Main Street 2020 Vol. ii by Main Street Magazine

MAIN STREET MAIN STREET MAIN STREET

2020 2020 vol. ii

GROUNDS FOR THE GROOVE In the grand scheme of things, we are all nothing; miniscule inklings who float along a streamlined consciousness for a fraction of a moment in the universe’s larger existence. So what to make of our role, our importance? At Main Street, we aspire to create watercolor relics of a time and place; snapshots of existence to be tried and tested as true. We aim to capture our individual and shared experiences in a variegated palette of nonconformity, mysticism, sorcery, hope-hoarding, hope-sharing, non-muzzling, the preservation of frivolity in the eye of mechanistic efficiency, the perforation of skylarking as a higher art form. To be open, accepting, free-willed and free-spirited, when many facets of society would rather churn out blank-faced workers designed to be mere numbers in a computer. We hope to rage and riot against this inhumane atrocity that denies the people of their soul power; we hope to kill the ego but embrace the individual with understanding and goodwill. We aim to do this through magazine pages of expression, dedicated to the things that connect us to our greater collective consciousness. One can only hope there’s more than statistics and deadlines and gadgets to this life; that there’s a beating, breathing creative heart behind each creation that leaps up in each of us when we allow it to behold the miraculous. Our goal, then, is to set this heart free, to let it run in a foolhardy and illuminated gait across the pages of our simple magazine. We invite you to take part in this journey guided by our team of co-conspirators, the many individuals who write, edit, design, and harness the magic of guileless enchantment open to every welcoming soul. As always, with love,

MAIN S STREET TREET MAGAZINE MAGAZINE MAIN

CONTRIBUTORS MARLIES AMBERGER CAROL BEATON SADIE BURGESS DEUS BOERNER JACK BOUCHARD SAMANTHA COETZEE EVAN EDMONDS ABBY FISHER CAROLINE FITZGERALD ALEXA GAGNE JULIA GOMES IAN LENAHAN CATRINA MARR NICK PICHIERRI OLIVIA POTENZIANO DOUG RODOSKI MEAGHAN SCOTTI JASMINE TAUDVIN

CALEB JAGODA Managing Editor

CHAD RIPLEY Editor-in-Chief “What in the world is going on / All we have to do is get along / I want to float like life has just begun.“ - Half a Kiss, Babe Rainbow

“‘Bill, when you’re my age, you’ll find out it’s the little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a hopped-up car, you know why? Because it’s full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing. You’ve time to seek and find. I know--you’re after the broad effect now, and I suppose that’s fit and proper. But for a young man working on a newspaper, you got to look for grapes as well as watermelons. You greatly admire skeletons and I like fingerprints; well and good. Right now such things

are bothersome to you, and I wonder if it isn’t because you’ve never learned to use them. If you had your way you’d pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you’d leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you’d have a devil of a time thinking up things to do so you wouldn’t go crazy. Instead of that, why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life, son.’” - Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

MEET THE EDITORS

DELANEY RIPLEY Content Editor “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak” - Audre Lorde

ANNA PARISI Creative Consultant

SAM EGGERT Content Editor Eggs are a staple. Eggs are in my name so that’s important to me, so I know how to cook eggs well. To those women reading, let me know how you like your eggs in the morning. Because I’ll cook it perfectly. If you want them in the late afternoon, that’s fine by me because I like them whenever, it doesn’t really matter. Yeah, I’m doing my thing, you’re doing your thing. You want eggs? I’ll chef it up. - Sam Eggert, Down the Line

“I, uh, don’t think I’m, y’know, so different than your average, y’know, average.” -Jeff Goldblum

Sometimes, it just be them seasons. Predatory capitalism. And all the -isms, you know what I’m saying? And everybody’s fed up. And people don’t know what to do, so we make our art and art is beautiful. But art is also the truth. So we know you know. Come on, you know. You know you know you know.” - Big Sen, “Mirage”

OUR

FAVORITE QUOTES

ALYSSA DOUST Design Editor “I wake up in the morning thinking about food.” - Guy Fieri

EVAN RINGLE Content Editor “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” - Lester Bangs in “Almost Famous”

“Instead of entertaining regret, why not assume that all you have done in the past was the best you could do and that it is leading you to where you are right now.“ - Unknown

THERE’S NO DENYING IT: These have been odd, tumultuous times for all of us. Mentally, spiritually, financially, and in countless other ways, this pandemic has been quite the challenge. So I suppose the question remains: How does one respond? At Main Street, we’ve aimed to encourage everybody to express themselves in any way that feels good and natural and cathartic and uplifting. And the result is a testament to the creative resilience and benevolent spirit of humanity. From Catrina’s wonky, soul-stained drawings of her view from quarantine, to Chad’s final send-off to the mag – nearly 2,000 beautiful words full of wisdom, equanimity, and gratefulness – to Jack Bouch’s stunning photography of surfers creating fluid ocean poetry, this final issue has been especially special and intrinsically timely. Our goal for this issue, then, is to bring solace to the wounded, hidden spirit when it needs it the most; to display the funky reveries of many beautiful weirdos in a notebook-style groove of bottled quarantined thoughts; to create and present “aloe vera sentences to heal the scars,” as Noname so ethereally put on “Forever.” These times have been challenging, yes, but this has only made the heartfelt expression of our inner meddlings even more of a sacred, precious currency to never be taken for granted. As I move forward as Editor-in-Chief, I’ve inherited insurmountably ginormous shoes to fill. Chad made Main Street not only a fun little side project—he made it this vivacious, tranquil, accepting creative community where all were welcomed and the voices of the many oddball creatives littering UNH’s campus were not only celebrated but laminated and preserved forever as a fine art. All these cerebral ponderings that only exist inside the walls of our head are indeed art—and Chad created an atmosphere

TH BRE DOW

HE EAK WN

where people could feel completely comfortable sharing and making tangible these inner mosaics. The magazine saved Chad, giving his college experience purpose and meaning; but maybe even more so, Chad saved the magazine, giving it purpose and meaning and streaking originality. I couldn’t feel more honored that he chose me to take his helm as Editor-in-Chief, and all I can hope to do is continue this gorgeous renaissance of creativity, magnanimity, and mindfulness that Chad has conjured. Working with Chad, our faculty advisor Jaed Coffin, and countless others, we’ve developed a lot of big and exciting plans for Main Street next year and beyond. But the central goal remains the same: To capture and display the voices of the many passionate bohemians on campus, to have this open-minded, like-minded, at-ease community where all are welcomed to share ideas, conversations, and smiles, and to do so with our hearts in the right place—because, in the end, this is what really shows. As always, with love, Caleb Main Street Mag

The bitter sweetness of times I wish to capture Abandon reason for the slime of greener pastures - Earl Sweatshirt, “Mirage”

Photo by Jack Bouchard. I mean, who else would we trust to fill these pages time and time again. 9

C ATR I N A M A R R

YOURSELF YOU GOTTA SEE

BY ANNA PARISI My mind is as coiled as my hair, rebelling against elastics that stretch and snap in efforts to contain it. For a long time, I felt like a walking contradiction, like being more than one thing divulged a complex otherness that was not compatible with a homogenous world. I sliced open all my parts and made them new. I took to this task with a vengeance, seeking to manufacture comfort in a body and brain that knew none. I was deeply conflicted by the simultaneous existence of opposing traits: synonym versus antonym. I was both feminine and crude. I was both loud and quiet. I was open-minded and hard- headed, serious and goofy, intelligent and clueless, abrasive and soft. I was the kind of person who wanted an object to hold, just to have something to do with my hands. I wanted to be categorized because I wanted to have a place to be. I filed away my edges, reducing my personality to make it more digestible and readily consumed. I sought out a single word – ordinary – to confine my eccentricities. I wrote the word in marker across my forehead, but was uneasy when people looked me in the eye instead. My performance never felt adequate. I rubbed my skin raw in revision, applying practiced penmanship and clean font. I reviewed encounters and interactions of each day like an athlete combing through his game reels, noting faults in formations, routes, and tendencies. These warring versions of myself were reflected in the rooms I inhabited. My childhood bedroom walls – the color of bubblegum – competed with black-and-white photos of movie scenes and grunge-y music posters. My freshman year dorm room was saccharine; a mosaic of high school photos taped to cinderblock, glossy trappings outfitting institutional furniture and space monopolized by an excess of stuff. Sophomore year was the same dorm, different

TO WANNA BE

YOURSELF room. Gone were the pictures of high school glory days, gone was the cloying décor. A lava lamp was introduced and lasted for a week before someone knocked it over. It shattered to the floor in technicolor carnage. Junior year I moved into my first apartment. Emboldened by an abundance of carpet and floor, I didn’t dare clutter it with things. I purchased a ladder bookshelf to house a bounty of books and a small bedside table to match. The bedding was plain and white. Barring a sparse collection of art on a single wall, the room was stripped and bare. At the beginning, it felt uncomplicated. With time, it made me sick. Books collected dust and the white walls, once fresh and bright, now felt bald and grim. The blankness swallowed me whole. I took time off from school and returned to my four pink walls. It was in this room, surrounded by teen idols and tchotchkes, that I discarded reinvention and caught footing in the constant becoming. Reinvention implies that you don’t like yourself, that there was nothing there to like from the start, but to reimagine is a different kind of coming of age. To quote American poet Sonia Sanchez, “Reimagine how—how I must live, how I must rearrange my bowels, how I must rearrange my toe jam, how I must rearrange my hair, my breasts—how I must rearrange my thoughts.” In these rooms of mine, people filtered in and out, knowing me and not knowing me. It wasn’t until later that I realized the mystery was not theirs to solve. I reconciled all my pieces. I found people who saw each and every one of them. This year I lived in a small, overcrowded apartment, with rooms a circus clown must have designed. In the smallest room I ever lived in, I fashioned a kaleidoscope of music, movies, madness, and mayhem that suited me just fine.

F F L L A AT T

ART BY SAMANTHA COETZEE

T TIRE IRE 14

BY EVAN RINGLE

The coronavirus has unexpectedly interrupted all of our lives. All of us at UNH were obviously saddened and sullen to hear from our administration that our temporary two-week absence from campus would be extended for the rest of the semester. It was an unfortunate yet necessary precaution to take as we heard from the news about developing cases across the country. Words never heard before like “social-distancing” and “self-quarantine” were adopted into the public lexicon seemingly overnight, and we braced ourselves for a moment truly unprecedented in our personal experience as Americans. My greatest hurdle through the first weeks of the shelter-in-place mandate was the incredible task of staying home all the while maintaining my sanity. I was almost never home during high school. After school, I’d work. And after work, I’d be with my friends. I spent more weekends at my best friend’s house than my own during high school. There was an unspoken understanding that their futon in the basement was my futon. So after three years of posthigh school commuting along with the years of previous lodging, my parents’ home was the

Art by Samantha Coetzee

last place I wanted to be. This was my first year at UNH, and the fact that I was once again returning to Merrimack, New Hampshire didn’t give me any feelings of elation. My life has never felt so halted as it has these past weeks. Besides the weekly video conferences and the headaches from doing academic work somewhere other than a library, I have never gone through such a standstill. Since my high school graduation, I’ve been committed to using my time as productively as I could so that when I finally got my degree, I would feel safe. I saved every paycheck I got from work, I never missed a homework assignment, I took my creative ventures seriously, I watched what I ate, and I didn’t drink or smoke (for the most part). But as the nation shut down, there wasn’t much I could do to push myself forward besides academics. I could’ve gotten some hours from the Hannaford I worked at down the street last winter break but succumbing to an incurable virus wasn’t worth the risk. I tried to record music, but with my parents and siblings always home, there was no way to find moments of peace where a guitar or vocal take didn’t have my cousin’s parrot chirping in the background or my dad’s voice thundering from upstairs because of his partial deafness. The problem-solving mechanism in my brain fried itself, and I’d just sit at my desk chair, my internal voice screaming “WHAT THE FUCK?” For years I’d treated my professional and personal affairs like that of a disciplined gardener. Precision in the trimming of the hedges and color-coordinated flower beds. The grass never grew above an inch. But this shelter-in-place…this enforced lack of effort; the supreme order to DO NOTHING for once…turned my blood into oil and short-circuited my motor skills. Movement meant nothing when the world was at a pause. My well-kept garden quickly deteriorated. The hedges resembled broccoli crowns, wild yellow daisies sprung up between my patches of blue and violet carnations, and my once beautiful lawn of grass was long enough to resemble a member of Led Zeppelin’s hair. My garden, my life, had returned to its natural form. My own hair was getting too long. And it was only going to get longer. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to the fact that I’m a pretty cynical person. I don’t expect much from people, and I certainly don’t wake up each morning with any real excitement for all of the wonderful and splendid adventures to come from today! That’s only become truer as I’ve gotten older. With the constant juggling of school and work coupled with a high-functioning addiction to the news, you lose the sense of wonder you had as a kid. But after being stuck in my childhood home for long enough, I remembered that’s what it was: my childhood home. There were stories here. There were birthday parties, sleepovers, and high school girlfriends. “I’m going to get my bike tires pumped,” I thought to myself one morning. I hadn’t ridden a bicycle in six years. The happiest memories I have from being a kid come from riding my bike around my neighborhood. It was how I made my first group of real friends: Daniel, Kyle, Tighe, Aaron, 16

and Aidan. I remember perfectly the first time I ever heard them at the door. It was the summer after third grade. I heard my dog barking, I opened the door, and there was my classmate Danny with Kyle, another kid who went to our school. “Hey, we were going to ride around and were wondering if you wanted to come,” said Danny. I don’t even remember how he knew where I lived. But anyways, I got my bike, and off we went. I don’t remember how everything fell together exactly, but I know that was the start of everything. My first real group of friends. I feel like I was never home that summer. All I can remember is being tire-to-tire with these new comrades of mine, exploring our neighborhood which seemed never-ending to me. Soon we went further than just a couple of blocks. I remember the first time we trekked to the gas station a mile away. I got a cherry ICEE and a Hershey’s chocolate bar. We’d walk to the gazebo next to the store and stay there for hours, doing whatever 9-year-olds do. I can’t remember exactly what that was, but I recall plenty of bruises and sunburns. My bicycle wasn’t just a menial activity to us anymore; it was our way of exploring and learning about what was beyond our street. It was my first taste of freedom. I was growing independently from my parents. With the thanks of my uncle’s electric air pump, I got one of the bikes in my garage to work without any issues. It hadn’t been used in around seven years. I hadn’t ridden on a bicycle since at least 2012. So I broke the dry-spell and went for a ride. I traced through my neighborhood feeling its endlessness and its stillness all over again. The winding of the streets, the dips and scrapes in the pavement. I rode by Tighe’s old house where I used to play Super Nintendo when my mom wasn’t there to pick me up from the bus stop. I recognized the dirt road where I noticed the locust on the inside of my arm on my way home from school in 5th grade. I sped down the street where Kyle Barrows shot me with an airsoft rifle when I was 12, and I took a lap in the neighborhood where Danny used to live. I remembered being 15 leaving his house so stoned I could barely drive my bike home, a five-minute trip becoming a half-hour odyssey. When I got home, the sun was starting to set. As I pulled into the driveway, I looked at the yard and saw us pretending to smoke candy cigarettes we got from the ice-cream truck. I saw Danny as the 11-year-old hellraiser he was, and I saw myself: an overweight frecklefaced twerp grateful for his company. The stillness of this month has given me the gift of looking back on a period of my life I haven’t had the time or ability to look back on. It was a beautiful collection of years where my biggest worry was what I’d do when it got too dark and I’d have to say goodbye to my friends, eager to see them again the next day. For the first time since leaving for UNH, or perhaps even before then, I truly feel like I’ve returned home. And as I wait to return to school, I don’t mind retracing some old steps in the meantime. 17

Don’t be afraid. Because tomorrow’s not promised. Do you. That’s all we can do. Listen; learn how to cope with reality. You only get one, so live life. Be safe. Watch who you call your homie. They come and go. Don’t gotta be gangsta all the time. Believe me; it can be so nice. Make use of the time. Make it live forever. A woman’s life is love. A man’s love is life. Keep on minding my business. - Knxwledge

We have to believe in the miraculous. The unattainable. The surreal serendipity dripping from visions of tomorrow like gold-spun strands of honeycomb honey. If we don’t, if we let this beautiful butterfly tomorrow dance away with its rainbow stained-glass wings flapping like dual kites in the soft breeze above our dirtburied heads, then we’ve let happiness escape. This isn’t to say the sparkling, stunning landscape of the now, which is full of enchantment in every whiff, isn’t paramount; it’s actually to reinforce this very idea by imagining an incandescent tomorrow filled with even more dalliance. One that exists much like the now, only it levitates without a single wrinkle strangling the open air, framed by a soothsaying landscape of variegated watercolors and wisdoms upon a vast reverie that wafts with the grace of a hot air balloon over the tumult and tyranny of a summer thunderstorm. These visions, in all their shared schematics and bellowed laughter and great hope, are what constitute the very joy that’s so anticipated. This wonderful tomorrow will come; it always does, although very seldom in the exact preordained image you imagined it being on that rainy Tuesday alone in your room, or on that out-of-breath laughing spree Wednesday evening when you mapped out every corner and crevice of the tomorrow with your closest friends as you made dinner and terrible, hilarious jokes. As we all wait for tomorrow, don’t forget about the reverie of now glittering in your mind—don’t forget that it’s just as precious. This whole thing is all very simple when we make it so—there’s no need to piddle in the drivel. Every ounce and second and grain of life is out there waiting to be grabbed and squeezed and embraced and taken. Simplicity, love, solace, whimsy, respect, skylarking. These are the cornerstones of every future endeavor. 18

DNT.B.AFRD.XF.TH.WY.U.FL words and photography by caleb jagoda

Y L A

R K

HERES HERES T TO O THE THE GOOD GOOD T TIMES IMES HERES T O THE GOOD T IMES

WORDS BY CAROL BEATON

S S S

I like lists. Some would call me type A; however, the relative messiness of my life would beg to differ. My best friend would probably analyze it as my minor OCD coming out (she’s a psych major by the way). Honestly, I always thought I liked lists because every time I got to cross something off I felt like I just won a freaking Oscar. Even if the thing being crossed off was “1. Get out of bed you lazy bum.” A few years ago I started keeping lists of all the good things in life. The little or big things that brought me joy and happiness. My lists typically housed things that I had encountered or noticed that day or during a recent experience. I now have years worth of entries, all full of random scents, sounds, objects, tastes, people, and feelings that make me smile. During this time when everything is going to shit, I have been leaning on these little journal entries as a crutch. I mean it literally feels like everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong right now, so what better time than now to keep track of the things that keep my world bright and sunny? In keeping with the journal theme of this issue quite literally, here are some excerpts from my actual journal. Now, the great majority of my lists are made up of people. My best friends, my family, my crushes, my coworkers, and even random strangers. It is becoming more and more apparent that people rule my world. I am, what do they call it, a “people person”? The people in my life are my life. With that being said, we are living in a time where most people are physically out of reach. I have had to center this new way of life around the non-human connections.

SO, HERE ARE SOME OF THOSE “GOOD THINGS” Bare feet in the early spring grass. The blades warm from the sun but the soil freezing from the cold night before. My toes go numb, and putting socks back on feels like a hug for each and every one of my toes. Seeing my grassstained feet and thinking of the soon-coming summer when my feet are in a state of perpetual blackness and filth, in the best way possible. They look like childlike fun, no worries, a simple state of life. Noise. The beautiful filler of the dreaded silence that accompanies quarantining alone. My upstairs neighbors shouting, screaming, singing, stomping, reminding me that life continues to be lived on. A crackled record spinning, transporting me decades into the past. Shrieked laughter, sometimes my own, sometimes from a nameless passerby, sometimes from a loved one through my phone speaker. Early morning bird trills, slicing through the dewy air, nature’s alarm. I don’t even mind when they wake me up far too early. Muffled voices, humming, cars driving by, music, whistling, any form of those vibrations that reach my eardrums, consuming the stillness. 21

SUNSHINE. GLORIOUS, BEAUTIFUL, SUNSHINE. That bridge in College Woods. The one right by the old drinking water treatment plant that I bet a lot of you didn’t even know was our drinking water treatment plant. The sound of the water cascading over the dam, washing away any worries or stresses. Watching those bad thoughts float away on the other side of the bridge, down the river, then around the bend, disappearing, at least for a moment. The excitement of anticipating the arrival of a package. Ordering something, or better yet someone asking for my mailing address. Receiving mail that’s not a bill or credit card advertisement. My name, written in someone else’s handwriting. Slipping my finger under the envelope flap, hearing the tearing sound of ripping paper, ravishingly opening the letter or card or box, gobbling up the contents uncontrollably. Coffee. Need I say more? Well, I will, whether I need to or not. The scent of the dark roast grounds filling the room. The kettle boiling with enthusiasm. The glass walls of the French press fogging up with steam. Just one sip and now the day has begun. Magnolia trees. The sickly sweet smell that draws me in. It almost feels like a trap. Trying to resist the urge to pick the delicate white-pink flowers but failing to do so. 22

The petals falling off the bloom before I even reach home. The addicting fragrance left behind on my fingers is the only trace of the beautiful bloom that’s left behind. The smell of garlic sauteing in olive oil. Such a common and simple thing, yet it is decadent, rich, and pleasurable to me. The beginning of any and all great meals, an indicator of savory delight. The scent encompassing the kitchen for hours post-cooking. The sunny spot on the couch. The living room is chilly in the morning, especially in comparison to the warmth and comfort of bed and sleep. My toes remain freezing while the rest of my body warms up, my face first. Pretending I am a house cat, basking in the beams. The intensity of the early rays so powerful that I can’t feel or think of anything else. Although these are things that bring me joy, I’m hoping they at least made the corners of your mouth twinge up a little bit. Lord knows we could all use a few more reasons to smile nowadays.

concrete dreams. by chad ripley

That’s why we ride a piece of wood, like, what that does to somebody’s spirit. - mid 90’s

TH R E E P O E M PA C K BY N I C K P I C H I E R RI

YE S SI R Everybody has things to do. There’s clothes to be bought, Windows to wash, Exits to take, hands to shake, Meals to bake, lists to create. Make a grocery list, don’t forget to, In fact, add that to the to do list. Fold the note into quarters; Tuck it into your corduroys. We’re out of milk, could use some eggs, And haven’t had cheese in weeks. Weeks? has it really been– Meatloaf! Get meatloaf! It’s been weeks since we’ve had meatloaf. Now put on your loafers, loaf later, You want to retire one day, right? It’ll be great, they tell me. My little cubicle is also great; A really fantastic shade of gray. Every now and then, though, I wish I could– Come in early? Sure, I don’t mind skipping breakfast, I’m out of eggs anyways. See, the store always closes before I– Complain? Never, I like having An empty fridge, Gives me more room to– Focus more, yes, I’ll focus more, I just need to focus more, you’re right. Yessir, I do understand. Yessir, I am sorry. 27

R RIIS SE E,, F FA AL LL L,, R RE EP PE EAT AT Like pandas perched on bamboo shoots, I shimmied up the forest trees And overlooked the canopy Of dead leaves and naked roots. The sun was rising on the horizon (Surprising, I know) And I was hiding inside a patch of rocks, Watching birds launch off branches Like feathered astronauts. Later that same day my timer rang, Indicating a finished load of laundry. My back pocket was full of quarters, Making me feel uneven. And I was rushed, driving Past pedestrians too slow to cross And squirrels too stupid to know That even time runs out. At night, after a couple of beers, I stumble to my stoop for a smoke, Thinking life is nothing Except sleep, food, and sex. I ask the stars for input, But they just shimmer, Indifferently, Like a woman’s shrug, Almost as if to say “Is that all you think about?”

WITH ITH E ER RE ED D W Dandelions aren’t roses And dime-a-dozen women Don’t deserve flowers. You stood among The sturdy shrubs and green trees, Drunk on rainwater and life. I was the man with the pan Of bacon grease, Watching the willows wilt. Sometimes, gravity grabs at Petals and pulls them apart. Oftentimes, I pluck them myself– I guess I like the way they fall. You invited me in for coffee And I watched your body roll As the pot billowed with smoke. “You’re pretty as a flower,” I said, Strafing towards your smiling face, Blinking. And waking up alone.

ONE TWO PUNCH BY CAROLINE FITZGERALD

1. UNTITLED Do you feel The memories that come from the room you’re standing in The ease of a long car ride The emotion from an old song on the radio The nostalgia from a smell The comfort from a best friend’s hug Me, I feel it all 2. WALLS. What are on your walls Are they blank Are you a prisoner in them Or are they full With pictures, posters, paintings Do you change them Do they stay the same Look at them You should like them And if you dont change them, they’re yours

Kneel and let the moment start. The birth of a moment itself, swirling about in the empyrean.

WORDS FROM DENMARK BY DEUS BOERNER

Our eyes are blurry, and the godless glory is astonishing to behold. So perhaps weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll miss it. But nay I think it is here, it is there, and it is all about, the very molecules coalescing into some stunning singularity. The moment, tangible and realized. Like a nameless smithy forging his magnum opus, we have arrived into some golden age where hope might have a chance to get its bearings. The thin veneer named perceptionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; broken and lost to another age, some iteration of ourselves gathering dust.

Stand beside me, brothers and sisters. Together shall we float amidst destiny and bring meaning into existence. I think we might all be looking for the path that was promised. And it was right over our heads all along, a metaphysical joke far beyond our own wit. The dulcet sounds of dawn are upon us now. They allow us to bask in the radiance with some measure of peace. Without them, we would surely be lost in the chaos, the din of men meandering meaninglessly drowning us out forever. Keeping us around in their hazy mess. 32

THE MIIR GE RA AG M E...... A AH HA AH H

LIFE IS IS EITHER EITHER LIFE

A GRAND GRAND ADVENT ADVENTURE URE A

OR NOTHING, BABY,

GO GO HAVE HAVE YOUR YOUR

ADVENTURE. URE. ADVENT

THE SECRET BLUEPRINTS CALEB JAGODA

the sound of the wind is constructed entirely inside of my eardrum, the invisible push whooshing like a maraca of mysticism; a map of the sound of the wind, fully unscrolled, that is, would be a massive blueprint spanning three mess hall tables, every gadget and gizmo and gearshift accounted for accordingly by an artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s zen touch the silence inebriates my brain, drenching it in blankets of blankness invisibility is key invisibility is what allows the wind to keep its secret reign hidden inside each drop of rain

lost once the water shatters on concrete and umbrellas and childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s outstretched tongues reaching for the unattainable invisibility, my friend, allows for the existence of wonder; allow me to wander into wonder for an eternity or two, serendipity streaming over my eyelids, the muffled secret splattering on my face, my worries and desires deserted, finally, for good. may i never know the secret blueprints, for my own good.

a study of log craft & wave forms. by jack bouchard

Christopher Edwin Breaux, better known as Frank Ocean, is a storyteller before all else. His songs often tell an intricate tale in a matter of minutes. On the artist’s sophomore studio album Blonde, he uses his narrative ability to reflect on his own life. On one track in particular, “Self Control,” he sings of love, loss, and bad timing. The songwriter uses literary devices such as juxtaposition and flashback to weave a plot sad enough to leave listeners winded. In this essay, we will unpack “Self Control” and analyze the methods Ocean used to craft one of the most heartbreaking ballads in music’s recent history. So what makes this song so goddamn sad? Before diving into our analysis of Frank Ocean’s “Self Control,” there is something that must be understood. Throughout “Self Control” – and the rest of Blonde – Ocean transitions between his normal voice and altered, high-pitched voices. The varied voices are more than an artistic choice; in the world of Blonde, different voices represent different perspectives. Switching voices can indicate anything from an altered emotional state to a different point in time; in “Self Control,” varied voices are used to represent the latter. The high-pitched voice represents a younger Frank, acting as a flashback that thrusts the song into the past with each appearance. To put it plainly, the song’s chronology is not linear. “Self Control’s” use of pitch shifting allows listeners to follow the song’s timeline as it jumps from past to present and back again, something imperative for understanding “Self Control” and the depth of its sadness. The song begins in the past, though how far exactly in the past is unknown. A high-pitched voice opens the song with the line, “Poolside convo about your summer last night.” Ocean begins to spin his tale 46

A LITERARY ANALYSIS OF FRANK OCEANS

SELF CONTROL

WORDS BY SADIE BURGESS

of lost love and wrong timing with these seven words. Frank sits beside a pool with his love interest, who tells him about his summer. The lyric implies that they spent the season apart, as discussion would be pointless had they been together. The poolside scene continues as the young Ocean asks, “Could I make you shy on the last night... / Could we make it in? Do we have time?” The answer to these questions must be no, no single night is enough time to build a relationship, but Ocean poses the question regardless. Like a kid turning to dad after mom says no, Frank searches for a different answer than the one he’s found. He wants his lover to tell him there’s enough time, despite knowing this to be untrue. The young Ocean sitting beside a pool would rather believe a reassuring lie than face the somber reality. Ocean’s unaltered voice transports listeners to the present day as “Self Control” arrives at its first verse. Time has passed, likely years, but Frank still harbors feelings for his extinguished flame, as is revealed in the verse’s opening line, “I’ll be the boyfriend in your wet dreams tonight.” Frank’s offer applies only to “wet dreams” because the two can only see each other while sleeping. Frank’s feelings and the pair’s time dilemma are unchanged by year separating them from the pool. However, his lover has changed since this night, a fact conveyed later in the verse: “You cut your hair but you used to live a blonded life.” Blonde literally and figuratively represents the individual’s change. Literally, his former lover’s hair used to be blonde, presumably when the two were together. On the other hand, blonde commonly symbolizes youth, innocence, and naivety, traits Frank likely saw in his lover all those years ago. Frank longs for the blonde that he fell in love with, someone who no longer exists. Ocean attempts to change the past with sheer willpower, wishing that he and his lover had “grown up on the same advice / and [their] time was right.” Frank’s desires are futile, but still he harbors them. Frank again finds himself desperate for the impossible, a hopelessness that adds to his heartbreak. The voice alteration from the intro reappears for the chorus. Austin Feinstein sings the chorus, his voice pitched up to indicate a flashback. Though the words don’t come from Ocean’s mouth, they come from his past. The pitch alteration transforms Feinstein into Frank

of the poolside past. The pitched-up voice sings, “Keep a place for me... / I’ll sleep between y’all, it’s nothing.” The young Ocean makes a desperate plea, longing for any place in his lover’s life—even if it means inserting himself into the old flame’s new relationship. After admitting that he’ll settle for just about anything, Frank tries to act nonchalant by adding, “It’s no thing,” to the end of his plea. Despite his attempt to play cool, Ocean has made his most shameless display of desperation yet (though this title will be lost by the song’s end). The song returns to the present for its second verse, where we find Ocean on a dancefloor. The verse begins with Ocean chirping, “Now and then you miss it, sounds make you cry / Some nights you dance with tears in your eyes.” Sadness and dancing are near opposites; happiness most often accompanies dance. But these expectations vanish when a song moves the still-grieving Frank to tears; the depth of his heartache makes him immune to the laws of dance. Ocean’s sadness can be felt even without an understanding of the song’s timeline; the context allows the full weight of this emotion to be understood as something that the narrator has carried from pool to present. The second half of this verse demands its own paragraph. This is where self control’s place within “Self Control” becomes clear. “I came to visit, ‘cause you see me like a UFO / That’s like never,” Ocean sings. He continues, “...’cause I made you use your self control / And you made me lose my self control.” Frank indicates that his loss of self control resulted from the self control he convinced his lover to use. The individuals’ abilities to practice restraint stand in stark contrast to one another, a juxtaposition that reveals a painful irony. Frank once found self control important enough to impose on his object of affection. But with Frank’s request comes fewer visits with his desired partner, and with fewer visits comes the loss of Ocean’s self control. The abandonment of his long-held discipline likely prompted the desperation Frank feels for this person; a loss of control often inspires feelings of hopelessness. Ocean has now lost more than the years spent pining—he has lost a piece of himself, a piece that he falls apart without. This is it; this is the big one. The second appearance of the chorus, “Keep a place for me / I’ll sleep between y’all,

it’s no thing,” repeats. The words aren’t the important part here, we’ve already covered those. Once again, the pitch shifting tells the real story. The first time the chorus rolled around, Feinstein’s pitch was altered to denote coming from Ocean’s past perspective. This time around, the high-pitched voice hasn’t left, but another voice has been added. The unaltered voice of the present sings slightly louder than the past’s altered one, both perspectives equally hopeless in spite of their different vantage points in time. Simultaneously past and present, the brief segment provides a full account of the love affair. Frank’s poolside desperation has persisted over the years; time has not changed anything but the weight of his burden. The altered voice fades out after the chorus’s first line, abandoning the past and advancing. Listeners effectively watch Frank’s feelings move through time, never changing. Ocean compresses the lengthy affair into merely two lines; his desperation of the past fades into the present in a seconds-long recap of the tragedy. The years have not helped Frank move on; in fact, they may have done the opposite. Now that the truth has been revealed, the remainder of the song serves as Ocean’s open and honest final bid for the individual of interest’s heart. After the chorus comes to a close, an ultra-distorted voice enters for the bridge. The pitch has been warped to such a degree that deciphering it requires acute scrutiny. A passive listening may leave one believing that it was nothing but an abstract soprano riff. With a focused ear, the repetition of a previous scene can be heard. The piercing voice sings, “Sometimes you’ll miss it / And the sound will make you cry / And some nights you’re dancing / With tears in your eyes.” Once again listeners find Frank brought to tears while dancing, but when this occurred is unclear, as the perspective represented by the distortion cannot be determined. The critical perspectives, poolside and present Frank, already have designated alterations. A concrete answer can’t be verified, but this doesn’t undermine the emotion invoked by the mystery voice. The warped voice wails above the mellow plucking of guitar strings and humming of what sounds like a violin or cello. The whining voice and delicate instruments blend together to create something that feels otherworldly, comparable to a siren song for its alluring but haunting sound. For the first time in “Self Control,” the use of pitch shifting adds to the song’s emotional impact rather than

its plot. Whether the bridge takes place in the past, present, or future, listeners can feel the heartache and sorrow conveyed through the warped voice. Ocean delivers a grand final plea in the outro of “Self Control.” His unaltered voice swells as he sings to his lost love: “I, I, I know you gotta leave... / Take down some summer time / Give us, just tonight... / I, I, I know you got someone comin’ / You’re spittin’ game, know you got it.” Frank once again disregards the obstacles blocking his path (such as the pair’s lack of time or his partner’s new partner), offering to settle for just one night. This is reminiscent of the song’s intro, when Frank asks his lover if their one night will be enough time. However, Ocean is no longer the young man beside the pool who naively hoped that he could save their relationship with only one night to do so. Frank has lost this innocence by the time he delivers his last appeal; he now knows that strides cannot be made in one night, but desperately wants the time anyway. The plea repeats, even grander than the original. Frank’s vocals are layered on top of one another, bringing something like a church choir to mind. The stacked, choral-sounding vocals act as the song’s boombox-outside-a-window scene: an over-the-top gesture made when nothing is left to lose. Frank repeats his appeal one more time, returning to his singular voice. The song draws to a close and his voice fades, still full of longing and desperation. Poor timing, desperation, and Ocean’s inability to let go of the unattainable mark the failed relationship chronicled in “Self Control.” Together these details paint the picture of a tragic relationship, doomed to fail but sought after nonetheless. Not only could Romeo and Juliet relate to Ocean’s tale, but anyone who has pined for something out of reach. The agony expressed in “Self Control” often leads to the belief that it depicts an unrequited romance. But this is not the case, despite Ocean’s despair. In the interview already previously mentioned, the singer explained that the song “was written about who [he] was actually in a relationship with … we just couldn’t really relate. We weren’t on the same wavelength.” All the pain exhibited by Frank stems not from unreciprocated love, but differences of mindset and lifestyle that make the pair incompatible.

WORDS BY ABBY FISHER ART BY CATRINA MARR

I move around a lot. Not necessarily in terms of permanent address; my actual house has not changed since I was brought into this world. In that sense, I only ever moved from my mother’s womb to the hospital to my standard suburban house where I lived for the next 18 years. However, despite having been settled there for most of my life, I don’t feel particularly attached to my town. There is a lot about it I don’t like to associate with, for example, the prominence of some flags (confederate ones) and the backlash of raising others (LGBTQ+ pride flags). Instead, I’ve made homes out of the people around me in whichever place I wind up in, travels and otherwise. The people I find a home in provide more comfort and protection than four walls ever could. Currently, this sense of home most feels like my best friends’ apartment at school where I spend my spare time. Or where I spent my spare time prior to this tornado of events that uplifted our sense of home and threw it to the wayside. Being surrounded by these four walls, in particular, feels like home because they provide the shelter for my heart to be poured out—along with some tears and some wine. It smells like the first truly successful meal I’ve ever made: red Thai curry, pan-fried tofu, and garlic naan with butter. The rich warmth wrapping around us in a way that only a home-cooked meal could. The meal is made even better knowing all of the times I’ve been cooked for in this same kitchen and that this is my sort of repayment, though my friends would never ask for one. It sounds like people from all aspects of our lives, friends of friends from the past four years that somehow began to overlap seamlessly in an ostensibly miraculous way for a school of 15,000 people, singing karaoke. Three hours later into the evening, it sounds like those same people playing acoustic guitar, some murmuring to each other at a volume just lower than the subtle notes of Mac Miller’s “Surf,” others completely silent just basking in the melodies. Often times this apartment sounds like four boys wrestling above us, crashing into walls and floorboards alike. Yelling, jumping, crashing. Only ever apologizing in the form of Hannaford cakes and leftover beer. Above all else, what it feels like is love, in its purest, simplest form. Simple by choice, hugs and open conversation distilled down from the complex going ons of our lives beyond these four walls and our

beloved blue denim couch. One of the last times I was here before this shit storm of a pandemic happened was right before spring break. We had spent a solid portion of the weekend together. Hosted friends, got bagels and coffee at the beach (a Sunday ritual that occurs about as often as the sun will grace us with her presence), and edited pictures that I now look back on with a smile and slight twinge in my heart. The moon was almost full that night. Four of us were sprawled out on that blue denim couch when we got a text from our friend Joe. “Moon” was all it said. That was all it needed to say. We threw our shoes on, wrapped ourselves in blankets and went outside to admire the moon as it rose over the apartment building. Our friend who graduated the year before sent a picture, acknowledging that she, too, was looking at the moon from her home a few hours away. These types of texts weren’t unusual to receive. In fact, they occupy most of our group message, as we don’t often bombard each other’s phones with “what’s up?” texts. That night, half of us headed back inside to get a start on homework, while Carol and I headed the other way. We went for a walk around campus, just because the moon was that striking and we wanted to see it from as many angles as we could. We had homework to do as well, but we figured it could wait, thinking: in three years would we remember that homework assignment or this full moon? Maybe neither, but the second option was more appealing so moonrise watching we went. Last night, two weeks after an e-mail alerted us that face-to-face operations were halted for the semester and three weeks after receiving the text about the moon, I found myself walking by the kitchen window in my childhood home. The moon was peeking through the trees behind my house. It was nearing full again, illuminating the sky despite being cozily nestled between the branches of trees behind my house. Corny as it sounds, I felt a slight sense of closure and a much larger sense of comfort wash over me as I was reminded of my friends, transported back to my favorite blue denim couch and the walls that surround it. Now surrounded by a different set of walls, but looking at the same moon, I thought to myself “Goodnight A5” and headed off to bed, where ever more procrastinated homework awaited me. With all the love in my heart, now and always, Goodnight A5. Goodnight Moon.

C C ATR ATR II N NA A M MA AR RR R

LOOKIN OUT MY BACK DOOR

STUCK INSIDE

‘

O K AY ‘

IF YOU’RE DONE

IT ’ S

BEING PRODUCTIVE FOR THE DAY AT

BY ALEXA GAGNE

NOON

I want to talk about allowing yourself to not be productive.

During all this time at home, I’m sure you’ve had this same dilemma. Once you finish your work for the day, you go and give your brain a break for a while. But then, guilt kicks in. I’ve been watching Netflix for three hours and it’s not even dark yet. Maybe I should do something productive. There’s a fine line between a well-deserved break and being lazy, right? Normally, yeah. But something we need to realize is there’s been a new normal lately. The situation we’ve been in has offered us time that we haven’t had in years. But what’s more, the emotional toll it’s taken has drained us of any energy we maybe would’ve had normally. You know that feeling you get when Friday hits and you remember that you’re going out with your friends tonight? The zing of energy that comes from stuff like that is something we’ve been lacking. 54

That combination is a recipe for laziness. But that’s okay! Because if doing nothing is what you need right now, that’s what you need. We’ve been raised in a go-go-go society, which means our brains are wired to think that we constantly need to be doing something. But this type of society has never had to deal with social-distancing. That being said, you are not alone! So many people are dealing with the same stuff. Dishes piling up in the sink, bickering siblings, overgrown hair, finishing a TV series in a week…it’s all good! And I know, as a college student, this situation is especially taxing. The biggest element of college is the social aspect: talking with your professor, hanging out with your friends, seeing someone in passing that you haven’t seen since you had that class together…and unfortunately, I can’t say for sure that I’ll see you in the fall. But the Wildcat community is still with you, it’s just a little more spread out. This is a lot. Make sure you’re giving your body what it needs. Feed your mental health with something mindless. Feed your physical health with something that gets your blood pumping. But if your body is asking for something that it might not normally, just remember it’s okay. College is hard work—maybe this is exactly what the doctor ordered.

SOCIAL SLUMPump WORDS BY MEAGHAN SCOTTI

I love social media and all the things it has to offer, but lately I’ve been finding my phone battery constantly running low, and my morale even lower. Since social media is the main way we are currently connecting with friends and family right now, I’ve found that it’s taken a bigger role in my life than ever before. The only way I’m able to keep up with friends is through a Facetime call, a text, or through social media, particularly Snapchat and Instagram. I’m grateful to have these tools available to me, but I’m also finding that the negative aspects are also harder to ignore at a time like this. I normally try not to pay too much mind to the amount of likes I have, or how many people have viewed or responded to my stories, but it’s hard when I am suddenly equipped with exponentially more time to look at these things. I keep finding myself falling into the loop of scrolling through Instagram and reading each name of who viewed my story or liked my posts and checking other people’s activity. It’s making me feel like a psycho crazy person. How do I get out of this mindset when it only feels natural to explore these features with all of this new time on my hands? I’m not trying to say social media is pointless and shallow or claim that I’m above it, because I do love it. But it’s hard to take a step back when it turns from something I enjoy to something that makes me feel bad. Another popular change I’ve been seeing on social media that has made me feel unproductive and lazy is the fact that it feels like everyone is taking up a new hobby or using this time to better themselves in some shape or form. I have a ton of friends selling crafts they’re making during quarantine, like cute and ornate embroideries or handcrafted earrings. As someone who appreciates but sucks at art of any kind, it’s discouraging to see everyone making a ton of cute shit that I want to buy and not having something similar that I’m able to share with my friends and followers. Another proponent of social media that is influencing the way I’m feeling is that not only is everybody getting crafty, but it feels like everyone is eating healthy and getting in shape. People are using their time to prepare health and labor intensive meals, and going on runs or bike rides. All day long I see people riding bikes or going on runs from my bedroom window where I’m still in bed in my pajamas at 3:00 p.m. From there I usually go to the kitchen and make myself a plate of nachos. If I shower it’s a good day. Okay as I wrote this somebody I went to high school with just ran by again. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. But in spite of being down in the dumps about it all, it is good to see how people are making the most of a hard situation and exploring new ideas. 57

I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE. I AM ONLY ON THE WAY - SIDDHARTHA, HERMANN HESSE

WITH LOVE, CHAD. 59

“You’re just living, man... you’re... just there in that moment, in that special place in time. Maybe when I get back, I can write a book about my travels, you know, about getting out of this sick society. SOCIETY! SOCIETY, MAN! SOCIETY! SOCIETY! You know, SOCIETY! Cause you know what I don’t understand, I don’t understand why people, why every fucking person is so bad to one each other, so fucking often. It doesn’t make sense to me. Judgement, control, all that, the whole spectrum…” - ALEXANDER SUPERTRAMP, INTO THE WILD

“The Buddha walked away, and his look and half-smile imprinted on Siddhartha’s memory forever. I have never seen a man look and smile, sit and walk like that, he thought. I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A man only looks and walks like that when he has conquered his Self. I will also conquer my Self.” - SIDDHARTHA, HERMANN HESSE

Firm flower, new attitude What a winter What a good time to Dare to lay down when magic is found And a cute little world for us to see - New Attitude, Babe Rainbow We are nothing, yet we are everything… take that in for a moment. If it still doesn’t make sense after a few moments, it’s fine—I still don’t quite understand it myself. As I’m sure I am not alone in this sentiment, I am reeling, trying to find the words to calm my restless mind during these trying times. Not much of it makes sense. Why? Nobody can put an answer to it, there is no answer—yet, throughout the day, people look to the news outlets for the answers with ensuing feelings of fear, anxiety, a distrust to follow, and pointed fingers. Blame it on CHINA! No, blame it on Trump and his shitty response!! I’ll be the first to admit that at first, all this overwhelmed me. On March 13, I was supposed to board a plane for the first time, fly out to Arizona with my closest compadres, and meet up with a friend who had been living out there. The stage was set for me to finally embark on what seemed like such a big milestone in my life. After that, we were supposed to come back to campus and enjoy what was left in the classroom and outside with all my homies by my side, marching to the beat and sound of our own drum, nestled cozy in a5. Eating, drinking, and being merry—as Dave Matthews would say.

But this anxiety didn’t stem from my existential crisis of not being able to enjoy a $2 PBR in the crowded basement of Scorps, no. Or the fact that I no longer would be driving the 50 minutes four days a week to sit in a classroom. Or even worse, no more Tuesday nights spent with the most creative people on this campus. Rather, for the first time in four years, I didn’t have to be somewhere at a certain time. I had complete control over the time in my day. No answering to anyone, no work, no assignments, no phone calls. It all stopped, right then and there. And I went into shock—and the depression that I managed to find my way out of in the fall came knocking. This time I didn’t answer. I kept Jim Croce’s words, “ain’t nobody seen a rainbow, until he had the rain,” close and the thought that tomorrow certainly had to be a brighter day. The only issue is that the days are starting to melt together, leaving all of us to question every morning, “what day is it, again?” Ever since I got to school, I’ve had this longing desire to change, to strip all that once was. When I arrived on campus nearly four years ago, I was a clean-cut, straight edge kid not knowing how little I knew about the world. My existence to that point had been very comfortable and change was never something that I embraced; rather, it was something I dismissed. I thought that running away from my hometown of Atkinson would bring me peace of mind, would give me a new perspective, something to shake everything that once was. That I needed to find a new home: Durham? California? I kept telling everyone that I wanted to go out West, needed to, actually. I hadn’t even been on a plane, how the fuck would I know that California is the right place for me? Yet, what I didn’t realize then and what I realize now after sitting in self-isolation for nearly two months is that home can be anywhere, that cultivating the peace within myself has to happen no matter where I go.

Like my dear childhood friend Aven told me, “it isn’t about finding the right cave, rather, it is about learning how to make everywhere the cave.” She told me to love and to always tell the truth, that if I can do those two things, then I too can make any place home, whether I am in Durham, Atkinson, or California. But what’s funny about this all is not that I am having this world-shattering realization during this time. It’s that I found my cave up in Durham and I hadn’t even realized it until this very moment. This magazine, the newsroom, the people that make up this community; I carved out this perfect little cave, and in all this time, I hadn’t even realized. I made this cave out of an idea, an attempt to pull myself from the belly of depression and a lack of direction. When sophomore year presented me the challenge of working five days a week to pay tuition, an hour commute both ways to campus, and classes that stripped any bit of soul and creativity out of me, I found myself stumbling through the door on Thursday nights around 6 p.m. after my day of classes in full tears trying to reason to my mother why I thought that dropping out would be the best course of action. I had no money. No direction. No passion. And all the excitement from freshman year wore off when things got real. It was February of 2018. I was painting rooms for friends and family for money, barely scraping the $1,200 mark I needed every first of the month for tuition. I was late on a payment, with UNH breathing down my neck threatening to take away everything I’d worked for with the snap of their fingers. And Blake Wasson, once Editor-in-Chief of this magazine who I’d previously met the weekend prior at a party, walked up to me in Hamilton Smith Hall and told me to come to a Main Street Magazine meeting.

O NOT NEED ME OR A YOU D NYO T NE HA T EL S I SE T N I AR PO TO BRING THIS NEW KIND OF LIGHT OU Y ND M “ “ IN YOUR LIFE. IT IS SIMPLY WAITING OUT THERE FOR YOU TO GRASP IT, AND ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS REACH FOR IT. THE ONLY PERSON YOU ARE FIGHTING IS YOURSELF AND YOUR STUBBORNESS TO ENGAGE IN NEW CIRCUMSTANCES. - ALEXANDER SUPERTRAMP, INTO THE WILD

“What the fuck is Main Street?” is the first thing that came to mind, but he told me I could get some of my pictures published or anything I wanted for that matter. I was skeptical, but instead of running straight to A-lot to my car after my last class, I stuck around and found my way into the newsroom that Tuesday night. It wasn’t a perfect, one-size-fits-all feel at first though; I never went back to a meeting that year actually. Rather, I would text Blake a story idea, something that had been on my mind, something that would never be accepted in the literature-based courses I was taking, where creativity and one’s voice gets stripped for MLA format and thesis statements. After being published twice, I returned to campus junior year and took it upon myself to become more involved, asking to join the editorial staff in the first meeting of the new year. And as they say, the rest is history. With Blake set to graduate in the coming months and the issues surrounding the magazine at the time, that fall semester was all over the place and the uncertainty of this publication grew larger. Blake left me with something special—a vision of his that he wasn’t able to bring to life because of conundrums and distractions out of his control. And he trusted that I’d be able to bring this vision to life. I wasn’t sure if I could, but with little to no certainty, I jumped and didn’t look back. Finally, I was escaping the death grip of a comfortable life and seeing what exactly might come out of doing.

Out of it, this community was born, a place where creative people can express themselves freely, without judgement. A place where vulnerability and honesty are harbored. A place where no matter who was there, new faces or old, it always felt like home. This magazine saved me. It gave me that direction and so much passionate expression I was longing for as a sophomore. And, even better, I shared these experiences with so many people that I get to call forever friends. This time spent alone at home has given me an opportunity to really sit with all that is happening right now. It has provided me the opportunity to embrace things like reading, listening to albums, a night spent by the fire. Four years later I have embraced this idea that we are nothing, yet everything. We are just a small piece of this larger existence, that things happen for a reason, and that if you aren’t careful, you might just get caught up in it all and not even realize what’s happening before your eyes. “Slow down everyone, you’re moving too fast,” we sing with Jack Johnson yet never take a moment to look up and admire the beauty of everything. Without creative expression, life becomes mundane and we lose sense of what’s important. College was fun but it was hard, far more challenging than I ever anticipated. And once again, at the end of this four-year evolution, I stand before a time of uncertainty, of another chapter. This time, no expectations. No pressure. Just living, in the moment. I said it before, but I’ll use at it as my parting words: “Take the risk to be alive and express what you truly are. You never know, something beautiful might just come out of turning the fucking page.” Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this journey. This magazine and the connections I made through my four years are ones I will cherish for a lifetime. I am grateful for all the professors, advisors, and faculty members who believed in my vision, my ideas, and my voice. To my friends in a5, thank you for letting the denim couch be my bed so many nights and being there through my highs and my lows. The bromigos for keeping the roots strong. My family for not letting me drop out and making sure that I know they believe in me. And to the people who believed in me and my vision for this magazine. Who embraced the very same things that I wanted to manifest. Together we did it. Cheers. As always, with love, Chad

hello, thoughts!

by julia gomes

YOU ARE

MORE THAN

A HOL OGRAM WORDS BY OLIVIA POTENZIANO

“We have this idea that someone’s phone will reveal their life, that if you found an iPhone on the streets you’d have access to photos, e-mail, notes, texts, videos, apps. Each of these would project an angle of light that would gradually illuminate a whole person. But the truth is nothing like that. The truth is that a phone will help you build something like a hologram, and if you tried to touch it, your hand would breeze right through the image.” -Kate Fagan

We tend to care a lot about our phones and social media. Always worrying about what to post, what filter will make us look more appealing; always putting our best self out there for the world to see. This isn’t to say our social media doesn’t reflect who we are as people or that we aren’t our most genuine selves on social media; you can be. What I along with many others I’m sure believe is that no matter what you have on your phone or post on social media is not all that you are. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the social media blackhole, but what social media or your phone history won’t show you is the impact you’ve made on people’s lives. Your phone can’t tell you all that you are behind the pictures, emojis, or Snapchat stories. However, the people closest to you can. They see you in your weakest moments and lift you right back up to watch you achieve your greatest accomplishments. These people know you to your core. With all of this and the quote from Kate Fagan in mind I was inspired to see what these important people in our lives had to say about their closest friends. More often than not, we do not express what we love and admire about these people as regularly as we should. We are constantly “interacting” with them via text, Snapchat, or Instagram but it rarely has any substance. Our interactions can become less personal and more about keeping a streak alive. Technology has allowed us to form new connections and advanced our ways of communication farther than we had ever imagined. But what about basic human interaction? That is why I took Fagan’s words to heart and did an experiment with a few of my closest friends from school. Without telling them why I was doing this or the background of the questions I was about to ask, I left them with this question: If someone were to randomly find your phone on the street and had access to everything on your phone (texts, photos, social media), what assumptions do you think they would make about you? What would this person think of you? If you were to pick up Kate Brennan’s iPhone on the side of the street and you unlocked some of her most personal and private information, where

would you start? If you were to start looking through her camera roll you would find pictures of her and her closest friends and lot’s of screenshots of homework assignments and emails. You could make the assumption that she cares about school, but you would be quick to judge her Instagram and assume she is a sorority girl that only cares about partying and going out with her friends and boyfriend. Maybe you would be pleasantly surprised to see her Instagram feed is also filled with vegan accounts and recipes and you could make the assumption she is a vegetarian, but you would be left wondering if she’s the kind of vegetarian that pushes her methods on you or supports you for eating a $40 steak. If you clicked into her call logs you would see regular Facetime calls with her mom and calls to her grandparents. A college student that calls her grandparents, regularly? I guess you could assume she is a kind person that likes to check in on her family and loved ones. For the second part of the experiment, I asked my friends the following question: What about this person do you admire? What is It about them that you were drawn to and have grown to appreciate and love. Why is this person one of your closest friends? What Kate had failed to mention were all the great things beyond her phone that her best friend notices within her. “Kate is the most kind hearted person and is always there to lift me up when I am down. She is one of the most genuine friends I have ever had. I think it’s also important to know about Kate that she is so in tune with her body, her overall health and well being. She knows how food is going to play into that, that’s partially why she is vegetarian. Kate is very understanding and is always down to talk shit with me when I need to. Also, she’s gorgeous. Kate is a naturally beautiful person,” said Cortlynn, one of her best friends. If you were to find Cortlynn’s phone on the street and began looking through her camera roll you would make the assumption that she is obsessed with herself and her image with the amount of pictures she has of herself. Her Instagram feed would solidify that image you have in your mind of the girl she would be: a blonde, self-centered diva who is in a sorority and prioritizes partying over any-

thing else. You could accredit this diva personality to being artistic and crafty with all of the edits and collages she has made over the years. Taking a deeper look into her personal life you would see phone calls and texts with her family and the bitchy text messages exchanged between her and her older sister. Maybe you could relate, sisters that fight? The odds are pretty likely. Would your judgement end there or would you give her the benefit of the doubt that the sarcastic comments are just a form of sisterly love? Kate and Cortlynn have been very close friends since their sophomore year of college. Now almost graduated seniors, the two have conquered a lot during their friendship. “Cortlynn is one of the most loyal friends I’ve ever had. She is truly a badass and always fights for the people she loves. Whether it’s in the business world or in her personal life she can keep up with anyone. She is seriously a badass. I’ve noticed the only time she is ever quiet is when she is working on an art project. She is always checking in on the people that she loves, whether that’s calling her dad or going out of her way to visit her friends. Cortlynn really values human connection,” Kate said. Our friends know a lot more about us than we give them credit for. Maybe that random call or time you brought them coffee seems innocent to you, but to them it could have meant the world. This is a long way of saying we’ll never know the impact we have on people’s lives and it’s important to remember people are not all that they seem. Since we’re in quarantine there isn’t much else for you to do besides read so if you’re still here, thank you. It came as no surprise that my friends said such heartfelt and personal things about their friend, why else would they stay friends with them? But as I mentioned before, it doesn’t hurt to remind your friends every now and again how great they are. Reassurance is a beautiful thing and can be very important, especially now giving our country’s current state. Check in on the ones you love, support them during their time of need, and remind them that are appreciated.

DYSTOPIAN DURHAM AND TH “I’m really sorry to have to tell you this,” my manager at a Portsmouth hotel told me in March, “but I have to cut hours. It’s nothing personal.” And just like that, I morphed in to an unemployed older dude. Still a graduate student at UNH Durham (even though I will be completing my MFA on Zoom), still an Army Reservist (even through the drill dates are pushed to the right, and conducted virtually), still a sports fan (although with March Madness cancelled, I am conjuring up YouTube videos of past college basketball tournaments and sports documentaries), still a supporter of the undergraduate students here (although I have to stand back a safe distance when I meet their parents and wish them well, as they stream back to campus to pack their things and leave again). I am still all these things, and yet, I feel as dysfunctional as when I was 17 years old and needed to decide what I was going to do with my life.

Durham has not exactly been a ghost town; far from it. Every day, and especially on the weekends, families with kids and dogs enjoy walking tours of campus. Bicyclists and students on rollerblades and skateboards make use of downtime by getting exercise in the mostly beautiful spring weather. Construction continues at Spaulding. Still, I walk by institutional college buildings now closed, the darkened windows of Hamilton Smith, Kingsbury Hall, the Memorial Union Building, and Murkland as others watch me, the olde whyte guy who misses the energy of the students here during normal semesters. Before Kingsbury locked up for good, I went in and did a slow walk through the corridors and visualized the fun classes, interesting professors, and nice young people that I had for classmates during my undergraduate years. I found room N 121 open on the ground floor, the room clean and orderly, as if my Core Concepts in Anthropology (ANTH 511 – 01) of fall semester 2015 was about to start. And yes, I sat in my same old seat and thought back to the neat lectures by Dr. Marieka Brouwer Burg as she illustrated the importance of respect between cultures. My mind wandered the corridors of memory.

I begin my days now with the usual early wake up, 5 a.m., as I do not want to sleep in when I haven’t been working and become a couch potato. (I have remained in Babcock Hall, gratefully accepting an extension of my residency here as UNH Housing is reaching out to help those who are inconvenienced by the pandemic.) I shower, shave, and visit Aroma Joes on Main Street, which is gratefully staying open during the crisis. I talk to the friendly baristas through a large plexiglass panel hung from the ceiling. Take out only; while I wait for my coffee and light breakfast, I enjoy conversing with the girls and then go outside to sit and eat. I find several likely spots, as dining areas in Durham are closed. While Dimond Library stayed open, I would sit at those tables outside of Zeke’s and have my breakfast or lunch there. When the library and other buildings closed up for good, I found concrete benches in front of DeMeritt, and also outside of Hamilton Smith. When it’s raining, I have stood to eat under the clock tower of Thompson Hall.

My heart goes out to seniors who were not able to finish their college years in a normal fashion, spending time with friends here. My hope is that there will be arrangements for a nice live graduation event later this year. In depressing and uncertain times, I like to rise above anxiety by doing something proactive, so lately I have been helping three days a week at the Cornucopia Food Pantry, located at the Waysmeet Center in Durham. I find that putting a smile on someone else’s face can alleviate the challenges in my own life. Chuck, Alissa, Clio, and other UNH students and volunteers have been working hard, coordinating relief to the local community. Any students who are local with 72

HE OLDE WHYTE GUY (ME!) their families are encouraged to reach out to the Waysmeet Center if they are having any food insecurity issues. (Visit www.waysmeetcenter.org for food pantry hours and info or call 603-8621165).

all of us. It has the dysfunctional feel of the days and weeks after 9/11; however that was a manmade tragedy while this is more of a crisis of nature. Like my deployments in the Army (three separate times to Iraq between 2003 and 2011), it seems to bring out the best and worst in people. At the same time the UNH community is helping others with online support and volunteering, I watch news each night of protests and long food lines across the country, as people’s nerves are stretched to the breaking point.

I have to say that I am impressed by the support of the university professors and administrators here in Durham. During early morning walks or runs on campus, I have seen President Dean, Dean Ted Kirkpatrick, and others arrive early to work and support students. Maintenance crews at our college are hard at work every morning. UNH Dining makes sure remaining students have no food insecurity issues; also, the workers at Stillings are supportive and friendly every day. As I finish up my Writing MFA, the support of Jovana Milosavljevic-Ardeljan, Caroline Kanaskie, Dovev Levine, Dean Cari Moorhead, and others at the UNH Graduate School cannot be overstated, as they have helped myself and other students with our Graduate Research Conference projects, as well as the Three Minute Thesis competition.

A popular truism is that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I encourage all the great young people here at UNH to network and support each other, and to stay gainfully employed with schoolwork and potential future research. And helping others is a great way “out of the woods.” Make some record of these times for posterity, as a monument to your own strength, and to use as a template for future challenges should they happen again in your life. I look forward to the day, and it will arrive at some point, when UNH Durham is alive with the energy and positivity of a traditional academic year. The news on television tonight had local authorities outlining the initial stages of reopening the economy. If everyone uses good judgement and looks out for one another we WILL get through this.

On Tuesday, April 28, a massive caravan of support streamed by Babcock Hall and other spots on campus. UNH administrators, professors, alumni, and their families drove by with handmade signs of support, exuberantly communicating their support of students finishing this dysfunctional semester here. It was a cool thing for them to do! In the absence of live sporting events to follow, I have been watching old videos on YouTube of teams such as the Boston Celtics of the Larry Bird era. ESPN is doing two episodes a week of The Last Dance (on Sunday nights from 9 to 11 p.m.) It profiles the final championship run, in 1998, of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, and is very entertaining to sports fans young and old.

Stay strong, Wildcats! You’re the best!

WORDS BY DOUGLAS RODOSKI

I am trying to remember a time in my life that was similar to the COVID-19 situation, and really cannot draw a parallel. It is truly challenging to 73

THE ISOLATION CONUNDRUM WORDS BY JASMINE TAUDVIN Among the dis-ease of a social-political era defined by the re-definition of truth emerges a new disease...literally. In the past few weeks, COVID-19 has flooded our worlds swiftly and completely. As we settle into this new chaotic normal full of boredom, debris makes its way into our homes: fear, confusion, and a new class of universal memes. Tempting as it is to see this worldwide humor as a product of technological advancements, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m inclined to believe otherwise. I like to imagine Sir Issac Newton, while in quarantine from the bubonic plague in 1665, writing a letter to a friend:

Safely tucked away from this Black Death that infects the earth, I find my mind drifting. When Trinity College closed its doors I joked that I would spend my time looking at bits of light and staring at apples for long lengths of timeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; well, my friend, the fruits (I jest) of my boredom have been truly luscious. 74

Soon after writing these words he shreds the page by hand, unsure of where their rocky friendship stands, his quarantine jokes lost to history. Although Newton probably never wrote such a letter, I find it hard to believe comparable documents donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exist. Anyone with proof of seventeenth century plague humor please contact me, as solidarity through time will provide me with the levity Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m craving. Jokes aside, our global connection throughout this period of isolation has emphasized a peculiar dichotomy within our society. On one hand, distrust and confusion are paramount, outrage and misinformation around every corner. Even good journalism holds significantly less water because truth has been cheapened by fear rhetoric. Simultaneously, society is rapidly moving toward a place where everyone is loved and accepted for who they are as support flourishes online and our lexicons expand to include new pronouns. In this polarizing time, hate has become both more and less socially acceptable to express, exposing a contradictory zeitgeist: distrust and empathy, fear and a movement toward the unconditional acceptance of others. How can we come to understand that these two truths cohabit the same singular society? However we may yearn for two worlds that run independently which we can choose between, it is only a hindrance to travel down that path. As we reach out to socialize in our isolation, vibe check in violence and in kindness, and search a screen for human connection, COVID-19 might remind us of the many contradictions that form our diverse society. I myself will be thinking of Newton, whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest breakthroughs in understanding occurred during quarantine. Perhaps we can use this isolation to form a greater understanding of these cohabiting sides of society; something we must collectively undertake before true progress can be achieved.

BRING BACK THE LAUGHS:

SNL AT HOME CHALLENGES COVID-19 WORDS BY IAN LENAHAN December 21, 2019, the night that comedy mega mogul Eddie Murphy returned to host Saturday Night Live was an incomparable blast to SNL past. It was also the night my once-unattainable dreams came true: After winning an SNL Instagram trivia contest three nights before, I was able to travel to New York City with my mother to sit in the live studio audience for the highly anticipated Eddie Murphy Christmas show. After his 35-year hiatus from Studio 8H, Murphy’s comeback couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for the show’s purposes. That night’s cold open nailed the political events of the time: Alec Baldwin’s dumbly defiant rendition of a recently impeached President Trump came out to “crash” the sixth Democratic presidential debate, held in Los Angeles just two days before with a (formerly) full slate of candidates. Illustrious vocalist/rapper Lizzo, the show’s accompanying musical guest, brought down the house with two glamorous, booty-shaking performances. Above all, the studio was a sea of poinsettias, pom-pom Santa hats, glittery fake snowfall, holiday trees, and golden decorations in anticipation of Christmas just four days away. On a night where the city buzzed with preparation and excitement for Christmas, Studio 8H buzzed with a celebration of love, immense laughter, and a homecoming like no other. With the stardom and entertainment that the night produced, no one would’ve guessed that four months later, New York City and the rest of the globe would be crippled with fear of a fast-spreading, debilitating, and deathly virus. Amidst the lockdown due to the international COVID-19 outbreak, New York City is a shadow of its former self. The images are ghostly: schools are closed, Times Square is near vacant, personal protective equipment (PPE) litters the streets, and Central Park now houses a temporary field hospital. New York has seemingly become the world’s coronavirus hotspot, with thousands upon thousands – and counting – having passed away as a result of the pandemic. In a rare and unforeseen turn of events, the city now seems to be asleep against its will. However, Saturday, April 11, brought the world – and New York City in particular – a

long-awaited return to just a bit of standard practice. A return to normalcy? Not quite. A return to laughter? Absolutely. After not airing since March 7, Saturday Night Live resumed its 45th season from a remote, socially-distanced standpoint, setting a bit of history along the way. The show’s 17 cast members came together to perform the first ever fully pre-taped episode in the show’s history. Dubbed “SNL at Home,” the show featured Tom Hanks, on the mend from he and his wife Rita Wilson’s coronavirus diagnoses last month as a surprise host (his 10th time overall) from his kitchen. In addition, Chris Martin of Coldplay served as the musical guest, and the show didn’t miss a beat. Relatability: The show’s opening scene featured all the cast members connecting to a Zoom video call just before the introductions showed them working, lounging, and quarantining in their households. In many sketches, the struggle to use, adapt to, and accept Zoom served as the comedic focal point. Recurring characters: Kate McKinnon reprised her role as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, this time displaying her home workout routine using tea bags as punching bags and Q-tips as weights. Bailey Gismert, the YouTubing teen movie critic played by Heidi Gardner, spoke candidly about her parents annoying tendencies in their life at home together. President Trump, played by Alec Baldwin, called into the quarantined installment of “Weekend Update” to (as usual) say all the wrong things in regard to the threat of coronavirus and his odd passion for discussing his thoughts on China. Raunchy: One segment of a fake game show called “How Low Will You Go?” had female cast members portraying sexually frustrated women in quarantine virtually chatting with laughably lowly single men. After talks of numerous broken vibrators, the game show progressed rapidly from contestant to contestant, with each one quickly forging a not-so sexy connection with the men and promptly exiting the show, much to the game show host’s – played by Beck Bennet’s – disbelief. Reflective: Current (McKinnon, Pete Davidson, and Kenan Thompson) and former cast and staff members (Bill Hader, Adam Sandler, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and John Mulaney, to name a few) put together a tribute video to the unbelievably-gifted late SNL music coordinator Hal Willner, who died Wednesday, April 7, from complications of COVID-19. He was 64 years old. SNL at Home served as a testament to the groups’ ability to rally a rather melancholic, devastated group and serve them through humor. We’ve seen it in the past: following 9/11, the show brought New York City’s first responders and former mayor Rudy Giuliani onto the stage as Paul Simon performed a deeply moving rendition of “The Boxer.” We also saw it after the 2016 general election, when McKinnon dressed as Hillary Clinton and sang an unbelievably poignant “Hallelujah” while playing the piano on the dimly lit Studio 8H stage.

This much is true: The world cannot and will not simply return to any sort of normal way of living as a result of COVID-19. However, it takes an unabashed leader to declare when it’s time to start picking up the pieces and catalyze that process. For New York City and through the ripples of its worldwide influence, Saturday Night Live has proved to be that necessary, unified show of resilience. They’re the helping hand, the ones who get the ball rolling, and the ones who find even a crack of light in the dark state of humanity. The consensus? Laughter may not be the antidote to curing all the unforeseen tragedy in our world today. Yet, the simple effort to put a smile on others’ faces is a step in the right direction in ensuring that the state of humanity will eventually recover. Nobel Prize winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborksa said it best: “In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.” SNL at Home, with its poking fun at America’s toilet paper consumption, undying jabs at the Trump administration, and quirky, foolish, giggle-inducing skits about our collective lackluster quarantine experience, proved that such jokes are the beginning of our healing. Though the virus can ravage the spirit of mankind, there is still humor left to find sprinkled throughout the experience. Jokes can’t change the grim reality, but demeanor is bound to be altered for the better. Winning the war against COVID-19 will not be a timely, easily-calculated feat, especially as a result of the shameful federal response to it. However, this doesn’t mean that the war on our crippling fear can’t be battled with the desire to put even a little smile on other peoples’ faces. Humor is the sweet relief that our world needs to start spreading in order to oppose such hellish, unprecedented hours. Hanks’ rather punctual line from his opening monologue stayed with me throughout the course of the show’s duration: “It’s a strange time to try to be funny, but trying to be funny is SNL’s whole thing,” he stated. I’ve been so blessed to witness first-hand just how magnificent the showmanship of Saturday Night Live can stretch in creating a momentous occasion of exuberant, hysterical art. Yet, as I sat sprawled on my parents’ dog-hair-clad couch on a cold, quarantined Saturday evening in New Hampshire, I believe I witnessed a greater spectacle: The heartfelt responsibility that Saturday Night Live undertook in beginning to cure society’s paranoia, all from the sociallydistanced comfort of their homes.

A C

For a nation known as the birthplace of modern soccer, England has seen very little international success since their only World Cup victory in 1966. Despite their struggles on a global scale keeping up with rival countries like Germany or Italy, the sport remains a unifying factor and an important staple in England’s culture and history.

K I N

Football’s persistent popularity over the years borders on obsession. The sport has long been present on a domestic league scale in their English Premier League, a competition that sprouted and grew over a century after England first installed a league in 1888 that involved 12 teams. Now with four professional leagues across the country, football is an average piece of daily life in England with a club to represent just about any population. 5 o’clock Wednesday night at a pub in Marylebone would see a steady flow of patrons coming in as work gets out, but on the occasional Wednesday night, it culminates to much more; the vibe is rowdier, the room fills up with energy, whether it’s anticipation or a sigh of relief. A clash of two of England’s London-based clubs Chelsea and Arsenal guarantees a night of heavy business. A group of obnoxious men all donning blue suits just rolled in from work for a few pints and to support Chelsea, while a group of adjacent Arsenal fans sit at the table in the center just beside them. It’s clear that they know each other; at times it seems they’re friendly and then moments later they aren’t. This anomaly eclipses the entirety of the nation as the English Premier League constantly takes it by storm. London itself is a hotspot, home to five top-flight football clubs and an additional eight lower-level professional ones. The sport has the cities and towns of this nation always buzzing. At the international level, however, England has been much less successful in the sport, despite their passion and belief that they were its creators. While simpler games of football can be traced years and years back all over the world, the English see their formation of the original English league in 1888 – making it the first ever national football league – as the creation of the modern game as it is seen today.

WORD + PHOTOS

KIC K

IT ?

Despite being the self-proclaimed creators of the sport, England’s international squad has never reached the heights of some of the top competitors in international football history. European rivals Italy have four titles to their name in the tournament’s history and eliminated England from the quarterfinals of the European Championships in 2012. Only once, in 1966, did England win the World Cup, and it was even sweeter than imagined having been against historical rivals West Germany. “They had street parties,” said BBC broadcasting veteran Stuart Hill. “The whole country was on fire.” Twenty years after England withstood the destruction of over 70,000 buildings from Germany’s blitz, their international football team delivered revenge in the form of a victory on the pitch. In a World Cup where “the standard of football was exceptional,” according to Hill, “the most boring team until we got to the final was England.” With all the high-level competition and the poor track record that preceded England’s team, they beat the odds. That victory in 1966 is England’s landmark achievement in football and sport history, and it remains their only major international tournament to their name.

A OU C

BY EVAN EDMONDS

The World Cup victory is immortalized in an everlasting shrine that is Wembley Stadium. While the structure itself is the main attraction, Wembley’s stadium tours take visitors down memory lane and tell its story. Displays show the memories of England’s one-time conquering of international football, and depict “The Wonder of Wembley,” the existence of such a venue that “evokes memories of tears of joy and pain and holds a special place in the nation’s hearts.” Brazilian football legend Pele said that Wembley is “the church of football… It is the capital of football and it is the heart of football.” The venue is recognized all over and immortalized in the grand scheme of football’s history. In other words, Wembley is the headquarters for the home of football. The original Wembley, or the Empire Stadium, is where the ‘66 final was played on July 30 in front of the Queen — and the whole world — hailed in the exhibit as “the greatest event in British sporting history.”

THAT VICTORY IN 1966 IS ENGLANDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S LANDMARK ACHIEVEMENT IN FOOTBALL AND SPORT HISTORY

Legendary captain of the winning team Sir Bobby Moore is immortalized in a 20-foot-tall statue at the stadium’s entrance. At the end of the match, Moore led a victory lap; fans say the team “brought football home,” as it is a “trophy for the fans” more than anything. It was a time where these professional athletes were nowhere near superstar status—they were just people of England. Without any prior success, Moore and the rest of the team wrote their names in the history books during a time where their names weren’t even on the backs of their jerseys. Manager Sir Alf Ramsey was knighted for his contributions to winning the cup. Players and fans alike all enjoyed the victory together: as depicted in The Illustrated London News (1967), “It seemed as if the entire country cheered when the final whistle blew.” Sociologist Chas Critcher recounts that this victory “seemed to set the seal on the resurgence of Britain in the 1960s.” It was a period for England that was transitioning out of hardship and resilience during World War II and transforming back into a prosperous nation, meaning this trophy marked more than a victory on the pitch, but a victory as a collective, an uplifting symbol of British resurgence. That legendary victory against German rivals in ‘66 remains England’s only World Cup success story, and thus is still celebrated and memorialized as the sacred victory. More than 50 years later, England reminisces about that same joy of a July day, while surrounding European countries and elsewhere have been writing their own football memories—including Germany, who would win three World Cups as West Germany and its fourth in 2014 as a united country. According to Christopher Young’s article in Sport in History, “When West Germany played Argentina in the 1986 World Cup final, a survey of the English public showed that support for the South Americans over Germany rated at 75:15.” The support of Argentina in this scenario came in spite of the fact that Argentina was the country to knock England out earlier in the tournament (with a controversial handball known as the “Hand of God” incident). Although English fans remained bitter about their failure to advance, they’d still choose to support those behind that failure rather than their old German rivals. Anthony King references the England fans’ general “passionate belief in England’s right to win” in his article for Sport in Sociology. Not only did they want to win, but “they believed they should win,” he wrote. England was a non-factor in the international scene and one of the more boring national teams, yet after 1966, the fans felt entitled to it. Perhaps it’s because that first victory ignited some belief within them, or because they still hold pride in being the first to establish the game as it is known today. The idea of the sport returning to its motherland came up again in 1996 when the band The Lightning Seeds released the song “Football’s Coming Home” for England’s campaign in the European Championships. It marked the first time England hosted a football tournament since 1966. First a harmless bit of excitement to host again after all these years, the statement evolved into a wide belief that because they were hosting it, they would win it as well. King wrote the message behind the song was “because England had invented the game, it deserved to win the tournament.” David Baddiel, one of the song’s writers, told the BBC that the song was about “how we’ve lost so often—and yet it’s a song we want to sing.” This idea of football coming home blew up again on social media as a reaction to England’s surge in the later stages of the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Now instead of the tournament taking place “at the home” of football, fans supported “it’s coming home” to indicate that they’d win it and bring the trophy back home. Despite one of their best efforts in recent years, England’s side went out against Croatia in the semifinal. Regardless of how much time passes by, or how many losses they accumulate, “it’s coming home” is a testament to the will and resilience of the whole nation. No matter how often Britain has lost, it’s still the song they want to sing—one of hope, pride, and cherished memories.

LEAVING L ONDON . .

L OVE LETTER & EUL OGY

I left my study abroad program in London due to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 15. At this point, almost two months after leaving London in a hurried mess, it all feels like it was a fever dream. My time in London was exhilarating, wild, and transformative. When I decided to study abroad there last September, I never could have predicted how great the people would be or how profound the experiences. From the moment my plane landed at Heathrow, gazing out on the sun rising over the city as the plane landed, I felt overwhelmingly secure and calm. I am an anxious person; I overthink and overanalyze every decision in my life. But for once, when my newfound friends and I deplaned and made our way to Regent’s University London, sitting in a black taxi cab squished between our suitcases, I was confident that this decision was going to result in the best experience of my 20 years of life. I explored a dozen different neighborhoods in London and met lifelong friends. I went to a 1975 concert, dozens of pubs, a movie premiere, countless museums, West End shows, the Prime Meridian, and a Brexit protest. I viewed Banksy graffiti, listened to Evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral, painted a mural on Leake Street, marched in an International Women’s Day March, watched the British Parliament in session, and walked down Abbey Road. It truly was too good to be true.

WORDS + PHOTOS MARLIES AMBERGER

A constant conversation about whether or not we would be sent home ran rampant for weeks until Donald Trump declared all overseas travelers in Europe should return home and self-isolate. A letter ending our study abroad came that afternoon. Chaos ensued as people tried to book last minute flights and call their families. Students ran around our campus, looking for consolation in their friends as our time in London prematurely ended. Our next few hours were spent in both misbelief and defeat, eating our last meals at Regent’s University together, and sitting in each other’s rooms, helping one another pack. Unlike the calmness I entered London with, my friends and I now collectively felt a surge of panic. We had only a few days to make up for the months ahead we were losing to this pandemic. We planned as much as we could for the next two days as we saw our remaining time with each other turning to dust.

My friends and I had this strange resolve about our last two days in London. There wasn’t time to grieve our experience—not until it was over. We took all of the possible opportunities we could to do the things we didn’t get to before. There were so many places we hadn’t yet seen, things we were saving for a rainy day that now needed to be compressed into mere highlights to do it all in 48 hours. For our last two days in London, we became tourists in the city we had just gotten used to calling home. We went to West End musicals, the Churchill War Rooms, St. Paul’s Cathedral, famous London bookstores, Picadilly Circus, and the London Eye—the places we couldn’t bear to leave London without seeing. We began taking pictures at every opportunity, even at mundane places. On escalators to and from the subway and even on the Tube. On the bus during a conversation about going home. Candid moments at meals. Pictures of monuments I had walked by

a hundred times but never bothered to capture on my phone. Moments we didn’t realize we would want to remember so achingly bad until we realized they wouldn’t be possible to have together after the next two days. On one of the last days, we booked tickets for the London Eye, realizing we only had hours left to be tourists in London. We got on the Ferris wheel and looked out at London from every angle. Despite the overcast weather, we could see Regent’s Park and the university in the distance. We could see Big Ben (in its mid-construction glory), Parliament, the Tower of London, St. Paul’s, and The Thames snaking through the city. It was 30 minutes inside a bubble, cutting off all the commotion of the city and of our busy schedule we had created as we tried to jam it all in two days. We couldn’t rush through looking out at London. And so, we all stood there, gazing out

at the city, taking in what we were lucky enough to by families and couples and friends, it felt like we have and the plethora of things we somehow missed. had all the time in the world left in London. No one else in the restaurant seemed to fear the pandemic I remember my last day in London vividly. My friends that was sending us home. At the time we left, the and I decided that we needed to slow down a bit and UK had not yet imposed any restrictions related to enjoy our last day. We found a new place to explore the COVID-19 pandemic, and we felt the freedom in Neal’s Yard and then we took a long walk through slipping away from us. We were trying desperately Charing Cross and Picadilly Circus, two of London’s to lengthen our last moments in London. most famous places. We walked slowly, watching the tourists crowd around popular statues and popping That evening, we went to the Volunteer, the neighinto random stores, taking one last look at all the borhood pub next to Regent’s Park we spent a dozen treasures of London stores. In order to hit even more nights in together. We reminisced about what we exLondon highlights, we strolled through Trafalgar perienced in London. We tried not to talk about what Square, across Millennium Bridge, and past the Lon- we had missed out on, like the trips we were forced don Eye once again, almost as a final goodbye. We to cancel. Instead of that, we brought up the funran into a museum to find one particular painting we ny moments and the mishaps. We made jokes about were told about on one of our first days in London. small things, like where we would possibly be able to Then, we got brunch together and toasted to our find Digestives biscuits in the U.S. I don’t think any time in London. As we sat at our table, surrounded of us realized how truly extraordinary the past two

months had been, and how lucky we were to able to be there together, until it was time to leave. I packed up my life hurriedly on the last night. In preparation for a 6:00 am flight, I sat in my room and dumped everything I owned on my roommate’s bed. She left the day before. Clothes both new and old mixed with ticket stubs and souvenirs were strewn across the bed in a dejected map commemorating my time in London. When packing, I came across clothes I didn’t wear because it was still too cold in England. I found postcards I was saving to send to my friends and the souvenirs I bought for my parents, meant as a gift for when we were to reunite in May. My schoolwork was mixed in with calendars and papers I had planned my European trips on with my friends in the library. I put these things in the bottom of my suitcase and shoved the last two months on top into my very overweight suitcase. Then, I went to Heathrow Airport. And I came home. I think I held back tears until halfway through the flight. I finished watching Jojo Rabbit and I was overwhelmed with a terrible bout of regret. Regret is incredibly strong and visceral. It’s an emotion that seizes you with frustration, and then rage. I would find myself upset and regretful just by looking through photos or remembering something about London. It is hard to battle. I fought my regrets about my study abroad on two fronts. First, I was upset that I didn’t go to more countries while I had the chance. I canceled two trips before I even left London because of the “what ifs.” The chance of mandatory quarantine or even contracting COVID-19 while traveling outside of London was a real and valid fear I had, especially in the last few weeks of being in Europe. I was also angry with myself for not taking advantage of the city of London more. There were so many times when I chose not to go somewhere for an afternoon and stay at Regent’s University instead, or let myself compromise on things I really wanted to do because I felt we had so much time left that we would eventually get there. I was plagued with thoughts like, “Why didn’t we try that restaurant when we had a chance? Why didn’t we walk through this neighborhood or see this historic place? Why didn’t we try that pub or go to the comedy club?” It’s hard to fight regret, but even more difficult to live with it. I’m trying to accept this novel and unprecedented circumstance and embrace it as my own study

REGRET IS INCREDIBLY STRONG AND VISCERAL. IT’S AN EMOTION THAT SEIZES YOU WITH FRUSTRATION, AND THEN RAGE. I WOULD FIND MYSELF UPSET AND REGRETFUL JUST BY L OOKING THROUGH PHOTOS OR REMEMBERING SOMETHING ABOUT L ONDON. IT IS HARD TO BATTLE.

abroad experience. Even if I knew beforehand that a pandemic would cut my time in London short, I know I would still go. The people I met, the places I saw, the personal changes I underwent are all too valuable to lose despite the pain and heartache of leaving. For the world to heal and to save people’s lives, I know that being sent home is what was necessary. We went from the utmost freedom in the most exciting city in the world to the life of quarantine. Quarantine is a mundane and monotonous existence compared to the exciting and remarkable life I was living in London, but nonetheless important for the safety and health of myself and others. It was too much of a risk for UNH to let us stay abroad, but I left behind so much I wanted to do. I know someday that I’ll go back, even though I can never go back to the exact experience I had studying at Regent’s University with some of my best friends. I’ll never be back in London with all of the people who made this abroad adventure truly incredible and the people that I miss more than anything else in London. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but when I go back, I will be doing it not only for myself, but to honor the strangers who became my best friends and made my time in London so memorable. This is both a love letter and a eulogy to my experience in the city with which I deserved more time. London, I hope to see you soon.

CREATURE OF COLLEGE WOODS IV

Note: One rainy night, I was the victim of a “ding dong ditch.” As I grumpily looked across the front yard of my parent’s house, I noticed a mysterious package on the steps. It had been weeks since my friend, who loves his anonymity, dragged me into the woods to try to find bigfoot. I confess that I thought he was crazy, and then he almost choked to death on a granola bar. After that night, I avoided my friend for a few weeks, even before the quarantine. But I’m sorry to report that the package contained my friend’s field notebook. There was a note to me in there, asking me to present the final passages in the notebook to you. I have faithfully carried out his final charges, now all that remains is what you do with it. 90

If you are receiving this correspondence, dear editor, I am afraid that the inevitable has happened. Like Icarus, I have flown too close to the proverbial sun. The powers that be have noticed my work and have decided to silence me. Who is it that reported me? The foolish professor who pretended that I was not onto the truth? Or perhaps my anonymity in our correspondences was not as ironclad as I once thought. Do not fear for yourself or feel wracked by guilt because of my fate. You have faithfully submitted my work to the world, but cleverly disguised it in a fiction magazine. I cannot think of a more intelligent way to present my work, and undoubtedly many minds were opened because of your diligence. What follows is a succinct account of what happened, before my light was snuffed out.

There is no doubt in my mind that I saw sasquatch on that fateful night in the woods. I haven’t been able to get back in since. The university shutdown has not only affected my course, it has affected my life’s mission. In the weeks following my third message to you, dear editor, I began to get the sense that I was being followed. I felt watched while I walked around campus. When I went home for spring break, I noticed nondescript black cars, always seeming to follow me. To break up the monotony of quarantine, I went on small walks in the woods. I was hiking for a while, in order to train for my next attempt to capture evidence of the creature of College Woods. In a normally tranquil section of forest, I became keenly aware that I was not alone. I tried to act nonchalant, as if I didn’t realize that there was someone else around. I discreetly searched the undergrowth, as I so often did in search of my favorite hairy cryptid. And as I continued walking, I continued my searching, aware that someone could see me even though I could not see them. When I rounded a bend in the woods, I saw them. Two tall men, dressed in hiking pants and boots. They eyed me in an unfriendly manner. I knew I was in trouble immediately. I considered making a break for it, but I was frozen with fear. The two men started walking toward me with a purpose. “We’re going to need to see your phone and your field notes,” the first man said. “You’re not in trouble, we just need your materials,” the second one added. At this point, I knew that all of my work was true. I couldn’t lose it all now. I sprinted into the woods, off the trail. The two men took off after me. I knew these woods; they were near my mother’s house and I hiked here often. The men were quick but were still struggling to keep up. I heard one of them stumble and fall, but I didn’t dare turn around. I darted in between trees and did everything I could to leave them behind.

I eventually regained the trail. It was close to dusk and the shadows fell long across the path. I knew that the men were still out there, but I couldn’t hear them. My adrenaline was surging through my veins as I cautiously but quickly approached the edge of the forest. In the parking area, there was a black SUV with tinted windows parked next to my car. That’s when I knew that I wouldn’t be safe leaving here. I followed the wood line for what felt like hours, until I reached an area close to my house. I sneaked slowly through the neighborhood and peeked into my yard from the neighbor’s. The coast seemed clear, so I ran into the house. Nobody was home. I knew what would be following close behind me so I lost no time. I grabbed my emergency bag, which was planning for this eventuality that I knew would come. I then grabbed a box, addressed it to my colleague, hastily wrote him a note, and sealed my research notes inside. This is where the story ends, with me on the run in a shutdown nation. My notes and research in the hands of another, but the truth firmly in the hearts of my loyal readers. I am not lost. Until we can correspond again, dear editor, be assured that I will continue to seek the truth.

WA L K I N O N WATE R

B Y C H A D R I P L EY