meet me in the pages

by CAMPBBELL WOODS

layout MADDIE SIEDELL photographer ABBY BURGY stylist MADDIE SIEDELL hmua ELLIANNA ARREOLA & IZABELLA HILMI models NICOLE RUDAKOVA & ERICA XU

Where minds dance freely to the unapologetic aura of independence and ambition glitters through empty souls, making them glow again.

Tom Sawyer used to wait for me every morning. I think back to my seventh grade English class, where I would escape into a world of white picket fences and green oak trees, basking in the fresh aroma of adventure in late spring. Each time I walked through that classroom door, Mark Twain’s stories comforted me in a way that I had never felt before; I was more connected to the character’s lives than to the people that surrounded me.

I think about the colder months, when we read “The Outsiders” and had to memorize Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” What were initially words I shakily recited in front of the class eventually shaped a huge part of my outlook on life: to stay gold, just like Ponyboy. Staying gold to me meant staying aware of the beautiful things in life, never letting a sunset go down without admiring its colors, and always cherishing the poetry that lies within a little moment.

“I ran freely into their worlds blooming with This will be the body copy you will be using! Make sure to not ambition and wonder, just often enough to keep mess with the font or sizing. You my knees scraped and my dreams golden.” can however play with the drop cap font and column size!

So with Tom’s hand in my hand and Robert in my soul, I ran freely into their worlds blooming with ambition and wonder, just often enough to keep my knees scraped and my dreams golden. I kept my footprints fresh in dirt roads; I played beneath the oak trees; I bloomed with the flowers and rested at sunsets, taking in every color. Golden, glowing, laughing. I swore I could’ve lived off of that pure creativity for the rest of my life. I never registered the consequences that would come with being so openly raw to life.

I still met with Robert during sunsets, and Tom waited for me beneath green oak trees in the summers. But as sunsets burned into the horizon day after day, and the cold breath of time iced the green leaves into bare branches, I tucked Tom Sawyer into my back pocket and shushed Robert Frost to a feathery whisper. Without that sweet escape, I wasn’t reminded as often how important it was to pay attention to the poetry.

My meaning of staying gold changed with the world that began to swallow me whole - a world where eyes laughed mockingly at my reach for adventure and judgment stripped the gold from my soul, grinding it down to a dull grey. My worth became just another play in the game of their inclusion, and validation was the prize. It lay waiting for me behind the stubborn walls of rejection that I had to break down only by breaking myself.

I couldn’t give up on the fight, for the repercussions of feeling like I wasn’t good enough were too humiliating for me to face. I started to see a trail of gold following behind me

in sad, broken pieces. I screamed at Robert, “Pick them up! Help me!” but they melted into the terrain of selfdoubt. Uncertainty looming in the distance, I began to break at the beck of tomorrow’s calls. Be better, try harder, grow up. I threw away everything that I felt made me different from the crowd I so badly wanted acceptance from, believing it would make me lighter, easier to bring over the walls. As I fought through with tears streaming and fists clenched, I realized how naive I had been to believe that being soft would get me anywhere. And soon, I found myself facing the last wall standing. Tom Sawyer reached his hand out, and while my heart swelled to seek something beyond these walls with him, I rejected my old dreams the only way I knew how to at this point. Without mercy. And finally, I reached the center at last, but I only found a broken mirror reflecting someone I could barely recognize. My knees weren’t scraped, and my face was worn by the endless search for acceptance that I never seemed to be enough for. This world is all an illusion, but I’ve realized it too late.

Now, as I walk through this old bookstore, I feel like I’m visiting an old friend that I have long outgrown. I expect rejection as I go through the books, picking some up and flipping through the different pages. As I run my fingers along the rough fabric, tracing the Make sure to keep these spreads 4-8 names engraved into their spines, my hand lands pages! Have fun with this and dont on a book by Jack Kerouac. Jack Kerouac, a beatnik writer who wrote at the seams of the sixties liberation stress about this assignment !! It’s just movement. Jack, whose words were the leaders for practice to get familiar with the brand the dreamers. Jack, who writes of beaten-down paths and starry skies, of tender love and firing passion. Jack, guides and messing with placement of who tells me that my life is a, “vast glowing and empty things! You can always look at previous page, I could do anything I want.” spreads on issuu if you’re stuck or con-Why haven’t I met you, Jack? Why couldn’t it have been fused or you can always reach out to when I lay breathless on the cold tile of my kitchen floor, shattered at the seams of my self-worth? An one of us! excitement overtakes me as I peer into this new world, and I feel the sense that something is changed, what it feels like to dream again. You also dont have to worry about adding anything to this yet either. Just play with corner placements and make sure it is visible!

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Take me into your world, Jack. Where minds dance freely to the unapologetic aura of independence and ambition glitters through empty souls, making them glow again.

Infuse me into your poetry, make me sound beautiful. How do you abide by your intuition so easily? How do you not hold yourself back? I’ve always been afraid of change, but now the thought of staying the same terrifies me. I am too open; I have seen too much of this other version of who I am that has revealed herself through your words. She is broken free from this superficiality that has raised her and released into the soft breeze of California; she knows what it means to dream. Fueled by the possibility of the unknown, she isn’t afraid of being lost. Of looking dumb. Of feeling worthless in the eyes of others, or of being measured up to some imaginary idea of what she should be. Let me bask in the uncertainty and give me the map to nowhere.

This golden light I sought for so long shines only in the comfort of words that make me feel understood in all of my brokenness, vibrant with possibility. I realize my dreams die in the expectation to be something tomorrow. So I refuse to give them to tomorrow; I grab it by each moment and let them enfold me.

It’s easy to read these words and think I could be different. Better. But right now, I am everything I thought I wasn’t. As I run forward, I can hear Robert’s sweet voice harmonizing with Tom’s footsteps. I am ready to meet them again. ■