Money Is An Issue

Heroïne STUDENT MAGAZINE OF LITERARY AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS

money is an issue

This

issue

Year 6, Volume 2, 2019

Editorial Money matters Prawncocktail Money Trees Piss and Micheal Kors Precariousness The Status Quo Interview: Tierno Deme Easter Shopping Courier Bidding for Opportunity , and Bargaining for Equality Money.

Recipie: Chorizo and Potato Stew 3

4 6 9 12 16 19 20 22 26 28 33 36 38

editorial

So embedded in the structure of daily life, so often lauded as the pinnacle of success the journey of money and its impact is often diminished. So this issue we’ve brought it to the forefront of the conversation - money, politics, religion - let the proverbial tea spill.

We wanted to create a space to talk about financial affect because an increasing reliance on contactless, tikki and services like paypal renders money more and more intangible, not to mention the discursive restrictions placed on the topic in ‘polite company’.

Restrictions on a subject that is complicated and difficult to grasp is only wanted by the people that profit from misunderstandings around money. That is why questions need to be asked and topics need to be unavoided.

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The incredible contributions we’ve received this issue ask important questions: what lengths are we willing to go to for money? What are the effects of a commercialised healthcare service?

Does money matter? How does hyperinflation warp reality?

We thank our contributors whose dedication and hard work inspires us to demand more of the magazine, to push its limits and set bigger goals. We’d also like to thank those that attend our events, your donations turn PDF’s into paper and help us to do right by our contributors by printing on higher quality paper, it also gives the design department the freedom they need to produce something we can all be proud of.

We really hope you enjoy this issue,

The Heroine Team

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Claus Hedman, Design Marta Mcilduff, Design assistant Serina Tatham, Editing Liesje Verhave, Editing and events Tiffany Lai, Editing and events Boriana Hadjieva, Editing Emily Standen, Editing

have no forest. But not all mediations work the same way. In the example of the forest, memory mediates your relationship to a thing so that the thing matters to you in a particular kind of way (maybe forests terrify you, so you do not share this fondness). Money, unlike memory, matters because it mediates the character of past, present, and future relations to all manner of things (all manner because, as we will see, people become objects in a money relation). So, if “money matters,” it is because it is a strong (though often internalized) mediation of you and the world.

But why would we say that a thing matters, especially when that thing increasingly is not something that is in your pocket and so not really a thing in the way we casually mean a thing, and so also not really matter in the way we casually mean matter. Money would seem to be more immaterial than material, at least to the extent that it is set of numbers that quantify a certain amount of value moving from your bank account to your coffee shop, university,

HOMERGASTEN

Money Matters Jeff Diamanti

If “money matters,” it is because money mediates. But what is mediation? Mediation takes place between things—between subjects and objects, subjects and subjects, objects and objects; put stronger, mediation is the relation between this and that, you and me, us and them, it and it. Every relation is mediated, and every mediation is a relation, even if there are multiple at play in a given relation.

So, for instance you could say that the forest at the edge of your birthplace stays with you, and that you return to the forest in your memories of home, of the familiar, and of friends.

Memory mediates the forest so strongly that were you to lose those memories, you would have no forest to remember, and so you would

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our money matters the coffee for us. But this last one – to make a thing materialize – gets a bit weirder when we think back to where the coffee (or computer or any commodity) came from in the first place, because there (what Marx calls the “hidden abode of production”1 ) money matters in very strange ways.

When you agree to work for someone, you agree to exchange your skills and your time for money. This is what Marx calls “labour power.” Nobody can force you to work, and nobody can make you work for nothing.

That’s called slavery. So, capitalism in principle depends upon a fair and equal exchange of values: the value of your labour power for an equal value borne by money (your wage or salary). Money matters a great deal for how things get made, then, because it is the medium of exchange that guarantees something like fair and equal exchange (the boss’s cash for your

or media provider whenever you make a purchase. Saying money matters when we nearly never come into physical contact with most of the money that matters to us is a bit like saying that emails matter, even though you cannot fold an email up and slip it in your pocket or across a desk when your teacher is not looking.

This would seem to get to the heart of the matter of what it means to matter. To say something “matters” can mean at least one of three things: 1) A thing can matter (the verb to matter) because it is important; 2) a thing can be a subject of concern (we deliberated on this matter); 3) less commonly, but most relevant to what I want to say here, it can describe a physical process (to matter as in to materialize, or make present). Money matters in all of these ways all of the time. When we are broke, money matters a lot because we do not have enough of it. When we do our taxes, we are turning our attention to money matters. And when we pay for a coffee, we are purchasing the right to that coffee and so making it present for ourselves:

1 For more on this phrase, see Nancy Fraser, “Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode,” ​New Left Review 8​6 (March-April 2014).

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the amount of stuff needed to reproduce the worker on a daily basis (what classical political economists called “socially necessary labour time,” or the basket of goods one needs to acquire and consume to come back the next day for work).

This is where things get weird for two reasons. First, Marxist feminists started pointing out in the 1970s that the basket of goods needed to reproduce the worker made invisible all the gendered forms of labour that take place in homes where women did unpaid work and men congealed that work into the labouring body ready for factory work every morning. In Italy, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James, and Silvia Federici’s work on wages for housework is a critique of the very character of the ways in which money matters for exploitation, domination, and gender. Money in a capitalist system matters for gender, insofar as it requires a blind eye to the indirect forms of labour (all gendered, even if not only done by women) presupposed but unremunerated

time and skills). But if the capitalist had the same amount of money as the value of your labour power, then he wouldn’t need to hire you because money would already give him the value he is after in your work. That would be like saying to your friend “I’ll give you this 20-euro bill for your 20-euro bill, which is fair and square.” It would be a waste of time, and time matters more to capitalists than anything else in the world (because otherwise all things would remain the same, at least from the standpoint of value).2 Which is to say, labour power is valuable to the capitalist for another, more fundamental reason than the remunerated value represented by the wage. It is valuable because its makes things (though you’re not being paid for your caloric output, strictly speaking, which is why energy theories of value have never been able to pierce the barrier of capital) and its value is in turn indexed to 2 For more on time and capital, see Moishe Postone’s T ​ ime, Labour, and Social Domination.​Cambridge UP, 1993.

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up the character of a commodity have no bearing on its value? He means, in short, that money matters matter, but that the way it does so is not by way of some translation of natural value into capitalist value, where an atom is worth x and the chain of value extends up to the things that contain those atoms. Imagine that: we all agree that an apple is worth x amount of calories, and x amount of calories can fuel you to make x amount of shirts, and x amount of shirts are worth … and so on. The value of money fluctuates like the weather, and the standards of value change once in a generation (used to be gold, now is something between the price of oil and the ‘value’ of the US dollar). Matter does not matter to money in the same way that it might matter to someone digging dirt or diving into the ocean to mourn bleached coral. Instead, money matters human labour power: money, in other words, is an abstraction of that thing you bring to the boss and say “here is what I can do with my brains and body in an hour,” and the boss says

from the standpoint of the wage. It matters because it matters the labouring body, and matters because it does not matter to the calculus of capital in the form of recognition. The worker is on the clock. Time off the clock does not matter.

Second, all along money has been mediating different forms of work, materials, time, and expectations so fundamentally that nobody would look at your 20-euro bill and ask “is it really worth 20 euros?” But if money abstracts into relatively exchangeable properties of things (what they are worth) it does so with an awfully strange claim on the physical stuff—the matter—that makes up money matters. Which is why Marx, who remember is a materialist, says something terribly confusing about all this when he claims in the first volume of Capital that “the value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance, not an atom of matter enters into its composition” (Marx, 1976: 138). What does he mean? How can the matter that makes

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“ok, well you’ll need this basket of goods to stay alive while you do that work, so that’s the value I’ll pay you.”

Money matters because it mediates the bio- and socio-physical nature of labour with the general equivalence of money, and it does so because money matters by abstracting into the logic of capital. In this way, money matters in all three ways sketched above: it imputes importance; it is a locus of concern; and it manifests certain qualities of the world—what in the humanities and social sciences we call “social relations”—including your labour power, at the same time that it turns the value of your time into an equivalent relation with the objects to which your life depends (socially necessary labour time, the basket of goods).

Money matters so much to capitalism that you would be forgiven for thinking when you look back at the forest from your childhood that its lumber might just be worth a bit of cash— that, in short, matter moneys. You can see why money matters as much to capitalists as

it does to Marxists. Capitalism is a system of exploitation built on the naturalization of the ways in which money abstracts. Marxism is the relentless the critique of the ways in which money matters most.

Works Cited Marx, Karl. Capital Volume 1. Penguin Books, 1976.

‘Untitled’, Maria Tsiattalou.

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Prawn

cocktail

Rushing home from work, famished, the familiar glare of the supermarket, prawn cocktail in my basket.

Palms touch, briefly, An exchange without words.

The 50 pence piece moves from body to body, Facilitating everything: Banks Capitalism My dinner.

My whole being indebted to the coin, This silent ruler with his finger in too many pies.

Serina Tatham

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dow. It made me think of simpler times, cheaper times. Hyperinflation made everyone live in a perpetual nostalgia. Having leftovers from dinner was something of a different era, two years before! Times of bonanza! After what felt like an eternity we miraculously received our raise, along with many months of backpay. I still remember that stuffed pepper and the lasagna I got that week with my colleagues as well as the many beers we had in La Panda, the closest bar. More regularly than the fantasy meals I would get a pack of cigarettes that would last for a week (if I didn’t give out too many to friends) - the pack was around eight hundred and fifty bolivares, so i could get around two packs a month. It is feasible that my idea about money at the time was that money was something I would never have, at least in the near future. What I had earned so far was basically more along the lines of a volunteer job than a real one. It didn’t really get better when I finally got a real job in a second hand bookshop - I got paid daily, by the hour and in cash - some-

Money Trees Gabriel SoJo

Three years ago I was studying philosophy in La Universidad Central de Venezuela. While studying, I worked at the Logics and Linguistic department as an errand runner. I would earn an unintelligible salary of twelve hundred bolivares a month, besides -of course- the spiritual enrichment of afternoon drinks and cigarettes with the professors and students from that department. A couple of months before I started working at the Logics department, the University had raised our wage to twenty four thousand bolivares which was however, only on paper.

We didn’t get the payroll until six months later.

At lunch time we would always fantasize about a local restaurant that would serve homemade food. We could smell it from the 4th floor win-

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Manuscripts; one of the books that my teacher regarded as part of the good Marx, not the propaganda crap in the Manifesto. His idea of money was something along the lines of “money is the universal whore”.

It was a line that seemed more likely to come from your drunk macho uncle than a respected european philosopher. But then again, is there a big difference? Drunk uncle Marx gave me a hint of the weirdly abstract condition of money and many things that were regarded as metaphysical like; Love, Freedom, God - all find its value in a paper we agreed to be our only stable form of trading.

I was so confused by the paradox of finding truth in Marx’s arguments whilst suffering from a deeper sense of alienation in a supposedly socialist state. My real job in the library

‘Untitled’, Zeynep Yilmaz.

times twelve hundred bolivares a day - this is why I wrote real in italics. Shit was still symbolic from a stable economy standpoint.

We had a course on Marx around that time and I remember finding Marx’s conception of money in the Economic and Philosophic

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“click&go™” a loan with no intermediaries, no bullshit - only a skyhigh interest rate of 20%. I found out I could cancel it before the monthly deadline with a 4 euro fee. So it was perfect for me, I wouldn’t really be in debt. Two seconds later, boom, there it was. I could see all the pixels euphorically gathering into 4 ciphers in my bank account. I wouldn’t be able to say how it feels to be born again, but between all its iterations this was definitely up there in the ranks.

My life in the 21st century had just begun.

wouldn’t give me enough money to buy books there, even with discount. During Christmas time we received a bonus of five thousand bolivares, which along with that month’s paycheck and my worker’s discount allowed me to buy the hottest book release of the moment: El Fervor de Caracas, a literary anthology about the city that attempts to grasp its spirit through many eras. It felt like perfect timing for a moment where memories were the best life you could get.

It is easy to understand then my even bigger confusion when I started living in Spain later that year. I just had just gotten a job and a cellphone contract. I still didn’t believe I was earning more money in a month than two years of my mom’s salary, the salary of a seasoned teacher in Venezuela. A few months later, under the promise that I would bring her to Spain, I took out my first loan. I had to move to a bigger flat so she could move in and the dates of the deposit wouldn’t match my payday. I saw this feature on my bank app called

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’Tea Faces’, Marta Mcilduff.

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another one of her drug infused party stories. I repeat: ‘Ella, what the fuck happened?’ She clears her throat, raising her eyebrows and nodding her head as she takes a sip of her whiskey.

She must have gotten a job, I think to myself. Ella was always the one friend in group without money. She worked countless jobs but somehow managed to always be completely broke.

Most of the stuff she owned she would steal, and I could recall seeing her picking up cigarettes from the ground because she couldn’t afford to buy them. At bars she would never pay for her own drinks, always persuading older men to get her the most expensive cocktails. And here she was, ordering whiskey.

The whiskey is gone. ‘Ok’, she says, taking a deep breath. I notice she is about to burst into laughter any second. ‘You won’t believe this, but I’ve become rich. Like really fucking rich’. ‘No way’, I reply. ‘How?’ She leans in, all the way to my ear, making sure the old bartender doesn’t hear.

‘Selling my pee’.

I choke on my tongue for two seconds. ‘Your

Piss & Michael Kors Eivor Slågedal

I meet my friend Ella at a run-down bar in the center of town. Two years ago she moved across the country and I haven’t seen her in months.

She stumbles in, waving at me frantically as she approaches the bar. ‘What do you wanna drink?’ she yells across the room. I shrug my shoulders and smile at her. She comes to sit down with two glasses of whiskey in her hand.

‘So, drinks come before giving me a hug, huh?’ I say as I get up to greet her. She winks her eye at me. ‘It’s good to see you’. ‘You too’. ‘How are you?’, ‘good’, ‘you?’, ‘good’. ​​​​ ‘So what’s new?’ I ask. She leans over, giggles and grabs my hand. She takes a breath. ‘Girl, you wouldn’t even believe me if I told you.’ ‘Ella, what did you do’, I say, disappointingly expecting

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pee?’ I ask, struggling to keep my voice down.

‘You’re selling your piss? What? Where? How?’.

She rolls her eyes. ‘Calm down’, she says. ‘To dirty men from the internet. Are you honestly even surprised?’.

I was. But I guess I shouldn’t have been.

Ella had always been the crazy one. While me and the other girls were losing our virginity to our boyfriends, Ella was far ahead, fucking 30- year old guys in the back of their cars. And while me and the other girls did our first shot of tequila, Ella had already done more drugs than she could count on one hand.

She puts her hand on the table. ‘It’s fucking genius. Being rich is even a thousand times more amazing than I ever imagined. Babe, I can do whatever the fuck I want. Buy whatever I want’. She smiles as she lifts up a black leather handbag from the floor. ‘What’s that’, I ask, rather unimpressed. ‘Bitch, are you stupid? It’s a Michael Kors’. ‘Michael who?’ ‘A Michael Kors handbag you dumb shit, everyone has them, I always wanted one but they were too expensive.

Cost me 450’. I roll my eyes in a mix of confusion and disgust. ‘You sold your pee to creepy men online and went and got a 450 dollar handbag?’

She nods. ‘Hell yes I did. There’s a lot of money in the piss business if you can call it that. Lots of money’. I noticed for a second she was struggling to take herself seriously. I start laughing. She laughs too. ‘Ok well tell me how it works’, I say.

‘See, this is why I love you’, she says and smiles.

‘You don’t judge. You’re probably the only person in the world who won’t view me differently even though I make a living selling my pee’. I nod and give her a little friendly wink.

‘Alright so this is how it started. I wanted to sell my used panties online because my friend from work told me apparently you can make a shit ton of money doing that. But. Turns out the creeps aren’t satisfied with only the panties, they wanted pictures and videos too, of me like masturbating or taking a shit in the panties or whatever, and you know that’s where I draw the line’.

‘Sure’, I reply. ‘Anyway so I gave up on that idea, but on this same dodgy website I found an ad

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ent men, which is about six bottles a week or so.

Babe, it’s so amazing, I don’t even have to do any work, just pee in a bottle!’ She takes a breath and leans back. ‘Modern times are great, huh?’ she says with a smirk on her face.

‘Well enough about me, how are you doing? Like what’s new? Any boys? How’s your job? What’s up?’ I spaced out, trying to remember what had changed in my life the past couple months but I couldn’t seem to find the words. I stared at the black leather bag and couldn’t think of anything else than pee. Six bottles of pee. My friend Ella, taking a piss in bottles for money.

Random men drinking it or pouring it all over themselves. Jesus.

Checking my bank account on my way home I must say I considered it.

from a guy wanting to buy pee from a girl. Like just the pee, nothing else. One full water bottle.

Once or twice a week. Price negotiable, but well paid. I was like, hell yeah? So I contacted him and we talked a bit and he was real chill and all, and he suggested to meet in a public space twice a week to exchange the pee, wanting to pay me at least two hundred for each bottle. So naturally, I was sold.’ ‘Naturally’, I repeat, realizing that by this point the bartender is well known with our conversation. ‘He offered to pay me even more if I peed on him instead of in the bottle, but I told him, you know, I would probably have to meet him first to consider it. Anyway so we met and he was really nice and surprisingly normal. His name is David and he works in real estate or something, making a lot of money. Like, really, there wasn’t anything creepy about him! Except for the pee fetish I guess. But yeah. Long story short; I’ve been selling my pee to my new friend David for six months now, and recently more ads for buying pee popped up so I responded to those as well. I think now I sell to like three differ-

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Precariousness

Sometimes I fear that fear will take me far away from people and won’t let me go back Take the air out of my lungs Tie me to the bed and shut my eyes To the warm sunlight outside Take all my energy away I just hope that it won’t do to me what happens to a candle in the oxygen-free the flame will slowly fade away without a sound and the only thing that’s left behind is a body with extinguished mind

the shining person the happy soul that I enjoyed to be that always felt so free I’M SCARED TO LOSE ME.

Lara-lane Plambeck

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The Status Quo Marthe van Bronkhorst

The status quo is a faraway isle where the winds do not blow and no water flows In the status quo temperature rising Fahrenheit after Fahrenheit does not imply anything for the climate right? – Wasn’t it cold yesterday? – On a wall in a cove a weak whistle blows and numbly the echo’s echoes echo - someone always benefits from the status quo. In the status quo men in suits take the coins away, they will keep them safe, sound in a secret place, for which you have to pay (do not dare ask where) Great and formidable projects they will create as you sleepwalk amongst them, eyes closed, but able to hear the sounds of the drilling the cutting the crying the yearning people not earningBut as you open your eyes, there is the money machine skilfully spitting out every euro

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- You got your money back, right? – - someone always benefits from the status quo.

In the status quo feathers are plucked, cows are scraped to scarlet bars dripping on white concrete and a suckling piglet squeals because somebody’s hungry. There is always a hungry one.

The Status Quo is 50 states united, the Status Quo is a country below sea level Where the big men say this is the only place, and if there would be another place, everything would take place just like it takes place in the status quo.

In the status quo a man buys a gun and he goes to school In the status quo a man shoots to kill because everything needs to burn Here I am. In a hallway of broken glass, every thought, every being is shattered to mosaic splinters of a hope that once was, all is glass in this school And in the status quo, voices speak up saying “This has to stop.

We will have none of this anymore.

We’re closing the schools.”

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CRUSH

Thierno Deme Tiffany Lai

This issue we’re crushing on the ever eloquent Thierno Deme, who’s a first year LCA student. Moving from Senegal to the US and later to Burkina Faso, Spain and Amsterdam he decided to create The Black Diaspora to document the stories and experiences of being black in countries dominated by whiteness.

Could you outline the origin and basic idea of your blog?

The basic idea is that I interview people and map out the different ways they identify with their blackness, the way they differ but also connect. It originated from an idea that my sister had of creating a black clothing business and I suggested putting the faces of black people on the clothing as well as art related to their stories; we started from there but I decided to begin the blog instead.

Are you still interested in the idea of a clothing line?

Yeah, if there’s enough people who appreciate it or the blog maybe they’ll be interested in the clothes but I’d be a little bit worried about monetising peo-

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ple’s identity. I guess, it feels a little fucked up so not for now, no.

Is the blog mostly based in Amsterdam or is it also international?

The audience is definitely mostly Amsterdam based but in terms of interviewees I want it to be international and that’s why if there’s an interesting artist that’s coming to perform in Amsterdam I’ll try to make sure to find out a few months ahead and then hit them up when they come to perform here and they can talk about their perspective from a different country. That’s already happened with this South African duo called Faka - they came here to perform a year ago and I met them to talk about their experience.

Is there anything that you have found really connects your interviewees in their experiences like a recurring theme or thread that runs through their stories?

There’s always a memory of when they ‘found out’ or realised they were black, it tends to be in places where they’re surrounded by whiteness. That’s my most common question, ‘when did you find out you were black? When did you confront that blackness?’ So I feel like that’s a feeling that connects everybody. I feel like that would be a different story if I was interviewing Africans in Africa because then this blog wouldn’t make sense.

Yeah it’s true, it’s often at school that you realise that you’re different right? Your friends ask you ‘why you’re eating that’.

Yeah it’s your food from home or your accent and you kind of see yourself a little bit - it makes you embarrassed of your culture I guess.

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Can you think of an instance where money has come up as an issue with either you or your interviewees?

Well, with myself it can be tough at times because I have to pay for the website to be up, for the film to be scanned and developed - all this is out of my pocket. So at times, I won’t have enough and the website will be down for a week or two. That obviously gets annoying so I’m trying to find ways to circumvent that, it’s either you spend a lot of time or you spend a lot of money doing this. I actually found an illustrator that wanted to make videos of my interviews but with her it was €200 for a 2 minute video.

Two minutes?!

Yep and that was the cheapest I could find. I also hit up this black owned anime studio in Japan and I asked for 2 minutes and they told me it would cost 150 grand but then I looked into their work and they were working with some of the most popular animes of today so I get it, I was reaching!

When we set up this interview you mentioned the moral compromise of monetising projects with political undertones - what did you mean by that?

I was referencing The Black Diaspora blog and I was thinking about how tricky it can be to be managing a project with political undertones but at the same

The Black Diasopra Logo

time I do want to find a way of making some money off of it.

So the question is, is it right to do so or not? Another example of this question might be Afropunk (a cultural collective, website and event organiser) which is inspiring to a lot of people globally but then once it became this multinational festival there was a lot of people calling them out for some

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bullshit. There was this woman called Ericka Hart who had been supporting them from the beginning and her partner Ebony Donnley was wearing a shirt to the festival that said “Afropunk sold out for white consumption”, they just kicked them out of the festival because it wasn’t a ‘good look’ for the brand. This tension had been around for a while and there were pictures online circulating of the VIP area which was pretty much filled with white people so that’s an example of me seeing something very political, giving in to rich people. I don’t want to necessarily do that with my blog.

I see. We also spoke a little about commission affect-

ing an artist’s integrity what are your thoughts in general about this?

I think it just depends on where you’re getting the money from, so, if it’s from a big organisation with a certain political view, I’m sure they would try and bend the artist’s views to benefit them or if it’s like a Patreon or other form of online patronage where one person is being funded by a community of their fans I’m sure that the artist might bend their views or art to what the fans expect.

Do you think there’s a way to avoid that?

For me, I think grants are a good way to do it because then maybe I can get enough capital to fund the photography and

the art and the website and to create whatever I want to create without having to feel like I’m capitalising on it. It’s just an investor that wants to support an artistic project and I won’t necessarily feel bad about that.

Well it’s clearly difficult but how do you see The Black Diaspora expanding from here?

I would like it to become more of a multimedia project and I already have two people that want to write for it - opinion pieces on their identity etc, I just want more and more content. So that’s the plan and if there’s interesting clothes that can come out of it we’ll make that but for now it’s just meeting interesting people and letting them talk, that’s the main goal.

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Website: tbdiaspora.com Instagram:@thiernod.

Easter Shopping

His touch; was worth The years he stole from me was worth the outfit I threw away He ignored the Easter eggs I had just bought and preferred his unwelcome touch His foot between the door wouldn’t his toes have gotten sore He should at least pay for my therapy Because those three years have come and gone and I’m still here remembering

Liesje Verhave

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‘Untitled’, Lila Schmeinck.

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The upstairs flat of the building at Grafton Street and Henrietta was still. The air inside hung heavily despite the open window; the fan’s black blades were matted with dust. Children played in the courtyard outside the window, but Shinar couldn’t make out the words to their games from his bed. They just weren’t loud enough. The dribbling bathroom faucet was fixed last week, and the clock needed new batteries to work again.

Where am I going to get eight-hundred euros? He thought to himself as he lied sprawledout on his bed. He ran his tongue across his back molars and felt the three offending teeth, recoiling once the pain became too much. The anesthesia alone for the surgery would cost two-hundred.

What if he went without it? Sure, it would probably be so agonizing that he’d pass out, but that was only temporary. No dentist would ever allow that. Maybe they could make a deal, he thought, rubbing his eyes then closing them too tightly to displace some of his pain.

Courier Calin EE Foster

an•es•the•tize /əˈnesTHəˌtīz/ verb gerund or present participle: anesthetizing 1. administer an anesthetic to (a person or animal), especially so as to induce a loss of consciousness.

• deprive of feeling or aware ness.

“tragedy of a magnitude that

anesthetizes the mind”

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lenced the street on all sides except for their own sounds.

“What happened?” Shinar asked a woman

in the rear of the crowd after joining them.

“Fire alarm,” she quickly answered after

glancing at him. “Probably a false one.”

“Can I still go in? I’m a courier,” he point

ed to the emblem on his vest.

“No,” she scoffed and shook her head.

Undeterred by her apathy toward him for the sake of keeping his job, he pried the information from her that the building would close soon anyway since it was nearing the end of the day, and its employees would likely be sent home. He had no chance of delivering the package that day.

His flat was quite close. He could try again tomorrow morning when the building opened, confident all parties involved would understand the circumstances.

After being part of the crowd viewing the

The parcel sat on the small round table in the corner of his studio flat. It was wrapped in careful layers of light-brown paper held tight by a length of twine. Shinar knew this parcel had something beautiful inside. Its weight, its integrity, and its wrapping were extraordinary. He had handled and delivered thousands of packages since he moved to this city, but this one was something new, and it had to hold something beautiful.

As he stared at the parcel from his bed, he realized that it was the only one he had ever brought into his flat. His attempt to deliver it the previous evening was unsuccessful. Yesterday’s scene outside its destination, the J. C. Vincent building on Pearse Street, almost overwhelmed him. Throngs of employees from inside the building, most of them wearing suits and fine business clothes, stood outside updating each other with erratic information while they craned their necks to see the building’s entrance. He felt underdressed in his shabby work uniform. Firetrucks, ambulances, and police cars dominated and si-

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spectacle for just a bit longer, having business there just like everyone around him, he turned and took the short walk to his flat with the package to wait for the next morning.

Shinar shifted to a more comfortable position, but one where he could still see the parcel on his table. Soon the J. C. Vincent building would be open and he could deliver it to its owner.

The children playing outside were silent now, or they had possibly left the courtyard altogether. Shinar didn’t bother to get up off his bed to look and remained still. How could he dare miss his own sister’s wedding? The ceremony was exactly one week away but he didn’t have enough money for the plane ticket, nor could he afford to miss any amount of time from his job. His parents as well as his sister told him it wasn’t a problem and that they understood. What was he doing here? Why did he up and leave his home to live in a city so far away? Years ago, before he made his plans to move, he remembered seeing the photos

of the city in magazines, in films, and on his family computer. It had everything his home didn’t have: street-side cafes, attractive people, waterways, romance, and everything else that he wanted.

He had seen and lived those things by now with his own eyes and self, but they weren’t the same.

How dare he miss his sister’s wedding? And where would he get eight-hundred euros?

Pain shot through his molars once again.

He stood up from his bed while trying to steady his breaths and reached for his fleece work vest. The words “Express Couriers” was sewn into the left breast. He threw it around himself and gently lifted the parcel off the table. The small shipping label on the bottom read: James Williams, 78 Pearse Street, Office 42D. He didn’t want to part with it, but he didn’t want to open it either. He would simply leave it on his small round table in the corner of his studio flat if it wouldn’t cost him his job.

How could he miss his sister’s wedding?

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Clutching the handle to his front door, Shinar exhaled, like a deep-sea diver readying himself to back-roll into the water, suited in all the heavy gear. He flung the door open, parcel in hand, and felt the crisp wind roar over his skin. The pressure of the new atmosphere shocked him, but then an opiatic wave overtook him. The weather in this city is better than any other, he thought, walking down the stairs to the street. How incredible it all was! The cafes, the people, the waterways, the romance! Cars and bikes raced by, fellow pedestrians paraded alongside him, and everything was moving. On his way to the J. C. Vincent building, he marveled at it all. What a city this was! There was no place he’d rather be.

He reached the package’s final destination with a calm smile on his face and passed through the building’s great doors. Inside, the lobby was vast and buzzing with employees and their noises. To work in this building would be so rewarding, he thought. He stood in the center of the lobby and searched with wide eyes for the elevators that

‘Whimsical Face’, Marta Mcilduff.

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ing a reception desk with a young woman seated behind it. She was dressed in a light-brown button-down shirt, impeccably pressed, and her dark-brown hair was styled up, pristinely wrapped around her head.

“Hello, Express Couriers,” he said to her. She smiled and nodded. “I have a package for James Williams in office 42D,” he said as he glanced at the label on the package. She smiled and pointed him in the proper direction.

Shinar smiled and thanked her, then began walking through the halls to the office. Could he ever get a girl like her? He wondered. Along the way, he passed other offices in which he heard phones ringing and being answered, employees chatting, and discussions about business in that “business” tone of voice. He reached the door of office 42D, which was already slightly ajar.

“Hello? Express Couriers,” he announced as he knocked on the door. He noticed the overhead lights were off but there was still plenty of

would take him to the forty-second floor as employees in suits and fine business clothes shot by him. He was underdressed for a place like this, but that didn’t worry him; too much was happening all around. After locating the elevator doors, he walked over and waited in front of them.

Three employees exited the elevator in their designer clothes and he proudly took their place. He pressed the button marked “42” then waited for the doors to close. No one else attempted to join him. It was an elevator without music, and he couldn’t feel the sensation of being lifted to his destination inside his chest. He clutched the package in his hand and admired it as it was— beautiful—wishing he could take it back to his flat and set it on the small round table in the corner.

Just then, the three tormenting molars in the back of his mouth sent a painful shock through his body. The anesthesia alone would cost two-hundred euros.

The elevator door opened abruptly when Shinar arrived at the forty-second floor, reveal-

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natural light inside. He pushed the door open slightly and saw there was no one. Maybe I could just leave the package on the desk, he thought while entering the office.

His eyes widened slightly, stunned at the size of the office window which claimed an entire wall as its own. Clutching the package firmly, he was drawn toward it, ending up within inches from the cold glass. He could see the entire city from where he stood. All its movement, its noise, its life didn’t exist from here. It was so still. He could still hear the muffled sounds of the employees in the neighboring offices, but they just weren’t loud enough. The teeth in the back of his mouth began to ache. What kind of brother misses his own sister’s wedding?

“Can I help you?” A voice snapped through the office as the overhead lights flashed on.

“Courier!” Shinar sputtered out before fully turning to see a man standing in the door in an immaculate dark-blue suit.

Bidding for Opportunity,

and bargaining for equality Ömür Kırlı It feels quite awkward to think about one of the most complicated relationships ever: money and art. Two things that despise and exploit each other at the same time. The Bourgeoisie and high art, auctions and art dealers, art and money... They, together, create the ultimate pleasure of capitalism.

The utopian dream of wholeness! Like, yin and yang, poor boy and rich girl, morning coffee and your first cigarette, Obama and Joe Biden...even too good to be true. Or, maybe, not true at all.

A shocker in this bilateral relationship is the similarity of their promises. They both prom-

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ise dreams, allow for creativity and encourage to imagine. However, this perfectly balanced relationship was dominated by money soon after; making art completely dependent on its circulation. Learning from his tales, Nasreddin Hodja’s experienced a similar event to the money-art anomaly.

One day, Nasreddin Hodja’s gets on his donkey to go to the town center. Some kids block his way to ask him if he can bring them whistles from the town center. 2 of them pay in advance, while others promise to give the money when he comes back with whistles. At sundown, Nasreddin Hodja comes back and kids cheer with the excitement of finally having their flutes. Hodja gives 2 whistles to the kids, who paid in advance. One of the other kids asks angrily to Hodja, ‘Why didn’t you get our whistles too?’.

He replies, ‘the one who pays the money can blow the whistle.’

Nasreddin Hodja is famous for his tales with underlying meanings. The main message of the tale is that opportunities only come into play if you have the resources to bid on it. Even though the tale is not directly related to case of art, it is applicable to many cases that artists experience, especially when they try to start a new form of art. Then, bidding turns into betting for opportunity. A performer getting in drag for the first time, a designer buying their first sewing machine, a painter trying new palettes...

Most artists define producing art as a passion rather than calling it a profession. It is money that decides whether or not you will be able to enjoy and experience your passion. Money promises unlimited opportunities, but you need to have it in your hand... without certainty of the results you may face in the end.

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‘Untitled’, Maria Tsiattalou.

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Money.

Rupert Read

Money is the route of all evil. I believe this to be a fairly truthful comment. I often have discussions with others about money and the way that it corrupts and I am often told a similar argument in its defence. It is a belief held by many that our lives and our society as a whole could not function without the existence of some kind of monetary system; indeed, many argue that it would not be fair for a doctor to be paid the same amount as a bin man is. The common argument is that we are all worth something to society and the human race as a whole and to varying degrees, and people are rewarded accordingly. This system seems to make things fair and encourages individuals to achieve more.

I have given this much thought but have not, until recently, thought of an alternative that would work as a replacement to this system. In short: if you provide a good – for instance, food – it is your responsibility to provide it for every member of your community. Why, you ask, should you have to do this? It is because surely you love your kind and want to see those around you prosper. Even those who cannot provide are deserving of basic food rations to keep them alive.

Let’s say, for instance, that you cut people’s hair for a living. If you make

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food, it would make sense for you to provide food for a barber in exchange for a haircut. If you want to own and run a car, you should have to provide a service in return, no matter how small, in exchange for the car. In this way, we take the value of items and make them all equal: things are no longer worth more or less than others, and you use your skills doing something you love to help others in order to help yourself – and not the other way around. The doctor and the bin man are thus seen equally, as human beings. One helps people with their health, the other with their rubbish. They both help the human race in their own unique ways but are not mutually exclusive.

All in all, although there is some truth in saying that one person provides a bigger help to humanity than another does, I believe that this is not the right way to run the system. The fact that someone provides a service is more than enough. To deem one person’s service inherently better than another’s only fosters hate and greed and most of the other problems we currently encounter, and I think that many of these problems would be solved by implementing a system somewhere along these lines.

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Recipie:

cpotato horizo and

stew

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My lil piece of advice: I came up with this recipe in December, when I really needed to clean out my fridge. I had recently bought some chorizo for less than I expected, and had a whole bunch of vegetables that needed taking care of. The meal was a hit, and considering how inexpensive it was to make I think it’s perfect for this issue of Heroïne. I want you and your wallet to have an equally enjoyable experience, so please take some advice: don’t get your veggies from Albert Heijn. Just don’t do it, it’s not realistic. I bought the chorizo for this recipe from Jumbo, and it was fine. Try this out the next time you and your friends are looking to have a nice dinner together! You’ll all spend even less if you contribute equally, and the prep work will go by really quickly if everyone lends a hand. Enjoy!

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-Ashleigh Mitchell

Ingredients

and

Preparation

* This recipe can be easily adapted to accommodate vegetarians and vegans.

•

• • • • •

• • • • • •

• • •

1 cup spanish chorizo; use vegetarian chorizo if desired 1 yellow onion 2 red bell peppers 4-6 yellow potatoes; depending on size 2-3 tomatoes (optional) 6-8 cups chicken or vegetable stock (bouillon and hot water is a lifesaver) 1-2 tablespoons tomato paste 2 tablespoons flour As much garlic as you can take Smoked paprika to taste Salt and pepper to taste A couple sprigs of fresh thyme (if you’re feeling fancy, but it’s optional) Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) Butter (optional, but nice) Crusty bread for serving

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Method * Prepare all of your veggies and measurements before you start, your life will be so much

easier .

1. Cut the chorizo and onions into thin half-moons. De-seed the bell peppers (it’s easy!) and thinly slice. Crush, peel and mince the garlic. Dice the tomatoes (keep the seeds, its chill) and potatoes into bite-sized pieces.

Over medium heat, heat up enough EVOO (and butter, if you like) to cover the bottom of the pot.

2. Add the chorizo and cook for one minute. The chorizo should be browned and should start smelling good.

3. Next, add all of the vegetables and a small pinch of salt. Cook everything together, stirring occasionally, for about 8-10 minutes. The veggies should be soft and the onions should be translucent.

4. Add the tomato paste and flour and cook, stirring constantly for about two minutes. This step is very important for two reasons: the flour is raw and needs to have the raw taste cooked out of it, and secondly because it’s going to thicken the soup. Here, you should also add the fresh thyme, if you’re using it.

5. Add all of the chicken or vegetable stock, smoked paprika and black pepper, mixing well (add the salt later, trust me).

6. Turn the heat up to high and let everything come up to a boil for a minute or two. After she’s had a chance to boil, turn the heat down to low or medium, and let simmer for 20-30 minutes.

7. Tear up your crusty bread and serve up the stew in bowls to your buds!

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Heroine - Money is an Issue

Scan this issue’s playlist on Spotify

Cover illustration by Marta Mcilduff.

With special thanks to Fabula Rasa.

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Want to have your work published in a student magazine?

Email redactie.heroine@gmail.com with your poems, essays, artwork and photography that has to do with the next theme which will be posted on our facebook Tijdschrift Heroïne

Heroïne STUDENT MAGAZINE OF LITERARY AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS

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