Leland Quarterly, Vol. 4 Issue 3, Spring 2010 by Leland Quarterly

SPRING 2010

ERIC

KARPAS TAMARIND

KING KATIE

PYNE MELISSA

RUNSTEN SETH

WINGER

leland QUARTERLY 1

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

leland

QUARTERLY VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3

Editorial Board, Spring 2010 Editors-in-Chief Miles Osgood, Lindsay Sellers Senior Editors Jaslyn Law, Max McClure, Graham Todd, Nathalie Trepagnier Associate Editors Christie Brydon, Stephanie Caro, Grace DeVoll, Ellie Green, Lihe Han, Kara Runsten, Katie Wu Financial Editor Nathalie Trepagnier Art, Design, and Layout Editor Jin Yu Associate Design and Layout Editor Katie Wu Web Manager Jin Yu

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 Spring 2010

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL STATEMENT

ARTIST PROFILE Tamarind King

Katie Pyne

Tied Up Lauren Youngsmith

Allium Sativum Jin Yu

Before Jin Yu

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

The Rattlesnake Eric Karpas

Gavin Jones

NONFICTION

DRAWING

So What, Come and Get Me... Joy Henry

INTERVIEW

CRITICAL ESSAY Memory, Identity... Jackie Basu

FICTION

The Village Seth Winger

PHOTOGRAPHY Jeepney Natalie Uy

Cover

Gubbio, Italy Will Geier

Ocean City, New Jersey Fallon Segarra

Untitled Kate Erickson

Loneliness Iris Ouyang

Pig from Full Circle Farm Mila Re

Raven Iris Ouyang

Benâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Room Tiffany Quach

Married Life Caroline Chen

Big Chief... Jin Zhu

Monday Night Dinner Melissa Runsten

Staircase Tiffany Quach

Beraka... Daniel Gratch

Untitled Will Geier

The Weight of Angels Leigh Lucas

The Long Road Home Natalie Uy

The Song of a Carnival Killing Leigh Lucas

POETRY

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Married Life We have run out of bookshelves. Books pile at the end of our bed, in your dresser drawer. The dinner table belongs to Hemingway; we eat on the floor, our books held open by the rims of our plates. Yesterday, I realized that if we washed our plates by hand we might even use the dishwasher to store Thoreau and Twain and so we wash up side by side, stare out the kitchen window, thinking about all the books that we will buy tomorrow.

– CAROLINE CHEN

“Gubbio, Italy” Will Geier

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so what, GET ME, COME AND

“Ocean City, NewQuarterly Jersey” Spring 2010 8 Leland Fallon Segarra

I KNOW YOU JOY HENRY “We’ve been vacationing at this beach since Grace was a tiny one, staying at this hotel,” Dad says, to my boyfriend John. He’s lying. He’s the type who talks things up to strangers, likes to act all grandiose with his one tooth wagging out in front, belying him. We’ve come to this beach every summer since I can remember, but we’ve only stayed in this hotel a few summers, the summers before I left for college. Dad sits in a beach chair under an umbrella, chain smoking, and John and I on a blanket a few feet away. “Hopefully this time he won’t have an angry streak or be black,” Dad says, gesturing at the man who’s carrying my sister on his shoulders, throwing her into the waves. He laughs, sputtering a bit on his beer. I pick up handfuls of sand, let it sift back out between my fingers, forming little molehills. I don’t, have never had, the energy to contest him. I’m a marvel of apathy, a superhero for the modern age. We’re all at the beach because my sister Angie is getting married again in two days. Her last marriage ended with her on our parents’ couch saying, “I’m starting a new fashion trend. Whaddya think?” her eyes droopy behind two Xanax and five beers. In a fit of domestic fervor, bleach had been thrown on everything she owned. She’s got the resilience that only slightly stupid people have, but me, I’ve got none of it. Instead of throwing punches, I stare sort of dumbly into the sun, asking when, when? When Angie speaks about this wedding, she says half-candidly, “Third time’s a charm.” Resilience. Me, I look away when she says these things. I stare at the corner of the room where the wall meets the floor. My brother Jay sits on the sand next to us, and he puts more sunscreen on his daughter Sofie. “If she gets sunburned, her mom will never let me hear the end of it,” he says. “When will the arrangements be finalized?” Grandma asks, as she turns a page. She’s half-reclined reading People magazine, and doesn’t bother to look up. Jay says he doesn’t know. He’s got his face in his hands, he’s crying again. It’s pathetic and we’re all mourning it and feeling sour about it except Grandma, who is an

idiot and doesn’t know what she’s done. “Hey Sof,” I say, “I’m kind of hungry,” and I pretend to gnaw on her little chicken wing of an arm. She’s squealing at me, but she’s also in love with me. She’s beautiful and perfect, and the only one of us who appreciates absurdity on a religious level. “Will you watch Sofie?” Jay asks me, and I say, “Of course I will, of course.” He goes to take a ride on Dad’s motorcycle so we don’t have to look at him and feel our insides seizing. I imagine he rides with the wind in his face and thinks about how things were before he had to move back home, to live with Dad, all loud, stomping through the house on his bad leg, forgetting his naked pictures of Mom on the bathroom counter for everyone to stumble upon. More likely he thinks about sweet nothing. Sofie yells at me, “Auntie Grace, Auntie Grace, I’m a doggy! yip yip yip!” I keep my eye on her as she runs out towards my other brother Tim, who’s fishing knee deep in the surf. She’s obsessed with his black lab. I can see Tim mouthing the familiar, “Pet him nice, Sof, you’ve got to be nice.” She barely touches the dog, like she’s patting a ball of cotton candy. Tim’s a year older than me, looks like me, but with a sharper jaw. He teases Sofie, lifts her up and pretends to make her ride the dog like a horse. All four of us haven’t been at the beach together in years. I always come, because I’m the youngest and have no excuses. Tim moved out of our house in the ninth grade to drink and live in a fishing town on a cape jutting out into the gulf. He raises clams for a living and rarely comes inland. Jay and Angie had been married, were busy. When we get together like this, a festive wonderment hangs in the air between us. We stand around, smiling at each other dazedly, amazed, as if we just crawled out of a mangled car on the side of the freeway. We’re happy that we’ve survived. I’m watching Sofie make pratfalls into the tiny waves lapping way up the shore when Dad turns to me and says, “You’ve got quite a little belly on you now, don’t you?” He’s laughing again. It erupts into a hacking cigarette cough, and for a brief moment I imagine

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

him a desiccated old man, alone. He’s drying up, shriveling, dryer done extensive damage to the room. There is dog shit and broken and dryer. Finally, without anyone to life-suck he’s turned into a glass everywhere, and you will be held responsible as the room is in handful of sand there on the seat of his wheelchair. Because people your name,” and then there is some more repetition of some more expect you to respond when they talk to you, I say “Ha!” loudly bad things. I can’t blame the fat man, because this is his job, being and dryly. a messenger from disaster and all. But I am growing weary. John’s got his mouth near my ear, he whispers “You’re a beautiful Dad’s arm shakes on his cane, and I think about his heart disease person,” which brings an interesting mix of that requires blood pressure medication and a Zoloft, daily. solace and humiliation. I steel myself “Tim,” he says quietly to the carpet, though Tim is and focus my eyes over Grandma’s not here. “Tim,” he says again, louder. The prodigal “I must have been shoulder at her magazine of son, he was always the favorite. He looks just like a water creature in a past beautiful people doing mundane Dad did in all those pictures from Vietnam, things. I’m good at drumming when dad’s face was small and square and clean life,” she says, “because of how up absurdity for consolation. shaven. Dad’s arm won’t stop quaking on his much I love the ocean.” Stars, they’re just like us! They cane. It’s slipping off. “Tim! Tim!” he screams. take shits! I squint my eyes and It’s too heart-scraping, hearing light a cigarette. “Nice outfit Grace,” Dad says. “Must be the her talk about this with her Mom comes up from the Polish in you.” He’s snickering, rasping at me from eyes wide and earnest. ocean. “Hey honey,” Dad says, giving the hospital bed, and I’m not listening to him. I’m her a kiss on the lips. Mom’s stomach is much too saturated to absorb anything more. I stare flat from doing aerobics videos in our living at the painting above his bed, a painting that yells NICE at room, and her hair is yellow, a stripe of grey roots crowning her. me in big block letters. No, this is not nice, I repeat over and over Dad helps her color it, sitting at the dining room table, his fingers in my head. I realize there’s a beach scene in the painting. It’s fumbling in plastic gloves. “How’re the waves?” he asks. talking about Nice, France, and the painting above the other bed “Oh they’re wonderful,” she says. “Amazing.” Dad makes a says MALIBU and presents a similar ugly pastel wave hitting an point of coming here every year, but hardly ever goes in the ocean. ugly pastel shore. He’s got this bad leg, but he seems to enjoy himself when he hears Dad motions to Mom, “Get me some water, Kris.” Mom sits Mom using this voice. She gets quiet and emphatic. “Ahh-mazing,” beside me reading a book with a poorly Photoshopped cover titled she says. Living with Dad and scrubbing shitters for a living must Lives Between Lives, by Rick Chorman, PhD. be a magical potion for self-actualizing, because Mom is more “Here, drink this,” she says, handing him a can of Ensure, well-adjusted than anyone I know. mother’s milk for the ancient and afflicted. She turns to John and me and tells us about the book she’s “I don’t want that shit,” he says. Mom’s eyes are open, but they’re reading. It’s about reincarnation and hypnotic regression. “I must glassy and unaffected, and her brain is somewhere else. have been a water creature in a past life,” she says, “because of how “Can I smoke in here?” he continues. “Where’s the ashtray?” much I love the ocean.” It’s too heart-scraping, hearing her talk I look out the window. We’re up high, and I see the line of the about this with her eyes wide and earnest. I know I should be ocean a few blocks away, where it all ends. The sky is dark now, happy that she is happy. But I don’t want her to have to use these plum-colored with afternoon rain. stories to console herself, I don’t want her to have to clean up other “You’re going to kill yourself,” I say limply to the parking lot people’s messes. I want a big fat wad of money between her and the below. Because I’ve inherited Dad’s weariness, I can’t hold it against constant abrasion of life. him. Smoking is a habit for people who have a realistic idea of the “I need to go cool off,” I say. I jump into the waves like someone slim cushion between them and disaster. Dad and I are linked arm who’s been to the beach many times and knows the secret. If you in arm, we see it there, waiting in the wings for us, and together we dive straight through you’ll come out on the other side, smooth say, so what, come and get me, I know you. and placid. I wonder where Tim is. No one could reach him. Maybe he’s sitting on the beach with his dog, a beer in his hand. Maybe he’s When we pack up our things and come up from the beach, the getting another tattoo. Dad and Tim love and infuriate each other hotel manager is waiting outside Dad’s room. He’s fat and bald, so much because they’re the same. They both believe their actions with a surly countenance. I sense the disaster welling up behind have no consequences for anyone else. us when I see him, like the chokingly sweet smell of ozone that “Our family,” I want to say to Dad and Tim, “is fragile like an rolls in before a hurricane. I’ve always been a bad psychic, sensing old woman’s bones. There are no reinforcements of luck or money. everything but telling my family nothing, and escaping when I got Any stupid thing you do breaks all of us.” the chance. But I don’t say that. I pick up the can of Ensure and slowly pour “I was getting complaints about one of your rooms,” the fat man it out into the trash can, while looking at Dad. says. Mentally I try to will him to admit he’s a messenger from “Now you don’t have to drink it,” I say. He doesn’t speak. When disaster, to come clean, but he keeps talking. “Sir, your son has he’s quiet and still, Dad’s tooth and bald head make him look like

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

“Tied Up” Lauren Youngsmith

an infant, tired and helpless, momentarily genuine. He reaches for the remote, smashes the quiet. “Video Vigilante!” the TV screams. “Citizen uses personal camera to catch prostitutes in action!” I put my forehead against the window, all thoughts shrinking away in the noise. John stands beside me, rubbing my arm. He’s the only one around making sure blood is still flowing to my extremities. His eyes are an opaque brown, the light reflecting off them in big white squares. I wanted to somehow tell Dad that John holds me up by the arms when I start folding into myself, but all Dad could say about him is “He’s vegan? He doesn’t drink milk?” I’m listless and John looks down at me and asks, “How can I help?” I look up at his glass spheres, his opaque reflectors. “I’m fine,” I say. “Did you know that you have marble eyes?” Outside, the plum-colored clouds keep rolling in, and it’s just an afternoon thunderstorm. I wish it were the tails of a hurricane whipping us. In Florida there’s weather, lots of it, and it makes you think about the body. It reminds you that you are corporeal and small. We were all here as kids once, at the beginning of a hurricane. The sky was bruised, and the waves swelled, three times their usual

size. Dad let us stay on the beach until the last possible moments, when the lightning started zipping down. Angie and Jay took their surfboards out, yelled excitedly over the rough water. Tim and I swam further than we should’ve, let the waves pull us under, throw us against the sand. It felt apocalyptic, but in an electrifying, almost funny way. Tomorrow was going to be different, but we were going to survive it. When we left the beach, the water kissed the grass at the top of the dunes, threatened to spill over its designated bounds. The hurricane crashed down while we slept. The next morning we hurried out to see the aftermath, the new world. We found wildness flung all over the sand; trash, pieces of people’s yards, driftwood, palm seeds from Africa. Tim and I decided to build a sandcastle, an indestructible one. We filled the middle with storm loot, glass bottles and two-by-fours, plastic bits. We packed sand on the outside and picked sea oats to put on top, wheaty little flags blowing in the wind. When we finished, I made triumphant declarations to everyone. “If anyone kicks our sandcastle, they’ll kill themselves. They’ll break their foot!” “This will always be here,” said Tim.

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

“Loneliness” Iris Ouyang

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“Raven” Iris Ouyang

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An Interview with

Gavin Jones Jones, a Professor of English, is the author of Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in Gilded Age America (University of California Press, 1999) and American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840-1945 (Princeton University Press, 2007). He has published articles on George W. Cable, Theodore Dreiser, W.E.B. DuBois, Sylvester Judd, Paule Marshall, Mark Twain, and Herman Melville, in journals such as American Literary History, New England Quarterly, and African American Review. His current project is titled Forms of Failure: American Literature and the Emotional Life of Class.

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

You recently wrote the introduction to the latest edition of Sylvester Judd’s Margaret. What drew you to this project?

novel,” and it’s a breathtaking, encyclopedic introduction to the culture of the early nineteenth century. It’s all in there!

In your introduction, you remark “Latest edition” implies there’s been some that the novel is revolutionary in amount of attention to this American novel, depicting a heroine who grows “in when there really hasn’t been. It’s a book social rather than domestic power.” that’s fallen over the cliff of literary history. Would you consider this a feminist The novel is by a neglected New England text?

writer called Sylvester Judd (1813—1853). Set in the turbulent years following the I’d say it’s somewhere between a feminist American Revolution, it’s the story of a and a religious text. It’s important to realize young woman’s attempt to overcome the the restricted space of female protagonists poverty and vice of her surroundings in the literature of to establish the “American writers, to me, this period. The only utopian ideals of the power available to nation in her New all seemed to be so very women characters England village. I was in a domestic unsure of themselves and became aware of space. The ideal for what they were doing.” the book when I women, according was researching to the ideology of American literature the time, was to be the Angel in the Home. as a post-doc at Harvard. I became Margaret takes her feminine and spiritual interested in the question of why there power out into the world, designing a was such a frenzy of utopian activity in society based on her transcendent selfhood. the United States in the 1840s. A bunch Scholars tend to read the Bildungsroman of utopian communes sprang up all over (the “coming-of-age” novel) as a kind of the country. Reading into the history of fiction in which the protagonist comes to the period, I became aware of this novel accept the conventions of society. But in called Margaret—a novel all about the Margaret it’s the reverse: society changes establishment of a utopian community, to reflect the demands of self. It’s an but also much more than that. It’s the interesting twist. closest thing we have to a “Transcendental

How do you think the creation of a female protagonist such as this one is complicated by the fact that the novelist was male? Perhaps the radical quality of the work emerges because the novelist was male. He was able to see beyond many of the ideologies of his culture. Hence he was able to take a story involving a female character and interweave it with themes far beyond the scope of gender—themes of ecology, social justice, and political history, to mention just a few.

Why have you chosen to concentrate much of your scholarship on American literature—what fascinates you about it? This is a question I’ve just been addressing in an undergraduate seminar on Antebellum American literature and culture. The students seemed much more familiar with the British literary tradition, and I think they were surprised by the style and structure of many of the American texts we read—works such as Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Herman Melville’s MobyDick. I became interested in American literature when a graduate student at Princeton. I’d just finished a degree in English literature, so when I started reading these nineteenth-century American texts I found them... well... weird. Weird and wonderful and eccentric and difficult. American literature does not quite come out of the same tradition as British literature. It emerges from the sermon and from the political pamphlet, and hence tends to be at once quite political and euphoric. Think of

Leaves of Grass. American writers, to me, all merging with questions of race and ethnic seemed to be so very unsure of themselves difference. It’s always problematic to argue and what they were for uniqueness, “Class is interesting because, at though I do doing. Hence these works, in one level, it seems not to be an think that the the nineteenth merging of American subject at all. century at least, class-based can seem a bit allracial The nation was meant to be an and over-the-place. themes in antidote to all that rigid class Think of MobyAmerican Dick. What is it, an structure associated with Europe. literature is adventure story or a quite peculiar. Of course it wasn’t...” philosophical tract, Think again of or an encyclopedia Moby-Dick. It’s of whaling? It’s all of those things. A as much about the “horizontal” difference former colleague once said to me: “You can between cultures as it is about the “vertical” find everything Dickens could do in the hierarchies of social power. works of Melville, but the same is not true in reverse.” This isn’t quite true. Melville What is your favorite novel and was never capable of the kind of multi- why? plotted novels like Dickens’s Bleak House. But it’s mostly true, I think. Melville’s work My favorite novel is Ishmael Reed’s Mumbois so various, and so weird, and so formally Jumbo (1972). It’s a bizarre, postmodernist eccentric at every point. I value these novel, set in the 1920s, that attempts to qualities. offer a whole, revised history of western

You’ve explored issues of race and class in much of your previous work—what do you think is unique in the American treatment of these topics? You could argue that “race” is the great American subject. So many writers have been concerned with racial difference and interaction, and this continues to be the case. So I think that in American literature you get an amazing variety of literary approaches to this question. Class is interesting because, at one level, it seems not to be an American subject at all. The nation was meant to be an antidote to all that rigid class structure associated with Europe. Of course it wasn’t, but ideas of class do get deflected in interesting ways, often

civilization! I can’t think of another book that’s so short but attempts to contain so much, though Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 also comes to mind.

Which contemporary writer do you think has written a classic? That’s a difficult question because there are so many amazing writers out there today: Toni Morrison, Richard Powers, Thomas Pynchon... I’ve just been teaching Morrison’s Beloved—that’s certainly a classic in the way that it weaves together major tropes of the American literary tradition with a distinct African-American vernacular tradition. It’s also a difficult book, both in its themes and its technique. Difficulty often helps to make a classic!

Cover of “Mumbo Jumbo,” Ishmael Reed. Image courtesy of amazon.com

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

“Allium Sativum” Jin Yu Charcoal

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monday night dinner Fifty miles from anywhere the table is set with dirty napkins, smudged wine glasses, and twisted spoons in the branch-like hands of men and women who arrived by different angles and patterns. Frank, who showed up on a horse one day; Anna, who’s been sleeping in Dave’s bed for years. Dave clears off space on his kitchen table one night each week, for anyone who might smell chocolate fondue from down the road where he is smoking. Old fertilizer sacks frame the windows and smell of steak medium rare, evenings of Mavericks and poker, the chef ’s black cat Ginger (and the Gingers that came before). Frank faces the ceiling: He uses the tip of his tongue to move a tooth in circles, wider and wider until it clicks. It joins the others in the little box on the window ledge. Dave tells Frank’s story again, how he shot a man who robbed a bank, or robbed the bank himself. Discussion of politics, the good kind: Tom went off to Iraq, Bill’s boy, and what a shame but you know he signed up for that. Didn’t run to Canada like we did. Didn’t have to. Forks spear asparagus, buttery potatoes, meat cut against the grain, leaking blood. Red wine to wash down the talk of the unknown philosophers. It’s nothing special, but where else can you find people who notice crooked trees or the coded spiral eyes on a Yukon Gold potato.

– MELISSA RUNSTEN

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Tamarind King Major: Art Studio Year: Sophomore “I really love animation and graphic design— precision and motion are important to me when I’m creating images.” Ink on paper.

“Q Town”

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“Hour by Hour” Ink on paper bag

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“There’s an artist named Kerry Skarbakka who throws himself out of buildings and down stairs and takes pictures of it. I looked at a lot of his pictures. He doesn’t have insurance.” -Tam

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

“Elevator”

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JACKIE BASU

In the late 1920s, René Magritte shared an epiphany with the world: for all of his photorealistic magic, all his paintings were merely two-dimensional representations of life. Nothing he painted would ever leap off the canvas into threedimensional space. Strangely, he seems less distressed than tickled by his realization of artistic limitation. This isn’t a pipe! he crows as he gleefully whisks the rug out from under our feet. Or at least…it’s not really a pipe. (Here he backpedals a bit). I mean it is in a sense…but just…as a visual representation of a pipe. (Arms propped on hips) That’s not the same at all! I mean—you can’t smoke it, can you? Twenty-three centuries earlier, Plato had essentially the same lightbulb moment. “Images are treacherous!” he decides, bringing his own set of household evidence to bear on the problem: “Beds are of three kinds, and there are three artists who superintend them (he counts on his fingers): God… the maker of the bed…and the painter.”

Continuing to muse: “So God is the superartisan, making the form-of-the-good Bed (something pricy and mahogany, no doubt). Running a close second is the bed-maker, who crafts real (rather than theoretical) furniture for real (rather than theoretical) people.” Here he pauses with distaste. “But the painter’s bed is a mere shadow of bedness—third-order mimesis on a woefully inadequate twodimensional plane.” Plato’s implications are clear: even the most beautiful of the painted beds (and Magritte has quite a few to choose from) is inferior to the worst of the real, three-dimensional beds (case in point: the hastily-assembled purple LEIRVIK bought on steep discount at Ikea. At least it sleeps two and has storage compartments). So. The ceci n’est pas crew has thrown down a hefty gauntlet: do faux-pipe, fauxbed images have value or weight in our living

René Magritte, “La Trahison des Images,”1928-29. Image courtesy of unidiotminunat.wordpress.com

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world of bodies and motion? upgraded to a relationship of almost- don’t make it into the record books—they’re I’m going to use portrait-images to perfect equivalence. In Mesopotamia denied remembrance, that trump card on answer that question, perhaps by starting (~2500 BCE), the great Temple of Inanna death accorded to their more-illustrious with a few counter-queries of my own. Why was peopled with wide-eyed stone figurines relatives. do babies love mirrors? Why do lovelorn who stood in attendance to the goddess. The ancestral portrait-image serves as teens destroy photos after breakups? Why Like lightning rods, those little maquettes the locus point for this intergenerational do facebookers cache reams of personal were made to channel the great power rite, both in the creation of ancestral death pictures (painstakingly tagging each one)? of divine favor directly to their human masks (imagines) for permanent display What’s up with effigies? Art historian E.H. counterparts. With their meek handclasps within the household as well as the lavish Gombrich poses us a related thought- and luminous owl-eyes, these perpetual funerary procession that followed each experiment: imagine yourself opening a worshippers functioned on behalf of new death in the family. Because these newspaper and finding an image of your their pious donors’ souls, giving them the visual representations were homologous to favorite public figure. Easy enough. Now, freedom to live non-ascetic secular lives. the individuals they depicted, they served imagine yourself picking up a pin and Portrait-images in Egypt, beginning as a means to directly honor (therefore stabbing it into the ‘eyes’ of the (wo)man around the same time, were produced on preserving) the ancestral spirit. Funerary represented. More difficult, I would hope. the same assumption of equivalence. In this portraiture was the integral vehicle of Gombrich describes his own feeling of case, the function was primarily funerary praise: tribute paid to an ancestral portrait empathy for the portrait-image: “However rather than devotional: whether crafted was directly transferable to the spirit of the well I know with my from plebeian man himself. How did this work, exactly? waking thoughts The world of the picture-plane terracotta or All of the imagery employed during the that what I do to and our world of existence just imperial diorite, funeral procession was geared towards his picture makes a man’s portrait- reanimating the images, treating them as no difference to don’t seem all that far apart. statue served as living beings to bring them back to life. my friend or hero, the posthumous Each new procession was a cue not only to I still feel a vague reluctance to harm it. home where his ka (animating spirit) would celebrate the newly deceased man, but for Somewhere there remains the absurd feeling reside. Statues had a great and terrible the family to trot out all of the ancestors that what one does to the picture is done responsibility—those constructs of earth and re-venerate them in one fell swoop. to the person it represents.” The implied and stone anchored souls to the world, The intent of the procession was to make it principle seems to be this: the world of the preventing their dissipation and loss. No seem “as if the ancient dead had returned to picture-plane and our world of existence earth.” The ancestors supplied just don’t seem all that far apart. We know their faces (the imagines, For the ancients, this sense of kinship funeral masks made at the that portrait images are not flesh and blood. (Thanks Magritte, we figured that one out time of their death); the life between portrait and portrayed for ourselves.) Perhaps, though, they’re was supplied by real, living was upgraded to a relationship of the next best thing—offshoots of selfhood, bodies: men who wore the almost-perfect equivalence. little agents of us-ness that carry our names masks and the curule garb outside of ourselves into the world at which would denote their high large. If the individual is the nucleus, his rank (the funerary procession images form a corona around him. This wonder the great god-emperors used such was a patrician affair). With this setup, the relationship is intuitive. Of course we don’t formidably hard rock for their portraits—it procession began—a work of family-cult stab out Barack Obama’s ink-dot eyes; of would be a terrible faux pas for the deity- theater intended to stage the afterlife in the course we purge ourselves of spurned love on-earth to lose his lofty spirit to erosion. corporeal world. by expunging its visual fingerprints; of In the Roman republican era, this course Dad is filming this piano recital in ‘perpetuation of memory’ theme was a Revivification: A Drama in Five three different digital media. The common fundamental concern of the patrician (Rather Synchronic) Acts thread compelling all of these situations is family-cult. First gambit: the living that strange, instinctive homology between generation honors and worships their Act I: Orienting the bodies the individual and images that capture his ancestors who stay ‘alive’ through their likeness. We interact with images because presence in the lives of the living. Classicist During the honorary funeral they form a bridgeway to other people and Eric Varner refers to this act of remembrance procession, the body of the deceased ourselves, a bridgeway that transcends both a sort of afterlife. In return, the ancestors’ space and time. renown galvanizes the younger generation himself was most commonly ‘conspicuous For the ancients, this sense of kinship to greater glory in the family name. After in an upright posture.’ The dead man would between portrait and portrayed was all, the family screwups and black sheep be dressed to the nines in his finest toga

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and accoutrements and paraded through the streets. Meanwhile, the masked and costumed representatives of his curule ancestors were enthroned on the ivory chairs that denoted their elite magisterial ranks. Though slightly less mobile than your average hero-popstardemigod-conquering general (other notable recipients of parades), the upright figure of the deceased and the seated images of his ancestors occupied space as they did in life—proud, autonomous, regal… almost lifelike.

Act II: The Processional Continuing the parallel between representation and reality, the deceased and his ancestral representatives were borne high above the streets in classy chariots, accompanied by all the emblems of their elite rank (à la homecoming queen and court).

Act III: Proclamations Appropriate, I think, for the climaxpoint of the processional, this stage is the auditory exception to what has heretofore been a largely visual spectacle. The ritual of speech-making made manifest the reanimating sentiments driving the event. According to Polybius, “he who makes the oration over the man about to be buried, when he has finished speaking of him, recounts the successes and exploits of the rest whose images are present, beginning with the most ancient.” Explaining the implications of this auditory program, he states that “by this means… the celebrity of those who did noble deeds is rendered immortal.” With every new addition to the family crypt, each familial great man received a fresh eulogy, a renewed exposure to the minds and memories of his living successors.

Act V: Transcending Time I suppose my paradigm of the five-act drama has been a bit disingenuous— this last element is no denouement, but rather a jumping-off point. The honorary funeral rites mentioned above—image orientation, mode of carriage, auditory component, and final destination—are all elements of the procession, occurring within a fixed timeline on the day of the ceremony. The final, most integral aspect of ancestorveneration—the imago, or commemorative portraithead—transcends this timeline, remaining a daily fixture within the household until the family line itself dies out. Enjoying pride of place within the family shrine, these simple wax masks with their remarkable fidelity of feature were the only permanent element of the elaborate funeral The effectiveness of the damnatio lies in celebration, returning home from each its subversive simplicity: ceremony to be placed back on display within

Act IV: Coming Home

what more effective way to create a vocabulary of dishonor than to take the existing lexicon of praise and turn it on its ear?

Depositing the portrait-image in its final resting place capped the honorary public performance. After the stately funeral procession and the interment of the deceased, the family brought home the imagines of departed and ancestors and deposited them in a wooden shrine within the house. This shrine, couched in a conspicuous part of the household, allowed the ancestral imagines a prominent place in the daily visual fabric of the living family, a sort of pantheonic throne from which to rule the cult of kinship.

the house. All the other accoutrements of the procession—fasces, curule chairs, and insignia-emblazoned togate bodies—were ephemeral costumes, worn only for the duration of the day’s rites. The assertion that the face/head is central to the Roman funerary cult may seem to negate the mechanisms described earlier, which required full and lavish representations of the body to achieve their full honorific effect. Clothed in majestic magisterial togas, these bodies were

“Severan Tondo,” 2nd century. Image courtesy of open.salon.com

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striking assertions of republican power designed to promote remembrance of the exhibition meant honor, omission could and civic service. Was this rich display less dead, the imperial obliteration of portraiture only mean disgrace. important than the humble wax imagines? was intended to induce social amnesia, As the empire matured, the damnatio Why were only the imagines preserved? removing the memory of the condemned process evolved as well, although it Perhaps what’s at work is the face-body from the collective consciousness (Stalin’s continued to operate on the principle of dichotomy that characterizes so much purges operated on the same principle). norm-inversion. Taking the language of Roman portraiture. In this schema, Ultimately, “the condemnation, damnation, of praise, especially that typified in the face is unique to the man portrayed, or abolition of an individual’s memory is the traditional funeral procession, the serving to indicate personal identity in a posthumous destruction of his or her damnatio systematically reversed it. naturalistic, lifelike What was created was an orthogonal set terms. The body, of visual and methodological signs that in contrast, is an Whereas the funeral procession consisted became the standard language of blame. indicator of social of a public parade of portraits designed The effectiveness of the damnatio lies identity, outfitted in in its subversive simplicity: what more the garb of the elite to promote remembrance of the dead, effective way to and accompanied create a vocabulary the imperial obliteration of portraiture by appropriate symbols of rank. These of dishonor than two forms of identity—personal and to take the existing was intended to induce social amnesia, social—coalesce in life but disaggregate in of praise removing the memory of the condemned lexicon death. In life, the individual is born with a and turn it on its unique personal identity and matures into a ear? Rather than from the collective consciousness. typified social role (a patron, a magistrate). reinventing the He brings his personal identity to the very essence or being.” Memory being wheel, damnatio set the existing one rolling grave, but the social identity is generic and homologous to portrait image, the removal in reverse. If the family-cult procession nonstransferable. Eventually he must cede and destruction of such likenesses acted as was a somber sort of comedy, the damnatio it to his successors. direct blows to the spirit and social legacy perversely reverses its vocabulary of action The funeral procession posthumously of the deceased. into a profane kind of tragedy. recombined imago and toga, reuniting In the early years of the empire, a personal identity with social, and nascent form of the damnatio memoriae Act I: Orienting the Body reanimating the dead in a stately promenade. fulfilled its condemning function by simply (Throw it on the Ground) However, like life itself, that procession was removing the imago of the deceased man ephemeral. At its end, the ancestors again from any funerals in which it would usually Remember the dead man (rather eerily) released their social personae and returned have been present. Ordered by senatorial ‘standing’ through his funeral procession as to the household shrine retaining only their decree, this state-sanctioned process a last nod to his upright, dominant posture individual, innate identities, encapsulated implied the negation of the dishonored in life? The damnatio process overturned within the simple facial portrait. spirit through its conspicuous absence this convention of body orientation as the Leaving the republican era and moving from the procession of its peers. Given crowd began its denunciation by toppling into the imperial, we see the same trend of the potency of portrait images as vehicles the statue of the condemned individual. the living interacting with the dead through of praise and commemoration, this snub Think Saddam Hussein. Lying in the dust, portrait images. Here, though, we won’t be accorded to the imago of a disgraced the statue of the dishonored dead was looking at the perpetuation of memory but man would have been a striking mark subordinated into a humiliating position rather the infamous damnatio memoriae of dishonor. The fundamental principle that connoted defeat and death. (‘obliteration of memory’). If honor was behind this action of posthumous disgrace accorded to those whose portraits were was the inversion of norms. Standard Act II: The Processional readily visible, the opposite fate—shame funeral rites had established principles for and ignominy—were the desserts of those displaying portrait images; the purpose whose portraits were removed or destroyed. of these typified actions was to praise and Ancestral honorees at the funeral To brutalize an image was to physically propagate the memory of the deceased. By procession rode high above the street in manifest abstractions such as disgrace and directly negating these norms, forbidding chariots, preceded by all the emblems of revenge. Whereas the funeral procession the display of a dead man’s imago, the proto- their rank. Statues of the damned were consisted of a public parade of portraits damnatio created a stark visual antonym: if borne by chariots as well: dragged behind

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them like dishonored corpses, lying facedown between their wheels. Often, this contempt accorded to the statue echoed the treatment received by the slain body it represented. Blacklisted imperial enemies often went the way of Hector, battered in the dust beneath Achilles’ wheels.

Act III: Proclamations …of jeering rage and dissatisfaction. From hired claques to senatorial groups to the general mass of the crowd, all participated in chanting the damnatio. During the later empire, the Senate’s chanting was systematized into a bastardized mimicry of praise-standards from the Theodosian Code. By perverting the preexisting language of praise, such chants created an easily recognizable and effective language of blame; again, simply by reversing norms of praise and honor, the crowds conducting the damnatio created a standard idiom and practice of humiliation.

Act IV: Coming Home? No indeed. Comfortable interment and imago preservation being the province of the honored dead, statues which had undergone damnatio ended up thrown into waste pits, recut into new portraits, or simply warehoused and forgotten. Whether a latrine or a neglected storeroom, these final destinations for portrait statues were the unmarked graves which relegated the former emperor or dignitary to ignominy and, ultimately, oblivion. Often, the statue that had undergone damnatio underwent the treatment as the disgraced body it represented: “corpses ended up in the sewage system as with any other refuse.”

Act V: Losing Face In its paradigm of honor-inversion, the damnatio focused its destructive activities on the images of the face. The symbolism behind the mutilation is “the loss of identity,” and—for the same reason that the

imago was the iconic ancestral image—this identity was most frequently associated with the unique features of the face. Though the full-body statue was toppled, dragged, taunted, and eventually disposed of, specific and intentional mutilation was reserved for the facial features. The iconic image of face-based damnatio memoriae is probably the tondo portrait of emperor Septimius Severus, his wife Julia Domna, and their two children Caracalla and Geta. It’s a fairly standard family portrait, the adults looking sweetly parental, imperial headdresses jauntily perched on their heads; young Caracalla gazes solemnly into the middle distance, all doe-eyes and long side-curls. To his right, his younger brother Geta… oh wait. He doesn’t have a face. When young doe-eyes ascended to the throne he took issue with co-ruling alongside his little sib and had him killed in a fit of pique. Since fratricide wasn’t enough to efface Geta’s (apparently) threatening memory, Caracalla went through the corpus of family portraits and had his brother erased from each one. In the case of the tondo portrait, this ‘erasing’ creates a tragicomic cognitive dissonance: the remnants of the happy family don’t square with angry childish scribblings where the fourth head should be. Really, Caracalla? Are you a pouty two-year-old?

Apparently so. In any case, the tondo portrait is an exemplary-if-rude specimen of the face-based thrust of the damnatio. Mutilation and Transformation, by classicist Eric Varner, is a comprehensive study of surviving imperial images that bear evidence of damnatio memoriae. Of all the full-body or extended-bust statuary, none show signs of intentional bodymutilation. All, however, bear evidence of facial mutilation, transformation, or, morerarely, decapitation. Clearly the agents of damnatio did not need to destroy the body to destroy the memory of the man: because the governing source of personal identity was the head and facial features, the honorific body on its own had now specific meaning, purpose, or power. The tondo portrait is not the only case of Geta getting short shrift from his paranoid and power-mad brother. Another image to get the effacement treatment is a heroic portrait statue of the younger imperial son. As future co-emperor, Geta is depicted with all of the imperial honors accorded to his rank: from the sculpted cuirass and sweeping military cloak to the martial hand gesture and barbarian underfoot, Geta’s regalia is clearly imperial. The fate of the statue, however, negates this regal imagery. Caught in the purges, the damage done to the statue conforms to the pattern mentioned earlier: Geta’s face was violently and entirely chiseled off of his head, leaving a gaping and gruesome shallow of marble where features should be. His body is completely unharmed— although now ludicrous in its assertion of imperial might and military virtus. Unlike the honorific funeral portraits in which the body is transient while the face remains, the only aspect of Geta’s statue that endures is his generic, typified body. The portrait body accords military and imperial honor to its wearer. However, because the face has been pried off, removing all signs of his individual character, there is no means of attributing the virtus portrayed by the body to Geta, its intended recipient. So. The evidence is in. The question now is how these ancient mechanisms

Eric R.Varner, Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture, (Leiden: Brill, 2004), fig. 165 a 26

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of praise and blame help us counter the Magritte/Plato insinuation of image falseness and irrelevance. In the Roman context, the portrait image is a mediator of subtle semiotics, a locus through which the living may bequeath honor or shame upon the dead. Let’s go back to Gombrich’s thought-experiment: the principle staying our hand from defacing the grainy blackand-white image is precisely the same principle compelling Caracalla’s scribbling rage. Portraits equal people, and that’s all there is to it. That scratched-out face on the family portrait would be mere petty silliness if Geta’s graven image didn’t have real significance in their shared world.

I propose a new model, then, to counter all the foregoing talk of pipes and beds. Because household items have cornered the market on the nature-of-reality debate, let’s look to Kosuth’s “One and Three Chairs.” It’s a simple piece: a straight-backed wooden chair—a tangible, sit-worthy one—flanked by an image of itself on the right and the dictionary definition of chair to its left. The object, Kosuth concedes, is not the same as its images. The central, physical chair is the One underscored in the title of the piece (nod to Magritte here). However, the whole trinity forms a greater unit, necessary to our complete understanding of chairness. Those Three—image, object, and verbal

understanding of the concept—sum into our conceptualization of… whatever it is we’re dealing with. It could be chairs, it could be newspaper clippings, it could be prom photos, or (if we’re elite Romans) it could be ancestral images and prefigurations of the life after death. The province of the artist is not the creation of new life—that’s the work of God, or biology. Rather, the artist’s role is to reframe understanding within the already-existing world of fleshand-blood. His image-based subjunctive reframes and expands upon the simple indicative of worldly fact, contributing richness, color, and complexity to the dayto-day syntax of our lives.

Joseph Kosuth, “One and Three Chairs,” 1965. Image courtesy of marginalia.it

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“Ben’s Room,” Tiffany Quach 28

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Beraka

is a part of my consciousness i just got a weird feeling (the hollywood-buddhist sort) that my friend michael beraka

occupies some small part of my own consciousnessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; like, is always a hidden factor in my thinking of things and making decisions.

â&#x20AC;&#x201C; DANIEL GRATCH

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

the

rattlesnake

ERIC KARPAS

The spider struggled silently to construct its web between the rotting oak of the porch floor and the sagging cloth of the dusty hammock. Albert Samson, chewing on a dry wheat stem, sat on his rickety plastic folding chair. Each day Albert Samson would sit on his porch on this chair from exactly 12:30 in the afternoon to exactly 3:27. Albert had a natural predisposition towards afternoon sunlight, but his dermatologist told him that the sun was bad for his health. “It will give you skin cancer,” said Doctor Blank. “I don’t want skin cancer,” said Albert Samson. “So don’t go in the sun,” said Doctor Blank. “I like the sun,” said Albert Samson. “Do you like cancer? Do you like chemotherapy? Do you like death? Stay out of the sun.” “What if I sit in the sun for an hour a day?” “Well, there’s no specific amount of time, you know, that determines whether or not you actually get the disease…” “What about two hours?” Dr. Blank’s tongue flailed about in his mouth as he ransacked his mind, searching for a simple way to explain the unpredictability of cancer to Albert. “What if I go in the sun for three hours?” “Don’t go in the sun.” Thus, Albert Samson only sat in the sun for two hours and fiftyseven minutes each day. Albert Samson’s house had been infested with spiders for a while now. He had always thought them a disgusting nuisance, but they usually kept to themselves, so it was relatively easy for him to ignore them. He was pretty sure that the majority of them hid in the attic, where he disliked going anyway. Because of this, Albert

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Samson was easily able to live his life separately from the spiders. Today, however, one of these spiders had crawled down from its attic haunt and invaded Albert Samson’s sacred space. Rather than bat it away with the swift flick of his finger, though, Albert Samson did something that he hadn’t done in a long time. He watched the spider. It fiddled about trying to construct its web, secreting the silk as carefully as possible to build a network so intricate and so perfect that it could sit contented in its center for the rest of its life, growing fat on flies and sunlight and not worrying about the cancerous effects of ultraviolet radiation. When Albert Samson sat on his porch he read sometimes. Usually it was the newspaper, but sometimes he would bring out a play to read. In the previous April he had read The Death of a Salesman, and the January before that he read A Doll’s House. He never had the patience to read an entire book. Three years ago he attempted to read Walden, but after reading the first five chapters he had to put it down. He felt that novels, especially ones with literary merit, weighed him down. When he wasn’t reading he would watch the landscape of the desert. He would watch the lizards scuttle across the road. He would watch the rattlesnakes slither towards the sun, which straddled the horizon line. The rattlesnakes would always go towards that horizon, but Albert Samson never knew if they reached it or not. They never came back to tell him. He watched the spider. The light easterly wind detached one of the web’s strands. The spider, sensing a threat to the web, rushed to the spot of detachment and patched up the wound. Albert Samson thought that the patch was not as pretty as the original strand had been, but it served its duty and kept the web aloft. The spider returned to where it had been previously working.

“Big Chief, Wilcox Solar Observatory” Jin Zhu

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

It is Saturday, and Albert is invincible. He is still lying in the for a moment alone in the sunlight. She slowly puts all of the picnic endzone, clutching the football, soaking in the stadium lights and items in the basket and walks silently back to her dorm. the babble of the exiting crowd, when his coach tells him that he is He watched the spider. Albert is six. His father shows him unstoppable, his parents tell him that he is their life’s pride, and his a football and tells him that he is going to be a West Desert friends tell him that it is time to get drunk. That night he conquers rattlesnake. Albert Samson is excited. the castles of Ashley, Laura, and Evangeline, three fair maidens “Is Allan going to be a rattlesnake too? And Agnes? And Marie? who are all thankful to have surrendered to the most heroic of And Davy?” the West Desert High Rattlesnakes. It happens the next Saturday “Yes, yes, they’ll all be rattlesnakes too. But they won’t be the too. Each Saturday, he is presented with the charms of three lovely type of rattlesnake that you will be. You will be the most powerful maidens. This season, Albert is sitting contented upon his throne rattlesnake in all of West Desert. Your rattle will be heard above all carved from pigskin. others. You will be more known than the rest.” One time he conquers the castle of a maiden who does not His dad throws the football at him. It is as if Albert’s hands had want to be conquered. She surrenders been perfectly molded to hold the football, as if the football has begrudgingly. He apologizes always belonged in that space between his palm and his curled afterwards, handing her fingers. Albert feels that this first touch of the football has filled They won’t be the a box of chocolates and the empty spaces in his psyche, completing that which is type of rattlesnake that kissing her on the cheek. naturally “Albert.” He grips the ball, and feels its smoothness. He watched the spider. Albert throws the ball back to his father, and admires the you will be. A fly flew into its net. For upward motion of the spiral that he has a moment the spider quit its thrown. work to tightly wrap the fly in a silk Albert Samson removed You will be the most prison. After the final strand was tied around the his hand from his bald powerful rattlesnake in all of West head. Yes, it was smooth, fly, the spider returned to the part of the web that it had been working on before the interruption. but he felt nothing. The Desert. Your rattle will be heard When that section of the web was finished, the spider didn’t say anything. above all others. spider crawled back to the encapsulated fly and ate it. It no longer remembered Albert sits cross-legged against the tall oak in the where the web had started. middle of the field next to the university quad. Delia lays out Albert Samson had just turned the red-checkered blanket and unloads the sandwiches that she has fifty when he went to the West Desert Pet Shop and purchased made. Albert picks one up and engulfs it in so few bites that it is Companie. Companie was a grey mutt with mottled hair, and as if he has unhinged his jaw and swallowed the sandwich whole. she walked with an obvious limp. On top of this, she was blind “You really weren’t that hungry, were you?” she asks with mock in one eye, deaf in one ear, and had lost nearly all of her sense of sarcasm, smiling at the way that Albert rubs his stomach with smell. His main reason for purchasing Companie was her name; his head tilted back and his eyes closed, allowing the rays of the he thought it comforting to have Companie around. The second noontime sun, fall onto his face. reason was that Dave Daniels, the owner of the pet shop, had told “Nope,” Albert says, “But if there’s one deli whose cooking I can’t Albert Samson that Companie was useless as a rattlesnake hunter. resist, it’s you.” Albert still has his eyes closed. Delia reaches over Dave had disclosed this fact in an attempt to get Albert Samson to and runs her hand like the legs of a spider through his long, thick purchase one of the more expensive dogs, so it was not surprising hair. She kisses him lightly on the lips. They lie together in silence that Dave was perplexed by Albert Samson’s decision. When the for a few moments, absorbing one another. They listen to chirps two men were standing in aisle three picking from many different and rustles and breezes and heartbeats. They listen to the erratic types of bags containing the same type of dog food, Albert Samson thumping of footsteps, and can no longer hear the heartbeats. noticed the downturned corners of Dave’s lips and Dave’s loss of “Samson!” says a deep, rumbling voice. Albert and Delia open salesman’s enthusiasm. their eyes to see offensive tackle Ernie “Cruncher” Potter and tight “I don’t want dead rattlesnakes around my house,” Albert end James Butcher looming above them, blocking out the sun. explained. “Let’s go man. We’ve got practice in an hour and we’ve got to buzz our heads for the big game.” Albert hesitates. He does not understand why football and Delia looks with concern at Albert, and at his long locks. Delia are mutually exclusive. He races through potential futures: “Don’t cut your hair. Plenty of people play football with long himself waking up in a mansion with the Vince Lombardi trophy hair.” next to him in his bed, himself waking up next to Delia in the house Albert looks at the guys and back at her. He says nothing at he grew up in, himself waking up in a mansion next to both Delia first, unsure of what words will leave his mouth. and the Lombardi trophy. “Don’t worry baby. It’ll grow back soon.” Albert kisses Delia on He does not see the distinct pasts that have brought up the the lips again and walks off with Cruncher and Butcher. Delia sits question: the way he missed her birthday party because Coach held

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an emergency team meeting, the way he arrived at her sorority’s formal with his sweaty and muddy cut-off shirt beneath his suit, the silent stares of her parents when he showed up at dinner thirty minutes late, rambled the entire time about his up-and-coming football career, and ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. “I want you,” he says. She smiles. She enjoys him all night. In the morning, he gets up and goes to practice.

Albert is pulled aside by Coach Comett after practice. He can tell that Coach is eager to say something by the way that the usually stiff, disciplined, ex-marine is shifting from foot to foot. Coach Comett’s poor attempt to maintain his usual behavior mannerisms makes him look like an elephant trying to hide in a picnic basket. “You played excellently today, Al. That catch you had by the twenty-yard line was exactly the kind of catch we need in order to win games. You show up like that tomorrow and Northern He watched the spider. Companie stumbled out onto the porch University will be waving the white flag after your first touchdown.” like a drunkard and limped over to Albert Samson. Albert Samson Albert nods through the small talk so that he can find out the made no motion towards the mutt as she staggered around on the more important news. Coach Comett realizes that Albert knows porch, as Albert was too enveloped in the spider’s story to think that something is up, gives one more nod of approval, and begins about Companie. to speak. “Al, I’ve been notified that there Albert struts into her room grinning will be some NFL scouts at the The hammock swung wildly like a used car salesman, holding some game tomorrow. Rumor has flowers in his outstretched arm that with this sudden addition of weight, and it that they want you in the he had plucked from the rose garden combine next year, and that the web was ripped to shreds. behind the dorm. Delia is lying on her after the game they’re going side, her head propped up on an unorganized to try to persuade you to join the mountain of white satin pillows. draft class. Their coming to the game “You picked my flowers, you son of a bitch,” she says. is just a matter of ceremony. Just show ‘em the shit you always “What use are flowers if you can’t pick them?” he asks her show and you’ll be gone in the first round before you know it. sweetly. Congratulations!” “That’s always your damn philosophy.” Al’s smile stretches into a wild grin. He has known that this Only the humming of her refrigerator fills the room. He has no would happen sooner or later, and feels content that it finally has. idea what she means, but he stops smiling so that he can pretend When Comett finishes speaking, he stretches his arms to the side that he understands perfectly. for a hug. Al ignores the gesture and reaches out his hand for a She does not say a word. She just stares and waits. He can tell handshake. Coach Comett awkwardly switches positions and that his lack of a smile is transparent. grabs the strong hand. Albert pulls away and struts to the locker Albert sighs. He knows that this is going to take a whole lot of room. With his peripheral vision, Albert sees Coach Comett look effort on his part. down at his hand, his smile faltering for just a moment. For that “Look babe…I know that you don’t like that I spend my days moment he looks dejected, but before this look registers in Albert’s practicing and my nights hanging out with the guys. I know you consciousness, Albert is in the locker room, thinking only about don’t like that I play a sport where I could hurt myself any day and his glorious future. never be the same again. I know that you don’t like that I spend Albert Samson watched the spider. It was inches away from more of my time with football than I spend with you.” completing its web. Only a minute more and it would finally be She continues glaring at him. Albert can faintly detect that able to bathe in the glory of its hard work and achievement. Then she is trying hard to hide her hopeful playbook from his prying Companie stumbled into the hammock that was the anchor for the television cameras. Regret begins to seep slowly into the forefront spider web. The hammock swung wildly with this sudden addition of his thoughts as his mouth begins to move, but he is unable to stop of weight, and the web was ripped to shreds. The spider was thrown the motion. Albert’s voice and his mind have lost their connection off, and Albert Samson did not see where it went. to one another. “But football is where my life is heading. Coach says that I’m The next three weeks are a blur to Albert. He vaguely going to be the face of the NFL some day. Hell, you know that remembers meeting the NFL scout before the game, and telling without football they’d kick me out of this school based on grades him to “get into your bunker ‘cause Samson’s coming to blow you alone. I don’t even have to get into the fact that I wouldn’t even be away.” He remembers the stadium lights, the first touchdown, the able to afford this school without my talent. I can’t give it up.” second touchdown, the ball in the air, the diving catch…the hit he “Get the fuck out of here,” she says in monotone. doesn’t even remember. Waking up in a hospital bed with pain everywhere, but especially in his head, thigh, and shoulder. The He watched the spider. It was almost done with its web. He doctor telling him that he can’t ever play again. The scout walking thought that if spiders had human mouths instead of those pincers, out of the stadium and into the oblivion of could-have-beens. The whose technical name he had long forgotten, that the spider would financial aid office revoking his scholarship money. The registrar be grinning with excitement. telling him that he has one semester to pull up his grades or he is

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“Staircase,” Tiffany Quach

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

out. The sinking feeling. The sinking feeling. The sinking feeling. Thanking the Lord that he isn’t paralyzed. Cursing the Lord that he is.

thought that the exterminator would ever show. Before Albert Samson could welcome the exterminator into the house, the exterminator was through the doorway. Albert Samson didn’t even notice the exterminator pass by him on the porch. At three twenty-seven Albert Samson got up out of his chair. Albert Samson walked up behind the exterminator, who was He knew that the spider, if it survived the fall, would not ever try standing in the foyer staring at a black-and-white painting of the to rebuild its web. desert that hung on the wall. Albert Samson sits in the lecture hall, fiddling with his pencil “The spider infestation is mostly in the attic. They don’t usually and staring up at the ceiling with bleary, bloodshot eyes. He has come down here.” to pass this class to stay in school, work hard, graduate, and get a The exterminator nodded silently and continued to stare at the monotonous desk job that won’t pay a quarter of the salary he would picture. have made in the NFL. He stares back at Professor McCloud, but “The entrance to the attic is on the other side of the house,” said does not listen. Who the fuck needs philosophy anyway? Waste Albert Samson. of fucking time. Philosophy is bullshit. He can bullshit his way The exterminator nodded again. After another moment through philosophy. Then he will get a fucking A+ for his bullshit, examining the painting, he began to stroll down the hallway. and the registrar will let him stay in school, work hard, graduate, Midway down the hall, however, the exterminator veered off into and get that desk job that won’t give him the immortality that the living room. He began to examine Albert Samson’s couches, NFL stars get. Fuck that boring life. Fuck the fact that his parents lifting each cushion into the air and peering into the spaces offered to pay the rest of the way through school. between them. Albert Samson doesn’t give a flying fuck. “The spiders are in the attic,” said Albert “That Thoreau had to eventually Samson, “not in the living room.” The stitching had been give in and return from his trip Again, the exterminator to Walden seems to support nodded. He put the seat cushions slowly coming out over the past five the old adage that claims into their proper places decades, causing the image of what was once back that no man is an island. on the couch. He then began an intimidating, vicious, football-crunching to examine the living room’s However, if you look at contemporary society, there is a fireplace. After pulling his head snake to be barely discernable. lot of evidence that suggests most out of the chimney, the exterminator men are peninsulas,” says Professor walked out of the living room and into the McCloud with a glint in his eye, gesturing kitchen without any show of emotion. He opened towards the audience of students. Albert Samson thinks that all of Albert Samson’s kitchen drawers, scrutinized all of his rusted Professor McCloud is pointing at him. Albert Samson looks away. utensils, and then returned them to their drawers. He opened the oven, stuck his head inside, and looked around. Albert Samson watched the place where the spider had been Albert Samson wanted to shut the oven door on his head and the day before, hoping that his intuition was wrong and that he turn up the heat. would find the web fully intact. Deflated, he began to accept that “The spiders are in the attic. They are not in the kitchen.” nothing was there. The exterminator pulled his head out of the oven and nodded An unmarked van pulled up to Albert Samson’s house. A again. The exterminator exited the kitchen. young man with an oddly graying moustache got out of the van. As For the next twenty minutes, the exterminator continued to he walked towards the porch, Albert Samson examined the young walk slowly throughout the house, absorbing every detail of every man. He examined his work boots. He examined his grass-stained room. Albert Samson followed behind, impatiently waiting for the jeans, his plaid logger’s sweater, and his hunting hat. He examined exterminator to do something besides treat his house as a museum. the man’s skeletal appearance, and his mirror-like sunglasses. Finally, they arrived at the door to Albert Samson’s bedroom. Albert Samson stood up to greet the visitor. Before reaching Exasperated, Albert Samson grabbed the exterminator by the out his hand, Albert Samson brushed off his chair’s seat cushion, shoulder and spun him around. The exterminator stopped moving. which was embroidered with the logo of the “West Desert High “Sir,” said Albert Samson, “the spiders are—” Rattlesnakes.” The stitching had been slowly coming out over “Show me into your attic,” said the exterminator, cutting him the past five decades, causing the image of what was once an off. Albert Samson pointed at the ladder at the end of the hallway. intimidating, vicious, football-crunching snake to be barely As the exterminator walked towards the attic, Albert Samson discernable. remained behind. The exterminator turned around and ruffled his “I have heard that there is a pest problem in this house,” the mustache. man said. “Come with me. I’ll need your help,” the exterminator said. Albert Samson vaguely remembered calling an exterminator, Albert Samson cringed. He hadn’t been into the attic in many years ago, when the spiders first came to his attention. He hadn’t years.

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“Please come with me,” the exterminator said again. the newspaper clipping that he was gripping in his gnarled fingers Albert Samson didn’t want to go, but he had a great difficulty and strutted with his chest in the air towards Albert Samson. He saying no to the exterminator. He obliged. moved so quickly that Albert Samson could have sworn that he was When they reached the attic, Albert Samson turned on the hovering. They were touching chest to chest, and the exterminator light. He could hear a multitude of spiders was looking directly into Albert Samson’s eyes. The exterminator scurry across the floor to escape was still wearing those reflective sunglasses, and as a result the flood of luminosity, but his Albert Samson found himself staring into his own eyes as The exterminator eyes only actually saw one of well. them. “I know where the pest that plagues this house grinned, his gossamer lips As Albert Samson lies,” whispered the exterminator. Albert Samson felt extending an uncanny length the exterminator’s cold breath as the wispy, invisible gazed around the attic, he tried not to look at all vapors wrapped themselves around Albert Samson’s and revealing a mangled set of the memorabilia from head. of gumless teeth. his football days: the high school jersey, the college helmet, Albert Samson is finally done with his physical therapy. his father’s football, and the newspaper After a year and a half, he finally feels well enough to function. clippings. However, they were the first things that the exterminator He struts with his chest in the air, waving adieu in his mind to the placed his fingers on. familiar sights of the hospital. Goodbye ugly white walls. Goodbye “You were some football player once, huh?” he asked, smacking grumpy receptionist. Goodbye maintenance closet with the busted his lips together. Albert Samson noticed the cadaverous thinness doorknob. As he waves goodbye to the list of recently admitted of the lips of the exterminator. patients, he sees something that makes him feel disoriented, like a “Yeah,” said Albert Samson, looking away. dancer pushed over in the middle of a pirouette by a mischievous “It seems you were a pretty damn good one. These newspaper child. Albert Samson changes direction. Hello maintenance clippings show some incredible stats. You scored forty-six closet… touchdowns your freshman year. That’s quite incredible.” When he walks in Delia is pretending to “Thanks,” Albert Samson said, barely audible. sleep, but as soon as she senses that “What happened?” pressed the exterminator. he is about to touch her shoulder “Injury,” Albert Samson was uncomfortable. she bolts upright. At first she “You could have probably gone to the NFL with a record like says nothing. She stares at this.” him with exasperated, “Get the fuck out of my house.” bloodshot eyes The exterminator grinned, his gossamer lips extending an uncanny length and revealing a mangled set of gumless teeth. He put down

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that remind Albert Samson of the cornerbacks in whose faces he Samson’s ramshackle house. He did not stop to observe anything used to gloat after breezing past them. this time; rather, he simply drifted as if in a trance towards Albert “I heard that you were hurt,” she says. That is the only thing Samson’s bedroom. The exterminator pulled open the that she is going to say to start the conversation. He doorknob. Albert Samson opens up the looks into her eyes. He has not seen them in a door to her hospital room. Without long time, since before his injury. He regrets faltering, the exterminator ripped He cries on her empty not speaking to her in all of this time. the sheets off of Albert Samson’s hospital bed, and the tectonic “Yeah,” says Albert Samson, rubbing empty bed. Without faltering, plates move, and he is no longer the back of his neck and looking past her with tears streaming down his at the whitewashed walls, “I have to talk to cheeks, Albert Samson rips the attached to any land mass. you about that. Since I’m done with football curtain away to reveal her empty now, I was —” bed. She interrupts him with a chuckle. Albert Samson wails. She is gone, and the “You’ve missed your chance, but gave Derek Stephens his.” exterminator stands above the bed pointing down. Delia coughs, rolls over, and falls back asleep. Albert Samson, “There’s your pest!” the exterminator exclaimed. In the bed remembering the name, runs back into the hospital hallway and was a dead rattlesnake, its noisemaking tail severed from its body stops one of the nurses. and nowhere to be found. Albert Samson cries into her pillows, “Why was the girl in that room admitted to this hospital?” searching for her smell, for any hint of her still being alive. Averting The nurse answers him curtly and attempts to smile. his eyes from the spectacle in his bed, Albert Samson turned to the This retroviral reality is a crippling blow to Albert Samson, window of his room and saw Companie running off like a cheetah making his cheeks burn, his head smolder, and his heart freeze. through the monochromatic desert, her limp gone and her fur He wants to run back into her room immediately but his legs will pristine. As she disappeared on the horizon, Albert Samson looked not let him. Albert Samson, stunned and slouching, staggers back back down gravely on the dead rattlesnake and began to breathe to his car. heavily. He followed the exterminator back down the ladder. He cries on her empty hospital bed, and the tectonic plates Albert Samson’s tests return negative. move, and he is no longer attached to any land mass. Albert Like a police dog following the scent of Samson’s tears stream down the bed, soak into the sheets, and a criminal, the exterminator moved surround him on all sides. Albert Samson, now hyperventilating, quickly and briskly through Albert stared at the rattlesnake, and stared into the reflective glasses of the exterminator. Albert Samson rushes out of the hospital, feeling trampled by his guilt and suffocated by his isolation. He feels a terrible pain in his heart. “Let me remove this old, dead rattlesnake for you,” the exterminator cooed, putting his hand on Albert Samson’s shoulder. Outside of the hospital, inside of his room, Albert Samson clutches at his chest and, curling up like a spider, falls at the bare, bony feet of the exterminator.

“Judgment,” Katie Pyne, Charcoal

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Katie Pyne Major: Art Studio Minor: Creative Writing Year: Sophomore “Barbies are babes, bitches and a perception of beauty. I’ve strangely begun to love everything about them.” Charcoal on paper.

“Drugs”

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“Michael Vick”

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is all wrong: one wing outweighs the other. You wouldn’t believe the handicaps, the slipped disks, bad hips, leans and limps, one wing dragging like a gun through mud.

Angels in rows crane their necks to handle the weight. They watch us move below. Angels were never human so they don’t understand when a man speaks to a woman and the woman looks away because she is thinking in this life there are so many things we don’t forgive and when you grow tired of the ways I entertain myself (you are one of them) you will tire of me.

When angels see a wish for something, someone’s eyes squeeze shut, bodies strain — they hate it. Our hope, our belief in flight, in the promise of angels, or prayer, we break their hearts. And the angels, weighed down, cannot lift their heavy heads to look away.

– LEIGH LUCAS

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“Untitled” Iris Ouyang

“Untitled” Will Geier

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SETH WINGER “Name?” I’ve driven up to the front gate several times in the last two and a half weeks, but the guard on duty isn’t one I recognize: a man— not much older than I am but a lot larger—who looks cramped in the small booth. There’s California summer sweat on the guard’s forehead, and I can’t blame him for being laconic. “Winger.” I try to look polite. “I.D.?” Getting to my driver’s license is a bit of a hassle since I haven’t taken my seatbelt off, but I’m pretty sure this guy has a taser and he looks like he has to take shit from geriatrics all day, so I don’t argue. The guard holds an arm out of his sliding window and I drop my license into his palm. The arm retracts slowly, coiling into the booth, and I can feel my face being scrutinized. The license picture was taken at fifteen and a half, and I don’t look anything like it any more. A car—a big, gold Oldsmobile like the kind I thought only retired Mafiosi in Florida owned—pulls up beside me. The bottom corner of the windshield is emblazoned with a yellow “Leisure Village” sticker, and the guard waves the eighty-year-old woman hunched over the steering wheel through the gate. The bar rises, seems to stretch to accommodate the Oldsmobile, and the grandmother in the gold car is gone. “I have a Marc Winger on file.” “What?” I look back over, and the guard is scrolling through something on his computer. “Marc Winger. You related?” “Yeah, that’s my dad. Am I not in there?” “Doesn’t look like it. And I can’t let anyone through that gate”— the guard gestures with my license to the bar blocking my path—“if their name’s not on this list.” He points my license at the computer. “I should be on the list. Everyone should be on the list. They told us anyone could visit this month.” 42

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“Unrestricted bereavement visiting ends after two weeks.” I can hear the cover of the employee handbook slamming shut. “Look, I’m just trying to visit my grandpa. Can’t you just call him or something?” With a sigh, the guard slowly hands me back my license and then reaches for the phone in his booth. He punches the buttons methodically as he reads them off the computer screen. The phone rings, and the guard comes to life with saccharine alacrity. “Hi, Mr. Mann? This is the front gate. The front gate. Yes, the gate, sir. I have a Seth Winger here to see you; is it all right if I let him in? Yes, Seth. Great. You have a nice day now. Well thank you, I will.” Any trace of his previous personality vanishes with the faint click of the receiver, and the guard sizes me up one more time before silently raising the gate. I thank him and accelerate slowly, trying at once to steer, roll the window up, and escape. The drive through Leisure Village, the senior community my grandfather lives in, is slow and methodical. I’m careful to keep my speed under twenty-five miles an hour, the speed limit on every road weaving like strands in an asphalt web through the gated community. I’d ignore the signs, but my dad told me this morning that he already got a ticket from a twenty-hour patrol car for hitting thirty-five with no one else around. I haven’t ever gotten a speeding ticket, and I’d rather not start with a low-speed pursuit in the middle of a giant senior resort. The Santa Rosa Valley, where Leisure Village sprawls over 440 acres, is really just like any one of the hundreds of other little valleys in California, but it does have a nice view of the Santa Monica mountains. The sky is dazzlingly azure today, like every other day, and the perfectly manicured and perfectly green lawns that line the perfectly tarred, abundantly wide, jet black stretch of road glisten in the sunlight. Smiling senior couples stroll down the sidewalks.

Bluebirds may or may not break into a charming rendition of “Zip“People don’t just move out of Leisure Village.” My grandfather a-Dee-Doo-Dah” as they flit around my car. said the last two words with a sort of reverence. “And we’re not There are two named streets in Leisure Village. I’m on the going to wait for someone to die.” imaginatively named “Leisure Village Drive,” but somewhere in the labyrinth of homes is supposedly a “Mountain View Drive” as The earth that Leisure Village sits on—the land that all of well, though I’ve admittedly never looked and so have never found Camarillo sits on, actually—used to be Rancho Calleguas, an 1837 it. All of the other streets are named with numbers—“Village 12” land grant by the Mexican government. I’ve thought a lot about or “Village 41” or “Village 23”—and every home on the street how different the land was then, how different California was then. has as its address a number like 12006 or 41011. It would make About how Adolfo Camarillo, sixteen when he inherited the ranch sense in a grid, but Leisure Village is about the farthest thing from upon his father’s death, would sit in the fields on horseback for a grid possible: a weird, vaguely triangular blob sanwiched and hours watching his cattle graze in the mountainous bassinet of squeezed between one of Camarillo’s main roads to the northwest the Santa Rosa Valley; about how Rancho Calleguas, rechristened and agricultural fields to the southeast. The village roads snake Rancho Camarillo, became one of the nation’s leading lima bean away from Leisure Village Drive like ivy tendrils, curling in on ranches; about how Adolfo would have had to watch wildfires themselves and filling every available inch of land that’s not already descend from the mountains every summer to threaten his crops; taken up by the eighteen-hole golf course, the swimming pool, about how, eventually, Adolfo’s adobe home was devoured by the recreation center, the spa, the tennis courts, the paddle tennis the ravenous tongues of those same flames, collapsing with the courts, the extra-wide sidewalks, the gym, the giant chessboard, terrifying crash of dreams rent asunder; about how, ultimately, the main office, the park, the shuffleboard courts, the horseshoe the land was segmented, divided, and sold off to the California pits, the RV parking, or the bocce courts. government. I pass Village 44 first. It branches off to the left, and might be a California was quick to incorporate the rancho into the small little shadier than some of the other villages, but it’s hard to tell. The communities already blossoming quietly in the valley. What addresses are about the only way to differentiate between houses— became the city of Camarillo, isolated by its geography, saw little every village has the same suburban look, and even if they have growth between its inception and the different floor plans, all the houses are painted the Second World War. But when a same identical shade of beige. Some residents go newly prosperous America Smiling senior couples so far as to hang potted plants or wind chimes emerged from the dusty stroll down the sidewalks. Bluebirds from their porch eaves, though I assume the rubble of Berlin and homeowners’ association has approved this the acrid smoke of may or may not break into a charming practice. My grandmother used to hang bird Hiroshima, when my rendition of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” as feeders from the roofs of her houses—she grandfather returned loved the hummingbirds they attracted—but from the ruins of Europe they flit around my car. the feeders were swallowed up by cardboard boxes at the age of twenty—my during some move and have yet to reemerge. I think age—to forget what he had seen the iridescent birds with ruby bellies and emerald wings may be and to learn how to be a college student gone forever. again, when Eisenhower’s highway system began to steamroll its My grandfather lives in Village 35, in the left half of an “El way across the nation in post-war affluence, Camarillo’s population Dorado” model duplex. At twenty-five miles an hour, it takes a exploded. Orchards were razed, houses were built, and people couple minutes to get from the gate to his driveway. followed the path blazed so many years ago by wildfire over the “We don’t want a duplex,” I can remember my grandfather mountains and into the city. saying as he sat in the green armchair he’d sat in for as long as I paid any attention to these things, the one that had followed him I suppose now is as good a time as any to explain why, exactly, from home to home. We were in his living room in an apartment I’m going to my grandfather’s house alone. Two and a half months in Simi Hills, late afternoon, and the sun was just beginning to ago I got a call from my mom while I was at work, saying that set. There was sunlight flooding into the room’s big windows and my grandmother’s cancer, long in remission, had resurfaced. It reflecting off the cream-colored carpet, so that the entire room was multiplying rapidly. The prognosis was grim. She was made looked blindingly white. My grandmother was standing at the comfortable. miniature kitchen counter, sorting pills into compartmentalized I flew home to visit that weekend, spent hours sitting by plastic containers for the week ahead. the hospital bed that had been wheeled into my grandparents’ “But there’re only a few openings now,” she said. “We have to bedroom, talking to my grandmother over the crooning notes take what we can get.” of a Joan Baez CD, the constant drone of C-SPAN, and the hum “Why not just wait until something bigger opens up?” I asked. of some sort of machine busy invading her body with tubes. My Naiveté. grandmother—who had had no symptoms the last time I saw her,

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who walked and cooked and danced until just days before I got the call from my mom, who I secretly thought would outlive us all—looked small and fairly well-drugged, but brave. We hit the same topics we always covered: how’s school, how’s work, are you enjoying yourself, I’m so proud of you, have you met a nice Jewish girl yet, are you eating well? But then my grandmother asked me what I wanted to do with my life. Tell me your plans, she said. Show me the future. Show me your future. I’m so proud of you. The second phone call—the one I was expecting but not, of course, prepared for—came two months later. I left my summer job four days early, flew home again, and the next day stepped out of my dad’s car and into the gravel parking lot of Eden Memorial Park. I was greeted by family members I knew from across California, family friends I hadn’t seen in years, a stooped man of almost ninety—one of my grandfather’s friends from the days when he played handball—who stood barely five feet tall, walked in inchlong, shuffling steps, and shook my hand firmly while apologizing for his “handballer’s strut.” I gave the eulogy for my grandmother. I don’t remember what I said. I do remember calling her the Energizer Bubbe. She would have liked that line. And then I carried my grandmother’s plain pine casket up the hill, to the gravesite next to the plot where my grandparents buried their youngest daughter decades ago. The six pallbearers paused every ten feet while the rabbi leading the procession said a prayer. We hauled the coffin past dozens of graves, each marked by a tombstone flush with the ground—no fields of upright crosses in a Jewish cemetery—doing our best to dance around the names, to step on the lattice of grass that framed the plaques and not on the memories interred by them. My grandmother was a small woman, but our arms burned under the weight of the heavy coffin, and the two or three minutes we carried my grandmother in the hot southern California sun lasted into eternity. The rabbi pinned a strip of black cloth to my mother, aunt, and grandfather’s chests at the gravesite. They tore in unison. The coffin was lowered into the grave by six Hispanic men dressed in grimy work clothes, their calloused hands sliding expertly over the leather belts that supported the coffin. My family took turns pouring dirt onto the grave with an upside-down shovel, each pile of dirt stippling the pale pine until the earth had swallowed my grandmother. Unto dust thou shalt return, I believe the saying goes. I’m at about Village 39 when my phone rings. It’s illegal in California to drive and talk on the phone—and I know the Leisure Village police will nail me if I do—but it’s not technically illegal to check who’s calling. Gram. That makes me pause. It always does. My grandfather’s phone died two days after my grandmother, and he’s been using her phone since. I haven’t gotten around to changing the address book entry from Gram to Pops. I realize I’m about to sideswipe a golf cart driving on the side 44

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of the road and swerve around it. The old man behind the wheel of the cart is oblivious. If there’s a cop around, he’s going to get me for that, but since I don’t hear sirens I figure it’s probably safe to pick up the phone. “Hello?” “Heeeeeyyy, kid. It’s Pops. Where are you?” “I’m on my way—I’m in Leisure Village. Almost to your house,” I say as I turn into Village 35. I don’t mention his conversation with the guard. “I’ll be there in one sec.” “Oh, that’s great. Just great. See you soon.”

“The Long Road Home” Natalie Uy He hangs up, and I park my car alongside the curb outside his house. I guess I could park in the driveway now that my grandmother’s copper-colored Lexus is gone—my grandfather sold it three days after the funeral, saying he didn’t want it around the house anymore—but I don’t. Old habits—well, you know. Tradition in Judaism—the oldest of habits—dictates that the immediate family of the deceased actively mourns for seven days, a period of time known as shiva. The first night we sat shiva was a

Friday, and so my family spent the first night with my grandfather, mom, and aunt, accompanied only by a few close friends, each other, and our memories. On the shiva’s second night, the two local Chabad chapter rabbis, who had apparently visited my grandparents often since their move to Leisure Village, came to my grandfather’s house with six other orthodox Jews in tow. From the window I watched them drive up to the house, careen wildly around Village 35’s cul-de-sac, and climb out of their van: first the thickly bearded Israeli driver, then the two rabbis, and finally two Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

“Untitled,” Kate Erickson fathers and three sons, tumbling out onto the pavement like welldressed clowns, faces set in the forced somber expression of people going to mourn for a stranger’s death. Rabbi Yitzhak was the first through the front door of the house, bowing slightly to make it under the threshold in his large black hat. My mom was the first to greet him, but Yitzhak remained silent. “Eileen!” Rabbi Zev burst through the screen door, pausing only to place a hand quickly on the mezuzah nailed at an angle to the frame. He asked how my mother was coping, made small talk, but volunteered no hand to her in greeting. 46

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Rabbis Zev and Yitzhak were complete opposites save for their identical black suits, black hats, and black drawstring belts—Zev short and slight, with the scraggly five-inch beard of a man who had just had his first child; Yitzhak well over six feet tall and easily 250 pounds, with a dark brown tangle of a beard that draped over the corners of his mouth and hung down to his solar plexus. Both were New York Hasidim, dressed for eighteenth-century Polish winter and then uprooted, whisked off for miles and decades to the California summer, to my grandfather’s doorstep. My family stood frozen, staring at the mourning task force. Zev

talked nonstop, chattering about deli or babies or my grandmother more aggravation than consolation?—but my grandfather carried or maybe all three while the rest of the group filtered into the through, and Zev and Yitzhak haven’t been back to the house. house; Yitzhak just stood in the corner like Zev’s golem. Finally, The house itself is back to normal. Zev’s tzedakah can sits, halfZev announced how sorry he was for our loss but how happy he full, on a coffee table. The dining room table has been pulled back was to be able to share in the great mitzvah of honoring Doris’ away from the wall, where it previously served diligently as a buffet memory. My family defrosted, the buzz of conversation drowning line. The mirror in the entrance hall, hidden by a draped white out whatever Zev was saying. My grandfather stood near Zev, sheet during the shiva, is uncovered, and my reflection in it catches leaning heavily on his cane, nodding. me off guard. I watched as Zev banked away from my grandfather and “Pops?” wheeled through the crowd, searching for a new target to talk at. “Heeeeeyyy kid!” My grandfather walks out of his study, We locked eyes, and I turned away an instant too late. limping heavily on his cane. He doesn’t have the handballer’s strut “You know, Seth,” Zev said as he walked up to yet, but arthritis and an artificial hip are conspiring me, “I’m the head of Chabad at Cal State to get him there. As per the rules of Channel Islands. You’ve heard of this bereavement, he’s letting his Both were New York Hasidim, school?” gray hair grow—or at least I nodded. not getting it cut—but dressed for eighteenth-century Polish “Good. Beautiful school. other than that he looks winter and then uprooted, whisked off for Your grandfather tells me you the same as always: largemiles and decades to the California go to Stanford. Also a beautiful framed bifocals, thick school. You’ve been to Chabad silver mustache, plaid shirt summer, to my grandfather’s doorstep. services? Do you know Rabbi with three pens and his weekly Dov?” schedule in the breast pocket, blue “Uh, no, I haven’t been. I haven’t met him.” jeans, white Nikes. He holds out his hand to “Oh, that’s too bad. He’s a good man, Rabbi Dov. You go to shake mine, a stilted action he’s fallen into since I left for college. I Hillel?” give him a hug. “No, actually, I don’t really—” We sit in his kitchen to eat leftover deli sandwiches and talk “Well, you would like Chabad. Give it a chance. You should about my summer job. I worked in an engineering lab, and my introduce yourself to Rabbi Dov. Tell him Rabbi Zev says hello.” grandfather, and ex-electrical engineer, is fascinated. At three p.m., “I will.” I haven’t. my grandfather stops the conversation. It’s time for “Judge Judy,” “Good. You’re a good grandson, Seth. Your grandfather is very a post-retirement afternoon ritual for him, so we relocate to the lucky.” living room and turn on the television. Today’s case is as absurd as I thanked him and excused myself to get a glass of water. My any other—someone lent a car to someone else and someone else aunt was on the phone in the kitchen—my grandfather’s landline, returned it with the spare tire missing, or someone tried to make an oversized handset with bold print for tired eyes, large buttons off with the contractor’s money from someone else’s half-dug pool, for arthritic fingers, and prodigious speaker output for deaf ears. or someone’s dad bought someone’s girlfriend breast implants— She was talking in the hushed, rushed tones of someone clearly and my grandfather insists repeatedly that he watches this show upset but not wanting to disturb the guests in the other room. only out of sheer amazement over the litigants. “Guests” is a strange term for mourners, I suppose, but such is a “Who are these people?” my grandfather asks. We both chuckle. shiva with catered food. After “Judge Judy,” Pops has had a full day, and he says he’s “We were told the deli spread would be here by 5 p.m.,” my aunt going to take a nap before dinner. My aunt is coming to visit when hissed, “and it’s almost 6p.m.” She turned, saw me and smiled, and she gets off work, so I tell him I’ll stay until she gets here. We both I smiled back before turning around and leaving the kitchen, faint know this is the last time I’ll see him until I come home again for sibilant sounds echoing off the tile behind me. Thanksgiving. Back in the living room, Zev was shaking a tin can about a third “When do you get back?” he asks. “November twentieth?” full with coins and extolling the virtues of tzedakah—charity—as “I don’t know. Something like that.” a way of commemorating the deceased. The can had his Chabad “Well, I’m going to see you when you get back, right?” chapter’s logo on the side. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to come visit.” I enter my grandfather’s house through the screen door, too, but “That’s great. Let’s get the video chat working, okay?” much more quietly than Zev did. The Chabad visits lasted two more “Sure thing. Sundays are still good?” nights before my grandfather shut down the shiva, both because he “Absolutely.” There’s a pause as he looks up at me. “How tall are was thinking about my grandmother all of the time anyway and you now? 6’1”? 6’2”?” because he was tired of having his house invaded by Orthodox Jews I laugh. “Pops, I’m almost five ten.” he didn’t know every night. I can’t even imagine how the phone “Really? Jesus. You know, I used to be 5’10 3/4”. That was a while call to Rabbi Zev went—how do you tell someone his solace is ago now, I guess.” He moves next to me and stands up straighter, Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

trying to compare our heights. “Yeah, a while ago. Sure you’re just I minimize the window quickly, and meet my grandmother’s 5’10”?” stare again. The house is still hers in so many ways—the walls are He’s at least two inches shorter than me. “Pretty sure,” I say. covered in pictures of her and pictures she took; her desk sits as “You get back here November 20th?” she left it in the sunroom; her hair curler is still in the medicine “Something like that.” cabinet above the master bathroom’s sink. But her car is gone, and “Come visit, okay?” her smell is gone, and it’s close to four and she’s not in the kitchen “I will.” starting to cook the lamb chops. And I realize what I think my “Okay then. I’m going to lie down. Have grandfather must have realized: he’s alone in paradise, which Wendi wake me up when she gets makes it rather indistinguishable from hell. here?” The freshly mown lawns “Can do. Bye, Pops.” I’m happy to leave when my aunt shows “Bye, kid.” up—mostly because it’s almost five, and remind me of Death with a capital D, I watch him shuffle o’clock anywhere near Los Angeles probably because people tend to talk about five into the master bedroom. means it’s going to take me two hours Death’s icy scythe that doth reap the I don’t have a book with to get home, half of which will be spent me, and I’m not as much on one ten-mile stretch of the 405. cornstalks of our lives. of an avid daytime television I say my hellos and goodbyes at watcher as he is, so I head to the the same time and hurry out That’s a ridiculous study, towards the internet connection. the door, leaving my aunt to metaphor. I always used to think of my grandfather as extremely the leftover deli food and the technologically literate—almost dangerously so for a man of not insignificant task of waking my his age. Before his move into assisted living, he taught computer grandfather for dinner. classes in senior centers and elementary schools, and he had three In my car, I slump into the polyester seats, turn the key in the working Apple computers and a laptop in his study. He gave me my ignition, and listen to the radio roar to life with the engine before first computer—a big, gray Macintosh manufactured around the swinging around the cul-de-sac to head back to the main road. The year I was born, complete with an auxiliary external floppy drive sprinklers are on and it strikes me that this seems like an incredibly for 5¼ inch diskettes. Now, his study has one working Mac and one stupid time to be watering the grass but then again something broken laptop, and he struggles to check his voicemail. I get emails has to keep it green, I guess. The water droplets sparkle in the late in all capital letters. afternoon sun. I flip down my sunshade. The blinds are closed and the lights are off in the study, but I’m The freshly mown lawns remind me of Death with a capital D, too lazy to let in light. I turn on the working Mac’s monitor—a big, probably because people tend to talk about Death’s icy scythe that glossy, 27-inch iMac—and am greeted by a blown up picture of doth reap the cornstalks of our lives. That’s a ridiculous metaphor. my grandmother smiling back at me from inside the screen. She’s It’s quick, clinical, precise, when obviously death is none of these wearing the purple sunglasses and red lipstick she always wore, things. The Talmud instead describes the Angel of Death as being her bangs curled as she would do meticulously every morning. “full of eyes.” I think I like this image better. We watched my I think it’s a picture from the last time I went to lunch with my grandmother for two months—watched, observed, studied—but grandparents at the assisted living apartment they lived in before now we see her. We see her around the corners of the empty house, Leisure Village—I can hear my grandfather asking for a hot dog by the unruffled half of the king-size bed, in the faraway sheen of with sauerkraut and my grandmother rolling her eyes behind those my grandfathers eyes when he tries to talk about her and simply sunglasses and saying, “Marty, the salt!” Files are strewn around says, “She was a good kid.” I hope I can live up to the same epitaph. her face in no conceivable order: detritus that seems to stem from There’s no security to leave the community, just a California not fully understanding how to find anything on the computer roll of a stop as I wait for the guard booth’s automatic arm to open that’s not placed on the desktop. The Mac’s screen illuminates my fully. A different security guard is stuffed into the stall this time, grandfather’s desk, covered in piles of receipts and forms: detritus and he nods slightly at me as I drive through. Is the gate staffed for that seems to stem from the legal and fiscal consequences of losing twenty-four hours a day? How long’s this guy’s shift? And who gets a loved one. shafted with the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift in that little booth at the I open up Safari thinking I’ll check my email or browse front of Leisure Village? But then I’m through the gate and it lowers Facebook for a while, but I never make it that far. Safari paints a behind me, shutting in my grandfather, shutting in the impressions tableau of frequently visited pages on the blank canvas of a new my grandmother’s hospital bed has left in the carpet, shutting in tab, and between some YouTube video of a skateboard trick that the deli food and the rabbis and the patrol cars and the lawns and I’m sure my cousin is responsible for and my grandfather’s Gmail the golf carts and wrapping it all up with the sign hanging along the account, there’s something jarringly out of place: wall that separates Leisure Village from the rest of the world. SingleSeniorsMeet.com. “Leisure Village: Safe. Quiet. Affordable.”

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

THE SONG OF A

carnival killing

Ting ping ping Are the sounds your teeth make on concrete Skidding on concrete! It’s the sound that accompanies your last grimace The dance is the way your body curves One two step, join in! You knock and spread out on the asphalt Count the beats, pop, bam!

One! Two! Your face is a cracked pot You smile through pink gums And the ground around is littered with little teeth They pitter and pop like dancing feet Some small sections of jaw Look like they could reattach and start a song Then your tongue unfolds like a scroll And a coin drops to the concrete, it rolls Jackpot, you win! That long and pointed tongue Flips and trembles outside of the mouth, it sings Then you wheeze and whack! The hinges of your face unlock Dust escapes like steam from a machine And then the spring winds up And you burst into something new! The rest of your gleaming flesh unfolds Now the song slows down The melody untunes The step moves slower, much slower now The shedding of the liquid beneath the skin Spreads out on the concrete, it covers That coin and those white teeth Hush glug glug, this slow chug Drowns out sound then exhales, ahh The skin is empty now The last note holds like a slow stream pooling The dance is done, so hold that pose

– LEIGH LUCAS

“Before” Jin Yu Charcoal

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

“Pig from Full Circle Farm” Mila Re 50 Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

CONTRIBUTORS

JACKIE BASU is a junior from Palos Verdes, CA CAROLINE CHEN is a sophomore from Hong Kong KATE ERICKSON is a sophomore from Carlisle, MA WILL GEIER is a junior from San Diego, CA DANIEL GRATCH is a junior from New York, NY JOY HENRY is a senior from Inglis, FL ERIC KARPAS is a sophomore from Livingston, NJ TAMARIND KING is a sophomore from Albuquerque, NM LEIGH LUCAS is a senior from Bethesda, MD IRIS OUYANG is a freshman from Huanggang, China KATIE PYNE is a sophomore from Los Angeles, CA TIFFANY QUACH is a junior from San Francisco, CA MILA RE is a sophomore from Davis, CA MELISSA RUNSTEN is a senior from Alpharetta, GA FALLON SEGARRA is a sophomore from Clifton, VA NATALIE UY is a sophomore from San Antonio, TX SETH WINGER is a junior from Santa Clarita, CA LAUREN YOUNGSMITH is a freshman from Littleton, CO JIN YU is a junior from Jeon-ju, Korea JIN ZHU is a junior from Mission Viejo, CA

HOW CAN I SUBMIT TO LELAND? •

Leland publishes three times per year. We accept submissions on a rolling basis throughout the year.

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All submissions to Leland must be original, unpublished work.

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Leland accepts and encourages submissions in a wide range of disciplines, including fiction, poetry, art, creative nonfiction (e.g., memoir, campus culture, student life), reviews (books, movies, music) and political essays (fulllength investigative pieces).

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The editors of Leland are concerned first and foremost with the quality of expression exhibited in a work, and not in the genre of work itself. Our goal is to have quality content across a breadth of disciplines, so please do not be afraid to innovate in your submissions.

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There is no expectation in terms of length of essays, poems, or fiction. We request, however, that you send in no more than six poems at a time and a maximum of four longer pieces.

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Leland accepts submissions exclusively from current Stanford undergraduates.

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All submissions are judged anonymously by the editors.

Submissions can be sent to lelandquarterly@gmail.com with “Name, Genre” in the subject line. Check out lelandquarterly.com for more details. Leland Quarterly Spring 2010

Volume 4, Issue 3 Copyright ÂŠ 2010 by Leland Quarterly Stanford University lelandquarterly.com 52

Leland Quarterly Spring 2010