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Doors
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Holiday 假日
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La Conquista, 2017:
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‘Uncontacted’ Amazon Tribe Members Reported Killed in Brazil
A clock strikes Deadly Me
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Inevitable
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The World, Baby.
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Domestic Portraits from 201246E– Manhattan Meltdown Ángel de la Guarda
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Muhammad and the Pilot the Star
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Dixitque Deus, “Fiat lux”. Et facta est lux.
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“…when I just erased my own drawings, it wasn’t art yet and so I thought aha it has to beat art and Bill [William] de Kooning was the best-known acceptable American artist that could be indisputably considered art…” ––Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953
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Doors Inside the chapel the door is white. A silver push handle in the shape of an edged axe disrupts the wood. The paint is older, scuffed with a streak of black. Above the frame, stained glass soars upward, dots of black fill the right hand corner, a Seurat tree glazed in lilac glass. The door wedged precisely between walls that meld into pews and into pedestals that hold the sky. The upper left corner where wood meets wood captures dust. It is empty here on Sunday, and I regret the crow that breaks the silence. There are six relief carvings, rectangles, prints of the door. Shadows hang under the projection beneath raised wood. The carving is a shallow well that moves clockwise, as if the woodworker scooped dry sand from the beach and left remnants of a moat. Two inches away the door is green. An imitation of wet grass. Smooth without a handle. Three hinges on the right side, spaced evenly like buttons. Below the grass is forgotten, growing longer in autumn rain. As the door turns into hedges, light softens the paint into earth. The edges are straight between land, brick, and wood, melding seamlessly. Above my head the chapel glass is black, the reflection of trees rippling outward. There is no purple glass, just the world bouncing back at me.
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Far away it looks nothing like a door, it is simply a slab of wood, separating brick on the east side of the chapel. There is a sliver of space between wood and stone. Stacked rectangles of brick gummed together with white mortar push against one another. They span an opening, the space between. Transferring the vertical loads laterally, fixed in air by the nature of their construction. The archway is then filled by a slab of wood, which we call a door. We rush through doorways, into houses, and onto streets. From inside to outside, dark to light, and warmth to cold without second thought. A door becomes merely a means to an end, a way to move between spaces. In Latin the word for door was ostium, and the word for gate was porta, yet it was porta, not ostium, that gave rise to the modern word for door. Remember the twist in your gut before entering an unfamiliar house; the pause, shoulder against wood before stepping into rain. The chatter as you pull off snow boots, bickering over what treats are inside. Or new lovers unsteady before departing. When you step through a doorway there is that nearly imperceptible moment of disorientation. Your eyes blink rapidly, momentarily blinded by white streaks of sunlight. The rapid cascade of noise and color fill your head, before potential becomes reality. Prose by Zoe Wilson ’19 Photos by Dear Liu ’19
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Holiday 假日
Film by Frank Cai ’20
* To view the film, download the Layar app in App Store or Google Play, then scan the page on the left. Please wear headphones.
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La Conquista, 2017: ‘Uncontacted’ Amazon Tribe Members Reported Killed in Brazil It goes like this: the hunt, the chase, the earth-rending groan of trees as they fall to the shaking ground, their prayers left unanswered by a god that never spoke their language The locals and their worn-out blue jeans, their greedy, meaty hands, drunk on casual violence A fatal first touch, the upstream flight of a people-turned-prey, the smothering smell of smoke and bone-deep terror, a river run red There is only so far a person can run before civilization catches him in its arms and wrings his neck like the savage he is, civilization -- that quiet evil that begs surrender, that whispers, sibilant and serene, “kill or be killed.”
Prose by Abby Sim ’20 Photo by Beckett Hornik ’20
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A clock strikes and I find myself sitting on the wooden chairs with the wooden table a faded grey that had so much life among all that is alive the bright pomegranate blushed flowers and the vibrant shades of green from the forest to a lime against the cool shades of coarse, brown brick all that is alive, recording it to keep a memory alive On this cool, windy day sheltered by the clouds with not a ray of sunshine in sight it still stays bright cool, calm, and radiant under the sheltered sky in this sheltered home there waves the red, white, and blue calling our attention to all that stands here in the center of this land this home this community these four years the children walk around restlessly observing the wild after having to read a poem of course not quite realizing how now i find myself sitting here on the wooden chair next to the wooden table outside and quietly, softly observing, soaking up the sky even on a day like this
Poem by Priyanka Kumar ’19 Art by Camila Marcus ’20
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Photo by Harry Roepers ’19
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Deadly Me A leaf falls gently, Whisking across My tanned calf In the mid-summer air The soft breeze blowing through My supple frame As I lay on the puffy Grass, my arm stretched out To the limits of the world; my hands gripping The frail, limp threads of grass, pulling Out of the fresh dirt. Guilt Fills me, as I ponder the loss, The ruin of our harmony.
Poem by Albert Zhang ’19 Photo by Luke Gardiner ’21
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Inevitable Prose by Roman Scavone ’20 Art by I Lok U ’20
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I hate talking to my grandma so much. Like don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing I love more than talking to my grandma, but I swear it’s the worst. There’s nothing more demoralizing than shattering the expectations of the person who holds you in a higher regard than anyone else in your life. Actually, that’s false. Lying to the person who holds you in higher regard than anyone else is worse. Like last week, she called me just to check in and see how I was doing (so sweet), but once I got off the phone, I felt like shit. She didn’t ask any invasive questions or try to push some agenda on me about not being a bum, she just genuinely cared about what I had to say. She just loves me unconditionally, which is why I lie to her. “So school is finally done! How’s summer? Did you do anything fun today?” Ummm…Got high. Went to the movies. Played PS4. “Yeah, it’s great. Today was kind of boring, just like summer reading and playing with the dogs.” “Oh, is Luigi still a wild child?” I mean, he is, but who cares about that. I’m still stuck thinking about how disappointed she would be if she really knew me. The thing is though, I don’t mind me. I kinda like me. But that doesn’t matter at all. What matters is the terminally ill 88 year old angel on the other end of the conversation is being wildly misled by her favorite grandson. And yes, Henry, I said favorite grandson, we both know it, she just avoids saying it to spare your feelings. Again, really sweet lady. It’s just awful. I don’t know, I guess she just makes me question who I am and what I do. Like sometimes when I’m considering doing something stupid, I think, “Would Grandma approve of this?” But usually by then it’s too late and the edibles are already starting to kick in and I can’t stop the inevitable, I’m not Superman. I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess she just kept me honest to an extent. Made me better. I’m kind of running long here, but yeah, she’s incredible and I still feel guilty. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. And I’m sorry if this sucked or wasn’t traditional, I’ve never given a eulogy before so thanks for being a great audience.
Love you, Gram.
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Art by Olya Sukonrat ’21
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The World, Baby. I’m dancing around In a blue and red pinstripe bathrobe, wearing aviator sunglasses While my bandana’d friend strums so slow on his handsome guitar. We jump, from space to space, Sprinting around our miserable apartment, Bumping into cosmic orgy after cosmic orgy This is where the magic happens, man! We adjust our proverbial suit and ties in The smudged window in the bathroom, as we head out onto our first big gig. We’re on the stage of the galaxy, and I’m singing to my friend, Play that guitar, baby.
His girlfriend is in the audience, watching with a huge smile As the horns and drums kick in to accompany Our galactic orchestra, as our band Kaleidoscopes into the stars.
Madison Square never stood a chance as The people scream and cheer our names and Our followers multiply from tens to millions, And the sheets of sound we fold feel so god damn soft. The guitar slows down; Finally, my time to shine! I’m a preacher to the world and This dusty, lived-in, two-bedroom apartment is my stage. And I wrap myself in the soft, floppy sleeves of his bathrobe And we slow dance to the good times and shit times and all the times inbetween. We’re standing on the god-damn edge of our lives and I’m dancing to the rhythm of The World, Baby.
Poem by Dominic Bellido ’20 Photo by Savi Roberts ’19
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Domestic Portraits from 201246E– Haikus by Margot Ngo ’19 Art by Kyle Jenkins ’20
Summer and Other S-Words We are out of tune S(ummer)’s spindly fingers have pulled us apart Untitled No. 1 A Portuguese song, swelling as my sore heart does Thumbtacks as earrings Annie’s Damn what mother said, eyes glow in microwave light Button: start, stop, peace I Could Die Right Now Hands and raspberries Dark room and tinny music from a phone speaker
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Photo by Yuka Masamura ’21
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These Flowers Would Never Grow Here Plant seeds in my mind Make me ask questions I don’t want the answers to On the Terrace I wed an apple We pass around the fruit and sneak into Eden I Know A Failed Marriage When I See One You try to elope with a chai ice cream cone and I almost let you Write Your Name on My 2015 Burgundy Vans So You Will Always Be With Me Sharpies on the floor, we all are, clutching old shoes Where have they (we) been? Where will we (they) go?
MCD Shining fruit-filled palms: crown the Mandarin Prince and take him to the stars Nebulus Ego death– I touch him, gone and he calls me false, but if not, then who?
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Manhattan Meltdown The brutal 3am coldness of manhattan makes my teeth chatter. I swear the wind will slice my face open in no time, or them synthetic drug junkies will do the job. I rub my nose and pull my fake Canada Goose tighter around myself. It still puts a smile on my face when I think about this jacket –– I got it for eighty-something dollars from a street rack. It was a good deal; no difference from the real ones. Where is this goddamn burger place? It has to be nearby and open 24/7 like Yelp says ‘cuz I ain’t far from dying of starvation. There it is! Bobby’s Burger. As I push through the entrance, the glass door feels weightless. The fluorescent lights flicker on and off when I enter. A few customers are still at the place: two scantily-clad young girls sharing fries, three black teenagers playing video games behind a table littered with greasy burger wraps, a disheveled guy lightly snoring on a leather couch, and a bougee wonder-bread couple gazing at me from behind their fountain drinks. I pull out my phone to check if my eyes are too red from the blunts and if my hair is messed up. Nope – and – nope. Good. I smile smugly at my own reflection. As I lift up my head, my eyes meet the cashier’s. Her face is as pale as a frozen corpse’s and her out-of-focus blue eyeballs are like the ones on my little cousin’s doll! “Hello, sir. What shall I get for you?” Her red lips stain her porcelain complexion like fresh blood on a starch-white shirt. She tilts her head to the side, and her oxblood nails tap against the white marble table. “Ummm… A double-steak burger and a side of cheddar fries, please.” I refuse to look into the lady’s creepy blue eyes. “You got it, sir.” The cashier smiles as she snatches my receipt from the printer. The crisp tearing sound scratches my eardrum. The order number is 666. The cashier taps on the white table; the clicking sound digs into my pot-pampered cortex. She returns her gaze to the glass door as if I am nonexistent. Creepy-ass place. I got my food quickly and sat down in the corner. The grease of the beef patty lingers between my teeth and the graininess of the cheddar fries sticks to my tongue, but oddly enough, I taste absolutely nothing. The cheese is cheesy, the fries are starchy, and the burger feels, well, burger-like. But my taste buds are somehow deactivated – I can’t taste a thing. Perhaps the blunts were spiked? I take a few more bites to fill myself up and throw the rest into the trash can. I zip up my fake jacket and walk out. The cashier is still the finger-tapping doll; the couple stares at me from behind their soda cups; the hooker-looking girls share their fries in silence; the black boys play video games together. Nothing changed. I seem like the only living and moving thing in this time lapse. Leaning against a fire hydrant, I inhale a long breath of nicotine and lemon-flavored chemicals from my juul. I let it all out. The dizziness from vaping intensifies the relaxation from the top-shelf blunts that I smoked an hour ago. I know my eyes are probably red as bull’s, but losing a little control over my muscles – and myself – feels so damn heavenly. I let my leaden lids fall bit lower. The back of my scalp and neck are numb and everything just slows … down. I squeeze my temples and feel warm despite the frosty wind. I yawn and start to walk in the direction of home. “Yo, Sir! Do you want a ticket to Snoop Dogg’s show? It’s in Brooklyn two weeks from today. The price is real good.” An enterprising Hispanic youth about ten years old shows
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Prose by Mackenzine Huang ’20 Art by Asher DuFord ’20
up from nowhere and brazenly grabs my t-shirt. With a smirk, he wavers two crumpled purple tickets in front of my face. I roll my eyes, “Kid, listen, it’s 2016. Twenty years ago I’d buy it in a heartbeat, but now? Nah.” I keep walking as a thought strikes me – wasn’t Snoop Dogg’s last tour a few years ago now? And what kind of tenyear-old wears corduroy pants and a turtleneck? Isn’t that a 90’s thing? Cold sweat is dripping down from my forehead. My body stiffens as I look back – no one is there. I pull out my phone in terror to confirm that it is 2016. I touch my jawline to feel the stubble that confirms my age. I look around to make sure that I’m in Manhattan instead my old Brooklyn hood. Or am I? “Oh my son, go home, go home fast. It’s too late.” The couple I saw at the burger place are now locking arms in the middle of the crosswalk, “But don’t go this way, son. Choose another path.” I silently scream. Can’t deal with this much eerie s**t at three in the morning. I ignore them and force myself to quicken my pace forward. But after just a few blocks, I slow down and couldn’t move my feet. I feel the thumping of my cortex again. It’s swelling bigger and bigger. Hustling police, the shrill sound of sirens, shattered window glass, the smell of gunpowder, a burnt hole in the forehead, lifeless eyes popping wideopen, a corpse, and a stunned teenager on the passenger’s seat splattered with his brother’s warm blood and brains. I’m the one who’s alive, and my older brother died exactly here in a drug transaction that went south ten years ago. The world is melting. At first, everything around me just sweats colored water – green dye drips down from the tips of cedar trees, viscous white paint deforms the statues on a small church, thick petrol oozes along the fire escapes of old apartment buildings... There is no fire and no heat, but every physical entity turns soft and malleable. It’s like I stepped into Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. Mere minutes later, the world completely melts down. The 3D paradigm I used to know now morphs into a kaleidoscopic conglomeration of saturated pigments. I, too, feel my essence collapsing down into a muddled puddle where my feet had been. Bubbles slowly effervesce from the medley of pigments. The world flattens into an ugly brown that smells like asphalt. My consciousness folds into itself. Only a few diffracted thoughts remain. But soon I lose those, too. And I fall into a deep, dreamless slumber.
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Ángel de la Guarda I lay in the warm sand and let the clear Rhode Island water run over my face as my little sister builds a castle out of sand on the shore. My mother sits under a pink umbrella, listening to Billy Joel sing his heart out over the radio. Notes from his soft piano harmonize with the summer breeze. My father floats on the dazzling water, reminiscing about the dirty river he used to swim around as a child in Peru. I look over to my mama and see her smile. Her face is wrinkled and tanned, and her eyes are tired from those countless days working, but she smiles nonetheless. My dad told me once that when they came to America, she took a job in a meat-packing factory after giving birth to me. Everyday, she would come back and her hands would be coarse and calloused. After she would cook our dinner, she would simply lay down next to me and sleep. I hope I didn’t wake her up that often. I can’t remember much from my infancy, but at times when I hear a certain tune, or a string of notes that faintly resemble a nursery rhyme, I think about her. I think about all those years she spent toiling and working, cleaning and cooking and caring for me at home, having to leave everything she knew to give me and my little sister a better life. I think about how every day when I came back from school and kissed her cheek, when she hugged my dad and packed his lunch, when she would cradle my little sister, she would smile. And every night, when me and my little sister were safely tucked into bed, she would hold our hands and pray. Ángel de la Guarda, dulce compańía, no me desampares ni de noche ni de día. No me dejes solo que me perdería. Jesús, Maria, José, Acompáñame este día. Amén.
Prose by Dominic Bellido ’20 Photo by Savi Roberts ’19
As I lay down on the beach and think about the sky and God, I feel a tear run down my cheek and into the salt water. I look into the vast blue horizon and feel the warmth of the sun and cannot stop myself from crying. I pick myself up and walk into the shore, leaving my tears behind. My mother looks up at me and asks what is wrong, taking my hand. I stumble and kneel before her in her plastic chair and I weep in her lap, her warm hands cradling me. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done to you. I’m sorry I’m a failure, and I’m lazy, and I don’t love you enough. I’m so sorry I haven’t been a good son, but I promise from here on out I will try. I will try, Mama.” She sighs and pulls me close, and I can hear her heart beating. “Don’t be sad, mi hijo. It’s okay. You have nothing to be sorry for.” I feel a tear drop onto my shoulder. She sniffles and looks at me. Her gaze was the only thing I saw, and her embrace was the only thing I felt. The sun on my back, the light all around comforted me. “It’s okay, hijo. It will be okay”.
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“Whheeeeoooo!” the wind whistles through the disintegrating skeletons of gray buildings. It whistles just like the bombs which had torn through the town the week before. Here Muhammad was raised, was still being raised, in fact; he is but sixteen years old. He walks over the cracked, scorched pavement where his father taught him to ride his bike. That was not so long ago, he thinks, back when the revolution seemed a foreign matter. The gun slung across his chest is as heavy as his heart, cold black steel with one purpose, one aim, one use. His eyes, deep with age, stand out against his youthful face as he surveys the block. The militia has sent him here, and other patrols elsewhere, on the lookout for that pilot. They saw the plane go down earlier this morning after a bombing run the town over. Approaching the end of the block, Muhammad sighs and saunters to his home, or at least what is left of it. The smell of the flames hangs thick in the air. Walking through the barren walls to the backyard, he notices a trail of red. Examining it, he knows it is blood, and fresh blood at that. It is not the blood of his family, whose stains had since faded. He follows the trail silently and his heart is pounding in his chest like the sound of munitions hitting the pavement. It leads to a dilapidated shed, barely erect in the wind, and peering inside, Muhammad sees him, the pilot. He is a white man, young and fit, yet broken. Is he even alive? With great difficulty, his chest rises and falls, and blood pools around him. His eyes open in a flash of fear and mutely beg for mercy. This is the pilot, Muhammad, the man who killed your family and who decimated your town. You know what to do, you have seen the videos. You brandish that knife and slay the infidel! These thoughts fly into his head, and so he brandishes that knife and stands above the pilot, the murderer, the broken man and brings it down with vengeance. Yet as the blade soars to its target, eager for any soul’s blood, the pilot changes. In an instant he is no longer in that sad shed and the body before him is no longer that of the broken pilot. He is back in his house, the smoke choking his lungs and eyes. At his feet is his bleeding father, dead daughter in his arms crying for help, crying for mercy, crying for Muhammad to run away. In a flash, he is back in the shed, and so disoreinted, he plunges the knife into his own thigh instead of the pilot. He stumbles into the shed and collapses unconscious. The pilot struggles to move, but is too broken. Now he looks at his country’s sworn enemy face to face. You’re just a kid, he thinks to himself. He looks out of the shed into the ruins of the city around him, examining, what he did not notice when he dragged himself into the shed earlier. The wind blows dust into clouds covering the wreckage with soot. In an instant, the scene changes for the pilot, and he is no longer in that desecrated desert town. He is in Manhattan, paralyzed in shock as he stands amidst the wreckage of where his wife used to work. Reality quickly returns and Muhammad awakens beside him. They glance at each other, at each other’s wounds, at the scene around them, and together burst into weeping. Tears for family, tears for each other, tears for the war. “Whheeeeoooo!” the wind whistles. Or is it the bombs?
Prose by Kostia Howard ’20
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Muhammad and the Pilot
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The light at sunset is a deep orange. It stains the surface of the windowsill, drawing a sharp line. The light at dawn is dull. It illuminates softly: a gentle lamp, a smothering of warmth. The light sharpens. The gleam on the window changes, from eggshell to marble. Inside, the shadows shift, the edges of the window form a sharp triangle with the flat plank beneath, projecting a small square on the opposite wall of the room. Rays of sunshine fall along the grain of the chipped table, filling in its little creases. Outside, the grass, still covered with a thin layer of moisture, seems to be more vivid. The dew shimmers as the lingering scent of fresh grass slowly wafts in: a subtle, earthy aroma. The arrival of fall comes bearing gifts, casting a carpet of bright gold on the fields. It lies just beneath the shade of the black oak, a blanket of emerald dotted with crimson. The wind howls. The thin, brittle branches of the tree tremble. A whirlwind of fallen leaves clump together into a mass of motley brown. The carpet takes flight.
Poem by Nick Hsu ’20 Photos by Frank Cai ’20
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Photo by Jeffrey Zhai ’20
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The pavement was lined with pastel storefronts that boasted their offerings in painted, curlicued letters. Trendiest Haircuts in Town! Cheapest Nail Salon! The gaps between buildings were shadowy, barely large enough for a malnourished cat, but the woman standing on the street ignored these. Her attention was drawn instead to the wispy willows growing in front of these alleyways, bright green and rich brown vibrant against the gloom. Her mind and senses were fuzzy, as if she had just woken from a deep slumber. This was unknown territory, but it reminded her of the town of her childhood - somewhere she had always found comfort in but never returned to once she began to feel stifled by her surroundings. There were no sounds coming from any direction. The silence was thick and enveloping, too quiet to be comforting. Where were the birdcalls, the shuffling of footsteps, the creaking of doorways, the comforting chorus of voices? Narcissa had always made it a point to be around people. To know Narcissa deeply was to hate her, but those that met her in passing felt her presence like a radiant, albeit malevolent, goddess. The woman, now perplexed by the dead air, approached a nearby store. The glass door revealed only the dark depths within the outwardly cheerful façade. Hand grasping at the doorknob, she pushed her way in, moving with the same arrogant carelessness with which she approached life. Inside, she could see what had been too dark to make out from outside. Her best friend from childhood was propped up in the center, head lolling to the side, eyes blank and unseeing. Narcissa, who had ditched this best friend in favor of more beautiful, sycophantic ones, felt an instant pang of revulsion at the sight and smell of death. Distressed, Narcissa turned and ran back into the street, when she was compelled to enter another one of the many buildings. In it was yet another propped up body, but that of her mother, whose love and caring she had always rejected. This town was not a town, she knew. Each building contained yet another person she had wronged in her life. There was not a sign of life anywhere, and the only sound was her pounding footsteps as she was forced from building to building. This is torture, she told herself, and in the same minute, she thought, at least it’s them, not me. The last building held not a body, but a large mirror. Narcissa ran to it, worried about her appearance after hours of running. She was greeted by dead eyes and gaunt, pale limbs. She would have screamed, but she found she could not make a sound. This was her own hell.
Prose by Isabel Su ’22 Photo by Dear Liu ’19
i chose to mark myself
i am not ashamed i am proud
i press it into my skin it digs in and i push it in farther harder to make it hurt hoping my skin will become red and itchy
i push it into my thumb trying to create a mark ingraining it in my skin until it is stamped
my hand tightens around the Star hanging from my neck next to my heart at all times
i am numb as i walk through the halls my eyes well up but i cannot cry
i cannot speak my mouth goes dry
the Star
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Poem by Emily Heimer ’21
we will force you push you to stop
so do not carve your hate into the life around me
but we could not we were forced pushed to wear it
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Dixitque Deus, “Fiat lux”. Et facta est lux. Before the stars, the sun, and the earth, there was only Darkness.
Prose by Ian Gill ’19
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Almost every group throughout history has their explanation for the creation of light. For Judeo-Islamic-Christians, God created light and separated the light from darkness. Thus was the first day. For Hindus, the first light awoke Brahma and began the creation of the world. For physicists, the Big Bang was an explosion of atomic material that created stars and galaxies, illuminating the ever-expanding universe. Very few groups have dared to explain the creation of Darkness. Darkness, simply put, is the lack of light. Pitch black. Nothing. However, Darkness, this most archaic art, is infinitely more complex than that simple definition. In the beginning, It is the color of tar: dense and viscous. As time progresses, the deepest color ever imaginable reaches new depths previously unbeknownst to the mind, only then to be driven deeper and deeper into the senseless void. Darkness, paired with silence, enchants the mind to the point of insanity: both scream to be filled by a light, by an image, by a sound, anything that will end their entangling grasp. There is light in Darkness, at least it seems this way. Not in front, but in the periphery, a whitish haze exists. The eye craves light, feeds off of it and demands it. Following the ever-vanishing light, the eye only sees Darkness with the faint appearance of light in some distant world on the outer edges of attention.
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All other art can be eluded, avoided, turned away from if the viewer finds it so hideous. With Darkness, the only respite comes from light itself. The art of Darkness is three-dimensional, in fact, four-dimensional, since the Art still remains even after your eyes are closed. No, you do not close your eyes. There is not such active movement in Darkness. Instead, your eyes are shut passively by the surrounding shadow as it pulls down your drooping eyelids. Thus, the Darkness creeps closer and closer to the very essence of your being. Even as you retreat to the inner recesses of your mind, even then, you will see only Darkness. There is no imagination in Darkness except for the tricks of your eyes. You come to the realization that you do not actually know whether or not your eyes are open. Pragmatically, the difference is minimal, but this sudden enlightenment strikes at your primordial chords of fear, plucking Darkness into your very heartstrings: Your eyes do not matter. After this realization, you invent a way to solve this query, a sadistic way evoking an animalistic response. Touch your eyeball. If you touch it and you do not flinch, your eyes are closed. If not… well, hope that they are closed. After an hour, or maybe two, I determine that there is no Time in Darkness. Time is merely an outside construct determined by light and sound. In the absence of these two, there is only a start and a finish. In between, nothing changes. Darkness is simultaneously expansive and claustrophobic. The hand that waves three inches from my face only waves because I feel it. The walls around me only exist in my memory and not at the present moment. At this, you may exclaim, “But reaching out, you will still touch the wall, and the ceiling, and the floor!” Yes, but only temporarily. As soon as I remove my hand, the wall again becomes only a construct of my imagination. The far reaches of Narnia are as close as the wall two feet ahead of me until I touch that wall. When the mind closes on the brink of insanity, silently screeching in mental anguish, the cult-like statement appears truly: God did not create Darkness. God is Darkness. Darkness is the AΩ. Darkness existed before anything else, and at the conclusion of Time, there will be only Darkness.
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Darkness is beautiful. In fact, It is the most beautiful. Because it exposes an inner ugliness, an inner fear that dates to man’s first fear of the unknown. In complete isolation from any understandable phenomenon, Darkness and silence force self-reflection. Retreat! Retreat! Build defenses of past experiences, past art, past music, past literature! All of it is drowned out by Darkness. All other art feigns an understanding of Time. Darkness destroys any preconception of it. Other art grasps at some intangible emotion. Darkness strikes the most realistic, raw emotions into any viewer simultaneously: terror, awe, sadness, hysteria, anguish, love, hate. All else ebbs and flows, worn down and faded over the years. Even light itself bends. Only Darkness remains steadfast, independent of Time. Darkness creates a new lens for the lesser arts. Lucy finding Narnia in the Wardrobe suddenly becomes perfectly reasonable in the void. She does not lose any time in Narnia, as there is no Time when she accepts the Darkness of the Wardrobe. Odysseus tells the blinded Polyphemus that his name is “οὐδέν”, “Nothing”. Polyphemus runs to his father, Poseidon, crying, “οὐδέν, οὐδέν, Nothing is hurting me.” Indeed, Nothing is hurting Polyphemus. Suddenly finding himself without light, Polyphemus arrives in destitute Darkness and in immense pain, no longer understanding the new world in which he now finds himself: the world of Darkness, of Timelessness, of anguish. I leave Darkness in a sudden burst of light. Temporarily blinding, the light reveals my shivering body. I feel a sudden urge to weep, just as a shipwrecked sailor weeps on the newfound beach and as the sinner weeps in discovering the opportunity of his salvation. The fear and the anguish that so overwhelmed me seconds before subside, but a small scar remains, always haunting. But, just as the sailor hears again his calling for the sea and the sinner an attraction for those carnal sins he now despises, I hear, beseeching me to follow It again into the depths and voids, to embrace Its infinite wisdom learned above the course of Time, Darkness.
ISSUE 23 Fall 2018 Writing Director Alex Xu ’19 Art Director Dear Liu ’19 Design Director Edward Guo ’19 Club Advisors Brad Faus Charlie Frankenbach Editorial Margot Ngo ’19 Shine Lee ’20 Abby Sim ’20 Roman Scavone ’20 Yitong Wu ’20 Nicole Morikawa ’21 Layout + Visual Jiahua Chen ’20 Beckett Hornik ’20 Jacqui Rice ’20 Yuka Masamura ’21 Ricky Shi ’22 Outreach Quinn Carlisle ’19 Covers by Edward Guo ’19 Inside Covers by Amy Wang ’19
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