The Morningside Monocle - Winter 2021 by The Morningside Monocle

The Morningside Monocle

front cover

Children Playing

Ian Berkelaar

Monocle Staff Editor-in-Chief Rachel Rein Co-Copy Editors Noah Foster & Dan Cobourn Submissions Editor Lanlie Zheng Poetry Editor Brandon Weber Prose Editor Gersham Johnson Art & Layout Editor Congrui Lin Social Chair/Event Coordinator Sahana Ragunathan

The Morningside Monocle Winter 2021

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Editor’s Note Over one year has passed since the COVID-19 pandemic began to ravage the world. Almost one year has passed since it hit New York City, the city of our law school, the city many of have called at least a temporary home. One year later, we have survived. Accordingly, the Winter 2021 issue’s theme is Resilience. In that same vein, our cover photo, “Children Playing,” shows sculpted children dancing, forever embracing in a joyful circle. “Forward,” a poem, asks us to shake off the rocks on our chests. Closing out the issue, our readers may find a short story in which the narrator ultimately finds comfort in his wife’s seeming indestructibility. But none of us are truly indestructible, and the COVID-19 pandemic has acutely illuminated the areas in which we, as individuals and as a collective, need support. I have seen people’s children wander into their rooms during classes. Partners take calls in the background. Classmates take time off, or go off-screen, to cope with mental illness worsened by the pandemic. We have either learned for the first time, or been reminded, that resilience is not necessarily “triumphing” over trauma. Resilience is often small, often simple. For those of us who have lost friends or family to COVID-19 or to conditions exacerbated by the pandemic, resilience may look like supporting our loved ones, experiencing our grief, or simply taking the next breath. I joined The Monocle to be a part of our law student body’s creative journey. I wanted to help amplify the voices I had experienced previously as a reader of The Monocle. It is these voices, spoken through our published pieces, and those behind the scenes, that have made this issue possible. So, thank you to our wonderful authors, artists, photographers, and editors for bringing this issue together. I want to extend a special thanks to Dan Cobourn and Noah Foster, our editorial team’s 1L’s who stepped up in a new and challenging virtual environment. As you read through this issue, I ask you to find what resonates with you, and leave the rest. Whatever you connect with, I hope you enjoy this issue, and find a spark of something to bring forward with you into the spring semester.

Rachel Rein, Editor-in-Chief

Table of Contents photography 1 2 3 5 6 9 10 13 14 15 20 23 26 28 31 35 vi

Autum Boathouse Ian Berkelaar Untitled (Origins) Karen Wang Untitled (Origins) Karen Wang Metro Ian Berkelaar Cathedral Wash North Ian Berkelaar The Bitter End Ian Berkelaar Untitled Seth Glickman A Hopeful Outlook Wan-Ting Huang Singing Sisters Ian Berkelaar Surrogate's Court Ian Berkelaar Piano keys Caleb W. Monaghan Wall with clock and mask Caleb W. Monaghan Exit Trail (Origins) Karen Wang Untitled (Origins) Karen Wang A Quick Recess Nap (Origins) Karen Wang Window Dressing (Origins) Karen Wang

art 16

Who win, and nations do not see-Nanette G. Liu

poetry 2 A Pair for A Pair: Rondeaus on Engagement Brandon R. Weber 4 commute anonymous 7 Mojave Trails Memoir William Leo 8 My Existential Crisis Rachel Rein 11 Oeuvre Gersham Johnson 12 forward Aubrey L. Kelley

prose 17

The Crater Dan Cobourn

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photograph

Autumn Boathouse

Ian Berkelaar 1

A Pair for A Pair: Rondeaus on Engagement Brandon R. Weber The rain came down as I walked up the stairs; on 116th Street, city under there. I held red roses and a small black box, and scattered petals on the steps like rocks on a beach by the ocean; the water can scare us both, standing on the shore, looking up where the wave peaks, feeling mist coat our hair, and running back for a fuller view from the docks. The rain came down. In the city, I made plans with care, as moments life-changing like this were rare, but minutes turned to hours; the tick-tocks of time passed like cars underneath my socks in shoes on red brick, matching the roses where the rain came down.

photograph (above)

Untitled (Origins) Karen Wang

When you arrive, the clouds will need to part, so I can get on one knee, bare my heart to you, and hear your reply without the rain coming between us, breaking the chain of love—no, we’ll have a fresh start. Checking my watch while my eyes dart between screen and street below; halal cart engine just a sweet background refrain when you arrive. Your car pulls up; I’m following your chart, seeing your blue dot move toward me like art on stage, rhythmic dancing in my brain. Walk up to me--your “yes” tastes like champagne as we finally kiss. You relieved all my pain when you arrived. photograph (left)

Untitled (Origins)

Karen Wang

commute anonymous

on weekday mornings i think of dying flying steel at eighty miles an hour if i turn off news radio and speak to myself in a low voice i can tune out the fear that my hands will jerk defiantly and drive me into the ground i am terrified of dying but more precisely i am scared of the ground sometimes i feel an echo from the ancient version of me who screams because she knows what’s coming and the whole ride to work she is crying louder after ten thousand years of dying she knows how to hold her breath while the air seeps out after ten thousand years of dying she knows how it feels to be in the ground finger scratches on the inside of her coffin and i want to bleed to let her out but i’m a goddamn wimp with a knife at the dentist i am paralyzed by the sight of my grinning skull and the ancient me tells me it will fill up with dirt and all of me – bones eyes dreams – will be inside the ground if my hands jerk and this steel collides let me explode in a flower of sparks and ten thousand pieces of light and heat but please never put me in the ground

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Metro

Ian Berkelaar

Mojave Trails Memoir William Leo

Mojave, I wish I had a better grasp on your consonants. I can’t draw. If I could, maybe a wave would appear The Moon’s performer Surging like the sea at Big Sur on the shore of the waste as the empty heavens glitter glibly

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Cathedral Wash North Ian Berkelaar

My Existential Crisis Rachel Rein

When I passed my eighteenth birthday, I treated myself to a headscarf. I wondered if I could tie up all my thoughts neatly, bundle them inside my brain, keep them from spilling over my hair and dripping from my ears. But it was too thin and worn to stop them from escaping.

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The Bitter End

Ian Berkelaar

Oeuvre

Gersham Johnson My outside ages So much faster Than my inside. By the time I am Old Enough to accept The body I have built— You’ll say this is no longer The ending For which you so fervently desired. But this one is mine; True, perhaps, I could have been The heretic with the wild theory, Younger and still beautiful, With followers by the thousands, With you every hour, With my name permanently etched Into the sandcastles you’d crush Underneath your feet. Instead I’ll stay Within my old tower Star-drenched eyes so teary But still bright.

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untitled

Seth Glickman

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forward

A Hopeful Outlook Wan-Ting Huang

Aubrey Kelley

is waking up with rocks on your chest. Stand up, shake them off; realize they are your chest. The earth spins with painstaking speed, devastating chaos that smears into one frame. One dull canvas of colors or words or motions that don’t matter, not now. forward is hearing music, but only in songs. You don’t hear it in the wind chimes or in his laugh, in the way you used to laugh. It is realizing you don’t have a favorite song; every tune is the same song in a different key. forward is always forgetting the future, forgetting that tomorrow will come. It is always remembering the future, remembering that tomorrow will come. Frustrations fit just perfectly into a bottle of New Amsterdam— replace the liquor with the things that make you scream at night. forward is crashing to the floor of the canyon. Self broken, hope dissolved, you keep crawling forward. Night is coming, and you have to keep moving forward. You have to keep moving forward. 12

photograph (above)

Singing Sisters Ian Berkelaar 14

photograph (below)

Surrogate's Court

Ian Berkelaar

art (left)

Who win, and nations do not see -- Nanette G. Liu

The Crater Dan Cobourn

Ed gets a call five minutes before close. I already know it’s a woman on the other line and that it’s a big job because the first thing he does after hanging up is a set of angry pushups, Bruce Lee-style, with only the tips of four of his fingers. There’s something about women with money; something he hates but can’t turn down. It’s been a slow day so it’s just Steve and me left in the bullpen, and we watch as Ed pumps out fifty quick ones. When he finishes working out whatever it was that needed working out, Ed crosses the bullpen and gives us the details. A big vein throbs in his forehead the whole time. “Well, those lightning bugs aren’t gonna disappear themselves,” Ed prods us. “Come on, already.” It’s either me or Steve who has to go. A quick note about Steve, actually. More accurately, about Steve’s appearance. Steve looks like an angry Samurai swordsman struck him right in the belly button and kept going. His lower half is nowhere to be seen. It’s been that way since last week’s Transparency Training accident. It’s either me or Steve who has to go, which means it’s me. 17

It’s illegal now to kill living creatures, even bugs. Life is precious, the government tells us, it has always been precious, but now it is even more precious, the most precious it has ever been, except for, maybe, when Life was just beginning, because without that Life then there would be no Life now, and if we don’t respect the preciousness of Life now, there will be no Life later, etc. Ergo, no more fly swatters or fresh-scented bug sprays and definitely no more bug bombing. Instead, people like me are hired to make bugs disappear. Invisible spray is easiest, but some pest control companies prefer utilizing inter-dimensional gates. It’s more expensive, though, and requires a permit. My company uses the cheaper method. On my way over in the van I wonder: was it always like this? I squint my eyes and look off into that place where answers are kept. While I’m thinking I mow down a Golden Retriever. It makes the sound I imagine the old whack-a-mole carnival games would have made if there had been only one mole and if it had stayed down for good after getting whacked. I grab my Invisispray and act quickly, because regardless of the mantra I chant into the mirror each morning while brushing my teeth, about Always Doing The Right Thing and so on, I realize that in this specific situation what is more important than doing the right thing for just anybody is doing the right thing for just me. When I finally arrive at the woman’s house my hands have completely disappeared, but so too, thankfully, has the dog. She looks only slightly alarmed at my apparent nubs, which are really transparent hands. She is gorgeous, I realize, and this newest revelation makes everything worse somehow, as I now feel the need to act charming—in addition to already feeling the need to act innocent—and for some reason these two roles feel mutually exclusive. All of that is before taking into account the lightning bugs—which are everywhere, leaving striated scorch marks on the wallpaper and causing the lights to flicker on and off, accompanied by little tiny thunder sounds. Screw Ed, I think all of a sudden. Him and his greedy pectoral muscles. I want to call him and tell him I quit and tell him where he can shove his he-knows-what, if it will even reach, and that it probably won’t. Then I remember about my mortgage and then I realize if I quit now before I take care of the bugs I’ll have to explain why so much Invisispray had been used without authorization. And then I remember that Ed can pick up big metal dumpsters, one in each hand, and crush them together like they were soda cans. “How long will this take?” she asks. She looks frazzled, and below-average-gorgeous now that I think about it, although all I can really think about is the dog I just killed, and also Ed crushing me into a little me-ball and then burying the me-ball with the dog, or instead just launching the me-ball into the middle of the Atlantic where I’d sink lower and lower until I became a meal for something hideous and sharp. Homicide was still illegal, of course, but who was going to tell Ed that? Maybe this is really Steve’s fault for being so incompetent and not Ed’s after all, I think, which 18

sounds more reasonable, actually, and maybe I would confront him about it tomorrow— after making sure that Ed knew what a splendid job I did here, tonight. “As long as it takes,” I say. Before long the bugs are gone. Well, not gone, but gone from sight. I can still hear them buzzing around my head. The woman pays me and even adds on a tip, which I decide not to share with Ed or Steve, even though Steve can read minds and frequently reads mine—always letting the rest of the office know which number it is when I get up to use the restroom, number one being the code for pee, which I don’t care if he announces or not, and number two being the code for the thing I do care if he announces, which he always does. But it’s his word against mine and I know Ed likes me more anyway, on account of I don’t announce my bowel movements or anyone else’s to the rest of the office. And wouldn’t even if I could read minds, which I cannot. Before I leave, I’m required to complete the Customer Satisfaction Question Protocol, which usually goes something like this: “Are you happy with the services rendered today?” “No? Why not?” “So, what you’re saying, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is that you were under the impression that the bugs would be removed rather than simply obscured? And that you’re not sure ‘what’s better about invisible bugs?’ And, if I may, would it be fair to characterize as the main thrust of your qualms the contention that, actually, invisible bugs are objectively worse than visible bugs? For many reasons that are plain to see, so to speak, not the least of which is the fact that now it might be impossible to ever get rid of them?” But tonight I don’t ask any of those questions. For the first time ever, I do not go through the Protocol. Instead, or rather because, as I go to retrieve the necessary script and supplementary response forms from my bag, my path intersects with the trajectory of a lightning bug, and at that equal position in space and time our concurrence is punctuated by a miniature thunderclap. The shock knocks something loose in me—a memory I’d lost, but more than that, too, a kind of urgent realization that, like the insects surrounding us, is imperceptible and yet undeniably present—and then that moment is gone, and I am on the floor. The woman helps me up. I apologize to her for not having any hands and tell her I have 19

to go. She apologizes for calling so late. On the way back I hit a bump in the road that I never saw coming. The bump’s name is something cute like Buddy or Ollie or Leo. This is the way things are now, I think.

*** Back at work my new mantra, This Is The Way Things Are Now, bumps around in my head as I wash my hands clean with SeeMe! lotion under near-boiling water. My old mantra, I Will Always Do The Right Thing, no longer seems apt. Rather than adding an addendum about circumstances involving dogs and prison time, or swapping out Always for the more-realistic Sometimes, I decide to ditch the old mantra altogether for the new one, which can be applied to any given situation and, if not morally upright in said situation, will nevertheless remain factually sound. There is something to be said for accuracy, even if it has all the empathy of a well-drawn pie chart. The SeeMe! lotion burns even worse than the water does, but when the police find the dog, and they will find the dog, they will be looking to catch someone red-handed, which is to say they will be looking to catch someone no-handed, and that someone, I decide, will not be me. While the SeeMe! lotion works its magic I think of Ed and Steve, relaxing at home with their wives. I think of my own wife, Janet, no doubt wondering where I am, but not exactly missing me, either. I think of our house, which is located on a nice street, a very nice street actually—too nice of a street as it turns out, because now our house with its crooked front door and overgrown grass is the worst one on it, and its ugliness is compounded by the fact that we had to go in debt just so we could be its owners. It’s the house that makes everyone else on our street feel a little better about the debt they accrued in purchasing their own houses, which all have neatly manicured lawns and doors that strictly adhere to an overarching perpendicular layout.

Slowly, my hands begin to reappear under the stream of scalding water, puffy and red. I hope that if the police do find anyone that that person is at least as guilty or possibly even guiltier than me. I imagine that their dogged investigation causes them to stumble across someone much more delinquent, and years later when that court case is wrapping up and the thief, or murderer, or worse, a thief who is also a murderer—when that person is finally going down for their heinous crimes then I’d pull the lead detective aside right as he is about to pour that first celebratory glass of whiskey, from the bottle he saves specially for righteous occasions such as these, and tell him in no uncertain terms that he’d caught the wrong guy and that the right guy, who was nothing short of a saint compared to the guy he had caught, was standing directly in front of him with a congratulatory gift card and a wife and a mortgage. And then my fate would be left in his hands, and I could live with that, because my hands—clean, dirty, invisible, whatever—could finally stop wringing with worry and guilt and just go back to doing normal hand things, like tearing up bank notices and taking out trash and occasionally nicking the corners of furniture, causing one to say, Ouch, or, if an especially sharp corner, something more severe. On the contrary, it occurs to me, the exact opposite could happen. If today had taught me anything, it was that humans are mistake-prone creatures, and that the police’s dogged investigation could just as easily lead them down a less productive path fraught with dead ends and angry police chief rants and shattered whiskey glasses thrown against the wall in frustration and late nights, and all of it for naught because the real criminal—and I suppose that is what I technically was now—was currently washing his hands of the matter, literally. And what tough choices would that lead detective have to make then, with the chief breathing cheap whiskey-breath down his neck; what poor victim might they choose to pin it on, then? It would suck if they nabbed someone who actually had lost their hands, a war hero who had fallen on hard times, maybe, or one of those people born with pieces missing and all grown up, and if that situation did occur, I think, maybe I would step forward and do the right thing and turn myself in as well. His-or-her nubs are innocent!, I could scream at the trial. You’ve nabbed the wrong nubs!, I would insist, because how unfair would it be to take someone who had already been dealt such a poor hand as having no hands at all and tack on the added burden of incarceration, perhaps the worst burden that could be thrust upon someone. Although the more I think about it the less sense it makes to invite that same burden upon myself, to sacrifice my own cards in this instance precisely for the reason that I have been dealt the cards in the first place, because I do have both my hands and, as such, so much more to lose.

photograph (left)

Piano keys

Caleb W. Monaghan 21

All the hypotheticals overwhelm me at once as I realize I have left the SeeMe! Lotion on way too long and my hands are red and peeling and oozing strange goos that I didn’t know a human body could ooze. Once again I am reminded of the presence of lost memories. I feel like I’ve been outrunning something all of my life and it’s just now caught up and, worse, it’s starting to pass me by. I resolve not to think about the future or the past any more than I must, because I already have so much to contend with in the present. Screw the old mantra, I think, and besides, I repeat to myself, This Is The Way Things Are Now. *** That said, it almost certainly has not always been like this. When I remember my childhood and teenage years, they are all years where it wasn’t like this, whereas my college memories and my more recent memories seem to be of years where it was. As to how it got from “wasn’t” to “was” and to now, where it “still is,” I’m not entirely sure. But, if I had to guess, it was probably the giant alien space rock. *** The Surgeon General lists among the side effects of cosmic space dust: memory loss, drastically increased chances of cancer, superpowers, and magical linguistic hyper-literalism. This explains much: my haziness on the state of the Union, politics in general, my untimely orphanhood, my neighborhood’s mailman—who soars rather than strolls from mailbox to mailbox—my wife’s own superpowers, and the existence of lightning bugs with live currents, fire ants made of real fire, and the prevalence of Golden Retrievers among the top 1%, respectively. *** Once I think I’ve gotten all of the Invisispray off, I leave work and head home. While driving I make a very conscious effort not to squint my eyes and think too hard about things other than what is directly in front of me. My hands remain at 10 and 2 as well, so that if anything cute with four legs runs out in front of me again I can swerve hard to avoid it— but not too hard, I remind myself, because all too often cute things with four legs are being chased by cute things with two legs, and what a terrible, horrible, tragedy that would be to, in an effort to avoid hitting the quadrupedal, act in such a way that one accidentally strikes the bipedal. Then no amount of Invisispray in the world could make things better. Although one could certainly try. There was no law against trying to make things better, was there? Mrs. Klein, the neighbor from across the street and a couple houses down, waves at me as I pass her front lawn where she and three of her six kids are playing croquet. One, two, three potential tragedies. I crawl past the house at snail speed. She is so excited to see me she looks like one of those inflatable tube persons that are always convulsing out front of auto dealerships. I mean really, she is literally almost ten feet tall at this point, and her snakelike arms are whipping around like a plastic bag caught in a small tornado. At least they are until I wave back, equally enthused by her enthusiasm, with my red swollen hands that now look like they actually might fall off at the nub, at which point she snaps back into a more subdued shape of shock and disgust. Her body returns to its usual five-foot frame, and she yells at the oldest kid to shield the youngest kid’s eyes, which the oldest kid accomplishes by 22

photograph (left)

Wall with clock and mask Caleb W. Monaghan

transforming his hand into a giant fan—kind of like the paper ones used by geisha, only if instead of paper they used super-stretchy skin—before proceeding to flatten it across the younger kid’s face with a putty-like slap. I put my hands back at 10 and 2 and gun the engine towards my driveway and scold myself for paying Mrs. Klein and her elastic family any attention, that waving wack job, because the last thing I need to do is establish myself in the neighborhood as an inattentive driver—this, in addition to already being known as the homeowner of the worst home. Because when the police do-or-don’t come knocking about a dead Golden Retriever, whose slightly crooked front door will-or-won’t the neighbors point at then, I wonder? This Is The Way Things Are Now, I hum to the tune of whatever is on the radio, and try not to care what that family of superfreaks thought of my hands, and that my hands would return to normal—probably anyway—whereas they most definitely would always be freaks. *** When the giant alien space rock first appeared on NASA’s radar it was thought to be three times the size of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. The president ordered the 23

rock destroyed, a decision he thought would poll well even across party lines. Previously the most hated thing had been terrorists, and they were almost Nazi-level hated, but now it was this big rock that seemed like it was equally likely to kill anyone regardless of their opinions on things like Nazis. It was all understandably terrifying. Well, as it turned out, the rock was maybe only twice the size of the dinosaur-killing rock—not that that isn’t plenty big—but more importantly, it was on a path that would have it narrowly missing Earth, not hitting it even a little bit, and may have even ended up being one of those cool astronomical events that momentarily unifies everyone regardless of personal politics, who all now feel the need to stop whatever they’re doing and look up at the sky, like for a really nice solar eclipse, or something. But it was too late. The nukes were launched, and hardly any time had passed after the president tweeted “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!!!!!” in all capital letters, with like thirty exclamation marks, for some reason, before the first bits of irradiated cosmic space rubble started falling to Earth. *** When I get home Janet is in tears. Perhaps she had missed me after all, I think. I’m about to tell her about the Golden Retriever, and maybe even about the Kleins if I’m feeling especially vulnerable, when I realize that her tears are not for me, that they are her tears cried for her alone, and that I have walked into a private moment, and suddenly I wonder if maybe I should turn around and take a walk around the neighborhood— in the opposite direction of the Kleins’ house, of course. But before I can do anything Janet’s arms are around me and now I’m crying too. In between sobs I tell her my new mantra, and I show her my hands and she starts crying even more. I’m so sad that I hardly have time to consider how sad and predictable it is that on this nice street, in the worst house on the street, are two sad sacks crying about how sad they are. She tells me about a family she saw in the park today, and how cute the two girls were, what with their matching outfits and matching faces, their being identical twins and all, and how they were differentiated only by the color of the bows that bound their blonde curls into cute little balls on the backs of their heads, and how she realized she would never have even one cute girl with even one cute ball on the back of her head. She tells me that we would be fine if we could just switch places, and I can’t help but think that she’s right: that if I had superpowers like Janet, and if she had a sound mantra like This Is The Way Things Are Now, then there would be no way that we would be clutching onto each other like two wet sad sacks, me with increasingly unbearable physical pain on account of the chemical burns ravaging my hands and she with an inability to accept an ever-more-real reality and the resulting, suffocating despair that accompanies it. One more time, I whisper my new mantra into her ears, but it does no good. In the end we settle into our personalized BioFome moldings in the couch and turn on the TV, and

before long we are laughing—still crying, of course—but laughing all the same. It feels good. It feels good until Janet goes and ruins it, that is, by asking can we get a dog and I’m forced to think all over again about things that I don’t want to think about, so I tell her “no” and that’s that. *** Janet wishes she had no powers at all, or, if she had to have powers, that they would be like the Klein lady’s, who is super flexible, like a wad of gum in warm water, and has had six children, each stretchier than the next. Not that you could tell by looking at them, least of all by looking at her, who looks like she has undergone zero pregnancies instead of six, and whose hips are actually smaller than Janet’s—which I tell Janet is actually not such a good thing, but which Janet perceives as actually being not such a bad thing, and in fact, she tells me, a much better thing in terms of perceived attractiveness from other females, which is significantly more important compared to perceived attractiveness from males. I start to say, “But don’t you want me to find you attractive?” She starts to respond, “Do you not?” In the end, neither of us say anything. Sometimes, like today on the couch watching TV, for instance, silence gets the better of me. “But at least you have powers,” I tell her, “you could be like me, power-less.” We thought about having kids, but the doctors advised against it. Unless you’re like Mrs. Klein then birth requires some amount of destruction, either at the hands of a surgeon or through the course of nature. “What’s the point of being indestructible if you are still in pain?” Janet asks. She puts a 12-gauge in her mouth and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. Not even a sore throat. Back in college she would do this at parties, or some other version of it if no shotgun was on hand, and believe you me, it was a hoot. Once, at a French Scrabble party, someone brought a replica guillotine like the ones used on the necks of the old French aristocracy. In retrospect it was a severe violation of campus guillotine policy. Heads rolled, but not Janet’s. It was worth it at the time, to see even the volunteer mimes burst out laughing in bad French accents. Now though, it’s just sad. Maybe if there were more people here to watch her do it then it would be funny like it was back then. How many people have to watch someone fake-commit suicide before it’s funny? I’ve found myself wondering this a lot recently. Right now the answer is somewhere be25

tween one and fifty. Fifty being the population of the French Scrabble Club; one being the population of just me. That’s the problem with this house, it’s not the crooked door, or the overgrown grass, it’s not even the fire ants—although those are a problem for sure, and one I need to take care of in the immediate future—it’s emptiness, emptiness is the problem. This house was too empty. Last week after Janet left for work I found the half-eaten bagel she had left on the counter. It was on fire because the ants had gotten to it and if I hadn’t been there the house could have gone up in flames as well. We needed more life. Something to bark at the smell of smoke, someone to cry out because it burned their tiny little sensitive eyes, an extra source to pour our love into when we had it and to draw it back out when we didn’t. When I don’t laugh Janet looks at the shotgun like it’s the manufacturer’s fault and not our own. “OK,” I say. “Let’s do it.” Janet exhales metal shot pellets all over the coffee table, “You mean?” “Woof woof,” I say. She frowns because it was never about a dog, because she is a cat person anyway, but is allergic to cats, and because maybe it’s not even about having a baby, just about having the ability to choose whether to have one or not, which she was starting to understand had been taken from her before she was even a baby herself, and before her mother was and her mother before that and before every mother before them all the way back to when mothers were just tadpoles in primordial slush ponds, and before them as well, all because of the

photograph 26

Exit Trail (Origins)

Karen Wang

path a hunk of rock took in space those eons prior, and every other course taken by those larger-than-life beings making decisions above us and before us between then and now. *** Contact with the cosmic space rubble affects each individual differently. Some people get the ability to fly while other people get lung cancer, some are suddenly able to leap twenty feet in one bound or make anyone fall in love with them just by whispering a string of words in Latin, while still others find lumps forming in places where lumps are not supposed to form ever. Statistically it works out to about a fifty-fifty split between superpowers and cancer. When the event happened, and the subsequent radioactive dust clouds momentarily blotted out the sun such that for the next few weeks it was like one long night, it wasn’t so much a choice as to whether to roll the dice and come into contact with the stuff as much as it was a question: have you drunk any non-filtered water today? Have you breathed in fresh air? Do you not live inside a hermetically sealed air bubble because of a rare genetic immune disorder that the doctors were unsure if you even had, but you wanted to play it on the safe side (“just in case”) anyway? If the answer to any of those questions was yes, then the dice most likely had already been cast. This is the same reason why killing bugs is illegal, why Janet doesn’t need to be particularly careful while cutting avocadoes, and why both of my parents died in excruciating agony while I watched from the inside of my bubble and wondered selfishly who now was going to dispose of the opaque plastic baggies labeled “waste.” Nowadays people will cast the dice themselves—young people who hadn’t inherited the super-gene mostly, but sometimes also people my age who somehow had not been previously exposed. “Normans,” the rest of the world calls us, as if being normal were a bad thing. Not that it’s easy to touch one of the remaining meteoric fragments today. But if they do manage to do so, the rules haven’t changed. Fifty-percent of those

who come into contact with the rock fragments will die within hours. Statistics argue against touching the rock. Statistics and Janet. *** “It’s too much effort,” Janet sometimes tells me in our bedroom when I’m feeling particularly down. “Why bother?” “Because,” I say, as I put on my pajamas, the ones with the holes in them that make it extra cool at night, “I spend the first half of my life on the other side of plastic from the rest of the world. Then, when I finally get out, I find out I have to do it all over again. It’s unfair is what it is.” “You could be dead,” she reminds me, kissing the skin on my neck where I like it, right underneath my jawline. I wave her off and roll over and turn off my reading light. “You’ll never understand,” I grumble into my pillow, but Janet is already fast asleep. *** Our sub-neighborhood is called The Crater, because it was built around one of the original craters, which the architects and neighborhood planners filled in and turned into a giant koi pond. The crater floor has been completely concreted over, the realtor promised a whole group of us prospective buyers, and filled up a glass with the koi pond water to prove his point. Try it, he urged me. I held the glass to my lips as if it were the actual Holy Grail. I practically chugged it. Nothing. See? He gesticulated to the crowd and motioned his hand towards me like I was an animal at the zoo. Nothing! Later that night I unloaded my guts into the toilet at Janet’s and my apartment, which the realtor told me might happen on account of my drinking (“unnecessarily guzzling”) a whole glass of pond water. Janet was beside herself. It was just all the microorganisms wreaking their havoc, I promised her. How do the Koi drink this stuff? I joked. Then I threw up whatever was left in the human body after there are no guts anymore. Secretly I wished it were the cancer, at least then I could say that I had had a chance at something greater. 28

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Untitled (Origins) Karen Wang

*** But that was all long before the new mantra. It should be behind me now, I think the next morning, as I chant it into the mirror while brushing my teeth, and suddenly I’m back watching my old self on the toilet throwing up. This Is The Way Things Are Now! I want to scream at him, if he could only listen. But I don’t scream because that would be weird and because This Is The Way Things Are Now, which I chant into the mirror once again for good measure before kissing the sleeping Janet on her cheek and heading off to work wearing the only gloves I can find, gloves which are black and meant for skiing, even though it’s the middle of summer and I’ve never been able to ski. Once at work, I tell myself, it’s head-down-and-nose-to-the-grindstone, no small talk or even those little “Hey How Are You”s—but before I can reach the time-punch station I’m intercepted by Ed, who is standing in the doorway to his office red in the face and calling my name. He looks like he’s been doing plyometrics, or some other high-intensity bodyweight exercise, so I know I’m really in for it. I wonder if he found out about my pocketing the tips from last night, or if it’s about the missing Invisispray or about the other thing with four legs and a tail that I don’t want to think about. The door closes to his office and it’s about that thing, I realize, the one thing I don’t want to think about, because Ed is flanked by two women police officers and his anger starts to make a little more sense, too—women with power being the only thing he hated more than women with money. Flat on his desk is my open personnel file and this thought kind of skirts through my head for a second like, Oh no, it’s over they’ve got you, and why didn’t you just tell somebody when it happened, that it was an accident, why didn’t you tell Janet?, but then I 29

block it all out with an anesthetic meditation of This Is The Way Things Are Now and I smile and say, “May I ask what it is I’m doing here?” “Woof woof,” Ed says, and not in a cute way. He’s so angry now that he has to sit down, and one of the officers steps forward. “An animal was found dead in the street. Materials from this facility were used to cover it up.” “That’s terrible,” I say. “What’s with the gloves?” she asks. “I have poor circulation,” I tell her. “Give it a rest already,” Ed says. It takes me a moment to understand that he’s talking to the officer and not me. The officers give each other a look like they can’t wait to get out of this man’s office, a sentiment I can one-hundred percent get behind, and then the other officer sort of sighs and looks at me and says, “Sir? Would you mind removing your gloves?” So I do, because what else can I do, and after I pull the first one off there is the initial reaction of dread and shame which kind of washes over me like cold goo that burns, like there’s SeeMe! lotion all over my body, but by the time the second glove is removed and both hands are out and the officers are definitely a little shocked but not reaching for their handcuffs, either, I notice that my hands don’t look nearly as bad as they did yesterday. More gross-looking than guilty-looking, really. And then I tell them—almost as if I’m embarrassed about it, which, I suppose, maybe I am—that, “I was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder when I was younger that mayor-may-not make my skin bubble when in contact with the air.” The officers look a little skeptical so I elaborate, “I was a bubble boy, but now I’m not,” and then I lie and say, “Sometimes it flairs up.” “I told you,” Ed says. “He’s a total pussy.” Ed gives me a silent thumbs-up while the female officers look through my personnel 30

file in the part where it asks for insurance and liability purposes about pre-existing conditions and is there a possibility you will die and, if you do, will that get your family in a fit and make them want to sue us? And right next to all those questions would be my chicken-scratch signature saying yes, it’s possible, but I really need this job and don’t worry about it all of my family are dead, anyway. “It checks out,” the first officer says. “And there was only one other employee with access on-site last night?” the other asks Ed. Ed nods and just like that everything is okay. The officers haul Steve off kicking and screaming, although you can’t see much of the kicking bit because unlike me he didn’t have the courage to apply the SeeMe! lotion, or at least that’s what I tell myself, because while Steve is a useless coworker he is an all right guy—more than all right actually, he is the guy that got me this job, him being my oldest

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A Quick Recess Nap (Origins) Karen Wang

friend and all, but none of that matters because This Is The Way Things Are Now, and when the officers get him under control and he looks at me I hope that he is reading my mind because this is all I’m thinking, This Is The Way Things Are Now, This Is The Way Things Are Now, This Is The Way Things Are Now. *** Around LunchTime I start to get my mantras confused. I’m sitting in my workspace regretting that I didn’t pack a lunch this morning while consoling myself that This Is The Way Things Are Now. Mostly my mantra is drowning out the grumbling of my stomach but eventually my stomach is grumbling too loud and, admittedly, I’m still shaken from the officers and Steve’s face, which was full of betrayal and confusion and, what’s more, every now and then I think about my parents and what they would say were they still alive and I Will Always Do The Right Thing pops back into my head out of habit and I have to shoo it away because This Is The Way Things Are Now, and because of that and the stomach grumbling This Is The Way Things Are Now turns into This Is The Way Things Have To Be For Now turns into This Is The Way Things Have Been For A While Now, which sort of prompts a self-reflexive mantra of Is This Always How Things Have Been?, which then turns into Is This Always How Things Have To Be?, and that prompts a declarative mantra, which is No, This Isn’t How Things Have To Be and, finally, an exclamatory mantra which, I realize too late isn’t inside my head at all but is actually exclaimed, out loud by me, the exclaimer, of This Isn’t How Things Should Be! Then Ed gestures me into his office with a waive of dumbbell and in between curls tells me that he knows that it was me who hit the dog but that Steve is a good-for-nothing employee and he knows how much I need this job and that I have always been loyal, but that if I have another outburst like that then I am fired and, Goodbye Mortgage Payment, Goodbye Health Insurance, Goodbye Everything. *** “Steve?” Janet asks. Tonight is Eggplant Parmesan Night—the best night of the week, really—so this is the last kind of thing she was expecting. Her knife misses the eggplant she was about to cleave in half and hits her hand instead. Nothing happens. I confirm that yes, it is Steve who is going to jail, my best friend and my best brotherin-law as well, Steve being both my oldest friend in addition to also being Janet’s birth brother, our friendship being what brought Janet and me together, Steve being her only surviving family member and so, by virtue of paucity, Steve also being my worst brotherin-law—which I think my conscience would do well to remember, being full of guilt for unknowingly coordinating, in part, the events that led to his becoming suspect, and then knowingly doing nothing in the moment to dissuade such suspicions.

“But he wouldn’t?” Janet protests. “And I would?” “I didn’t say that, I just meant—you know what I meant.” “I know what you meant,” I confirm. “I was just pointing out that even though somebody would never do a terrible thing in theory, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do the very same thing in reality, on accident, you know, in the moment.” “I guess you’re right,” she says. “But I don’t see how that helps here.” Janet just stands there looking at me. I just stand there looking at Janet. Across the kitchen a swarm of fire ants catches a stack of mortgage bills on fire. I rush over to put the fire out and to make sure we haven’t lost any records of our debt. When I’m done Janet is still just looking at me, not mad-like or even sad-like, just, like, looking. This is not the same Janet as when we met, I think. The Janet who, even though she was indestructible, still cried more than anyone I’d ever met. Not at her own pain but at the pain of others and, what with everything that happened in my childhood and my, admittedly, clumsy tendencies (re: the SeeMe! Lotion)—well, she was basically crying all of the time back then. Never during sex—thank God—but always immediately after, which, since I was crying too then, on account of my finally feeling like I had found this sort of perfectly compatible life-force that made me better and made me happier at the same time—well, it really wasn’t the worst thing and, in fact, was sort of the thing I most looked forward to about making love, those delicate moments, the end after the end, when our bodies lay still and our hearts telescoped out into the future, together. Sure, fine, people change. But this wasn’t even the Janet I knew yesterday, crying over the two little girls and their two little hairballs on their little heads. This was a new person, and the thought that I had made her into this new Janet really scared me. “Aren’t you going to cry?” I ask her. “I don’t think so,” she says. “I love you?” I say. “I love you too?” she says back.

After dinner is over, we once again settle into our personalized BioFome moldings in the couch and turn on the TV. It feels good, mostly. *** The great thing about the BioFome personalized couch moldings is, they are literally the most comfortable material on the planet for any given person. This new technology, as with Invisispray and SeeMe! lotion, was one of the many scientific achievements made by super-smart scientists whose brain cells, after coming into contact with the cosmic radiation, were supercharged like nuclear batteries, and were immediately put to use in the Lifestyle and Home Improvement technology sectors. The moldings are alive in the way that viruses are alive, and dead in the same regard, as well. They don’t think, they just do what they are programmed to do: restructure their physiochemical makeup in real-time based on a variety of genetic and physiological indicators (did your dad pass on to you a poor lumbar structure? No matter. Are you feeling bloated from that extra slice of Eggplant Parm? All good), assist in the routine execution of necessary bodily functions (by way of making leaving the room for bathroom breaks during movies obsolete), as well as maintain optimal meteorological conditions (mini-atmospheres, low humidity, a slight breeze, a little extra O2 to make funny things funnier and sad things happier). What’s more: they are practically free, having been subsidized by a gang of corporations, who feel their advertisements will be given more serious consideration by the consumer if they are in a more agreeable state of mind at the time of viewing. The not-so-great thing about BioFome personalized couch moldings is that while such advertisements are playing the moldings will restrict certain User Functions; if you try to turn the TV off, or even just turn the volume down a little bit, you might feel a foam tendril sort of wrap around your wrist as you reach for the remote and, with inhuman super-strength, even stronger than the strongest super-strong man, gently guide your arm back into an ergonomic position within the foam that aligns your whole body nicely. But only if you are looking directly at the TV, otherwise it might lead to a cramp or, if resisted over an extended period of time, spinal torsion. And so, even while Janet and I are ostensibly relaxing while watching the news, I’m not entirely comfortable. Because throughout the show and even during the commercials I keep sneaking looks over at Janet to try to gauge how she is feeling. And because the news tonight is just a montage of massacre and misfortune with a few sponsorships thrown in and patriotic music playing over it all, the O2 is cranked all the way up. And because of all that Janet’s face is just this blank sheet of smiling flaps with dry eyes that occasionally emits a sort of drunken chuckle even though I’m pretty sure she’s unconscious at this point and that it’s just the BioFome tendrils prying her eyelids apart that is giving her the appearance of Someone Watching TV.

Almost independently, as if on their own, my eyes start to moisten up in response to, what? To Janet? To the only person since my parents were killed that I have found myself capable of loving? To watching that person be lobotomized with comfort products that I insisted we buy? After insisting that we buy this house because I was sure that, eventually, we could afford it? Because even though Janet told me that she didn’t care that I was without powers, I did, and I knew others did, and at least, I thought, a big house could start to make up for that? Because, despite what Janet said, I could never shake the feeling that I didn’t deserve her, not when there were super-smart men, and super-rich men, and even super-nice men, and I was just, me? At this, I start fully crying. So much so that the BioFome absorbent tendrils can hardly keep up. On the TV two newscasters are having a WWE-style ladder match. Whoever manages to climb the ladder and grab the golden microphone gets to report the exciting news, War In The Middle East. The loser must report on the latest strain of Super Coronavirus oppressing South America.

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Window Dressing (Origins) Karen Wang

“I’m so sorry,” I tell Janet, even though I know she cannot hear me. “Forgive me.” With all of my strength I attempt to extricate myself from the couch, to make things right with Steve, to confess that I hit the dog and to accept the consequences. But the couch’s tendrils pull taut and force me into a lawn chair position. On the TV, one newscaster has won, but he is so badly beaten that he can no longer report anything, so instead they replay highlights from the fight he just won, the part where he gouges the other newscaster’s eyes out with his class ring. When I continue to struggle, the BioFome, mistakenly believing, perhaps, that it had misread some of my physiological/genetic indicators, cranks the O2 way up past the Max Level and into the SuperMax Level. I start to feel my face effecting the same sort of drunk smile as Janet’s. But unlike Janet, since I’m straining against the couch to look at her, causing it to force my body into this painful position that is giving me the appearance of Someone Trying To Lick Their Own Knee, I do not go unconscious. Instead, as the tendrils delicately guide me back into Relaxed Position, as my mini-atmosphere becomes completely saturated with oxygen and I can hear the oxygen leaking out of my atmosphere, filling the living room and then the kitchen, and as I watch a line of fire ants work their way towards the leftover Eggplant Parmesan, I think This Is The Way Things Are Now, But It’s Not The Way Things Should Be. And right before one of the ants ignites the cloud of gas—and pieces of the house along with pieces of me soar through the air and end up sprinkling the surface of the koi pond before coming to rest at the bottom—before all that, I look at Janet one last time. And for the first time in my life, I am grateful that she is indestructible and that I am not.

About The Monocle The Morningside Monocle seeks to enrich student life at Columbia Law School by sharing poetry, prose, art, and photography. The Monocle is published twice a year. The content and opinions represented in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the Law School, administrators, or student body. For more information about the literary magazine, please visit us online at themorningsidemonocle.com. Additional questions, concerns, and submissions can be directed to themorningsidemonocle@gmail.com.