Strike Magazine Issue 06 by Strike Magazines

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featuring Victoria Briggiler Tamara Dandreamatteo Violet Holah Aneesah RiveraNichols Judy Li

All Grown Up written by Sidney Spiecher

28 November 2003

The office has 27 floors. Every morning she reaches her desk on the 23rd floor fifteen minutes early, a good habit formed years ago. She settles into the stiff chair with a straight back and crossed legs. As people arrive, the room stirs with the familiar sound of fingers on keyboards and papers shuffling around. The keyboards and papers make a sad attempt to fill the vacant space with a droning conversation of their own. There is very little talking on the 23rd floor. Around 11:00, the coffee machine in the corner room begins its predictable whine, and, for the next half hour, everyone will take unspoken shifts to pour themselves a cup. They linger in the breakroom, slowly sipping until their drinks go cold. They return to their desks and the work revs up again until 12:00.

At lunchtime, she escapes outside to take her break. She sits alone on a dark, weathered bench with thick paint flaking off, red rust peeking out of its uncovered patches. Eyes adjusted to the office light, she squints at the sharpness of the sun, its rays her midday reward. There is something upsetting about this to her, but she does not dwell on it. Back inside, she finds her desk among the straight array of gray cubicles, each just tall enough to cover the eyes of the people in front of her. The smell of the afternoon coffee pierces the room on schedule—3:00 sharp—and by 4:00 the sun dips low in the sky. At 5:00, she packs up her things and waits for the first people to hurry out, so as to not be the first one gone, before she makes her way back down the 23 floors, stepping outside at 5:07. Like always.

“Snow Outside the 23rd Floor” written by Tess Vogel

She returns to work the next day, same time as usual. The air in the office this morning is cold, the type of cold that seeps through the edges of the windows. She wants to keep her jacket on; she wants to take a walk, to stretch, and warm up her stationary limbs. She squeezes her icy hands so that she can move her fingers enough to answer her emails. The man next to her is playing music through black wired headphones. They look flimsy, the type you would be given on an airplane and be expected to throw out. The music he plays spills out of the earbuds with a static just loud enough that she can make out the beat. It stands out against the hum of the keyboard clicking and the paper shuffling. She notices the tapping of her own feet only when she is met with a sidelong glance condemning the noise of her heel against the leg of her chair.

12 December 1997 Mornings on the first floor of Studio C are always cold. The room is lined with mirrors and thin beige walls. Each wooden barre is smooth and polished, delicate to the touch. She gets to the studio early to warm herself up, and the beat of the music from the next room filters through the walls. When class begins, the room springs into action, brought to life with the rhythm of moving feet and the soft tapping of pointe shoes against the hardwood floor. There is consistency in the movements, practiced for days on end. They are, however, never identical; there is always a change in the movement of a wrist or a gaze into the mirror that sends the rhythm of the room in a new direction. The sound of the shoes on the floor halt when the music stops, but the space remains in suspension for just a moment longer.

Mornings on the

29 November 2003, 11:57 am

On the 23rd floor, the man takes off his headphones and leaves for lunch. The room returns to near silence, and she halts the tapping of her feet. She glances up from her computer and is surprised to see snowflakes falling outside the window. It lures her outside, to step beyond the 23rd floor. Her weekly numbers ought to be entered before lunch, but snow this early in the winter is rare. She apprehensively decides to move outside to watch.

In the elevator, the thought of the numbers left waiting on her desk irk her. She steps outside and moves carefully across the wet pavement to the courtyard. The weathered benches are just beginning to accumulate its initial layer of powdery flakes. They frost the rusty spots so that they nearly shimmer. Looking into the gray sky, she watchest the flakes fall straight down in torrents.

19 December 1997

stage hands pour specks of white paper down from above the stage. The dancers are ready in their places. The symphony starts to play its first notes, and she looks up to catch a glimpse as a fan blows the paper in a spiral. As the dancers twist around, they melt into the sea of falling snow, spiraling in circles in all white costumes. The paper flakes cover the stage and accumulate under her feet as she leaps through the air, almost without thought. She will look back and miss how carefree she feels in this moment.

29 November, 12:03 pm

the ground is growing a dangerous layer of icy slush. She watches as a young boy on the stage hands pouralong speckshappily, of white paper adown stage. his feet are taken sidewalk hurries dancing littlefrom in hisabove step. the Suddenly The dancers arehim ready their places. symphony to play its the ground. She out from under andinshe hears the The jarring thud of starts his body hitting first notes, and up to catch a glimpse as a of fanthe blows theflakes paperstill falling as remembers theshe waylooks the symphony halted, the sight paper in spiral. As theoffstage. dancersNow, twistrooted around,tothey into sea of falling shea was carried her melt spot in thethe courtyard, she sees the boy pick snow, spiraling in circles in all white costumes. The paper flakes cover himself up and lug himself away. She studies intensely for a limp in his walk or a twist in the stage and accumulate under feet as she leaps through the air, his ankle, but when he rounds theher corner and disappears from view, unphased, she turns almost thought. Sheback will inside. look back and miss how carefree she around without and takes her lunch feels in this moment.

“Breaking Out: Redefining Success and Identity” written by Tamara Dandreamatteo

Third year of college and I still find myself Googling “What can I do with my degree?” on random weekday nights overwhelmed with the rapidly impending, amorphous future. Completely defeated by the rigor of my classes, I doom scroll Reddit posts for potential jobs or grad school programs until, without fail, the question “Do I even want a career?” single handedly stops me in my tracks. And each time, I decide it’s too daunting to answer. Instead, I walk to my kitchen, eat a sweet treat, and head to bed. This existential thought cycle happens often. In a competitive academic environment, we hope one day our suffering will have meaning. That once we ascend to a powerful position in a Fortune 500 company it will all be worth something. Or, at the very least, that the suffering is momentary, just a necessary blip before the long, blissful journey of the rest of our lives and successful careers. However, what happens when you wake up and hate a major you once loved as the looming reality of limited, mundane work options finally hits you? Once we start having pressure to succeed in the classroom, the subjects we once found seductive lose all their shine. The achievement culture of college pushes us to accomplish as much as we physically can, at the expense of time to introspect and truly think. Finally, when we are certain we are doing all that we can, a casual conversation with a classmate reveals that they just got into a prestigious program and somehow managed to receive an A on an assignment that we tirelessly struggled to complete. These

moments of comparison erode our motivation to understand. Learning no longer feels fulfilling amidst the seemingly immovable mountain of rigorous work. Every other peer you’ve ever had has some sort of invisible leg up. The pressure to produce quality work all the time has robbed us from the joy of learning. Our genuine curiosity ends when our motivation becomes extrinsic: getting validation from a letter grade. Grades aside, the alluring and seductive beauty of these elite career paths, promising power and influence, rapidly decay, leaving behind their rotten core, when it becomes increasingly obvious they are elite for a reason: they don’t want you there. Achievement culture sinisterly keeps us productive by instilling in us, so deeply it transforms into a pseudo moral code, that success means making it in an elite career path (think doctor, lawyer, CEO, software engineer at Amazon, etc). These jobs entice us with the promise that, if we manage to land them, we will be granted automatic validation and respect from … who? The wealthy, the elite, our peers? The promises are empty. Jobs we once wished to pursue for noble, altruistic reasons like helping others become cesspools for fierce competition, where we claw our way to “success.” It seems that professions that pride themselves on promoting justice, health, equality, advocacy, put in barriers to entry so rigorous, competitive, and rigged that virtually only those with a generational network can enter, promoting the very systems they seek to dismantle.

Could you tell me more about your own design brand?

SecondHand

I do patchwork and screenprinting. I print on thrifted tops and pants, but I also source from an ethical manufacturer who makers their stuff in the US. I always make sure that the stuff I am making is ethically made or sourced. I screenprint in the studio, and then for Is it difficult to demy patchwork piecsign sustainably? es, all of the fabric and thread is secIt’s not necessarily ond-hand. harder, but it’s more costly. I would say Why is sustainabilhaving an unethical ity so important to clothing business, you? like if you dropship, is extremely easy. We have so much The person doesn’t clothing in the even see the item, world. If we stopped they just get the making clothing profit from it. So right now, we have in my case, where enough for the next I’m actually dealing 7 generations of with each item, and people. It would I ship it myself, and be wrong to make I photograph it myclothing that may self, and I make it contribute to that. all myself, it’s definitely a lot harder.

What kind of advice would you give someone who’s looking to sell thrifted or vintage clothing? Absolutely get started. We definitely need more resellers. I know a lot of people who want to resell, but are afraid they’re taking clothing away from someone else who need it, but unless you’re thrifting somewhere and there’s only a handful of items like a winter coat or a suit someone might need for an interview, which usually never happens (anytime you walk into a thrift store, it’s always totally packed), you’re totally fine.

SECOND LIFE

Do you ever feel like there’s a certain emotional aspect of giving clothing a second life or another home? Absolutely. I feel very emotionally motivated. I’m very happy that I’m able to do this job where I can thrift something that someone didn’t once appreciate and I’m able to turn it into something that a lot of people want. I can take that piece of clothing that was unwanted and then make it wanted by printing my art onto it. There’s something very caterpillar into butterfly about that.