INK: Issue 21, Spring 2018

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ink.

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Parliament Passes The Inclosing Lands Act, 1809

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El Corazón

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Footprints

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the farm

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Mao Zedong’s Stand Up Special

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This is My Best Friend

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Problem Child

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No Room at the In

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From the Window, Facing West

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Trees, Students, and a Bus Stop

interviews

Grace Bristow Sage Molasky Lauren Lam

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Fine

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Knowing

Inspired by Kadir Nelson’s “Generations”

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To Marrakech, Barcelona, Tokyo, London, and New York

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The Common Diving Petrel

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Earrings

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Glory Days

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Enough

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The Demise of Margaret Wilson,

The Girl With The One Black Eye

Chapter II: Gus And The Great Balloon

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Parliament Passes The Inclosing Lands Act, 1809 The open-field system would end. Every acre was enumerated in a way John Clare could not comprehend. Why should footpaths have fences, streams be made straight, why fell trees, wall a field and lock it with a gate? No longer could he drink from Eastwell spring; the bubbling water was penned by scaffolding. No Trespassing at every turn, posted over scurvy-grass, loosestrife, vetch, clover, and fern. Clare doffed his cap and wept for his right to roam; in chicory, thistle, briony and buttercup, he’d always been at home.

Or coming upon a gypsy camp (fires and tambourines!) he’d share his fleabane, borage, parsley, some beans. Once again the labouring-class had lost to the well-to-do, those new proprietors of blackberry, hempnettle, toadflax, and meadow rue. Clare questioned his sanity, fearing a familiar hell, but tramped on to say his farewell to mallow, teasel, oxlip, and pimpernel. He knew this ramble was one of his last; every field, farm, and forest would be enclosed. The open world was past.

Poem by Susan Kinsolving Art by Laura Hart ’20

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Photos by Beckett Hornik ’20

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El Corazón quiere lo que quiere, right now what I really want is a beer, something to ease into this, never been to a houseparty, lots of people, lots of dancing, big space, one of my cousin’s rich friend’s parents’ house and they’re gone for the weekend, enough time to set this up, blue, red, hot lights, alcohol, booze, dancing and yelling and kissing rolled into one, I’ve always wanted to dance, my mom tried to teach me when I was younger, never could get it right so I gave up, I really want to dance; night stars, I never see stars where I’m from, I don’t see any of this where I’m from, never seen any of these people, except for that girl in the corner, used to be friends until she got a boyfriend and now she’s calling him, waiting for him to pick her up so they can go back to her apartment and—stop; look for people, talk to people, try to at least, come on, let me get through, can’t really see, stop stepping on my shoes, hot breaths on my neck, trying to see, tight dresses, black shoes, tapping and stepping, on-and-off beat, like there’s no time and someone brushes past me, her arm against my arm, so hot yet soft to the touch, I look back to first see her red dress, fitting her curves but still loose like an Ancient Greek sculpture, her soft tan arms, her neck, her brown hair flowing off her shoulder, I see a birthmark under her right ear, inviting my lips, and her eyes—I’m paralyzed; she’s looking at me, and I try to talk but I don’t because the person you want to talk to the most is the hardest person to talk to, and she touches my arm and puts my hands on her hips, and I wish my mom taught me how to dance better, but I don’t care anymore.

Story by Dominic Bellido ’20 Art by Dear Liu ’19

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Footprints

Story by Sophie Cassou ’18 Art by Edward Guo ’19

you eat turkey like brussel sprouts. you think death is something that only happens to you or your parents. and you will never know this pain until you have held a turkey as it pushed against you, blood splattering onto dirt stained shoes. two slits. diagonally. make it quick, make it clean. hold the legs, keep the wings in. steady until arms ache from the weight, hearing wings crack under the pressure and grip of hands, terrified of letting go, terrified of holding on. and you will never know my strength until the sweat has dripped from your face to the beat of sprinklers in summertime while you shovel waste out of pens into wheelbarrows creaking with every spin before landing with a soft thud on compost. let it drain until all the blood is on the grass or on you, until the eyes are closed, and then. another cut. this time the whole head. carry it to the trash can and say your prayers but make it quick, there are no tears at this funeral service. and you will never know my impatience until you wait for turkeys to move, shooing one from this corner and finding it in the other, like fitting a bottom

sheet on a bed, waiting to place new bedding for these selfish birds. dunk the bird, pluck the feathers, rip them out, dunk the bird, soften the feathers, pluck the feathers, repeat. and you will never know my frustration until you squeeze these turkeys into five crates, carrying them onto the gator, driving them to tractors only to carry them off, birds squawking, waste dripping, encouraging each one out, taking your time so as not to hurt them until you get impatient and push the crate over and do it again. take the knife and find the joint. now slice all around until you can pop off the foot. do it again. flip the bird and find a bigger knife. one movement and it begins to look like something bought at a grocery store and not a life you took. and you will never know my shame until you move these tractors everyday, dragging until you have found fresh grass, and on this day moving the tractor until the turkey is not stuck anymore, until it is not in pain anymore, left in the old plot of grass, crushed under the weight of carelessness.

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go slowly now. sternum to top. begin to cut, not the skin, not the crop, just around, peeling back the bond that holds the two together, until the sack is released and disposed. another piece gone. and you will never know my sloppiness until you have gone into these tractors each day, greeting turkeys that are not afraid anymore but curious, forced to balance dumping buckets into feeders, keeping exploring turkeys out of the tractor, stopping the dog from coming in. last cut. breastbone to bottom. cut deep but not too deep. don’t puncture the organs. reach inside and pull them out. Identify them, a bag of toys at the dentist office, you get all the yoyos and slinkys. cut out the intestines, don’t burst anything open, but make it fast. now the heart. reach your hand all the way in and pull very hard. It will be warm, that’s okay. breathe. you are here. and you will never know my indifference until you have picked up thirty turkeys to be processed elsewhere, grabbing each one by one leg, going in slowly so they trust you, breaking that trust until you can reach the other foot. and in keeping them upside down you feel closer to them, until the weight begins to make your arms ache, a feeling you didn’t know would soon bring memories of death, a feeling that makes you release a turkey into a trailer right now. wash it out now, rinse the remaining blood off with the remaining emotions, watch as they become the same, dancing down the drain. bag the turkey and put it in the freezer until the next time you have a hankering for sprouts. and you will never know this love until you have seen this process through, and the memories that you feed yourself with, and the life that goes into this death.

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I forget to remember poems I’ve lost.

Pale sky stills the rushes that clouds smudged still blasts just hard enough to be clean of the meaning of the wind.

Just streams of leaves sideways to breeze up and swirl, lazy gnats about rattled shreds, foam on waves aspen runs up high country rises.

This stone wall, wedged by edge of stone hammer to fit square and every sway of this ground almost winter iron.

This grass that holds the stain at noon of dawn’s frost, steps.

Sun falls on ghosts always.

Purple pools of the lake not reflecting sky except for the last geese on the water and air but for mimic shadows, sliding with the light.

Poem by Charlie Frankenbach Art by Pete Assakul ’18

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Taken on an iPhone.

Locations include: Richmond, England; Lakeville, Connecticut; Whangaparaoa, New Zealand; Ha Long Bay, Vietnam;

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Matakana, New Zealand; Canterbury, New Zealand; Tekapo, New Zealand; Stowe, Vermont; Sa Pa Valley, Vietnam

Photos by Charlotte Somerville ’18

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The spring creek, with cottonwoods and willows on its edge, comes flowing out from underneath the flume back onto our property, winding its way around islands and down channels before flowing underneath an old bridge and into the Yellowstone River about a quarter-mile down the valley. A breeze blows my hair off the back of my neck and a mosquito buzzes by my right ear underneath my blue fishing hat. Up to my right, the creek comes flowing down underneath the flume and into a series of channels where Browns, Rainbows, and Cutthroat thrive.

Three bridges stretch from the bank onto little islands in the middle of the creek, all varying in length. Up in one of the top pools, I remember catching a huge Brown trout in a place my dad told me I would have no luck.

This was before I had caught the fishing bug, and I remember every time we went down to the creek I only wanted to look for petrified wood or catch frogs. But that day I took my rod along, and as my dad fished down below where there were more fish, I explored the upper pools by the flume. He told me I wouldn’t catch anything up there, but that was okay with me; all I wanted to do was look for petrified wood and catch frogs. But when I came upon the little channel right below the flume, a huge Browns swam slowly against the slight current, unaware of my presence.

Although I don’t remember actually catching the fish, I remember not being able to hold it with just one hand because its back was too broad. I also remember calling out to my dad to come help me unhook it because I was afraid it would bite me with those needle-like teeth big browns often have.

“Wow, that’s a big fish,” he said with a little chuckle as he unhooked it.

Story by Bonnie Dana ’19 Art by Liz Ostermeyer ’18

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To my left, the stream begins to narrow before flowing under the bridge. The banks on either side get steeper and the willows and chokecherry bushes start to grow denser. The stream gets deeper as well and the current gets much stronger. On the opposite bank, three huge cottonwoods stand; we often spotted a hawk or an eagle settled on one of its branches, watching over the creek. In the water, the fish, unsurprisingly, are much spookier and almost never come to the surface for dry flies. They’ll often hide beneath plants or dead branches hanging over the water so they’re almost impossible to see. There’s also a giant chokecherry bush that takes up half the bank on the side you fish from; it often gets in the way of your backcast. About halfway down toward the bridge, the remnants of a small dam lay, with large rocks and some sticks. When I was little, my friend Hannah and I would play in the freezing water most afternoons, swimming, catching frogs, and destroying any chance of fish being there after we left. We also spent a lot of time building little pens for the minnows from the river or little rock prisons for the frogs we caught before we released them back into the water. The dam was one of our many projects that still exists in one way or another.

I looked down at the water, the crystal clear fifty degree water that I had grown up playing in. I let my foot inside a wading boot float to the water surface and bob up and down, being pulled this way and that by the current. And suddenly I lost my balance. I forced my floating leg back down to find a solid place to stand, but the current pulled at it away and my standing leg tried to adjust.

Unsuccessfully. My clunky boot was stuck in the mud and I fell over backwards into the beautiful crystal-clear water of my childhood.

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the farm In October, I wrote this when I found myself on the farm with an hour of silence. I was equipped with a canteen of tea, a notebook, and a pen. The texts have not been changed since, besides being transcribed.

I would not mind being the last person on Earth if I had this view. The idea of being alone used to terrify me, but not so much anymore. There will come a time in my life when I have to face myself, and entertaining the thought of being alone is a good first (half-) step.

Human fingers don’t fall flat when our arms are laid by our sides. The small, minor muscles in our hands curl the tips of our fingers up just slightly, as if we were all holding something. We are holding imaginary hands, the sun, even our own fates. We do our best to guide ourselves out of this darkness.

Nothing is ever truly silent anymore. There may not be conscious sound, but the electric hum persists. It is a white noise that we have been bred to drown out. Our ancestors would have perished if they heard those irregular beats all day and night; they could not have slept. Lights and cars and air conditioning, their electric heartbeat is not toxic, they all serve us in a way.

But we have grown dependent and now, the question is: Where does the hum not exist? If it can resonate into Lakeville, CT, are we really safe?

I am colder and stronger than the sun’s ability to heat me up.

Used to not be, but times have changed. I am made of ice and snow, bitter cold. I am a patchwork quilt, I am made of the pieces that have been given to me.

I used to wonder how sand was made. There was always so much sand at the beaches. My mother tried to explain that the waves were what watered the rocks down, reducing them to as close to nothing as possible. I know we may romanticize the beach, but that sounds like an abusive relationship to me.

We are the sum of our experiences. We are the sun that has gently kissed us, the wind that has slowly dragged its fingertips

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along our spine, the strangers (and not so strangers) that have pinned us against couches and beds and done more than the sun and wind have ever and more than you asked for. This is not something you bargain for. We do not choose our composition; our only privilege is that of choice.

The bench I am sitting on is carved with a W, A, T, and sketches of SON. I do not know how long ago they were done, the letters appear to have been sanded down with age. So many people I know are intent on becoming permanent. First, when they world ends, nothing will remain. Nothing is truly permanent. This bench with wood carving so deep they probably will not ever fade in its lifetime–gone. Whatever glory anyone ever worked for to be remembered will disappear. I do not want an award to say that I was important or to be acclaimed by masses of people that will not remember my name in twenty years. I want to find someone who will remember me as I was. This is how I wish to be immortalized. Surely, they will die too. But we would have coexisted, and the chances that we would have shared something worthwhile seems likely.

Journal Entry by Adalyn Ngo ’19 Art by Shania Zhu ’18

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Mao Zedong’s Stand Up Special

it was one of those jokes (a joke, I swear) : do

the exact opposite of one’s wishes and we laugh

of course

trained by those childhood afternoons

in the sandbox acquainted

and so *set up* we wrestle*******

(as one does

when they’re just joking around that type of joke that leaves ?aches

a red cloud on his cheeks

condensing to a pit bumping against my appendix)

all a joke to one day be sold at the market

SHAME INDUCING, LOL 77¢

with that classic comedic commodity cruelty

make a trade? pit in my stomach for your punchline (that punchline we battled over with a

puerile gusto reserved only for [really] physical humor)?

won’t get any better than that. but

shielding must come to an end eventually

with the wisdom of our new age (three hours older, whole new world, I tell ya)

and we can’t help but laugh at *punch line*

how long it took us to get here

Poem by Liz Ostermeyer ’18 Art by Grace Bristow ’18

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This is My Best Friend

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Ay Mija! We’s’ll run up that mountain behind your house maybe bring Tita too, but we’ll have to turn round because it’s getting late and tonight we’re making Mexican soup. Tomorrow we’ll wake late and see if we can fix a pancake, but you will and I won’t because I’m lazy and I just end up eating the dough. But we’ll do it again because that’s what we always do- eat it in front the TV until we have to leave because Tennis is on and your dad’s got some new rackets to string. But that’s ok because we’ll go back out below the mountain and pedal those old bikes all the way to the beach- not a real beach, we both know that- but we’ll get there and strip our shirts and jump in and hide from those mean lifeguards we once knew. You’ll disappear under and then come up but this time you’ll have my toe, laughing, but I can’t join because I’m under- toe up, head down, kicking.

Ay Mija! What can I learn from the tupperware of cookies you brought to my house or the packets of stickers and socks you snuck into my locker? Because that (above) was all I needed from you: a friend to join family dinners sometimes, a friend to slide around the grocery store while your mom plucks sweet pepper and plastic wrapped chicken, a friend whose house bears bowls of sugary foods (the kind my mom won’t allow) for me to pick at when I’m singing to you, a friend to tickle in the dirty backseat of your car on our way to the movies, a friend to make collages of to post on your birthdays (and to rack up those likes! … ugh, middle school was the worst).

And oh, my Mija, we always called you hout but you know we didn't mean it. Because of the way to you pronounce “Sauna” (S-ow!-na). Because you love Stevie, and McDreamy.

Because once we ran, and then we rode, but now we drive in the heat of the sun. Hair flying, arms open, bare feet browning- do you remember? Hay bales? No? “Make my blood laugh,” you do do. And when the world outside our window sets and the kitchen light keeps this room breathing, yes my blood is laughing.

Ay Mija!

Story by Grace Bristow ’18 Photo by James Albanese ’19

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Problem Child Poem by Duncan Sopko ’19 Art by Lauren Lam ’18

A stream of salmon flow in and out of my office from 9 to 3.

Strep throat, bronchitis… nothing unusual The sun is generous today tiny mirrors on rhododendron leaves reflect gratitude Intervals of earthquake? Ahh, no. the communication handle catches my attention I won’t be gone for long Wails of torturous damnations can be understood from 5th street that some unimaginable force has sunken its claws and rooted within the serotonin receptors of poor Albert His psyche seems to have bought a first-class ticket into high-intensity gibberish, fuel tanks dormant and the body wingless, searching desperately for the landing platform “fasten seatbelt” is interpreted as disrespectful in his state Al claims he was in the lab, Ergot fungus in the twenty-fifth synthesis was the unexpected pinch A nickel...a dime… now a quarter of the day he “walks”, pounces, giggles jubilantly now Parts of body related to ecosystem Talk of his invitation to a dine with lime-green ferns sprints off Albert’s sweat-covered lips pores reaching maximum diameter, the sun has never attained such elevated appreciation from a family member of the human experiment It seems time has proven itself a successor over the lyserrrrr...what the hell is it called again?

“Lysergic acid diethylamide, maaan”

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No Room at the In Poem by Charlie Frankenbach Photo by Jordan Feast ’18

At Easter Mass, a priest in black folded a canvas offertory bag and left before Communion, which was served by a priest in white and gold and a frowning old woman whose voice beamed, directly above her brocade A sign under a vacant Ford dealership read “Miracle.”

Too easy a figure for a poem about how cold gray trees tried at spring, how families spoke about the beginning of everything that had always been, and people decided that what poems meant echoed what they had heard once, when they had felt good, what those poems had been, nonetheless, And then that Ford sign stayed with me, all the way to a small sign naming a river, a name I forgot, even now, as I recall.

A poet asks, “Without some idea of homecoming, How do you get through the day?”

When on our momentary quests, we arrive finally at moments, again and again, and find ourselves, again and again, what do we do with all those people there with us, and the rooms, the angled light, summer, smells, and days, but feel, and say, welcome.

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From the Window, Facing West They came in yellow to pull the man first.

It was beautiful, and it was thin, because of all the water and because the water was temporary. which made trousers stick to skin and the face look shiny as it dried. The river always held things for finding and when the pockets opened and the water came from the south I thought of how the quarters might look like rocks at the bottom, how even the best hunting child would resort to sunbathing. not finding what she imagined wasn’t there, reflective memories of tip jars and twenty-five cent gum. Pocket weights or palm weights You said it was a miracle all the other pieces didn’t burn and sink but floated, like decomposed things after the sun dries them. And even now a memory of a window for watching the river with the floating pieces, when the light was white next to edible plants in grey porch-pots, wooden birds on the step. And even at night the water made thick noises over motorcycles and we didn’t talk.

Because maybe you knew about the water, or he told you over breakfast that he was drawn to it.

A memory of something that never existed, you said. And it was beautiful, even though it was wet and it was temporary. maybe they came in yellow not to save the man but to admire how his wet body caught the light.

Story by Willa Neubauer ’18 Art by Charlotte Somerville ’18

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Trees, Students, and a Bus Stop

Film by Frank Cai ’20

* To view the film, please download Layar from the App Store or Google Play Store, then scan the page on the left.

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an interview

Grace Bristow ’18 When did you first start making art and how did you first discover your passion for the arts?

My parents are architects/interior designers/furniture designers and ever since I was a child, my dad would always help me make stuff in his workshop. Growing up, my parents were really big on the arts, so all my siblings and I would experiment a lot with art and were exposed to art culture, but I definitely didn’t consider art as one of my main interests. Before I came to Hotchkiss, I was actually planning on taking two years of Humanities Art and then doing film.

But then, after going through the Humanities program, I realized that I really liked art. Also, I think I started to discover what I could do with art and that I loved it when I went on the Hotchkiss Florence Art Trip with Mr. Noyes in the summer after my prep year. To be honest, I’ve started to think of life as a piece of art, and how you’re constantly crafting an experience (just like you do in art). In that way, art now overarches my life in every way.

You talked a little bit about your parents, and how they’re an inspiration for you as well as for your siblings. What other artists, writers, musicians, etc. do you look up to? Who are some of your favorites?

Growing up, I was surrounded by art, and was particularly exposed to some of the art that my parents’ friends created. In fact, their artistic styles, to this day, have an effect on my own aesthetic; one of my parents’ good artist friends, who runs a summer program in the town I grew up in, Norfolk, still influences the art I create now. Being surrounded by people like that really helped me develop my own approach to art. In terms of writing, I love Sandra Cisneros—she’s one of my favorites—and also Toni Morrison. For art, I enjoy Pablo Picasso and I love Joan Miró. I was able to see a show about Picasso that did not feature his more known stuff, and I really liked that. The show was at the Reina Sofía in Madrid.

Can you describe one of the things you saw at the Reina Sofia?

All I can remember is this one drawing he did of a skull, which was just so simple. It didn’t look like a real skull; if you looked at it, you wouldn’t have thought it was Picasso, but it was just a pencil drawing on (I think) wood. Oh, I love Gego, she’s a really cool artist! I actually discovered her because of a presentation I had to do in Spanish class. She’s a Venezuelan

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artist—actually she’s originally from Germany before she emigrated. she does a similar thing to Ruth Asawa, who also plays with wires in her art. I also love Kiki Smith; she’s been a great inspiration for me, too. My whole series on the transparent paper, though I didn’t realize at the time, must have been subconsciously inspired by her because she also has all these drawings on transparent paper. I think that’s kind of cool, how that subconsciously influenced me.

I heard you’re going on the Hotchkiss-sponsored Beijing Art Trip this summer with Mr. Noyes. Why did you want to go on the trip and what are you excited about?

I really have loved my experience with the travel programs at Hotchkiss. They’ve allowed me to meet new people, and they’ve given me cultural awareness and a more worldly perspective.

I think I decided to apply for the trip because I love meeting new people and it’s the last opportunity for me to participate in a Hotchkiss trip. I don’t know what to expect and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but just giving myself the opportunity could help a lot. As I said about Florence, I went just for the chance to see Italy, and it was my first time out of the country. Then I ended up discovering how much I like painting in watercolor.

How was the experience of book-making for you and how did that experience change how you approached layout and style?

I made a book and it’s not finished - I made the physical thing, and I just left it. I wanted it to be the this whole… object, and in it, each page had to be special. I tried to do some pencil drawings in it—I haven’t drawn in pencil for such a long time, and so I kind of ruined it.

I think I’ll definitely come back and do, maybe, a deconstruction thing with it, hopefully. I have a sketchbook with transparent paper that I really like and I experimented with different design things in that. I cut all these strips in it, and I would also do these tape things and sew in it. That process has definitely added to my approach to layout and design—it’s already influencing what I’m doing now in my current work. I’m starting to do a figures-and-space type thing—it’s going to be more design-y—experimenting with book-making for sure influenced that. Making the book was fun; you can get stuck on trying to paint and it gets annoying after a while, so it was good to try something completely different. I’m also looking forward to taking a book-making class in college and actually learn how you’re supposed to do it, because I just looked online on Pinterest, so my book is certainly not the best made book out there.

What’s your favorite place at Hotchkiss?

I used to say it was the woods, but I actually haven’t been to the woods in a while (but I still love it). I love the jetty by the lake (the piece of land that goes out). Also in that general area by the Sucker brook when it’s rainy, foggy weather.

I know that you’re a member of Film Club. Are you more interested in watching a movie or learning about the technicalities of film?

I’d say watching a movie, partly because I’ve never actually had any classes on film or anything like that. When I went on a college visit, I went to a cinematography class and that was really cool. But based on my experiences now, I’d probably go with watching a movie.

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What is one of your favorite films and why?

I love The Truman Show; it was my first time watching a very philosophical movie and it got me really interested in Existentialism (I also ended up taking that course at Hotchkiss). I liked the aesthetics of the movie’s setting—a little town on an island. When I first watched it I was just so amazed, like, “what if I was in a TV show and didn’t know this whole time?” You know, that kind of thing.

What does dancing mean to you?

In different contexts dancing is for different things. It’s fun to be really goofy and not take yourself too seriously. I do also love finding more ways to make people uncomfortable (haha).

What kind of music do you listen to and why?

I listen to a lot of alternative music. My favorite artist is Regina Spektor; she’s really good.

But lately I’ve been into Cage the Elephant, but I also might go in a completely different direction and listen to Beyoncé. I like having my playlists randomized (in terms of genre).

Sometimes I get really annoyed with my phone because even when I use the shuffle option, it still plays the same songs. So often I just like listening to the Pandora radio.

Where are you planning to live in the future?

Growing up I always thought New York City, but I don’t know anymore. It seems kind of … not overrated, but I’ve gone there a bunch now, like I go with my friends, I’ve grown up two hours away from it, so I go multiple times a year. On the one hand, I’m like, “I’m going to go live in Hawaii!” and on the other I’m like, “I’m totally going to live in Austin, Texas, or some cool hipster city, or Madrid.” So I really haven’t decided that.

We’ve included your piece, “This is My Best Friend,” in this issue. Who/what inspired you to write it?

It’s part of my Teagle; I did a compilation of short creative essays. I read Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion and Woman Hollering Creek and Other Short Stories by Sandra Cisneros as my books. I eventually strayed away from Joan Didion because I wasn’t as big of a fan of her style for the purpose of writing a Teagle. Both of the books are collections of short essays, so what I’d do is I’d read a few, re-read, let the language come out, repeat. I think my “This is My Best Friend” piece is directly related to Cisneros’ first essay, “My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn.” It’s just this really joyous and outpouring piece, and I found it endearing how much she loved her friend.

What else is important to you?

People are important—I really value the human being. The fact that everyone is an individual—that’s just so cool—I use it as a resource and as a way to enjoy life.

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an interview

Sage Molasky ’18

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When did you discover your passion?

I think that it was an evolution I didn't see coming. I was indifferent to the acting world when I came to Hotchkiss. I didn't realize the power I had in myself as an artist, and did not realize that I could have that with acting, but it slowly evolved over my time here. I think a turning point was last year in the spring with Dead Man’s Cell Phone. I realized how much I loved it on my own. Before, I loved theatre because of the people and the way they made me feel and connect, but that was the point when I realized I had my own artistic sovereignty and that I could affect an audience the way that I wanted, but also in ways I didn't see coming, and that was really empowering.

What genre of music do you like?

I listen to really old music from the 60s and the 70s. I listen to jazz when I'm doing homework, but I don't know a lot of jazz and I wish that I knew more. I know Bill Evans, but I feel like I’m a faux jazz enthusiast. I need to go to more jazz clubs (laughs). I sound like such an ass!

How have your surroundings influenced you?

The weird thing is coming from Nevada and finding a new place for yourself — carving out kind of a hole in both of these homes and being able to nestle yourself into it. I think that my awareness of land and conservation and the resources that we have come from growing up in the desert, but I got to translate that awareness here on the farm. I also directed on the farm last year. It was called “Controlling Interest” — about children pretending to be grown ups and discovering a bit of themselves along the way. My time at Hotchkiss is very much concerned with the universality of place — I feel like my home is very much here — like the desert is here with me even though it's not.

How do you like going to the farm nearly every day?

I think I draw the most inspiration from the land. Even if I'm not writing about the natural world or acting in a play that is directly related to the land, I think it's always there. The sensibilities of place are always affecting every audience, every piece.

I noticed a lot of Klimt and Schiele paintings on your walls. Most of their work depicts women as soft and angelic beings. Is that similar to the ideal woman in your mind?

I think that being soft and angelic comes from other things. I think it's strange and magical that women can be transcendent. My Teagle is an analysis of how Shakespeare's women evolved over time. A lot of people say that Shakespeare was a misogynist, which is so false. But in my exploration with his plays, I’ve fallen in love with the idea that women can be transcendent in being soft, and in that softness, there is a resilience that you don't see right away. I think that if you look at art or writing or plays at surface value, you don't notice that there is the tenacity underneath, like this angelic idea of womanhood.

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What role does writing play in your life, and what are some of your favorite writers?

When I was little, I was really a dilettante — I thought I was the cat's meow. I used to say that I wanted to be a writer. I don't think I know exactly what role writing plays in my life because sometimes, it's hard to focus on writing here. I also don't like to say that art is a way of expressing myself because I think art is a way of expressing something that is not yourself. I think it's a way of channeling something, some kind of way, some kind of energy that needs to be conveyed that is not me, but also very much influenced by my experiences.

You know, it's funny because everyone in my English class is very conflicted while reading Lolita, but there's something so empowering to me about it and something so disgustingly beautiful — I love that. I've been reading Nabakov's love letters to his wife while I'm reading this book that he wrote, and I think it's such an interesting look at an author, and I want to explore that more going forward with reading— because I think it's interesting to see the personal side of authors.

What plays would you suggest to watch?

I really love performing classical theatre. I love Shakespeare so much because it makes me a better performer with contemporary plays. Harley Granville-Barker, who’s a critic, talks about Shakespeare having this dramatic achievement, a coalescing of moments all happening at once, and that’s why it’s so brilliant. People go into Shakespeare having this preconceived notion that it’s not going to be entertaining, so I think that being able to go into a classical play with no preconceived notions is ideal — but I worry that will never happen. It’s important to find contemporary plays that have this same dramatic achievement — this pulsation of many moments coming together in one vibration. I think there are contemporary playwrights, like Sarah Ruhl, that do this really beautifully in a really quirky, odd way. Those have a lot of value.

Have you ever considered directing?

I’ve directed here — I loved directing at the farm and exploring found spaces as a director, and I wish that more directors did that — but I don’t think that I’m very effective as a director. I think that some people can see the big picture in that way and put all the pieces together, but I think that I’m better at seeing the big picture as an individual moving part that then works with a group.

Do you revel in pretending to be someone else? How does pretending to be someone else impact the presentation of your own identity?

I think that theatre is always a balance because you are using yourself. So often, people look at acting as a lesser art than painting or writing or being a musician because you’re using your body and you’re using your words. People look at actors as kind of standing on a stage and saying, “Look at me!” There are few actors — the really, really great actors — who distinguish themselves from this character, and it’s not them. It’s them giving voice to the voiceless and being in service to telling a story. Ever since I was little, I loved telling stories. When I would go to new places on trips, I would pretend to be someone else because I liked to see how people would react. I was really pretentious and narcissistic when I was little, but I think that was the inkling and the budding love of stories. That’s what acting needs to translate into — it needs to become a relinquishing of yourself and an evolution of character. Sometimes, that’s not always seen, but I think that’s what we’re always endeavoring to do.

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What are you scared of ?

I’m really scared of dying — I know that is a really typical answer — but recently in the past year, I have moments where I jolt awake at night and get really scared to die. I feel like I’m on the precipice of something, and I’m holding onto things that I don’t have yet. You’re at this age where you don’t have anything for yourself. You don’t have this solid life formed yet, but the idea of it is so dear to you that you can’t imagine being gone before you do what you want to do.

What, to you, is the difference between acting in film and acting in theatre? What medium do you lean more towards and why?

Acting in a film, you’re disengaged; there’s no audience in the moment, you’re cutting a lot, and the rehearsal process isn’t the same. I haven’t been in that many films, but I read a study recently where scientists have discovered that members of an audience, while watching a play, synchronize their heartbeats.

No other art form does that. I just think that that is so powerful — that you can biologically make people in tune through a live performance. The thing that’s beautiful is that everyone is thinking something different in that theater, wherever you are, and everyone’s thought is valid. Just like a painting that’s been passed by all these years, that painting is imprinted with the thought of every single person that has viewed it. And all those thoughts are valid. So, in a theatre performance, all those thoughts are happening at once, and what’s going to define that performance is those people watching it in that moment. That is what is going to mold and shape that performance and leave that imprint, and that can’t happen with film. That’s what’s so beautiful about everyone experiencing a play at once.

What’s your favorite play that you’ve acted in here, and why?

They’re all so different, but I would say Dead Man’s Cell Phone last spring because we saw a lot of people laugh and cry and be moved by that piece. This year, I think that Cymbeline was a challenge for me as an actor and as a part of an ensemble. The experience was really immersive, and that’s why I loved it. It was a very different experience. And we were all speaking pure poetry for two hours — that was lovely.

Do you pick up energy quickly?

I’d like to think that I do.

How did you prepare your role in Fuddy Meers?

Like I said, in theatre, you have to give voice to the voiceless. A woman like Gertie, because of her stroke, could never be in a play like Fuddy Meers So — this sounds morbid — I sat in my room and watched videos of stroke victims over break, and my family came in and were very concerned. I did a lot of research in that regard, but it gets to a point where you put away the research and all the thinking that you’ve done and you just get up there and you feel it. I tried to mimic stroke victims, but you have to tailor it to the play.

What would you like to eat tomorrow?

I didn't have salad today, and it makes me really sad because I really like salads — like really loaded salads. Maybe I’ll have some arugula.

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Lauren Lam ’18 an interview

How did you first become introduced to Visual Art?

Well, there’s a museum on my block at home, the National Academy Museum right next to the Guggenheim, and so I started taking classes there. That’s a very boring answer. Sorry.

Is there a specific reason that you do collage?

I think that using collage allows me to build upon other people’s work. So yes, I’m curating my own path, but I’m doing so by using inspiration from people before me. Combining my own creative vision with other people’s work makes my work more advanced. There are hundreds of thousands of artists who have created their own language before me, and collaging allows me to utilize others’ experiences in my own work. Also, being able to physically move around paper strengthens my visual imagination and my ability to create images in my mind. I started collage because I got interested in architecture, and I wanted to improve my ability to picture certain physical spaces.

How or where did you find inspiration for creating art while you’re here at Hotchkiss?

Well, I’m all over different art and museum websites to look at other artists before me. I really love Arch Daily, which is an architecture website, and iGNANT, a design website. I also flip through magazines and draw inspiration from other disciplines. For example, two of my collages in the past were inspired by two books I read last year in English class, Sula and A Streetcar Named Desire. One of them depicted Nel and Sula’s friendship, and the other one represented Blanche’s hallucinations. So yeah, I find inspiration in lots of different media, beyond just the Hotchkiss landscape that’s directly outside the window. Inspiration can be found in daily things. I was just at the recital and looking at the shape curves of the violin

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and the reflection of the tube, I thought, Hmm, how can that be interpreted as a sculpture or as a plan of a building? Usually, I start a piece with relatively few rules; it’s a general idea of “I want to achieve this,” not a set plan of “I have to do x, y, and z.”

Could you describe one or a couple of your favorite pieces that you’ve done?

Agh, picking a favorite… They’re all equally forgettable (haha). I guess one of my most memorable pieces is this collage that I did, called “Snapshot of a Building.” This piece gave me inspiration for another collage and a painting. Considering its particular spontaneity, it was surprisingly complex… I think that it really succeeds in creating or at least suggesting a space that the viewer can imagine by piecing together some unrelated images. You don’t look at this piece and think, Oh, that’s a building; you look at it, and you say, Wow, that looks like different scenes happening within one place at one time. It’s also spatially complex and kind of disjoint. I like how the eye roams about the piece — there’s isn’t a singular main focus.

How do you define art? What does art mean to you?

Haha, wow, how philosophical. I was not prepared for that… Well, this defines specifically design, but I was just reading a book about Charles and Ray Eames, who were a husband-and-wife design powerhouse. They were architects and furniture designers, and they designed the Eames chair. They led 20th century design, and they said, “Design is a sum of all constraints.” They said that design is always for people or clients, and so there will always be constraints. Art is different because you mostly create it for yourself—you define the purpose of art for yourself—it becomes a summary of your past experiences, and obviously everyone’s different. More aggressive personalities may have sharper lines, more contrast, or daring subject matters. I was talking to this guy at a design firm, who’s in charge of looking through everyone’s portfolios. He said that he could get a sense of what a person is like just by looking at their art.

If you could dinner with a famous artist or designer, who would it be?

I would talk to Shigeru Ban. He’s an architect who has done a combination of humanitarian work and more explorative buildings. He mainly works with cardboard tubes —very economical… But somehow, he manages to make these cardboard tubes look incredibly clean and sleek—he also uses these cardboard tubes for humanitarian work. In the past, he’s done refugee housing and tents and dividers for victims of natural disasters. What’s cool is that you can assemble his dividers, that create an illusion of personal space, in a room of hundreds of people. His designs are very simple but impactful; they help people and simultaneously explore creative design and aesthetics. That’s what I’m trying to explore more as an artist. I’ve done lots of things that look cool or pretty, but as I’ve gotten older, I’m exploring to see how I can impact others and do good things, I guess.

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Why do you do art? What do you see your art accomplishing or impacting?

That’s something I’m exploring right now. I’m currently in the works of doing one project…

I’m creating a line of t-shirts with some friends who are Asian American artists and writers and different creatives, and the proceeds are going to go to Asian artists and fund their classes or scholarships. We’re really underrepresented in the Western world, and we want to help change that. Honestly, art doesn’t always have to serve a humanitarian purpose. I know that a lot of people think that everything should have an impact on humanity or society.

But sometimes, you just need a distraction. You need a little pretty just for pretty.

How has your two years at Hotchkiss influenced your thoughts and art, if at all?

Well, I was in Ms. Moore’s portfolio class last year. I came to Hotchkiss as a new Upper Mid, and I was kind of bold coming from my old art school, sort of like, “I want to do what I want!” But I really wasn’t ready to create a strong, deliberate body of work. Going through her assignments really taught me to stick with something and develop a concept over time rather than just jumping around, which was what I used to do. I was a little flighty in the beginning. The art department’s assignments are thoughtful and skill-building, as well as being conceptually fulfilling.

When creating art, how do you find balance between abstraction and realism?

It’s whatever balance you want it to be! Honestly, I’m just awful at doing abstract stuff — abstraction is so difficult! I live in New York City and I’ve gone to the MOMA a lot, so my point of reference is, like, Franz Kline, Calder, Rauschenberg, Rothko. When you have that sort of standard, anything you do will look like crap (haha). I think that, for me personally, I try to spell something out with my collage. It’s like an anagram, like I try to put all the letters there, but the viewer also needs to create her own synthesis in her mind. Instead of directly spelling it all out, I try to give snippets of a scene to suggest and make the viewer feel something.

Have you noticed any overarching themes or recurring ideas throughout your work?

Well, I really like exploring methods of creating conceptual space—both in architecture and collage. Conceptual space is space that’s implied but not directly defined, and I’ve recently been experimenting with that.

Any last remarks?

Moo.

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Left to Right Bonnie Dana ’19, Alvin Mak ’19, Ruthie Ehrhardt ’19 and Britney Douglas ’19

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Fine

Story by Annabelle Burns ’18 Art by Lauren Lam ’18

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You have turned, at eighteen, from girl to gone. From smooth to crippled, like an elegant switch, doling out light beatings, graceful, a branch that left a stinging on your skin like a thousand tiny ants. A trail of salmon pink. You have turned, now, into a heap of twig rubble, once proud, once complete, and now you scrabble on the ground, picking up pieces while they slip between your fingers, out of your satchel that hangs low across your hip; broken. Broken, but aware of the melodrama, confused, and yet recognizing the irony, so you stand, on the edge of a river as it rushes past, alpine cool droplets spraying your ankles.

You are me—

Inside, it has become like silly putty, moon dust, homemade slime, turned brown, streaked with fireman red and forest green. It’s generic. This I recognize and this I abhor, though it brings me comfort, too. I have given up—given up holding on to firm knowledge, stable, stainless steel cylinders, tidy paperwork, opinions, even. They float about me, mostly above, those remnants of structure and security; outer space fills my lungs and I have to let go.

“Well we know where we’re going, but we don’t know, where we’ve been…,” David Byrne is warbling, admonishing, a loop in my mind that teases me. He teases. I heard him once, in an interview, talking about how he was experimenting with something new on his album, that the audience needed its hand to be held and to be dragged along. “I promise, it’s good, you just need to listen.” Byrne again.

I am being dragged along.

Dragged through heaps of gravel.

I am dragged.

I am protective of my logic. But sometimes, in secret, when no one can hear or see, the smell of old cardboard pervasive, I wonder if logic is working. If there is a fundamental flaw we have overlooked, something at the basis of our conception of the world. Like the number zero shouldn’t have been invented, or base-ten was a mistake. Or humankind is actually one animal.

I’m a cell. I guess it’s not that crazy.

Just tell me what you want. They say. Literally, tell me. But literally, I don’t know. I don’t know anything, and to avoid being sucked into a hole of doubt and disbelief I comfort myself: we should celebrate not knowing! Hah. Exploration is a key part of the human experience! So there.

I am afraid. Deeply afraid. Scared like, whole body might cave into oblivion scared, or like sinking into a pillow, very slowly, and never stopping, being enveloped in smooth, crisp, white abstraction, the smell of bleach faint in your invisible nostrils scared. I dreamt last night that a plague had come, oozing out of the fog that had spread on the ground. We locked ourselves upstairs, and people banged on the door. Banged, shouted, frantically, hoarse cries grating on my very soul, fabric of morality dissolving like paper scraps in a river. It was agony. My eyes spread wide, taut and wild, like those of a shot horse (musket wound), and I realized, I realized I too had reached that moment. The reckoning. I had crossed that point, where life was pain and pain unbearable and I pleaded with my mother to end it, for there was no return.

Yes.

I woke up in a start, jolted, bed sheets damp, tangled around my calves like cotton handcuffs, and I hopped, falling almost, out of bed. Great start. Pictures of crushed bones seared under my eyelids, I laughed, dryly, at the absurdity, the morbidity, of it all, but—I could not shake the feeling. A fear starting high like a dog whistle gradually mellowed out into the low levels of my bone marrow. But: growing, covertly, like the mark Davy Jones gives Jack Sparrow, fuzzy and deep and unknowable.

And, yet, in spite and nonetheless. I am settling. By the rushing water, churning, its speed everything and nothing at all, the clear blueness a challenge to the world (jaunty, playful, self-possessed), I have decided that inactivity is sometimes the best way forward. Smoothly, like the inside of an empty pool, the edge of a milk bottle, full, liable to overflow, but sturdy all the same—it settles. Sturdy. Repeat—sturdy.

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Knowing Inspired by Kadir Nelson’s “Generations”

My daddy’s got me.

His arms, brown, worn, warm, covered in the little blue lines I love to trace, Keep me safe from anything.

The black cat down the street Or rushing cars who don’t seem to see or care for anything more than their destination.

They’re loving and running the to-and-fro.

But my daddy’s world stops when I call his name.

Pauses when I drop my lunch pail or scrape my arm.

His voice, big and gravelly, sees and answers me, His hands, Laced with rough, white circles, Gently bandage my boo-boos. and he kisses them So I remember his love when I’m on the stoop.

So I can look out into the streets and look that black cat square in the eye Knowing my Superman with his teel cape and tan hat Stands behind me.

Poem by Jayla-Whitney Spidell ’18 Art by Kadir Nelson

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To Marrakech, Barcelona, Tokyo, London, and New York Journal Entries by Dear Liu ’19

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Waltz for My Debby

I found you

flushed inside a blur, gazing into and out of an arc — my neural creams weigh me in between even she, the blameless limbs of day, and some maroon wall — all of a sudden within dried fruits, pickpockets, curled tendrils, and a dumb glove. Some glare finds me, and I find myself searching for it.

54 January - Eighteen

February - Going to see jazz

March - Snow in Lakeville

March 2nd, 3:28 pm. - Shaw (We might have touched, clapping hands in sync.)

April - Spring snow

MOMA, April 12th - Jazz is generous

55 I seemed to see you.

spring going with gust i fondled a moon onto my bed you recognize.

the second touch is the ‘soon,’ and of a soft sudden the snow begins to travel down. my nerves seek a way out so impossibly.

On a Saturday I visited David Hockney at the MET, but all I saw was FRANCIS BACON & LUCIAN FREUD. Picasso must be our shared father.

I fall along their stream of totterings — the varied organs in space, following and listening to their own kind — as if I were a cool horn.

My hundreds of nouns, heading nowhere, lulling your play, there, and holding your wanderings that give me shape: an unbearable circle.

I place myself in 100-110 Euston Rd, Kings Cross, London NW1 2AJ, UK Among strangers, your listening to the movings of lights cuts me open— I thought I was the box.

I must believe in spring.

Bill Evans is a Holy man.

I am reminded of my self in your theatre, watching his archedback arise and closedeyes, SOOTHE.

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When you catapult yourself into the ocean with such alacrity, how shameful for me to dip a pinkie in the water and dally by the docks.

The Atlantic is no swimming pool.

It’s a far frigider arena.

And when the gods made the others stay in the sky, and I the land, wingless, finless, he made you: oh not so common diving petrel, un oiseau AND un poisson!

For your domain is not just heaven, but the ice, the baby blue, the sea blossoming at your entry.

I wonder then, when you cross that bound, that tooth-flossed line, from feather ruffling levity to water, does your down weigh you down, or does that mottled grey, damp suddenly, encase you in a seal’s bodice?

And when you finally resurface to sit on wave crests, I think to myself have I ever seen a sight so endearing You’re a boey on undulating planes, bobbing, pleasant..

I cease to think of your majesty, if only for a moment.

Seeing you that way. You are much like me, lazy and afloat.

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The Common Diving Petrel Poem by Natalie Yang ’18 Art by Pete Assakul ’18

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Earrings Story by Anna Connell ’18 Photo by Edward Guo ’19

59 Dr. Edis, shortly before passing away, pierced my ears for my sixteenth birthday in the pediatrician's office in Scarsdale despite my dad’s body-respecting objections. My mother, Natalia, later gifted me hoop earrings because the pure gold would stop my ear infection and because I could never lose the backs, like I did with my first pair in Mr. Conklin’s science class. The ones my mom gave me were small hoops, decorated with a star shining on the front from Mother Russia. My mother, born and raised in St. Petersburg, bought this exact pair in a quaint Soviet jewelry shop on Nevsky Prospect near Russia’s iconic image: the Church of the Savior on Blood. She wore them throughout her youth as she finished her homework quickly to socialize in the city center during the white summer nights when the sun’s golden rays peeked from behind the turquoise Hermitage until midnight. When we visit my Babushka and Dedushka, my mom reminisces of her childhood and the beautiful architecture and vibrant energy that I have come to love. I feel each time that all I have been taught is somehow rooted in this European city, though it differs so much from the suburbs of New York where I grew up. So far from this place, the earrings represent this life before adulthood, before America, before me. It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that life existed before I was born, especially when there are only the old photos and stories to prove the reality of the unlived past.

The hoops’ golden stars signify the political state of the USSR, booming with red propaganda and Soviet songs that influenced the minds of each individual and presented themselves throughout my childhood, just like my mother’s. My mom left in 1991 near the dismantling of the Soviet Union to seek the American Dream and to study. She couldn’t have known that this trip would change her life. But even with our summer trips to Babushka’s datcha to rekindle my mother’s joy and our family’s bilingual nature, she still spends the other 11 months of the year in a country she entered as a foreigner at 26. She said on July 11th, as we celebrated her 26th year in America at Wollensky's Grill in Chicago, where the canals resembled St. Petersburg, “I’ve lived in America the same amount of time that I’ve lived in Russia, but I still don’t know if I made the right choice.”

The resilient strength from my mother’s traveled wisdom made her vulnerability seldom detectable, but I could now sense the drained mirth in her words and hazel eyes. When someone loved feels a solemn melancholy of something irreversible and permanent, I can’t help but blame myself for their pain. And by saying this, my mom was abandoning a part of herself that had taught me resilience and determination, that had shown me the value of education and globalism, that had inspired me to be a feminist. She was giving up on all of the friends and family that she left in Russia and all the houses she cleaned to pay herself through college; this couldn’t have been for nothing.

I realized it was my turn to be a symbol of strength for her. So I wear her golden hoops to remind her daily of her youth before becoming a foreigner. I wear them to treasure the token of my mother’s childhood, her culture, and her home.

I wear them so when she looks at me, she can only think of the joy and pride I bring her, so she can have some closure in her transformative decision. I wear them to validate her American Dream.

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Philosopher Nelson Goodman begs that instead of asking, “What is architecture?” we must ask, “When is architecture?” Architecture is at the cross-section of art and shelter. A physical structure may change in its meaning from art to architecture to neither. However, the built environment that surrounds us is tremendously static and permanent. I considered a more democratic form of constructed space in the physical environment though a piece that could be shaped differently by each observer to take on several meanings. Impermatent empowers the observer to manipulate the structure’s shape, form, and meaning democratically and allows him or her to question the impact of the built environment on our physical space at the person, microcommunal, and public level.

Impermatent Art by Samuel Golini Photo by Malika Khurana

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Qi Gesture In the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi, the first essential lesson is to harness your inner qi. Right hand palm-up, left hand palm-down, the hands gently cradle an invisible sphere of energy in front of the chest.

This is your qi, a force that is intangibly ubiquitous. The space created by your two hands is intuitively powerful, united, magnetic, and sacred.

Dianoia is a term used by Plato to describe thinking, especially in mathematical and technical subjects, and is defined as the capacity for, process of, and result of discursive thinking, which relates definitions and perceptions to coordinate a principle, which reflexively governs that relationship. Knowledge is coordinated in tension to create unity.

I sought to create a dianoetic expression of qi that confronts one with sensation and concentration into the unity of empty space. A single strand of yarn is threaded to create a focus on the power of the space in-between each contoured plane. The gesture is both inviting and puzzling. The yarn suggests an ergonomic plane, but does not give the observer the satisfaction of experiencing that comfort. Qi is understood as an intangible energy that contradicts the emptiness of the cosmos.

Tension, in itself, is an expression of energy, and brings life to an empty space.

62 “These multimedia pieces were inspired by the character Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Sam Suslavich and I created these pieces for a character analysis project in Mr. Reed’s “Shakespeare and the Bible” class.

As a child, I spent many hours in the fields and woods around my house searching for flowers to press, so the process of executing this project was near and dear to my heart. In Hamlet, Ophelia’s presence is often associated with flowers. After her father’s death, Ophelia begins to go mad, and her madness leads her to communicate through song and verse, which is laced with the discussion of different types of flowers such as daisies, violets, and fennel. Because of this, each flower that we chose was significant to Ophelia’s character evolution based on the flowers’ symbolism. We also chose to employ various washes of water color to emphasize the connection between color and emotion as it related to Ophelia’s character.”

Art and Introduction by Amelia Smith ’18 and Sam Suslavich ’18

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Poem by Abby Sim ’20 Art by Bonnie Dana ’19

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Glory Days You were told to reach for these years as if they were a holy land– some glamorous, glittering domain of firecrackers and champagne that was yours to begin with, yours to claim, and yours to celebrate, barbed wire and heartache sleepovers and road trips, they said, you’ll have the time of your life, so you pictured this: your birthright, as carnival rides and butterfly wings, sneaking out your bedroom window late at night and stargazing barefoot, an adventure outlined in breathless, dizzying neon.

They were wrong, and so were you.

You, baby bird pushed from the nest, you, little caterpillar trapped in the dewy glue of its own chrysalis, have realized that these years are freefall and paralysis, duller and more terrifying than you could ever imagine, like sailing through miles of dense fog, interminable moments of searching for the shore just out of reach; these years are crossed fingers and held breaths, an unmapped pilgrimage that has only just begun.

So your daydreams have fractured into a million misplaced pieces, but what beauty is not born from change?

Imagine deserts turned to glass in the wake of nuclear bombs, trees left petrified and gleaming beneath lightning-split skies. Imagine your own boundless hope, like a shining sliver of sea glass clenched tight in a child’s fist after years spent weathering the sea’s torrential tides.

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Enough Writing by Charlie Noyes Art by Jacqui Rice ’20

Just days before your final day I sat by your bedside, And sought out the mother I once used to know.

That someone who still wandered in the dark recesses behind Your bright, shining eyes.

And I wondered, Do you know who I am?

I am the infant who brought you tumbling down to earth.

You were a new bride, grounded amidst the rolling fields.

No bright lights to guide you home.

None of the city splendor you once loved so.

But I, small as I was, filled up your new world.

And that was enough.

Do you know who I am?

I am the child who thrived in your arms.

And you were the young mother, finding your way.

Still off in the countryside, lovely but bleak.

It was travel that helped you rekindle your spark.

Though I was your tagalong, wide-eyed and needy, You showed me adventure, worlds that you loved.

And that was enough.

Do you know who I am?

I am the teenager, finding my way And you were my seasoned mom, caring and kind.

You urged me to strive high, allowed me to stumble Though I pushed all your limits, you knew I would learn.

Late at night I’d check in with you, whisper “I’m home”.

In the darkness you’d whisper back “OK, sweetheart”. Every time.

And that was enough.

Do you know who I am?

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I’m an adult now, off on my own.

And you remained my role model, patient and calm.

You loved with your whole heart, but still asked hard questions.

Your shoulders were broad, and I cried on them often.

And I knew that, no matter my highs or my lows, You’d be there with a warm hug to come home to.

And that was enough.

Do you know who I am?

I am the parent now, struggling to know.

And you were our Baba, radiant and bright.

I looked to you often for guidance and wisdom, As did the grandchildren, who held you in awe.

You were our North Star, the heart of the matter.

The loving tie that bound us all.

And that was enough.

Do you know who I am?

I am your aged child, a visitor now, And you are but fragments of what you once were.

You are gracious and loving, though your memory flutters.

Still, I cling to those pieces of you, brief as they are.

You delight in my company, even though you’ll forget I was ever there. Until my next visit.

And that was enough.

Do you know who I am?

I ask you directly, as I sit by your beside, Wanting to know.

You look at me gently; It’s clear you’re not sure.

But you say with a smile I know that I love you.

And that is enough.

68 Chapter II Gus And The Great Balloon Margaret and I take a ride in the country in her 1964 sunflower-yellow Mustang convertible. She does the driving. Margaret looks like Rita Hayworth, and behaves erratically. She has flaming hair, and I don’t just mean red. Every so often during our chats, she takes out a Zippo lighter and sets fire to her long locks. In fact, she does that now. The wind extinguishes the flames. I read that Florence Nightingale used to do the same thing in the Crimean War, to distract wounded soldiers from their pain. They’d bring in a kid on a stretcher who had both legs blown off by a landmine. He would be moaning and bleeding, and Florence would go for her matches. “I love this car,” says Margaret. “I could lick the fenders.”

Margaret and I don’t talk much about what we mean to be.

That is, what we mean to be together. Margaret talks plenty about herself, what she means to be, her ambitions, more so than other girls I’ve been with, but I stick around to listen, to let her distract me. Margaret went to Italy last summer and I suspect she had sex with her fair share of Italian boys (or perhaps just one and I’m getting ahead of myself ). But I can’t stop imagining them all oily and tan and smelling of wine. I can almost smell it on her, the wine, and I know she’s proud I wasn’t the one to deflower her. Besides, she’d always hated my asking; she only liked when I begged. Now, she’s different. “I could lick the fenders,” says Margaret, without flinching, and I know she’s done it, the thing she swore she’d never do without being in love. Maybe she loves that Italian boy. Maybe she loves him like she loves her car. Maybe she loves him like she used to love me.

Margaret and I pull into the driveway in her 1964 sunflower-yellow Mustang convertible. The house is one you’d expect in this part of the country at this time of year. The trees are red like Margaret’s hair. Everything is burning, on fire, all of us.

She opens up her door and runs round to my side to open the door for me. I suddenly have an odd feeling she’s much better in bed than I am. I always knew I wasn’t extraordinary, but knowing she was unknown made talking easy. I always had the upper hand, but now the tables have turned. In fact, I have an odd feeling she knows she’s better in bed than I am too.

I step out of the car; I feel better above her. I smile down and she looks up at me, and in this moment she teases like I remember, only now sans cherry. She lifts one eyebrow like an actress and smiles back at me, wide. She takes a key out of her front pocket and wiggles it in front of my face, like a bone.

Margaret grabs my hand and we are on the front porch- I’m flying! Our bags we leave in the car. She opens the door with such fervor, I almost blush. The other girls may talk less, but they sure as hell are never as good in bed as I imagine Margaret will be right now right here in the house she grew up hating.

Margaret asks, “Would you undo me?” like I wouldn’t say yes, like undoing is the most important job in the universe, like

The Demise of Margaret Wilson, The Girl With The One Black Eye

69 she hasn’t already been undone by the Italian. I say, “Yes” nonetheless because, like I said, why wouldn’t I? My fingers shake a bit but I manage to unbutton the white dress of hers, top to bottom. With each pop her dress slides farther and farther away from her shoulder blades until I’m down where her ass meets her back and I can see the top of a pair of canary panties, like string. She says, “Thank you” like she’s been waiting to say thank you since she slipped out into this world. And now I’m ready, all of me. If her back can do this to a man, what else is that body capable of, I think. So close, I could lick her. I bend my neck downwards. This is the closest we’ve been in months and something about her is aching. I inch closer and closer, my lips so far it hurts. I can close my eyes and pretend she is unpicked. She’s mine and I know it. She wants me, too.

“I’m going to go get changed,” smiles Margaret as she turns her face around towards mine. “Thank you, darling, I can never quite get all the buttons of this goddamn dress!” Her hand on my chest, sisterly.

“Wha-”

“Would you mind getting the bags, Gus?” I nod, paralyzed.

“What a doll. I could just eat you up.” A kiss on the cheek; a consolation.

She runs upstairs clutching the dress, and I remember something I read once about ribs.

I walk out the front of the house towards the 1964 sunflower-yellow Mustang convertible and wipe sweat off my forehead with my sleeve. I heave my sack over my back and let her leather luggage lag behind on its wheels, squeaking. Once inside, I close the door and haul the bags upstairs, two at once. I couldn’t bear another trip in silence with my shame. Why would Margaret Wilson want me, of all people? I think to myself. What an ass I am. What a real fucking ass.

She’s taking a shower in her old room, the room in the house in the country. The house in the country by the sea, the sea of her redness and her consumption, threatening me quite notably at the moment. I remember that room like I am there, on those summer nights, blowing smoke in billows as big as Margaret’s mane. I see her lying on a white bed and telling me about mama's pottery and daffodils and just how delicious this cigarette is, just how hot the days are here in the summer and oh! how she wishes she could buy a Mustang and get the hell out of this town. I can smell lilacs and rosemary and tomato leaves- things her mother planted in vain hope of becoming something more than a mother. Margaret always smelled faintly of those things her mother planted, and dirt, and oh! how I’d watch her toes dance, painted pink and shining in the slant light; a white roof slanting; a white wall and a white girl, freckled and speckled- remnants of the sun. A sun I fear quite notably, at the moment.

I remember loving her then, but now I am lost in the in-betweenness of it all.

The water pressure is good and hard for such an old house. I hear it running and then the rusted handle yeek! and suddenly she is before me in a towel, smiling and twirling- locks in finger.

“I’m starved,” whines Margaret and I agree. I’m hungry too.

“There’s probably no food in the fridge,” I say, “the house seems like it’s sleeping.”

“Tomorrow we can go to the farmer’s market and pretend we’re old and married and fat. We’ll stock up for the long weekend.”

“I’d like that,” I say, “to be old and married and fat with you.”

“You’re such a doll, Gus. Has anyone ever told you what a doll you are?”

She sounds like the girls I usually have sex with, all air and soft syllables. I almost hear a broken pipe. A mundane mimicking of girlhood.

“What do you want to eat?”

“A cigarette sounds sublime. Won’t you roll one up for me?”

“Sure thing.”

“Maybe a few more than just one?”

“Of course, beautiful. Of course.”

“And then we’ll stuff our faces with adult things in the morning. We’ll get good and fat.”

“Margaret, the poet,” I sigh and can’t help but smirk. Such a smart ass, she is. So lovely, she is, without meaning to be. Such a tease, she is, a tease who’s going to get a college education and then what? I think, a nod to some sort of silence, some notion of an ending incomplete- unjust, perhaps.

“Let me get dressed and then we’ll chat. Light a fire, won’t you?”

“Of course. As always.”

70 “You can stay in Benedict’s old room.”

“Mom and Dad wouldn’t approve of us in the same room, huh?” I feel myself getting needy again, and I hate it, but, again, there’s the aching. “Why won’t you let me stay with you? We’re practically family.”

“You know very well why.”

“Why?”

I’ve amused her somehow. “I’m not going to answer that question sober.”

Margaret turns around and retreats back into her old bedroom, the room where I used to fold myself into her crookedness, gazing- an oeil de boeuf- while she undressed, pretending not to peek at her reflection in the cracked mirror. From time to time, when glimpses failed to fill this hole, when eyes failed to fantasize, I would look out and think of branches, limbs, bone- silver birches, too. How ashamed I was for wanting Margaret to give herself up to me, as if I’d do the job credibly, as if she’d be so satisfied. How perfectly inadequate I was, even then, and now I’m here, standing, staring at her white door, immobilized with gallant notions. Simple notions. Vague notions.

I walk downstairs and light the fire, logs left over from Benedict and his wife. Both of them quite young for such an amalgamation, still taking weekends at the family house in the country, their parents lost somewhere in middle age and incompleteness. Lost under a Mercy Street, I think- I’d like to believe in moss- perhaps reminiscent of a viridescence. Margaret and I will never be like them, I think. We’ll buy our own house in the country and grow fat and old and happy, abandoned by our grown up children who will look so beautiful because of her. They’ll get my hair, I hope, and then they won’t remind me so much of her ferocity. That will be for the better, I think. It’ll be easier to let them go.

The fire blazes quick, like a shot. I start rolling up the cigarettes. It bothers me that Margaret knows I have enough to feed her. Margaret could live off of cigarettes, I think. I better get some food in her.

There’s an apple tree outside. Maybe we’ll eat apples and smoke cigarettes and maybe this time we’ll really talk about something. I think maybe this time it’ll be different.

I go outside with a basket and fill it with apples. Unlike summer, the air is cool in the soft interlude of late afternoon and the apples are hard, like salt water and caramel. I don’t know what kind they are, Margaret was always the one who knew about trees and bugs and things. I resolve to ask her about it, then maybe she’ll be open to talking. I imagine her, cigarette drooping lazily in her too long fingers, the smoke curling around her hand and her lips curling around words like “birch” and “deciduous” and “fleeting.”

When I come back inside, she’s sitting, cross legged; a Bohemian is lighting up one of my cigarettes. Her hair trickles like blood when it’s wet, curling down her bare back. She wears a halter top, white, and her back looks sweet. Her ribs are showing, but I promise myself I won’t think about her ribs, so I look at her fingers instead.

And now even her finger bones tease with their flutterings and pointing and cigarette holding.

“Hey you,” she coos and the words fall out in smoke.

“Hey you,” I coo right back. “I remembered how you used to be in the garden.”

“Me?” “Yeah. I remembered your dirty feet and hands and how you’d spend so long in the woods, writing shit down and coming up with words for things that weren’t the things those words really meant. You were an artist, that’s for sure. A hell of a lot better than most people.”

“I’m glad you think so well of me.” Inhale.

“I do. Most of the time.” Exhale. I smile. She offers me a cigarette as if she’s the one who rolled it. I accept, most graciously. She pulls out her Zippo lighter and offers it up, but doesn’t flip it open. She lets me take it from her hands and light the cigarette myself. A symbolic gesture, I suppose.

“When do you not think so well of me?”

“I guess… I don’t know. I guess when I least expect it… I think about how you took all your wonder with you.

And how mad I am that you get you everyday and I don’t. You… evanesce, Margaret. You’re here but you’re already gone.” Don’t be a child, I chide myself, but the words spill out nonetheless.

“Do you think I owe you something?” Inhale. Exhale.

71 I take a long drag in protest to her quickness of smoking. Usually she’s the one who takes the long drag, not me. But tonight I’m feeling radical, like I could take apart that Mustang in the driveway and reassemble the pieces to look like the kind of car I’d want to drive. But now, come to think of it, I don’t know what kind of car I’d want to drive. And now, come to think of it, I’d much rather opt out of radicalization.

“I know you want me, Gus.” She won’t look at me. For then there’s the glare of shadows and a pond.

“But I won’t let you have me until you stop loving me. Because I know you’re one of those clinically attached types. And I don’t want that kind of baggage hanging around.”

This time, she takes the long drag.

This infuriates me.

“Is the ‘clinically attached’ type so fucking awful, Margaret?”

“No. Not so fucking awful. Just typical. And boring. No good girl likes a hopeless romantic these days anyways.

And besides, you would feel completely and utterly inadequate. Not to mention the flies.”

Inhale exhale.

“What on earth are you talking about, Margaret?”

“The whole production of it all. They swarm. Like flies.” Inhale.

“The production of what?”

Exhale. “Love.”

“So you don’t believe in love?” I’ve stopped smoking at the moment.

“God, no. I am perfectly capable of believing, but I won’t allow myself to get roped into the whole ordeal. It makes you sick, that’s what it does. Anything in excess is bad for us. Love is the excess of infatuation. I hate excess. I hate gluttony. I hate that love does that to people. Makes them fat, or alone, or something that smells kind of like that, like loneliness, like loving someone and never really knowing them as you should.”

“Do you really?” This time, I inhale and exhale much too quickly to feel any sort of magnitude.

“That’s why I’d rather stay satisfied in this great big hole. Me, a tree, a beer, a book, a fag. Now that’s what I call a good time, even if I am always hungry. At least I get myself.”

“But how do you suppose-” “I suppose a good fuck now and then can’t hurt.”

“I wasn’t finished with my sentence.” “‘How do you suppose’ sounds like a perfectly adequate sentence to me.”

“I don’t even know what to say to you, sometimes, Mags.” Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. “You really should work on that sarcasm of yours.” It’s all I can say. She laughs an airy, almost laugh. Our breaths- simultaneous.

She looks at me now and I am, at the moment, looking into the eye of a great storm, the storm of the firmaments, black and blind to man’s suffering. I think to myself, if only I could be Margaret’s one bad eye so that I wouldn’t see the injustice of it all. Sitting here with the first girl I loved, realizing my own madness and knowing I love her more in suspense. And knowing she’s right. I want an excess of Margaret Wilson. I want to crawl inside her and sleep, feeling the warmth of her organs, sheltered by the skeletal complex of her skin tight against the sexiest bones I have ever seen.

“You know,” I sigh, “You really are the most exhausting creature I have ever met.”

72 “Thank you. I take it as a compliment.” Inhale. Exhale. “Ready for that drink?”

She walks to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator. Margaret pulls out two beers and opens them with her teeth. I flinch. She doesn’t. Her hips sashay as she walks back towards me, and I can’t help but notice how unsexy she would be if she wasn’t whatever she is or means to be or the way she breathes- like air that doesn’t quite linger. Her body, in this dusky autumn light, seems less like Rita Hayworth and more like a perforated image. Light shines through her holes and here, in this moment, I notice how frail she is, how she looks about to break. No longer a movie star with burning curls, she is a woman, tired from the lightness of it all, tired from the heaviness of metal and this massacred melody. She is, unlike Hayworth, hardly well-endowed, lanky and maudlin- drinks in hand. Her hair is longer, wilder. There is a flatness about her. Her nose is longer, harder. Her eyes are wider, deeper set, like moss, and her lashes flutter nakedly. The cold beer drips in the presence of her unsexiness.

“So…” She hands me the beer as a peace offering.

“So…” I whisper back. She sits cross-legged again and arches her back, pulling the fag closer to her lips, puffy like she’s been crying.

Inhale. Exhale. Sip. Inhale. Exhale. Sip. “How was your year? As enlightening as you hoped?”

“I guess you could say that,” she smirks and I know she’s thinking about him, the way she fondles the lip of the bottle, the way she flicks ash onto the rug.

“What did you do?

Meet anyone?” Stop being cloying, I think. stop. But I can’t. I’m the over-attached type.

“I traveled around. Worked jobs here and there. Waitressed in Santa Margherita. Met some sailors. Sailed the Cinque Terre. Worked as a laundry woman at an inn somewhere that smelled like fish and wood. Took the train through the alps. Worked on a vineyard in Anghiari…” A sharp inhalation. Somewhere a first cricket sounds.

“Worked on a vineyard in Geneva. Worked on a vineyard in Provence. Got sick of grapes, starting drinking beer. Au paired for two brats- two months, hated every minute with them. Took long walks and picked wild flowers, which made up for it. Got sick of France and no good beer, so I went to Germany. Hiked Nepal and Tibet. But I was ready to come home, I think.”

A hallmark of flames- I let her exaggerate this adventure of hers. Soon enough, it’ll all be but a dream- a tale to make things seem a little less long.

She hesitates. “I’m happy to be home.”

She doesn’t take another drag, out of respect, I think. She looks around the house in silence.

There sits a red Mary Magdalene on the mantelpiece, or a girl that looks like her, next to a clock that makes no noise and I think, how odd for a clock not to tick, and then I realize the hand isn’t moving, the clock is broken; time is but a ticking that ceases to belong here, I think, in this church where two red women feign chastity.

There is, suddenly, an island and an ocean of consumption, and I know time knows not of rivers, only seas.

“I’m happy you’re home, too, Margaret.

I’m happy too.”

How to take a moment?

“How was your year? As enlightening as you hoped?”

73 I scoff, “Not any better than yours. You were smart to take a year off. College isn’t all it’s chalked up to be, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Yeah well, I’m actually liking it. A month in and I think the whole idea of it’s growing on me.” inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale. I let her take the time to smoke in silence.

“Fuck the man,” I say, “The Man is seducing you too now. The one good thing left and they’ve taken it from me.” I don’t really care all that much about The Man, but I figure she likes the way I worry, so I say it anyways. It’s endearing, this oddity of mine, this obsession. But no, obsession isn’t what this is, is it? I don’t like the word obsession- it connotes a certain impotence under the hefty weight of womanhood- I’d much rather say: an ivresse.

Maybe I’m a romantic that way. No matter, whatever this thing is, she likes it when I worry.

“Don’t worry, Gus, I won’t become too ordinary, I promise.” She laughs and I wish someone else was here to share my envy.

Now we sit and smoke a while longer in silence- I can’t complain. I like hearing her breathing, knowing someday her breath won’t be so clear and crisp as it is now, in this moment, watching a sunset of maple leaves, fluttering. Maple leaves have pointed tips- I remember because Margaret told me about them, because they’re on fire. Monks in protest, Rita Hayworth in a sunflower-yellow 1964 Mustang convertible, Florence Nightingale and a little boy screaming, a girl wishing she could leave and knowing that once she did, she would never come back, a balloon, a whisper, a thought in the lushness of night descending. We are cloaked now, in blueness, and all the reds are gone of this world. Margaret puts her head in my lap and closes her eyes as she lights cigarette after cigarette after cigarette, flicking the ash onto the rug, defacing the Church, giving the bird to The Man, perhaps to make me feel better, to relieve me of my counterfeit malady, and I smile knowing she wants me to be happy, here, in our little garden. Here in the house in the country, the house that is sleeping, the house that is suddenly awake with our breathing. And I like to imagine the clock will never work again- I like to imagine us here, suspended serendipitously, perfectly perilous, perched upon the precipice, lovers on a ledge. If only we could return- virgins breathing the kind of dreary breath of dreams, falling asunder, together in a bed, the sheet pulled taut between them- a quiet house- a house quiet with the breath of equals.

Story by Sage Molasky ’18 Art by Dear Liu ’19

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ISSUE 21 Spring 2018 Writing Director Alex Xu ’19 Art Director Dear Liu ’19 Design Director Edward Guo ’19 Club Advisors Elizabeth Buckles Brad Faus Editorial Adalyn Ngo ’19 Shine Lee ’20 Abby Sim ’20 Visual Jiahua Chen ’20 Jacqui Rice ’20 Beckett Hornik ’20 Outreach Quinn Carlisle ’19 Front Inside Cover Edward Guo ’19 Back Inside Cover James Albanese ’19 Photo on page 51 is sourced from the Internet. ink. has no intention of commercial use.

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