TOE TAGS

Goodbyes for the Indy’s class of 2022

before i knew ATCB, i knew they were rooting for me. not because i was special, or because i had earned it, but because they so clearly and fundamentally believe in the goodness of people that they celebrate everyone around them. and then, suddenly, ATCB was everywhere, a reminder that indy MEs twerk on stage, that poets scream bad bunny lyrics, that water can pick you up and carry you for miles but it also sometimes begs to be cupped in your overlapping palms.

this is when i learned that to be friends with ATCB is to be dancing. by that i mean: you will be truly, deeply, and lovingly seen, it will feel like it is meant to be, and every once in a while you will glance at how ATCB moves and try to mimic the floating, romantic, grace with which they navigate the world. you will hear chirps and know they are robins. you will believe that the clouds can rain coffee. you will be here. -MMC

We’ve all gotten very used to not having to go far to walk with RG, read with RG, write with

RG, talk with RG. How, after all this, could RG go? We at the Indy have a list of demands for this outrageous situation we find ourselves in:

Can we have a little more? Could it be after games and books? After coffee and a sandwich? After movies? After one more round of edits? After music and your poems? After another show? One more long drive? Another illustration for an article?

Another chicken man in Philly last night? Another listen through? Another set of reads? RG has let us push it back an issue before, could we try that again?

Could we draw for a heart for our RG Barille? Like most RG fans, we only need a small eternity, just enough for another spin around the park; is that so much to ask? Just a little crust of garlic bread?

After all that, potentially, and a few more things, could we maybe play a game of chess and have a little lunch?

-LN In an Indy pick-your-fighter scenario, MMC would max the levels out on multiple criteria: magnetic charm, maravilhosa cantora, model of compassion. She’d do it all in her default rose-patterned dress. MMC, just like unlocking a new character at the end of a great journey, I lucked out on becoming your friend. I discover so much in the smallest decisions that you take along the way: how you turn down a Snackpass deal for the chance at a prolonged conversation over a cream cheese bagel, how you would rather let your love shine once and shine bright in unforgettable shades of pink and green than be anyplace. MMC, there are countless precious viewpoints that only you have occupied. Thank you for showing me all the different ways of straying from the path, stopping for conversation, and resuming your stride with a new friend by your side. -ATCB

Anyone close to AF has witnessed her dogged meticulousness, a commitment to the particularity of even the smallest and subtlest of things, a devotion to the just so. AF’s just so-ness is not a bland perfectionism or obsession––it is not an involuntary urge for lack of control. Rather, AF is executing a directorial vision; she is the auteur of the AF cinematic universe. The three defining attributes of the auteur are technical competence, stylistic continuity/distinguishability, and interior meaning. There is no doubting the technical brilliance in AF’s execution of her life-as-film. It’s evident in the exactness, the just so-ness, of all things in AF’s world; when it comes to putting it together, she couldn’t do better.

Nor could one question her distinct style and sensibility (so-called “consistent swag”), unfaltering and coherent day-to-day through her art, writing, and general demeanor (and outfits). Finally, the auteur’s work contains interior meaning –– something like a worldview, an interpretation or approach to being; in AF’s case, it is an expressive soul, cumulative across everything she makes, does and is. It’s the overlapping center of the multitudinous Venn diagram that is the AF life-opus. Naturally, AF’s interior meaning is difficult to pin down, but it derives primarily from her steadfast adherence to principles, penetrating curiosity and perceptiveness, immense intellect, and infallible emotional intuition. Anyone close to AF must realize that they are in some sense part of her world. That is, if AF the auteur opts for your company, she has written you into her cinematic universe, and this was a very careful choice––you should be honored.

To encounter IA is to sit beside one of the foremost Taylor Swift scholars, to find poetry in the quiet of early dawn but also in sweaty palms and puddles that linger after a windswept rainfall. The cadence of her voice lulls over grass crested hills, frolicking towards home. No one else holds sisterhood so gently in her pocket as she laughs one beat staccato and lets the giggle carry over the room. IA, to know you is a gift, handwritten notes and pop songs, eternally bounding homeward, stretching out beneath the sun. I am grateful you have let me lean on you, and that you are so generous with your soft gravity. v and our lives are brighter, warmer, and ever so slightly sunkissed by your presence in them. -AJ

TM, we are so lucky that you joined our crew this semester. It has been too short and oh so sweet! And in honor of that, here is a short and (hopefully) sweet farewell poem:

Equanimous craftsman, you Cut carefully through papery blocks of persimmon and indigo hues

-JS

Wedged colors vibrate Before our eyes. And your pictures offer to their textual twins a gaze.

“This doesn’t look like it’s ever been the ‘right way,’” LN said once, as we were following the thread of a wrong turn somewhere near Fremont, Indiana. We asked an old couple for directions: she pointed left, he pointed right, we continued straight. This is all to say: to get lost with LN is what makes a paper map worth its weight in gasoline. On trips short and long, LN is the greatest story teller, and he is always the safest person to store a memory in; some may say that this is because he’s a good friend, a historian, and an Indy writer, but I think it’s just because he’s got the biggest heart. LN is the person that makes a place a Place, and that Place a place you want to be in, and he is the person that can look at Providence, square in her horrible eye, and still find a way to love her blossoms in the spring.

All those who have been so lucky to work on an LN D1, or to parse through the [-ln]s scattered about a messy WiR, or to pencil in and erase and pencil in again the answers to an LN crossword, know that to share a page with him is the Indy’s greatest gift. Providence will be horribly less fun once he’s gone, and we can only hope that he’ll somehow take a wrong turn and end up here again one day, with a coffee, basketball, and chess set in tow.

-DM

rhythm, time, wonder :: all this magic whirls around LP as sure as if she were a little planet (if planets could be so cool) :: here and there and everywhere :: a wisdomful friend, a careful reader, an artful noticer :: be in LP’s orbit for just a second and you’ll feel charm entwined with gravity :: maybe you’ll float into LP’s cosmic rings, spinning with bits of ginkgo leaf, flotsam and jetsam, strong tea, or yarn :: gathered and arranged with grace, LP’s orbits make music :: she is rally comrade, concert planner, and fire sign extraordinaire :: who else would you turn for guitar lessons, a trip to the tidepools, or an especially brilliant musing about combat chameleons? :: LP teaches us how to revel and wonder, to organize and dance :: LP makes the world go round :: the minute you see her you begin to question why you were anywhere else just the moment before.

-RG

Unbeknownst to her utmost casual acquaintances, Wheels is uncannily Wheelsian. She is a forward-moving entity, gliding forth vis-à-vis rotational movement. This Wheel is both stable and always in motion, and similar to her sobriquet, she sustains dualities: ironic and angelic, charming and cutting, girly and feminist, internet-persona and ever-present, self-deprecating and quick-witted, etc. She spins so fast, you can hardly decipher one spoke from another: is she playful or wise? Dear Indy or a Dear Friend? blonde or brunette? charming or cutting? playful or wise? Result-

ing is not so much a stable object as much as an atmosphere—easily identifiable in a wheelsian knick knack, a blouse, a treat. Nevertheless, we mustn’t forget that Wheels bears a sturdy center axis, for she is a source of stability to many. Not only does she frequent the Rock, but she is a rock to the most fortunate of her contemporaries. This young lady is singular and she contains multiplicities, perpetually unraveling upon each and every forward rotation. We look forward to see where she spins, and can only hope that she might come full circle, rolling back into our lives. -AF

If you’ve ever taken a trip to the Moominvalley, you might have chanced upon ER traipsing through a glade, poised and snapping photos. A sunflower, an icicle, a friend. ER is a faithful documentarian, capturing scenes that would otherwise pass unnoticed. To be on the opposite side of her camera lens is to catch a moment of praise from her friendly eye. She knows what looks good—her sense of style elicits Moomin and human gasps! To accentuate her chic blouses and handsome coats, ER often places random trinkets on her head—bottles, oranges, coffee milk—though she would call these hats. Always making new,

ER refines what she sees. Cardamom, butter, sugar… her technical prowess with a waffle maker is said to be legendary; the buzz of its alarm touches stomachs and hearts.

BM and I have been cursed, but we’re working on it. Thankfully, there is no better person to be with through hacked instagrams, many heartbreaks, and losing everything we’ve ever owned. Meeting BM, which happens only in the eyes of hurricanes, is a gift reserved only for those ready to drive around in their car at midnight or sit with them in any diner at a moment’s notice. They greet every day with sincerity, and there must be twenty of them because there is no other way a person could do so much with as much love as they do. I want to watch lore YouTube videos with them until the sun rises. I want to dress up with them like pop stars. I want to buy treats with them because we are cursed, and don’t we deserve it anyways?

Being cursed is not so bad when a friendship is simply too good. It is, perhaps, the fair trade off for having the opportunity to know and love BM at all.

-AC

ER’s time with the Indy inaugurates her brief stay among the humans of PVD. We hope that one day, she returns, reminding us that Moomin magic is never too far away.

LP + RG

From replicating synesthetic washes of pink and marigold, to the moody and painterly scenes of Narragansett, the images that OL crafts appear to me as cinematic stills. OL’s art has brought a special dimension of tangibility to the texts crafted by our writers. Thank you for your ruminative creative presence.

-SJ

I picture OEO 20 years from now sitting poolside, in her Spike-Lee-adjacent husband’s home. Her sons are off at Eton, a school she thought only existed in period novels. Her hand is packed with an assortment of golden rings, ones she is sure not to lose in conmag, or in other people’s houses because she can no longer replace them in 2-3 business days. But even with Spike Lee Lite™️ away at his latest film shoot, OEO remains the star of this production. What you don’t see in this scene is that in her gold-laden hand lies a cellphone where she is sending all her friends good morning messages alongside the best places to get jollof rice and plantain in the city––a warm gesture, an attempt to bring home to all those who have gone away. OEO is the physical embodiment of home, a golden embrace. A reminder that you can find kinship in late night copy days, giggling over last-minute edits, and wondering how she’s managed to be the sunshine you need when all the curtains are drawn.

NS is on the green, catching a frisbee. She’s huddled by her laptop, writing a story. NS is so sorry she can’t do Sunday, she’s taking the day to drive to the woods and forage for mushrooms.

When I met NS, I was immediately drawn to her intensity, a dogged devotion to excellence in the things—storytelling, service, family—she cares about, to her candid fearlessness and commitment against apathy. In this, she remains unwavering. However, since knowing her, I am most grateful for her infectious sense of wonder, an inimitable curiosity about the world and people around her.

Meeting her for coffee spans a baffling range, across youth and ambition and the ways we make meaning, a steadfastness in interrogating the world paired with an affirming laugh and awareness of the humor in it all; she’ll earnestly share your enthusiasm, and it’s impossible to leave without believing more in yourself. I’m convinced this comes from her candor, her disarming authenticity; at her core, NS is driven by kindness, unshakeable in her convictions and bold in how she moves through the world. We’re lucky to know her.

-LG

I did not know until meeting AS that I wanted a wooden duck, a decoy, if you’re in with the vernacular. Yet, when I saw him walking down Benefit with said decoy tucked delicately beneath his arm, I knew that somehow, something in my own life was so deeply lacking.

The life of AS seems full, even when his arms are not filled with duck. His laugh can fill a room better than water can any cup. And somehow, he never runs out of words, whether in tweets or in March Madness brackets.

I did not know much before meeting AS, but

I am learning how the world can be when you reject New York City and follow other feelings and other places. Through him, I am learning to search for ducks and small towns.

-AC

Few words in the English language capture the ethereal presences of one MD. To know her is to feel loved and accepted always. Her beautiful words and her kind spirit fill a room (and a heart <3) Who better to discuss books and days and feelings and life with than Megan. I am so gratefvul to have shared my time at Brown with her lovely and priceless presence. I will remember fondly the times we’ve spent dancing, talking, and wondering together. With her, life feels a little less lonely and a lot more hopeful. Forever grateful to know her and to be able to love her in such close friendship.

- ODM

The blissful resonance of OD's laughter is almost as comforting as her warming hugs. Conversations with her hold a sense of genuine sincerity that can disarm the most cautious of people in the very best way. I feel so fortunate to have endured the strangest of college years alongside her gentle presence—Ophelia reminds me that there are people that understand. In spaces where everyone seems to be glued to an escalator transporting them to some predetermined end zone, Ophelia is happy to take a walk the long way round, stopping for an egg tart en route. The Indy remains beyond blessed to receive the grace of her designer eye, just as I am honored to receive her kindness. Whenever we depart, I always wish to thank her for the time she spends with me, so I will immortalize such thanks here <3 -MD

I think we took things a bit for granted this semester. JG always pulls through at Copy when we need help with emergency illustrations. What will [future ME acronym] do without him? I’m not sure, but that’s not for me to tell.

JG tells a story about his first time coming to copy. He had scaled the stairs of Faunce— up three flights and to the right. The room was empty except for one guy, who he asked: “is this conmag?

Like for the Indy?” The guy said no and that he has never heard of the

Indy. I don’t know what really happened because I know for a fact that Alisa, Ife, Isaac and I are always at copy and there are never men at Copy before 5.

Anyways, JG will always be able to find his way back to Conmag, and

I’m glad he found us.

-SJ

A flash of pink (or green, or blue, or whichever bottle of hair dye was on sale that week), the all-too-familiar clickclack of platform shoes, the mysterious sound of angels harmonizing in––wait, is that Greek? And suddenly AW is here, there, everywhere, in fact they are the entire room, and we are all just lucky to be invited inside. AW transforms your universe into a fairytale, one where princesses speak in sapphic poetry, lucrative thrift store finds are emperor’s clothes, and, if you close your eyes and truly believe, the perfect bagel can make you fly! AW, you are a gift––the absolute rarest of all, the type you take a really long time to open on Christmas morning because you simply need to keep the wrapping paper to remember it by. Thank you for teaching us that true poetry can be found in a laugh, or in nighttime conversation, or even (especially) in a steady hand guiding you home. -IA

We love you all and thank you for your wisdom! Good luck out in the world, and stay in touch <3

-ISIA

a letter, a prayer

easter sunday, and the couples make me cry.

i dreamt, last night, of a secret place between knowing and consummating, between love and lack. i dreamt it twice, innocent interlacing with a body mine hasn’t known. i wake up and see flowers, feel love as it traipsed through my veins, hollow and ghost-like.

and i’m back in the world of others’ love and others’ pain and others’ business, and it’s a holiday today.

i miss the old amorphous love who was infinitely foreign to me. we knew each other well. and then the older man texts me, who writes of devour, and i watch my dreams harden and go stale before my wristwatch. the infinite unknown love spoils away, and i am left, alone again. eating a scone at a coffee shop. watching the old folks on the east side hold hands and sip their tea.

i felt it all day, coming over me. like a song stuck in my head. echoes loud enough to leak through the unconscious.

the dream: we were in a field of baby green and yellow late sunlight.

we were cradled in a bed beneath the slanted ceiling, our feet were by the pillows, our heads almost falling off. we were spelling words: i think it was love: he had followed me here, a home, a displacement. and then our limbs were like letters: the L took my leg over his waist, our torsos collapsed. heads bound to new shoulders, i walked into liminality and saw beyond it. i saw asking for his mouth, without words. but he was gone before my lips could find him.

in the day, i will occupy myself with simple things, and this moment will start at the small of my back, in the middle, and sharpen through to the navel, bleeding up. softly, though, with a coldness, like a flower. i don’t know what to do but feel that i’m dreaming, now, instead, that i’m away from that world, that though i cannot comfort you in love i will be back tonight with closed eyes. i will be back in love in a deep inwardness, the most sincere of all absences.

walking in the park i will dissociate a little. the grass and the way the sun hits it reminds me of a different grass, and the memory becomes me. i am not in love, i am under the highway by the bay. i am not at the river. i am not with one who makes everywhere feel like river. what would happen if we said the words? what would happen if the language filled your mouth and wrinkled your prose. the betweenness of your tongue and cheek invokes me: would you feel me, then––like a dream, like prayer? a beckoning for the incomplete.

i could sit on your tongue and touch your teeth while you talk. you would feel me, then, in an intimate absence, a space between your parted lips.

A Bird Will Not Be A Bird

I am writing a poem today. I am writing a poem, because I have decided to write a poem, and because I have decided to write a poem, a poem is being written today. And every word will have meaning and every juxtaposition will have a just position, and you will take something from these words, from these words, something will be taken because I have written them down for you. If you squint, tilt your head, maybe even close your eyes, you will imagine corn fields or early onset erectile dysfunction or exploding stars or whatever else we can decide has meaning. And a bird will not be a bird, but instead a treatise on the national coin shortage, or the Cuban Missile Crisis, or both. If you question where you are or get confused, merely skip to the next line. Who needs to understand where you have been so long as you have something to look forward to?

I am writing a poem today, and there will be line breaks and limited punctuation, capitalization—because we are best consumed in small portions!

I am writing a poem today, and it will be from the perspective of a white woman, using the name of a white man, telling the story of a Black man facing fears she pretends to understand. It will win the Pulitzer Prize, and Congress members will kneel before me in kente cloth, and AP Literature and Composition classrooms will never be the same. In the back row, little Black girls will tuck their pencils into notebooks and shuffle their feet until one day they decide that they will write themselves a poem, too.

I am writing a poem today, except actually it will not be about forest fires, or taxes, or exploring the Himalayas, or how a scarf isn’t really a scarf but a metaphor for a hat, or police brutality, or the sound a cow makes when it is first separated from its child, or any trauma that is not mine to name. Instead, it will be my mother’s laughter on the Long Island Expressway, the painful accuracy I find in a slow expressway’s acronym being “LIE,” the way my best friend smiles when she dances, the smell of my nephew’s hair, my favorite songs, my grandmother’s name, my brother’s favorite songs that he claims I got from him.

I am writing a poem today because I hate poetry, and I don’t believe that the world has as much meaning as we pretend it does. I am writing a poem today because I love poetry, and language has created the world for me.

I am writing a poem today. I am writing a poem, because I have decided to write a poem, and because I have decided to write a poem, a poem is being written today.

Goodbye Rock, or, My Run-in with A Swivel Chair

“At dusk, the orange glows through the windows, and black birds fly in formation over the city.”

The basement is a cold concrete floor, floating dust motes, a gated book bindery, shelvers, and silence. In the bindery, the freshest pages are bound in glossy cardboard covers behind an iron cage, while in the shelvery, the books are slowly sorted until they find their home again, seeking their special place in the thousands of volumes above.

On Level A, the absolute quiet room is full of hissing radiators, comfy couches, librarians eating lunch, a view over the city, and late night naps before graveyard shifts.

I worked for many years on the first floor, staffing the main desk until 2 AM, pulling books for circulation, and whiling away the winter weeks in Providence while I waited for the return of my fellow students. For one friend, the power of sitting behind the desk went to his head. He deemed himself the head pooh-bah of the library, I his assistant, both of us armed only with the alarm bell and threats of overdue fines on missing books. Sometimes, after ringing the bell, freshmen would run up to the desk. What’s happening! they cried. Is it an emergency? We smiled. My friend is long gone. Now, some librarians greet me as I swipe in, or open the gates specially for me. They ask about the latest happenings around campus, eyes peeking out from behind masked faces. They’re kind, always ready with a greeting or a quip in the midst of long hours immersed in the written word.

Avoid the second floor at all costs. The grad students’ chambers—locked to outsiders—are sterile, walled with glass, and I’ve known many who have been locked out of the private rooms, their books and belongings held captive to the whims of the swipe system.

The third floor is my world. Freshman year, we sat in the East Asian section in lumpy chairs, a community of truth investigators armed with youthful naivete. Four years later, we’re alone in the winter months, watching the sun set over Providence. At dusk, the orange glows through the windows, and blackbirds fly in formation over the city. We sit in lonesome carrels—crude jokes scratched into the wood—writing theses on obscure topics, plucking books from the shelves like apples from a tree. We gorge. My desk sits equidistant between the bathroom and the elevator, beside long rows of history. My chosen volumes are aligned in tight formation on the shelves above my desk, my hidey-hole, sitting alongside academic detritus—old thesis drafts, notes from advisors, copies of the Indy, and letters from friends stuffed between wellworn book covers. My jacket hangs at attention. In the witching hour, security guards dressed in yellow pass my desk, their beepers bopping the bookcases, their feet padding down long hallways. Janitors at midnight move slowly through the rows, and student workers, pulling carts, pull books for far-flung locales. The concrete floor is cold against my socked feet, and I know the number of steps to the stairwell, the bathroom, the elevator, and that window in the corner that looks out over the Bay.

On the third floor my world once ended while sitting in a swivel chair. I was convinced that everything was coming undone. It’s not anything! said one with me then. Oh, but it is, I cried. A year later, I was finally able to return to that chair. At least the books were still there.

I like the fourth floor, and have no qualms with it.

I’ve never been to the roof, but once, when taking my place behind the desk for the graveyard shift, I heard a story: two students had found an open door and snuck up. They left the door ajar, an alarm rang, and some adults found them—escapade over. Someone took down the information of these snoopers, led them to the lobby, then let them go. They leaped down the broad Rock stairs and fled through the night. I want to go on the roof too, one day, to reminisce on swivel chairs, pooh-bah, and dust motes.

After all, there are only so many things you can learn in the stacks of a library, between the covers of a book.

PEDER SCHAEFER B’22.5 will be back.