#4 Time: The Subway Ride by thesubwayride

The Subway Ride is an all-inclusive publication that recognizes the humanity of the artistic and literary process, prioritizes celebration over criticism, and provides a common space in which individuals with different backgrounds and identities can contribute to a welcoming artistic space. When we ride the subway, it’s hard not to notice the other people around us. We form an unknowing community, comprised of individuals who might never have met outside of the subway car. Everybody has a different reason for being on it, and different directions when they leave. But on board, we stand, sit, and lean against each other, sharing the same space and air in a brief moment of unity. This magazine is an attempt to recreate that community through print, giving all individuals, regardless of prior experience with publishing or art, an equal opportunity to get on the subway with us. In this issue, you will find written, photographic, and artistic explorations of “Time” through the eyes and experiences of a wide variety of contributors. We are proud to bring you submissions from St. Vincent de Paul Soup Kitchen, One MacDonough Senior Center, Vinnie’s Jump and Jive Dance Studio, and the Veterans’ Writing Workshop at Russel Library alongside those from individual contributors on campus, in the greater Middletown area, and beyond. In addition to our magazine edition, our online blog showcases work that stretches the boundaries of print, including videos and audio submissions. Lastly, as a team, we would like to thank all of our contributors for having the courage to share their intensely personal works with us. We, and our community, are better because of it. Please enjoy. The Subway Ride Editorial Team

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Table of Contents “TIME” Cover and back photos by Daniel Jarris Drawing by Justina Yam

“But A Number“ by Danielle Krieger

Photos by Daniel Jarris

Photo by Alea Laidlaw, Photo by Cheryl Anne Hale

“All Is Well“ by Ali Jamali, Painting by D. E. Chase

“Regrets“*

Photos by Wilson Lai

7-8

“Cheap Thrills“ by Justina Yam

“The Watch“ by Will Bellamy

“After a Summer, a Year, a World of Tragedy“

“Time“ by Harv Goldstein

by Nick Yeager

“Pavor Nocturnus“ by Nick Byers

“Zero Dark Thirty“ by Vance Fisher

“A. M.“ by Nick Byers, “A Week“ by Nick Yeager

Writing by James Masso

Drawings by Alea Laidlaw

Photo by Chong Gu

“Relapse“ by Anonymous

“Time“ by Neha Srinivas

“Time“ by James Jeter, Photo by Lucie Plasse

“My Thoughts on Time“ by Jerry Augustine

“Time Travel Destinations“*

“20 Years“ by Ava Grob

“Regrets“*

Drawing by Meanapas

Drawings by Rosanne Ng

Painting by Sam Medrano

“This Time, Next Time, Sometime“ by Al

Photos by Gaby Montinola

31-32

Photo by Shelli Weiler

Photos by Daniel Jarris

“Summer“, “Stages“ by Katie Vasquez

“Goodnight, Gracie“ by Cheryl Anne Hale

“What the Parent Wishes to Forget the Child Wishes 18

“Bake It Easy III: Cronuts!“ by Toys Koomplee

To Rember“ by Arron Luo

Poems by Random Passers-by at Usdan

Writing by Phil

“Clockmaster“ by Madison McClain-Frederick

Interview with CT musicians by Haenah Kwon

Drawing by Jada Jenkins

“All Aboard“ by Sarah Schechter

Drawing by Justina Yam

Photos by Adeline Hafemeister

Shoutouts and blog submissions

“Soil Microbes and You” by Siri McGuire

Editing Team

* These submissions were crowd-sourced at Wesleyan University. We fabricated two boxes, provided paper, and asked two questions: “If you could time travel, where would you go?” and “Any regrets?” Over the course of several weeks, we received approximately 100 submissions. We would like to thank all of our anonymous contributors for sharing their thoughts with us!

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justina yam

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but a number danielle krieger The times that I wave a fly off of my face, The moments déjà vu illuminates a Christmas bulb in my memory are numbered. Students sit at their desks, heads bowed One finishes one of the algebra problems he will ever complete After a thousand, two hundred and forty-six he will discover one previously unheard of by mankind. Another student, the same moment he finds x, deletes a sentence on her computer. She needs many more to turn in her paper but her thoughts don’t stick. Her watch is a weight and before she finishes, she looks at it more times than sentences she writes. My friends and I would feel more beautiful If we dreamed of what could be Never dreading deadlines Wondered what tunes winter’s wind will whistle this December And planned for our wardrobes to match our moods. Each such thought we could pay attention to We yearn to speak the kind words and truth that they evoke.

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Daniel Jarris

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Top: Alea Laidlaw / Bottom: Cheryl Anne Hale THE SUBWAY RIDE

All Is Well Ali Jamali 4:59am You open your eyes. Can’t quite see clearly. Extend your hand searching for your phone on the table next to bed. The alarm goes off. 5:00am You think for a moment: how many alarms did I set last night? Six, you reply immediately. Smile and close your eyes again. This is the best part of your morning. 5:20am Alarm goes off. You reach for your phone and hit the Snooze. It’s very tempting to go back to sleep. So you go over the reasons why you have to wake up early: problem set, paper, paper, Moodle response, reading, reading. Eyes wide open. Say hi to Reality and smile. Hide your tears as best as you can. Disable the remaining alarms. 5:25am You go to the bathroom. It’s cold enough to give you goosebumps all over your body. You like the sensation. It makes you feel your skin. You wash your face and stare at the mirror. An existential moment. 5:30am You open your laptop. Go to Facebook. “Socialize.” Check your crush’s Instagram account. First blush of the day. 5:35am Take a piece of paper and write your name on top of it. Look at the first question in your problem set. Puzzled. Feel your heartbeat. Open Spotify. 5:45am You like the playlist you made last weekend. It makes you forget about everything. A highly relatable song comes on. Memories. You say hi to Reality again. This time you can’t hide your tears. 5:50am Back to the problem set. Determined. You grab a Red Bull from the fridge. You can do this! 6:30am Done with question number one! You look at your answer and feel proud. Nine more questions to go… 7:00am Open Gmail. Write a sincere email asking your professor for an extension. 7:10am You go to Moodle. Your response was due last midnight. Confused. You thought you had until noon to do it. Panic. 7:15am Open Gmail. Write a sincere email to your professor. You promise to never miss a deadline again. You forget that this is not the first time you missed a deadline this semester. 7:45am You submit the Moodle response. Check how many pages you have to read. Open the calculator app. See how many hours it will take you to read them all before class. Impossible. 8:15am 10 pages into your reading and you have no idea what it’s talking about. You argue why you’re taking the class. Frustrated. 8:20am Check your phone. Set an alarm for 20 minutes. Your head hits the pillow. Blackout. 11:05am Eyes open. Shock. Grab your phone. You missed two classes. All is well…

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Any Regrets?

Wilson Lai

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The Watch Will Bellamy

The young woman loses her watch two days after Christmas. She has had the watch for some time now and doesn’t want to buy a new one, but she has no idea when or where she lost it. There is no sign of it in her old room, where she is staying for the holidays, and there is no sign of it in the house, either. Last night she met with an old best friend from high school, and so the watch may be outside, somewhere along the route that she walked with him. They had walked a good amount around the neighborhood, and she remembers having the watch on for at least some portion of it. But often during the encounter she started to think about other things, or simply started to think about the encounter too deeply while it was still happening, and so it is difficult for her to remember if she ever, say, took the watch off and placed it on a bench, or dropped it on the pavement. Nevertheless, she will walk the route again and try to piece together the story. She remembers—somewhat—checking the time as she left the house and walked to the street corner, where they had always met. He arrived late while she arrived early, which felt odd to her; but soon enough it felt normal as he gave her a hug and she ruffled his hair. They decided to go to the old pizza shop, a favorite for both of them. She now sets off in that direction with her eyes on the ground, scanning. On the walk there they asked each other what they had been doing all these years. He told her that he was still living at home and that he had started to make music. She said “Wow,” and asked what kind of music, and he said that it was difficult to explain; it was an amalgamation of many different genres, and he had in fact gotten a deal to do the music for some sort of TV commercial. She said “Wow,” again, and probably would’ve beaten herself up about saying the word twice—but she was only thinking about how odd it was, for him, to use the word amalgamation. He asked her the same question—what she had been doing—and she said that she was working for a small publishing press in California; in fact, she was living there now. She talked about how different California is from home—how the people are friendlier but also more snooty, how everyone drives everywhere, and of course how the weather is always beautiful, with the sun always out. She talked about how her roommates always left their personal stuff around the house, how she is attempting to learn how to live without parents, and buy her own groceries. He did not say anything in response to her spiel on California. She had prepared most of it beforehand, but he didn’t say anything, and she doesn’t know if this was because he saw it as pretentious or because they had arrived at the pizza shop. As they came in the fluorescent lighting made them squint, as always, and the owner seemed to recognize him but not her, even though she herself recognized the owner. She ordered two slices and waited for him to order, but nothing happened. Finally she asked if he was going to get anything, and he said that he already ate.

Here, she definitely looked down at her wrist to look at the time. If he already ate, why did he still say that he would go to the pizza place? Or at least, why didn’t he say that he already ate, but would go with her to the pizza place regardless? Did he not want to be honest with her? She was not going to confront him about such a seemingly small thing, but still, she wondered. And at this point, she definitely looked at the watch. But when she asks the man at the front of the counter—a different man from yesterday—if he had seen a watch, he shakes his head. She keeps her eyes on the pavement as she traces their path from last night, all the way down to the waterfront. Perhaps as she ate the two cheese slices while walking, her watch slipped off from all the movement. Perhaps as he told her about how his parents were doing, and how his dog had actually died in response to her question about his pets, the watch had let itself come off of her wrist and fallen into one of the dirt-filled planters. The sun is setting at the waterfront, just like yesterday, but today the light on the water seems redder, and seems to penetrate the water even deeper than before. She goes to the bench where they sat and talked about high school, and sits there again, feeling through the cracks. She is almost positive that she didn’t check the time here as they went on about math teachers and relationships and school plays. At this point they both seemed engaged enough that she didn’t have to distract herself: he was looking straight at her, she was not fiddling with anything or feeling flustered about the interaction, and they both let seconds of silence slip between what they said. He was being animate with his hands, as always, and she would jokingly roll her eyes at some of the things he said. But once she started talking about terrible moments and terrible people, his voice switched into a tone that she didn’t recognize. And he said that you cannot necessarily call anybody terrible at that age, call them “terrible people,” because they haven’t fully formed themselves just yet—there is still time for them to come out as good, beautiful people, who are no longer cruel in the way that they seemed to be, at that time. She nodded her head, wholeheartedly agreeing—although still, she felt something odd about his voice, about how he communicated what he wanted to communicate. And once the sun sets, there is no way that the watch is on the path back home, because they took the same path here that they took on the way back. There are new storefronts all along the avenue that she pointed out, such as the new juice store, the new Mexican restaurant, but he said that they are only new to her because she hasn’t been here—and shortly after, they said goodbye. Everything seemed both different and not, but she feels that there is something to fill in between, a portion that she is forgetting to tell herself that would make the difference reasonable. If there really is anything, though, it would take much longer to fill in the story and piece it together. And besides, she has already started to pack for a flight in the afternoon, off to return to a second home.

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Time Harv Goldstein It has been said that “Time goes by so slowly….” I guess it is all a matter of perspective. As a child, time did move slowly as I looked forward to a birthday, a special holiday, a party with friends or with family. It sometimes felt that a week took a year. Even a countdown to a special event didn’t help – it was still a long wait for a week to pass. When I was in the Air Force, the days and weeks moved very s-l-o-w-l-y. We tried to hurry the days and weeks while in language school by giving each day of the week special significance. Saturdays and Sundays were the best days of the week, because they were the WEEKEND and we did not have to do anything on the weekend except relax, play cards, maybe go home, or just see the sights around Washington D.C. Monday was considered still the weekend, and even though we were back at school in Arlington, Virginia, our mindset was still remembering the fun times we had the previous few days. Tuesday could be drudgery because the previous weekend was behind us and the next weekend was still a few days away. We looked forward to Wednesday, Hump Day, because the week was now half over. Thursday was almost the weekend, and Friday was the beginning of the weekend, which we initiated either promptly at 3:00 when school got out and we were taken by bus back to Andrews Air Force Base, or sometimes at noon, after our weekly exam was finished. Rather than remaining at school for the remainder of the day, a number of us would walk across the Key Bridge into Georgetown to begin the festivities with lunch and adult beverages at the Crazy Horse Saloon on M Street. In retrospect, our nine months in language school was over very quickly. The same held true for our 6 months in San Angelo, Texas; each day was a long day, but looking back, time flew. Time seemed to stand still during our year in Viet Nam; nothing we did made the days fly by. We looked forward to the days ahead when we would return to the World, but that just seemed to make our stay seem even longer. In Viet Nam there were no weekends, sometimes no days off. It wasn’t uncommon for us to work, which meant fly on reconnaissance missions, 1012 days in a row. While each mission was “only” five hours, there were also two briefings before each mission and a short debrief after we returned. Our time in Viet Nam was long for a variety of reasons. We were in danger of being shot at, or worse, shot down. However, the worst part of being there in the days before instant communication was the loneliness. We didn’t have Skype, computers, or cell phones. We would try to call home either from the USO in Saigon or from the MARS station (a short-wave radio connection) on base, but connecting to loved ones in the States had a lot to do with how clear the atmosphere was, either in South East Asia or the connecting point in the United States. Sure, there were many friends that kept us laughing and entertained, but we all missed our parents, our siblings, our friends back home, our wives, and our girlfriends. As we lived each day, this one year felt like 10. When we got to the point of having less than 90 days left in Viet Nam, less than 60 days, less than 30 days, time moved even more slowly. It wasn’t until we returned to the United States that we could look back, reflect, and say, “Wow, that year went by fast!” As I approach my seventh decade, time seems to really fly by. Each day is a blur, with the days dissolving one into the next. Do I long for the days when time went by so slowly? Only if I could change history.

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Zero Dark Thirty Vance Fisher Who has enough time? What time do we leave? Where has the time gone? When do we get there? Why do we have time? Until the late 1800s all clocks were set to 12:00 at NOON, the sun’s highest point in the sky, regardless of the location in the town. Over long easterly or westerly distances this could result in a difference of several minutes, which were not critical for that time period because travel times of that era were far longer than today. Suppose Mr. and Mrs. Jones sent a telegram from East Hampton, CT to her sister in Middletown suggesting lunch at NOON the next day and received a positive reply. The Joneses would have to leave home at 4AM to walk the twelve-mile trip. Of course they could hitch Cloe to their carriage and be there in three hours at her walking pace. Or, if she liked to trot, they could make it in an hour and a half. Was there a bridge? A ferry would add at least half an hour. They knew just how long it took to get from their home to nearby towns. But the railroads would come along and with their ever increasing speeds standardizing problems would begin. Working with the government, the railroads devised a standardized system which we still use today. Without these time zones, noon in Louisville, KY, would be about an hour and a half later than in Middletown, CT and lead to complicated scheduling of commercial transportation. The one hour difference from time zone to time zone is no hindrance to the scheduling. When I flew combat missions time was critical. The time to insert troops into the landing zone was set in stone by the infantry commander. It was a relatively simple calculation from that time. Backtracking flight-time from the landing zone to the pickup zone to the refueling point to our airfield take off time and taxiing to take off and preflight inspection and the trek from billets to the airfield and eating breakfast and getting dressed got us to shake hard and: “Wake up sir, it’s zero three thirty.”

Time

James Masso

Neha Srinivas The hand strikes one, two, three. How to is a mystery, To hold him back? What if I grasp him in my hand. He runs fast, faster, Regardless of my plea to slow down. Yet he wipes my tears, He mends what is hurt. He’s a work of magic. And he’s arrogant. I asked him for a dance, He swept me off my feet. I lost my place, I lost everything. I landed in a completely new space. I closed my eyes, and He was gone again. I tried to tie Him down in one place. That made him run faster. I embraced him, and together we ran.

As I sit here writing this, the clock is moving. It’s not a regular clock. It’s different. This clock doesn’t measure the hours, minutes and seconds passing by into an unknown abyss. No, this clock adds time. Each second that passes adds to the total, building up a discernible number, a number that doesn’t disappear. I can see it and watch it grow. It is part of the building blocks of me. Right now one of those blocks contains eight hundred and six months and twenty-four days toward month eight hundred and seven. An even larger number is the three thousand five hundred eight and a quarter stack of week blocks. That is for me, only me. They’re not just numbers, they’re one person’s time broken down to twenty four thousand five hundred fifty-eight days or an amazing five hundred eighty nine thousand three hundred ninety-two hours. Unlike a clock, this time doesn’t disappear. It is there to see, feel, and contemplate. The numbers grow. Instead of only a day remaining, or an hour or several minutes until a deadline, there is no limit. The numbers just keep getting larger. The size amazes me. What does it mean? I haven’t figured that out. They’re numbers representing time in a building, positive way, not fleeting and lost. I find it fascinating. The next time someone asks my age I can imagine the expression on his or her face when I say as of today two billion, one hundred twenty-one million eight hundred eleven thousand, two hundred seconds, 201, 202, 203… They accumulate faster than I can type. It’s an unfathomable amount of anything, but they are my seconds that roll up my minutes that move up my hours, which increase my days into my weeks and turn into my months. These numbers sound more impressive than just saying a year. The downside is I’ll need a lot more candles for my cake.

Now, I’m far away from home, My heart hurts, I close my eyes, and it’s darkness I meet. Walking on, I cry, What he gave me, I can never see again. He is ever going, I will never be able to stop him. But it is I that shall end.

Chong Gu 11

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Time

James Jeter

When the judge sentenced me he gave me 30yrs. I was 20yrs. old and had been incarcerated since I was 17 so I knew prison, however, to be sentenced to a designated amount of time was something new to me. It was official, enforceable, negating, and presented me with an ever-present absence from all that anchored me in time. I had no concept for what 30 yrs. was, all I knew, intimately, was the 20 looong years I had lived—at least they felt long, and what did I have to compare them against that I could contextualize? 16 years later, I measure the time I spent incarcerated in moments and events (as we all do). This is how I quantify the time I did and what I gained: first book I read in prison, first fight, finding my faith, getting my GED, pre-trail hearings, plea agreement, assessment, Cheshire, my second fight, real friendships, conversations that impacted me, the continual fight for freedom—post conviction i.e. briefs, hearings, legal visits, decisions and losses, new hope, new issues, new briefs, new hearings, and education. In between these things life happened, 20 years’ worth. Each category branches off into a million smaller branches, which anchors my experiences, tracks my growth, my flaws and failures, and my gains. But through it all there lies an undercurrent of absence, I was still absent from all that I knew previously, but knew no more. I grasped for it mentally, emotionally, understanding that I was losing or rather had lost something but had no way of quantifying it. Thus my mind and emotions remained aloof, all I knew was that time was giving to me, which means that it—time— had become an agent of the state, and it was eating away at something important, and if eating away at nothing else it became cannibalistic, and ate away at itself. I had 30 years, but I was losing time. I’ve been on this side of the land of the living for 29 days. The hardest part of my transition was actually seeing, no, quantifying, my lost. Weighing the value of time lost—through events in the lives of others that are marked by my absence from them and them from me—against the value of the time I did. My presence in prison, created a negation, a void in greater society, yet this absence, this void, became a constant representation of me, because the lives of others were formulated around it. Thus I existed in 2 spaces at the same time. We all do. The irony of it all is that I viewed time in prison as this daunting, oppressive task master that hovered over my every thought and deed. But now time is an elusive lover who refuses to be possessed, it seems to slip right through my hands. I barely found time to “right” this.

Lucie Plasse

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If you Could Time travel, where would you go?

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Any Regrets?

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Rosanne ng

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This Time, Next Time, Sometime Al

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Shelli Weiler

Summer Katie Vasquez

I have nothing to say about the plastic chairs facing toward the sun, or how we lived on the edges of our seats, neighboring islands on a sea of dry grass and un-pulled weeds inhabited by week-old magazines with running ink. I have nothing to say about the chaos that is a two-for-one deal with that lifestyle or the conceit of my Ray-Bans or that of his hands. I have nothing to say about the scratched records that we spent months analyzing in vain, not guilty or innocentall Summer as the text of those magazines faded from black to gray.

Stages Katie Vasquez

Technicolor sand was the substrate. Sand dollar was the currency. Dead jellyfish in empty milk jugs were our pets. Our world stretched from Pop Pop’s house to the sea. We lived for sunscreen and ice cream and Bruce Springsteen. We shared a hair brush to calm my brown frizz and to style your strawberry blonde ponytail into a Yankees cap. Then the magic brush turned into our microphone every time we’d sing “Thunder Road.” ~~ The minivan drove us an hour away and we found miles of fields instead of beaches. The sand was traded for hard wood. The sand dollars were exchanged for American Express. The Yankees cap stuck around but soon your ginger wig introduced itself. The world stretched from school to Doctor Reiss’s and we sang less as you were home-less. ~~ The BMW took me to a new city...or at least it felt that way when juxtaposed with our jetties and farm land. I saw the big library lit up at night and I think you would have hated how it made education seem like a metropolitan luxury.

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What the parent wishes to forget the child wishes to remember Arron Luo

The second most important thing is these words weren’t first mine but Marcus Lee Hansen’s, a historian of American immigration. He said, “What the son wishes to forget, the grandson wishes to remember.” Other words that also aren’t mine, by Philip Slater, a sociologist and writer: “I’ve had mixed responses to my handling of gender pronouns. Some think it silly and ‘inconvenient’ to deviate from the impersonal ‘he.’ But change is always inconvenient; and through suchtrivial innovations you learn who the society is arranged for and why.” The most important thing is these words belong to no one and everyone, to be spoken by anyone to whom it has spoken to.

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LingBa Flare

KeNdLm

The Carapace

Time Phil 19

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Music, Time, and Memory Interview by Haenah Kwon

I invited three musicians from Connecticut - LingBa Flare (Bryan Giles), KeNdLm (David Jascot), and the Carapace (Joshua Colella) to my house for a conversation. Check out their music and artist statements on our blog: thesubwayride.weebly.com. How did you all meet? LF: I am the mutual friend. I met [KeNdLm] (pronounced as “kenelm”) in high school. I was a freshman and he was a senior. Josh (The Carapace) and I hung out at the same coffee house when we were in high school. We kinda knew each other through the same social structure. In mid-to-late 90’s, his first record came out and one of my co-workers played it. So many months go by, and I was hearing the record when Josh walks in, and this is how officially I knew that Scrap .edx was the dude that I’ve been standing next to, occasionally smoking cigarettes or having coffee with for years. It’s a small world. What is the history of your music-making? LF: I started being really interested in music to the point I started learning how to play instruments when I was 15. I picked up bass guitar, turn tables, sampler, guitar, and, you know, Mongolian Horse Fiddle. It was always the question: “Can I do this? Well, I don’t know, so let’s try.” That’s really it. K: I was in a bunch of bands in high school since 16. I’ve always played in bands, playing punk rock and alternate rock. But it got all boring recently. Getting people to play together can be really frustrating. So I was like ‘You know what? I’m gonna do my own shit.’ Now I’m just trying to experiment now with different noises. Not so much instrumentation but trying things like voices, noise, running water, and throwing rocks. Stuffs like that. Real life things. Now it has been three years. C: I started programming music in ‘99 at the age of 19, I think., with the main goal to emulate the music that I enjoyed listening to. Throughout college, I was exposed to more music technology and continued producing music, putting together a collage under the name Scrape .edx. Post-college, I was able to improve my career, for the lack of a better way to put it. I was able to release a small record and eventually do regular gigs in New England and made my way to Europe. I eventually settled with a German record label that opened a lot of doors for me in the industrial hardcore music in Europe and North America. I eventually grew not disgusted but tired

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with where things were going. It was getting to the point where the trajectory of life was going in one direction along with my value system following that. So I concerted efforts to put one final release together, which is what really tied up, from a musical point of view, everything that I wanted to accomplish with that project. I felt like I did that and then walked away from the project. I love programming and writing music, but I decided that I wanted to do it on my own terms where there were no expectations and I can let my creativity be the driving force. So I decided to do this Carapace project with a core theme basically having elements of experimental style. LF: Josh always underplays what he has done. He has had a career that people in our musical circles would dream of. This dude is actually really famous. He acts like he’s not, but within his genre, he is actually known now as a notable figure. H: How has the music scene changed in your time? C: It’s definitely more accessible to create music now because technology allows that. Music is always going to be changing; it always has been and always will be. I don’t know how to make a global statement about it but I definitely think we live in a time where we can get resources to produce music at an earlier age. K: I agree. If I had Garage Band as a teenager, I’d be making hundred songs a day. It’s so easy noq. C: I don’t know if creativity has changed though. One thing I noticed and am still trying to figure out is that it is easier to emulate things you like now because you can just watch a youtube tutorial of how to do it. But when I was trying to figure out music on digital platforms, you had to figure it out yourself – break it down to a granular level. You have to walk through all the steps. I don’t know if that affects creativity. LF: For me, it is realizing that you’re not going to have a cult following without having any digital medium for myself. With the internet now being a huge thing, now I feel like I have to figure out how to use Twitter and how to use Instagram. It’s just a way too complicated for me. K: Technology is not my thing either. I tried

(Above: art for KeNdLm’s song ‘Entrance’) it for a year, but it didn’t work. There’s just too many options. C: I would challenge people to not put expectations on themselves like that. I always remind myself that music is a hobby but also a voice. Just like how your music is your voice. As long as you’re creating and doing what you love, it doesn’t matter how you do it. H: I have been thinking a lot about how the same song sounds different as I grow. Any thoughts on the relationship music has with time or memory? C: I have a four-year-old daugter at home and I try to expose her to music or painting or whatever. I can see what happens with kids; they take things in and somehow it becomes ingrained in them as memory. K: I did the same thing with my own daughter and it didn’t work. She went somewhere else with it, so be careful. C: [Laughing] Yeah, well, my goal as a parent is just to expose. And whatever she chooses, she will do, whether it is challenging for me to accept or not. LF: For me, big part of music is ‘feeling’ that brings in memory. The earliest memory of music for me was hearing Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight specifically at a time when I was in the middle of a supermarket late at night. That was a feeling of being alone but also being surrounded. As I’ve gotten older, making music is about generating certain emotions. I don’t want to create a certain song, but I want to create a certain feeling.

All Aboard Sarah Schechter Love on Metro North (top left) Man On The Train (top right) Newz, Booze, Trash (Bottom left) Idyllic Train Ride (Bottom right)

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Adeline Hafemeister

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Soil Microbes and You Siri McGuire This picture shows the potential effects of methanogenesis on pH and calcium carbonate dissolution over time in lake sediments from Western Ireland. This process may affect carbon stable isotope composition in the carbonate, which serves as an important paleoenvironmental indicator. This picture was taken in the summer of 2016 for a research project in Wesleyanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Earth and Environmental Sciences Department. Additional credits: Tate Knight, Timothy Ku.

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cheap thrills Justina Yam

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After a Summer, a Year, a World of Tragedy Nick Yeager After four deaths in two days shot while knees press down backs and 4-yearold girls sit wide-eyed in the backseat. After fifty die dancing, and fear returns, and safety shatters, quick. After war breaks out in the streets of Texas my home and retaliation flies unhinged through the air; countless bullets. After the holiday month Eid ends and millions upon millions of people are meant to return to stark life after 30 days of celebration, but they spent it bloodied and in tears and now life batters them onward. After his knuckles drip thick red death from dragging on the pavement, skin a blank canvas soiled with the most hideous painting. After our world’s stormy, cruel days pass through my eyes, I tear out my heart, rack my brain for meaningless answers, rip my skin off in anger, and I am only flesh. A human outline. And I simply want a single moment that is safe, or sunny, or in my wildest dreams peaceful. To lie on my back in a field of yellow daisies gazing at the toxic clouds that float by, easy. What an impossible dream it would be. After the horror passes, this is what I will ask the Wizard for. One single moment. Is that what they’ve been asking for all along?

pavor nocturnus Nick Byers

Years away the pain don’t stay It runs away, slowly strays

Bread crumbs and roly-polies fill my pockets junk food and late nights redden my eye sockets

sleeping awake at night doom creeping by and I fight and I run but the fear still comes anticipated tears fill my cheeks

pain back then carries its own weight waiting to jump back on its freight and surprise me none too late 25

its faded in years since the last but terror hated me to tears that day couldn’t wake up to see errors in my way

THE SUBWAY RIDE

A.M.

Nick Byers Everyday masochist Stare at fake fits Iconography in 8-bit Can barely see the fist No fee for photography Carelessly flicks his wrist It’s a trick that he’s pissed A prick on a false edge of precariousness Fickle pity spree Killing it like ledger Narcissistic rage ingrained like leather Egoistic cage links like a tether Bars light as a feather Metaphors white like cold weather In fact finds spite in his truths In white upbringing and fox news Fantasized, fetishized that Tribe and Wu were his crews Surmised to tantalize them Devour them like forbidden food Forget his power not fix its crude Rule on his actions. As the clock ticks it’s still shooed

A Week Nick Yeager

At 2am Saturday stars dance around me and I see the sun in the distance a welcoming, genuine friend. At 10am Sunday morning I feel cynics bleed into my mind and I become one so easy like maybe I already was one. Only if I drown truth out with Carey by Joni Mitchell can I believe in the sun again. At 11pm Sunday I cannot think but think so hard and deep I tell myself I must sleep before I make any decisions. Monday will feel better. This happens every week and it starts to feel like my most real moments, not my worst or my warped ones. At 12pm Monday, Vitamin D seeps in and I could skip through the grass forever once the clouds clear. But heavy stacks of paper tether me to my chair. The rest of the day and Tuesday and Wednesday feel the same. At 5pm Thursday I become free enough that I can outstretch my chains farther from my deadlines and my sorrow, and I can indulge in platonic connection and forget myself in the faces of grace, beauty, and depth around me. This lovely forgetting and learning lasts a few nights but Sunday always rolls around. The sun and its gentle touch always sets and fades and my state of emptiness returns. A façade or reality? I can never ever decide. Long live that moon weeping in solidarity. The stars hold my hand as I stretch my aching muscles and glide phony into sleep. THE SUBWAY RIDE

Alea Laidlaw

THE SUBWAY RIDE

Relapse

20 Years

Anonymous

Ava Grob

You don’t notice it at first It’s as gentle as the first leaves of autumn Falling on the dried grasses Slowly its tameness disappears Now it is the blizzard Blockading any and all thoughts in your mind You’re stuck. Surrounded in white, but the house is dark Running, looking for an escape You can’t give up. Loss of breath, loss of all sense Your body rattled by the change, can’t take it anymore You let go. Drop to the floor and allow the darkness to hollow you out Hollowed mind, hallowed soul But even the holiest of lights can’t reach you now.

My Thoughts on Time Jerry Augustine U.S. Army 1965-1967 Now that I am in the winter of my years I tend to think more about the past than ever. Just fifty years ago this month I was fighting for my country and for my life in the jungles of Vietnam. My first son was about to be born ten days from this date. I had been in combat just two months and constantly wondered if I would make it out of there alive. When my son was born, a member of the Red Cross notified me that I had become a father. When I found out that my son would have my first name I feared, “Was that a premonition?” That he was named after me and I wouldn’t make it home? I had to live with this fear for ten more months before I returned to the States. I would love to meet my guardian angel. One has no control over what space in time he or she occupies. There is virtually no control of the length of time one will last also. Leaving our mark in time is just a tiny speck of the millions of years of existence. Time never will end but our existence sadly does. Make the best of your time while you are here and cherish it.

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This is the body This is the body This is the body Make sure it is at least 10pt font size.

Meanapas (Translation by Toys Koomplee) Time is infinite. No start. No ending. Circling rounds after rounds, ceaselessly, We name it time, even though its existence isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t real.

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Sam Medrano THE SUBWAY RIDE

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Gaby Montinola THE SUBWAY RIDE

Daniel Jarris 33

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Goodnight, Gracie Cheryl Anne Hale, 2015

Deep in Savannah, beneath garlands lacy I lost my heart to a girl named Gracie. red azaleas surround as she sits in her bower her left hand still clasps a sweet wildflower. High-button shoes peek from under her dress, and I longed, how I longed, her cool cheek to caress They say she once sang at Pulaski Hotel until was tolled, the black Passing Bell. Now her gaze skims over her carved stone bed, I was there, but she searched out her parents instead. She would pray them come back to tuck her in pull ivy-green quilt up to marble-white chin. An unearthly beauty, sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sculptural magic eternally six, eternally tragic.

Daniel Jarris THE SUBWAY RIDE

THE SUBWAY RIDE

By Random Anonymous People at Usdan We asked some radom passers-by at Usdan to write a short poem, and here are some of them!

Clockmaster

Madison McClain-Frederick

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jada jenkins 37

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Justina Yam THE SUBWAY RIDE

SHOUTOUTS to.... To Tai and wesbreaker friends for the beautiful bike (and to Miles for always fixing it) To Adeline for taking this photo in the background (haha) To Belen for winning our cake-pie raffle To CK Hackers for the Bills and the GDP project To Nick Yeager and Wilson Lai for submitting to us every time To Chong (we still miss you) (we used your photo) To Caren (Kana) for helping us make the boxes To music producers and brewers of the world for helping us get thru To Sherry for suffering thru digital art + all nighters w/ Christianne To Ellen for drivinig me to ER

check out our blog check out our blog blog submissions: - Death Rebirth - EP by Max Bouvagnet - Flowers- photos by Justina Yam - Succulents - drawings by Sarah Schechter - Break-Time - Dance footage by Tai Taliaoa - Second Chance, First Choice - documentary by Laura Singer-Magdoff - Timelapse- videos by Daniel Jarris and music by KeNdLm, the Carapace, and LingBa Flare

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EDITING TEAM

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