Mandala 2022

MANDALA

NORTHFIELD MOUNT HERMON’S ART AND LITERARY MAGAZINE

2021 - 2022

2021 - 2022 Mandala Student Editors Charlie Brandt ‘22 Emma Clark ‘23 Alex Clayton ’23 Carolyn Edwards ‘23 Clara Guettel ’24 Angie Ko ‘22 Lucas Macedo ’23 Anya Malkin ‘23 Poppy Merrill ’24 Hazel Peach Reeder ‘23 Oma Tasie-Amadi ’23 Cassandra Tung ‘23 Eliot Vaughey ’23 Jaymee Yeung ‘24 Vivian Zhang ’24

Fall Term Only Celeste DeLeo ‘22 Ethan Lin ’23 Bryant Bang Zhang ‘23 Esther Zhou ’24

FACULTY ADVISOR - LAUREN SCOTT CORWIN

CARELESS ABOUT to the memory of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, class of 1937

By Peter Weis He was ours, though he barely made the grade in French after a summer of study and after even Fred McVeigh had to give him up as a bad job.

After that, I had him.

He was ours, though we never quite knew him.

Why “Moose”? we wondered and we guessed.

Guessed wrong, maybe.

(OK, probably.)

We tried but were we to blame for not knowing the boy?

Yes, cared – a word you didn’t feel much from outside When, speaking of caring, we’d write of him, “We are sorry to tell you Lawrence has been careless About our regulations Concerning tobacco.”

PHOne call

By Theresa Twordosky ‘22 The headstone needs to be polished. The flowers have lost their color. The rocks are covered in dirt.

The letters AJB dangle around my neck. The cold lining of the pendant lightly touches my chest.

Who decides when someone’s time is up?

Tears begin to fill my eyes faster than the water filled his lungs.

The air has gone stale. As I try to speak, my mouth won’t open it has been sewn shut.

My knees hit the ground with a thud.

My heart forgets to beat.

I’m paralyzed.

I wish I had been there.

Instead, I’m a phone call away.

You let his headstone drown in vines. You could’ve stopped the flowers from withering, but you let the pedals crinkle and crumble. How hard would it have been to just brush off the rocks?

You let his name become letters that now dangle around my neck and when I try to forgive and assemble the words A-Men, my mouth is sewn shut and I can only blame you.

How could I not?

I trusted you since birth, letting my infant body be smothered In your name, but so did he, And the water that once covered him, now fills his lungs.

New year’s Eve

By Rocky Ji ‘23

The last day before a new year starts at midnight, but New Year’s Eve itself actually doesn’t start until dinner. Each year, families gather together to celebrate this traditional holiday. In my family, my parents hosted the festivities, and by 6:30 pm, everyone had finally arrived. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins all knocked on the door with an excited flush to their faces, rushing in for hugs as if there was a time limit to the excitement. Besides a few of the relatives that lived fairly close to us, I hadn’t seen most of the guests in a year. All the men ---- dads and husbands ---had noticeably aged; I could tell from their retreating hairlines and increasing bald spots that the years were piling up. On the other hand, the past year had left very little trace on the women.

“Perhaps the next time I see them, all these couples are going to look like fathers and daughters,” I thought to myself.

-

The roster of guests was the same as it always was, with one exception: a baby. Her parents explained that she hadn’t made it to the festivities last year because she was too young to travel, but my mom quietly told me the truth later. “They don’t want to lose face,” she said. “If their baby had thrown a fit it would have been embarrassing for them.” As soon as the baby entered the room, she got all the attention. The youngest child at a family reunion like this is always the most effective way to elicit conversations between the adults, particularly if the baby is dressed for the occasion. I thought about photos of myself in a similar outfit, reds and golds and my parents holding me as I wriggled. Now it was her turn. My uncles and aunts were talking about how cute the baby was, and how she looked so much like her parents. I could see both mother and father beaming. I overheard the adults’ conversation and learned that the baby’s name was “Meiqi”, which means “beautiful and cute” in Chinese. Meiqi was in her carriage, and she seemed a bit overwhelmed by all these giants standing in front of her. I understood the look on her face, but her parents didn’t. It had been too long since they were kids. Meiqi’s parents pushed the carriage around and met every guest, telling every person the same thing they’d said before, as if they’d rehearsed it: “This is Meiqi… Hahaha, that is right, she is indeed… Thank you, thank you...”

Then immediately to the next person. It was obvious that Meiqi’s parents wanted her to meet everybody, or rather, to make everybody meet her. The ceiling lights shined on Meiqi’s outfit, and she shimmered just like a trophy.

Soon, people separated into different groups: the men, the women, and the elders. The men chatted at the dinner table while the women prepared food in the kitchen. Grandpas and grandmas sat down next to a square-shaped table to play Mahjong. The game similar to gin rummy, but instead of cards, they play with tiles. I heard my father call me over and made my way through the throng. my uncle was sitting next to my dad and patted me on the shoulder, telling me how much I’d grown over the years, and how I should look up to my dad. The men started laughing and saying words that I couldn't fully understand. My dad waved his hand in the air, and I knew that I was allowed to leave.

I walked towards the kitchen and stopped at the doorway. I’m usually not allowed to go into the kitchen because it’s “too dangerous.” I didn’t mind that rule, unlike many others, because I didn’t like the oily floor anyways. The women were making potstickers, a traditional food for New Year’s Eve. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to fall in love with potstickers. Every woman was doing different tasks: one was tamping the dough, one was making the fillings, and the rest were chatting and working on other dishes. I saw my mom folding the wrappers that already had filling in them. She folded the little dumplings into perfect pyramids, all of the same size and shape. The assembly line was impressive, but not much fun to watch, so I decided to go to the Mahjong table. On my way there, I saw Meiqi. She was still in her carriage, but the crowd that was around her was long gone.

The elders had just finished a game, so they were shuffling the tiles for a new round. The way they shuffled the tiles was very specific: they first pushed all the tiles they had from the last game to the middle of the table, then grabbed the tiles on the outside and pushed them to the inside. Their hands moved in a circular motion, very similar to a particular Tai Chi move, except that Tai Chi was about drawing the circle in the air instead of on a table. I waited until they finally finished mixing the tiles to ask my question: “Can I play?”

My grandma responded: “I’m sorry dear, this is not a game for children.” By the time she finished her sentence, all four of the players had done organizing their hands. I asked again: “Why not?” A tile was smashed into the table with a bang, and then was quickly unidentifiable from the other ones. Grandma turned and said: “This is gambling. Gambling is very bad. Very.” I asked again with confusion: “But aren’t you doing it right now?” But my words got lost against their excited play and the clacking of tiles.

From the kitchen came the sound of running water and women’s conversation; the mahjong pieces crackling and colliding in the corner; Meiqi continued crying in her carriage, loud and clear. The men went to smoke on the balcony. The soot descended, as the smoke rose, and quickly blended in with the falling snow. Suddenly there was an outburst of laughter coming from the kitchen. Every person in the house was having moments of joy or sorrow. But I didn’t care. I just thought they were loud.

I am Fine

By Julia Fedoruk ‘22 Consciousness sets its two-pronged hook in my sweater and begins to pull me from the dream world of fish roasting over the stove at my old house. As my brain shifts fuzzily between dream and reality, pain suddenly screams into existence. I pick up my phone and my eyes sting as they adjust to the screen’s bright light. It’s 6:00am. Panic begins to set in as I count in another hour of sleep debt, balancing it against the sum of my responsibilities. I have to get up soon or there will be blood on my sheets, but I just lie there, wishing that I am not me and this is not right now. I need to drive my carpool to NMH in an hour, and it’s strange to think that my body might not be able to drag itself out of bed and carry me through life the way it always does. Out of sheer necessity, I stumble to the bathroom next door, hunched over and squinting in the early morning light. As I fumble through my bathroom mirror for a pad, I feel powerless. Downstairs for the ibuprofen and then back upstairs to bed and then searching for a water bottle: it’s like I’m drifting slowly through a muddy lake. My tongue tastes dirt. I take one step too far and the nausea hits. My body pulses with the pain of it all. I feel the pain pushing into the recesses of my mind like an expanding balloon, its sides pressing against my skull, pushing away any thought but the urge to lie down again. Desperate to escape, I take out my phone and open YouTube, but even my favorite content creators can’t launch me out of this screaming body as the pain fills every gap, every lapse in attention. I want to forget my responsibilities, call my mom and ask her to bring me a hot pad and just lie there until I feel okay, but today I have monday morning meeting and three classes I can’t afford to miss. So, I drag myself from bed again and try to smile as if this is not me and it’s not today and everything is and will always be fine.

Survival

By Oma Tasie-Amadi ‘23

safety once drew breath in the warm, brown crook of her mother’s arm now, exposed in the dark shadows like an open, red wound in search of the small, white rope or the orange pill bottle on the top shelf she is a wilted gladiolus trampled on by large leather shoes

Sonnet #7

By Paul Cushing As you look upon the cold, bright night's sky, A star passes through the atmosphere. Fast.

Fast, You make a wish as you close your eyes A new line to break from your distant past.

You only mutter. It cannot come true If they are heard from anyone else. Wish I heard it; bring hope to what you construe For a wish goes with loose change; in a dish With all the things that do not have meaning While hope brings new chances and new life. Life At present. A wish shoots past, careening Past hope and into a new night's strife.

And with some hope, there is no shooting star.

It’s a ruse, a meteor from a far.

Sleep in Dead Silence

By Laurel Milacci ‘22

as the sun sets below the river, sounds of impending night rise, continuing to play down the streets and through apartments awaiting sleep. lying there, the smell of musty airconditioning rises to my nose and its cold blast hits one side of my cheek. my opposite ear hears its muffled ejection— bitter, oddly tranquilizing, air. a flutter of snowflakes, the soaring roar of wind, blend with the traffic below. tires blowing through salt and slush splash over sleepless bystanders. an old man whines over his phone, whispering into my ear warning me to stay awake. my comforter’s static caresses my ears as i cover my head and close my eyes shut. the sounds begin to call to me.

a couch’s legs scrape above my body digging dark gashes through my neighbors wooden floors, and her heels click. click-clacking again and again against the floor like the inevitable ticking of a grandfather clock. no matter how loud the quiet, the city will soon sleep, awake only by sounds of firetrucks blaring and honking their sirens down seventh avenue. the breathing of existence lulls me to unconsciousness. as it’s easier to rest with comfort of life living around you, than the dead silence of universal sleep.

A Decade of Eye Trouble - Found in the Pages of The Hermonite

By Peter Weis 1890 A.T. Hawks of last year’s Senior Middle class, has been obliged to give up his studies owing to trouble with his eyes.

We are sorry that R.C. Downe who entered school this fall, has had to leave on account of trouble with his eyes.

1891 Miss Louise Law, after taking examinations, was obliged to go home for a time on account of trouble with her eyes.

She hopes to resume study in April.

Miss Frances Goodell has left school on account of trouble with her eyes.

C.B. Crowell, ’92, is unable to return to school on account of trouble with his eyes.

We are sorry to hear that McCollom, ’94, has left school, owing to trouble with his eyes.

H. J. Miller, ’94 leaves school for the present on account of trouble with his eyes.

1892 Frank L. Critchlow, '88, having serious trouble with his eyes, has given up his college course at Williams, and sailed for France. The best wishes of all his Hermon friends follow him as he leaves us.

Shumway, ’93 has left school for a time on account of trouble with his eyes, but will return when able.

We regret to hear that Thomas Madden, ’94 is having trouble with his eyes and will not return to Hermon this year.

We are glad to see Thomas Madden with us again.

Durand, ’96, has been obliged to leave school for a few days on account of trouble with his eyes.

We hope to see him back soon.

1893 R. Fulton has been obliged to leave school for a time on account of trouble with his eyes.

E. J. Noble, formerly ’92, is in an office at his home in Brooklyn. He still has trouble with his eyes, but hopes to return in September.

Stockwell has left school on account of trouble with his eyes.

1894 Gardner, ’94, Has gone home on account of trouble with his eyes.

1895 Miss Alice Maltby has left the Seminary on account of trouble with her eyes.

1896 C. A. Pierce goes to his home in Roxbury, Conn., having to leave school on account of trouble with his eyes.

W. B. Webster, ex-’98, has left school because of eye trouble. He will enter Maine College next fall.

1897 Osgood, ’99, has left school on account of eye trouble.

E. S. Fisher, ex-’99, is unable to return to school on account of eye trouble.

1898 C. A. Lord, ex-’01, who left school on account of some trouble with his eyes, is staying at his home in Hebron, Conn., and intends to return to school in February.

6 Word Stories

Go ahead. Underestimate me. We'll see.

by Brooke Hindinger ‘25

She left him a scrunched-up killer.

by Sofiia Tiapkina ’24

Junior year. Midnight. No internet access.

by Marvin Yang ‘23

Nine years later, your memory lingers.

by Aura Barinas ’22

Oma Tasie-Amadi ‘23 serenity