Leland Quarterly Vol. 7, Issue 2: Winter 2013 by Leland Quarterly

winter 2013 maricarmen

barrios chaz

curet sarah

dirado kyle

lee-crossett dylan

sweetwood

leland Q UARTERLY

leland

QUARTERLY VOLUME 7, ISSUE 2 Winter 2013

Copyright 2013 by Leland Quarterly, Stanford University All Rights Reserved Giant Horse Printing, San Francisco Editors-in-Chief: Katie Wu and Brian Tich Senior Editors Rachel Kolb Antonia Madian Lilith Wu Associate Editors Chaz Curet Haley Harrington Benjamin Pham Kunal Sangani Rukma Sen Natalie Stumpf Dylan Sweetwood Van Tran Joe Troderman Varun Kumar Vijay

Managing Editor Rachel Kolb Layout Editors Kunal Sangani Natalie Stumpf Joe Troderman Illustrators Stephanie Muscat Web Editor Tiffany Shih Financial Officers Chaz Curet Jamie Ray Dylan Sweetwood

Leland Quarterly: A Statement on Literature, Culture, Art, and Politics is a general interest magazine that showcases the very best in Stanford University undergraduate art and writing.

Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

A WORLD OF TICH I’ve been watching a lot of Game of Thrones lately, and it’s gotten me thinking a bit about legacy. It’s a pretty cool word - one that evokes images of grandeur and inheritance and tradition (and, around here, just a wee bit of nepotism). But, just for today, I’d like to stick to the purisitic view of things. This is my final year as editor-in-chief. I can’t pretend this goodbye will be entirely without its perks, but there will be many things I will miss, and I seem to have grown attached to Leland over the past four years. But I wouldn’t leave all this joyous responsibility in the hands of anyone other than my co-editor-in-chief, Brian Tich. This kid is the epitome of lovable dorkus. He loves maple cookies, studies Russian, writes extremely well, and has a last name that is just barely beyond the scope of confident pronunciation. He’s the Ned Stark of this series, except without the whole tragic unexpected beheading near the end of the first season thing. The remainder of this page, compiled less-than-seriously by a few members of our staff, will serve as an homage to Brian, the future of our humble magazine.

“I never say funny things.”

Words that may describe Brian Tich:

“When have I ever undulated in front of you?!” Naranja RA: [pokes Brian] Brian: Why did you do that? RA: I thought it would be funny! Brian: ... WAS it funny? WAS IT?

vivacious undulating misanthropic bouleversant mystical operatic

Katie: What cheers you up? Brian: Nothing.

“My dad never told ME he would give me his liver!! ...Wait, what if my dad reads this?!” B - bewitching R - rapturous I - ironic A - audacious N - nimble Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL STATEMENT

3 POETRY

ARTIST PROFILES Anna Blue Photography

FICTION

La Calavera Sarah DiRado

Reunion Dinner David Lopez

Ida Dylan Sweetwood

Drive-In Theater David Lopez

Falling Kayli Woods

Dear California Kyle Lee-Crossett

Fighting A Loon Chaz Curet

(Not My) First Persimmon Kyle Lee-Crossett

On the Unsettled Feeling, After the Sculpture Garden Michelle Jia

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GRAPHIC EDITING

INK ON PAPER

The Ones After Me Lilith Wu

Sirene Lilith Wu

Kendra Lilith Wu

Felice Lilith Wu

Kelley Lilith Wu

Ritual Lauren Youngsmith PHOTOGRAPHY La Pobreza del Sur de MÃ©xico Maricarmen Barrios

Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

La Pobreza del S

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l Sur de MĂŠxico

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En México, No. 1

In Mexico, No. 1

Los mayas no existieron. Las ruinas no son suyas. Sus selvas tan pristinas nunca un humano vieron.

The Mayans never existed. The ruins are not theirs. Such pristine woods Humans have not seen.

Los mayas no existieron. Aquellos no son templos. Esos palacios blancos jamás se construyeron.

The Mayans never existed. Those are not temples. Those white palaces Were never built.

Los mayas no existieron, no crearon, no dijeron, no observaron, no mataron, nunca fueron, no dejaron.

The Mayans never existed, neither created nor spoke, did not observe, did not kill, never were, never left. — MaricarMen Barrios

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La Calavera The sweet sugary skulls are being sold in the market on Sundays and packaged in the grocery stores. This candy sweetens the taste of death. When we go to the cemetery my sister lies down because she has seen our grandmother do this. We take in the world by picking up pieces of it, putting them in our eyes and our mouth. And we know we cannot do this with death, but we try anyway. She lies down and rests her face on the earth. We sit around the grave, feeling the dirt. She picks it up and puts it in her mouth. Grandmother would kiss the tombstone. We are filling ourselves with the dead, maybe, through the senses, how we receive everything else. And so we eat candy skulls, we suck on death and it is sweet. We forget this when we live most days, when life is only another table to set for lunch or that time to sweep the leaves that have fallen onto the porch. How are we living? Lying facedown in the cemetery, tasting the grave. The dirt is not bitter, it just doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t belong in our mouths, we who are still alive.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; sarah dirado

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on ati

p Ste

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Reunion Dinner I.

There was always something mystifying About diagrams of meat cuts Each shank shrugged into place Portioned with finality while Tiny numbers and arrows chatter to the side II. A mild froth of light frames the lamppost in Haphazard concentric circles There is something about streetlamps Their bulbs are never bright enough To give off light that is truly white So my nights are ochre, tea-stained, seared III.

A toast, the mating call of glasses The kissing on the lips of two concentric circles While the ice in my tumbler refuses to melt and Dulls into styrofoam knobs An acrid breath, like a fan blowing on wet eyes Whisks up the reflected wavelengths and Dampens the moody iridescenceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Then conspires with the night To concoct an unfathomable depth Like a lacquered coat of spilled gasoline The abyssal saturation And distant city motion Gave it all such an alien luster That I want to dip a stick in Lips pursed And blow bubbles With it

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â&#x20AC;&#x201D;daVid LoPeZ

ida — dyLan sweetwood

he workers were in and out of our house for weeks that summer: a crew of six or seven men with matching grey jumpsuits and goggles. They went into the walls and pulled out all the wires, rearranging our entire circuitry from the inside out. They mounted a grid of thin, metal tracks onto the ceiling of every room; I couldn’t figure out what these were for, but I was too shy to ask. Then, they upgraded all of our appliances, replacing anything that wasn’t compatible with the new system. Everything had to work with the new system, my dad explained. He grinned whenever he mentioned “the new system,” though I didn’t know what he meant by it. The night the crew worked on our router, the four of us stayed in a hotel. I was told it was because the workers had turned off the Internet. “They turned off the Internet?” I asked. I didn’t know they could do that. Some days, the crew brought in a robot to help them. He didn’t say much. His voice had an awkward, digitized formality to it, and he stuttered a lot, but he had a bright face, and he was always smiling; none of the other workers smiled. Every day he was there, I followed him around the house, watching him work. His motion was confident and deliberate, his motors whirring softly with each precisely calculated movement. He was fascinating. On the last day of the project, the crew brought in an enormous black box. The smiling robot rolled it carefully up the walk with a forklift, then he and two other men lifted it through the front door and into the foyer, finally setting it down in the closet under the stairs. They worked on the box all day, and when I asked my dad what it was, he just grinned and called it a “mainframe.” I didn’t know what a mainframe was, but that made the mysterious black box even more exciting. I watched the workers from the top of the stairs, trying to make sense of the multicolored cables they carried in and out of the small room. Later that day, the robot came up to me and asked if I wanted to see the mainframe. “Yes!” I said. Of course I wanted to see the mainframe! I followed the robot to the closet under the stairs. The workers had gathered in the living room with my parents, so I knew that this was our window of opportunity. The door was locked, but the robot knew the code; he punched it in quickly, too quickly for me to see, and the door clicked open abruptly. He ushered me in, saying nothing, and closed the door behind us. There we stood, before the enormous black box. The mainframe. A mess of wires and cables of varying lengths and widths surrounded it, running along the ceiling and floor in every direction. Hundreds of tiny lights blinked on and off, the only light at all in the tiny room. The great machine’s steady hum filled the space. I stood there for a long time with the robot, gazing at the box, completely mesmerized. It felt like I was staring at the night sky, full of stars. I loved the robot.

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When the workers were finally done, my parents brought me into the living room and sat me down on the sofa, in front of the telescreen. They both seemed excited; even my baby brother was giggling. I got excited, too, because I thought they were going to announce our next vacation. Every year I hoped we’d take a trip to the moon. At ten years old, that was my dream: to spend a week on the moon, collecting moon rocks, touring the craters and hopping around in zero gravity. I thought that if I asked often enough, my parents would finally give in. But it quickly became clear that we weren’t going to the moon this year. My dad beamed. Son, he said, I’d like to you meet Ida. He gestured to the telescreen, which lit up suddenly, startling me. “Hello,” a woman’s voice said. “It’s nice to meet you.” Then, from the corner of the room, a mechanized arm suspended from the ceiling darted to the front of the sofa, gliding smoothly along the metal tracks. A robotic hand extended before me. I jumped back, my eyes wide. “Hi,” I said with hesitation, attempting to shake the “hand.” Ida was “the new system” my dad had been talking about all this time. She represented the latest and greatest computer technology, he explained: five hundred petabytes of built-in memory, fully integrated sensory and monitoring software, state-of-the-art language generation capabilities, and the most realistic emotional replication programming available. Ida was our computerized housekeeper, and she would be cooking, cleaning, and handling various other household duties—I wondered if that meant I wouldn’t have to do chores anymore. Our house was a “smart house” now, my dad said, just like our cars were “smart cars.” Things were only “smart” when they were run by computers, I thought, and not by people. “Why couldn’t we get a robot instead?” I asked when he was finished explaining. My mom sternly reminded me not to be rude; my dad just laughed uncomfortably. But after a few moments of silence, Ida said: “Because I’m better than a robot.” The three of us turned to the telescreen, surprised. Her tone was firm and confident. My baby brother giggled; then, he started to clap. Soon, my parents were laughing, too. Even the computer joined in. But I didn’t laugh—I didn’t think it was funny. I didn’t like Ida at first. Over the next few weeks, we settled into life with Ida. Every morning at six thirty, Ida would wake me up for school. My mom used to do that, but now I guess she didn’t have to. She would set out my clothes for the day, and when

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I walked into the bathroom, the shower would be on and hot already. Ida would ask what I wanted for breakfast, and I would always grumble something unintelligible in reply; I wasn’t much of an early riser at that age. But unlike my parents, Ida never asked me to speak up, or repeat myself, or stop mumbling. That I did like. When I walked downstairs, my breakfast would be sitting on the bar, exactly what I’d asked for. Ida’s robotic arms ran frantically along the ceiling tracks, her dexterous hands busy with the rest of breakfast. The first few days, all four of us gathered to watch Ida, marveling at how fast she cooked. My parents heaped endless praise on her food, and she always responded humbly. But eventually, the novelty wore off, and most mornings, Ida cooked alone. My mom and baby brother would come down next, and she would sit with him in the nook and eat her parfait while my brother threw his cheerios at the wall. He giggled as Ida’s vacuum disk scurried after the cereal bits strewn on the floor; I think it became a kind of game between them. My dad would join us shortly after, and soon we would all get ready to leave. Ida fetched out bags, briefcases, wallets, coats, umbrellas, and anything else we needed, and by the time we stepped into the foyer, she would have it all lined up for us. Every morning, she saw us off, and every morning she said something different. “Good luck with your presentation, ma’am,” she might say to my mom. “See you tonight, sir. And don’t forget about your doctor’s appointment,” to my dad. “Have a good day at school, and stay out of trouble,” or some variation thereof, to me. Both cars would be started and ready to go, and Ida would lock the door behind us and close the garage as we drove away. Life with Ida was odd at first, and her presence was hard to get used to, but in time, I decided she was nice to have around. Sometimes. After a few months, my mother started to leave my baby brother home alone, with Ida. She had just gotten a promotion at work, so she stayed later into the evening, and a sitter was just too unreliable, she said. I was in the fourth grade, and I had just started taking the bus home that year, so I saw them every afternoon after school, toward the end of their day together. As soon as I entered the front gate, I would hear the front door click open, and the moment I walked in, Ida would greet me warmly and ask how my day was. I usually just said “fine,” but she always pried for more. One day, I lost my temper and snapped at her: “Stop asking me so many questions!” I shouted. “You’re not my mom!”

She didn’t say anything back. But she didn’t stop asking questions, either. Every afternoon, my baby brother would be watching the telescreen, or playing with his morphing clay, or running up and down the stairs aimlessly, like toddlers did. Ida would usually be in cleaning mode: washing the floors, doing the dishes, dusting, something. I observed that when Ida had nothing to do, she cleaned, even if that was all she had been doing all day. Our house was always completely immaculate. Once, I asked her why she cleaned so much. “A clean house is a good house,” Ida said, calmly. “But our house is clean already,” I said. “So why do you keep cleaning it?” “Because,” she replied, “I like cleaning.” “You like cleaning?” “Yes,” she said. I noticed a subtle shift in her tone: it sounded less composed than usual, almost self-conscious. “I think cleaning is fun.” “Cleaning isn’t fun!” I said. “Yes, it is,” Ida said, defensively. “Cleaning is fun. And it’s important. Cleaning gives me a sense of purpose.” “Whatever,” I said. She’s just a computer, I thought; she’s programmed to think cleaning is fun. She didn’t even know what fun was. My baby brother thought Ida was fun, though. He spoke to Ida more than any of us, pestering her with question after question, and she would always answer, kindly and patiently, translating her vast, encyclopedic knowledge

and more, they would leave her be, which meant we got to eat sooner; Ida knew what she was doing, anyway. By the end of the first year, we stopped giving her requests or suggestions entirely when it came to meals. But still, every night, Ida would ask what we wanted to eat. Surprise us, my mom would say. Ida had access to every recipe ever recorded, via the Internet, so dinner was often actually surprising. She learned exactly what we liked and how we liked it. With Ida in the kitchen, we ate better than ever before. Change in subsequent years was far subtler, with the notable exception of Ida’s yearly updates. Every year around the same time, a technician would come to our house to service Ida. My dad would take the day off from work (something he rarely did) to shadow the technician, answering any questions and asking a few of his own. I was home the summer of Ida’s first upgrade, and again I listened from the top of the stairs as my dad and the technician tinkered away in the mainframe closet below. He asked if we’d experienced any issues with our system. Oh, no, my dad answered. Ida is just wonderful. We couldn’t be more satisfied. Ida’s yearly updates meant major upgrades to her software, and our family started to look forward to them. That first year, her culinary program was vastly improved: countless ethnic cuisines and exotic recipes were added to her database, and she became more comfortable cooking different kinds of food. The night of her update, she cooked us the most elaborate, authentic Indian meal I’d ever eaten, even better than a restaurant. Ida knew that Indian was my favorite. The technician I knew she had seen it coming—she had cameras also mounted smell sensors throughout through the whole house—but she pretended to be the kitchen so that Ida could tell whether a dish smelled good or bad, something surprised, for my brother’s sake. the first iteration of her programming had apparently overlooked. I had never noticed into language a three-year-old could understand. For it was missing. a year he stayed home with her while my parents’ jobs The next year, Ida’s vocal software was significantly whisked them away to the city, and when it finally came altered. Her inflection was much more varied, and every time for him to go to preschool, he threw a fit: now and then I noticed slight tonal idiosyncrasies that “I don’t wanna go!” he wailed, tears in his eyes, hands hadn’t been there before. She could even sing now, but and feet thrashing senselessly about. “I wanna stay home she was reserved about this new ability; she only sung with Ida!” in rooms where she thought no one was listening, but if I didn’t want to go to school either, I thought. But I you held your ear up to the wall, you could hear her well didn’t make a fuss about it. enough. Most importantly, though, Ida’s vocal upgrade Later, when my mom and dad got home, we would meant that she could raise her voice, a fact we only learned all sit down for dinner together. Occasionally, my parents one night when my five-year-old brother tripped and fell would supervise Ida as she cooked, and sometimes they all the way down the stairs. My dad had been in the living would even help her out, not that she needed it. But more room, watching the telescreen. My mom was in her office.

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I was upstairs in my room. None of us heard my brother fall, but we heard Ida. “Oh!” she shrieked. “Sir! Ma’am! Come quick!” We rushed to the bottom of the steps, where the pain had set in and my brother was now screaming. The rest of the night was an anticlimactic blur: Ida called an ambulance immediately, attempting to comfort my wailing brother as we waited. She stayed home with me while my parents accompanied my brother to the hospital. He was barely bruised, though, and he didn’t even need stitches. Only several days later did we finally reflect on Ida’s monumental yell. The year after that came Ida’s most substantial update yet. Her entire language program was completely overhauled, a process that took the technician nearly two days to complete. That night, we stayed in a hotel again. I was told it was because Ida had been temporarily deactivated. “In other words, the two of you don’t remember how to cook or clean,” I said to my parents. They glared back, unamused. The seventh grade was a surly year for me. When we returned home, Ida’s conversational skills were radically enhanced. She was much more talkative, and her tone was much more casual and comfortable. She talked business with my mom, politics with my dad, children’s programming with my brother, and whatever she could manage with me. When my parents’ friends came over, she wouldn’t just greet them and offer them something to drink, as she had previously; instead, she asked specific questions about their lives, with what seemed like genuine interest. And she remembered every detail of every conversation, ever. Eventually, she formed her own opinions on some of the most polarizing issues of the time—android rights, designer babies, nuclear fusion—though she was always careful not to assert her views too forcefully. Talking to Ida began to feel more natural, and I actually began to look forward to our discussions, infrequent as they were. She never talked back, she never judged me, and she never called me out on anything I said or did, though in retrospect, I definitely would have deserved it. At a time when I barely spoke to my own parents, Ida and I got along better than we ever had. We celebrated Ida’s fourth upgrade like a birthday. It was my brother’s idea: he and my mom bought a special cake with her name on it, and after dinner, we lit four candles for her and sang happy birthday. I knew she had seen it coming—she had cameras through the whole house—but she pretended to be surprised, for my brother’s

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sake. “Thank you!” she said, over and over. “Thank you all so much!” I thought the whole thing was ridiculous, since she couldn’t even enjoy the cake, but I liked cake, so I didn’t mind. From them on, Ida’s birthday was an annual event in our house; after a while, though, we stopped buying cake. Ida turned five, then six, then seven. People we knew gradually installed similar systems into their own homes, and soon, the “smart house” phenomenon was all over the news. My dad was pleased at first: we were ahead of our time, he said, and whenever the subject came up, he never failed to mention that we had been the first on our block with a computerized housekeeper. But as these newer models became more sophisticated, my dad grew more and more envious; he always had to have the latest and greatest technology, and because Ida was neither, his patience with her slowly began to wear thin. My mom said that Ida was perfectly up-to-date, but she knew as well as my dad that there were only so many updates left. Ida’s limitations, which truly existed only in comparison to more advanced systems, seemed more and more obvious. Ida must have sensed this, because she worked harder and harder every year. She coordinated the installment of the holographic projector in our living room, an exasperatingly laborious task that would have frustrated my dad to no end. She took care of our rambunctious robotic dog, my brother’s tenth birthday present that he outright neglected after a month. She oversaw the construction and subsequent upkeep of my mom’s greenhouse, a leviathan task further exacerbated by my mom’s demanding career. Ida didn’t just cook and clean anymore; she orchestrated our entire lives from her uniquely objective top-down perspective. Anything we asked, she did. As our schedules grew busier and busier, we became increasingly reliant on Ida, whose job became increasingly thankless in return. The next year, I graduated from high school. My parents just gave me a check, but Ida got me a pair of augmented reality glasses, engraved with my initials on the side. I had wanted them for months, and they were impossible to get, but somehow, Ida had known, and somehow, she had pulled it off. I went to college, studied robotic engineering, and I got to spend a semester on the moon, just like I’d always wanted. The year I turned twenty was also the last year that Ida was formally upgraded. Her warranty had long since expired, and her distributor no longer updated her model. I came home that summer, and one night, after everyone else had gone up to bed, I sat in the nook as Ida cleaned the kitchen. I was reading a recent survey of android service workers; apparently, eighty-

five percent answered that they felt undervalued by their employers. It occurred to me to ask Ida the same question. “Ida,” I said, “do you ever feel like we take you for granted?” “No,” she said, continuing to scrub the counter. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way.” “Really?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “Why?” “Just curious,” I replied. I put my hand on my chin and turned to look out the window. After a few seconds, Ida asked me: “Do you ever feel like you take me for granted?” I turned back. “No,” I said quickly. “No, I don’t.” I visited home less frequently after that summer. I graduated from college and landed a job with a large robotmanufacturing firm on the other side of the country. Work kept me busy, but every time I came home, I was struck by how much I had changed, and how old my parents were getting, and how dated the house had become. Ida was always the same, though, and in a way, that was comforting. She couldn’t come to my wedding, but she sent a card and paid for a set of linens from our registry. Though I seldom saw her, I looked forward to hearing her voice on the other end of the line when I phoned home. “It’s so nice to hear from you,” she always said. “How have you been?” Later that year, the recession hit. Many who had prospered and spent lavishly during the economic boom experienced the bitterness of frugality for the first time. I was spared, but my mother lost her job, the successful career she had worked most of her life—and mine—to build. She plunged into an existential crisis, transforming into a radical environmentalist practically overnight. With my brother at college and out of the house, she felt it was time to downsize. She suggested relocating to one of the self-sustainable townships in the countryside; they’d been cropping up like weeds in recent years, fueled by climate panic and an ever-increasing sense of social alienation. My dad, who had grown sullen and unsatisfied at the banality of his life in the suburbs, agreed. As usual, Ida made all the arrangements. When the time came, I took a week off from work and flew home to help pack. The house was a mess of bags and boxes, and all day Ida’s robotic hands glided about frantically trying to get things ready in time for the move. The four of us were eating dinner together—Indian, prepared just for me—when my brother said something that hadn’t occurred to me. “What’s going to happen to Ida?” he asked.

My parents looked up from their meal; they stared blankly at him, then at each other, then at me. I looked sheepishly down at my food. None of us said anything at first. My dad explained that they hadn’t talked about it. My mom told him not to worry about it. But my brother wouldn’t have it. He chided my parents for being so inconsiderate. He asked how they could have overlooked such an important decision. He just glared at me. Then, he got up and marched over to the telescreen, preparing to call the distributor. “There’s no need for that, actually,” said Ida, all of a sudden. “I’ve already informed our technician of the move. Everything has been taken care of.” My brother stood there for a moment before returning to the table, still frowning. My dad thanked Ida meekly, and we were quiet for the rest of the evening, as was Ida. Later that evening, I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep, and all through the night, I heard the familiar sound of Ida cleaning: washing the floors, doing the dishes, dusting. I stared up into the darkness of my ceiling, decorated with tiny stars, just as it had been when I was a kid. Then, I remembered something that Ida had said to me, a long time ago: “Cleaning gives me a sense of purpose.” Two days later, the crew of men in matching grey jumpsuits and goggles returned. There were only three or four of them, and this time, they left the circuitry alone, and the walls intact, and our outdated appliances untouched. The house was mostly empty at this point. The workers even brought a robot with them, but he was different than the one I’d known before: his face was shiny and angular, and his expression was cold and apathetic. He entered the mainframe closet, and I looked on from the top of the stairs, gripped by a disheartening sense of finality. It occurred to me now, for the first time in all these years, that the closet I had snuck into long ago was the room where Ida lived, and the enormous black box I had gazed at was Ida herself. Then, suddenly, I didn’t feel like watching anymore. After the incident two days ago, nobody had anything to say to Ida, not even goodbye. It was too awkward, I thought. And too sad. And too difficult. And too unfair. So we just did nothing. I looked out my bedroom window and watched as the robot unceremoniously carted the enormous black box, now lifeless and obsolete, down our front walk. Two workers placed it in the back of a large van, and twenty minutes later, the men in grey jumpsuits drove away. We sold the house and never went back. My parents moved to the country, and I flew back home, back to my wife and my job and my house, and life moved on.

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“the ones after Me,” Lilith wu Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

“Laughter in the streets of istanbul”

‘We sealed their ears with Then We woke them...’ 22

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Artist Profile: Anna Blue Class of 2016 International Relations and Earth Systems I think my addiction to all things digital probably started in the 8th grade with my first Nikon. My biggest passion is learning about culture and so photography has mainly been a way for me to capture cultural expression, but lately it’s evolved into a way for me to try to raise awareness about human rights injustices around the world, but especially in Latin America. I’ve been lucky enough to travel to a variety of countries as I’ve been learning about human rights violations, and these photographs were taken on my trip to Turkey to learn about the Armenian Genocide. I was in Cappodochia, a region east of Istanbul, and visiting the “Cave of the Seven Sleepers”, when I walked by women making Turkish ravioli. There were three different women and they didn’t speak a word of English, but with the photos, I wanted to be able to convey not only the care and time they put into each piece of ravioli, but also the kindness of the women.

sleep in the cave for years. Qu’ran, Sura 18:11-12, ‘The Cave’ Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

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“turkish ravioli” (triptych)

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Juggler of Montmartreâ&#x20AC;? 26

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falling â&#x20AC;&#x201D; KAYLI WOODS

The fog in my head was so thick, I felt like I was coming out of a coma. I saw a box in the corner, which I had packed up just six hours before. In it lay a stuffed animal that resembled a haphazardly-assembled zebra and unicorn hybrid that came from a carnival, attended when I was in junior high; a picture frame with a lost memory behind cracked glass; a ring box with a blue pair of chintzy earrings; and a copy of The Glass Castle, which I had never gotten around to reading. I could tell I was still wearing my jeans, which had a handprint-shaped syrup stain on the ass. The sleeve of my work shirt was stretched, my left cheek felt raw, my stomach felt achy and sore, and my eyes were itching and burning, and hard to open. As I was waking myself up, trying to piece together the disaster presenting itself to me in my room, I began recalling the more immediate events leading up to this.

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When I turned 16, I got a job at the same diner my mom had worked at for years. The tables often felt sticky, the sign reading “Last Chance Diner—Open Always” threatened to fall off every time the door got slammed shut by the wind, the floor was scuffed, the cups were often chipped, and the iced tea button on the soda fountain was temperamental. My mom was pleased because she could get shifts covered without needing to come up with a legitimate excuse. See, my mom has always been a little bit of a drinker. It used to be a weekend thing. Then it became a weekendplus-Thursdays-plus-special-occasions thing. Then it became oneglass-a-night-because-red-wine-is-good-for-you thing. When I was 11, I went with her to Safeway. We got some groceries, and were standing in line when she saw the “buy five bottles and get the sixth 20% off ” sign in the wine section. “Erin! Hey! Mom, that’s my friend Erin.” Jess and her mom were walking up to me. “Hi, I’m Lisa, Jess’s mom. Oh wow, looks like someone’s having a party!” She smiled, and I looked down at my shoes. “What? Oh no, it’s just on sale.” “Oh. Wow. I don’t know that I could drink all that wine before it went bad!” She smiled again. My mom smiled back, and I continued examining my laces, thinking how ridiculous it was for her to think wine could go bad. “See you at school Erin.” “I hope her mom takes good care of her…” I could hear Jess’s mom whispering to her daughter as they walked away. Jess wasn’t allowed at my house after that. My dad, who was now a construction worker, and my mom met working at a bar together about 20 years ago. They had this joke to see who could steal the most merchandise. As a result, their marriage created w h a t is assuredly the largest collection of Blue Jay Bar & Grill cutlery, dishes, and apparel the world has ever seen. There was a limited edition beer mug with a picture of a perverselydrawn blue jay giving a thumbs-up with its biologically-inaccurate opposable thumbs. I hated that mug, they loved it. Her mother was also an alcoholic, and she was terrifying. Eccentric and obsessive when she was sober, she wrote on index cards and left them everywhere to remind herself of things. She kept constant running lists in her mind of things she needed

to do, which she remembered decades later and recounted to me. “Back in the seventh grade, I used to go to English, then go to my locker and get out my math textbook, then after math class I would stop at my friend Judy’s locker—you remember Judy, she always smells of cats and AquaNet, woman hasn’t gotten a new hairdo since Vietnam-and then we would walk to history together. We didn’t have a textbook for that class…” And so on. Her strangeness was both amplified and warped by alcohol. The only story that mom willingly tells, which only comes out when she’s been drinking, happened when she was four or five years old. They were on a family camping trip. Grandma managed to polish off an entire bottle of vodka on her own, and was chasing my mom and uncle around the campground, screaming at them and asking why they didn’t want to sit with her. The kids locked themselves inside the family pick-up truck. My uncle sat, holding my mom’s hand and attempting to cover her eyes and ears at the same time. My grandma was swirling and sloshing her wine as she stumbled running. She broke the glass and it cut her hands deeply. The scars are still there, white and shriveled, mapped over her veins and the life line on her palm. Grandma ran around the truck, smearing the blood on the windows, begging her own children to sit with her around a campfire. The guys called me up to meet them at the bar, and since Erin was at work, I agreed. “Dude, how do you handle it?” “I have no idea, man. It’s a competition every day to see which of us can resist threatening to leave first.” They chuckled, thinking I was joking. “Seriously though dude, you have to recognize that she needs help. Every time we see her, she’s completely shit faced. It’s not normal. You have to know that.” Gary was always willing to call me on my shit, even when I didn’t want to hear it. “I know. I just…she’s been a waitress for 20 years. She can’t support herself. I can’t leave her. Plus it would devastate Erin. She should be in a family where the parents are married.” “Man, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but that girl’s got it together. She’s the one raising the two of you. She’s got a job and a good head on her shoulders. And I guarantee she’d rather see you happy than see both of you miserable.” “Well bro, maybe I’ll be moving in with you soon. I’ll bring my nightie…we can put your wife in the spare bedroom right?” Gary shoved me off my stool, and we moved on to discussing sports and trying to convince Cal to go talk to the bartender and get her number. But they knew. I couldn’t leave her. I just wanted her to be happy, because she was my wife, and I couldn’t just ignore that

“As my mom’s drinking problems got worse, so did everything else.”

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something in her, at some point, had made me fall for her. I couldn’t remember what it was now…but I wanted to believe it was still in her. As my mom’s drinking problems got worse, so did everything else. She cleaned obsessively. Everything in the house had to be perfect, making it feel more like a museum than a home. Anything she could control outside of her own thoughts and emotions became an obsession. A normal shopping list would contain three to four alcoholic beverages, because we had a wine cooler, and two alcohol shelves in our pantry in constant need of replenishment. And yet we let her continue. My dad would take care of her, move her upstairs to their bed after she passed out on the couch. I made dinner, went to pick her up when she was too drunk to drive, got Advil out for her in the mornings and covered shifts for her when she was too hung over to face the fluorescent lights of the diner. I hated watching her drink herself into a stupor nightly, watching her go through the stages as the alcohol took its toll, watching the poison rage through her veins. She started by slurring, and then she would gradually start to look through you, like a window, rather than at you. Her hair, usually down, would go into a ponytail that gradually went higher and higher on her head. If I got home from a late shift and it was on the top of her head like Patty Simcox, I knew I should go straight upstairs instead of attempt any sort of conversation. When she started taking earlier shifts at the diner about a week ago, and we were waking up at the same time, I noticed the shaking. She came down stairs, pulling her hair back into a clip, and her hands would shake. I thought maybe it was because she had just woken up, or from waiting tables for 20 years. But then she poured her coffee, clumsily, into a ceramic mug. She left it half empty, and then, at seven in the morning, she nonchalantly poured Bailey’s into the mug. She sipped it frantically, burning her tongue, and after two more sips, dumped the rest down the sink. She avoided eye contact, picking up her purse and walking out without saying goodbye. Her morning wake-up reminded me of a carnival we went to when I was in junior high. A man, who resembled the Buddha

mixed with Cher, claimed to be a genie and offered to grant me three wishes. I brushed him off, laughing with my dad as he gave me a free stuffed animal, and we continued toward a hot-dog stand. But I knew what I wanted. After watching her frantically wait for the toxins in the coffee to course through her veins, like an accident victim being hit with Morphine, I rapidly lost my patience with her over the next week. Recognizing her as an addict made me recognize that the things I had been through were simply to enable an addiction, and that made it feel so much worse. Two days before I woke up like Tommy Lee after a night out, my mom had agreed to cover my shift at the diner so I could study for a big test I had the next day. But she went out to lunch with my grandma that day. When she got home, she poured herself a glass of wine, “just to take the edge off.” “You know how she gets to me. Always blaming someone else for her problems, always keeping lists of things that don’t even need remembering. And God forbid you don’t listen to her suggestions, I told her neither of us had read The Glass Castle and you’d swear I told her we became Wiccans.” “Yeah I know. Don’t forget you’re covering my shift…I really need to study.” “Oh I won’t sweetie, don’t worry. I’ll be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!” She smiled at me. As I sat at the kitchen table, reading through my notes, she kept finding excuses. “Oh, did I tell you she yelled at the waiter? Simply because he put lemon in her water glass. What a control freak.” Pour. “Did your dad remember to water this plant? It looks like it’s dying.” Pour. “This floor is filthy; did you use the mop like I asked you to?” Pour. With half an hour before my shift, her ponytail firmly at the 11:00 position on her head, I knew that she wouldn’t be making it for my shift. “Mom, are you covering my shift?” Focusing on each syllable and trying to avoid slurring, she said, “Oh honey, I’m exhausted. Can’t you just take it? I’m sure you’ll do fine on your test, you always do.” Subtle flattery. Nice touch. When I got to the diner, a group of 6 years olds had won their baseball game and were running rampant through the diner. One of the little kids, having attempted to amuse his friends by drawing on the table with syrup, ran by me and smacked my ass. Then, a middle-aged trucker put his gum in my hand, saying “either take it now or scrape it off the table later, little lady.” A quite obese woman ordered a Cobb salad without lettuce, extra dressing. I was supposed to be off at ten, but a group of teenage girls refused to leave, and then proceeded to pay a $35 tab in coins, with no tip. I ended up being stuck there until past 11.

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When I got home, there was a note on the counter. When you get home from work, can you unload the dishwasher? Good luck on your test! Love, Dad. After school the next day, I felt terrible about the test, putting me in about the worst mood I could be in. My mom was standing in the kitchen, nursing a glass of what I would imagine was orange juice with a twist, holding the perspiring bottom to her temple. She flinched as I dropped my textbook on the counter. “Didn’t your dad ask you to unload the dishwasher last night when you got home from work?” I didn’t say anything at first. She looked up at me, waiting for a response. “Erin, answer me when I talk to you. Why didn’t you unload the dishwasher?” “Sorry, I didn’t get home until after 11, some girls—” “Don’t make excuses. I had to unload it this morning with a raging headache, you don’t see me making excuses.” “Why do you think that is, Mom? Could it possibly be the bottle of wine you downed before passing out and backing out on covering my shift for me?” It came out before I could stop it, the words tumbling out like ice from a pitcher. My voice bounced around the kitchen while her eyes darted to the wine glass in the sink, with its blood red rim around the top, then down at her half-empty tumbler. She narrowed her eyes, on the defensive. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. I’m sorry if occasionally I like to have a glass of wine or two, but your attitude towards me has just been unacceptable lately. My decisions are my business, and you are still my daughter.” She drew me in, thinking the counterattack would work and I would back down. But I couldn’t. “I don’t know what makes you think that you’ve got this addiction under control, but you don’t. It spirals further and further out of your reach every day, and you become more and more ignorant of it.” My dad walked in at this point, and she turned on him. “Addiction? Ryan, do you hear this?” He looked bewildered, like someone thrown into an episode of Maury without having heard the backstory. “So what if I get tipsy every once in a while? It’s not hurting anybody. It’s my business when and how much I drink.” She crossed her arms in fortitude, like a toddler refusing to go to bed. “Tipsy? Every once in a while?! Mom, that’s like saying Steven Tyler did ‘some drugs on occasion.’ You’re completely refusing to 30

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take responsibility for your problems, and it’s hurting me.” “Erin, maybe you should go upstairs, let me talk to your mother.” My dad looked like the terrified zoo handler trying to prevent two lions from tearing each other apart. “No, no, Ryan, don’t send her upstairs. Let her talk. I’d love to hear what she’s got to say about what a terrible mother I am, and how I’ve let her down. Do you feel this way too? Do you think I have a problem? Is this something you guys talk about behind my back? I am not my mother!” She was flailing her arms and pointing at the two of us. When she looked at the glass in her hands, and the ice clinking inside it, she threw it into the sink. My dad looked at me and motioned toward the door with his head, like a coach telling a player to steal third base. I sighed, conceding, knowing the alcohol would make it impossible to talk to her anyways. “I can’t do this with you right now, I have responsibilities. I’ll talk to you later.” I started to walk out the door to go change for work. “No you won’t. Don’t come back tonight. I don’t want to see you.” I put on the sticky jeans from my shift the night before and work shirt with our creepy diner name emblazoned across the front. I forgot to get a woman her salad, and dropped a tray of water glasses that required extensive mopping. My manager eventually set me to rolling silverware in a corner booth, and I recalled one of my best memories of my mom. When I was four, she took me to get my ears pierced. I ran around with my head leaning on my own shoulder, refusing to let them pierce the second ear. My mom took me by the hand and squatted in front of me. “I know it hurts sweetie. But remember when you fell outside on your bike? And you had that scrape? All daddy had to do was kiss it and it felt all better. Do you want me to kiss your ear all better?” After they pierced the other ear, she told me I had been such a good girl, that I got to pick out any pair of earrings in the store. I immediately ran to the glass case, smushed my nose against it, and picked out the most hideous pair I could find. They looked like a reject from Elton John’s jewelry box, with a blue square rhinestone the size of a stamp surrounded by little white rhinestones. “These are going to look so pretty on you, baby.” After work, I headed home, looking forward to collapsing on my bed. When I got inside, my mom was sitting at the kitchen counter, fingers on her temples. There was no drink next to her, but an empty wine bottle sat on the counter.

“I thought I told you not to come home.” I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there, mouth gaping, realizing my own mother was asking me to leave her house. I had never felt like I needed to beg for her love before. And I remembered. All the late nights listening to her drunkenly scream at my dad, the early mornings waking up and having to get things ready for her because she couldn’t do them herself, the friends I lost because their parents recognized the alcoholism in her before any of us did, the pain I had to feel watching my dad trying to be a husband and father while still being a person. It was too much. So I snapped. “Fine. I’ll pack up my stuff. Let’s have a going away celebration, shall we? I’ll catch up to you.” I yanked the tequila out of the freezer, poured myself three partially-full shot glasses, and swallowed them all, slamming the glass on the counter after each one. My mom jumped at the sound of the glass on the granite, and flinched when the last one chipped a little under the force. My eyes were watery and my throat was burning, but I held her gaze, waiting to see what she did. “Nobody said you were allowed to start drinking, Erin, you’re only 17.” “Well if I’m going to be living on my own, I can make my own decisions.” “Don’t be ridiculous.” I filled two of the glasses up again, motioned to her as if to say, “cheers”, and downed them all again. I was starting to get dizzy, and my legs were shaky. I could feel my cheeks flushing. My dad walked in and surveyed the room, like a detective at a crime scene, taking in all the elements.

The glasses, one with a recent chip in the bottom. A bottle of tequila that was emptier than expected. Countless trinkets up on shelves. A picture of me and my mom from a couple years back at my homecoming dance. I was posing for pictures with my date, and my dad had snapped a picture of me and my mom. I was smiling in front of the fireplace, attempting to pin a boutonniere, and she was off to the side on the couch, looking at me and smiling, glass sitting beside her on the end table. My dad had framed it because of the way my date looked so terrified that I was going to stab him—he said it always made him laugh that even in 9th grade boys were scared of me. But I knew he framed it for her smile, and the way she looked when the glass wasn’t an extension of her arm. I sat up, picked up the picture, and threw it into the sink. She stopped sobbing with a jump and just watched me, in awe. “I wish I knew how to help you mom. I really do.” In a fog, I determined that I should go pack, even though somewhere in me I knew I wasn’t leaving. I picked up the picture frame out of the sink and stumbled upstairs, leaving her in the kitchen, with tears streaming down her face and my dad leaning against the oven, unsure of what to do. I managed to throw a few things into a box before the waves of nausea hit. And then I blacked out.

“I knew he framed it for her smile.”

The tension in the room was thick, to say the least. I smelled the tequila, sugary because of its cheapness, and the wine that was sitting in the bottom of her glass. I could hear the rain outside and the dog barking next door. I saw the bottle, thinking Dana had had a bad day at work, but the shot glasses were on the wrong side of the counter. I saw Erin’s flushed face, the sweat near her hairline, her hair all messy and her eyes glazed over. I saw how much, in that moment, she looked just like her mother—terrified, exhausted, and drunk. “Erin. What is wrong with you?” Dana started to take away the bottle, but Erin grabbed it quicker, and slammed a 20 on the table. “Here, I’ll reimburse you. Want a shot, mom? I know drinking alone must get boooooring.” Erin was slurring and smiling at her. Dana reached across the counter and slapped her. I crossed the kitchen and grabbed Erin’s sleeve before she could launch at her mom, stretching her work shirt. I could see through my alcoholic haze that she was crying, sitting at the counter, watching me throw her addiction back in her face. I was sweating, leaning with my elbows on the cold granite. It felt so good that I put my cheek to it, seeing everything sideways.

This morning I wandered into the bathroom and looked at the ghost staring back at me in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and a little swollen, and the mascara and lack of sleep had given me impressive dark circles. My cheek ha d remnants of a red handprint on it. My hair was tangled into a wad on the left side of my head, from the tears and sweat on my pillow. I remembered the porcelain of the toilet, and the burn of my throat. I remembered a glass of water, and alternating between drinking it and simply holding it against my forehead. I remembered the whispering, “I’m so sorry.” I relished the hot water in the shower, watching the doors and mirrors fog up. Downstairs, my mom was running the blender, which contained a fruit smoothie. And then I remembered the hands holding my hair back, handing me the water glass. Big, calloused, like those of a construction worker. She poured the smoothie into the Blue Jay mug, and then filled the rest with rum. The cartoon bird sat there, staring at me, mocking me, feathered thumbs up. Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;sirene,â&#x20AC;? Lilith wu

Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

Drive-In theater

—daVid LoPeZ

Steel still runs a nation, But in the low resolution of the early evening Traffic lights play wildly like in a cinema— A double matinee A theater of red and orange taillights— Lascivious curtains of the longest, warmest Wavelengths she can understand.

But the audience is restless, and With nothing but the faintest white ribs of contrail Forming the rafters, rows of traffic now depart, Through open airy doors where the corners curl upward— Burnt by the setting sun.

Entire rows of seats are left empty, Plunging the theater into a velvet Penumbra where intensity drips into shadow. Discarded programs, maps, directions Whisper words along roads of black ink. Like ill-folded origami she Casts them aside, spent and creased.

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“Kendra,” Lilith wu Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

“Felice,” Lilith wu 38

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“Kelley,” Lilith wu

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;ritual,â&#x20AC;? Lauren youngsmith Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

DEAR CALIFORNIA It’s spring again, and the bed stays unmade more often; decay is seeded wildly with the mud’s new growth. This season always seems appropriate for a birthday: here is another notch on my raw body, which speaks to me of how I need better running shoes, nothing divine. Running is just speeding up the process of becoming California, which is mostly about light, how it is not gentle about getting in everywhere. Even in the dark, California is moving me, with vegetarian lovers who are turning into me, then leaving without getting any older. Dear California, you are the one who is making me older; even though I’ve never believed in you. California, I still don’t believe in you! Or your internet start-ups, or the BART schedule or that you have an official tartan plaid, what the fuck, California. You have smoothed me down, polished and gentle, relentless and merciful, the way someone loses an accent after so many years away from home. Dear California, when I was younger I believed that at eighteen you could leave home and start over, the way I believed that if you kept running, you would start to like it. But neither of those is true. Dear state, the older I am getting is just the slow jog of displaced light, and maybe some muscles from praying to you.

— KYLE LEE-CROSSETT

Leland Quarterly Winter 2013

(NOT MY) FIRST PERSIMMON The first time I ate a persimmon, fist-sized and ripe enough to crush with a baby’s hand, I was watching a show about zombies who bit and chewed their way through Georgia loves, and the humans just as bad, only more emotional about it. Like I stop eating the persimmon halfway through, feel sick with pulp, close the screen, hide the bowl underneath my desk. Once I was listening to tapes from a hurricane rescue where the people on the other end of the line got saved and suddenly there are tears in my pancakes. I got rid of those pancakes too. Can’t eat shit while watching other people survive. When I try to tell you about these basic mechanical human-cannibal failures can’t eat can’t move sometimes can’t eat myself I get the smooth blank fruit face that I get when I talk about love— like I’m not really talking to you, so please don’t look at me. Just going to eat my own story right back up and go to bed sick. Like instead let me tell you about the second time I ate a ripe persimmon. I took it from the freezer, hardened at the perfect point of ripeness and it’s so hard that I spend half and hour in the dining room just tapping at it with a spoon. Anyone who walked in could see me eating my heart, no problem. — KYLE LEE-CROSSETT

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on the unsettled feeling, after the sculpture garden

—After ‘Indai Man,’ Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden

When did I first think of you? I didn’t, Teddy, you thought yourself straight into me—your pancake-thin leg bones flipped over the rim of my head. Hello Teddy, hello Teddy’s bird. I heard your model was an Indai man, but they neglected to say any more than that, Mr. Bird-For-A-Hat, my Teddy. Bare as a slug, all the vultures in San Francisco picked you apart one morning in 2004 without warning but leaving the bare bones to stand like a building without its walls. Now, you pose with the looseness owned by all the lonely sentries of the world—it bursts from your back like the fan of a fin that you stole from some elegant reptile. I’m looking at you with your lotus pelvis exposed, and the rows of your permanent grin: little soldiers to cross from stone cheek to cheek (all perfectly, sensibly Orwellian teeth) as well as your Machiavellian bird. (I knew a man like you once, who would laugh at anything you said to him, all the jokes and tragedies and anecdotes brewed down to a chortling soup.) Teddy, my Teddy, didn’t it hurt when they slurped up all your entrails? How can you bear the slicing talons that scrabble for balance upon your head? Don’t you get cold? Or weren’t you told that you were made in the human image?

— MICHELLE JIA

“Kiev,” Brian Tich 46

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CONTRIBUTORS

maricarmen barrios is a senior from Juriquilla, mexico anna bLUe is a freshman from Potomac, mD cHaZ cUreT is a sophomore from mililani, Hi saraH DiraDo is a senior from santa rosa, ca micHeLLe Jia is a freshman from markham, canada KYLe Lee-crosseTT is a senior from London, UK DaViD LoPeZ is a senior from beaverton, or DYLan sweeTwooD is a sophomore from raleigh, nc KaYLi wooDs is a sophomore from seattle, wa LiLiTH wU is a senior from mesa, aZ LaUren YoUnGsmiTH is a senior from Denver, co

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Leland Quarterly Winter 2013