By Hari Dandapani Illustrated by Ella Buchanan IG: @nanahcube
My oldest sister, Nikila, brought Radish home as a party favor when I was in the third grade. He was a purple betta fish, our family’s first pet, and the first animal I would ever form a bond with. I would crawl into my sister’s room every day after school to catch a glimpse of Radish swimming in circles in his fishbowl and, on occasion, attacking his reflection on the glass. For nine-year-old me, peering into his bowl and watching him wiggle around brought me boundless joy; I would stare at him and imagine myself in his position, gliding through the water.
As my sister nurtured Radish, I learned from the sidelines what it takes to keep someone alive: You have to feed them, entertain them, and make sure that they have a clean environment. One day, as my sister and I were washing
Dear Readers,
Radish’s bowl, he leapt into the sink full of soap. Though she put him back into the bowl as soon as she could, later that day, he sank to the bottom of his bowl, and I heard my sister sobbing. The soap had poisoned him. I wanted to cry but couldn't find the tears. It was my first experience with death.
My family wouldn’t have fish again for another two years, until my middle sister, Abi, brought home two goldfish from the county fair as a prize for throwing darts at balloons. Though my sister affectionately named them Rupert and Gregory, my mom immediately Indianized their names to Rishi and Ganga. Excited by the prospect of having more fish, I quickly moved them from their plastic bags into Radish’s old bowl and watched them grow.
When I came home from school each day, I waddled
up to their bowl and peered inside to see what was going on. They looked back at me sometimes, but they mostly just floated disinterestedly in the water. Their bowl was barren. It was just two fish and the filth that they produced. They seemed bored, so I begged my mom to buy new accessories for their bowl. I asked her if she would want to live in our fish bowl—in a barren wasteland of water and feces. After much discussion, we finally agreed to get some blue rocks to decorate the bottom of the bowl and a rock arch to add some topological diversity.
Rishi and Ganga seemed happier. Now, when I came home, they would swim through the arch and bite at the rocks. From then on, I began to ask my mom for more and more accessories for them. We upgraded their bowl to a 10
“If it feels like a trap, you’re already in one.” I couldn’t resist… No traps here, though. Just an exhausted editor quot ing Taylor Swift and wishing for the weekend to arrive just a little bit faster. And what a weekend to wish for! Spooks, haunts, horror movies, parties with themed drinks & sticky floors, costumes ranging from silly to sexy: it’s Halloweek end, baby.
If you’re in the market for some last minute costume ideas, one of our Lifestyle writers has you covered with an assortment of Halloween possibilities. Our other Lifestyle writer provides the first installment of our new series on the dogs of Brown’s campus! In A&C, one of our writers thinks about the role of memory as examined by science fiction, while the other writers about finding comfort in jazz. Our
Feature writer recalls his experience having pet fish and how it led him to animal rights activism. In Narrative, one writer poetically reflects on experiences of home clashing with identity. Lastly, one of our longtime staff writers searches for certainty and looks toward the future in her final piece with post-.
Whether you’re a horror movie buff approaching this weekend with popcorn bucket in hand or you’re gearing up for a marathon of themed parties, I hope Halloweekend treats you well. I, for one, will be balancing my introverted urges to cuddle up indoors with a need to be witnessed as Straw berry Shortcake in the public eye. From the entire post- staff: Happy Halloween!
More tricking than treating, Kyoko Leaman Editor in Chief
gallon tank, added more colorful rocks and playthings, and even lined the tank with wallpaper to make them feel like they were in the ocean. I hadn’t yet formally investigated the literature demonstrating that environmental changes and exciting surroundings enhance the cognitive capacities of fish, but I cared about them and wanted to provide them with more than the bare minimum for survival. Along with the tank’s extra space and new decor, I got more goldfish to keep Rishi and Ganga company. The fish had gone from my weird obsession to an actual aesthetic part of our house.
Then, in the seventh grade, Ganga died. I noticed before I went to school and cried the entire day. My friends, guidance counselors, and teachers were sympathetic but bemused by my tears. One friend even tried to comfort me by recounting the time his cat knocked over their fish tank and ate all of his fish. He laughed as he told me that story. Others could affirm my feelings, but could not understand my grief over a single goldfish. For me, Ganga was a member of the family. He was an individual and had his own peculiarities: He never swam to the top of the tank for food and randomly jolted around the tank to create a current in the water and mess with the other fish.
This mismatch in our reactions to an animal dying desensitized me. Clearly, I was overreacting by crying over the death of a fish. After all, who cares about fish? Over the next couple of years, the goldfish would continue to sink to the bottom of their tank. My only reaction was to take them out, lay them to rest in the lake behind my house, and pray that their little souls would attain moksha.
As my goldfish were dying, I decided to keep them company by getting more fish. At the fish store, I was fascinated by the diversity of gilled creatures—from exotic eels to pufferfish to loaches to goldfish. But, at the same time, I felt sad. It seemed that, at the bottom of every tank, there were throngs of fish that were either dead or on the verge of death. I would peer into the tank and try to look at anything other than these moribund fish, but my eyes were always drawn back to them. They sat pathetically at the bottom of the tank, opening and closing their mouths, clinging to every passing second.
Still, I brought home four black skirt tetras and four red-eye tetras, and gave them some very eccentric names: Pizza, Hut, Taco, Bell, Pachacuti, Belly, Fish, and Stewart. They seemed very merry in my tank—playing with each other, swimming freely, and voraciously devouring any food that I poured in. Watching how much they enjoyed playing with each other, my fascination with the fish only grew. I became increasingly invested in their lives and mythologized about friend groups that existed within their little fish community. Obviously, Pizza & Hut and Taco & Bell would be awesome couples. I began to think of them more as interesting individuals and less as mindless drones. I loved them.
During my senior year of high school, I went out of town for three days to visit colleges and left my fish under the care of my mom, who had never had to look after them
before. When I came back at 3 a.m. on Sunday, I took a look into my fish tank to make sure they were okay. The first thing that I noticed was that it was cloudy. The next thing I noticed was that there was decaying flesh floating at the top of my tank. Then finally I noticed that there were no fish. As I was sobbing, my mom explained to me that our AC broke while I was away. And, since I lived in Florida, the temperature in the tank got unbearably hot and boiled them to death. I let these individuals, whom I ostensibly loved, die a slow and agonizing death. I gave up keeping fish after that. How could I continue?
***
After coming to Brown, I became extremely involved in animal rights—perhaps a natural outgrowth of my love for fish as a teen. I learned about the scale of animal agriculture, saw the unspeakable things that happened on factory farms, and wanted to do something to help these suffering animals. Still, while I intellectually understood the reasons to support animal rights, I couldn’t connect to the strife of farmed animals until I saw masses of fish crammed in tanks at the supermarket.
Among the fish confined to the tank, there was one fish in particular—a fat catfish—that made eye contact with me. As he wriggled his body in distress, his bright and kind eyes locked with mine. We stared at each other, and as each second passed, a smile slowly began to grow on his face as he opened his mouth and moved his whiskers. His face was filled with hope, even as he was surrounded by 20 other fish, most of whom seemed to have resigned themselves to their imminent and inevitable fate. This fish kept swimming forward, as though he, with just a little more willpower, might somehow escape the cramped four-by-six-inch tank.
I had to look away. This fish was fighting for his life, but I knew the date of his death. I wanted to do something, but what was there to do? Perhaps I could break the glass of the tank and liberate him, but then what? He would just die of asphyxiation instead of decapitation. I could try to buy him alive, but I had no means of taking care of him, let alone bringing him home. He was no different from the fish that I used to care for and love, and I was powerless to help him, just as I had been before. The only things I could offer were a shred of sympathy, a place in my memory, and a prayer to a God I hoped existed. It had been three years since I had last cried over a fish, but there I stood in the supermarket, bawling my eyes out over a fish killed for a forgettable meal by someone who never cared about his life.
Reading news about how climate change is affecting our oceans, I often feel gloomy. There are predictions that we will have more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2048. Giant garbage patches made predominantly of fishing nets are strangling marine life. Overfishing is destroying habitats of fish, like the Great Barrier Reef. To me, these facts aren’t sad because pollution or environmental degradation are vacuously bad—I wouldn’t be invested in plastic waste on another planet, because there isn’t life there. Rather, I’m
concerned by the staggering loss of aquatic life that fishing and environmental harm produce.
More specifically, I’m saddened not directly about the number itself, but about the fact that those quantities represent the termination of an individual life, happening over and over again. When my fish died, I didn’t cry because a certain number of them had died. I cried about each one and their idiosyncrasies, because they individually mattered to me: Hut’s tendency to hide behind the arch whenever someone loomed over the tank, Pachacuti’s ritual of swimming over to nudge my finger whenever I stuck it in the water. I have no personal connection to the trillions of sea creatures that die each year, but I recognize that they’re individuals who want to live, the same as any of the fish I’ve ever cared for—and that’s reason enough for why their lives have value.
I first felt certainty at my masaní’s (grandmother’s) farm. I felt safe in her hogan, curled up with blankets, the stove fire hot on my cheeks, side-by-side with my younger siblings. I’d listen to their breathing, a steady rhythm accompanied by soft crackles from the burning wood. Through her living room window, I’d watch as the wild cats slept in the old pine tree. I was so sure they’d come around one day, and accept my love for their scraggly, matted selves.
I felt certainty again later that morning, around my masaní’s peeling green dining table, eating homemade flour tortillas with Spam and potatoes for breakfast. I could see the sun rising through her rickety metal screen door. I could feel its warmth on my nose, just like at the fireplace last night.
Take another look before it goes Days are only footprints in the snow How far away can I walk
Till I'm way too far from home
I wish I knew, I wish I knew I want something more than More than restless mornings Getting by's so boring
I can name moments at home where I’ve felt the most certain, the most safe, the most reassured and cozy. These
1. Haunted
2. Gingerbread
3. Harry’s
4. of Dragons
5. “a music genre characterized by a repetitive four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 120 beats per minute” –Encyclopedia Britannica
6. Wife
7. Not a home
8. Party
Sarah Doyle
“Make sure you pee after sex, otherwise you’ll get a UTRA.”
“I thought volleyball was a daytime sport.”
“You can’t talk and pee? I thought that was a hallmark of masculinity.”
moments come easy, like yellow leaves that twirl and flutter in the air before falling; a satisfying crunch on a wistful walk. And a part of me wonders if it’s because, when you’re little, everything feels absolute—you’re not looking into the future, because no six-year-old plans the specifics in their career, especially when their attention span barely covers the present. Being certain in elementary school means knowing which bus to ride to your nalí’s (paternal grandmother’s), and how much you hate riding the bus because it is either too hot or too cold. It’s watching leaves change colors and thinking to yourself that looks pretty without knowing the hows or whys of seasons.
I took a train back to Providence recently. As I sat in the cafe car trying to write emails, I stared out of the window a lot. I lingered on the thought of certainty: New England weather is awful, but goddamn, the autumn trees are beautiful; the lakes surrounded by said beautiful autumn trees amplify the scene’s beauty tenfold; if I could, I’d ride this train forever, watching as streaks of crimson blur over into dark yellow and lime green.
Do you ever get a little bit tired of life
Like you're not really happy but you don't wanna die Like you're hanging by a thread but you gotta survive 'Cause you gotta survive.
From my experience, feeling certain as a kid essentially came down to safety. “I know my masaní’s farm is safe,” “I know once I’m on the bus I’m safe,” “I know school is safe,” “I know my mom is safe,” “I know I must keep my siblings safe,” “I know doing well in school will help us be safe.” But as an adult, who doesn't have to live in constant fear anymore—at least, in terms of domestic abuse—feeling certain has moved beyond the bare minimum of physical and emotional safety. I don’t have to always be in survival mode. I’m allowed to think about the future. I’m allowed to be excited for the future. I’m allowed to feel both certain and uncertain about the future.
If I smile with my teeth
Bet you believe me
If I smile with my teeth
I think I believe me
Oh please don't ask me how I've been
Don't make me play pretend
Oh no, oh what's the use?
Oh please, I bet everybody here is fake happy too
“Fake Happy,” Paramore
Obviously, the future brings more uncertainties—not because I don’t feel safe, but because I’ve never visualized a place, somewhere down the line, where I’m certainly happy. I never thought I’d make it this far in life. Sometimes a voice in the center of my throat, heavy like black tar, says I don’t deserve it, that imagining a future isn’t possible. It makes me second-guess: I erase applications, rewrite to-do list after todo list. I feel like giving up on school and moving back home, where things are chaotic and toxic, but ultimately familiar and straightforward—where certainty becomes “just be safe and survive,” because that’s all my life should amount to.
Every other day I’m wondering
"What’s a human being gotta be like?
What’s a way to just be competent?"
These sweet instincts ruin my life
Every other day I’m wondering
Was it a mistake to try and define
What I’m certain’s mad incompetence?
These sweet instincts ruin my life
I was at work when I finished writing my latest to-do list. On down-time, when there’s no one in the store, I try to catch up on school work or other responsibilities. Every Tuesday, a friend stops by to say hello before their shift. We catch each other up on our lives, and they offer me a small break from the dissociative state that comes with working 12-hour days.
They took one look at my long list and groaned.
I sigh, but smile. “Yeah, there’s always something.”
“Break it up into smaller lists.”
I look up from my notebook.
“Maybe put them into genres. But just make it smaller, because looking at that is making me anxious.”
It’s a small thing, making multiple lists, breaking things up. But I didn’t realize that making things “smaller” makes
them less overwhelming and a bit more achievable.
Everything stays right where you left it
Everything stays
But it still changes
Ever so slightly, daily and nightly
In little ways, when everything stays.
My aunt used to tell me, “If you’re not feeling good, drink some water and look up. Looking down makes you feel stuck.” She then proceeded to laugh a bit when she realized looking up at the skyline is a bit more difficult here—surrounded by brick buildings and hills—than it is back home. But her words stick with me. Just as my friend’s seemingly simple suggestion sticks with me.
The idea of breaking it all down into more manageable pieces. I can lose track of all the branches, zigzagging and crisscrossing between paint-splattered trees. I can lose track of my footprints amongst all the fallen leaves, covering and uncovering my path. When I feel the most lost, I’m scared I won’t feel certain about anything, that I’ll always be in a strange state of not knowing where I’ll be in five years.
But, like with my long anxiety-inducing list, I need to take a deep breath and step back. I’ll pick and pluck the small things I need to do and the small things I’m certain of to keep close. The small things I need to do to be certain.
If I can’t see a whole future for myself, I should start visualizing glimpses of a future. Me and my siblings. Me and my cat Nicole. Me and bits of my writing. Me and pomegranates, because it’s pomegranate season. Me and the people I’ve met here in Providence. Me and the smell of the coffee I make before my morning shift. Me and the comforting food of my roommate, my aunt, my significant other. And, on the rare occasion I have an evening off, the food I make for myself.
My uncertainty won’t disappear. But I know I’ll always feel certainty with my family, on my homeland, and with those I love. For as long as I can remember, it’s always been this way.
Maybe if I hold onto that, then someday I’ll be able to see certainties, a long-lived future, as clear as the sun’s warmth that childhood morning in my masaní’s hogan.
Mother believes that a young girl’s upbringing is not complete without witnessing a butterfly’s life cycle. To be raised as a girl in our home is an act of shedding skin, growing a pair, and embracing change. If your wings get stuck, you wiggle about. If the chrysalis is tough, you punch its walls. Survival is a matter of how willing you are.
I am but a freckle on a leaf, burdened to evergreen beneath the flaming sun. Freckle in the face of life, power in the face of oblivion. I don’t know why I am or, rather, why I keep trying to be. I know nothing of birth but of rebirth. I’ve been here before. I know how this ends.
I munch out of my first home and swallow.
Larva
Is it greedy to want to exist unexplained? To let my stripes create roller coasters for ants, bouncing up, down across milkweeds. Munch . Is it greedy to want? To be? To ask?
My thoughts are disrupted by shaking, rumbling, coming from somewhere. I munch mindlessly until I believe myself to grow taller. Has my transition occurred early? Is this burden the pair of wings I am destined to model?
I munch a last bite before I am pushed into a foggy wave of a pink vessel.
Touring this space is necessary. Munch . It appears to be dinner and a show; there’s enlarged true legs from outside moving back and forth. Munch . A steady movement upward and I am met with much dimmer suns—eyes blinking in and out of existence. There are trees of filaments surrounding these unlit suns as they eagerly stare at me.
Mun-.
A jolt backwards pushes me away from the leaves and into the other side of the pink. There are crunches and wobbles as whoever, whatever is carrying me traverses a boundless plane.
They’re watching me through pink as I swing in late summer’s sauna. They smile from east to west. I cling to the frigid metal of my enclosure. I am now, seemingly, in their alabaster chrysalis, fabricated night, shielded from the flaming sun, while the unlit suns on enlarged true legs have lost interest in me.
Alone. In a different, distant, way. In a way where I could never not be alone. Where I am subjected to others outside of the self, the whole.
Alone.
I rewind into myself and decide that I am my own hallowed, haunted home. That I will build the foundation. That I am the foundation, with walls and an impermeable roof. I am the fragmented floor plan and every wall’s scrapes, bumps, and bruises. I am every cabinet that does not quite close, every tile missing a corner. I am every cracked picture frame and every picture inside. I am every line measuring heights on the wall corners and every bump on that wall. I am every mismatched pair of socks and all of their loose threads.
I rewind into bubbling bile and remember that I am all I ever need. That this home is latent. Shapeless, I sit, stand, and lay all at once in a womb of my own devising. I (in)voluntarily envelop myself in caresses through the on and off of the flaming sun I have since gone out of sync with. In the closing and opening of the unlit suns, I am anew.
For a beat, I become ichor, flowing, trickling.
For a beat, I am the maker and its creation.
For a beat, I exist unexplainable.
I am entropy.
If I wasn’t already in the process of jumping out of my skin, the unlit suns staring at me would have jolted me to do so. And I am riven, swilled, shoehorned into frigid pink ground.
Still, I cling to this solid evernight, alabaster, chrysalis of theirs: are all homes contradictions of yes and no, of there and not, of open and close?
My new form is idolized by the unlit suns in vibrating oohs and aahs . We appear to be breaking out of their chrysalis as they shield their suns from the flaming one. Maybe it’s an important day for all of us.
My wings open and close, warming in the balmy spring afternoon. I made these wings. I crafted these means to an end of boundlessness. I crafted this transport, transitory; translation of what it means to be free; transcendence of meaning; transition of being.
The pink vessel opens with a k-ch . The unlit suns seem to be encouraging me. They say goodbye with some true leg motions.
The flaming sun gets closer in the ebbs and flows of my new body, gliding through the waves of air. I descend once more. Hoarfrost legs grace lachrymose butter leaves. Still, must I find a home in this bedlam, need I seek refuge in cold flames licking up prickly legs and tattered wings? Do I exist perpetually? Am I shedding another’s skin? Need I explain my garb?
As my eyes adjust, I perceive myself desolate in this mass of green. Where did they go? Am I the cause of fervent distress? Am I the chaos, the mayhem, a sword brandished, a gin straight, a cheap gun, a broken clock? I hold memories of needing, of wanting. Must I have the unfortunate existence of a butterfly, deeply wishing to go back into themself and just be , unexplainable? Yet,
I am rebellion, I am resurgence, I am rebirth, I am perpetuity, I am contradiction.
I need to find a flower.
I must find myself.
***
Mother believes that all young girls are monarchs to be. Destined for hardship and possessing innate resilience. To be raised as a girl in our home is therefore an act of staying one. If you get stuck, you cannot stay stagnant. If it gets tough, you cannot say it is so. Survival is a matter of how willing you are to deny yourself.
I am no longer home.
by Leanna Bai Illustrated by Lucia Tian
Please hand-write a one page essay about yourself. Due tomorrow.
Lying on my belly in my closet, I lazily scribbled several ideas onto the paper. Hi, my name is Leanna. I’m thirteen years old. I definitely know more capitals of the world than you. Also I have a cat. I am ChineseAmerican? Here you go, teacher, I have no idea what it means to be or exist or gather memories into the shape of a human.
In fact, do not make me say one fun fact about myself or two truths and a lie. I literally don’t know.
+++
It is with my very elementary notions of identity that I stumbled upon a particular novel over the summer— The Memory Police, written in Japanese by Yōko Ogawa in 1994 and later translated into English. I consumed this book in the way my aforementioned cat demolishes a bag of Costco tortillas: secretly, in the corner of my home.
The Memory Police imagines a mysterious island, in which ordinary objects like ribbon, music boxes, and perfume vanish from people’s minds. Accompanying this phenomenon is the titular Memory Police, who enforces these disappearances by capturing select individuals who quietly remember these items. The main character is a struggling novelist, and when her editor is endangered, she decides to hide him under the floorboards of her house. As the disappearances become more severe, the duo grapple with the grief of societal and individual amnesia. The Memory Police is simultaneously a commentary on personal loss and a political depiction of a population that forgets its own history with grave consequences.
Yōko Ogawa beckons readers to contemplate what they themselves have forgotten, and I think I know my answer.
+++
I’m sure other Chinese Americans also underwent some degree of cultural alienation in the US. It’s a
point that has been reiterated countless times in Asian American literature—the tendency towards assimilation that occurs when someone, like myself, grows up in places like scarlet-stained Texas. But when I attempt to peel off the coat of Western culture, expecting to see rows and rows of ancestors inviting me home, I find that I don’t even know where to look.
I am envious of those who can take a 23andMe test and learn their precise ethnic composition instead of “Broadly East Asian,” of those who know they are distantly related to King Henry VIII or [insert literally any other European]. At the very most, I know snippets about my great-grandmother from my mother’s anecdotes. What else is there? Was there a woman in the Tang Dynasty who had my face and loved cats as well? How much of my family history has been lost to time? Or maybe it was the Cultural Revolution?
I mourn the disappearance of my ancestors, and I don’t even know who I’m sad for.
+++
But I know one full story about my family.
A small, shaky wagon cuts across the province of Manchuria, carrying a mother, a father, and a trio of infants. The arc of the babies’ cries shoot up and across the plain. Japanese invasion was imminent, and most people believed that the inland was safer. Fingers clench the cart, hearts set themselves towards Xi’an.
The father squints his eyes at the eastern horizon. A troupe of ants advances in the distance. They take the shape of soldiers. Fingers cover the infants’ mouths. He closes his eyes, levels his breathing. Kisses his babies one last time.
He brandishes a knife, jumps out the cart, and pushes his loved ones away. The woman looks back, eyes set with determination, yet too occupied with hushing the children. The cart gains momentum, and he stares at his family for a very, very long time, then charges at the band of soldiers. His sacrifice bought them time.
And that’s how our family ended up in Xi’an , my mom deftly folded the last piece of laundry and left the room.
+++
There reaches a point in The Memory Police where knowledge of body parts begin to vanish.
It starts with a leg—people rise from their beds and feel a weird sensation on their hip. The protagonist trips and falls, the object welded to her body throwing her off-kilter. The island walks with a limp.
People no longer conceptualize a “left leg.” The new disappearance initially sparks distress and confusion among the residents, but then, the other leg dissipates from existence. Then arms. Then the rest of the body, and the protagonist is merely a voice.
+++
What becomes of the identity of a cultural isolate?
I know maybe 50 percent of the holidays and 25 percent of the language. The customs, traditions, and ways of living in Chinese culture are fragmented in my memory. The hyphen in “Chinese-American” is a divide, an expansive rift that blocks the parts of me that have disappeared. Whatever is passed down to my descendants will be small scraps and pretenses; as a grandmother, googling a meal I forgot to ask my mom about wouldn’t feel the same.
I probe my leg with a finger, and there’s no sensation.
+++
The disappearances trickle into other parts of my life.
The Mandarin trapped in my throat snatches the English before it can escape from my mouth, and my lips move in desperation to convey a coherent thought. I squeak in the middle of English classes, and my classmates hear small rumblings and half-formed analyses.
Then, I forget all of the world capitals I so diligently memorized as a point of pride, all of my accumulated
knowledge, what I looked like and what I loved when I was six—I can’t even conceptualize my favorite ice cream flavor, and when I sit in a circle at the start of a seminar or club meeting, I don’t know how to introduce myself because of the incompleteness of my existence. I’m afraid that if you peel away my identity there will be nothing; humans are only layers and no core.
Or maybe I’m overthinking everything. And should simply accept that I will never fully comprehend my culture. And by extension, myself.
Should I let go of the disappearances, dissolve until I’m merely a voice? Glide through the floorboards into the secret corridor like a ghost and continue to expire?
+++
Before the protagonist loses her left hand, she finishes her novel. It’s an exhausting process that enlists every fragment that is left of herself—books are now gone, and she can hardly write a coherent sentence, much less the final act. In her incompleteness, she performed her last sliver of resistance before fading away.
On the night I finished The Memory Police , I vividly dreamt that I was in outer space. I swam forward and floated towards a multicolored light source—reds, purples, and yellows swirled in my vision. Somehow, I was able to sit by this pool of colors. An object bobbed up and down in the waves, so I reached out to grab it, inspect it, and trace its contours. Dig my fingers into its nooks and crannies and feel its dimensions. I take it out of the pool and repeat this process with all the others. A pile of unrecognizable names, histories, and trinkets grows around me, and maybe this assortment is things that I once knew or lost. Scrunchies. Language. Ancestors.
Perhaps there is an unreachable place where disappeared memories end up. It could be buried deep in my brain or in some metaphysical plane. This reassures me.
I don’t have to be complete to tell my story, to face the soldiers attacking from the east. A tale in fragments can endure eons; I am a scattered clay piece of an ancient epic. My ancestors are spread elsewhere, but I know the story of my mother, my brother, and especially me—even in its broken pieces.
And, like the writer in the novel, I’ll tell it all.
It was February of freshman year and the novelty of New England winter was starting to wear off. My fantasies of a winter wonderland were met with bare trees and blotches of yellow snow, bleak reminders of my tendency to over-romanticize. The snowflakes that once gently graced my face now fell repeatedly like drops from a leaky faucet you can’t bring yourself to fix. The cable knit sweaters and turtlenecks and cardigans and scarves and fuzzy socks that I bought with great enthusiasm—despite there being no bank statement to support these purchases—were itchy, each layer more suffocating than the last. Perhaps the most disheartening transition lay in the walks around campus. My once-purposeful strides turned into frostbitten scurries from one classroom’s refuge to another; that is, if I could muster up the willpower to leave my dorm in the first place.
On one instance where I did manage to leave the comfort of the riot-proof New Pem halls I’d grown to love, I found myself wandering aimlessly southward. It must’ve been less than 30 degrees that day, for the usual bustle of passersby down Thayer was replaced by a few brave souls trudging through the snow and slush. I had, by no means, accomplished anything on my to-do list, but I decided I was done for the day. Done with classes, myself, all of it. Surely a change of scenery would result in a more positive train of thought.
Despite my uncharacteristic burst of spontaneity, this adventure started with my usual, soul-crushing routine: Put on a thermal layer. Then jeans. Those don’t fit you like they used to . Now a sweater. Not baggy enough. Oh look, I’m crying again . Here goes sweater #2 followed by my worn-out black puffer jacket and boots. I hope I don’t see anyone I know . Lastly, the headphones. Will these keep me distracted for long? I hope so . Like clockwork, I layered my insecurities between my winter clothes, subduing the insulation with the iciness of my
internal monologue.
Somehow I wound up at The Underground. It was long past the usual lunchtime rush hour, so I managed to secure a seat on a high top in the back corner. Like a fly on the wall, I was among the shadows without the paranoia usually caused by others’ lingering eyes. Apart from the few half-hearted pleasantries I exchanged with the barista, I sat in silence. With both hands wrapped around my latte in the hopes of regaining sensation in my fingers, I filtered out scattered conversations about weekend plans and friend group gossip, allowing myself to bask in the warm glow of the dim string lights hanging from the pipes around the room. That’s when I heard it: a single piano note followed by a smooth, melancholic voice that enveloped me entirely.
For the next three minutes, I submitted myself to Chet Baker’s anguished rendition of Sinatra’s “My Funny Valentine.” I desperately held on to every last word, relishing every syllable, every breath. His warmth was all-consuming, like my mother’s tearyeyed embrace as I board the plane that puts us over one-thousand miles apart. He bore his heart with a dulcet nonchalance that slyly taunted me, for my moments of emotional release are far more turbulent; if only I could mimic his stability , I thought, even just briefly.
In this moment, Baker was a harbinger of change. I was no stranger to the notion of using music to drown out my thoughts—I have curated 130+ playlists for overly specific scenarios (e.g. lying in the fetal position on my dorm room floor, soft songs for migraines, driving with the windows down, etc.) to back this—but this time was different. Listening to his voice did not encourage me to stuff my thoughts into the overflowing mental cabinets I’d long refused to open. For the first time, my mind wasn’t racing with questions of whether or not I was doing enough, caring enough, being enough. Rather, the tenderness emanating from his voice and the soft piano melody allowed me to sit comfortably with the very same thoughts that persistently plagued me. He held my hand and squeezed it tight, reassuring me that introspection does not have to be self-destructive; this is a feeling I was not willing to relinquish.
I’ve registered this memory with such detail
because it marks the beginning of my search for warmth in music. It’s preserved in my mental archives, glowing with soft sepia tints and covered in delicate lace trimmings like the relics stored in my grandmother’s weather-beaten armoire. In my mind, warmth transcends comfort. It is a sense of familiarity, nostalgia, relief. Within music, I’ve found that more often than not, jazz is the ultimate hearth. It’s Julie London’s sultry voice drifting around the lake house kitchen as my friends and I delegate tasks to prepare a cozy, candlelit dinner during spring break. It’s Billie Holiday’s soulful reconciliation with love unrequited that infuses my mind with ease as I fold fleece quarter-zips during my shifts at the bookstore. Or maybe it’s Nat King Cole’s silky smooth description of the autumn leaves crunching under my feet on my morning walks down Hope Street. Lately, it’s been Laufey’s modern yet tender touch on the genre as she paints a picture reminiscent of the cobblestone streets I see when I visit my best friend in Boston.
Before coming to Providence, I never had to seek warmth; I was constantly surrounded with more heat than I was willing to bear. I lived in an eternal summer, perpetually drenched in sweat and acne-ridden from the relentless Miami humidity. All I had ever known were the palm trees towering over the gridded streets, stubbornly withstanding the Floridian extremes. I was sunburnt and dehydrated from the sweltering heat, or I was confined to my tiny bedroom from the latest hurricane’s torrential downpour. But at least I was home. At least I could cozy up with my cat when I was feeling down, or make my parents laugh with my musings during dinner. At home, heat and warmth were inextricably intertwined, and I was never at a loss for either.
When I’m away from home, I’ve resorted to gathering songs like quarters for a jukebox that will imbue me with the warmth I need to make it through the day. With jazz, each song evokes a curious sense of nostalgia for a time I’ve never known. There’s something so comforting about leaving behind the woes of my day-to-day life to immerse myself in a world wherein I, as well as my fears, do not belong. I am untethered to my responsibilities, relieved of the burden of my anxieties, a blissful foreigner transiently wandering. I simply am, and frankly, I’d seldom describe myself as simply anything.
Nowadays, I find myself at that very same table at The Underground, fingers interlaced around my coffee cup and listening to jazz just as I was not too many months ago. Except this time, I planned to go there. And the music is not coming from a speaker. The room is dimly lit but lively, with people squeezing together on couches and coffee tables under the glow of the string lights that continue to adorn the exposed brick. This sight has become familiar to me, for every few Wednesday nights, members of the Brown community come together to share their genuine love for jazz. Whether they be instrumentalists jamming together as they play “Caravan,” or supportive friends snapping along in the crowd, the warmth radiated by the speakeasy-like atmosphere of Jazz Jams is what makes people, like myself, come back every time.
As winter looms near, I think back to the first time my close friend invited me to these sessions—his sheer excitement to share the piece he’d spent hours practicing made his offer impossible to decline. I’ll just make an appearance and leave . I’ll be okay. One session turned into two, three, now all. It became tradition, with each performance stringing along more familiar faces to fill up that cramped leather couch. Ultimately, I am but an observer, yet I relish in these moments. I hold them closely to my chest as I walk along the same paths that once overwhelmed me. I allow the melodies to seep in, warming my heart even when my thoughts induce their iciest chills.
by SEAN TOOMEY Illustrated by Lucid Clairvoyant IG: @l.u.cid
If you’re like me, Halloween is the time for last-minute panic and candy indulgence, a time for throwing together the shittiest costume the world’s ever seen and going, “No, you just don’t get the reference,” to people who see right through your Spooky Season laziness. But, as the old adage goes, those who can’t do, teach! Today I’ll be giving you some Halloween costume ideas to try and save you from the inevitable early exits at parties.
Patrick Bateman from American Psycho: No.
Frank Serpico from Serpico:
This is the perfect costume for those of you seeking to hit that perfect ‘70s balance between grooviness and sleaze. This movie’s range of outfits spans from “Gross Milsurp Guy” to “Gross Big Hat Guy” and will draw plenty of looks no matter what Halloween function you’re attending. After Halloween, you can capitalize on the multiple stylish pieces this costume requires by slipping them into your fall wardrobe. Field jackets and oversized coats will always look good when paired with more casual items like jeans and flannels, including tailored clothing like sport coats and trousers. Aim for more casual fittings to pair with the style of ‘70s fashion. This is also the perfect time to grow out your porno stache/beard combo that everyone in your life has been telling you not to.
Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks:
Dale Cooper is the perfect costume for those who have been collecting cherry pie and coffee jokes from the inevitable, extremely confusing TV show marathon during quarantine a couple years back. All you need to do is run down to your local thrift store and find a black suit and tie combined with the lengthiest floor length trench coat they have, and you’re golden. During Halloween, try to tone down on mentioning your prophetic dreams and saying “Damn Fine Coffee” after every sip of literally anything you ingest throughout the day.
Coraline:
Everyone does Coraline, and considering the title of this article, it’s probably best to stick to what you know. This is
a pretty easy one to put together, as all you need is a blue wig and a yellow raincoat. You could also consider dressing up as the movie’s supporting characters. A benefit of the movie being as ubiquitous during the Halloween season as vaguely inappropriate skeletons is that you can dress high concept or low concept and the costume will still come across. For Ms. Spink and Forcible, you could recreate their pink and green costumes with colored clothing or just their colored robes. Bobinksy could be done by painting your entire body blue and drawing on a mustache or just by wearing the rattiest athletic clothes you have. You could also do Coraline’s Dad (although I know for many of you this might be akin to looking in the mirror) by getting a Michigan State sweater and blue flip flops, or just by wearing what you normally wear combined with your already horrendous posture. This should do the trick amazingly.
Miss Piggy from The Muppets:
Miss Piggy is another example of a costume that can be pulled off with both high- and low-concept outfits. On the bottom end of the spectrum, you could just grab a dress you’ve had lying around since you bombed your audition for Chicago, throw on some pig ears, and call it a day. On the higher end, you could take that dress you’ve had lying around since you bombed your audition for Chicago and spruce it up with all sorts of gaudy additions to the outfit. Then you could go deep in character by painting your face pink and method acting for the next week in order to prepare for that one joke you just have to land, because you’ve never been the same since your voice cracked during your audition and goddamnit I just need this.
The real workhorse of Halloween. If you could pick one costume variation to bring with you to a deserted island this would (naturally) be the one to take. Pirate costumes are great because they can be pulled off by anybody with almost any wardrobe to pick from. But effort is what separates the bad pirates (dead) from the good ones (dead at a later date). It's easy to just throw on some brown chinos your mom got you two years ago and a linen top you’ve had lying around begging to be worn, but the little details that show you care are really what's going to push your outfit to the top. Pirate hats, swords, drawstring shirts, giant beards: These are the things that’ll turn your low concept outfit into a really good one without breaking the bank. Goodwill and other thrift stores will almost always have these Halloween items for cheap, so go get yourself a pirate hat and start drinking grog—Halloween is right around the corner.
There we have it. Your last minute Halloween without the stress or scrounging! Stay safe and have fun partying, sequestering, baking, candy binging, or whatever else there is to do on the last day of Spooky Season.
If you are an avid reader of post-, you may have seen my entry a few weeks ago where I proclaimed a gaping dog-shaped hole in my life. It exists because I miss my pup from home, Sara (who is, unequivocally, the best dog, like all dogs). In an attempt to fill this hole in my heart, I’ve reached out to talk to dogs and dog owners on campus that frequent the main green to hear more of (and perhaps live vicariously through) their lives. This week, I talked to Atlas (@the_atlas_gram on Instagram!), a beautiful part-golden retriever, and his parent, Victoria.
The first thing you should know about Atlas is that he’s ambiguously aged. He is six, or maybe seven—he’s a rescue so no one really knows. When Victoria first got him he was around a year old. When Atlas joined her family, she thought he was going to get bigger and grow out of his puppy bed. But then he didn’t really do that. Atlas stayed puppy-sized. And retained his puppy characteristics of friendly, goofy silliness. “He spends a lot of time flopped over on his back, I think it is a golden retriever thing.”
Atlas is allegedly also part chow, and part Leonberger “which is a giant dog that looks just like him but just much, much larger”. But perhaps most accurately, Atlas is a “West Virginia brown dog” (Victoria notes here that this “is code for mutt”). He lives near campus with Victoria in a “weird, old Providence apartment” that offers Atlas his own private balcony where he likes to start his day with time in the sun before going on a morning walk. If Victoria doesn’t open the
balcony door fast enough, he’ll look at her, as if to say, ‘Why aren’t you opening the door to the balcony?’ Victoria suspects that he knows the word “balcony” at this point.
Atlas is calm. Most of the time.
“Yesterday while we were all sitting in the living room doing homework, he wasn’t barking, but he’d lie there, and then he’d be like, ‘What’s that?’ Then he would run across the room and look in my roommate’s door, then run into my room and look out the window, then run back and lie down. He repeated that every ten minutes for over two hours. Atlas would never disrupt others with relentless barking, he would do a little ‘arwoof woof,’ which is not really a bark, just a little vocalization.”
“People on the Main Green love him. I bring him there and walk laps around the Main Green so people will pay attention to him. He really knows how to work a room. He’ll sit there and let people pet him. Then he’ll lay there and as people start to lose interest, he’ll do a big dramatic flop and everyone will squeal and rub his belly. He fully knows what he’s doing.”
Victoria recalls what is perhaps his greatest Main Green performance to date was on the first day of Spring Weekend last year:
“I walked him up and down the line while people were waiting to get in. Everyone told me I should’ve been charging, and maybe I should have because I bet I would’ve gotten a lot of money. Drunk Brown students want nothing more than [to pet] a dog.”
Atlas is a big fan of butt scratches and being under the bed, and we are let in on the secret that Atlas will also secretly sit on the couch.
“I think he knows he’s not allowed to, but I can never tell him he’s not allowed because he never gets on the couch when I’m around. Frequently we’ll let him and pat the couch and be like, ‘Come here, come here,’ and we’ll ask him to get on the couch and cuddle with us, but he won’t do it. He’ll stand his
front feet up there and lay his head on you, but he will not get on the couch.”
However, Atlas has been caught in the act on a few occasions.
“One time one of my roommates came out of the shower, and I guess Atlas didn’t think my roommate was there. And Atlas was sitting on the couch and my roommate looked at him like, ‘Are you supposed to be there?’ so he got off.”
“Another time I was leaving, and as I walked by the window, I saw him standing with his paws on the arm of the couch watching me walk away. So the next day when I was leaving, as I was heading out of the living room, I saw he was standing close and at a strange orientation to the couch, and I was like, ‘I bet he’s gonna get on the couch.’ So I opened the door and shut the door without leaving. I waited a little bit and I poked my head around the corner, and he was sitting there with his feet on the couch ready to watch me leave. It was really funny. I was like, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ He jumped off and was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”
Otherwise, Atlas and Victoria have an exceptional rapport.
“We communicate and understand each other well. I just talk to him like a normal person. I really like having him here just because he’s my friend and I like having him around. I grew up on a farm and we had a bunch of farm dogs, and we always had pet dogs and cats and sheep, so it was really weird my first two years not ever interacting with a dog except for twice in a semester at a therapy dog event or something. So it’s nice to have him around, but it’s a lot of work.”
“I think this is only working so well for me because he’s my dog who I had before I came to Brown, and I knew him and had a good connection with him. I knew he wasn’t going to be really high maintenance and bark all day and annoy the neighbors or need to go to the groomer twice a week. I don’t think I would adopt a dog as a Brown student because there are so many unknowns.”
As winter approaches, Atlas invites us to join him in facing the drop in temperatures and shortening of days with vigor and dogged enthusiasm. “He’s definitely a cold weather dog, so as it’s gotten colder he’s gotten weirdly energetic. He always has, but more so this year. I think it’s part of his journey to being a normal dog.”
***
I hope you enjoyed this installment of getting to know a Brown dog! If you have a dog, please contact me at andy_ luo@brown.edu. In exchange for getting to spend time with you and your dog, I’ll feature both of you in my next article!
Note: please do not contact me if (1) you do not have a dog, (2) you have a dog but your dog is not physically in Providence, (3) your dog does not consent to being featured in the article. If (2) applies to you, I’m sorry, I feel your pain. I too miss my dog very much. However, if you meet all the criteria and would like to be featured, I do hope you’ll be in touch!
“Whether the impetus be a monster, a psycho killer, or a demonic spirit in search of a new host, I always find that there is something so cozy about this Hollywood-produced fear.”
—Ellie Jurmann, “Horror Movies for Bedtime Stories” 10.29.2021
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kyoko Leaman
Managing Editor Alice Bai
Editors Addie Marin Ananya Mukerji
ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Joe Maffa
Section Editors Katheryne Gonzalez Rachel Metzger
NARRATIVE Managing Editor Siena Capone
Section Editors Danielle Emerson Sam Nevins
LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Kimberly Liu Section Editors Tabitha Lynn Kate Cobey
HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Connie Liu
COPY CHIEF Aditi Marshan
Copy Editors Eleanor Peters Klara David son-Schmich Indigo Mudhbary
SOCIAL MEDIA HEAD EDITORS Kelsey Cooper Chloe Zhao Tabitha Grandolfo Natalie Chang
LAYOUT CHIEF Alice Min
Layout Designers Alice Min Angela Sha Caroline Zhang Gray Martens
STAFF WRITERS Dorrit Corwin Lily Seltz Alexandra Herrera Olivia Cohen Danielle Emerson Liza Kolbasov Marin Warshay
Aalia Jagwani AJ Wu
Nélari Figueroa Torres Daniel Hu Mack Ford Meher Sandhu Ellie Jurmann Andy Luo Sean Toomey Marlena Brown Ariela Rosenzweig Nadia Heller Sarah Frank
—Rob Capron, “Screen Memory” 11.1.2019
Want to be involved?
Email: kyoko_leaman@brown.edu!
“What threshold of time and space must be crossed before we can fully understand how a film works and the limitations of the magic it offers?”