Incite Magazine - February 2014

INCITE MAGAZINE VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5 ▪ FEBRUARY 2014

SIGHT

EXECUTIVE EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Sam Godfrey Avery Lam CONTENT EDITORS Sarah Kanko Palika Kohli Julie-Anne Mendoza Kacper Niburski Jessica Teicher MANAGING ART EDITOR Ianitza Vassileva ART EDITORS Khatija Anjum Jason Lau Whyishnave Suthagar

CONTRIBUTORS WRITERS Magdalene Au, Jesse Bettencourt, L. Maegan Cheng, Dayla Cohen, Jaslyn English, Kayla Esser, Victoria Haykin, Palika Kohli, Madeline Lawler, Chris Leckenby, Sabnam Mahmuda, Meg Peters, Nigel Pynn-Coates, Ana Qarri, Shruti Ramesh, Mackenzie Richardson, Raluca Topliceanu, Emile Shen, Ianitza Vassileva, Rachelle Zalter, Sabrina Zhu ARTWORK Khatija Anjum, Angela Busse-Gibson, Sarah Mae Conrad, Katie Dingwall,

Cassandra Ferguson, Sam Godfrey, Sonnet Irwin, Bryan Kellam, Avery Lam, Jason Lau, Chris Leckenby, Rahul Sadavarte, David Tan, Livia Tsang, Whyishnave Suthagar, Ianitza Vassileva LAYOUT Sarah Mae Conrad, Clare MacDonald, Lauren Gorfinkel, Shicheng (Tony) Jin, Avery Lam, Jason Lau, Angela Ma, Emily Power, Emile Shen, Elaine Westenhoefer COVERS/TABLE OF CONTENTS Sarah Mae Conrad

LAYOUT EDITOR Sarah Mae Conrad PROMOTIONS Emily Power

I got glasses when I was in the fifth grade. At the time, I wasn’t a particularly popular child, and I remember hoping that people would ask to try on my new glasses. Maybe the attention would make me cool. Though I might have known that any attention drawn due to corrective eyewear was probably not the type of attention that would help me climb grade school’s social ladder.

So, I remained an invisible member of my school for a great while longer. But by grade 12, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I had become a rather well-known student in my (teeny) school. Upon entering university, it was obviously impossible for me to be known by everyone in the school, as had been the case the year prior, but I still enjoyed the same social confidence that had evolved over the course of my high school career.

As I sit writing this in the basement of my family home, I can hear the civilized din of a party going on upstairs. I’ve retreated under the guise of writing this editorial, though it was primarily because my social stamina had run out, and I was feeling uncomfortable among the guests. It’s a party for my mother’s 50th birthday, and my father prepared a surprise party for her with all her local friends.

Being back in my family house always reminds me of the time I spent in this small city, makes me look back at who I was for the greater part of my life. But with my mother’s milestone birthday, I find myself looking ahead.

Sometimes, I feel as though the pieces in Incite help me with this vision. I feel like I get a glimpse of who I might be when I myself hit 50 (or even 30 or 25). With articles like the ones in this issue, about perspective and vision, artists and art, fear and love, I have the audacity to think that I might be getting smart enough, learned enough, well-rounded enough to be able to guess at what my life might look like down the line.

And thank you all, contributors and readers, for giving me this chance every issue. But I’m fooling myself if I think I can even get a clue of who I’ll be some day.

My glasses can only do so much.

Sam Godfrey, Co-Editor-in-Chief 

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

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THE FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS Palika Kohli INSIGHTS ON INCITE Readers and Contributors THE ART GALLERY PROBLEM Nigel Pynn-Coates ART Livia Tsang THE STORIES DON’T LIE Sabrina Zhu AT A GLANCE Raluca Topliceanu

PHOTOGRAPHY Khatija Anjum, Katie Dingwall, Sam Godfrey, Rahul Sadavarte, David Tan THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY Victoria Haykin FRAMED Emile Shen SEEKING 20/20 Imaiya Ravichandran A LOVE LETTER Sabnam Mahmuda HAVE YOU MET YOU? Meg Peters

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HAPPINESS, LOVE, HINDSIGHT Dalya Cohen, Jaslyn English, Rachelle Zalter NEW HORIZONS Chris Leckenby YOUR SECRET SUPERPOWER L. Maegan Cheng DEAD VISIONARIES Shruti Ramesh O.NOIR Dalya Cohen & Raluca Topliceanu IN THE SIGHTS Mackenzie Richardson REIMAGINING THE ARTS AT TOGO SALMON HALL Ianitza Vassileva

ART: THE FOX’S SECRET Whyishnave Suthagar RECOLLECTIONS Ana Qarri THE SUGAR JAR Magdalene Au ART: BREATHING IN THE LAND, THEIR LAND Cassandra Ferguson SECOND SIGHT Kayla Esser THE AUTOCORRECTIVE LENS Jesse Bettencourt EXTRAORDINARY CHANGE IN VISION Madeline Lawler

THE FUTURE IS IN YOUR HANDS Palika Kohli

M

y family is full of the most hilarious superstitions. Both of my parents spent their childhoods in India, and brought to Canada a set of rules I don’t think I’ll ever understand. They’re mostly centred around warding off the ‘evil eye’. We follow rituals that make sure we leave the house ‘safely’. For example, if someone sneezes, trips over the doorframe, or has their name called when they’re leaving, that person must eat something, then remove and replace one shoe. And according to my family, you can instigate a fight simply by passing sharp silverware to someone by hand.

All things considered, it’s easy to make fun of them. But it makes me realize that my family’s view of the world is intensely shaped by our Indian background. And similarly, a mix of both the Canadian and Indian cultures influences my own views. The superstitions that my friends and I follow are certainly less elaborate than the ones my parents subscribe to, but removed from the context of our lives, they’re also pretty ridiculous. Why on earth is 11:11 AM a ‘lucky’ time? And what have black cats ever done to some of my more superstitious friends? (I still maintain that this particular superstition is some weird form of animal racism.) So, I have made my own bizarre (read: nonsensi-

cal) compromises between rationalism, my curiosity, and my family’s influence on me.

For one thing, I refuse to directly pass sharp silverware to anyone. I’ve rationalized this by deciding that there’s an obvious kernel of logic in not handing an extremely sharp knife over to someone. And I have never been able to resist reading my horoscope, something I’ve watched my parents do ever since I can remember. In fact, I believe that my love for horoscopes has bled into a love for personality tests. I’m pretty sure I take the Myers-Briggs test every year, in an effort to somehow learn more about myself, even if it’s just to make sure that I still belong in a special category (INFJ, anyone?). And Pottermore was pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me – I finally learned that, yes, I do truly belong in Gryffindor. It’s easy for me to attribute these weird passions to personal interests. I am minoring in psychology, which is how I was introduced to the Myers-Briggs personality test in the first place, and I have been a massive Potterhead since about the age of seven. But are these things any more legitimate than reading my daily horoscope?

I don’t think it matters. Ultimately, learning that I am in Gryffindor, or that I fit into the INFJ category, helps me better understand

Then he turned to me and told me Who I Was, Who I Am, and Who I Will Become.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JASON LAU

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myself. Knowing that there are specific traits and descriptors that I can assign to myself means that I am more than just an outward-facing lens viewing the world. And it goes further than simple introspection – I’m not just thinking about myself, but understanding myself as a person through the eyes of others.

I guess that, ultimately, I’m always looking to learn more about myself regardless of whether it’s on the terms of a psychologist, an astrologist, or a palm reader. When I had my palm read three years ago in India, I found myself believing everything a little Indian man said to me after he stared at the lines etched into my palm for approximately thirty seconds. He first read my father’s palm, and he knew things. He knew that my dad had moved “abroad,” that he had three children, that he had a bossy (read: extremely loud) wife, and that his second child (me!) was “lucky.” Then he turned to me and told me Who I Was, Who I Am, and Who I Will Become. Or, more accurately, he told me about personal obstacles, personality quirks, and weirdly specific things, like the number of children I will have (two, in case you were wondering). And the fact that I’m going to get married at the age of twenty-four; that I am “extraordinarily lucky,” both for myself and for the people in my life; that my biggest obstacle for success is my laziness; that I’m a bit of a spendthrift; and that I’m destined to do well in “the sciences” (I’m sure you can agree that this is vaguely reassuring).

I can’t help but think of this summary whenever I’m fretting over my future. It’s a source of comfort – the belief that everything is going to be all right, even though I don’t see it yet. And thus far, I haven’t been able to disagree with anything he said to me, although let’s see what happens when I turn twenty-four. Maybe he has Holmesian skills and made a bunch of deductions based on minute details in my appearance. Or maybe he has his trade down to a tee, and knows how to strike the perfect balance between vagueness and accuracy. All I know is that it has been three years, and he’s affected the way I look at myself. I might learn about myself through my personality type, or my Hogwarts house, but these things are (sadly, especially for the latter) only internal.

Somehow the palm reading, which seems to be the most implausible of them all, is the only description that’s grounded in something concrete – the palm of my hand.  INCITE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2014

One thought always leads to another… but more like 20 others or so.

– Maegan Cheng Writing for Incite (despite my limited experience) has been quite the sightseeing adventure. It really did shed some light on approaching an article from a creative perspective, almost forcing me to visualize the entirety of my piece before I even began to type. I believe the vision of Incite is something that really connects with me, and I have begun to see improvements in my own writing as I continue to open my eyes up to new ideas. It is my supreme hope that I will be able to continue my contributions without my writing getting cornea.

– Varun Puri Incite Magazine is a fantastic collection of incredible student work – ranging from visual art to articles and even creative writing – that the university needs to be able to see and enjoy. Student work needs to be showcased proudly and this magazine does exactly that with not just class but also visual beauty.

– Jason Lau Realizing that being reflective doesn’t necessarily mean you’re informed, but also acknowledging that it can be more poignant and memorable than researched facts.

– Palika

The first words I wrote in Incite were a lie.

They were found in an article entitled, "Being Kacper". In some 600 words, I tried to carve out the meaning of my life with a toothbrush for a shovel. This was my problem. Not that a life can't be reduced in 600 words. Mine takes much less than that – he lived, he tried, he died.

But you see, after writing that article I learned that I don't know jack about being Kacper. On a good day, he was a cluster of inconsistencies and contradictions. On a bad day, he was everything above and below.

Incite, though, catalyzed this existential snafu. As a writer, it has brought the miracle of introspection: for example, where I place my commas and what that means to me. As an editor, it has provided me with a phony authority to pretend I know where to place my commas in the first place.

So, if nothing else, Incite has allowed me to appreciate these pauses in a life that is itself a long and winding pause.

– Kacper Niburski I didn’t write a lot of articles for Incite. I think I wrote three, to be exact. One was only a paragraph, and two were full pages. I wrote stories based on personal experiences. And I just gave it a creative twist. Having the creative space to express my stories through Incite Magazine was a wonderful experience.

– Yardena Winegust Incite lets me to step away from my school work, take a breath, and just enjoy working on something for the pleasure of it. It lets me enjoy the writing and editing processes without the pressures of guidelines and grades.

This year especially, with a class schedule full of Science courses, Incite has let me put away my calculator, dig into something creative, and remind myself that there is more to life than assignments, midterms, and getting into graduate school.

– Jam My experience reading and writing for Incite has been very insightful! I have learned so much from both and love having the chance to write about something outside of my comfort zone. I also have noticed a significant improvement in my writing for my course assignments. Thank you Incite for giving me this opportunity!

– Madeline Lawler

Insights on Incite

Every month I try to adopt a different style of writing for Incite Magazine, and I like how much this challenges me. It's a good type of challenge, though. Not like wearing wet socks, or missing the bus when it's -20 degrees outside.

– Anonymous

I came across the following quotation when I was writing a piece for Incite, and it has stayed with me ever since: “No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise.”

– Lewis Carroll – Anonymous

I write. I write often and awfully. I write short and long words, sometimes consecutively, sometimes with long gaps and short stops. While I don’t believe in writer’s block, I do believe in black outs. (Contrary to popular belief, inspiration is less like a lightning bolt and more like a circuit board.)

Incite has been the electric wire to this telephone; I am so glad you’ve picked up.

– Meg Peters

I learned that if you can justify writing a food review of Chuck’s Burger Bar then Incite will pay for it.

– Anthony D’Ambrosio

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AVERY LAM

Reading Incite grants me insight into the topics we choose to explore in each issue. Each theme has so many facets, and I feel privileged to be a part of the group illuminating these for our readers! This time, we present to you a beautiful diamond of sight…

– Jessica

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREINA SCHOEBERLEIN (FLICKR)

THE ART GALLERY PROBLEM Nigel Pynn-Coates

A

rt galleries and mathematics are two things one does not typically associate, but let me convince you that some knowledge of mathematics is essential to the proper running of an art gallery.

Consider the question of how many cameras an art gallery needs for someone to watch their entire collection at once. They can just put one in every room, but that might be overkill. Instead, they should learn a little mathematics to find optimal placement strategies and save money on cameras.

You might wonder why mathematicians would ever think to study this problem, but it’s actually quite famous, and a lot of work has been done on it.

Believe me, mathematicians will study anything they can formulate mathematically. The version of this problem that I will present below has a few simplifying assumptions and was first proved by Chvátal in 1975. The proof I give is due to Fisk in 1978. Since then, the problem has been generalized in many ways, from walking guards to camera obstructions. Mathematicians love to take a problem as far as they can!

We need a few assumptions for our version of the art gallery problem. First, our cameras will have as wide a field

of vision as possible. Second, assume that there are no obstructions to a camera’s vision in the middle of a room. The second is obviously not a reasonable assumption for actual museums, but for the simple case we are considering, it is necessary. Don’t worry, mathematicians have considered the case when there are obstructions, too, but there isn’t space to discuss all of the generalizations of this problem. Note we only need to consider the interior walls of the gallery,

as is always sufficient to watch the whole gallery at once.

If n/3 is not a whole number, round down to the nearest whole number. For example, if n/3 = 3.33, we only need 3 cameras. In fact, we can do better when all our walls meet at right angles, using only n/4 cameras, but that’s harder to prove. The simplest example of this problem is a gallery shaped as any regular polygon, such as a triangle or square, with paintings on the walls. There would only need to be one camera to see the whole gallery.

To prove Chvátal’s theorem, we’ll need a little bit of graph theory. A graph is a set of points in the plane connected by lines.

We call the points, ‘vertices’, and the lines, ‘edges’. Simple examples are triangles, rectangles, and other polygons. We can think of our art gallery floor plan as a graph in the natural way: by thinking of the walls as edges, and any point they meet as a vertex.

We’ll use two stepping stone facts (called lemmas in mathematics lingo) from graph theory. We’ll return to them later to see why they are true, but for now accept them provisionally to see how easily they give us Chvátal’s result.

Lemma 1: Any polygon can be triangulated.

Triangulating a polygon means adding enough extra

The connections between art and mathematics abound! as everything else is irrelevant for camera placement. Finally, we’ll assume that the walls of our art gallery are perpendicular to the floor, so our floor plan is a reasonable representation of the gallery’s structure. The people at the ROM just made things difficult for themselves.

Now for our main result.  Chvátal’s Art Gallery Theorem: If the floor plan of an art gallery has n walls, then n/3 camer-

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edges (lines) inside the graph so that we can break the resulting object into triangles.

For example, you can triangulate a rectangle by drawing a line between two corners.

Lemma 2: Any polygon can be 3-coloured.

A 3-colouring of a triangulated polygon is when we colour each of the vertices of our graph with one of three colours such that each triangle has one vertex of each colour.

Proof of the Art Gallery Theorem: First, triangulate the graph of our art gallery floor plan, then 3-colour the vertices.

Choosing the colour with the fewest number of vertices and placing a camera on each vertex of that colour is enough to cover the entire art gallery. This is because each triangle in our triangulated polygon has one vertex of every colour and from each of those you can see the entire triangle. Because there are n vertices divided into three sets, the smallest set must have at most n/3 vertices. We’re done!

Putting together the two lemmas makes for a slick proof. If you take my word on their truth and have had your fill of math and art galleries, feel free to stop here. If you want to go a bit deeper

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into why this is true, read on!  The proofs of both lemmas use the technique of mathematical induction. The idea is to show that the fact is true for the simplest case, where we just have polygon with three vertices and three edges. Then, assume it is true for a polygon with n vertices, and show it must be true for a polygon with n+1 vertices. Since n was arbitrary, we have: if it’s true for 3-vertex polygons, it’s true for 4-vertex polygons; if it’s true for 4-vertex polygons, it’s true for 5-vertex polygons, etc. We conclude that it must be true for polygons with any number of vertices, or in other words, all polygons!

The proofs of the lemmas described below uses the method of ‘ear clipping’, perhaps inspired by Vincent van Gogh – the connections between art and mathematics abound! We use the fact that any simple polygon with four or more vertices has at least two ‘ears’. For a polygon, an ‘ear’ is a triangle with

two sides that are edges of the polygon and a third side entirely inside the polygon.

Proof of Lemma 1: We can obviously triangulate a polygon with three vertices, since it’s already a triangle. Now suppose we can triangulate any polygon with n vertices, and consider a polygon with n+1 vertices. Find an ear of the polygon and remove it. Then we have a polygon of n vertices, which by our assumption we can then triangulate. We can extend this to a triangulation of the original polygon just by adding in the triangle we removed. Thus, given that a polygon of n vertices can be triangulated, we must be able to triangulate a polygon of n+1 vertices. By mathematical induction, we have just proven that any polygon can be triangulated.

Proof of Lemma 2: This is very similar to the proof of lemma 1. I leave it as an exercise in mathematical induction for the reader! 

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Livia Tsang These digital collages come from personal photographs, a combination of images belonging to my parents from their youth back in Hong Kong and Columbus, Ohio, as well as images from mine and my brother’s first trip to Kowloon in 1999. There is something strange about the idea of leaving home as a version of oneself and returning after 15 years as another, and this time with children. I often wonder if my parents knew that their lives would end up this way. And as I find myself looking at these photos, being the same age as my parents were when these photographs were taken, my mind can’t help but draw parallels between us.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANGELA BUSSE-GIBSON

THE STORIES DON’T LIE Sabrina Zhu

W

hen I was in second grade, I doodled all over my worksheets. The math ones probably started the habit – they were always the most decorated (and least completed). It only took a week for the teacher to catch on, but I think someone tattled. Whatever the reason, Mrs. Nelson told me I had to do the questions first, even if numbers were boring. She started watching extra close during math time, but let me draw when I was done. She even brought new paper and asked about my pictures. I thought that was nice, so I told her all about my bedtime friends.

It started with voices in my wall. I heard them every night, usually sharp whispers or strange mumbling sounds beside the window. Mom and Dad told me it was the good fairies, singing to keep away scary things that lived in the dark. They said that if I really believed, I would see one. And I did! The good fairies were lovely, just timid at first. We eventually became close friends, and they even introduced me to their famous travelling cousin. She left me an extra quarter when my first tooth came out.

My parents were always glad to hear me talk about the good fairies. They started taking me to the library more often, picking out books like Cinderella and Peter Pan. The more I read, the more friends I looked for. Within a month, I had discovered a little elf village in my top drawer and a group of friendly gnomes living in backyard tunnels. A friendly dragon kept my hot chocolate warm and mermaids taught me to swim in the VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5

community pool. But as hard as I tried, there were never any evil queens or wicked witches to be found, and the longer I looked, the more I read about them. My parents didn’t like seeing me with those stories. They said that monsters and their black magic weren’t real – there were only the good fairies.

But I didn’t believe them. Books had never lied before.

I kept looking and reading, and spring became winter before the good fairies told me about a ghost who used to live in our house. He was rather young and clumsy,

They still try to tell me that there are only fairies and white magic, but I know better. and hadn’t quite mastered his newfound invisibility or wind-manipulating powers. A few years ago, he had disappeared with his strange messes and mysterious chills. They said it was because he didn’t want to startle people anymore. To that day, nobody knew if he had gotten any better, but everyone remembered that he had a sweet tooth.

The next day, I left a small candy under the stairs to the attic along with a note for the ghost saying that I’d like to meet him if I could. For nearly a month I looked especial-

ly hard for strange wind, replacing the candy with another type or flavour when nothing happened for a week. It was right before the holidays when I first saw the curtains by my window moving ever so slightly at bedtime.

I whispered for the ghost, and felt another breeze. I asked if he liked butterscotch, the candy I had left that morning, and the curtains drifted yet again.

It took many more days before I actually saw the ghost, hovering under a draped sheet because he still couldn’t control his invisibility. That’s why I started calling him Sheets. He was very smart, but did have a habit of interrupting people rather loudly when they spoke. That probably startled me more than the occasional chill before bed. After a while, Sheets started introducing me to some of the other creatures that stayed out of sight. They were every bit as interesting as my books said.

Mom and Dad still don’t like it when I talk about Sheets, or any of my newest bedtime friends. They still try to tell me that there are only fairies and white magic, but I know better. So does Mrs. Nelson, who never made numbers go away, but always managed to find me a new book of ghost stories. When the lights go out, I open my flashlight and read them to Sheets while the fairies brush their hair by the headlights of a UFO. When I finish, I bow to the mermaid princess and the black spider queen, trade a lullaby with an elf and the boogeyman, and make sure to blow a kiss to the monster in my closet.  9

AT A GLANCE Raluca Topliceanu

“W

hat caused this change? She has always been our most docile specimen.”

“She saw too much; she learned. Her knowledge will not allow her to return to the way things were before.”

“What steps should be taken?”

“Have her hooked up to the computer, we need to weed out the wrong memories and see if she can be salvaged. We can’t risk her giving these ideas to the other specimens. If she is beyond repair, she must be terminated.”  I am young, barely able to see a metre above the ground. Perhaps if I were taller, I would find something more fascinating about the white walls packing the room into a neat square. Perhaps if I were older, I would find a reason for the weekly rituals – the hardfaced woman entering the room each morning, not bothering to conceal the syringe as she approaches, no change in her expression as she delivers its contents into the tissue of my left or right arm, depending on which was used previously.

If I ever flinched, her grip would tighten on my arm and she would say, “What you do helps our research move forward. The data gathered from these tests will save millions of lives – you should be honored.” Her words were somewhat pacifying, but could never quite erase the pain. She rarely spoke; our meetings were mostly conducted in silence.

“Why?” I ask her, my eyes pleading with hers.

Silence and the bite of the needle are my only replies.  I feel the quick insertion of the needle, the injection of its contents followed by its steady withdrawal. The procedure has become so routine that pain no longer registers, and any discomfort takes its time to settle in. The woman places the needle within a zippered yellow package – the only colour in this barren white room – and conducts her preliminary observations after the first three minutes.

Elevated heart rate is detected after seven minutes and thirty-four seconds. Another five minutes and two seconds pass before vision is blurred to the point of not being able to distinguish shapes farther than an arm-length distance from the eyes. One hour leaves me howling in pain at her feet. Enough of these trials have drilled in the fact that she will not intervene, nor will she attempt to ease the pain caused by the drugs she administered. She is merely an observer.

A young man is brought into the room with the sole purpose of restraining my trembling limbs enough for all the required measurements to be taken. His hands circle around me, hold me to his chest, and the sensation of warmth radiating from his body feels so foreign to me, so different from the jabs and probes. The woman writes, “experimental sample SY198-2099 not stable enough for human use” across the zippered yellow package containing the used syringe, and the click of her retreating shoes resonate within the room long after the door shuts behind her. She already took her readings, observed me enough to determine what the drug is doing to my body. Any further interaction was not necessary.

The walls ignore my howls, send them back to me so that they echo in my thrumming head.

Cold porcelain tiles lining the floor do little to ease the burning of my skin. It is as if the drug is igniting each of my cells. The man’s arms begin to lose their hold on my trembling body, and I cling to his shirt, burying my face into his chest.

In my unpracticed voice I beg him not to leave me there alone, and I cannot determine if it is the pitiful state of my body or the fear quivering in my voice that convinces him to replace his arms around me.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I can’t answer that.”

“What do you do here?”

Silence.

“No one talks to me.” I close my eyes, savoring these strange feelings.

“I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“What?”

“Interacting.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Saying something stupid.”

“Like what?”

He runs his hand along my cheek, testing the temperature.

“You shouldn’t have to go through this,” he whispers into my hair.

“She told me the tests help save millions of lives.”

Enough of these trials have drilled in the fact that she will not intervene, nor will she attempt to ease the pain caused by the drugs she administered.

Each week brought a syringe filled with a different elixir to be tested. She would observe me closely, absently brush her fingers across my forehead to detect moisture or an increase in temperature. Most weeks she would have little more than an allergic reaction to show for her hours, and the sound of her shoes biting at the porcelain tile floors would be fierce with her frustrations. The amount of time the two of us spend together, though, allowed me to make my own observations. Her constant gaze shocked me with its distance, as if she did not want to acknowledge that under the superficial layer of our skin, there did not exist many differences between us.  Enough time has passed that my head would reach just slightly under her chin if I were to stand alongside her. Skin folds into tiny crevasses at the corners of her eyes, and slight grooves developed around her mouth. I wonder what she sees when she looks at me, or whether she even notices my features.

The syringe glistens in her gloved hands.

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“Oh, is that what they’re saying?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know what biological warfare is?”

“No.” “What they do to you, they want to patent and sell. They design millions of viruses and administer very dilute quantities to engineered test subjects – anything that gets a reaction is further tested until they are pleased with how it performs.”

“No… it can’t be. They never gave me something like that.”

“You’re the final step. Your immune system is three times more efficient than any human’s, so if they can get a reaction from you at all with a concentrated virus sample, they are pleased. But they have been having difficulty making something that they could turn off at will, should it ever be used against us. Do you know how many test subjects that drug you received went through? Fifty-three failed attempts.”

Silence.

“Am I just a subject? I have no other purpose?”

He does not answer with words, but his arms tighten around me.

“What questions will you answer?”

No reply.

“What do I look like?” I ask.

He wipes the hair from my face. “Why?” “Do I look very different from you?”

“They never let you look before?”

The hair is white, and the eyes are a deep pink. The girl in the image looks right at me, mimicking my movements.

I shake my head.

He reaches into the pocket of his uniform, pulls out a small, lustrous box and places it in my hands.

“What is it?”

“Open it.”

The little box comes apart, revealing a face which fits perfectly inside. The features are delicate, but they are not like any I have seen before. The hair is white, and the eyes are a deep pink. The girl in the image looks right at me, mimics my movements.

“That’s you,” he says.

“I… no. I look strange.”

“You are beautiful.”

“This is why I test those samples? Because I look like this?

Because white hair and pink eyes are displeasing?”

“No. You were made to look like this, and to serve this purpose.

The way you look is to help identify you if you run away.”

“There’s an ‘away’?”

“Yes, there is. Green grass, blue sky, tall buildings reaching as far as you can see—” “Take me there. I want to see it.”

A smile lights up his face. “I will take you there someday.” 

ARTWORK BY RALUCA TOPLICEANU VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5

“She refused the injection.”

“Yes, I clearly see that in her memories. Never had one of our specimens shown such opposition. This is definitely a risk to our institution – to our entire way of life. The evolution of our science lies on the foundation of these human test subjects. If the other specimens become capable of free thought…”

“The root of the uncharacteristic behavior is the male guard.”

“Yes.” “Is he taken care of?”

“Yes. All relevant memories and thoughts were shredded and he is now in the primary line for the testing of virus XF405-625.”

“Good. Deleted memories sometimes get revived with a strong enough visual cue. We could not risk another resurfacing in our specimen.”

“All memories are now loaded. Which do you wish me to erase?”

“All of them. Leave nothing. This is the only way we can have the control we need. Arrange for reformatting each week.”

“Yes, sir. All memories have been shredded.”

“Return her to her room. Resume the regular routine.”  11

Khatija Anjum

Rahul Sadavarte

Sam Godfrey

David Tan Katie Dingwall

Sam Godfrey

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AVERY LAM

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY Victoria Haykin

The Power of Prophecy in the Ancient World

“B

eware the Ides of March,” cries the old seer as Julius Caesar passes her by in the cobbled street. He barely heeds her warning, stopping only to say, “Today is the Ides of March.” As he hastens on his way, she mutters, “Yes, but the day is not yet over.”

Of course, as many Shakespeare buffs will recall from Julius Caesar, the unsuspecting general doesn’t live out the day.

Betrayed by his good friend Brutus, he is mercilessly murdered and left for dead.

The power of prediction has played an almost universal role in cultures throughout history. Oracles, soothsayers, and seers all offered their prophetic powers and their insight into the complexities of life. Often, they provided the illusion of stability during a time when humankind’s scientific understanding of the natural world was still in its infancy.

The first written evidence for this ancient practice comes from Mesopotamia. As with most cultures, divination (or the interpretation of signs) had religious significance, and the reading of omens would enable prophets to give advice for the present, predict future events, or make sense of the past.

The Mesopotamians believed that all things in the universe operated in accordance with divine will. As a result, they amassed a compendia of signs with which priests could interpret the world. They were particularly fascinated by planetary cycles. Every celestial body that could be observed with the naked eye, was thought to have been created and governed by the three gods, Anu, Enlil, and Ea. No political or private decision could be

14

undertaken without consulting them.

This practice isn’t unique to Mesopotamians. The Ancient Egyptians developed a form of divination more akin to magic.

Rituals drew heavily upon spoken chants containing ‘words of power’. Surviving records indicate that the Egyptians believed the world had been uttered into existence with a single word from the goddess Ma’at. Thus, the spoken word was particularly potent and could be invoked to control all the forces of nature. The Egyptians also consulted cult statues of common deities for guidance.

Priests would interpret the response of the god or goddess and relay the information to the petitioner.

Ancient Greece was originally indebted to nomadic Mesopotamian prophets for their understanding of divination. The Greek philosopher Plato was purportedly visited by one such wanderer the night before he died. Despite carrying on traditions similar to the Ancient Mesopotamians, the Greeks also built up cult sites around the notion of oracular consultation.

Great sanctuaries dedicated to oracles, believed to be directly inspired by the gods, sprung up throughout the Mediterranean.

The most important of these is undoubtedly the site of Delphi where the famous Pythia, oracle of Apollo, lived in a cave, chanting in verse for all those who could afford to consult her, from kings to lowly peasants.

Priests would receive the Pythia’s ambiguous prophecies, translate them into more sensible language, and offer up their explanations.

Our modern English word for ‘divination’ derives from the Latin noun divinatio (meaning prophecy or prognostication), and indeed, the Romans also believed strongly in the power of omens. They appropriated many religious practices of the Etruscan peoples who had resided in Italy long before the Roman Empire took root. Etruscans in particular were interested in the art of haruspicy, whereby a priest, called a haruspex, would examine the entrails of a sacrificed animal, usual sheep or poultry.

Depending on the consistency of the innards, the priest would then predict either a favourable or an ill-omened outcome for any event.

Augury was another common form of Roman divination adapted from the Etruscans. An augur, yet another type of priest, was trained to interpret the flight patterns of birds. Roman augurs held great political influence, conducting rites and interpreting the will of the gods at major ceremonies, predicting the outcomes of wars, and providing advice on commercial enterprises.

Many years after the death of Caesar, the poet Virgil would write that the seer who first predicted his assassination on the Ides of March was not the only one to foretell his impending doom. A whole host of signs were present in the entrails of sacrificial offerings and the natural world experienced earthquakes and terrors. Herein lies the allure of ancient prophecy: the power of hindsight. The truth of an omen when considered retrospectively can never be disputed.  INCITE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2014

FRAMED Emile Shen

I

t is so easy to accept what we hear from the ‘reputable’ news sources.

Why would CNN lie to you? Isn’t The Globe and Mail an award-winning newspaper? It’s not Fox News we’re talking about, after all.

The reality of the matter is that though we may not be faced with the blatant idiocy that Fox News is known for, we experience more subtle distortions of the truth. There is a blurred line – à la Robin Thicke – between reporting facts and framing them as a way to perpetuate a more convoluted agenda besides the supposedly objective reporting of current events.  What is framing?

In art, framing is the composition that establishes the scope of what is shown to the audience. This is not so different from the news media. Framing is a summarizing technique that is fundamentally necessary in communicating information. There are thousands of newsworthy topics to discuss within a limited amount of time, space, and resources.

Thus, many topics and perspectives are ignored while other facts and values are emphasized. More importantly, the perpetuators of mass media understand that framing is a mental shortcut; it is a technique that simplifies reality by focusing on subsets of information.

Complex issues are painted black and white. Complex individuals, good or bad. The simplification of these multidimensional issues into basic and anecdotal reports has serious implications for media consumers.  Why does it matter?

The majority of the news presented in mainstream society is set up in episodic framing, which focuses on simplicity. It is simplicity to the point

VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5

that many salient parts of issues are altogether ignored, little context or analysis is given, and the aforementioned thought dichotomy is promoted. This point of view fails to consider the ‘grey zone’ between the obvious black and white, meaning a whole range of interpretations are ignored or ‘forgotten’.

This failure is unacceptable and hypocritical for a society that places such emphasis on freedom of speech and often criticizes other geopolitical areas for their opinionated and fallacious news reports.

Framing prevents the public from gathering enough evidence to form any logical conclusion of their own. A paradox exists in the fact that we are being constantly opened to information about the world while being simultaneously encased in the bubble of media. A prime example of this is seen

vice versa. This constant interaction between the media, the frames, and the individual provides a defining norm for attitudes, appearances, and priorities. For this, we can say thank you to News Corp, GE, Disney, Viacom, CBS, and Time Warner, not necessarily for dictating what to think, but merely what to think about. The ‘Big Six’ owns 90% of all media-related firms; the corporations have a say in 90% of what we read, watch, and listen to.

Perhaps, then, it is to be expected that the long-run messages being communicated by the media tend to align with the interests these groups with economic clout.  How to notice it?

If you haven’t noticed that culture is more or less created by the media, observe how it tells us what attitudes

U.S.

World

U.S.

World

U.S.

World

U.S.

World

with the global content distribution in TIME (shown above).

While it is reasonable for TIME to focus on regional issues, football and politics included, in other parts of the world the same publication focuses on critical events, ideas, and people.

Such a contrast makes the American framing of current events seem trivial and self-absorbed.

The triviality and self-absorption of our cultural values are created, to a certain extent, by the media and

to take on certain issues and the emphasis of certain topics in the world.

We must search less for meaning and more for truth. We need to work harder and to look for the important contextual information that is all too often omitted; the historical and cultural interpretations of events, social patterns, and public policy. With the increase of alternative information sources available now because of the Internet, a more holistic view of any given issue is possible. 

15

SEEKING

20/20 Imaiya Ravichandran

artwork by Angela Busse-Gibson

16

I

vividly remember the moment I tried on my first pair of glasses.

Until then, I’d navigated the world through a foggy veil, though I’d never actually thought of myself as impaired. I’d always assumed that I was a member of the elusive “20/20” club that so many of my non-bespectacled friends boasted about. And so, I sat in the optometrist’s office, blissfully ignorant.

“1, or 2?” the optometrist asked while switching between two different lenses.

Neither had made the little red barn I was staring at any clearer, so I guessed: “2?”

“2, or 3?”

We played this silly game for another ten minutes at which point the doctor made me choose a pair of frames. A week later, I returned to the office. Smiling, the doctor handed me a pair of plastic glasses, which I then slipped onto my face.

It’s difficult to describe the experience of peering through those hideous frames without resorting to an assortment of over-used clichés. They are all true. Colours did suddenly become more vibrant.

Everything was crisper. Looking into the nearby mirror, I saw hundreds of frizzy hairs that I hadn’t noticed earlier that same morning.

But, even this tragic discovery could not dampen my exhilarated spirit and newfound sense of direction.

Years later, as I was entering university, I imagined being an undergrad would be like trying on my first pair of glasses. I had spent the

INCITE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2014

preceding four years stumbling my way through high school courses and feeling utterly confused. I did well in everything, yet excelled at nothing. I loved to read, and so enjoyed English, but not enough to compensate for my average writing ability. I was interested in learning about the human body in biology, but to this day, cannot explain what meiosis is, despite having attempted to memorize it on at least ten different occasions. “Science or arts?” a little voice in my head asked, much like the optometrist had when testing different lenses. I postponed answering this question for a long time until I was accepted into an interdisciplinary program at McMaster, where my answer finally became “both!”. I was overjoyed. This program would be the perfect pair of spectacles that would provide me with the time and perspective I was desperately seeking.

Perhaps the fact that my actual glasses shattered the week before my first year was an omen of what was to come. I began my classes with optimism, fantasizing about the profound self-actualization I would surely attain. Sadly, these preconceived expectations fell apart once faced with the bleak reality that was real life. I disliked most of my classes, and it was a struggle for me to muster enough motivation to drag myself out of bed. My apathy worked in tandem with my inability to wake up before 11:00 AM, and produced a feeling of discouragement so intense that even a perfect score on a calculus quiz (a rarity) did little to improve my attitude. This feeling was only exacerbated by the realization that my peers loved our classes.

VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5

What was wrong with me? I once thought I had too many interests, but now I felt I had none. Was I destined to lead the life of a Forever Undergrad, an academic vagabond who’d graduate with Bachelors of Nothing and minors in Everything?

I spent the summer after first year exactly as I’d spent my last one – pondering my future. Throughout high school, I’d been convinced that university would miraculously awaken a passion in me for one field or another. However, considering that this passion has been in deep slumber for the past 19 years, I wondered if my expectations were unreasonable. Maybe McMaster and my program were not to blame for my first-year lethargy. Sure, some courses were worse than anticipated. But the university experience is not limited to coursework, and there were a plethora of other learning opportunities plastered on the walls of MUSC, circulated to me by e-mail, and maybe even discussed in one of the many classes I’d slept through. I realized that while waiting for my undergrad to fulfill the prophecy I’d outlined a year earlier, I had overlooked countless chances to uncover the answers I had been seeking in the first place. This realization has helped me create a new vision, which is to not have a vision at all. It’s a little frightening to see this manifesto so blatantly articulated on paper. It seems too simplistic to be worth what will be nearly $28 000 of tuition. But if I learned anything during my first year, it is to let go. Sometimes, it’s good to not see where you’re headed. 

17

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WHYISHNAVE SUTHAGAR

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R O N N O C

TEXTURES BY EVELYN

FLINT (FLICKR)

HAVE YOU MET YOU? Meg Peters

I

first met her in 1994, a blonde toddler with chubby cheeks and a loud voice; she was fascinated by the corners of windows, her reflection bouncing in bluish-greenish-gray eyes. Over the years, I got to know her, watching her shape change as she grew into a quiet child, a loud teenager, and an eventual clueless almost-adult. I have come to love those eyes, curiously peering into every reflecting surface, covered in make up at certain points of her adolescence. I know her better than anyone else in the world and have come to appreciate her imperfections, flaws, and difficulties. Sometimes I hate her, cursing the body, the mind, the soul, but at the end of the day, she is the only one that is guaranteed to stick by me. She is me, and we are pretty perfect together.

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan first discussed the mirror stage in 1936, pointing to the exact moment when a person first recognizes the reflection of him or herself. He posited that after a human has reached 6 to 18 months, they have probably recognized their own subjectivity. In other words, I met myself around age one and a half. Now that I’m nearing the end of my undergraduate degree, I am relatively certain that I am happy with this self that I met twenty years ago. I have discovered, however, that not everyone knows or loves him or herself as much as I love me.

Loving yourself will always be a struggle. It’s much easier to love someone or something that you know very little about because your mind can fill in the gaps with positive untruths. But you’ve been living with yourself for a while now, and you have insecurities, fears, and some pretty glaring flaws. I promise that you are not perfect.

And if you think you are, you probably don’t know yourself very well after all.

But, as much as it may pain you to recognize this, you are literally the only person who will stay with you throughout your entire, imperfect life. Friends will move away, your parents will pass away, and your significant other might be lying when they carved your initials next to theirs. While they can all walk away, you are stuck with you.

Thankfully, this doesn’t have to be all bad. While your list of flaws might be long, you’re bound to have some super positive qualities. Why? Because you, dear reader, are human. You’re a paradox of good and bad all meshed together in a nice smoothie of personhood. And it’s much easier to hate someone that you know very little about,

VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5

While they can all walk away, you are stuck with you. because your mind can fill in the gaps with negative untruths. If you completely hate yourself, you don’t know yourself well enough. So spoil yourself. Take yourself out on a date and ask yourself awkward questions about your childhood.

I hate the adage “You Only Live Once” for a bunch of reasons, including the questionable grammar the phrase invokes, but Drake does have a point: you may only have this one life, so why not enjoy it? If you hate yourself, start questioning your own active or inactive life, and start questioning the people you’ve surrounded yourself with.

You do not have to do the things you do; if you hate these things, why do you do them? Your friends do not have to be your friends; if they support your own self-hatred, why do you hang out with them? You de-

serve to be who you want to be, and being around people who legitimately love you just as much as you love yourself helps to achieve that goal.

At the same time, part of this self-love struggle involves recognizing that you don’t live in a bubble. Your choices and actions do affect those around you. The choices of others do affect you. There are many, many things you cannot choose, and will never have power over. One of the major lessons in my life has been the importance of forgiveness. If you learn how to forgive yourself, it makes it much easier for others to forgive you. Forgive yourself and start enjoying life again. Guilt is not helpful. Get to know yourself well enough to apologize, forgive, and live. Fall love with yourself; you do have a lot in common. 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SONNET IRWIN

19

(Becoming happy)

Dalya Cohen

J

ust as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is happiness. Everybody has a different idea of happiness, and of what makes them happy, and everybody takes a different path to get there. But in the end, we are all going to the same place.

Goals can be about personal achievements, a career path, a healthier lifestyle, a good grade point average, or finding someone to share your life with. Maybe you’re working toward just getting through the week, or the day. Each of these pursuits is equally valid, because each brings the promise of something indescribable, indefinable, and yet so fundamental: happiness.

Although we know theoretically that mundane or unpleasant activities may be a means to an end, it is easy to get bogged down in the details of day-to-day life and lose sight of the ultimate goal. Getting a good grade point average may not make you happy, but getting the dream job will, if that is your goal. Working out five times a week might not be your ideal pastime, but the feeling you get when you look in the mirror and are happy with the person looking back makes the sweat and exhaustion worth it.

Sometimes we become so lost in happiness as a concept that we no longer understand happiness as an experience.

But happiness does not have to be an ultimate and as yet unattainable state of mind. It can, and should be, present. We shouldn’t have to wait to achieve our goals to enjoy our lives. And we shouldn’t have to be in a constant chicken-and-egg debate, asking “Which will come first: my success or my happiness?” The good news is that you don’t have to sacrifice one for the other. You don’t have to put off happiness to pursue success, or be happy now at the expense of your future.

You should be happy in your day-to-day life as you pursue your goals, and it all comes down to perspective.

I am a cynical person. I tend to jump to the worst-case scenario, and choose to see what I have done wrong, and where I have failed, rather than celebrate my success and see just how wonderful my life is. So whenever the idea that what you put out into the world is what you get back is suggested to me, I tend to dismiss it. The fluffy idea that thinking positively will influence your life positively and make you happier is, to me, just that: fluff.

Or at least it was. This century-old idea, which seems to be based on nothing but anecdotal testimony and the speeches delivered by the soft-spoken woman teaching your local hot yoga class, has been getting a lot of attention lately.

And the attention is not reserved for self-help books and magazines. The impact of a positive attitude has been recognized in the scientific community as well. This scientific attention has satisfied the cynic in me and allowed me to, slowly, embark on a new and more positive way of thinking.

There is truth that a positive mindset can guide you to make different decisions in your life. Decisions to explore, invent, imagine, and create are influenced by having a positive attitude. Positivity will also help you see the possibilities in your life, and recognize that failure doesn’t have to be so scary. However you choose to pursue your own happiness, you don’t have to wait to reach your goal before you start to feel joy and contentment. Each path may be unique, and each goal individual, but changing the perspective of the pursuit is something we should all try, a uniform framework that will help everyone in becoming happy. 

“Eye of the the beholder.”

H

indsight, as the infamous ‘they’ tell us, is looking back at the past and evaluating what happened. Apparently our hindsight is perfect 20/20 vision. But what does this mean? Looking back and deciding that we should have known that everything was about to unfold the way it did? That it was so staggeringly obvious, we should have seen it coming?

One of my psychology profs lectured that memory is not meant to recapitulate the past, but rather to prepare us for the future. Hindsight, seen through this context, is interesting. Whether personally or pertaining more to global history, what we learn when we study events that have happened already does not give aid to those in the past; their actions are done. It is, however, essential to our own survival. Through processes called cognitive biases, our mind allows us to remember the importance of the past and forget its chaos. These filters set us up to remember what will help us later and forget what is perceived to have little importance.

There are lists popping up everywhere these days: “20 things I wish I knew as an undergrad”, “15 things no one told me about high school”, “What I would tell my sixteen-year-old self”, et cetera. We are obsessed with looking back and deciding that it would have been easier if this, or how could we not have known that. We get into this cycle of thinking where we compare the real past to an ideal past until we have this list of defined pros and cons that are neither lifelike nor helpful since they lack

(Ten titles I ought to have used)

artwork by

Angela Busse-Gibson

“Love is blind.”

Rachelle Zalter

L

.”

ove is tricky. It can be exciting, scary, impulsive, uplifting, detrimental, beautiful, or ugly. There’s no formula.

It’s never the same twice. Love is just another aspect of our complicated lives, and yet it often seems to be placed on a pedestal. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe the fact that I like to watch chick flicks and fantasize over my Prince Charming makes me a cliché. Maybe the fact that I’m not afraid to admit it makes me unusual. I think we all want to be loved. I don’t, however, think we all understand love.

The first boy I ever fell for was Gordon from The Lizzie McGuire Show. From him, I learned that love can be unrequited. I learned from Titanic that love can be sacrificial. I learned from The Notebook that love can be everlasting. I learned from The Parent Trap that love can be rekindled. The problem is that when I base reality off of these assumptions, nothing seems to line up. I’ve never felt the way these characters do in that one grand scene at the end where somebody’s being chased in the airport, or jumping out of cars, or banging on doors at three in the morning to finally confess how they feel.

Maybe the problem is that I’ve never been in love. Or maybe the problem is that this kind of love doesn’t exist.

When I decided to write an article on “Love is blind”, I thought about how this one aspect of love may be true for some people, while completely inaccurate for others. One of my electives this term is Philosophy of Love and Sex, and in it we discuss the many questions of love. If you know anything about philosophy, then it won’t surprise you when I state the short answer to love is that there is no answer at all. There is no singular definition. There is blind love, yes. But there is also love that helps us realize the truth – helps us open our eyes to ourselves, to each other, and perhaps even to the world around us.

I guess if I’ve learned anything from love it’s that you can’t really know what to expect. The more you envision the perfect time, the perfect person, the perfect scenario, the less likely it is that you’ll find what you’re looking for.

I don’t mean that in the way where your best friend tells you, “Love always finds you when you least expect it.” I just mean that if you’re the type of person that likes to plan things out, or if you have that list of ideals that you’re looking to find in a partner, it might be best to close your diary and open your mind.

My first boyfriend and I dated for two weeks. Our one and only date was to McDonald’s. He bought me a strawberry pie. I think I spent more time trying to figure out how to hold his hand then I did on anything else for those fourteen days. You could write poems about the butterflies in yours stomach or tell stories about the blossoming of young love. But the truth was that I was too scared to date him, and so, naturally, I broke up with him in front of all of his friends in the library. The point is that life is often different from how it’s portrayed in movies.

Relationships are not always ideal. But they are real, and that’s probably better anyway. 

(What is love, anyway?)

Jaslyn English

that chaotic aspect of reality. We are abusing our cognitive biases by over-trimming the edges, leaving us not with a full concept of what happened, but an incomplete sense of the chaos we have left behind.

We are blessed with memory, both taught in our history classes and residing in our minds. The saying “Hindsight is 20/20” has a slightly condescending connotation towards what we are remembering. The people who use it are clucking at you, saying of course you know that now, you’ve already lived through it. I would like to submit the argument, however, that being able to perfectly examine the past allows us to better predict the future. Examining all the variables and evaluating which ones mattered is an invaluable insight privy to us mere mortals. Unfortunately, we spend too much time in the past and forget what it can tell us about the future.

By thinking in terms only of what, for example, our twenties can tell us about our twenties, rather than what it can tell us about our thirties and beyond, we are blatantly refusing the mindfulness that evolution has set up for us. To study the past for the sake of the past is not only redundant but also reprehensible in its hypocrisy to the human necessity for progress. It behooves me to point out that the past is pointless unless it helps you succeed in the future. The farther back you look, Churchill tells us, the further you can go. This is true, I would argue, only if you were looking in the right places. 

“Hindsight is 20/20.”

NEW HORIZONS Chris Leckenby

I

t’s remarkable how easy it is to spend one’s whole life in the same city and yet remain blissfully unaware of the many stories it holds. For my part, that’s a reality I’ve understood since a damp afternoon in early November, in the foyer of the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre in Hamilton’s north end. There, as I awaited admission to the opening reception of the Horizons Art Show, I was greeted by Salvadoran-born artist and long-time Hamilton resident José Loney, whose works were the focus of this exhibition. His face and mannerisms revealed a mixture of nervousness and excitement. This was new ground for him, a significant landmark in this fresh and much happier chapter of his life, and as we headed towards the gallery my excitement to see what awaited grew rapidly; all the more so because, if the past few months were anything to go by, I was not to be disappointed.

And, sure enough, I wasn’t.

When I first met José at the Hamilton Public Library in January 2013, I was immediately struck by two things. The first was the remarkable hardships through which he’s lived, and the second was the enchanting genuineness and creativity with which he has now chosen to express them. Although

he isn’t a professionally trained artist, people who engage with his work quickly come to recognize and admire the foresight and intention behind even the smallest details of his most abstract pieces, and it’s for this reason that his story is so captivating. “Art is a window to somebody’s point of view,

mother at a young age, and then witnessed the murder of his father by the Salvadoran military when he was 13. Orphaned in the midst of a brutal civil war, José had no choice but to flee the country, spending five years in Costa Rica before acquiring refugee status in Canada. Living with a Hamilton foster family and attending a local high school, before finding work in a variety of fields including house painting, José was given the chance to start over. But, in many respects, the damage was already done, and it wasn’t long before he began turning to alcohol as a perverse form of self-medication.

José remained an alcoholic for almost 20 years, and in that time paid a heavy price – physically, socially, and financially – for his addiction. “When painting companies stopped calling me because I was drunk every day and they couldn’t have that, and when the invitations to house parties stopped because they didn’t want to see ‘José the Drunk’, and when people stopped showing me respect as a human being… that’s when I knew I’d hit rock bottom. I was very isolated by society because I was a drunk, and I also isolated myself because I thought they didn’t understand me.” Today, though, he has been sober for nine years, and has

“Art is a window to somebody’s point of view, a medium you can use to express feelings, fears, and goals. In my case, it’s therapy. I use my art to tell my stories.” a medium you can use to express feelings, fears, and goals. In my case, it’s therapy. I use my art to tell my stories,” he would later tell me, and anyone who’s ever spoken with him on this subject knows only too well how passionately he does so.

Born in San Juan Opico, José lost his

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS LECKENBY

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INCITE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2014

once again taken up the hobby he enjoyed as a child; but this time with an important difference.

Following the conclusion of his November show, I sat down with him to discuss his plans and goals for the future. His life has definitely taken a turn for the better, but he remains humble and realistic about where he is and where he wants to go. “My addiction isn’t nine years away. It’s always this close,” he said, tapping the table with his coffee cup. And it’s for this reason that he has every intention of continuing the work he’s started. “In 10 years, I picture myself still being alive, healthy, and sharing my thoughts, because I’ll never stop doing art. And, while I still see myself talking about painful experiences, if my traumas have disappeared by then I’ll also show more sunshine.”

More than anything, he wants his experiences to serve as a warning sign for other people who are struggling with addictions and suppressing painful memories of all kinds. In particular, he would like to help young adults avoid making the same destructive choices he did at that age by using his story to reach out to potentially troubled members of Hamilton’s student communities. “Addiction,” as he puts it, “is the loss of self-control. It’s a way to destroy life. Making somebody stop and think a little bit about their activity… that would be payback for me.” He also envisions himself opening a studio; one in which the works VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5

and lives of other amateur artists can be promoted and shared, especially those from Hamilton’s Latin American community.

The completion of such a project may still be a long way off, but it’s also far from idle chatter. Rather, it stems directly from his understanding of art and the healing power it holds for individuals and society alike. “Commercialized art, art without meaning, isn’t really art. Art is a tool that should be used on a daily basis, for whatever purpose… I believe people like my art because they can empathize with some element of it.”

Indeed, as I wandered amongst the pieces on display at the Horizons Art Show, I saw new creations alongside old favourites of mine from previous exhibitions; each work imbued with a profound sincerity and individuality. I never tire of looking at his works, because, while I’ll never truly understand the ordeals through which José has lived, the feelings of familiarity and solidarity they inspire are of tremendous solace and

revitalization. In a sense, it’s like meeting an old friend for the first time.

It seems fitting, then, that José should have the last word, and it comes from a question I once asked him about what his advice would be for young people today: “If you’re struggling with a problem, an addiction, don’t get stuck in it… There comes a time in life when you actually have to lift the gloves and throw at least a punch, and in my case that’s painting and drawing, because that releases all my tension and pain.

Whatever you do, don’t keep it to yourself, because that will eventually eat you alive.

Talk about your issues, or write about them on a piece of paper, or draw an image. Let out your feelings. You are an artist, you just don’t know it.”  23

YOUR SECRET SUPERPOWER L. Maegan Cheng

The Mind’s Eye

P

icture this. You’re lying on a beach. It’s warm, and birds are soaring above, their calls mixing with the crash of the ocean. Your heels dig into hot sand and you prop yourself up, debating whether it’s time for a leisurely swim. But the edge of your textbook bites into your palm and images of summery weather flicker and fade. You mourn the fantasy, for it would be far more pleasant to be on vacation than to be at school, paging through assigned readings that must have been designed to cure insomnia.

When you ‘see’ something in your mind’s eye, areas of your brain, like the visual cortex, light up on brain imaging scans.

Everyday visualization skills can also be measured through performance on mental rotation tasks (when you see a weird shape and then decide which of the other few weird shapes is the original, rotated).

We use our ability to visualize like our other senses, taking it for granted. But can you imagine what life would be like without it?

Unable to pull up mental maps mid-journey, you’d probably end up taking the wrong turn and getting lost far more often (or I would at least). Being able to picture things that aren’t in your actual visual input is a really useful ability.

Sometimes real visuals are nice, though, if only to trigger inspiration. Words have a special power, evoking images, gifsets, and little movie reels in your mind’s eye. Reading nurtures the imagination as words knit together, forming phrases and pictures. Just think how libraries contain entire worlds of knowledge and stories. Intuitively, you knew this already. You can probably see the movie of your favourite story in your head, and when a book you’ve read gets made into a movie, you can be certain that someone will complain “that’s not the way I pictured it!”

Of course, it’s not just literature that spawns these escapes. Your imagination can take on a life of its own, and a trip down memory lane is sure to evoke some nostalgic epics. For brief periods of time, you can spirit yourself away with no one the wiser – provided you don’t look completely spaced out. There is little risk of getting caught daydreaming because no one can actually see into your thoughts. Your mind is, perhaps,

24

the most private part of you.

But a great imagination is a double-edged sword. How many times would it have been convenient to project what you have in your mind onto a screen? Or to capture your thoughts in a photograph and share with the world (though imagine how much more terrifying social media would get)? Currently the only way to share your particular vision is to translate it from the images of your mind’s eye into content sharable in our world.

Maybe you have the talent to paint what you see, or you’re adept at turning the images into words. The tools we have to express ourselves limit the translation from mind to ‘reality’. The limitations of language, colour, and technology all set the parameters for what you can convey. Furthermore, imagination may be limitless, but we are constrained by the range of our senses. It is impossible to ‘see’ an entirely new colour, one that’s out of the range that the human

eye can perceive. If you’re like me, all you can picture is a pretty blend of colours that you could already perceive, just as if it was before you. But with the expanse of all that you imagine, let’s not dwell further on the troubles of translating things from mind to reality.

Visualizing may be like a secret superpower we don’t even realize we have. You could be glimpsing a myriad of alternate worlds, spawned from the little, everyday decisions we make all the time. You can reconstruct the past, look up at the stars in an unpolluted night sky, or breathe in fragrant spring air. As a kid, you probably played pretend (slaying dragons?) and it was as real as you could imagine it. So who knows, maybe you don’t need to see, if you can ‘see’. 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WHYISHNAVE SUTHAGAR

DEAD VISIONARIES Shruti Ramesh

ARTWORK BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

V

isionaries are people who think about the future. They have innovative and original ideas of how the world could change for the better, and are motivated to act and turn these dreams of change into a reality. Perhaps most important of all, their inspiration has the ability to inspire others to create change in the world

as well. Every year new visionaries enter the world. But many also pass away. Their effect, however, remains long after they have gone.

Though by no means an exhaustive list, here are some of the visionaries we have lost in the past year, whose legacy stretches far beyond 2013.

Hiroshi Yamauchi (1927—2013) was a Japanese businessman and served as the third president of Nintendo for over fifty years. Among many achievements, he is largely responsible for transforming Nintendo from a small toy company into the giant corporation it is today. After stepping down from presidency, Yamauchi refused to accept his pension for Nintendo so that it could be reinvested into the company. Shortly before his death from complications following pneumonia, he donated over seven billion yen to build a new cancer treatment center in Kyoto, Japan.

Chinua Achebe (1930—2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. He is the author of the African Trilogy, the first installment of which is the novel Things Fall Apart, the most widely read book in modern African literature. Much of his work focuses on the impact of colonialism on indigenous peoples. For a time, he was an ambassador for the independence of the Biafran region of Nigeria, but resigned due to government corruption. He served as a professor of African Literature at Brown University in the United States from 2009 until his death.

Douglas Engelbart (1925—2013) was an American engineer and inventor. He was responsible for introducing many ‘firsts’ of computing, such as inventing the first computer mouse, display editing, and computer windows. His research and work largely focused on the challenges regarding human-computer interaction. He became known for his decision to “decline a steady job to focus on making the world a better place, especially through the use of computers” and worked towards this goal of addressing the world’s increasingly urgent and complex problems with computing until his death.

Amar Bose (1929—2013) was an Indian American entrepreneur, engineer and academic. Along with being the founder and chairmen of Bose Corporation, he was a professor at MIT for over 45 years. His company, which specializes in audio equipment, used his research into psychoacoustics to revolutionize speaker technology by emulating the experience of live music. Bose was known for once saying, “I never went into business to make money; I went into business so I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.” True to this, Bose donated a majority of his company to MIT in the form of non-voting shares to sustain and advance MIT’s research mission, representing his unending support of the pursuit of education.

Nelson Mandela (1918—2013) was a South African politician who served as the country’s first black chief executive elected in a fully representative democratic election, as well as serving as the President of the African National Congress from 1991 to 1997. Prior to this, he was an anti-apartheid revolutionary, and served 27 years in prison as a result. His government continued to work to dismantle the legacy of apartheid, and to tackle issues of poverty and racial inequalities by fostering reconciliation between different groups. Mandela later established the Nelson Mandela Foundation and focused on combating HIV/AIDS and eliminating extreme poverty.

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O.NOIR O As each course is presented, the use of cutlery is forgotten and social barriers begin to collapse.

A

.NOIR, a restaurant concept with locations in Toronto and Montreal, is a completely unique, out-of-sight experience. Literally.

Climbing underground to enter the restaurant, it appears to be high-class, with a welcoming lounge and bar area to sit, schmooze, and order. Yes, you order before entering the dining room. This is really more of a procedure of practicality than anything, because as soon as you enter the dining room you are totally eclipsed by darkness. It is not scary; rather it is surreal. The restaurant creates the opportunity to experience for one evening the loss of one of your five senses, and to consider the effect this has on the other four.

Led into the dining room by one of the blind waiters who works there, you completely lose the ability to orient yourself; you quite literally enter the room blindly. You cannot tell where in the restaurant you are sitting, who you are sitting next to, or what you have on the plate in front of you. As each course is presented, the use of cutlery is forgotten and social barriers begin to collapse. You converse with the people at tables next to you, all equally enchanted by the imposed moonless night, and come to ignore the rules that traditionally govern an evening out at a restaurant. And it is liberating.

O.NOIR is for anyone looking for a good meal, and a fun, adventurous experience you can have nowhere else. The next time you find yourself looking for plans on a Saturday night, I highly recommend you give it a try. 

d r

Dalya Cohen

ccording to my friend, O.NOIR is the kind of place where you abandon utensils when eating salad in the pitch black, where most of the staff is blind, and where you most likely will try to sneak out without paying the bill. It is a restaurant where servers running into you is not a sign of their clumsiness, but rather your inability to move out of the way when they warn “Attençion, attençion….” You hold onto your companion’s hand or risk losing them in the void forever, and the first thing you think about as you sit down (feeling for the chair, of course) is whether the kitchen staff are also under the influence of the restaurant’s theme. While you take your first bite, you have to think really hard about whether the food does taste different when one of your other senses is impaired, but you were thinking so hard about figuring out where the food was relative to your mouth that by then you’re exhausted. Either way, you leave satisfied, full, and with one more interesting story to tell someday. 

Raluca Topliceanu

ARTWORK BY SARAH MAE CONRAD 26

INCITE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2014

IN THE SIGHTS

Mackenzie Richardson

B

reathe, he tells himself. Breathe and focus.

Today was not a day he could afford to mess up.

Years of practice, training, learning, and preparing had gone into this moment. He shifts his grip, embarrassed and aware of how sweaty his palms are, leaving warm, sticky handprints on the cool black carbon fibre body. For the thousandth time that day, he looks down the sights, checking alignment, sight lines, positioning.

The scene to come plays out in his head like methodical clockwork: music plays, crowd cheers, President walks out, click.. Music plays, crowd cheers, President walks out, click. click

easy it had been. There was no fear, no doubts, nothing holding him back. It was the first real job he had. If he did well, there may be more. Do poorly, mess up, and the rest of his life would be spent in a dirty, squalid hole.

He checks his watch: 9:59 A.M. Breathe, just breathe, you fool. He shifts his grip again, sweat pouring from his hands, volumes more sweat than his body could contain. Angrily he checks his watch: 10:00 A.M. Why hasn’t it started? They’re late. Goddamn politicians. Always late. He speaks the words with about as much conviction as a dead mouse could muster, just needing a target to vent at, something (anything) to take his mind off

One shot was all there was, but it was the only one he needed.

He had one shot at this. The timing had to be impeccable or everything he had done would be for naught. One shot was all there was, but it was the only one he needed. He eases his fingers, stretching them lightly back and forth, to relieve tension, to pass the time.

He looks at his watch: 9:56 A.M. He looks at the sky: clear and sunny. He picks his teeth once again to try and get the last of the poppy seeds from his morning bagel out. He checks his watch again: 9:57 A.M. Sighing, he shifts his grip, repeating the process, the pointless loop, over and over. He could hear the ever so slight tick, tick, tick, going on in the back of his head telling him the time was coming.

The seeds in his teeth weren’t the only frustrating reminder of that morning’s events. He wasn’t supposed to be here. It was Phil’s job. Phil was supposed to be here, sweating bullets, checking sights, taking aim. It had been Phil’s plan, Phil’s job, Phil’s risk, Phil’s reward. But not his. The call had come at 5:00 A.M., rousing him from sleep: a frantic voice prattling on too anxiously about how Phil was sick or gone or dead or missing or scared. Pleading, begging him to come in. The voice plied him with compliments, threatened him with ultimatums, bribed him with rewards. He had heard this would happen. His friends had told him to not be scared: this was all part of the job, all part of the life style. You couldn’t seem too eager but you couldn’t refuse. Those who refused never survived for long, and that was a fate he wished to avoid. Yes. Yes I’ll take it.

Even now, sitting in the uncomfortably hot sun of a July morning, he was amazed at how

VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5

of what is truly happening. Quietly, rising quickly, an all too familiar tune begins to play: buh ba buh ba… Hail to the Chief is playing. People cheer, raising arms, voices, shouts, salutes, cries, laughter, heckles.

This is it. No more waiting. No time left. It’s now, it’s happening. If he was sweating before, the torrents of liquid now streaming from his hands defy plausibility. He holds the stock firmly, tightly.

He breathes. Lightly pull the finger, he tells himself.

Don’t jerk, don’t be hasty. Wait. Wait and breathe.

He sees the president begin to walk across the stage. He waits. He holds his breath. He waits.

He sees the president approaching the centre.

He relaxes his arms, relaxes his hands, relaxes his mind.

This is it. He lines up the sights.

Click.  Damn fine work. Damn fine work indeed. He’s sitting in a cool office, cool air streaming onto his face, easing his muscles and his worries as he sits in his cheap suit. He scratches at the imitation wool. Soon, he thinks, soon this will be trash and I can afford an actual suit, a nice suit. The boss is talking to him. The radiant expression, the shinning sun beam of his gaze streams out over him. What you did kid, one in a million. No one expected something that good, that well done.

It’s all over the newspaper. You know what they’re calling you? It takes every ounce of will he has to not jump up and do cartwheels. What? he says, trying to act cool, play it off like it’s nothing.

The best damn photographer in New York. 

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REIMAGINING THE ARTS AT TOGO Ianitza Vassileva

“There are art studios in TSH?!”

T

hat is usually what people say when I tell them I am going to go paint in my studio. However, the $3 million gift to the Fine Arts program by Robert Fitzhenry will fund a significant renovation of the building. Get ready BFA’s, because those hidden studios in the labyrinth that is TSH are about to make a huge impact on the arts scene at Mac. Hopefully this will lead to a greater understanding, acknowledgement of, and collaboration with the arts at McMaster.

To kick off this renovation, David Premi Architects Inc, VRM Engineers, Adesso Design and HAVN decided to hold a Charrette.

This is an intense period of collaborative design and planning where a large group sub divides into small groups who work the design problem. At the end the groups come 28

together to present their work. Essentially, a Charrette serves as a way to quickly generate a design solution while integrating the aptitudes and interests of a diverse group of people.

With a fervent energy we broke down walls and remodeled the building on layers and layers of transparent paper. As we hashed out ideas, the lines became clearer.

Foam board 3D models of TSH were available for us to manipulate and add onto. At the end of the day, the architects began to computer model the rough sketches and bring them to life.

There was a huge emphasis in all three groups on creating a shared common space.

There would also be an entirely new atrium to enter into the building. The new gallery

at this atrium would be a place to welcome visitors and students. It will open up possibilities for more public exhibitions and open up a hub of activity on campus. At the moment, many students may not know but the “New Space Gallery” does exist, and there are extremely cool art shows that students put on nearly every week. As well, upper year students present their work every Thursday afternoon during a class that is open to visitors.

As we brainstormed, a new idea kept coming into to play – the creation of collaborative spaces.

There was talk of creating spaces and facilities for interdisciplinary flow. Art often intersects with other disciplines such as multimedia, science, and engineering. Whether we are artists or scientists we are all imaginative creators who are involved in the process of asking questions and doing research. Perhaps the new studios could facilitate greater interdisciplinary collaboration with the arts.

What really stood out to me is how many alumni and people from the art community in Hamilton came out to this event. Although we all may be a little jealous of the incoming first year students who will likely have full access to this space for their entire undergrad, as a graduating student I understood that we would be leaving a legacy, and that maybe as a result of our contribution when we come back to visit in ten years the program will be completely revitalized and have a much bigger presence on campus.

The art program is made up of sculptors, painters, installation artists, printmakers, all of whom would love to have more space that supports their creative energy. Art students basically live in the studios when deadlines are approaching. For many, the studios are like home; a place where you could express any crazy idea and others will offer valuable insight and support into how it may come to fruition. As Robert Fitzhenry said, “Art is an essential component of a complete life.” Hopefully the impact these renovations make will bring a little more art into all of McMaster students’ lives.  INCITE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2014

SALMON HALL: A DESIGN CHARRETTE PHOTOGRAPHY BY IANITZA VASSILEVA

The term charrette is French for ‘cart’ or ‘chariot’, and comes from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 19th century. Here, architecture students would work furiously towards a deadline, after which a chariot would transport their final product while they added the finishing touches.

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“One sees clearly only with the heart.

What is essential is invisible to the eye.�

Whyishnave Suthagar

The Fox’s Secret: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur.

L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.”

Recollections Ana Qarri

W

hen I came back from Greece, I looked out of the car window to watch the landscape as we drove through the mountain roads. I tried to make out the trees, the flowers, the smallest rocks at the side of the road, but all I could see were blurs of dark green and olive brown. I wrote a poem that day expressing my love for my country. It was beautiful, it was my favourite place on Earth, I had missed it terribly, and it was all a blur.

The walls of my mom’s workplace were white with a hint of pink. I slid down the wide ceramic staircase railings in front of the university every time I was given the chance. In her office, she had a garbage bin with holes in it.

I stared at it for hours once wondering about those holes. I never bothered to ask her, and she never bothered to tell me.

I’m nineteen. I call my mom to find out if she has a copy of that poem. She tells me I always kept my own work. I rummage through my boxes to find my seven year old self’s innocent expression of patriotism.

On November 28, our day of independence, I read a poem I wrote for Mother Teresa aloud in front of my school. I praised her life, her work, her significance to our country with all the eloquence of a fourth

grader. One month later, I wrote a second part to my poem. I read it in front of my family full of the kind of pride that one only feels when their first contribution was so successful a second one was necessary.

I saved both pieces of paper in my pink notebook. I wrote them out carefully in my neatest handwriting. I never liked the sec-

the professors were saying their goodbyes, and I watched as they went up to the podium one by one, blurting out something heartwarming, cracking jokes at the expense of the dean. They gave him flowers and he retired wearing a striped shirt. I wondered if his work was a masterpiece by pure coincidence too.

I looked up to see my own reflection on the restroom’s mirror, and she wished me luck on my exams.

Thanks, I said, focusing on her short, curly, graying hair. She kept her eyes fixed until I looked down. Are you a student too? I asked. Yeah, it’s taking me a few decades, she joked. Why did you come back? I wondered if I was crossing a line. I thought I’d give it another try, she said as she turned towards the door. Good luck.

I opened the bottom drawer to find a pair of my lucky socks. I’ve only ever owned lucky socks, and they’ve never been particularly lucky. They were a pair of dark red, ankle high, worn out Adidas socks. I put them on and stared at my protruding giant of a big toe poking out of the hole that was a testament of years of never being particularly lucky.

I placed my hand on her knee and leaned in for a kiss. Not at the library. They

I wondered if his work was a masterpiece by pure coincidence too.

32

ond part. I decided to never write a second part to anything again. I thought all my poems were one-hit wonders, masterpieces by pure coincidence.

The dean of the university patted me on the head. It was his last day on the job. I didn’t recall when he started balding, but his hair had formed a black crown around his head. We walked into the lecture hall where

probably have cameras everywhere. I looked up and around and even in the spaces between the bookshelves. I didn’t see any cameras. I looked down at my book and continued reading. I saw the silhouette of a man looking our way in my peripheral vision.

She put her hand on my knee. My dad sat on the right side of the booth by the window.

He crossed his arms and avoided making eye contact, but his restless hands kept

five people that day. A woman in a headscarf was sitting in the front row, staring quizzically at the phrases on the board. She adjusted her scarf and turned to the man next to her.

I tried to make out the words hidden behind his thick moustache.

I took off the drenched socks and sat on the edge of my bed. My wet footprints were slowly disappearing into the thin, cold air. I left the window open that morning hop-

The tears building up at the corners of his eyes reflected the fluorescent lighting of the restaurant. travelling up and down his forearms, playing with their thick black hairs, until they finally found each other and nervously morphed into one fist – knuckles and veins and all.

The tears building up at the corners of his eyes reflected the fluorescent lighting of the restaurant. I looked around to see if anyone was watching.

The community meeting started half an hour late, when my mom and her partner realized that they weren’t expecting more than

ing the room would be different when I returned. In the footprints there was a song and a girl and a midnight-attempt at a slow dance. We hadn’t really danced.

We swayed back and forth to the sound of some cliché pop song reminiscent of a middle-school dance we hadn’t attended. I hadn’t thought much of it then. But now, sitting on a cold bed breathing in the brisk air of a freezing room, I couldn’t help but think, At least, we danced. 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WHYISHNAVE SUTHAGAR 33

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KHATIJA ANJUM

THE SUGAR JAR Magdalene Au

T

he jar was a blur when it fell to the ground and shattered into a million tiny shards.

Bits of glass and brown sugar were littered around his feet. Francis chided himself for his clumsiness. The coffee would be bitter today.

He edged his way to the closet where the broom and dustpan were kept. In his head, Francis could hear his daughter’s voice filled with concern. Why didn’t you call me? You could have cut yourself on the glass. But Francis was not about to call his daughter from across town just to clean up a little mess.

Francis had always been stubborn, even in infancy. His mother tried every trick in the book to coax a “Mama” out of the wide-eyed baby, but despite of all the cooing and coddling, Francis would not utter a single word until his fourth birthday. Until then, he simply did not have any interest in talking. He was content spending his days within the pastel yellow walls of his nursery. During the day he gave life to his stuffed animals, and at night he counted the glow-in-the dark stars on his ceiling. His whole world was laid out in front of him.

As a young child, Francis was teased mercilessly on the playground. He had a peculiar way of dressing that he inherited from his uncle: bold patterns like polka dots and thick stripes always caught his eye in the clothing stores. His taste for geometric shapes and vibrant colours extended to the crafts that he did in class and presented proudly to his parents.

Not even the immense waves of pressure from his peers could quell his flamboyant tastes.

One teenage summer, Francis hit a growth spurt and suddenly he was looking down on the world. Everything seemed so much smaller and within reach.

In these years his ambitions climbed.

His parents pleaded for him to stay close to home, but he insisted on going to university on the other side of the country. On his flight to school, the plane circled the city of his childhood. In that moment, Francis decided that the city had become too small for his long legs.

His twenties always played vividly in his mind. The clarity was 34

On the day when he looked in the mirror and saw his father’s face staring back at him, Francis conceded to time. a product of many hours spent reliving the moments, retouching and recolouring his memories. These were the years that he spent with Alice. She approached his stubbornness with a sharp wit and he loved her for that. By that time, Francis was teaching at the local elementary school. He adored the children and they adored him in return. He begged and begged until Alice conceded. They put their darling daughter in a white crib and painted the walls of the nursery pastel yellow.

And then the day came when Francis stopped wearing his polka dot shirts. He watched his wife wither away from a lump in her breast.

Years later, when Francis had lived longer as a widow than as a husband, he would still remember his wife as the vivacious young woman she was before her illness. As his thoughts lingered on the image of his wife, forever young, Francis let the years slip by. At last, when he was ready for companionship in his life once again, all the women had grown too old for him. He first noticed the passage of time in the faces of the boys who used to tease him on the playground.

The lines on their faces marked the trials and tribulations of age. On the day when he looked in the mirror and saw his father’s face staring back at him, Francis conceded to time. From that moment on, Francis counted his growing aches and wrinkles like rings on a tree.

Francis leaned the broom against the counter and bent down slowly to examine the shards of glass. The fragments were like raindrops, throwing colour around the yellow kitchen. His fragile hands trembled as he reached down, but he jerked back in shock. A blotch of red grew steadily on his finger.  INCITE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2014

Breathing in the Land, Their Land 3 × 5.5 ft Wool, yarn, rope, fibre bandage, pine, maple, nails.

2013

Cassandra Ferguson is a third-year BFA Studio Art student at McMaster University. Her background interest in the environment informs her artwork as she explores parallels between forms of life.

This work is part of an ongoing series of woven panels, each constructed and displayed on its own loom. The series references the connections and relationships present between the human species and the natural environment. On its own, this work speaks of an organic world and a human’s position within that world in contemporary society.

This work is an example of process speaking as part of the dialogue. The weaving process is a major time commitment, with the production of this single panel spanning roughly six weeks from planning to completion. As time continued to unfold there were several external factors directly influencing the piece, those factors constantly changing. My work has a desire to relate nature to the self. My emotional experience over the course of its production intuitively drove the work forward as outward experiences transformed to introspection.  VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY AVERY LAM

SECOND SIGHT Kayla Esser

T

he majority of what we don’t understand about being human, and about the world, is all in our heads. While psychologists can describe many of the strange phenomena our brains produce every day, they often can’t pinpoint the causes. Have you ever felt like you recognized something you’d never seen before?

Or known the outcome of a conversation before having it? Maybe science can’t give you an explanation, but the Internet can. The following are several of the strangest and yet widely experienced brain phenomena I could find, and some even stranger theories to explain them.

déjà vu Déjà vu, the most common phenomenon, is the sensation of having already seen something that is entirely new to you. It could be a restaurant, a room full of people, even a country you have never travelled to before. Déjà vu is extremely hard to pinpoint, because it occurs in short and unexpected spurts, with no physical manifestations other than the occasional cry of “Hey! Déjà vu!” It is hard to conduct scientific research on such a fleeting phenomenon, but scientists think that two thirds of the world’s population has experienced it at some point in their lives. Most cases occur in individuals between ages 15 to 25. This might indicate a link between déjà vu and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, which are found in higher concentrations in adolescents.

The Internet has its own opinions about déjà vu which may seem far-fetched, but could be argued equally as valid as the unproven scientific theories. One long-standing theory suggests that a visual disconnect, where one hemisphere of the brain processes an image before the other, can create a false memory and thus the feeling of déjà vu. Some people believe that déjà vu is merely the recognition of something you saw in a dream, or in a previous life. It has also been explained as the overlap between you and your alternate self in a parallel universe.

déjà vécu Often mistakenly referred to as the aforementioned déjà vu, déjà vécu (French for “already lived”) refers to feeling as though you have experienced an event before in great detail, right down to the various smells or sounds associated with it. It is usually accompanied with the feeling of knowing exactly what is going to happen next. Some psychiatrists chalk it up to a brain mismatching that causes the present to be attributed to the past. Others believe that déjà vécu merely involves a feeling of knowing associated with seeing something familiar in an unfamiliar context.

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jamais vu Have you ever repeated a word so much that it suddenly lost all meaning? There’s a term for that! Jamais vu, the opposite of déjà vu, is when a familiar sensation is not recognized by the observer, and often involves a sense of eeriness.

Dr. Chris Moulin, a psychologist at Leeds University, tested this phenomenon by having participants in a study write out the word ‘door’ 30 times in 60 seconds. Almost 70% of them began demonstrating jamais vu, doubting that they were spelling the word correctly, or even thinking that they had made it up. It is commonly attributed to brain fatigue and overexposure to the same stimulus.

pareidolia This one has probably caused the most uproar on the Internet. Pareidolia, pronounced pari-doh-li-a, is the phenomenon of seeing faces in unusual places.

A renowned example of this occurred in 2004, when a woman sold a grilled cheese sandwich for $28 000 on eBay, claiming that the browned bread held the likeness of the Virgin Mary. You may have experienced some less lucrative examples of this, such as seeing faces in clouds or electrical outlets.

Carl Sagan, an American scientist, hypothesized that pareidolia is the result of human brains being hard-wired to recognize faces everywhere, which can be observed in everyone from adults to newborns. The ability to recognize faces immediately to discern friend from foe might have been an evolutionary advantage in the past, and consequently retained in human populations.

Leonardo da Vinci, however, chose to interpret pareidolia as an artistic device. In one of his notebooks, he wrote: “If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene, you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks […] and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well-conceived forms.” The ability to see visual potential in a seemingly meaningless collection of shapes is a valuable first step towards creativity. It is also the way we have learned to make sense of our world, by innately turning foreign objects into familiar images.

However you choose to explain it, these phenomena demonstrate the ability of our brain to trick us into believing almost anything to be true. We live in a world dominated by visual stimulus, and this causes us to rely on our sight more than our other senses. We use sight to VOLUME 16, ISSUE 5

confirm reality, to shape our choices, and to understand ourselves.

Obviously, this can and will lead us astray at times. In order to examine the world as it really is, we need to separate ourselves from our faulty perceptions and try to approach life with a clear set of eyes.  37

THE UTOCORRECTIVE LENS Jesse Bettencourt

I

was born with poor eyesight, and so were you.

Perhaps not the myopic, strabismus sight easily treated through corrective glass or the quick insert of a contact lens. The vision deficit we share is far more debilitating, and crude: it is a one-dimensional, unannotated impression of our surroundings.

Thankfully this condition will soon be an inconvenience only in our memory in much the same way as any other sight problem is: through corrective glass or a contact lens. And just as any sight correction, once applied, we will wonder what we ever managed to see without it.

Google Glass is the first step in creating an augmented vision of the world. In the same way our parents recall the tedium of pre-Google searching for information, the activity of consciously seeking out information will one day be antique.

Instead, the information we want will be delivered to us right in front of our eyes.

Map directions will not be trapped on your phone, or a paper map (if you're old enough to remember such things). Instead driving to a new restaurant will mean following the visibly coloured road. The menu, obviously available online, will mean you can order a bottle of wine to your table without waving down a waitress. Order recommen-

dations are easy, with social network plugin rating the dishes your friends enjoyed or disliked. And, of course, the date will go smoothly as you skim her entire social profile floating right above her head.

Consider the last time you uploaded a photo to Facebook or Google+. The software automatically detects faces and sug-

Consciously seeking out information will one day be antique. Instead, the information we want will be delivered to us right in front of our eyes. gests the people to tag. This is facial recognition, and its use in augmented vision is controversial. Google has banned any facial recognition apps from its store, but since Glass is open and hackable, the first instances of this type of software, an app called NameTag, is already being released.

In this case, the application will use

facial recognition to annotate your vision with any person's name. As anyone who struggles with name recollection, this implementation of augmented vision might initially seem like a welcome tool.

Though why stop at just a name? What about posts, tweets, pictures, news articles, relationship statuses, and favourite books?

Not just at present, but throughout your entire online life. Facebook has your face, and it is connected with this data. It's one thing to open the history of your embarrassing exploits to your friends, but how often are you sitting across the bus from a complete stranger? Across the desk from an employer? What will people watching mean when anyone can scan through a person's entire life ‘profile’? What will people see when they scan through yours?

This is today’s reality, not just a loose prediction of the future. Not only the technology, but the data is as real as anything you can see with your naked eyes. Using the data to supplement our vision and better understand the world around us will revolutionize how we live more than even our smartphones. But as we continue to struggle with the ethics of data use, privacy, and information openness, we must be conscientious of their implications. Otherwise, the world we’ll see through our Google Glass may not be one we’ll want to. 

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ARTWORK BY BRYAN KELLAM

EXTRAORDINARY CHANGE IN VISION Madeline Lawler

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t is not controversial to say that Claude Monet was an amazing artist, who saw the world as a framework of geometric patterns in a wide array of colours, brightly marking the Impressionist era. What may be an eye-opener for viewers is the drastic change Monet’s art underwent following a surgery to remove his cataracts.

From 1912 to 1922, Monet’s vision deteriorated as a result of cataracts developing on his eyes. A cataract causes the lens of the eye to become denser, and gives incoming light a yellowish tone. Due to this alteration to his vision, Monet found that colours were duller, and that what he once perceived as extremely diverse tones now all appeared the same. He also had to label all his paint tubes so that he could continue to pursue his work as before. Art historians have questioned whether his painting style changed as a result of his cataracts. Some believe he still managed to maintain his methods during this rough period, while others do not. Others suggest that he painted from memory, or that he overcompensated for his yellowish vision. After Monet undertook surgery to replace his lenses in 1923 – a risky practice at the time – he destroyed most of the work he produced during the time he was affected by cataracts, which was not an uncommon practice for him when he was unsatisfied with his work. His family members managed to keep a few of his pieces from that period, allowing us to see the unusual development of his work at the time.

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Although these events may be intriguing in and of themselves, what was truly amazing were the side effects of the surgery. It is likely that Monet regained a more vibrant colour perception, but more baffling is the theory that he began to see a new set of colours due to a condition called aphakia.

Cataract surgeries such as Monet’s replace or remove the optical lens altogether, allowing UV rays to enter the eye and expanding the viewer’s colour perception to include the

An Australian engineer who underwent the surgery tested his own vision with a prism showing a light spectrum, and was able to see a wider spectrum of light than those with normal lenses. He also used a monochrometer, an instrument that projects light at a specific frequency, and was able to see the light projected from a UV setting.

With this rare ability occurring in some humans, it is not surprising that it is possible in other species. For animals, this ability is more of a necessity than it is for humans. One bird species uses the amount of UV light reflected off of their young to determine whether they need to be fed, while others use it to determine the difference between males and females. Plants like black-eyed Susans provide a UV bull’s-eye pattern to attract bees for pollination. Some butterflies use UV patterns to scout out healthier mates, while some species use UV markings to mimic predators, or to project signals to potential mates.

Even though this strange ability to see the UV spectrum is essential for some animals, and in Monet’s case was arguably an enhancement to his skill as a painter, this capability is not necessarily something that everyone would want. Many might jump at the chance to widen their visual spectrum, and gain access to more visual stimuli. A select few on the other hand, including this author, might choose to stick to the beauty of simplicity of the world as we see it today. 

Monet’s palette transformed from earthy red and brown tones to more blue and purplish shades. violet or white-bluish colours from the UV spectrum. The transformation of Monet’s palette from earthy red and brown tones to more blue and purplish shades does appear to have some validity, and is evident when comparing versions of “The House Seen from the Rose Garden” painted before and after his surgery. Other patients today who have undergone this surgery, now done by inserting a Crystalen implant, have also experienced this phenomenon.

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