Mandala 2023

Mandala

NORTHFIELD MOUNT HERMON’S ART AND LITERARY MAGAZINE 2022 - 2023

These gardens were dying before you arrived. You watered the flowers and leaves, the spine of a magnolia tree. The kitchen is empty. In shadows I still see your figure on the wall; your handprints, their beautiful symmetry. Yet the morning still comes with its battering ram. I am familiar with it, with you. Goodbyes; a sound to drown in. These years have passed so quickly. The terraces and synagogues disappear from view. Yesterday I was at the Jewish Quarter in Kraków. I remember the smooth tiles of the plaza, as clear as water. The shopkeepers spun guns from chocolate, birds from almonds and every taste was sweet. Our palms were cupped to the spring, so drunk on the idea of us and we, students as careless as doves. You stood there with your books, your poetry. A voice so soft and unforgiving. I remember its sound, the cadence; the horizon flattening and falling away.

Mooncakes

Delicate designs dance across the surface, spelling out characters I can’t read. Mooncakes look delicious. They have a golden-brown exterior and are normally circle-shaped with soft ridges and a pattern on top. The delicacy is soft, with a crumbly outside layer, an interior made of lotus paste that wraps around the egg yolk, and a varnish of even more egg. My sister craves them. They are probably heavenly.

Eggs are something I am allergic to.

I imagine the exterior crumbles a bit when I bite, while the sweetened lotus paste has a thicker consistency than cookie dough. But, I cannot say. All I can go on are the long-forgotten whiffs that I remember—a scent similar to freshly baked goods with a hint of something savory—and a vague idea of how they should taste based on the internet. All I understand is that which I see, which I smell, none of the taste, none of the substance. The internet is no substitute for personal experience.

I was born in America and raised in Western culture; I live in Hong Kong yet speak English at school. I have very little exposure to Chinese culture, other than that which I am told at school and experience in New Year visits to Hebei. I only know the basics: the most accessible Lunar New Year customs, a few traditional foods, and the story of Nian the monster. I do not know how people choose the characters to write on the couplets for the Spring Festival, and I only recently learned how names are chosen.

Yet, I know so much more about the Western world. I know about Greek myths, the Fourth of July, the French Revolution and the Confederacy, fast food and diet culture and Easter celebrations in the spring. Yet, I can only recall the name of one Chinese dynasty. I only know of two Chinese politicians: Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping, while I can name at least four US presidents.

Ironically, my parents wanted us to move to Hong Kong so that I could learn more about Chinese culture, and yet, my Chinese improved once I came to America. I still only understand the surface of Chinese culture, with no grasp of the substance; the internet is no substitute for personal experience. I only know a few characters, and I am unable to even read a novel without struggling like a kindergartener. My Chinese reading comprehension is not nearly as effortless as my English, and I cannot venture out of the Anglophonic part of the internet without Google Translate. I am made of ‘almost’s: almost American, almost Chinese, almost belonging but still not quite.

Almost able to taste mooncakes.

Impending Doom

Calamitous circumstances occur coincidentally

By its nature, Flathead lake is a body of clear blue, captivating water

The absence of wildlife and the inviting coral reefs lure you in You step in and the water brushes against your knees...

Until it’s not just your knees anymore

you look down and the water levels start to rise Higher and Higher

It’s calamitous, isn’t it?

Your heart, thumping like a drum, as the blood rushing through each part of your body

Palms, doused in sweat

Arms and legs shake at the speed of light

Your head is fully submerged in the water and all you can do is frantically swim back up for air.

Your thoughts are indecipherable, distracted by the chaos in your mind and the only thought you are able to decipher is

It’s calamitous, isn’t it?

Frantically trying to escape fills you with an insurmountable, existential dread that almost coerces you to give up

But you continue to swim

Higher and Higher Until you break the surface. You take deep breaths

Yet none replenish the air in your lungs.

Exhausted, you stand up

The water was always just at your knees.

It’s calamitous, isn’t it?

rest-stop town

a wrinkled lady and her doting husband accused me of shoplifting an arizona tea if i really did, wouldn’t the mayor have noticed? he sits outside of the store, you know, right next to the closed down bistro next to the broken-down wishing fountain they must have missed him, its easy to do look for the calm man, stretched back on a bench he built look next to him, there’s our furry old mayor, ever post-surgery because rest stop towns don’t need mayors, they’ve got friendly-looking dogs outside friendly-looking shops attracting friendly-looking visitors

wouldn’t the police officers licking ice cream on Kimmy’s deck have noticed? (truthfully, they wouldn’t) all they have to worry about is the occasional speeding ticket and mishandling mental breakdowns in my sister’s room I waved at them, sipping that forbidden arizona tea, did you know? so it can’t be so wrong if the wrong ones are wrong, waving back at me with princess sprinkles on their collars they were too busy talking about Kimmy, anyways it’s not her store anymore, she sold it a few years back, but her name’s still on the sign and in the customers’ mouth

we don’t take too kindly to change around here the school closed twenty years ago, finally tired of us but we’re still tired of those rowdy rich kids the gas station closed down before I could remember the smell wafting down main street but the lot stays empty, like a dog waiting for his owner like we will somehow become better again we both know that hope is but a fickle dream what is our worth if not a stop to your summer home?

the couple tells me that the security camera will catch me that I should just fess up now but they don’t know that there was never one installed Adria told me as I washed my cough down with an unpaid water she said it didn’t matter that she got paid in minimum wage dollars and funyuns - water came with the territory she said it didn’t matter no need for cameras when customers come from across the country no way to catch a lifter from Kentucky

they didn’t know that our atm doesn’t run on locals it ran on minimum wage dollars from maximum wage people buying funyuns it ran on wrinkled ladies and their doting husbands I was a passerby in my own town

By the time August rolls around

The summer heat has lost its novelty

Gone are the days of sunbathing

When afternoons were easy, breezy, and free

Now, I sit in my still sweat, melting away in my melting bedroom

For the syrup dripping out of my wooden walls has grown bitter

I bite into peaches three weeks past their peak

I sympathize with them, so tender and meek

For I too remember hanging in trees

Soft and warm, content with content existence

If I had the energy to get down on my hands and knees

I would plead for any other day

Do you remember the crunch of leaves in October

And the threads of brown sweaters?

Or the hour-long calls on swing sets in June?

We jumped in lakes with fingers pruned

December is the end of the year

But August is the end of me

I am indistinguishable now

August, what have you done?

I am a shell of who I once was

And a seed of what I will become

Made up of nights blended together

Time does not matter, soon none of it does

I am destined to spend my days rebuilding what you broke

Achieving the shiny glow I imagined two months ago

And failing - just a little bit - miserably

Oh, dear August, you are the very worst version of me

The Strange Woman

Supposedly I know you. You’re the woman in my stomach. Who opens the curtains ajar Tickling my throat. Grazing my skin, Where blisters soon form, A lame excuse for your stubby fingers to dance on my wounds, Picking the scab that is you.

rot me

But not like how meat rots, Instead like a banana, where it can still be cooked. making a warm gooey bread that melts on your tongue, a kind only a mother can make.

My hatred for you is strong, like how a person on a diet dislikes ice cream Because it’s untrue. Hoping to rid the weight nagging at me, A girl I never even knew.

Mandala Editors *

• Oma Tasie-Amadi ‘23

• Linh Bui ‘23

• Pauline Cardonnel ‘24

• Emma Clark ‘23

• Ashley Clarkson ‘24

• Alex Clayton ‘23

• Carolyn Edwards ‘23

• Fontis Hsieh ‘23

• Ethan Lin ‘ 23

• Anya Malkin ‘23

• Lucas Macedo ‘23

• Sage Newman ‘23

• Chiara Pinci ‘24

• Cassandra Tung ‘23

• Brania Tzou ‘23

• Meredith Werblow ‘24

• Jaymee Yeung ’24

• Izzy Young ‘24

• Claude Zhang ‘24

Faculty Advisor | YeJin Han

Cover Art | Alice Kim ‘23

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Mandala 2023

Mandala

Table of Contents

A Few Years

Reception

Train to Lebanon

28 Millimeter Lens

Mooncakes

Eggs are something I am allergic to.

Impending Doom

Calamitous circumstances occur coincidentally

By the time August rolls around

The Strange Woman

Mandala Editors *