silvae magazine issue one: asymmetry by silvae magazine

silvae magazine is for the lost, the homesick, the blooming

forests are important to us. forests are for

getting lost, for finding yourself, for appreciating silence and beauty. sometimes they serve as our surrogate homes, too. we would like this magazine to do the same for you and we hope that you find parts of yourself within these pages and that you realise that being lost is not such a 3 bad thing

the

asymmetry

issue

features 5 6 9 16 20 28 38 44 46 48 52 56 57

introduction prose: can i survive another winter? prose: degrees of separation poetry: by day & by night asymmetry in heavenly creatures an interview with emma magenta homemade pop tarts penpals letters from far away places did you apply philosophy darling? anonymous lives mixtape contributors

writing submissions 10 11 19 24 26 42 43 51

art & photography submissions 12-18 27, 50 4

photography | hana haley art | lucy scott

hello there,

welcome to our very first issue in which we explore the realm of asymmetry. in the eyes of others, to choose the world of imperfection makes us unruly and wild, mismatched and out of place. we are asked for explanations and reasons, as if there is something shameful in stepping out of balance, in exploring the far and forgotten corners of reality, and in letting ourselves fall. instead of surrendering our answers, we dare to be stubborn in our choices: looking for affirmation and incentive all around, from ancient art to cheap day-to-day entertainment, we hope to find and show the subtleties of asymmetry as they weave through our everyday lives and make our experiences and characters richer.

staff genevieve may

niko islar

genevieve adores hiding indoors and taking long train journeys. she is passionate about rain, cats, writing, 35mm photography and spending as little money as possible. she is very good at doing nothing at all. fond of disappearing, she finds it hard to remember who or where she was last week. one of her bad habits is eating desserts before or instead of a meal but she doesn't think it's that bad really. she is currently trying to find home in foreign places and faraway people but mostly feels quite lost.

niko is a wild creature who commits too much to whatever she is currently doing (and that changes a lot). she is never seen without a book, prefers to not sleep at all, and considers four people a crowd. when she was small she wanted to be an astronomer so she frequents planetariums on her free days. she likes reading the same books in different languages, listening to the same songs over and over, having vanilla soy milk for breakfast, and talking to her plants.

twitter: mayblushes

website: everythingispoetry.com

find her contributions on pages

3, 9, 17, 28-37, 44-47, 56

3, 6-8, 16, 20-23, 25, 38-40, 48-49, 52-55

cover design: niko islar | editor: genevieve may copyright of work remains with the author

can i survive another winter? a human life, in our collective mind, is supposed to go like this: yesterday, today, tomorrow. the day without a yesterday is the day we are born and too young to be aware of anything but the coldness of the air and the warmth of a human touch. the day without a tomorrow – we can never tell when it will happen: the great unknown drives us to always go ahead, as if there is still time. i have been living without a tomorrow for so long that i don't know how i still manage to make myself breathe. it's not – carpe diem or another ancient catchphrase which we learn sometime during teenage years (surrounded by stuffy classroom air that defies horace's thought). it is – not knowing and not waiting and not wishing; a constant state of existing. (i try and never succeed to get out of the trap. someone smarter than me wrote, it is not worth the bother to kill yourself, as you always kill yourself too late.) it is – being aware that the things that i wanted to be my future cannot be my future anymore. their time has passed. all the days that i lived haven't brought any other answers other than the impossible ones; i haven't been taught anything but the impossible. (there is an image of myself sitting on a windowsill with goosebump-skin knowing, as no child should, that i am making memories; being young thinking: this can never happen again, this will never happen again, i won't ever find a night like this amidst all the nights of the world to come.) i invented the art of missing things before they even happen. i miss tomorrows as if they were yesterdays, as if i already lost them to the passage of time. from my childhood, i remember vividly the sense of longing and loss, never the sense of accomplishment or satiety. it is a strange way to grow up, knowing things you are not supposed to know until you are an elder. (i remember things that never happened far better than things that happened, too.) my life lacks the equilibrium of time; it's all yesterdays. yesterdays' dreams. english grammar offers many ways to express regret, there is i wish and if only, and there are more vague conditionals, second and third, past and more past; all easy patterns to say we wish we could change something. each language has one way or another of creating similar sentences; there is none without irrealis. (i live within irrealis. i might just as well be a personification of irrealis.) 6

the winters are too long and the summers pass too soon, a year is a broken device, never corresponding with truths. months without sun, months of snow-clouds that bring no real snow, it all drags on; every morning looking out of the window to see milky-grey clouds, that is no way to live a life. here lies the delusion: live. sometimes i find myself living other people's lives, in other people's homes, more than my own; once i was sitting on a red-painted chair by a window, a storm just passed, feeling cool breaths of wind around my neck and shoulders and ankles after weeks of sunshine and warmth seeping from shadows, and it felt as if i was the girl who lived there. for the briefest of moments, the realisation of me and her, a few minutes apart, standing in the same spot on the same cold tiled floor: a feeling as if there was something ahead of me and it's already gone. the winters are too long. with a world of no tomorrows winters are everything there is; summers, even right there on my skin, are the past. i always shiver in june trying to take late after-sunset walks through one city or another. i always shiver in july eating ice-cream cake on my birthday. i always shiver in august trying to wear shorts and t-shirts. i always shiver; it makes my life a constant of coats and jackets and gloves. sometimes a scene, here and there (never home), makes me feel present. when the sun is so strong it burns and the heat is so intense it makes breathing hard, then sometimes my body relaxes. the heat might be just making me too comfortable to think, thoughts slow and words slurred in a primitive pleasure: that's how i imagine animals feel, snakes on rocks, cats on windowsills, lizards on house walls. it takes more than just the sun and the heat though; i long for something that makes me insignificant, so insignificant that i could almost dare to exist within it. hills and mountains. spaces. endless rooftops. white curls of waves and white locks of clouds. things vast, and majestic, and soaring. things that cannot be affected by me, cannot be broken, cannot be changed. the difference between the shell of me and the vastness makes me forget (the cold and the lateness and the dreams â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the boredom and the phantoms and the fatigue â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the foreign language and the loneliness and the hope) as i give myself to it, as i whisper a prayer:

welcome me engulf me swallow me

the imbalance between me and the world is ancient, i know, i have thought of biblical days three and four, of arcadia, of st augustine natural order, of romantics' alps, of monet's gardens â&#x20AC;&#x201C; i have thought how none of those concepts need human creatures to be perfect. to exist. i've thought how i am intruding. there are mornings, i do not know what brings them on, when i wake up and look out of the window to see the same clouds again, and i think that if i'm living in the past i must have already done all the damage i could have: i've become innocuous. 7

and i laugh. i think about all people of the earth, with homes, friends, wishes, futures, possibilities, all theirs in complete lack of humility. none of which are mine to have and all of which could have been mine, in a different universe. in the world of no tomorrows i'm still teaching myself not to envy. i shall not envy. i shall stay where i am. i shall not think of the sun and i shall shiver and entertain my childhood longings. i shall find my place beyond all the borders and definitions (displaced), there i shall exist on. i shall laugh and stare and and i shall continue my melancholy. (maybe i shall let myself hope, one morning of my infinite winter, for an adrenaline rush of a dĂŠjĂ vu.)

degrees of separation i. on no account are we allowed to throw each other's memories away. i must warn you: many of mine are tucked behind your ears, in your curls and tangles, too delicate for me to look after myself. please, never brush them out and if you must, because sometimes we all must be selfish, please write them down, be as detailed as possible, and send them to me, of course. ii. at the moment of our separation, we must both create an inventory of any items that relate directly to our relationship entitled 'the museum of (insert name)'. if we are unable to bear the sight of them upon waking, or if they suffocate us in the corners of our rooms and lives, then we may place them in a chest, out of sight. remember to be careful when opening this chest at a later date. tread softly. be ready to close it immediately if you feel the thorns of painful nostalgia before you see any blooms. and ask yourself, does it hurt because it used to or is the pain still there? iii. if the loss of the abovementioned museum of keepsakes is to happen by accident (e.g. in a fire, flood, etc.) we must immediately refer to our inventory and meditate on each lost item. this will be some form of a goodbye ritual. after this we will know that our connection is completely over and that it is time to let go; of our memories, longing, nostalgia. only then. in this case, you may also brush out all my memories from your tangles for i will no longer need them. iv. there are many degrees of separation, so be careful. do not assume that i am as close or as far away as you are. when you are forgetting about me (could you ever really?), i may very well be still blinking your face away throughout my day, seeing you in my reflection instead of myself. v. i wish you luck. i'll find any degree of separation particularly hard, not only because my spirit swallowed you so frantically before i had a chance to decide how and to what extent, but simply because we've never met.

there are no eulogies for the vanished

by priya bryant

BEFORE you breathe. you love otters, hostels, the Jesus and Mary Chain. you crumble rich tea biscuits between your thumb and forefinger; you laugh when we scold the mess. you paint meticulous nails, and nurture snide comments. "letting go is easier than it looks," you say THERE ARE 4 DAYS WHERE WE THINK YOU'LL COME HOME it doesn't matter now whether I trusted you. you fell backwards anyway. AFTER crudely, you tore your edges out of every photograph â&#x20AC;&#x201C; or maybe you burned? I can see your lighter-flick now. do you look at singed flesh sometimes? do you think about what it left? there are no eulogies for the vanished, only raw-pain pleas on local television. you would say that you were just stain-remover. I would say that I've never used the conditional tense so often in my life, you fuck

My voice is like a shadow puppet existing in the darkness coming out into the light. I am trying to make life out of little, coaxing life from the darkness, moulding the air into something. But there are limits to what I have. Here, with these words, I straddle two worlds of darkness and shadows and light and air. But my words are made from earth and water, ancient soils and ancient seas. The language which I speak is nothing more than the centre of a Venn diagram, the overlap between Romance and Antiquity. My words are the forgotten child of empires and legends. Now, my language exists as a dialect, a code of the few, twisted and mangled, over-used and abused like a well-beaten path (to where? nowhere, we run in circles here on this island). These words, which in history have been uttered by few, have polished the steps and made the stones smooth and worn out, like the waves that beat the pebbles into perfection. These are words I hold in my hand, a small language I can fit easily into my palm. I am the daughter of extinction, my mouth uttering the existence of this extinction, an orphan of a language forgotten in time. But somehow, my voice remained. And still my heart beats to the rhythm of this whispered language. But sometimes I step out from the world of shadows and light into a new land. I have grown accustomed to this world whose language is familiar but not mine. Unlike what I do with the shadows of my mother tongue, this foreign tongue is without light. I speak our colonisers' language but my heart screams in the language of my ancestors. It recites the prayers of my grandmother, echoes the warnings of my grandfather, sings the hymns of my grandmother and remains silent like my grandfather. This Semitic tongue, it tastes like blood. I spit it out with every word misunderstood and ignored. Listen to me amid this irony of trying to make shadows without light.

Shadows of a voice

by angela seychell

BY DAY IN DAYLIGHT, THE WORLD HAS COLOURS UNCORRUPTED BY ARTIFICIAL LIGHT BULBS, AND THEY ARE TRUE IN DAYLIGHT, EYES ARE BRIGHTER AND SKIN SEEMS TO SHINE LIKE BRONZE STATUES OF OLD IN DAYLIGHT, WE NEED NOT GUESS THE CONTOURS OF THINGS BUT GRASP THEM, CONFIDENTLY THERE IS A WORLD OF IMAGES THAT TRAVELS TO HUMAN BRAINS WITH LIGHT, AND IT MELTS AND DISSIPATES WITH THE COMING OF DARKNESS; A WORLD EASILY LOST IF NOT TREASURED. NO MEMORY CAN PROJECT IT VIVIDLY ENOUGH, IN DREAMS AND DAYDREAMS. ALL OUR ATTEMPTS AT RECREATION ARE BOUND TO FAIL, ALL ATTEMPTS TO FOLLOW THE LINES AND SKETCH SHAPES ARE DOOMED TO BECOME A SURREALIST'S NIGHTMARE THERE IS A WORLD YOU CANNOT TRACE WITH YOUR FINGERS, A WORLD YOU CANNOT SMELL OR TASTE, A WORLD AS ONE-DIMENSIONAL AS FIRST LOVE. MOST OF OUR IMPRESSIONS COME THROUGH SIGHT, MANY CAN BE SUBSTITUTED OR RE-INVENTED WITHIN OTHER SENSES, BUT THERE IS A MARGIN COMPLETELY HIDDEN FROM THEM; A SCRAP OF PARADISE: A DISTANT GLEAM IN A GOLDEN TEMPLE ROOF THAT ONE COULD NEVER DESCRIBE, A GOLDEN FLICKER OF LIGHT THROUGH LEAVES, A GOLDEN BURN OF THE SUN WE DRESS FOR DAYTIMES AS IF THEY WERE SUNDAYS, WE WEAR OUR BEST SHOES AND LEAVE OUR STUFFY ROOMS, WALKING INTO A WORLD SO WIDE AND ENDLESS THAT WE CAN NEVER FULLY COMPREHEND IT. WE RELY ON THE VISUAL BECAUSE IT'S THE EASIEST, AND MOST PRECIOUS, SO WE CELEBRATE BY MATCHING COLOURS; SHOES AND BAG, DRESS AND TIE, JEWELS AND EYES WHEN DAYLIGHT FADES, WE ARE GREY, WE ARE SHADOWS WHEN DAYLIGHT FADES, EVERYTHING BECOMES ONE, ONE, ONE WHEN DAYLIGHT FADES, WE LOSE THE AUTHENTICITY OF WHAT WE SEE, IT'S ALL CHANGED AND DISTORTED AND GONE EACH TIME DAYLIGHT BREAKS, SMILE AT THE SUN AND WORSHIP THE EVOLUTION OF YOUR OPTIC NERVES, THE VISUAL CORTEX AT THE BACK OF YOUR BRAIN. WORSHIP THE WORLD THAT CREATED YOU THIS WAY, THE POSSIBILITIES, EVEN IF IT MEANS LEARNING EVERY SINGLE DOT AND SPOT ON EVERY BUTTERFLY'S WINGS 16

BY NIGHT IN DARKNESS, THE WORLD HAS ALL KINDS OF SOUNDS THAT DISTURB EACH OTHER, AND DISTINGUISH THEMSELVES IN DARKNESS, THE SOUNDS THAT WE HEAR ARE LOUDER, THEY LINGER IN THE AIR IN DARKNESS, WE LISTEN, FOR CLARITY, WE REACH OUT AND GRASP TO GIVE MEANING TO THINGS WE CANNOT SEE THERE IS A WORLD OF SOUNDS THAT BECOME HUSHED AND BLUR INTO ONE ANOTHER AS PEOPLE STIR AND BEGIN THEIR DAYS; EACH UNIQUE NOISE BECOMES HARDER TO DISCERN AND WE FORGET HOW THE QUIET AND DARKNESS OF NIGHT SEPARATES EVERYTHING THERE IS A WORLD YOU CANNOT SEE WHEN THE LIGHTS ARE DIM AND DISAPPEAR ENTIRELY, A WORLD SO MYSTERIOUS AND LOUD, FULL OF SONGS FROM MACHINES, MONSTERS AND MOUTHS, A WORLD THAT YOU MUST LEARN TO LOVE BECAUSE THE SOUNDS ARE KINGS AND QUEENS AND WILL NOT BE IGNORED IF SOUNDS WERE ALL WE HAD WE WOULD SPEAK SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY, DRESSING OUR VOICES WITH COLOUR AND STYLE, CONSCIOUS OF THE WAY THEY CARRIED ACROSS ROOMS, ACROSS TELEPHONE WIRES, ACROSS STREETS, CONSCIOUS OF THE WAY THEY EXPRESSED US AND THE SOUNDS APPRECIATE IN THE WORLD WHEN DARKNESS SHRINKS, WE ARE HUES, WE ARE HERE WHEN DARKNESS SHRINKS, POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS WHEN DARKNESS SHRINKS, WE DON'T KNOW WHICH DIRECTION SOUNDS COME FROM, THE VISUAL DISTRACTS EACH TIME DARKNESS GROWS, EMBRACE THE VIBRATIONS OF SOUNDS SO CLEAR. WORSHIP THE WORLD WITHOUT COLOURS AND SHAPES, EVEN IF IT MEANS LEARNING EVERY CREAK OF THE FLOORBOARDS, FURNITURE AND WEATHER'S MOODS

backspace I had a perfect thought before this one and forgot it • you said you'll never forget me and I cried because everyone does • I close my eyes to see phosphores behind my eyelids, blooms of purple amethyst and flowers – you're them • you're the hope I waited for, so long • return, return, return. enter, enter, enter. enter. • I wonder if we'll be writing poetry with those stupid yellow emojis instead of words like 'evanescent ' and 'forgotten' someday • my typewriter ribbon snapped and you wrapped it around my finger like a bow, telling me to forget the words I was going to write. I couldn't remember them anyway • I dreamed your dad tried to kill me, smiling. I wish I would stop having dreams like that. I wish I didn't fear men so deeply that my subconscious poisons me with them • I close my eyes to see you standing there, purple and shimmering, bows tied in black around all your fingers. I don't remember why •

by collyn towns

heavenly

you and i us

to find one of the most splendid examples of imbalance in oneness we need to go back to 1994. (we could go back to the 1950s, when the story that the movie is based on took place, but the 1950s are a world away and the people of the 1950s are real.) in 1994, most of the world is full of conflict. modern pop-culture is starting to emerge with the premiere of friends and, in faraway new zealand, peter jackson makes his first movie to become internationally famous, gaining an academy award nomination and a silver lion from venice film festival. the movie starts and ends with screams and blood, tension building from the very beginning. we already know how the story has to end, we just don't know why. it could have been another imagined tale of two halves and the depths of relationships, if not for the story coming from reality. juliet and pauline meet each other in school, where juliet is the newest shiny addition, mouthy and pretty, and pauline is the odd girl who doesn't sing along in a chorus and spends her breaks alone. they get to know each other on a bench during a physical education class which they're both exempt from. the girls are brought together by the famous circumstance of illness that literature has seen so many times, from classics to easy modern novels, from the magic mountain to the fault in our stars. juliet says: "All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases. It's all frightfully romantic." illness is a common ground for them both which separates them from the whole world, perhaps underestimated by those who have never experienced how alienating it might be. the girls come from completely different backgrounds. pauline's family is very middle-class, a little on the poor side. her room is basically a shed in the backyard, and it's all boring. juliet's parents have travelled the world with and without her, and juliet herself lives in a mansion with a spacious garden and a gramophone, familiar with all the pleasures of the world. juliet does what she wants in the boldest of ways, just like pauline would like to, and they snicker at the teachers togetherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;yet maybe they would have never really spoken to each other if it weren't for pauline's leg and juliet's lungs. they spent months in hospitals, a universe away from their friends, undoubtedly practicing the skill of entertaining themselves in the darkness of long lonely nights. it takes very little to become one. the girls, unsatisfied with school and home lives, find everything in each other. they are different. it only takes a look: from pauline's dark curly hair, bushy eyebrows, stormy gaze to juliet's blonde locks, full lips, and constant smiles. the movie follows them together, yes, but also separately in their homes, where they feel unwelcome and unimportant. pauline argues with her parents and pesters the lodgers. juliet tries to talk with her parents but, ignored, she cries and never says no, despite how hurt she is. we can very clearly see the distinction between those two states. being separate always means darkness and longing, even when they're exchanging letters every day; being together is always associated with happiness, even when the subject of the day is murder: they could never be unhappy with each other. pauline attempts 21

to find something between her and the lodger, but not even losing her virginity matters as much as a day out with juliet because it's one-dimensional. nothing in the physical world can matter as much as the secret universe where both of the girls are princesses, in a childlike fantasy (perhaps their minds are somehow immature, somehow susceptible to emotions that they can't quite comprehend themselves.) much has been said about the worlds which were made up by pauline and juliet and are repeatedly present in the movie, in dream-like sequences that are surprisingly violent and rough (borovnia) and predictably arcadian (the fourth world); yes it seems not to be of significance what is imagined. what matters is that anything juliet makes up, pauline seems to have always known, and whatever addition pauline might come up with, juliet blends into her story with no effort at all. despite how bleak and problematic reality is, more often than not, nothing can stop the imaginary worlds from growing and the girls from drowning in them. together, they are open and eager and hopeful. together, they are smiling and singing and dancing, playing dress up, and crushing on opera singers' voices. together, they are one being, there is no crack between them: the perfection of their oneness is unprecedented. in the famous scene (pictured on the previous page) they undress and dance around in the bushy forest, laughing, not needing anything from the world—barely acknowledging anything but themselves—and it is clear to viewers that, after such a moment, no one would ever want to go back to reality, especially as a teenage girl (there was and is and always will be something about those creatures that is impossible to put into words) the distortion of the soulmate myth comes with insanity. the question is, where did insanity start, here? it seems safe to say: in desperation. pauline doesn't want to exist without juliet. juliet doesn't want to exist without pauline. at the same time, the whole world seems willing to separate them; their teachers, parents, peers. people say they are a bad influence on each other because they are too close, even sleeping in one bed, and that maybe that means something unspeakable. we don't know what pauline's life was like before juliet but maybe that is the point: there was no life before juliet. there can be no life after juliet (the scenes of juliet leaving, which play over and over in pauline's mind, seem to scare her more than a mortal sin). juliet comes in and sweeps pauline in like a whirlwind but it could have never happened if pauline wasn't willing. her psyche seems damaged and almost disturbing, and she blooms next to juliet, emotionally and creatively, only she goes in a frightening direction. however different the girls might be at the beginning, they become symbiotic beings—creatures—of a different world, the psychosis only strengthened by separation anxiety. they've never had anything before each other, not for real, and in adolescent feverish dreams, they cannot imagine another life. the complete loneliness that brought the two damaged girls together becomes the beginning, and the movie shows us nothing but genesis of a murder. there is no remorse. there is shock at their own boldness and strength, and at the blood on their hands. if you watch the movie as an adult, it might feel strange, but if you see it while you are 16 yourself, it isn't strange. it's liberating, in the most 22

horrific way, and it's profound. no matter how much was between pauline and juliet, for that short time they stepped into heaven: look at the melancholic intimacy between them, the protectiveness, the unspoken promise of an embrace that is so obvious. then, at the end, perhaps more shocking than finding out that the story was based on real events, and more shocking than the spiral of flower-patterned and brighteyed adolescents into shared insanity, is a final sentence that flashes before our eyes on the screen. the ultimate visceral note of a broken world (if it weren't for the real world, perhaps both the protagonists would be dead, too).

"IT WAS A CONDITION OF THEIR RELEASE THAT THEY NEVER MEET AGAIN" 23

Inside the Dream That Held Us Captive Hours After It Began At one point, there was Something within me that, if bent or folded, would still remain infinitely whole. But that Something collapsed into A Thing after I discovered a disparity between what was said and what was true. Afterwards, I could only fold A Thing seven times before it broke. The breath inside me was astounded at this, and fled. [An aster, pastor: I give you this flower for God to look after.] Lies are fire. They exert gravity on the eyes and chuckle mirthlessly with the knowledge of how gorgeously aloof they are. We desire novelty, and what could be more novel than a wild array of red and blue and orange and white (white, pale white) towers? Nothing. If you must know, there are two steps to losing the infinity inside you: meet a person and love the pure facade of who they believe they are. Then, wake up. You'll figure it out soon (that there is a reason the deepest minds are heir to the broken existence). [Alabaster commander, does your broken arm bring you to laughter?] Somewhere in my town is a fountain. All around the base of it are marble cherubs, frozen in their joy, and within their circle a goddess is dancing with ironic carp (whoever heard of water spilling out of a fish?). Several years ago someone was messing around with his baseball and threw it at her. Defiled, sweet queen. [Disaster, faster, as if the art of destruction is an art to be mastered.] The pockmarked skin on the underside of my wrist is mildly disappointing, like planting herbs and discovering that the first leaf pokes up an inch from the rim of the pot rather than from the center. Like wandering through a forest and being struck with the knowledge that the trees are neither the same height nor the same species. Have you ever? Have you ever thought about that? Here's another twostep dance. Get on your singing platform and gather the people. Then, share the rain. [Atom smasher, candy blaster, milky dreams ofâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;] I dreamed of living, once. I would not recommend it. Instead I have retreated from the edge of that sullen reality and now stand on the border of the land and the sea. The waves are in love with my body, and when the world finally explodes into impossible being I will still be in bed and your brown hand will still be holding my hand. Will we be soft as feathers? Will we be soft as flesh? You are the cornerstone of my reality, and I regret it. [love, thereafter.] 24

by theodora abigail

one of your photos?/quote

I Think I Was Here Before

by daniel rebbe

My childhood was the memory of my parents. My father's wishes and dreams and my mother's deeds and acts seen through the milky glass on the every day breakfast table. But luckily there was this something left of me. Memories of vacations to nonexistent places; tempting to believe in. I found myself in a scrapbook, later. You and the others put me there, on pages where I played a role which gradually lost its shape. Ephemeral moments melted together like puzzle pieces creating a certain sense out of it all. Sometimes I listened to choirs of laughter from the people I have loved. Sometimes I didn't know what I was hearing when I was hearing it. My youth is now a black-paint covered film plot. Nothing happened. I didn't have to delete feelings and thoughts about it. It just so happened that nothing was told by someone who was interested. There were stories and some memorable scenes, though. There must have been. I just liked to be lonely. An old familiar melody on the radio wakes me up from one of these daydreams. I saw the trees dancing in front of my kitchen window and thought there were people sneakily looking inside. Sometimes I drew a whole village of curious characters around me, enjoying being one of them myself. But still, sometimes I don't know what I was thinking when I was thinking it. The rest of my life has yet been lived and not yet been told. The narrators stare at the protagonists and perhaps the actors haven't practised their roles, too scared to fail their part in perfection. I think I disappeared lately.

by lucy scott

emma magenta is my new obsession. not only are her drawings youthful, magical and encouraging, but she writes refreshing blog posts and is definitely worth following on twitter for a dose of thoughtful and profound inspiration. you can find her at:

cackleclub on twitter emmamagenta.wordpress.com

i. according to your website, your career began when you started drawing and writing on brown paper bags and displaying them in the window at the bookstore

where you worked. but can we go back further into your past, and even your

childhood, to find the seeds, the beginnings of roots, the unbloomed buds

of your passion: were there moments which you can focus on, even now, and know that they were what began your creativity? we'd love to hear that story.

Ever since I can remember, my desire to draw and my love of books have been inextricably linked. My father was a bibliophile and he had built a completely different space off our very 1970's brick house that was wooden and made up of various weird angles with a staircase leading to a loft. The entire space was floor to ceiling of books like 1st editions, ancient history, religious texts, weird historical journals of facts, the classics and a lot of hollywood paraphernalia and obscure paintings. Within this collection was the entire catalogue of Peanuts cartoons and I would sit in this room as a kid and read them and take in the simplicity of Schultz's line and subtle accompanying humorous text. I would always draw, with both my right and left hands and try to write with both and sometimes simultaneously. I would sit in this room, my escape space and read and just absorb so much information, play the piano and draw. Then I found this scrap book in there and it was a collection of all my mother's drawings that she had drawn as a teenager and they were extraordinary â&#x20AC;&#x201C; so sophisticated for her age that I suddenly saw her as a goddess for having this secret talent and it was this quiet turning point for myself where I knew that drawing was magical. I was a loner as a kid, but not out of desire, and my way of connecting with people was by drawing. I would draw to entertain other kids and generally it was drawing their dreams of the future or just stuff they were excited about. I won a state art competition when I was 13 and was awarded a ghetto blaster and $100 by a famous Australian artist and it kind of encourages me that it was my path of sorts. Secretly though, I always wanted to write, I wanted to write the greatest ghost story ever and illustrate it, but they were all shit. I also wrote about trees quite a lot. Since going to art school after high school, drawing has been an almost daily practise, although in recent years, writing has completely taken over as a daily practice. It's my spiritual practise. I draw and write to release the deluge in my psyche. I did a TED talk on my creative process and how I arrived at drawing with my left hand like a child, it has a lot to do with untraining my dominant hand and left side of my brain from institutional thinking. It is also about the beauty in the flawed line and that something magical happens when you let go of striving for perfection and just be the feeling or idea you're trying to release. Having said this, I'm a big fan of highly detailed art and anything that shows the authentic expression of the artist. I'm not a fan of elitist creations or overly academic processes at all. 29

ii. i know many people who have achieved so much and yet still feel unsuccessful. do you find it hard to embrace what you've achieved? when you think of your professional achievements, how do they weigh up against the personal ones?

I would never rest long enough to review what I had achieved because I was too busy being absorbed by the next project/book or piece I was consumed by. It was only at my TED talk in 2011, when I had to analyse my process to do an 18 minute talk, that I began to think about it. It was overwhelming, like a whole other person had done all these things in that worldly sense, as I was always too busy protecting my interior from too much attachment to that. It kind of ruined my process having to take people through it as I believe creatively that once you become conscious of your methods they are over. It is no longer organic or truly creative, but, a formula. In a sense, what appeared to be a peak in my "career" so to speak, was the death knell of my creative process and therefore my personal life as they are not separate. I had many hideous personal things go wrong at that time too, and for about two years after, and it coincided with me letting go completely of emmamagenta.com or the industry that had developed around my ideas and art. I could no longer do it as I knew I would be lying to myself that I still believed in my process. So I left my publishers, I left all my commissions, moved into the mountains and bush walked for 18 months. I completely let go of the idea of myself or what I had become in a public sense and I redefined what I do. I realised drawing will never not be something I do, but I will never do it on the terms set by anyone else again; publishers, commercial ventures etc. I wanted to take my work out of the commodity realm and back into the divine process again. I've gone though some tricky things in the last few years, so my work is darker in some respects and that means it may not resonate with the old audience, perhaps it may, but I cannot be worried about that. I don't create for an audience. I'm also writing more and I'm comfortable just exploring that side of myself for my own curiosity, not for a publishing deal or a pat on the back. iii. on twitter you wrote think about all the books you read as a kid that saved your life. that got me curious. which ones saved yours, and why?

Well besides Peanuts comics, Pride and Prejudice which any girl with a heartbeat would have read and moulded all romantic imaginings into the shape of Mr Darcy. There was the now famous, Bridge to Terabithia, and the less famous Dark Wood: a book about a girl on holiday at her aunt's mansion where she finds a mysterious locket, uncovering it's history, her aunt's secret past is revealed. The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in The Haunted House: A wild young girl finds a portal to a previous time through a series of seven portrait paintings of evil sisters who once lived in the run down deserted mansion on her street. Marianne Dreams: a young girl stricken with polio draws an imaginary friend in her journal who comes to life and is ultimately a catalyst for her unravelling. The MISTY comics, a UK publication that my father used to buy for me. 30

All these books were about other dimensions, planes of existence and generally about girls with heightened spiritual abilities and consciousness. The feeling that reading these books gave me has been my anchor and source of great comfort throughout my life and they still are. They are my core. iv. i grew up craving beauty, all around me and inside me, in each word i spoke

and every touch i gave or received. beauty was pure to me; more important than loving myself, or others. when reading your thought my addiction to beauty was my

Achilles

heel it immediately resonated with me. in what ways

were you addicted to beauty and how did it positively or negatively shape you?

That's such a beautiful intro to the question and I was completely that way as well. My family, on one hand, were so encouraging of the arts and creativity in our house that beauty and refined ideals were of such importance. I was raised with classical music only and I had to sneak a radio into my bed to listen to Michael Jackson's Thriller when I was 10 so my dad wouldn't see or hear. We were banned fROm contemporary everything. My first introduction to beauty was through music, then art, then nature, but in truth it was my sensibility to beauty that was innate. Above all, I was an idealist. I was so sensitive to never exposing myself to "average, nonbeautiful" moments, or what seemed to be like the squandering of my life force on moments that were not guaranteed high-octane involvements, and I have brought into my world some pretty extraordinary moments because of that. My biggest folly, though, was mistaking physical beauty for depth and the idealism that if people just stayed within my carefully organised ideas of what was magnificent, then they were acceptable and worthy of my love. Life had other ideas and that has been my hardest lesson; to let go and let people just be and their beauty will come through. The beauty is in the flaw. This journey has been most played out in my romantic relationships. Now my only obsession when it comes to beauty is nature and has been since I first travelled but in particular when I went to Patagonia and then moved to The Blue Mountains in Australia. I bush walk everyday to practice being in nature's beauty. v. what constants do you have in your life? are they constraints or aids?

My constants are: eating/being healthy first and foremost as everything goes very badly for me when I step outside of body equilibrium; keeping my social interaction to a controlled level as I'm extremely sensitive to people's energies and I'm like a sponge; coffee; tea; writing; walking mediation; providing a safe, happy realm for my kids to live in; showers in the dark to forget physical existence for 30 minutes. All of these things are my anchors and I have learnt that when I don't do these certain things, I unravel. I have so many things to do that I need to be super organised but always check in with how I feel along the way to see if I actually want to do half of those things and then I omit them from my life if I don't. I've been going through a stage of simplifying my life and getting rid of everything that I no longer absolutely love or need. I would love to apply this to social media but there must be still some requirement for it. Probably because I am an actual hermit. 33

vi. you spoke about the death of your child self which is something i also struggle with. do you find your child self amongst old possessions, memories, songs? have you managed to recover from the loss and find joy in what she was?

My child self resurfaced after I was 20 and my entire existence was dominated by the prodigal child returning after so long, but it was having my own children that changed that for me. Suddenly I was forced to care for these beautiful little souls and the responsibility was overwhelming. Also, it occurred to me once I had kids that I had never really had a childhood, as mine was fraught with such oppression and volcanic emotions. It was an absolute bipolar childhood of complete creative freedom, but complete psychological and physical oppression. I also was the mother to my mother which left me feeling like an orphan and was saddled with much responsibility and obligation from a young age. Once I left home I was so devoted to my independence that I feared any commitment. It was handed to me with kids and I suddenly felt like I was back in the role I was in as a child: being the adult for everyone else. Although I would die without my 2 sons, their arrival meant that I basically died at that moment of their birth. I have been writing a book for the last two years, that I am now turning into a TV series with a great team of filmmakers and producers, animators and actors, about this very process of the death of the child self in the face of adulthood and how we relocate it. For me, it has everything to do with removing conditioning, from deep realms of society, but first from the ideas that were handed to us from the family, about who we are. Liberating the child self is, in fact, standing separate from the parents and the system and the idea of what an adult is and about being the self that is unencumbered by all this conditioning. Reconnecting to the wild, untamed, natural self so to speak. That is what my new work is about. As far as possessions as triggers, yes books, any New Romantics era songs or just any music before I died and became an adult, all of these things trigger her. Drawing always connects me to her, writing less so. I have been mourning her since 2008, but I am about to be reborn as her. vii. when you write pieces such as your tiny canoes poem, do you purposefully create

inspire

and

encourage

something

that

naturally

found

itself in your work, something you have to share otherwise you'll go mad?

I wrote that while I was meant to be writing something else. It came to me when I realised that we are made up of everyone we have ever loved. No one ever leaves us. Everyone we come in contact with shapes us, but the people we have loved do so the most. I just followed the line of that idea and the poem gave me the revelation. It was a really nice surprise for me when I finished it and I knew that it had been written by the better part in myself that can only be accessed when I stand out of the way of trying to control the thoughts. The fact that it has resonated is not something that motivates me, but of course it is great when it does, for then it becomes a gift to pass on to others. That is never my motivation though, it's the absolute need to expel ideas or respond to the creative stirring in the belly that meets with an idea not yet in bloom. 34

viii. which characteristics or emotions from child selves in general would you say are absolutely necessary to hold onto and bring into adulthood?

Wonder, joy, spontaneity, but, more importantly, timelessness. 35

ix. you have a big following on twitter. how does your creativity compare to the days without twitter, when you'd create and display work offline, and have

much fewer people to interact and share with? how would you describe your relationship with social media?

I have such deep self loathing about having a twitter account and have been dealing with this shame since I've been actively engaged in it since 2013. I feel like it appeals to my small ego self that secretly wants a tiny clap for all my thoughts, but, having said that, it has completely helped me get past my need to have anything about myself validated by anyone else at all. It's the most curious thing. It's such a paradox. I've come full circle. It is totally for me now. It has also helped me condense my ideas into simple lines and I use it completely as a writing tool, a creative outlet, a psyche public washing board and sometimes, but rarely, as a tool for inspiration from the few who inspire me on there. It is so odd that I have arrived here in this digital theatre as my materials and processes have always been completely about the human hand, recycled materials found, zero technology and, in fact, a celebration of the absence of all reliance on the system. But after The Gradual Demise of Phillipa Finch, I was forced into the world of technology after having to create a digital interactive web component with some ace tech guys and an iPhone App, as well as animation, and it was a slow seduction, but here I am. My processes before were more thorough, less distracted, less ADHD and quicker turnaround. I had far more interaction with people before. I would often give strangers my work if they looked sad or just not expecting it and that spontaneity is less so, but I've started to send my work to some friends I've made online now. x. i find a mixture of youth, magic, nostalgia and inspirational messages in your

drawings. this mixture is what makes them immediately speak to me and i can imagine that is also why they became so popular and important to people. were you surprised about this?

I've always had that thing where I can feel other people's feelings and I guess when I make my drawings I kind of go into this place of collective feeling, so in a sense, I'm not surprised. Maybe because I worked for many years as a palm reader and a tarot reader, something I had studied since I was 15, and I used to just feel the person's whole life. It's this thing I can do, so I use my art in a way to bridge that connection so people feel less alone in their feelings and also to basically say that our feelings are our best guides for everything. So I'm kind of giving form to what those feelings are and empowering others to have faith in them. I only write what I truly believe and feel and act on. I am not a fan of platitudes or the big new age mantras that lack any real connection. You just know when words are true and a billion sunsets with a few lines about "letting go and just breathing" are never gonna make me feel like doing that.

asymmetries

truths & lies birthmarks scars relationships the days & weeks luck car crashes language & translations faces you & me 37

HOMEMADE POP TARTS

homemade pop tarts (makes 12-15) 300g flour (used whole wheat) 150g butter, softened 50g powdered sugar 2 egg yolks pinch of salt fruit preserves (used homemade rhubarb + strawberry + vanilla. you want whole fruit jam made without the use of any gelling agent like pectin or gelatin because such jam would melt at baking temperature) glaze (lemon juice + powdered sugar + food colouring) sprinkles mix the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl; add the butter and mix it in with your hands until the flour gets lumpy; add one egg yolk and quickly mix the dough with your hands until it's smooth (alternatively, put all the ingredients in a blender and blend until the dough forms a smooth ball); refrigerate for at least two hours mix the remaining egg yolk with a teaspoon of water roll out the cold dough on a floured surface to 3mm (1/8") thickness and cut out rectangles with a sharp knife (mine were 5x8cm â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2x3,5") place a teaspoon of jam in the middle of a dough rectangle; brush the edges (about 1cm â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1/2") with egg yolk and put another rectangle on the top press the edges of the two rectangles with a fork to make sure they will stay together; prick the top a few times with a fork repeat until the dough is all used up (you can take the leftover dough and form a ball out of it, roll it out and repeat the process until you run out) bake in a preheated oven at 200Â°C for 12-15 minutes let them cool down for ten minutes before carefully removing them from the baking tray glaze when complerely cool, sprinkle immediately and let the glaze dry before eating!

39 39

Of Broken Glass & Fallen Lovers

by topaz winters

i. it was something m o n s t r o u s, this want for you. something lethal, like: i shouldn't want this. like: i do anyway. like: shattered kisses, bloody smiles â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all this and the fireworks too, who'd have thought it, darling? ii. the dream was something d e a d l y. torn clothes, split lips, a car crash 15 years too young. like: war stories never end well. like: let's tell one anyway. like: teach the bruises how to bloom again, won't you, darling? iii. but it happened like something fatal in the worst way. laughter dancing in the dark. your touch soft as sunrise and just as sweet. like: surrender shouldn't be this kind. like: i think i like it anyway. like: gentle lips, quiet hands â&#x20AC;&#x201C; what a strange salvation, don't you think, darling?

"Dress for the job you want, not the job you have." Fine. I'll sit at my desk in pajama pants and fuzzy slippers, and I'll show you how brightly my dreams shine when I am awake past midnight, sipping tea and writing stories for lost girls like me. Ink-stained hands and wandering hearts are not inclined to sit in cubicles from nine to five and ask, "How may I help you?" or offer empty apologies. I don't want to complete forms to shove into your file or ask if you can verify your address; I want to share words as if they were made of gold— treasures that glitter beneath the rubble of my mistakes and do not rust in the rain. But if I can help— if I can offer you apologies— I want to tell you that I am sorry that you are in so much pain from the poisons we call loneliness and fear, tell my boss that words are the only antidote I know and that this is my apology, my customer care. We all want to craft dreams into happy endings. If I, in all my foolishness, can finally create worlds out of nothing, I will have found mine.

Cover Letters and Coffee, Part One by katie gilgour

penpals

chris gray

74 Omeath Street Belfast, Northern Ireland County Antrim BT6 8ND

i live between belfast in northern ireland and a dream world i've yet to perfect. when i'm not working for minimum wage, i'm re-expanding parts of my soul which have been steamrolled into ground. i do this by remembering kind words, listening to the lyrics uttered in music, holding onto books (not just losing myself in their stories) and taking walks around the city which i've felt so much in. someday i'll finish writing a novel. someday...

margaryta golovchenko margaryta@ilmar.ca

although i consider myself to be an emerging poet and artist, i have yet to receive any (real) recognition from either community. in the meantime, i spend hours traversing my city of toronto, canada, in search of cozy, quiet bookstores, and making lists of ongoing art shows, my path often leading me to the distillery district. i am doing my undergrad at the university of toronto, i drink, on average, four cups of tea a day and have an obsession with symmetrically organizing chocolates in boxes. if you get to know me i will most likely end up writing a poem about you in your past life. 44

HANDWRITTEN POST IS RARE AND SPECIAL. OUR PENPAL SECTION CAN HELP YOU FIND SOME NEW FRIENDS: NEAR OR FAR. SEND A LITTLE NOTE, AN EMAIL, A POSTCARD, A CARE PACKAGE OR THE LONGEST LETTER YOU'VE EVER WRITTEN TO SOMEONE ON THIS PAGE USING OLD-FASHIONED SOCIAL NETWORKING! IF YOU'D LIKE TO BE FEATURED HERE IN THE FUTURE SIMPLY EMAIL US AT SILVAEMAGAZINE@GMAIL.COM

helen corton

helen_corton@hotmail.co.uk

i am 32 and live in wales. my hobbies include reading, writing and listening to documentaries. i am passionate about animals, left wing politics and thinking/ debate. i write long-ish letters about my day-to-day life and things i am thinking about on a fairly swift basis. if you would like to write to me i would love to get to know you.

niko islar

top floor flat 27 sydenham road bs65sj bristol, uk

hello there, i am niko. i am working on perfecting the ability of turning pretending into reality. when i was small i wanted to be an astronomer. sometimes i take photos, bake, write. mostly i just read. i like short stories, listening to the same songs over and over, vanilla soy milk, riding trains for hours, and live plants.

IZABELLA MONZON

204 Melrose Pl Apt C San Antonio Texas 78212

a wispy 22-year-old collector who enjoys good food and all things art related. currently, a favorite thing of mine is to lounge in south tejas sun while sipping down sandia lemonade.

genevieve may mayblushes@gmail.com

favourites: big lazy dogs, thunderstorms, no-reason gifts, disposable cameras, childish bed covers, globe-shaped lamps, bicycles with baskets, reading poetry to cats, freckles, daydreaming, telling my friends i don't have bus money and then buying books. learning: the art of decision making, the german language, how to grow up, sleep, and avoid small talk. 45

dear j., i have been to berlin and that time is over. this is something that i have to accept. i cannot explain properly in words how important that time was for me. i shared an apartment with four dear friends and i wonder if we will all ever be in the same country again at the same time breathing the same summer air (or winter air, i don't care). well, i won't dwell on the things that now only exist in the invisible spaces of who i was and who i am. you asked me to tell you where i've been and what i've done, so i will. i was obsessed with documenting the trip, mainly in photo boothsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the kind that prints you a black and white strip of four photos. we must have done more than ten of these between us, but they only cost â&#x201A;Ź2 each. i was also obsessed with bookshops. the first was shakespeare & sons, which is almost as lovely as shakespeare & company which we visited in paris together, do you remember? this one didn't have a piano, though. i purchased a notebook for a friend, because i have far too many already. i found 'the bone people' by keri hulme, too, which is slotted nicely into my bookshelf until i decide to read it once more. one of my guides recommended visiting antiquariat wiederhold, a second hand bookshop. this one was more international than shakespeare & sons, with lots of very cheap books in different languages, as well as cute vintage children's books and some postcards (which you know i can't resist). i vividly remember running through the pouring rain to catch the u-bahn after spending an hour there. we visited so many cafes. one morning we found our way to cafĂŠ vux, a vintage style vegan place, where we had bagels, cake, and smoothies. of course i took photos of everything and i posed against a backdrop of antique frames that filled one of the walls. the cakes looked fake but tasted delicious. while i'm writing about cake: we found another lovely shop, called let them eat cake. it was full of vintage clothing and was lovely to browse in but i do prefer flea market prices. the mauerpark flea market completely satisfied my senses. it was huge, crowded, and cheap. i still cherish the embroidered vintage hand mirror that i found there and now keep by my bedside. another cafe, aviatrix, was close to our apartment and served really good coffee. the name was most likely chosen because it is very close to tempelhofer feld, the former tempelhof airport, which is now a huge expanse of concrete, grass, and community gardens. this was our late night destination for cool walks and watching the sunset. this trip was particularly precious because i celebrated my birthday with so many dear friends, which rarely happens these days. i don't spend much time in groups since everyone i know is scattered around the place in different time zones. i will always remember this time as the time when i wanted to celebrate because all of my soul mates were sitting around me at the low coffee table singing happy birthday and grinning. write back soon! love, v.

shakespeare & sons raumerstr. 36 & Warschauerstr. 74 antiquariat wiederhold ackerstr. 18 cafĂŠ vux wipperstr. 14

mauerpark flea market bernauer str. 63-64 aviatrix herrfurthstr. 13 tempelhofer feld tempelhof

let them eat cake weserstr. 164

DID YOU APPLY PHILOSOPHY, DARLING (ONE-SIDED, MORNING-TIME CONVERSATIONS WITH DEAD PHILOSPHERS) MORNING NO.1: BREAKFAST TEA WITH NO MILK, FRESH PEACHES WITH YOGURT & HONEY, AND E.M. CIORAN, FROM a short history of decay, the second-hand thinker, the parasite of poets (to create a definition and include oneself as a part of it, not intentionally, but through the sole choice to create it, that is a pure delight for a hungry mind, mister cioran.) This is how I recognise an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. (is that what you are looking for when you pick up a book from a shelf in a bookshop or library or someone's house? people in this century prefer engaging plots and numerous mysteries, endless words that pass time quickly, characters that either make sense in their choices or make no sense at all. are you looking for a story, or for a feeling? or are you looking for the essence â&#x20AC;&#x201C; no, are you ready to look for the essence? are you ready to be at the mercy of a set of words woven by someone, far away in time and space, ready for a disease from another world to infect you?) 48

ValĂŠry and Stefan George leave us where we picked them up, or else make us more demanding on the formal level of the mind: they are geniuses we have no need of, they are merely artists. (you have read countless books and indeed some of those have been a work of genius and the time put into creating them, well, the number makes you dizzy. and yet they are redundant. you have read them and you have understood them and you recommended them to someone else in the belief that you are doing good. you have read all the classics and all the modern classics. you can quote words and enumerate names. you have been a humble guest at the temple of literature yet still waiting for enlightenment.) But a Shelley, a Baudelaire, but a Rilke intervene in the deepest part of our organism which annexes them as it would a vice. In their vicinity, a body is fortified, then weakens and disintegrates. (when you see a title that sends a shiver down your spine and pick out the right tome, new but forgotten, you find words that make you become not yourself. you are suddenly in greece, in france, in germany, you are suddenly within a world purer than dreams. the words settle in your mind forever, reminding you gently of their presence at one random sight or a scent or a single sound of a word spoken in a crowd. for a time, you live between verses â&#x20AC;&#x201C; within verses. you do not count hours: they are of no value in a world of written, undying words. as you read, you carefully rush, eager for more but anxious of losing something, anything. as you finish, you wish you never started. you can never let go.) For the poet is an agent of destruction, a virus, a disguised disease and the gravest danger, though a wonderfully vague one, for our red corpuscles. To live around him is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears... (to a poet, you lose yourself. you count your days as "before" and "after". this century likes to give a taste, to let you try, to offer an opportunity in the name of freedom and equality, to the point where people forget what sacrifice is. to choose poetry is to inject yourself with a deadly disease you can never conquer; you can only submit to it and mould your life according to its rules. an illness displaces you from the world of the healthy and the sane and gives you another priority: survive. survive and flourish as you are being torn apart, a chain reaction of something inside you changing; a domino, a nuclear blast and the silence of fallout. you become a willing slave of the indefinite; to choose poetry is to choose such slavery and to find it sweet and delightful for it tastes of worlds only a poet, in absolute detachment, could ever access, and you, a reader, are gifted with a shadowed glimpse.) then, mister cioran, the delightful disparity of humankind: Many times I have dreamed of a friend of the poets who would have known them all out of his despair at not being one of them. (it is us all until we become more)

by lucy scott

On the composition of love My soul is restless and my mind wanders too often. The silence is the feeling of wondering that remains even after a lifetime of observing people who ignore you. I start with the emptiness and I try to construct something. Derrida distinguishes between two kinds of love: the love of someone versus the love of something. Essentially, do you love a person for their essence, their core, their existence? Or do you love them for their qualities or their characteristics? To me this seems like trying to distinguish between a soul and a ghost. Or light from the shadows. Do you love someone based on how they appear in all their being to you? (It is an appearance which you are de-constructing through your own interpretation. I love him because he makes me laugh and cry in equal measure, because he reads my favourite books without knowing that I like them, because he is kind to me etc.) But these are the shadows and the ghosts which we see. So how do I go about deconstructing this ghost to find the soul at the core? How do I find the light source creating the shadows? Can we ever do this? Are we even supposed to? Can we handle it? As long as we are in our bodies, the journey shall be long and the vision blurry. The light and the ghost get mixed up and the shadows of the soul never emerge. Can we even separate one another? As long as we are human, no, I do not think so. The shadow will always exist behind the light. And even if we find the light we will still look back at the shadow and wonder. Has it changed? Do we think less of it now that we know the truth? Is the ghost less worthy than the soul? Is the ghost not simply a manifestation of the soul anyway? Do you think less of me because the image of my face changes from the mirror to the photo to the glass window to reality? Are they not all me? My eyes remain my eyes and somewhere down there, the soul dances in the shadows and the ghost makes light.

by angela seychell 51

ANONYMOUS LIVES Q A N D A W I T H S O M E O N E YO U C O U L D K N O W: O N T H E A RT O F S I T T I N G U P, S H A K I N G O F F S L E E P I N E S S AT 2 A . M ., A N D N E V E R MISSING AN OPPORTUNITY TO EXIST FOR A LITTLE BIT LONGER

How did your romance with night-times start?

A: With tiredness. I got a new job which was more physically demanding than the previous one, and I started getting home too tired to carry on with my usual daily routine. After eating dinner and relaxing for a little while my body begged for sleep. Going to sleep at ten and waking up ready to go to work again didn't seem too nice. Q: Did someone suggest that you try segmented sleep instead? A: No, not really. I think one night I just woke up thirsty, in the middle of the night, and went to the kitchen to get some water. I didn't go back to sleep for a couple of hours, I sat on the sofa and finished reading a book I was trying to read before sleep. After three or so hours of sleep, my body felt quite rested and the whole world felt perfectly silent, only the rustle of paper pages filling the room. I found it enchanting. I remember thinking, maybe I can do this tomorrow. And then I never stopped. I had no idea it was a "thing" until a few months later when I came across the proper name during research for a story. It's incredible how something as simple as sleep routines have changed completely and we, as a society, collectively forgot about the details of life from before the industrial revolution, as if they never mattered. Q: Most people would turn over and go back to sleep. Why do you get out of bed when you wake up in the middle of the night? A: For me, as well as for everyone else, when the days are long and tiring, it's difficult to push oneself to be productive in the evening. Coming back home after a ten hour work day, followed by commuting and a language class or a dance lessonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that's what people do these days, isn't it?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;it would be uneducated to expect people to create while their bodies are laden with exhaustion. Surely some people can still do it, we should all envy them the persistence, but for most of us being a member of a society is life-consuming. So I agree to participate in that 53

world by day. By night, I revert to old times, from before constant entertainment and endless lights. I fall asleep an hour or two before midnight, most days, after an evening of a dinner and a movie, or some social activity; by that time by body begs for rest and I concur. Then I wake up because I want to, usually at one or two in the morning, I am rested and ready, impatient to catch the loose threads of dreams and thoughts floating in my mind: I sit by my desk and create. Q:

Is that moment difficult? It must be tempting to just close your eyes again.

A: Sometimes it is and I give in, after a very long day, when I am ill, when I am not motivated enough. Motivation is the key: as I slowly wake up from the first sleep, the world around is silent, nothing but a remote sound of cars buzzing somewhere down the main roads, and sometimes, there are cicadas singing and cats calling their prey. Everyone is asleep and everything is slow. Relaxing. I could close my eyes and disappear, the short moment of night world forgotten by the morning, but I get up because this is the perfect time to create, finish work started the night before or begin something new entirely. There are no interruptions, no issues, just me and the darkness. Not waking up would be the waste of an opportunity. Q: Many great writers had unusual working schedules and quirksâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;we've seen all the books on the subject. Would you consider your sleep pattern to be something unique to you as an artist? A: I wouldn't call myself that. I know people tend to call themselves things that are more wishful thinking than reality and I would never want to fall into that trap. One obscure writer once said that someone who is "a poet" is less like one than anyone who leads a beautiful life, perfect in its unpretentious simplicity. But surely creating my art is the motivation I need to push myself sometimes. As creatures of habit, we teach our minds to yearn for the sublime time we have to ourselves, just ourselves and our mind-spaces: as I wake up in the middle of the night, my mind is eager to create. Q: Is that what you always do, every single night? What about writer's block or lack of inspiration? A: Sometimes I watch movies, or an old TV series that everyone's already forgotten about a decade ago. Other nights I make myself tea and read until my eyes close in the middle of a sentence and then I wake up with an ache in my neck, sprawled all over my desk. The night has something mystical to it, as if I were in a secret world that is no one else's to share, as if I were still half-dreaming. It partially has an explanation that has been proven by medical research: at night, the human body releases prolactin, one of its lesser-known effects is putting the body into a deep relaxation state. A study showed that the hormone is not only present while sleeping, as believed, but it's still produced in the time of night wakefulness, presumably linked to an inborn biological response to light and darkness rather than sleep and activity. In the state prolactin induces, our thoughts run more freely, our neurons connect in ways normally only present while dreaming. It requires a bit of 54

self-discipline, as well as some dedication, to condition oneself to take advantage of that state. Also, it might be human's natural way of dealing with stress, those few quiet hours with no connection to the outside world let our minds relax. Q: Can you see a significant difference in style between words you write during the day and words you write at night? A: At night, sentences come together loosely, easily, unexpectedly, and tie together in an almost ethereal way that makes me ask myself later on, did I write this? During the day, everything is more precise and premeditated, as if I had more control over my mind. It applies to everything I do at night, though. I'm not that good at visual arts but whenever I indulge in my childish sketches, the lines differ. I choose different colours, make the lines less pronounced. I let my hand wander and create shapes which are unexplainable in daylight. Q: Have you managed to persuade anyone to try segmented sleep themselves, with success or not? A: I got some people to try; most of them fell asleep quite soon after waking up from the first sleep. They are too used to their usual sleep patterns, and honestly, I don't think they really tried. Having a reason is most important. We tend to think, after a day at work, that we've already done everything we should have and now we are entitled to sleep as long as we can. We don't push ourselves anymore, even when we could. That is what I try to doâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;push myself. This rift between sleeps is my time that significantly affects my whole life. Q:

It seems safe to assume you get to talk about it a lot.

A: Oh yes. I have to explain myself constantly and I like it. Whenever I am staying over at someone's place, I sneak out to an empty room by myself, or an unoccupied corner, and read with a small night lamp, careful not to disturb. It's a common misconception that we need eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I can't count the times I've rolled my eyes at someone mentioning that medical myth. Q:

Planning on going back to the "normal" world?

A: I am happy this way, my mind is fulfilled and my body satisfied, in the simplest and most natural way. I could never give up on my 2 AMs.

photograph by john hill used with permission find him at flickr.com/people/istilldream 55

mixtape created with the help of daniel rebbe listen here: https://8tracks.com/silvaemag

floating/sinking peter broderick

06 madrona hey marseilles

02 vcr the antlers

03 hamburg mt. wolf

08 goshen beirut

09 slipped the national

little dreamer future islands

05 baby warpaint

brother sparrow agnes obel

10 somewhere pascal pinon

submit to silvae if you're a storyteller, a wanderer, a capturer, a dreamer, an aspirer, a maker, a shower and teller: why not share something with us and our readers? although submissions are open year-round, each issue's theme will be announced a month before the submission deadline. we'd love to see where your stairs are leading.

contributors a-z angela seychell is 22 years old, born and raised on an island in the mediterranean sea, now in the heart of europe. she likes cosmology, the british countryside, pomegranates and nabokov. she is currently in a state of introspection and contemplation collyn towns is getting ready to go to college for art and communications. she's a writer, an artist, and even a musician at times. her biggest dream is to someday work for studio ghibli or vogue magazine tumblr: folieacollyn.tumblr.com ~ favstar: favstar.fm/users/cathedraltunes daniel rebbe is currently finishing his ph.d. in social sciences. he is also widely unknown for his untold stories, unseen observations and silent speeches. he mostly hides under his desk, with his hands on the keyboard, though, to also write little poems, stories and songs of the everyday and curiousities twitter: unknowledgeably hana haley is a photographer and filmmaker from portland, or, living in new york. in the past years she lived in san francisco where she explored her dreamy aesthetic, vintage style, and girly fashion photography. she also adores meeting cats and dogs, and writing; you can find some of her stories in her first photobook instagram: hanahaley ~ website: hanahaley.com katie gilgour is a writer, fairy-tale fangirl, and book addict based in missouri. so far she has made it through her early twenties by consuming absurd amounts of caffeine and watching a lot of netflix twitter: katielilybeth lucy scott is an aspiring illustrator currently studying at leeds college of art. her practice is based on the relationship between people and places through the use of perspective, colour, and composition instagram: lucyscottillustration priya bryant is an a-level history and languages student from london, england, who has a near-obsessive fascination with the ocean. she posts poetry on her tumblr and edits and writes regularly for several music blogs; links to which can be found on her wordpress blogs: industrialmelancholy.tumblr.com ~ whatpriyasaid.wordpress.com theodora abigail writes. she lives in serpong, indonesia, where she struggles as an atypical university kid and fleshes out poems on scrap pieces of paper. she is enthusiastic about plants, humans, the internet, and childish gambino. through her prose and poetry she seeks to evoke the natural beauty of existence twitter: moriebun ~ wordpress: moriebun.wordpress.com topaz winters is a songbird and word-hoarder with a penchant for tea and tchaikovsky website: topazwinters.com

Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost