sometimes he would add fists. Tonight, he was in no mood for talking.

CRASH. An antagonizing shriek accompanied the sound of shattering glass. Donna began to scream, choking on tears as she gasped for air.

“Donna, honey, look what you made me do…”

“Get away from me!”

“Donna... Donna… woman, I swear, put down the phone…”

I took my cellphone out of my pocket and handed it to Ainsley.

Enough was enough. If Donna wasn’t going to protect herself and her family, then I was going to do it myself.

“Do you remember how to dial 9-1-1, like Mom showed you?

Lock the door behind me when I leave. Okay?”

Adrenaline pumped through my veins as I descended the stairs.

Rounding the corner, I discovered my mother lying in a sea of blood, glass, and metal, which I recognized as the remains of our coffee table. She was rocking back and forth, clutching a knife in one hand and a cordless phone in the other. The floor creaked beneath me and Larry looked up.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he laughed.

I swung at him as hard as I could, and he staggered as fresh blood glistened along his lips. I smiled.

“Sissy boy thinks he’s all grown up now, huh?” he jeered, returning my grin.

He charged at me, but for the first time in four years I met his 6'1" with an even 6'0", I met his rage with a deeper hatred, and I met his cowardice with the universal human instinct to protect one’s family.

I lunged for the knife that had since fallen out of Donna’s loose grasp, and in one swift motion I ensured that I would never run from Larry again. 

An antagonizing shriek accompanied the sound of shattering glass.

12

ARTWORK BY JASON LAU (@jasonlaucker)

INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

ARTWORK BY SHANNON WU

S

he was born in the sky.

Or so they told her anyway. The story inspired a nostalgic effect within her parents, exciting her mother and even softening the stoic demeanour of her father. They were returning home from a medical conference in Glasgow, her mother just into her ninth month of pregnancy. Less than an hour after they were seated, her contractions began. And so, sometime into the transatlantic flight, someplace a good deal closer to Canada than Scotland, her mother gave birth.

Her father kept a miniature airplane, suspended in the air by a string like a horse in a merry-go-round, in commemoration of the event.

When she turned 13 years old, he gave it to her.

“So, you see, you were born to soar,” Her mother liked to end the retelling with a dramatic flourish. Those words, uttered with a coy smile, seemed so unnecessary and burdensome and confounding to take in. She wondered at times if it would bother her mother and father if she told them that she had no intention of soaring. Moreover, that she didn’t really understand what soaring was supposed to be.

She vaguely recalled an incident where she posed a question in a similar vein to her parents. Her query had received puzzled looks and

AIRBORNE Anna Goshua

a chuckle from her father. Placing a hand on her shoulder, he had told her: “There’s nothing to say. You’ll know, my darling.”

That was how the discussion ended: long before it even began.  “You play it too safe,” Alessandra liked to tell her. This particular time, it was regarding her hesitation at the prospect of a summer expedition to the Galapagos Islands.

“I might consider it, but I don’t know that I’d be comfortable with it. I’d rather do something else,” was her exasperated response.

The two had met on Move-in Day and had developed a reliable if occasionally tumultuous friendship. Alessandra’s personality and ambitions coiled into a supercharged knot of energy that kept her at the forefront of every initiative she chose to partake in. It was difficult to name a single characteristic that made her stand out, yet stand out she did. In comparison to Alessandra, she often felt diminutive.

Particularly at times like this.

“Like what?” Alessandra was saying in frustration. “Do you ever make any decisions or do you have a gear stuck in autopilot mode?”

The comment made her stare.

“Most planes are flown on autopilot. That doesn’t mean that the pilot is incapable of decisions,” She replied, doing her best to moderate her tone. They lapsed into silence. She glanced at Alessandra, feeling more than a bit discomfited. Autopilot. It was a be-

VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

nign word and yet, within its seemingly harmless scope, it contained a condemnation of her lifestyle and choices. She frowned, troubled.

And wouldn’t her parents have echoed a similar sentiment with utter conviction? Withholding a sigh, she closed her eyes. The familiar pressure was building at her temple and her shoulder blades were tight, as if held in an iron grip.

A crash broke the silence. She shot straight out of bed, looking around the room for the source of the noise. Stunned, she saw that the ornament her father had given her had toppled from her nightstand. Kneeling down, she discovered that the string suspending the airplane had snapped.

“Did it break? Oh gosh,” murmured Alessandra. “You could ask John to fix it, it’d be easy for him.”

“I suppose,” She answered, cradling the small silver jet in her hands for the first time in years. The compact weight felt reassuring in her hands. She stood and placed it carefully on her nightstand, pointing the jet’s nose toward her own bed.

“It looks defeated,” Alessandra said.

“It looks ready to take off,” She responded, appreciating its sleek form far more now that it occupied a definitive position in her space, rather than dangling mindlessly in its airborne state. “I think I’ll keep it just as it is.”

She lay back down with a small smile on her face. 

13

FROM HERE TO THERE Yara Farran

I

was born from calamity, from crashing waters and prickly shores—from the July sun that was a permanent fixture in the sky and a turbulent wind that always carried bodies west.

And it swept me away, too.

Growing up, I didn’t think about the wind much. As far as I was concerned, the wind was just the force that took me from there to here, from here to there. These two places were interchangeable – perhaps the same – even if they existed on opposite sides of the world and coloured conversations in distinct shades. There was red, and here bore a blue of innocence. Here was gray and there was a stunning shade of violet that bled through memories of family dinners, afternoons by the ocean, and laughter that lit the sky like fireworks.

Nostalgia is a twisted thing. And the wind, after all, is nature’s way of keeping life in motion. Scientifically speaking, staying in one place for too long signals the process of death.

And so we left.

There was no trepidation. No second guessing. No one wondered how their faces would look in different mirrors; it was all just a reflection of light, anyway. There became here, and everything was holy again. Amen.

Until, however, I saw the wind rustle the hairs on dandelion heads, and felt it play with the hair on the back of my neck.

There is nothing natural about a wind that is coaxed by gun fire, militia men and destruction. Those days, the sea wept, recoiling from the shores it called home.

Memory is a twisted thing, and even if the memories are not yours to claim, you still adopt them as a means of constructing the past – of making sense of senseless things like time and place.

There is here. Here is there. I am in between, both red and blue.

to bend and break and fall prey to subjectivity.

At the end of the day, it is all relative: the way you speak, the way you style your hair, the way you claim memories and reconcile the past with the present. There, I am the child who was too young to understand the warring world around her, recklessly eating pistachios with the hard shells still intact.

Here, I understood too much, continuously thinking and reshaping the words that are spoken and the feelings omitted from daily conversation. “Amen,” I say, realizing that there is a privilege to confusion – to being a fish out of water with the option of one day, learning how to swim.

There is here. Here is there. I am in between, both red and blue.

The wind, I’ve realized, never stops blowing: it carries, it displaces, and it stops you from accepting stagnancy. The dandelions’ hairs will always shake with vigour, and maybe that’s what must be done to keep them dancing. Essentially, the wind carries dandelion seeds in its arms, scattering them in different fields with the goal of letting more dandelions bloom.

There is here. Here is there. I am in between, both red and blue.

Then again, don’t red and blue make the most stunning violet? 

Memory is a twisted thing.

Soon, I began to notice the scales on my back and the fractures in my speech.

Sentences did not flow with much as ease as they used to. The wings that developed during my childhood quickly transformed into graceless fins – now, I am a fish out of water in my own bathtub, and now is when I regret never learning how to swim.

The bathroom mirror changed too. No longer was it an object of reflection, but of construction. I grew up embracing the universality of light, only to learn that it was able

ARTWORK BY YOSEIF HADDAD

14

INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

ARTWORK BY FRANCO SIMÕES

REVERENCE FOR LIFE Salma El-Zamel

G

erman sociologist Max Weber explains in his book, Politics As a Vocation, that a state is built on the monopolization of legitimate physical violence within a common territory. I cannot argue with that. Politics is power and violence plays a big role in that. This said, what

ing to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), the number of innocent civilian deaths has been increasing during the Obama Administration. The TBIJ claims that in 2012, 2593–3378 people were reported killed in the 350 US drone strikes in Pakistan, of whom 475–885 were civilians and

Most armies do not train soldiers on how to act justly and ethically; they train them to blindly obey orders.

I like about Weber is that he philosophically connects ethics to the usage of political violence. He emphasizes that respect for a human’s dignity is the moralistic key player in war. But violence is not always used for the sake of mere territory protection. It can be more complex and self-interested than that. I would argue that politics is a game of hegemony – it became a constant case of who can exert cultural, economic, and political influence over others.

Our world is certainly witnessing the peak of weapons engineering. What better way for states to exert power over one another, other than to create new, dominant weaponry? One weapon that has been occupying headlines in recent years is the drone: an unmanned aerial vehicle, controlled remotely. Drones have been operated in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries where the US Intelligence Services declared terrorism imminent. Though number of causalities varies from one source to the other, accordVOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

176 were children. Drones have become a symbol of power, and so far 50 countries have jumped on the wagon (though a majority of them have not yet used drones in warfare).

We are training soldiers to manipulate a machine from behind screens, directing it to kill people with little to no ability to defend themselves. Journalist Eduardo Galeano artistically describes drones as “the perfect warriors” because “they kill without

we are telling soldiers that it’s acceptable to cause incredible damage from miles away with the click of a button.

Ex-drone operator Brandon Bryant made it clear on multiple occasions – including during interviews on Democracy Now! or the documentary Drone Wars – that these attacks are carried out as a result of the CIA’s definition of a terrorist, rather than as the result of clear evidence. The problem is that unfortunately most armies do not train soldiers on how to act justly and ethically; they train them to blindly obey orders.

World powers are currently manipulating drone attacks against various countries in the name of “protecting national security.” Doing so makes it even harder to define whether these attacks fall under acts of war, acts of terrorism, or acts of defense. It requires a cunning mental dexterity to mask the abuse of human rights under the guise of war to legitimize government-sanctioned violence. Our governments are creating soldiers who are losing respect for humans’ lives. German theologian Albert Schweitzer once said, “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.” Therefore, the life of a soldier

Respect and value for a human’s life should be attached to all human beings. remorse, obey without kidding around, and they never reveal the names of their masters.” I would like us to question the legitimacy of such violence. A war driven by drones is neither just nor humane. With drone technology becoming normalized,

from some first world country should not be worth more than the life of child, woman or man living in a third world country. Respect and value for a human’s life should be attached to all human beings, only then might we glimpse a hopeful peace.  15

A

THE WIRES

fter sunset the temperature dipped below freezing, and the wind picked up to hammer on the walls of the little shed on the beach Orville sighed and shook out his newspaper, huddling into the thick wool blanket around his shoulders. “Archdeacon has written another column,” he said.

Wilbur didn’t look up from the notebook he was writing in.

“He still doesn’t believe us. He says the French engines are better, and they’ll be the first.”

“Power’s not the problem,” muttered Wilbur.

“I know.”

The wind gusted over sand that glowed blue in the moonlight.

This was Kitty Hawk, a sandy dune on a spit of land jutting out from the North Carolinian coast. Barren and isolated, it was the perfect place for the brothers to test their flying machines, but comforts were scarce. Their camp was just a sturdy hangar built to protect their precious Wright Flyer, and the cramped shed they slept in.

In the shed, a small boiler popped and hissed, struggling against the cold that wormed its way in through the walls. Wilbur’s pen scratched across his notebook, furiously working to tame equations of lift, thrust, and drag.

“What went wrong today?” Orville asked.

“Operator error.”

“Hm,” Orville scanned his paper. Reports from Manchuria, with a blurred picture of Japanese troops lined up along a trench wall.

Artillery shells sliced through the sky and exploded in the mud with bone-shaking explosions. “But with, say, ten percent more thrust could you have pushed through the stall?”

“The power is ample.” Wilbur spoke quietly, but with an edge.

“I made a trifling error, Orville. Pilot control is the key to the flying problem.”

Orville considered a retort, but thought better. They’d had this discussion before and he knew his brother was right. Instead he turned his attention to the stack of mail on the table beside him, where a letter with a government seal grabbed his attention. “Wilbur,” he said. “Look.”

“Department of Defense.” His brother leaned over to check the seal. “Open it.”

With shaking hands, Orville sliced open the envelope and scanned the letter inside. “Damn it,” he said.

Wilbur grabbed the letter and looked it over. “‘Dubious utility… early in development… no interest at this time.’” He shook his head.

“Boneheads.”

“What now?” asked Orville. They needed funding to develop

more sophisticated machines, and the military was their best hope. Inventing human flight was an expensive hobby.

Wilbur shrugged and tossed the letter aside. “We wait. They’ll come around.” He nodded towards Wilbur’s newspaper, and the battles it reported on. “War will force them to the air.”

Orville frowned. “Does it have to be the military, though? What about the French?”

Wilbur shook his head. “We’ll find funding here.”

“What about corporations?”

“Only the military has the money we require.”

Orville swallowed his words again, turned back to his paper. The rest of the mail lay forgotten on the table.

This article said the Japanese were winning. A picture of a snowy hill they had captured, scarred by deep artillery craters, was presented as evidence. 20 000 men had fallen to take it, either bitten by bullets, smashed by explosives, or crippled by disease.

The brothers’ humble camp, defiant in the offshore wind, seemed cozy right now. Wilbur had turned back to his notepad and equations. “Control is key,” he murmured, lost to the world.

Orville flipped through his paper, taking in the news of the world.

He’d always been fascinated by newspapers, and considered the technology behind their manufacture quite miraculous. After building his own printing press he’d dropped out of high school to start his own publishing business. But beyond the beautiful presses themselves, all interwoven ink and wire and copper, Orville liked to think about the telegraph wires that brought the papers news, those wires radiating out like sunbeams, diving under oceans and through forests. He would imagine saying a word at his house in Dayton, picture it morphing into a rhythmic pulse of electricity before shooting across the world at the speed of light, racing through the wires to Chicago and Hong Kong and Moscow and a thousand other cities.

How that pulse could travel uninterrupted around the globe a dozen times, surfing the fragile ribbons that linked everyone together.

Hard to believe that a few decades ago none of it existed. It was all moving so fast, and there was Wilbur at the front, pushing the throttle forward.

At the other end of the wire men killed each other with guns and bombs, while at Kitty Hawk Orville felt sleep press down on his eyelids.

The pencil was fused to Wilbur’s hand, and his notebook a black maze of scribbles. He whispered as he worked.

“The power is ample,” he said. “Control is key.” 

Stephen Clare

The wind gusted over sand that glowed blue in the moonlight.

The rest of the mail lay forgotten on the table.

16

INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

FALL FLIGHT & #DISNEYWISDOM Lea Green

O

h, fall. It’s a time of the year that can go either way. Summer is one of those seasons that you just know will be fantastic. The weather is beautiful, school is out, and everyone feels relaxed and is looking to share their exuberant youth with others. It all adds up to a recipe for good times. Fall, on the other hand, is a little more iffy. The weather is still reasonably nice for the most part, and the changing colors of the trees are truly a feast for the eyes. But the stress of school starts to set in as you are forced to navigate the turbulent waters of midterms. By the end of October, you are already one existential crisis in because questions about what exactly you are doing with your life inevitably arise during those Red Bull-filled, tear-inducing cram nights. Then you realize that all you have to look forward to is a long, cold winter and six more months of physics lectures that you will keep attending, in spite of their uselessness, because the prof is good looking. On top of everything else, there’s a good chance that your personal life is falling apart. The relationship you so carefully cultivated in the summer with that special someone is just not working thanks to long distances and an ever-growing pile of more pressing preoccupations. How do you deal with the flight of the seasons, your sanity, and your lover? I will refer you to one of society’s most valuable arsenals of knowledge: Disney movies. That’s right. Lessons like “Don’t take food from strangers” (shout-out to Snow White) and “Lying just does not lead to good things” (holla at Pinocchio) could easily be the foundation of my understanding as far as street smarts and morality go. Here’s what not to do according to Disney when trying to cope with the phenomenon I will dub Fall Flight or F2 for short.

1

In Beauty and the Beast, Belle is in a situation that is pretty similar to what we have to get through when experiencing F2. She is separated from her dad while co-existing with a temperamental and straight up scary monster (a.k.a. calculus amiright?), and the future seems pretty solitary and bleak. Belle finds comfort in talking to the enchanted objects that reside within the castle. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a Disney movie, and commonplace items, like clocks and candlesticks, aren’t a good substitute for psychiatrists.

Lesson to be learned: talk to people, not inanimate things.

2

When Simba witnesses the death of Mufasa in The Lion King, he is quite understandably devastated, mostly because he feels responsible for the tragedy that ensued. These two factors combined leave his mental health in a precarious state.

The only thing he knew how to do was run away. Though it all worked out in the end, a whole bunch of drama could have been avoided had he just stayed and told his version of the story.

Lesson to be learned: Don’t wait till the end of a musical sequence showcasing the masterpieces that are “Hakuna Matata” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” to address your feelings.

3

In Frozen, Elsa does not find herself in a particularly enviable position.

She feels guilty due to the fact that she almost caused the death of her sister, stressed because of the coronation, and lonely since she can’t share one of the most fundamental parts of her being with anyone else. Like Simba, she decides to run away when it all gets to be a little too much. This choice proved to be a bad one. As a result, Elsa almost lost her kingdom and the people that she cared most about.

Lesson to be learned: Isolating yourself is not a good idea. Be honest with yourself and know that life is so much better when you let things go. Side Bar: building a giant ice castle helps when processing how real the struggle is.

That is all I have. When in doubt about how to overcome the perils of F2, consult Disney movies, and don’t forget that eventually, Fall itself will fly away, and we’ll be free once again to revel in the sweetness of Summer.  ARTWORK BY SAMANTHA OSTAPCHUK

17

Y A D BAD Olivia Fasullo

ARTWORK BY ANGELA MA

S

ometimes days feel destined to be bad.

I slept through my alarm. Forced to rush around my apartment, I try to look put together with only 15 minutes to get ready. Where are my glasses? Yesterday, this bedroom was organized chaos. Now it’s just chaos.

I’m already 15 minutes late to work. Fuck it, I don’t need to see clearly.

Scrambling out the door, I have two options as I check the time: I can run to the subway and risk missing it, making me even later, or I can spend 15 dollars I don’t have on a cab.

I’m 20 minutes late. Fuck it, I don’t need lunch today.

My twenty dollar cab ride turns into an 80 dollar cab ride when traffic halts as Splendid Lad, one of New York City’s finest superheroes, battles this week’s villain, Aquabad. The cab driver gives me a sort of ‘bad luck, bud’ look but refuses to stop the meter as we sit in standstill traffic for an hour.

I guess I don’t need lunch for the rest of the month.

As I get to the subway station, I find out that all the subways have been cancelled. Aquabad has outdone himself and flooded all the tunnels.

Great.

By now, I’m two and a half hours late and my cellphone has been buzzing for the last hour, my boss calling in 10 minute intervals.

My only option now is to take the over-expensive and totally inefficient monorail. Another 15 dollars later I find myself uncomfortably seated.

As we head over the Hudson River, the monorail suddenly stops and the lights flicker. An emergency message comes over the speakers: “THIS IS AN AUTOMATIC MESSAGE. THERE HAS BEEN A DISTRUBANCE ON THE TRACKS. THE MONORAIL IS TEMPORAILY OUT OF SERVICE. PLEASE REMAIN CALM.” The car jerks forward, then backward. I look out the window to see Marvelling Maiden pull at the front of the monorail car. I look out the back window and see Aquabad’s sidekick, Wild Water Works, pulling at the back monorail car. Of course they would decide to play tug-of-war with my monorail train this morning. I’d be more afraid for my life, if I wasn’t so annoyed.

I’m now three hours late.

18

I always thought that the middle car of the monorail was the safest. However, it seems that when two super humans pull at both ends of a train, the middle is bound to tear. Clinging to my seat, the car groans and shakes as it is torn in two.

Then Wild Water Works gets bored of using my last form of transportation as a toy and creates a torrential rainstorm, disappearing amongst the thunder and lightning.

Four hours late to work, I finally arrive at my small office. Soaked to the bone, my shoes squeak with each step I take.

“Late again Taylor?”

“Mhm.” “Well, Mr. Sanders is on line one, asking for you. He’s claiming that Aquabad flooded his basement.”

I spend the next two hours explaining to an angry Mr. Sanders, who refuses to see why the Meta-Human Interference Department of New Hall Insurance refuses to acknowledge his claim, that this is the third time this year “Aquabad” has allegedly “flooded” his basement.

Countless real claims come in as well, as people start to count up the damages to their property caused by today’s heroics. Since I was late, I get stuck finishing paperwork after hours.

As I’m finishing up, I hear shuffling in the office beside mine.

I go to investigate, like a dumbass.

My only weapon being a large coffee mug clutched tightly in my hand, I open the office door slowly.

The office is dark as I take a step in. Suddenly, glowing green hands come out from behind me.

“Get away villain!” a voice cries.

I’m thrown to the ground as the lights are turned on.

“Taylor?” I turn to see Splendid Lad, costume-clad in my quirky co-worker’s office.

Wait a second.

“Will?”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I feel weird... tingly,” I feel my head, “and warm.”

“Oh dear, I think I blasted you too hard.”

“Is that bad?”

“Well,” Will grimaces, “There may be some side effects…”

Some days feel destined to be bad.  INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

ď Ž Soar Matthew Jordan & David Yun Soar above flights of higher beings When airborne the freedom permeates my Fingertips.

For it cannot exist without some other powers, some other beings, some other visions Once complete this fleeting instant is transcendent, effervescent, and infallibly ephemeral.

Float higher.

Soar farther.

Live higher.

Fly. Once I failed yet now I fail faster These visions of soft shoes atop hard, pointy, pointless, poignant floors I fly, I fly, we crash into flight Vertically challenged In another time we could have been so tactful yet now we are but wandering spirits alone within Ourselves Once Michael flu, once Michael flew Circles are spheres crammed into two loving dimensions Soon they will fly Soon they will fail because soon everyone must Become airborne. ď Ž This poem was written collaboratively and spontaneously.

The authors alternated saying one word at a time, with only the theme of Flight in mind.

artwork by Yoseif Haddad

VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

19

ARTWORK BY FRANCO SIMÕES

OUT OF THE NEST...

Asha Behdinan

And no clue where we’re going.

A

s kids, we’re often in awe of the world before us. Bright and glittering, promising fun and adventure, yet somehow always hopelessly out of reach.

We marvel at the idea that one day we’ll be able to join that world and bask in the many perks it offers: ice cream for breakfast, no set bed-time, and nobody forcing you to eat your veggies before dessert. But, as any child who has been lost in a department store can tell you, the world can also seem big and scary. So, for now, we accept (somewhat begrudgingly) that we’re not ready to jump in headfirst just yet, and allow ourselves to be tucked under our parents’ wing, waiting.

The years go by, each one bringing with it new freedoms and more adventures as we inch closer to our prize. For those of us with more restrictive parents, these adolescent years are spent frustratingly negotiating curfews, arguing over parties, and, of course, trying to prove we’re all grown up.

Yet, now it is clear to me that being a grown-up is over-rated. The world that I, and so many others, spent our youths reaching for exists only from the outside. In our quest for independence, we traded frivolity for responsibility, and silliness for practicality, arguably leaving us less free than when we started.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Rewind a few years and we find ourselves finishing up our last year of high school, eager for the university experience that promises to be the best four years of our lives. But along with that anticipation comes the stress of making the largest decision we’ve made to date: what am I going to do next year? Science or journalism?

McMaster or Western? Should I take a year to work or travel? For many of us, the four

years of high school simply do not lead us to discover exactly what we want to do for the rest of our lives. It certainly didn’t for me.

In fact, it only left me with more questions, and with a curious nostalgia for the days where my biggest decision was whether to have Lucky Charms or Frosted Flakes for breakfast.

And the decisions don’t stop there.

Soon, we’re confronted with choices about courses, volunteering, summer plans, and as time goes on, we become increasingly concerned about preparing for our futures while wondering where our childhood has gone.

Of course this certainly does not hold true for everyone, and I’m not suggesting that we should all shirk the responsibilities we face as we journey on through our university experience. I’m simply proposing we do just that: experience it. In four short years we are presented with countless opportunities for personal growth and development, as well as the chance to figure out what you truly want to do.

But there is no time stamp on this process – the world will still be there when we’re ready to fully enter it.

Yet despite the newfound responsibilities that come with taking the final steps into the rest of our lives, there is no paucity of excitement and new discoveries that are waiting. Initially all of this may seem overwhelming, especially for those of us (myself included) who are on the brink of this post-undergrad transition. The uncertainty, desire to succeed, and seemingly endless list of things to do can seem all-consuming at times. But this doesn’t mean we can’t still be in touch with our creative and imaginative side, learn through making mistakes, and do things “just for fun.” I may soon be a real grown-up, but I shall try my hardest to never grow up. n

Not ready to jump in headfirst just yet, we allow ourselves to be tucked under our parents’ wing, waiting.

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INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

ARTWORK BY LAUREN GORFINKEL

TAKING OFF

I

n 1929, Amelia Earhart, along with 98 other female flyers, helped pilot a North American organization called the Ninety-Nines. Her goal was to get women in the air, to fly “for the fun of it.”

My grandmother, if you had asked her in her younger years, would not have blinked twice at their mentioning. Most likely, she would have given you a “that’s nice, dear” and then put the kettle on for tea. However, when my grandfather learned how to fly, he needed a copilot. One cliché later, my grandmother was saddled up and shoved in a two-person plane along with a certified teacher. After the first flight, her teacher marched over to my grandfather, presented him with his now shaking, terrified wife, and pronounced: “She will never be a pilot.”

Jaslyn English

LOSING TOUCH

W

hen we are young, we spend so much time worrying about finding ourselves that we forget about the point in time when that process will be reversed. What we will do when our carefully coiffed and constructed sense of self begins to fade?

I am lucky enough to have had various role models in the process of constructing my own ideas of who I am. My grandmother is one of these people. In the past few years, however, she has faced challenges from the inside-out, disrupting the calm and steady confidence I had seen her exude throughout

We spend so much time worrying about finding ourselves...

Years later, my grandmother, after having flown competitions from one side of the globe to the other, becoming a Ninety-Nines spokeswoman, and delivering medical supplies via air to remote locations in Africa, amongst other accomplishments, would tell a reporter that that trembling moment was the moment she decided to fly.

I could spend the rest of the article discussing how when she was flying over Saudi Arabia and was flagged down, her and her copilot Adele looked for something to cover their faces in order to avoid offending the traditionalist country. Luckily for them, they never had to land the plane, for all they found to cover their faces were a pair of silk panties.

I could also write about how she is quite the grandmother.

That she taught me how to be a lady while being a feminist, two thoughts not always so easily paired, rarely done with such elegance. To me, she was an ordinary grandmother – but recently I have realized that my definition of ‘ordinary’ may be slightly skewed. She can host, golf, fly, bake, sail; basically one killer juggling act away from being a one-woman show.

But basically what I want to say I can sum up in a few short sentences. Just as necessity is the mother of invention, it could be said that boldness does the same for brilliance. Anyone can step into a plane and pretend to be a pilot, but few can fix an engine malfunction midflight and step onto the tarmac with gloves unwrinkled and smiles a-blazing. The point of this article is neither to brag about how I have an amazing grandmother (though I do) nor to gloat over my shining gene pool (though it is quite nice, wouldn’t you say?). If this piece of writing did have a point other than to marvel at the brilliance of an otherwise ordinary woman, I would say what she would say: that people are going to think you’re crazy, and they might be right, but is that really a good reason to not do something?  VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

my childhood. Since my grandmother flew planes, it was easy to joke about whether she was down to earth. Recently, however, the joke has turned cruelly ironic; having two feet on the ground seems to mean something completely different.

If you looked at an MRI of my grandmother’s brain, there are visible holes; gaps in her knowledge and voids emptying a formerly crammed mind. My own cannot fathom a time in my life where my worry is not remembering statistical equations but how on earth I am supposed to maneuver the food on my plate into my mouth.

It is the oddest feeling watching someone search their brain for a memory, especially when they had it so little time ago. Watching a frail lady who faintly resembles your grandmother struggle to find an answer to a mere “how are you today” is as baffling as it is heartbreaking. This feeling is equated only by watching your loved ones come to the same conclusion; that someone in your family is irreversibly broken and, as much as you may try, there is no crazy glue strong enough to hold together a human being.

I find it interesting that, when our dear older generations go the way the way they do, we rely on the very thing that has failed them. My memory weaves a golden thread of past tea parties and cottage visits into an ever-clouded vision of the women I visit less regularly than I should. Our legacy depends on our ability to reach people, so that when our neurons can no longer connect to each other, our loved ones are willing to fill in the dots for us. The impermanence of identity is rectified not by the recollections we ourselves hold dear, but by being architects of memories for those around us.

So, maybe that’s the point. Watching someone fade is a chance to take stock, gather up the aspects of them you hold most dear, and, with that, take off into the world until, one day, you may have the chance to do the same for someone else.  21

My name is Vannessa Barnier, and I always have an eye behind the lens of my 35mm film camera.

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INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

Over the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of my time in airports and airplanes.

These photos depict the pre and peri of flight.

Vannessa’s zine series: vannessassennav.bigcartel.com More of Vannessa’s photography: flickr.com/vannessassennav vannessabarnier.tumblr.com

VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

23

FINDERS, Kayla Esser

T

he first time, I was six years old, wandering through the gift shop at the Ontario Science Centre. My brothers were perusing the spy kit’s X-ray vision goggles in an attempt to see into other boxes, and my parents lingered at the exit. I was standing next to a low table, running my hands through a sea of crystals. Jagged amethyst, polished jade, tiger’s eye that shimmered in the fluorescent light. I knew my parents wouldn’t want me to waste my money on rocks, but I couldn’t tear myself away. Taking a quick glance around the room, I slipped my hand onto the table, grabbed the nearest stone, and tucked it up my sleeve.

As soon as I was home and safely shut in my room, I pulled the rock out to inspect it. Somehow, in the dim light of my chandelier, it wasn’t as large or magnificent as it had appeared in the shop. I placed it on the metal base of my lamp, where it stayed for a few years, eyeing me like a challenge, until I finally threw it out.

That seemed like the swift end of my rebellious shoplifting career. And it was, until the summer after grade 11, when I went on an French immersion program in rural Quebec. The town we boarded in was so small that it had only one main street with shops; the rest of our entertainment came from the soccer field and the large mountain that bordered the university. One Saturday, I was in the process of checking out at the local drugstore with some friends when a visibly irate manager came running up to the cashier. She waved a security camera printout under my nose and fired a series of questions at me in a rapid French that I couldn’t catch. However, I recognized the blonde girl in the picture, caught clutching a bottle of nail polish in a closed fist, as the girl standing behind me in line. I glanced at her, not knowing what to say, and listened as she denied over and over again in English having taken anything from the store. The manager eventually gave up, and we fled, walking back up the mountain to the uni-

versity in silence. I was in awe. Coming from such a sheltered upbringing, I’d never seen someone do anything seriously illegal, much less almost get caught for it.

But as the week went on, the store didn’t call the university, and the girl wasn’t caught. In fact, she went on to lift a pair of

into dressing rooms, into bags, into the palm of a hand. Something about her nonchalant demeanor caught my attention. I was so entranced by the prospect of freedom – freedom to do whatever I wanted during that hot, sweltering summer – that I believed her.

The curiosity she inspired in me was the only reason I dared return to that long-forgotten day at the Ontario Science Centre.

After the summer ended, I returned to Toronto for my final year of high school. I don’t remember if it was the frustration of being trapped in that tiny, confined environment for another year, or the urge to try something risky, or simply boredom. But grade 12 was the year I decided to become good at shoplifting.

Coming from such a sheltered upbringing, I’d never seen someone do anything seriously illegal, much less almost get caught for it.

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earrings from the local Simon’s, and in conversations with her I discovered that this was actually a frequent habit of hers. With the ease of a teenage flower child, she described the simplicity of sneaking things

INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

KEEPERS It started small. Taking cover in the dressing room, I brought in enough items to conceal the thing I wanted, pulled off the tags, and stashed it in the bottom of my bag.

I stuck to inexpensive things, simple things, like headbands and t-shirts. I would always leave the store breathless, forcing my chin up as if nothing could faze me, smiling graciously to the sales ladies as they thanked me for visiting, and “wouldn’t I please come again”. Delirious with fear, I could feel my heart beating against my ribcage as I waited for alarms to sound and security to swarm.

But nothing ever happened.

It dawned on me slowly that those signs threatening arrest and fines were simply that: threats. That the world wasn’t capable of shadowing my every move, that in the grand scheme of life, my deviancy was negligible at best, and that once I un-

artwork by Diana Marginean

VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

derstood all that, I was free.

With freedom came a sense of unstoppable recklessness. I lifted tops from expensive stores, bottles of perfume from the checkout area, and entire sets of lingerie from Victoria’s Secret. If items from Urban or Brandy were too expensive, I’d swap the price tags with sale items and watch as the cashier unwittingly gave me a five-finger discount. In one particularly heightened and unthinking moment, I palmed a $100 crystal ring from a store with obvious cameras and then continued browsing with my friends.

It got to the point where I was no longer taking because I wanted to, but simply because I could. It wasn’t kleptomania – I had no problem with impulse control – nor was I stealing items that were of no personal benefit. But I can also safely say that I never truly needed to steal any of that merchandise.

If I had to guess, I’d say I stole over a couple thousand dollars’ worth of commercial goods. I never had the opportunity to figure out whether or not that was an extreme number, since I kept it as a secret to myself. I became afraid to even bring up the idea of shoplifting because I believed people would somehow know I was guilty.

At school, I was on the honour roll.

Community service was my full time extracurricular, and I had a strong circle of friends. I was in the top of my class, but I failed at failing. Shoplifting was something I had that proved there was more to life than obedient introversion. I desperately wanted people to know I was defiant, that I wasn’t as mindless as the other kids in my classes, but deep down, I couldn’t bear to shatter my reputation as the nice girl.

Recently, I’ve been trying to accumu-

. Shoplifting was something I had that proved there was more to life than obedient introversion. late less stuff in general, especially things made by unethical companies, and in the process I’ve started stealing less and less.

I’ve been trying to reconcile my desire to swaddle myself in high fashion with the reality of labour conditions for textile workers. I could look back in hindsight and find crude justifications for what I stole. I could tell you that it was a challenge, an adrenaline rush.

That I believed things should be free, or at least that I should be free to take them. To this day, I know that none of those are acceptable excuses.

To shoplift is to place your selfish interests above those of everyone around you, and it has dawned on me that I don’t want to be that kind of person anymore. I’m still conflicted, because I don’t feel as guilty as I’d like to, but thankfully I recognized how damaging my habits could become before they ever had a chance to escalate. And that, it turns out, was the real and not-soswift end of my shoplifting career. 

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Christine Wang

S

ome nights the numbers keep me awake. There are 64 days until I turn 18, 2352 dollars left on my meal plan, and there are 83 bricks painted white on the wall (not including the ones cut off by corners or the generic blue-carpet floor). I am 4306 kilometers from home.

Some days, I’m not entirely sure why I left in the first place.

Home was a place that always made me feel small in a good way. On the shorelines, in the nooks between the evergreen forests and Cascade Mountains, there would sometimes hang a mist of salty ocean spray. The real kind, not like the stuff you get from Febreze cans. The coffee stores in my neighbourhood were too overpriced for the locals to enjoy, and catered instead to wide-eyed hipsters in man-capris who came in on the 99. My little brother is just starting high school, reaching the tender age where he’s a grump all the time as opposed to only on weekday mornings. My best friend always insists on cranking up the country music, even though she still believes that rednecks are a skin condition. And my mom is just beginning to have those thin, subtle lines at the corners of her eyes that radiate like penciled sunbeams whenever she laughs at something I said that wasn’t funny.

It was as if the vibrant pages of a book I was fully submerged in was suddenly slammed shut, and I was tossed into a blank page. I spent the first week being lost, figuratively and literally. The kilometers between Hamilton and Vancouver did not feel like open space, but as solid and impenetrable as the ridiculous igloo chunks that comprise walls of this room.

But then it occurred to me I was not the only one who had been uprooted and tossed into the unknown. Everyone around me has left home to some extent in order to be here, everyone who goes to university anywhere, in fact. Furthermore, it is a sentiment that extends way and far beyond that of university students, one that has prevailed throughout every page of human history. Scientists and archaeologists say that all the world’s unique civilizations began with a mass migration off the continent of Africa. Wars are comprised of those who travel to alien lands in the name of a cause that may or may not be worthy of the blood displaced. And before the princess is saved or the evil debased, all of our favorite heroes in the great stories of our childhoods must first say goodbye.

We, collectively, leave behind sturdy walls and ceilings, places where food sources are secure and the people trustworthy and loving, in order to seek lands beyond the horizon that only carry a disconcerting darkness in our minds. It is a pattern of behavior that transcends the logic of survival first, Maslow’s hierarchy of fundamental needs.

I cannot speak for all the lonely fools who have willingly flew off into unfamiliarity. But I will say that for me, it might have had something to do with that taste in my throat at the end of grade 12. Lying on my Disney bed sheets staring at the same arrangement of faint, plastic stars on the ceiling that has been there since fifth grade, I 26

ARTWORK BY LINDA JOYCE OTT www.lindajoyceott.com www.optimismofcolor.com

realized that as beautiful as this city was, I could not stay. Because staying would imply a belief that there is not much better out there, a perspective that I knew only grows more prominent with age.

Chest spiraling into a twisting panic over the fact that I had one month left to decide the whereabouts of my next four years, I sat up and threw a pillow at the door. The next morning I tripped over the pillow on my way out, and did what one does when one chooses to come to McMaster University.

I have begun to believe that leaving home is not necessarily as irrational as it seems. (Although throwing pillows at doors after making critical decisions might be). Perhaps it’s just another way we try to distinguish ourselves from natures mindless, impulsive sprawl. When we leave home, we place our trust and priorities on a cause greater than ourselves. It means that beyond food, shelter, and procreation, we also care to concern ourselves with the creation of new cultures from the clash of the old, with refining our ideas of how tall a mountain can be or why a circle is round; to be educated innovatively, so that we can address the real monsters looming above us, because the one’s in our closets back home are nothing but jackets and shoes.

It’s not so much a desire to leave here as much as a need to be elsewhere.

So when the need to hear a certain person’s voice leaves a stale ache under your chest, when all the Rasta pastas in the world cannot satisfy your hunger for warm, laughter-filled dinners in small

I was not the only one who had been uprooted and tossed into the unknown. kitchens, and the icy bricks next to you are starting to drive you off the wall, try to remember that home is not a building on a street or a point on a map, but rather an idea. Home is wherever we need to be to accomplish whatever it is that will make our time here worthwhile, any place that offers fresh opportunities to enrich our contribution. Omnipresent, home may be found in a new friend’s old joke, that thing you need to be good at which you’re not, or the thumping bass of a heartbeat that accelerates even when the movie isn’t scary. Home is the person you wish to become, and sometimes the physical setting must blur in order for us to find that clarity.  INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

A Magnificent Ruin I

Rachel Liu

t is winter in the city and I don’t know whether to fight or flee. The landlord won’t let us turn up the heat, so we layer up and venture outside to the rat-trap-tapping of our boots on the pavement. We have lived here long enough to know that there are only two options: head downtown where the one way streets give us more direction than we’re prepared for, or up to the forest where the only directions are the sounds of waterfalls.

Tonight, we choose the latter. When we reach the lake, we find out that it is frozen solid so we run run run, ice cracking underneath our feet. The drag makes us feel like we’re flying.

We moved here last year because we were tired of the grass stains of childhood, of getting high off suburban street races and haunting corner stores at three in the morning. We moved here because we were tired of roads that recognized the treads of our shoes and neighbours that knew our names, because we craved the unre-

quited love of a city. We moved here because we were tired of easy beauty; we wanted to call ugly what was ugly, and this place was a magnificent ruin.

After our first month, we bought postcards of the smoke stacked skyline and sent them home. I still remember the back of mine saying: “This town is a wound, but it is healing. It shakes, but not like a leaf or an unsteady hand; like a bowstring humming to be released, like my bones in their sockets when he smiles at me. This town is a bruise, but it is bravely worn. I wish you were here to see it.”

Now it is winter and, like us, the city doesn’t rest well in the cold. Sung to sleep by steel mills, the buildings have bags under their eyes and the sidewalks crack under-slept smiles.

But we have lived here long enough to refuse to be buried by December, so we huddle on the roof of our student house and look for stars between the streetlights and their electrical arteries.

The Earth tilts on its axis and reminds us that we’re flying. 

Now it is winter and, like us, the city doesn’t rest well in the cold.

ARTWORK BY BARBARA KARPINSKI

ARTWORK BY FIRSTNAME LASTNAME

VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

27

ď Ž Imprints Sam Bubnic when they danced, his bare hands imprinted her marrow and seeped into her system with urgency and intent. his bones embraced her clothing as if the fabric were made from her anatomy, and together they cascaded. their hearts cascading, voyaging into each others cavities, saturating the empty spaces, listening to the whispers of their organs creating symphonies with every step.

ď Ž

artwork by Leah Flannigan

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INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

ARTWORK BY MATT CLARKE

WHO FLEE THE WINTER Jesse Bettencourt

I

n the Sunday of fall break, we watched from the shore of Sassafras Point as the early autumn dusk covered Cootes Paradise in viscous light. Across the marsh, flitting to and from the amber and orange trees, some hundreds of birds moved along the shoreline. A congregation of them, all heading in one direction, glided northeast along the edge of the marsh. We guessed at their activity, confused; this couldn’t be migration, could it? Had winter crept up with us unaware? Or, for another thing, they weren’t flying south, don’t birds migrate south? We decided that what we were seeing couldn’t be migration. Besides, it was a Sunday, and nothing of great effort occurs on Sundays, let alone during the midterm recess.

I feel no exposure in sharing these flawed meditations from my fall break. My comfort, though, probably comes from conformity; I know I am not alone in thinking them. Like many others, I achieved nearly nothing of productive value this break. Perhaps it was an act of projecting my procrastination on to the behaviour of birds that led me to my incorrect conclusion. Otherwise, I might just be another person keeping up the ancient tradition of not knowing shit about what birds do in the winter.

Our shared heritage of confusion can be traced to antiquity. The Bible claims a divine instruction, birds stretching their wings to the south in accordance with the Lord.

Homer’s Illiad intriguingly describes the annual war waged by the common crane against Pygmies at the far edges of the world: shriek of cranes down from heaven who flee the winter and the terrible rains and fly off to the world’s end bringing death and doom to the Pygmy-men as they open fierce battle at dawn.

This legend continued in Rome, where natu-

ralist Pliny the Elder described battle scenes of Pygmies, mounted on goats and armed with arrows. For three months, the Pygmies would go to the sea and consume the eggs and chicks of the cranes. If they didn’t, the Pygmies would not survive the next year’s carnage, when the cranes would return as adults. Pliny knew of crane migration by studying the writings of Aristotle, who wrote about flocks travelling from the steppes of Scythia to the Nile’s marshes. He suggested that swans, geese, pelicans, and many other birds must also move to warmer regions during winter.

Had winter crept up with us unaware?

Aristotle remained an authority on bird patterns until the 19th century. Unfortunately, some of his speculations were not as accurate as his theory of migration. Dr. Elliott Coues, American ornithologist, supported one such theory in 1878, with approximately 180 papers detailing the hibernation of swallows. Aristotle wrote that many birds, including swallows, doves, and kites, would disappear each autumn by falling into a dormant state. They would hide in hollowed tree trunks or the eaves of buildings. Alternatively, these birds would flock to marshes, congregate in the reeds and become torpid.

Their combined weight would sink the mud of the marsh, leaving the birds submerged under the winter’s ice. In 1555, accounts on the nature of northern peoples by the Swedish Archbishop of Uppsala told of novice fishermen accidentally pulling up nets full of hibernating birds. Inexperienced as they were, these fishermen would try to warm the swallows to revive them, but shortly after the birds would die. Skilled fishermen knew to leave the birds at the bottom of the

water, undisturbed.

Aristotle also had a theory about the birds that remained throughout the winter.

Noticing that summer redstarts and winter robins were never present in the same season, he suggested an annual transmutation of birds. Garden warblers became blackcaps. The cuckoo turned into a hawk: The cuckoo is said by some to be a hawk transformed, because at the time of the cuckoo’s coming, the hawk, which it resembles, is never seen and indeed it is only for a few days that you will see hawks about when the cuckoo’s note sounds early in the season.

This theory may seem inconceivable now, but at the time transformations between similar birds were perhaps no less believable than the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies. Like all science, these theories reflect the atmosphere of society’s scholarly practice at the time. It’s appropriate that the classical Greek opinion was that birds went to distant lands to fight foreigners, as classical Greeks were wont to do. Likewise, during the time of Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler, Charles Morton published the earliest treatise on bird migration in England, which reflected the fascination 17th century scientists had with the heavens. Morton hypothesized that, since nobody on Earth knew the whereabouts of birds in the winter, they must have settled beyond Earth: the rest of season-observing birds, till some other more fit place can be with reason assigned them, do go unto, and remain in some one of the celestial bodies; and that must be the moon, which is most likely, because nearest.

The birds we saw on Sunday were likely not on their way to the moon. And if they were looking for a marsh, they needed only to stop and sleep in Cootes. Perhaps, even now, Pygmies are preparing their warriors for the upcoming onslaught. Regardless, I didn’t hypothesize where they were off to.

In accordance with reflecting on my own scholarly practices, I instead remained in awe of hundreds of birds, managing to avoid procrastination so close to winter and so far from their holidays. 

SUNFLOWERS and

untrimmed WEEDS Rachelle Zalter

I

saw you treating the hallway like a wide-open field of sunflowers and untrimmed weeds. You were in the middle of an airport, yet you had your arms flailed out and your head tilted back. You were spinning in circles, looking like you wanted to sing. I noticed this on my way to my gate, thinking that maybe you were insane, but that maybe I wanted to join you.

Everything is different now.

I just received the phone call. My right hand is twitching in the subtle way that promises no one else will notice. My right hand is twitching, but it is the pain in my chest that bothers me. It isn’t subtle, it is scorching and smothering like an untamed fire, burning every last tree in a forest.

I just received the phone call, but I put my phone back in my pocket and now I’m clenching my fist to stop my hand from twitching. I am supposed to meet my fiancé in nine hours. I don’t just want to see him – I need to see him. I need to see his face and hear his voice and remember why we are doing this. We’ve been fighting. The distance isn’t working. When I told him that of course you should take the job in France, I truly meant it. We aren’t the type of couple to hold each other back, we are the couple who frolics in wide-open fields filled with sunflowers and untrimmed weeds. Together, we can conquer everything. But we aren’t together. We haven’t been together – hand holding hand, nose pressing nose, feet touching feet – for seven months. And in those seven months, ARTWORK BY TALYSSA FERRER John has made new friends, John’s up while I’m asleep, and he’s asleep while I’m up, and he’s been working with a beautiful woman named Adelise.

So it’s not that I want to see him, it’s that I need to see him. And I think that’s a very important point.

You are staring at me now, but I’m not sure if you want me to say something. You were staring out the window a minute ago, and now you’re pacing around me like a puppy waiting to go for a walk.

I saw you treating the hallway like a wide-open field, but this is an airport. This is a terminal, and this is not the place to be acting like a dog. You’re a grown woman for goodness’ sake. I decide to ignore you.

Ten seconds pass, and now you’ve gone ahead and sat beside me. I am trying to send you a message, turning my gaze to my lap and shifting my knees away from yours. I don’t think you understand the message, so I give up.

“Hello,” I say, hoping that if we get this over with you’ll eventually leave me in peace.

“Hi!” You squeak with excitement and for a second I expect you to hug me. “I’m Angela!”

“Hey,” I say again. I’ll let you do the talking.

“Where do you think all these airplanes are going?” You look out the window, and I can tell you’re being contemplative.

But I have other things on my mind. “I don’t know,” I shrug.

“Somewhere.”

30

You nod as if I’ve just said something very philosophical. “Amazing!” you say. “It’s amazing! Do you think they’re happy? All the people in the planes?”

I shrug again, not knowing how to respond.

“Where are you going?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” I tell you, because I don’t. Not long ago, I was sure I was going to France, but not long ago, I would have been nicer to you as well. I wouldn’t have had a reason not to.

“I’m going to Paris,” you tell me, and I know this because we’re sitting together at a gate that’s leaving to Paris in an hour. I nod anyway. “At least that’s where I’m starting. I don’t know where I’ll end up!” I try to smile, but others’ happiness is the last thing you want when you’re sad. “What’s wrong with you?” you ask. I want to ask you that question. But instead I stare. You stare back.

“I got a phone call,” I finally say.

“A sad one?” I nod. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this.

“Shit,” you nearly shout this. And then you wrap your arms around me and the shock of it overwhelms me until I’m crying like a baby in your arms. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but I’m crying in your arms like a baby. I don’t ever cry in public, but this is what I’m doing now.

“Growing up, my grandma lived in my house.” I tell you. You don’t say anything so I continue. I continue until I run out of words.

“My grandma, she is like my second mom. My grandfather died before I got to know him, but my grandma moved in with us after that.

And now… I just got a phone call that she’s in the hospital. I don’t know what happened. She just had a cold… but, now she’s in the hospital. She’s 93.”

“Are you going to see her?”

“I’m going to see my fiancé.” I wipe the last tear from my cheek.

“Or… I thought I was. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

You don’t say anything to that. You look at me for one long moment and then turn your head away, crying. You’re crying. I’m the one torn between my fiancé and my grandma, but you’re crying.

“What’s wrong?” I ask you, unsure of how to handle this.

“Where do you think all the planes are going?” you ask me again.

“I don’t know.”

“Me neither,” you sigh. “But I really do hope they’re happy.”  INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

what you don’t know can hurt you Devra Charney (@devviecakes) and Kaila Radan

THE FACTS BEHIND CONSPIRACY THEORIES THE FLAT EARTH SOCIETY Remember back in grade 4 when you learned that the earth is round? News flash: it isn’t. Most people believe the ‘science’ behind earth as an oblate spheroid, but the Flat Earth Society knows the truth. All this scientific jargon, like ‘rotationally symmetric’ and ‘polar axis’, is just a cover up for the fact that the Earth is flat. Need some proof? It’s really quite simple. Although ‘space agencies’ tell us it’s round and that they’ve seen it, we shouldn’t accept their beliefs at face value. In fact, the Bedford Level Experiment proves that the Earth is flat because the surface of water is flat. If this sounds extremist to you, don’t worry. The Flat Earth Society isn’t connected to any religion or deity. Just use your senses! Does the Earth feel round?

Didn’t think so. Does the Earth look round?

Didn’t think so.

BARACK OBAMA IS THE LIZARD KING There are rumors floating around that Obama is Satan reincarnated, but this is entirely false. According to over 12 million Americans, he is actually the Lizard King.

It may seem outlandish, but when you remember that giant lizards wearing designer suits are running the United States, it all falls into place. Evidence shows that reptilians originating from the Draco Constellation in the Northern sky have been breeding with humans for at least 300 000 years. These hybrids have infiltrated many of our most powerful institutions. For example, many members of the U.S. government and British monarchy are descended from these reptiles. It may seem bizarre, but an unknown number of individuals have actually seen them shape shift. You may even be one of them.

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T

here are some pretty crazy conspiracy theories out there. For example, some people might try to tell you that there are no such things as elite shape shifting reptiles, or that people have actually walked on the moon. However, this is obviously impossible, as there are eyewitness accounts of the reptile-human hybrids, and the moon isn’t even real in the first place. We are here to debunk these myths and show you the real truth.

Either way, the only logical conclusion is that the moon is a propaganda hoax.

THE U.S. CAN CONTROL THE WEATHER You may have heard of the ground-breaking theories proving climate change is a hoax, but you probably haven’t stopped to think about how this is actually affecting your life. Take the snow in your backyard last winter, for instance. We can all agree there was more than usual, but not everyone can agree that it was snow.

YouTube users across the United States performed experiments where they held butane lighters against ‘snowballs’. When the snow and the flame made contact, the snow did not melt but instead turned to a black soot-like substance.

While some people have explained that a chemical reaction involving the hydrocarbon butane forms soot when exposed to air and water, it is much more likely that the ‘snow’ was composed of chemicals and plastic.

you ask? For the simple reason that ‘space exploration’ brings in billions of dollars every day. Still not convinced? What evidence do you even have that there is a moon? Experts have been telling us for years that what we see outside our windows at night is the moon, but that’s exactly what they want us to think. 

THE MOON DOES NOT EXIST The moon isn’t made of cheese, obviously, but just because it isn’t an edible dairy product doesn’t mean it exists. You have no idea what you’re actually looking at. The Earth’s only natural satellite? Please, it could just as easily be a hologram or a helium balloon. Even more likely, it could be any number of things made from the technology available to governments throughout history. Either way, the only logical conclusion is that the moon is a propaganda hoax. Why,

ARTWORK BY ANGELA MA

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i whisper Matthew Chau

I

whisper my cigarettes away. The smoke swims through my teeth. Ignoring the gravity that grounds me, fresh smoke dances to skies – eyes of mine will never see.

Half the time I forget to inhale; the other times, I inhale too much. I am either smoking a cigarette out of customary boredom, or the lure of warmth is drawing my lips.

From my windowsill overlooking the chaos of yapping dogs and lumbering trucks, I look up. I look up from everything surrounding my impromptu life suffocating in the middle. I am scared of the air that fills my lungs and allows me to breathe, for through it all the winds blow on, taking me whichever way.

I’ve been torn from my ignorance. I was perched high above in naive contentedness, but then they began to chop and hack away at my tree; bringing me lower and lower until I lost my wings and forgot the sky. If I set my mouth on fire and choke it with smoke, then maybe, I’ll stop falling. Maybe I will finally be able to escape this evil inevitability that digs the dirt under my nails and picks at the pots in my skin.

Smoke dances with time as the wisps billow into each corner of the room. The smell of burning and rotting is fading with each breath as the smoke blankets the long years of lies and sin. The outside air lifts me from my bed and pushes me to run, as outside winds nip my cheek and fill my lungs – clean. I am no longer sore and blistered from the chains that coiled around my throat, rooting into my veins.

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I exhale more and more of me. My life is finally flying away from a decaying corpse – hollowing what little good there is left to save. For I’ve left some of me here, not my best, but something.

Unable, unwilling to ever leave you. To ever leave your endearing smile and warming lips that promised me the world as I promised it back. You had a face a museum could frame.

Subtly in awe that a man with no time in the world could stand and gaze at the strokes comprised of you for the rest of his life. I sat and stared, criticizing nothing but the other eyes that dared to look at you. You. Who will forever be declared, somehow, mine.

For, how do you leave someone that is etched into your heart? Someone who you know allows your sanity to exist in a world that has pushed you to the edge of self-immolation.

I’ve been yelled and spat at for years, but now my own mouth has told me that love cannot exist in the life that I am shackled to.

Sliding through the crack in the window is the majority of me. My soul is leaving the ceiling that was forever trapping.

Swaying into skies and into sheets of white higher and brighter than I thought my eyes would ever see.

Even though I can’t I still will.

I will still leave Even though I can’t leave you.  ARTWORK BY VÉRONIQUE GIGUÈRE

INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

UP IN THE SKY Afshan Siddiqui

ARTWORK BY SABNAM MAHMUDA

“Just a pack of balloons, please.”

U

p in the sky was the most beautiful blanket of stars that Andy had ever seen. She lived on just the right floor in her building – low enough to be able to see the ground, yet high enough to see the stars twinkling like gems. One thing that always caught her eye was a big cloud right in the centre of the sky. It was white and fluffy, and it looked far more comfortable than her own bed.

Day in, day out, the cloud remained up there among the beautiful stars. Looking up in awe, Andy decided that she also wanted to be up in the sky. But she didn’t have a plane or a pair of wings to take her up there! After thinking really hard, Andy realized she knew just what could help her. And so, Andy started collecting balloons at every opportunity. She had so many, in fact, that they filled an entire room.

Every birthday, her friends would ask, “Andy, what do you want for your birthday?” And she would respond, “A pack of balloons, please.”

Every Easter, her grandparents would visit and ask, “Andy, what do you want this year?” And she would respond, “Just a pack of balloons, please.”

And every Christmas, her parents would ask, “Andy, what do you want this Christmas?” And she would respond, “Another pack of balloons, please.”

And so it went on. Every holiday, Andy got another pack of balloons. She’d save up her allowance, she’d clean extra for more, and then she’d go out and buy some balloons.

Finally, one year later, Andy decided she had just enough balloons. That birthday, she asked her friends to buy her a pump to fill her balloons. And that Easter, she asked her grandparents for a basket big enough to hold her. And finally, that Christmas,

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she asked her parents to buy a very, very long rope ladder. Just long enough to reach from the ground to the sky.

With that, she began to blow up her balloons. Every morning before school, she would blow five packs of balloons. And then she’d tie them with some string to the branches of the big oak tree in the park. Every afternoon after school, she’d come home and blow up another five packs, and then also tie them up. And, of course, every night just after supper, she would blow another five packs and tie those as well.

This continued until Andy had blown up all of the balloons. In fact, there were so many balloons that the tree had almost lifted out of the ground because of them.

Once all of the balloons had been blown, Andy brought out her basket and ladder to the park.

She weighed down the basket with some rocks and started to tie balloons all around the edges. Finally, she climbed into the basket and began removing the rocks. With the removal of each rock, she could slowly feel herself starting to float up a little bit more.

Andy held on and watched herself pass by the top of the trees in the park and the top of the building that she lived in. She held on and watched until she was high up among the stars. So close, in fact, that she could reach out and touch them.

Finally, she reached the cloud that she had spotted in the sky. Andy stepped out of her basket and stumbled on to the cloud. It was as fluffy as cotton candy, and softer than silk. It was just the right temperature, and it was in just the right place. Andy threw down her rope ladder and lay down and fell asleep, right among the stars.

The following morning, she climbed down the ladder for breakfast, and that night, she came back up to sleep. And every night from then on, she would climb back up to sleep among the stars just as she had dreamed for.  33

The Cathedral of The Wilderness  I. (it begins with birch) Extremities deprived: of warmth, of comforting sensations, and of the healing power of touch. I knew I had arrived. It was the middle of January and I couldn’t fathom composing a metaphor that would begin to explain my descent, the nameless descent that left me dressed in translucent robes exposing my wounds and inner landscape.

Thoughts of my mother flooded my gray matter.

She had kissed my forehead when darkness threatened to consume the little of me that I hadn’t forgotten, and had whispered to me reassuringly when I was harbouring too much carbon dioxide in my lungs, afraid that I was taking more than my fair share of oxygen from the universe.

Thoughts of my mother kept me from turning my internal world into a funhouse with an endless number of dark corridors and distorted mirrors.

So I held my body up with thoughts of my mother and with the strength of the

ARTWORK BY FRANCO SIMÕES

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decaying branches of silver birch trees that refused to call the muddy ground their home, even in the midst of winter’s rage.  II. (fagus sylvactica and fear) She awoke to the sound of birds as I sat perched on the edge of her bed, staring at the tangle of leaves outside her bay window. Slumber and I hadn’t crossed paths in a while. I found rest in acrylic paint and the sky, but seldom in the depths of my unconscious mind.

The more I stared out the window, the more I was consumed by irrationality, until I became trapped in a multitude of alternate universes, each more terrifying and twisted than the last.

She told me I should read something other than Carl Jung, and we walked until the sound of birds turned into the sound of crickets and wood owls.

She translated the screeches of the owls for me and my body shook with laughter; I suddenly realized how indistinguishable this was from trembling with fear.

I went through the inventory of things that could go wrong in this moment, in the next moment, in the next month, in the seemingly infinite but limited number of nexts. I went through the inventory of things I could not do, be, or say. I went through an inventory that seemed to have been made by someone I no longer identified as myself.

It struck me that finding yourself in the thicket of darkness was perhaps easier when you knew what you looked like in the light.  III. (ginkgo biloba: grace gives) My grandmother once defined grace for me. She said it felt like divine intervention and looked like the

Marlene Malik

golden, watery sunset we marveled over each Sunday before supper. She had seen grace in caverns so dark and lonely that one might think Grace was as much of a warrior as a beacon of love.

Without any formal requests, I found that life continually gave Grace to me: signed, sealed and delivered. In the form of breath, in run-on sentences, in silence and in kindred spirits, this elusive Grace appeared.

And I received an abundance of love and peace, which had been mine forever, except that I had forgotten I was worthy.

I had cluttered my existence with others’ opinions, trivial desires, and the desire to be everywhere and elsewhere all at once.

But Grace gives.

And I received a moment of eternity in every tick of my grandfather’s clock.

Wrapped in wonder, certain uncertainty, and lightness.

Grace insisted that these scraps of pleasure and validation were meaningless compared to the wholeness that composed my entity.

Grace gives and keeps on giving.  IV. (nyssa sylvatica) I sit in a forest, extending so far that I cannot see any signs of civilization, as I have learned that this is the best way to spend time with one’s self.

I catch myself nowadays, when I notice the contours of my body imitating the shape of my suffering.

Accepting what is, I let the craziness within me rise to the surface, each emotion a unique and roaring riptide.

I let nature take its course, taking notes from bodies of water and families of trees.

I let myself soar above these emotionally debilitating illusions that are composed of thought, pain, separation and fleeting surroundings. This sort of freedom sounds vague and abstract, but even love is vague and abstract in all its colours and variations.

My back is against the bark of a Nyssa sylvatica while the pale honeydew coloured leaves brush against my head.

My head is composed of mountain ranges, bright whites, and golden orbs.

My head is wild, but as I look around, I realize this cathedral is wilder.  INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

ARTWORK BY LAUREN GORFINKEL

DEFYING GRAVITY WITH Omobola Olarewaju

H

ello, wickedly awesome readers! If you are a Broadway geek like me, you’ve probably seen the amazing, heart-wrenching and fun musical Wicked. If not, you should feel very ashamed of yourself and go remedy that situation right this instant! I mean it. I’ll wait… done yet? Good.

For those of you who chose to remain in a perpetual state of uncool, I shake my pointed cap-wearing head at you. Let me give you a brief look into what you’re missing.

(This may contain spoilers!)

Wicked is the story of Elphaba, a young girl from the Land of Oz (yes, as in The Wizard of Oz). She’s a typical girl, with long brown hair, glasses, and green skin (okay, maybe not so typical). As you can guess, she never quite fits in among her peers, and is even despised by her family. She tries her best to follow the rules and not attract too much attention to herself, even though she is often the victim of hate and fear. She is, however, a very powerful witch and this catches the attention of the Wizard of Oz himself.

With the company of her new popular, shallow friend Galinda (soon to be known as Glinda the Good Witch), she heads to the Emerald City to be the Wizard’s apprentice. Things are going rosy until she is asked to choose between doing something horrible for fame and acceptance, or being exiled for doing the right thing. It is this choice that brings us to her amazing song, “Defying Gravity”.

What is it about this song that gives

WICKED

me chills every time I hear it? Is it Elphaba’s voice, high and passionate in a way that makes my pulse race with excitement? Is it the lyrics, describing the decision of an oppressed and victimized girl to believe in herself and take the high road, consequences be damned? Or is it a deeper psychological need that exists within all of us to break free of societal limitations?

Any actress playing Elphaba has her work cut out for her with this song. It’s not enough to just sing it; she must also show Elphaba’s pain, anger, excitement and hope

Lord, do they have it!

The song’s lyrics describe Elphaba’s new self-awareness that she is about to embark on the lonely path that she has always travelled, except this time, she is choosing to do so. She gains strength from the fact that it is her choice and not anyone else’s. She has always wanted love and acceptance, but isn’t willing to pay the price of integrity. She then decides to do something completely crazy: she decides to fly, to defy gravity, if you will. Elphaba doesn’t know if flying is even possible, but she knows that if it is then she will be the first one to do it. Here, defying gravity is a metaphor for breaking free of the things that kept her locked down to the ground.

By letting them go, she is able to soar high enough that nothing can take her down again.

This brings me to the deep psychological need that we all have to break free of the things that trap us.

We all have something holding us back from being truly fantastic. But when we see Elphaba defy gravity, we see ourselves in her, breaking free.

The wonder of this song comes from a combination of all of these factors, in addition to a great story, wonderful acting that demonstrates the gravity (see what I did there?) of the situation, and gorgeous effects (that dazzling moment when Elphaba is lifted in the air, anyone?). So take a cue from Elphaba and dare to say no to gravity.

If you need me, I’ll be up in the sky on my magic broomstick. Toodles! 

It’s not enough just to sing it; she must also show Elphaba’s pain, anger, excitement and hope in every note.

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in every note. The singing itself is hard work, with all the high notes and occasional harmonies. So when an actress can pull off both the singing and the passion, it’s mind-blowing. Being the geek that I am, I have seen many, many different Elphabas and although they have all been wonderful, some just don’t bring that complete bundle of awesomeness. But when they have it,

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TURBULENCE Rachel Katz @RachAlbertaKatz

ARTWORK BY TALYSSA FERRER

H

e searched for his seat, his shoulder bag catching on every chair and armrest he passed. Confined spaces like this always made him sweat a little, and the jacket he was wearing wasn’t helping the situation. After a few minutes, he found salvation in the little plaque bearing his seat number. He noticed he was in the middle seat and prayed that his neighbours’

The man could feel himself smirking.

“Nice to see you, too,” he said quietly.

A tense silence descended, and so did the man’s aisle side neighbour, who was a large man in dire need of a haircut and more forgiving jeans. His girth forced the man to shift in his seat until he was practically touching her.

“So… uh, how’ve you been? How’s the uh, glass-blowing business?” he asked. Please let her say something, he thought. He hated silences like these, and she knew it as well as he did.

She pursed her lips and glanced out the window. The man had scarcely noticed the plane taking off. “It’s good,” she answered finally. “Orders are coming in daily.

Probably because it’s almost Christmas.”

The man in the aisle seat was already out cold. His elbow jabbed the man in the ribs, forcing him to slide towards her even further.

“Sorry,” the man said.

“It’s fine.” She moved closer to the plane’s wall to keep a slight distance between them.

The seatbelt light snapped off.

She must have noticed the relief on his face, because she gave a half-laugh.

“It would be so much better if we were up there,” she said, nodding toward the first class seats.

“Don’t get me started,” he said longingly. “I was supposed to be, but my secretary Marjorie’s a stupid bitch, and she booked my flight wrong.”

She shook her head. “That is why this,” she said, wiggling her finger from him to herself, “didn’t work. You can be such a dick.”

“Yeah, well, think of all those rich Bay

He hated silences like these, and she knew it as well as he did. sizes did not exceed their seat allotments.

He stuffed his bag above his head and sat down heavily.

The man pulled out his phone and began to scroll through his multiple dating apps. After his last breakup, his brother and friends had suggested he give them a try to “get back in the game.” Clearly, they weren’t working. He was too young for the divorcées and too old for the college girls.

He sighed and switched to Solitaire. Who was he kidding? He clearly wasn’t ready to get over her. Not yet. Whenever he closed his eyes he could see her, feel her warm breath in his ear, her whisper tickling his ear.

He could practically hear her voice, calling to him from across the stre— “Hey, can I get through? I have the window seat.”

Automatically, the man moved his legs.

She stepped over him and took her seat, adjusting her skirt. He blinked. It was her— the same broad shoulders and gangly arms.

She had dyed her hair, though. He liked the red better. Black was too stark.

“Oh. Oh my God, it’s you,” she said, turning to him. The surprise on her face quickly faded to anger. “I can’t believe it. It’s bad enough that I have to fly at all, let alone beside you.” She was seething. She looked cute when she was seething.

36

Street dicks up there, sipping their non-instant coffees and enjoying their spacious seats,” the man shot back.

“Not to mention the leg room,” she said, stretching her feet and accidentally kicking the seat in front of her. The man in the row ahead glared in her direction.

“I feel like the flight attendants at least have to give you a fake smile up there,” the man continued. They turned to look at the surly woman slamming Cokes and sandwiches onto meal trays.

“Her face just killed what little appetite I had,” she said, laughing. A real laugh this time, the kind he knew and loved.

“Can you still smoke in first class?” the man asked. “Because I could really use a cig.”

“I don’t think so, but it’s so chill up there that you don’t need to. They probably burn different types of incense there depending on the time of day.”

“What kind of hippie bull is that?” he asked. “You’ve always had the dumbest ideas.”

“Can you still smoke in first class?” the man asked.

“Because I could really use a cig.”

“Whatever. You have your first class paradise, and I have mine. Yours probably has too many whores named Georgina for my liking, anyway.”

“Yeah? Well, you’d still find something to blow there despite not having a glass-blowing workshop,” he answered.

That was bad. It wasn’t even witty, he thought. God, he was stupid.

She looked out the window and he shifted in his tiny seat as far as he could.

He was never letting Marjorie near his flight bookings again.  INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

ALICE

Imaiya Ravichandran (@imaiyar)

A

lice was always aware of her blackness. It enveloped her like a thick winter jacket, sometimes warm and protective, but most times stifling, wooly, and itchy. When the unbearable Mississippi sun glared down on her as she jaunted through town, and beads of sweat made her glisten in the prettiest way, she would love herself for an ephemeral moment. It would last until she’d reach a water fountain and lower her lips to take a drink, a sign spelling ‘COLORED’ hanging above her, crude and mean. It was in these moments that she wished she could escape her skin and fly away.

It was one such hot day and Alice was home. “Alice, go on an’ find Tom,” barked Alice’s mother. Babs was 63 years old and had borne six children. She was an ill-tempered woman, yet she cared for her children for the sake of her husband. Every square inch of her skin was parchment rough, except for her palms. Those remained mysteriously smooth despite being worn thin like the flesh of a weathered peach.

Alice tried to avoid her mother’s fiery invective as best she could. She nodded obediently and ran out the mesh door, letting it swing shut. As she walked, she felt that she ought to be more concerned for her brother. But she knew that he would reappear before sunset, seeking refuge from the flies that waft out from the marshes to feed at night. She soon came to a field of sunflowers, withered and arid from the recent drought. Far into the field stood a majestic sycamore tree and beneath its branches was a small boy.

“Tom! To-oom!” Alice yelled. She could make out her brother’s mousey features.

She beckoned to him, but he stood still.

She started scrambling through the flowers, forgetting that underneath was a thicket of gnarled branches and dried leaves. By the time she reached the tree, her legs were scratched and bruised. Pomegranate red stained her calves.

“C’mon, let’s go.”

“We can’t,” Tom replied solemnly. “He’ll be back.”

Alice was surprised by her brother’s newfound solemnity and felt it best to remain silent. She turned to the sycamore. Growing up, she and her siblings would pick at its trunk out of sheer boredom. They’d peel back layers of bark till their nails were filed to the nub and their fingertips had turned raw.

Alice would feel bad for the tree and for the VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

destruction they had caused. Her siblings would mock her distress, pointing to a bird nest perched on a branch above. “The tree don’t care if you take some bark, Alice! The birds gon’ sing and the leaves gon’ grow all the same.”

“He’s back!” exclaimed Tom, snapping Alice out of her reverie. Walking towards them was Nathaniel, the son of the white school’s principal. His school bag was slung over his back. He was older and handsome with broad shoulders that tensed and relaxed in stride with his manly gait. Alice felt herself going red and wished Tom would stop staring at her with that knowing gaze.

“You Negroes better get on outta here,” Nathaniel warned.

“Watcha gon’ do?” asked Tom. “Cut this here tree.”

“How?” said Alice, suddenly, softly.

“You can’t hurt a tree. It won’t pay you no mind.” She recalled them peeling the sycamore’s bark, layer by layer.

Smirking, Nathaniel set down his bag.

From it, he slowly withdrew a long axe. Alice watched in horror as he took a step back, raised the axe high above his head, and clumsily brought it crashing down onto the nearest branch. The entire tree shuddered from the impact while something came tumbling down from the highest branch onto the grass below.

“Fuck,” spat Nathaniel, clearly upset that he hadn’t done more damage. But Alice was not listening to him. She approached the fallen mass with caution. It was bloody and deformed. She stared at it puzzled for a few moments longer before finally letting out a shrill shriek.

It was a bird’s nest - and in it, the remnants of tiny baby birds. They appeared grotesque and misshapen, but Alice could make out their beady eyes. She raised her eyes to meet those of Nathaniel, who looked neither stricken nor smug. His blue eyes transformed; his irises grew smaller and his pupils darker until they were simply two beady specks, just like the baby birds’. Unable

ARTWORK BY LEAH FLANNIGAN

to bear any more, Alice twisted her brother’s arm, who yelped in pain, and they ran back the way they came, sprinting through the field of sunflowers. Her legs bled anew.

They walked wordlessly on the road for quite some time before Tom broke the silence.

“Alice.”

“Mhmm?”

“I’ve been thinkin’. And I think that we shoudn’ feel too sad for them birds. They never knew how to fly. An’ it’s a terrible thing, dyin’ when you could have flown away.”

Alice chewed over her brother’s words.

Should she be thankful for her blissful ignorance? Her blackness, like the birds’ nascent, useless wings, anchored her to the ground – but she knew of nothing else. And this should make her happy.

She could sense Tom waiting for an answer, but for the second time that day, Alice decided that it would be best to remain silent. 

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IF THERE’S ONE THING I REMEMBER Raluca Topliceanu

I

t begins subtly, nipping at the earliest buds of fresh memories. The simple things. The ones you can dismiss as merely being distracted or misplacing items. The pile of green apples, accumulating in the back of your fridge. The blue-patterned pillow on the sofa, in a different position than earlier that day, laid flat in the centre instead of snuggled on the arm.

How her name escapes you even though you could have sworn you had seen that face before, heard that voice. It progresses, and soon you find yourself living in the past instead of the present. You don’t recognize the people you met two months ago... six months ago... three years ago. You walk along the only familiar roads, make your way up the creaking steps to the third house on the block, only to realize that the lights are on inside, the locks have been changed, and, according to the disgruntled man who answers the door at your urgent knocking, that you have not lived there for at least 5 years. You are on your way to work, and at the entrance you rummage through your purse, looking for an access card you could have sworn was in the middle pocket the night before, but which you actually haven’t had since you stopped working there 8 months and 72 days prior.

You begin to forget the men who smashed your heart to pieces.

One of them could have passed you on the way to the subway, so close the fabric of your coats touch, and your eyes almost meet. His eyebrows might rise, a peculiar expression would paint his face, and you would only greet him with a blank expression. Because you don’t know him. The most you would notice is the Burberry scarf wrapped around his neck, and how at some point you complimented a similar scarf. But that is all. You were never there that night at his condo, willingly pouring your feelings out into his hands, and shortly after weeping at the biting words on an LCD screen letting you know it all meant nothing to him. You were never left alone each night, staring through bloodshot eyes, trying to find shapes in the popcorn ceiling of your barren apartment. You were never haunted by what was, or what could have been.

There was just you. At that moment. As your memories drifted away and you didn’t feel the need to stop them. 

You were never haunted by what was, or what could have been.

ARTWORK BY RALUCA TOPLICEANU

38

INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

 A Mind Departure Amanda Emmanuel I can’t remember the last I was kissed.

It was beautiful, do you like that?

That sound of silence in a room full of passions and thoughts and he asked me to leave, Change the subject – do you dance?

I can’t, but I do and oh, do I give it my all.

I dance on the moon and the night dips me backwardly, awkwardly tainted in music but I don’t like crying in public anymore, people stare and ask what’s wrong.

Oh, ma’am I’m fine, I just can’t find my favourite shirt.

Do you know?

There are 100 billion neurons running wild through our brain?

Turn down the music, it’s hurting me.

There are candles in my room, I light them like a bonfire in the summer and sometimes I think about dying and they smell nice I have 10.

I like the blue ones and the malls on Sundays and the holiday classics like that poor little boy all alone in his house.

 Tell Me a Story Amanda Emmanuel A melody of memories of a singing kettle warms my heart with the hot water that stings the tip of my tongue and runs down my throat that is his to be familiar with.

He knows the curves of my lips like the curves of my frail body and the curves of the words he writes.

He understands the roof of my mouth the way he is the roof of my sheltered heart to keep the rain from leaking through the cracks and running down my face.

A young girl of only 18 and already a queen in his eyes that looked at me the way the sun hugs my skin

VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

Do you know the one about the girl with candy apple lips and they never did when she told them to stop Do you have friends?

I made 12 last week and they’re all voices in my head Have you met them?

I’ve taken up art.

Yesterday I carved my fist into the wall, splattered paint on my legs, have you ever been to the city?

People talk to you in the city.

They yell so loudly and tell me to stop, what happened after that again?

The sun always sets at different times so my watch never works and I think that’s why they always say “no time” And can you hear that stupid noise where the fuck is my shirt and why are they looking at me like that?

I wonder if he thinks I’m pretty Are you happy?



he still strives to memorize.

He knows my demons, and my scratches and my bandaged wounds of loving harder than stone and breaks through the stone that my walls are made of.

In his pocket he carries my carriage, and my soul and my broken heart that he spends time tying strings around and sewing pieces of worn out pillowcases to mend the broken pieces of my story that he reads to me over and over again so I don’t forget who I am.

Lie naked with me and help me find my mind and tell me my story before I forget who you are and you are?



artwork by Angela Busse-Gibson 39

FIGHT & FLIGHT Ronald Leung

T

he woman looked around, risking a peek after many hours of silence. All was still in the grey landscape. The silence seemed to echo even louder than the explosions had; it was almost deafening. She looked at the boy curled up beside her, sound asleep. A child of the apocalypse, he had never known the world before its end. He could sleep through almost anything. His face, serene under the moonlight’s caress, reflected a gentleness that the woman struggled to find in herself in these harsh times.

She could linger no longer. Inaction gnawed at her. Rousing the boy from his slumber and gently soothing his sleepy objections, the pair started to traverse the desolate landscape. Still wary, she felt the hilt of the semi-automatic pistol in her pocket. Pried from the stiff fingers of a corpse, she had almost dropped the gun the first time she pulled the trigger. She had never thought she was capable of killing. Then again, she hadn’t thought herself capable of many things that she’d done, all in the name of survival. Looking back, she realised the fragility of the society that once existed. It was only out of maximum self-benefit that most people had obeyed the unspoken contract of social etiquette. The orderly system of roads and traffic lights and money was built upon toothpicks, hiding a river of ugly human desperation that slithered underneath. Now, she was completely submerged. She willingly took the plunge. What did it mean to be human? She could no longer remember. She shuffled from meal to meal, skin and bones hiding a metal heart.

The boy pointed upwards, his voice echoing over the hills.

Looking up, she saw small specks floating down on them. It was ash. Even the sky had no more tears for them. The boy was surprised to hear that water and snow used to fall from the clouds.

Shaking her head, the woman smiled ruefully, scarcely believing that she could miss something so mundane.

They were running low on food, so she guided the boy into an empty side street. It was a slim hope to find an untouched home, but that was all they had. Stumbling upon a small bungalow, she was shocked that the front door was still locked. Fiddling with the handle, she pried it open and the pair stepped into a once-ornate entryway.

Dust adorned every surface, and the boy raced off, occasionally running back to ask her about the origins of a particular curiosity. She started searching systematically, moving the belongings of the previ-

ous inhabitants gingerly, as if they would return someday.

The kitchen was just as filthy from disuse, but she could still see family portraits adorning the walls. Dust covered their faces. She was glad; she didn’t need to know what they looked like, nor did she want to feel their gaze as she rifled through their home. Predictably, there was little food to be found, although she did come upon a pair of chocolate bars, to the boy’s delight. Stuffing what meagre supplies she could find into her bag, the woman and the boy left, but not before the latter closed the front door quietly behind them.

Their surroundings slowly drifted into a medley of greys and greens as they walked past unmanned checkpoints and husks of battle weapons. Previously boxed in by conflict, they had lived many years within the same borders.

The next few days passed by in a blur of monotony. They would wake and travel in the same direction, searching homes and buildings along the way. Neither of them knew where they were going.

They just knew that nothing but death and dust lay behind them.

Slowly, they found themselves surrounded by vegetation. The hues of green overwhelmed the pair, after many years of nothing but a dull palate of colours. Nature was starting to reclaim the fruits of human labour: branches and vines freely intertwined with traffic lights and window frames. The husks of looming apartment buildings, previously burning, now stood peacefully with entire gardens growing on caved-in floors.

The woman followed after the awe-struck boy as his small hands ran smoothly over bark and leaf. He had never seen so much green life before. Tugging her arm, they broke into a run, eager to see more of this strange new world. They reached the city square, where a large fountain had been completely overtaken by shrubbery.

Instead of flowing streams of water, green vines outlined the carved crevices, spilling out over the rim. She dropped her pack and lay on the ground, surrounded by the sweet smell of grass.

This centre of life, determined not merely to survive, but to flourish, was what she needed. She needed to be reminded of what it felt like to live. She watched as the boy ran towards her, no doubt wanting to share another newfound marvel. Picking him up in her arms, she lifted him completely off the ground, and for a moment, he flew. 

ARTWORK BY KAYLA DA SILVA 40

INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

AUTOPILOT Sabrina Sibbald

ARTWORK BY SABRINA SIBBALD

T

here are many downfalls to being in your third year of university. For starters, ‘teenage angst’ is no longer an acceptable excuse to listen to Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” on repeat (welcome to your twenties). There is the fact that your student card no longer doubles as a meal card and you now have to sustain your festering caffeine addiction with actual cash. The long, sleepless nights (procrastination is timeless, right?). And of course, the impending doom, courtesy of the realization that you will soon have to engage in a year-long combat with an inexorable monster known as the thesis.

But, there are some advantages too; experience has led to proficiency in areas that you spent the first two years fumbling through with mistakes and mistrials. I have, for example, devised a new system of note-taking to replace both the “typing-away-furiouslylike-a-chicken-with-its-head-cut-offtrying-to-copy-down-everything-that-theprofessor-is-saying” method that I mastered in first year and the “I’m-not-going-totake-notes-so-that-I-can-focus-on-trulyunderstanding-the-lecture” approach that I (very briefly) dabbled with in second year.

Now, like a seasoned and wise university student, I calmly sit in lecture and denote key phrases, using my personal codes to encrypt it all – underlining definitions, italicizing what I infer the professor thinks is important, bolding what they explicitly state are important, and doing all three when they utter a phrase that even remotely resembles, “this will be on the exam.”

One of the great things about finally being accomplished in the subtle art VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

of note-taking is that I can at times allow myself to drift on autopilot. I’m not talking about being that kid who watches Netflix in class (Gasp! So scandalous!), but about the times when you are listening, but not actually critically processing. You’re not being completely ineffective; rather, you are letting the lecture marinate in the back of your mind and hoping that the professor’s words will lodge themselves in your psyche.

Maybe if you’re lucky enough, the correct answer will even jump off of the page for you during a multiple choice test.

Majority rules. Opinion of the few doesn’t matter.

I found myself in this autopilot state a few weeks ago during a commerce lecture.

My professor was talking about something commerce-y, and I was using half of my brainpower to absorb what he was saying and the other half to think about coffee.

During a break in his prose I was leisurely skimming through what I had just typed when I almost had to pick my jaw up off of the floor. There, in my notes I had written: I looked around at the rest of my class to see if they were as appalled at what our professor had apparently just said as I was.

But they did not appear to be questioning this message. Why would they? He was our professor, and a professor’s words are concrete fact, right?

I do not think that the professor meant harm. But unless filtered through the lens of

critical thinking, his words could plant the seeds of a dangerous set of belief systems.

Though he was talking specifically about the business world, what if one of the students in the lecture internalized this message and truly took it to heart? If years after they have written the multiple choice exam they find themselves in a situation where they have been wronged or witnessed an unjust situation and have the choice of (a) standing up for themselves or (b) keeping quiet, will they choose b) because majority rules, and the opinion of the few doesn’t matter?

Perhaps I am just some weird third-year in a first-year commerce class, overthinking things. But I can’t help but wonder how often in our educations – in our lives – we blindly accept detrimental attitudes or norms as truths because they are being fed to us in easily-digestible capsules coated with nonchalance and authority, or because we are not focusing enough to critically evaluate what we are being told to accept.

I am not saying that this is a ground-breaking observation, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I need to take greater accountability in my own education and become a more informed participant of every sphere in which I exist. What I am saying is that when we stop critically evaluating what information we want to accept as our truth, we reduce ourselves to passive components in a realm where we should be the most active players.

Sure, we can’t be hyperaware all of the time, but living on autopilot would be a tremendous waste of opportunity; life’s most exhilarating adventures are found on the paths that you create for yourself.  41

Barbara Karpinski

To say that I am emotional is an understatement.

I am a flash fire of anger, The eruption of a volcano, The boiling impatience of magma, The pressing flow of lava.

I am the lambent glow of a sunny day, The playful tongues of flame that celebrate the freedom of night, The scorch of kindling hate, The blaze of determination, The fire in your eyes at the prospect of a challenge, The searing passion of an amateur, The desperate last flare of a survivor.

I am the steady light of a torch in the maw of hopelessness, The jumping sparkler that needs someone to excite, The firecracker that burns out for an audience.

I am the swelter of a roaring furnace, The comforting warmth of a bonfire, And the seemingly dead glow of embers that just trudges on, Bursting to life with the right fuel.

I am not emotional. I am a fire. ď Ž – Barbara Karpinski 42

INCITE MAGAZINE, DECEMBER 2014

ARTWORK BY SAM GODFREY

TRIP

Sasha Berkeley

T

he crispness of the air did little to soothe my rolling stomach. I tried to focus on my friend’s voice beside me, but my feet seemed to be demanding more attention than usual. The motion sickness swelled and faded as I tried to push the strangeness from my body.

I’d done my research. I knew that it was unlikely I’d be feeling anything just yet. It was just 10 minutes ago that we’d clinked glasses and swallowed our shares.

We’d commented on the bizarreness of toasting over what looked and tasted like stale bottled water, but we were suckers for ceremony.

The forest was just ahead. Though my stomach was feeling worse, I was giggling.

My friend grinned matter-of-factly and nodded. He’d been right. I was filled with a bubbly lightness that skipped out of me as laughter. We paused, waiting for the rest of our group to catch up. The trees bowed together over the path and formed a tunnel for us to fall into.

Our friends caught up to us and we pressed on, the trail part dirty leaves and part rocky staircase. At a small plateau we paused to catch our breath. The horizon bent into the trees, lights becoming the centers of spirals made of bare treetops and purple sky. We aren’t there yet, someone said, we’re not even close. We were here though, and I took a marker from my bag to note it. The wood of the railing was a VOLUME 17, ISSUE 4

perfect canvas for the ink. Letters sunk into it, words jumped out of it, and sentences floated, drifting slowly around themselves.

The stairs had dissolved into packed earth, bowing in the middle. I balanced on the sides, edging my way around the sunken centre. The hollow was filled with mud, and though my friends walked easily through it I would have been swallowed up. A sapling offered to help me around a particularly steep section, and I thanked the tree for its trouble, standing beside it while my other friends caught up.

As they approached, the earth rose up to meet their feet. I rejoiced in their presence and introduced them to the tree. Their features swam and morphed into a dense collection of 0s and 1s, the scenery behind them falling away into a shimmering sea of black binaries.

I couldn’t stop talking. Finally able to keep up with my mind, my mouth surrounded me in words and tethered me to the person on my left. The forest to our right fell away and was replaced by a grey, hazy sky. Switching softly from sky to river, river to sky and back again, we stood sometimes on a riverbank and sometimes at the end of the world. We aren’t there yet, someone said, but we’re getting close. Turning our backs to the edge of the earth, we trekked out into a detour. A towering tree with sinuous bark slithered upwards in front of us. Unable and unwilling to contain myself,

I rushed towards it through the underbrush.

A friend marvelled at how much this tall tree had seen before us and would see after us.

I marvelled at being with it then. A friend beckoned us from the nearby shore. The water climbed and fell lazily in the shallows, reflecting the orange glow of highway lights.

Everything was vibrant oil paint and bold, digital colours.

And then slowly, it wasn’t. I felt myself coming back, but didn’t panic or grasp for the fading scene. After a patient period of silence, I asked if we could keep going.

We’re getting there, someone said, we’re really close. My friend offered a hand to steady me up the slope, and I took it.

As we walked, I fell farther away from the acrylic scene laid out behind us and into a knowledge of specialness. Words and stories flowed through the forest and my friends, connecting me in a warm melancholy. The front of the group clambered down the slope we’d reached, and I heard their giggles skip across the water. With a delicate but profound knowledge of how our narrative was unfolding, I felt the sun threatening to rise, despite having just set a few hours ago.

Glancing behind to look to me, a gentle person asked if everything was all right.

We’re here, someone said.

Beside the still water, among the sleeping trees, we were here, and everything was all right.  43

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