Tuesday Magazine Fall 2015 by Tuesday Magazine

Table of Contents | Volume 12, Issue 2 Cover Nebula Yousef Awaad Hussein, Guillermo Castello, Bryan Mendez . Digital Rendering 4

5 Jacqueline Leong, President Qing Qing Miao, President

6 Editorial Board Jacqueline Leong, Co-Editor-in-Chief Matthew Aguirre, Co-Editor-in-Chief Juan Bedoya Edyt Dickstein Erik Owen Michael Luo Annie Schugart Erica Eisen Jenny Nitishinskaya Jenny Ng Bridget Irvine dArt Board (Design+Art) Sam Wattrus, Design Director Zoe Galindo, Art Director Jacqueline Leong Qing Qing Miao Hannah Byrne Michael Luo Francesca Violich Sam Shapiro Alice Xiao

Staﬀ Writers Annie Harvieux, Director Emily Oliveira Marija Jevtic Joan Li

Omissions Ivana Viani

Departure Eli Keller

Gentrification Talia Boylan

my mother Sophia Yanis . Photography

Larrea Series 1 David Pearson & Mikaela Spielman . Digital Drawing

The Calm Down Ivana Viani Stuck in Traffic for Thirty Hours Christine Legros

Also Frightened Michael McGlathery Not Only Pieces Michael McGlathery

Forgotten Classics Xinran Ma . Digital Media

destroying the evidence 20 Dash Brenna Hilferty . Photography Michael Luo

Director of Staﬀ Development Erik Owen

The Bye Bull Lance Johnson

The Murakami Recipe Emily Fox-Penner

Social Media & Publicity Deirdre Carney

come to my window Sophia Yanis . Photography

Verlig Sophia Yanis . Photography

By The Bookstore Anita Lo

Face Frame Continuum Sophia Yanis . Photography

Nebula Yousef Awaad Hussein, Guillermo Castello, Bryan Mendez . Digital Rendering

These Cities Christine Legros

January Eliyahu Keller

Business Board Qing Qing Miao Jacqueline Leong Faculty Advisor Daniel Donoghue With Special Thanks To: The Oﬃce for the Arts at Harvard The Undergraduate Council The Harvard COOP

Tuesday Magazine is a publication that engages in and furthers Harvard College’s artistic dialogue. In our biannual magazine, we seek to present a cross-section of Harvard’s intellectual life and amplify the arts, showcasing student voices by publishing their creations. We accept applications to join our staff at the beginning of each semester. Submissions from the Harvard community are accepted for publication on a rolling basis throughout the school year. Please visit tuesdaymagazine.com for more information about applications or submissions. Copyright © 2015 by Tuesday Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.Tuesday Magazine is a publication of a Harvard College student-run organization. The Harvard name and/or VERITAS shield are trademarks of the President and Fellows of Harvard College and are used by permission of Harvard University. This product was printed in China.

Feedback Loop Bridget Irvine

sukupuoli Sophia Yanis . Photography

System Larrea Tridentata David Pearson & Mikaela Spielman . Photography

Heartwind Bridget Irvine

Tavern Serenade Dierdre Carney

Sisyphus Ben Chabanon . Film Stills

Untitled Ethan Pierce . Photography

Et in Larchmont Ego Emma Adler

Spatio-temporal Diagram Ingrid Bengtson . Wood Model & Digital Collage

City of Artificial Extrusion Harsha Sharma . Artificial Model

Panopticon Theatre Harsha Sharma . Digital Rendering

Ephemeral City Brenna McDuﬃe

Prince and Mulberry Ben Halpern . Oil

Nature more careful more powerful than any guardian 50 Sara Gothard . Watercolor 29 Untitled Ingrid Bengtson . Graphite on Vellum 14 Fast Food Reverie 52 Christine Legros 30 Concept for Tower Grotto FLIES Ingrid Bengtson . Concerte . Garret Allen Photography Cast 13

Belleville Emily Fox-Penner . Film

The Ceramics Studio Ege Yumusak

A Field Guide to Entropy Stephanie Guo

THIRSTY THURSDAY Elodie Saint-Louis

Like a Finger Painting Dorothy Villarreal Romanesco Michael McGlathery PARKING LOTS Elodie Saint-Louis

Reference Section Benjamin Ruswick, Josh Schecter, & Jorge San Martin

Encount(h)er Pierie Cegren

Omissions

Gentrification

IVANA VIANI

TALIA BOYLAN

One would never guess how many tiny holes exist in our bones like tunnels through which rivers of blood and nerves pass

They told me mine was a Walt Disney dilution, a cartoon wasteland, where once crack vials crunched, they told me;

One rounder and more perfect than the other So small, like a needle’s point resembling imperfection, something unfulfilled and missing A careless eye would fail to see their purpose

a city now gorged on money, money poison’s paint, paint the mask of poverty. Thought and art banished to the dark corners of the page, they told me. What was it when we lay, then, you and I, like starfish stretched against the sky, that story-book summer’s night in Strawberry Fields?

Larrea Series 1 | David Pearson & Mikaela Spielman | Tuesday Magazine | 5

Also Frightened MICHAEL MCGLATHERY Sometimes tree-bark makes my skin crawl. It’s skin, too; it just doesn’t care.

Not Only Pieces MICHAEL MCGLATHERY

II.

III.

IV.

We left the bedroom, music still grinding from laptop perforations. Followed your friend to the bathroom-stall floor.

I’ve spent a good while out, and inside myself, snipping gristle off, chewing through tough connective tissue.

After six months, when I close my eyes, I still breathe with you sometimes. When

Back to the bedroom, again, but still on the floor. Acidic flecks dotted the wastebin.

Gristle gone, I shuffled through slimy bits of my pink flesh, spotting the ones with the right grain: nuggets I could work with.

Pulled back inside, I watched as something bubbled up from the depths of your chest, remnant of some hazy Dakotan summer camp. I swear I could see your pigtails tease in the breeze, and that lovable hippie teach you Tai Chi.

I spent a good while out.

“Breathe,” you said to her, “with me.” She quieted down, your hands in her hair. “In ” and you breathed.

you showed up, it felt like time to connect things again. I’ve learned to love my ligaments.

destroying the evidence BRENNA HILFERTY | PHOTOGRAPHY

“Out ” She was breathing too. 6 | Tuesday Magazine | Michael McGlathery | Also Frightened | Not Only Pieces

destroying the evidence | Brenna Hilferty | Tuesday Magazine | 7

The Bye Bull LANCE JOHNSON

the polished white head on the fencepost, overseeing the rusty grass is Buster; and yes, i did name him before he was meat because i had the choice and i chose to name him because there ought to be names for things to call them by and such because, when i had no choice, i had to “Go water the cow.” not a cow, i would think. in the frozen months ten gallons on each side from house, across field to dirty, heated trough bucket handles cutting canyons in my hands water sloshing frostbite patches onto my legs because, when i had no choice, i wrenched frosted chips clawing desperately to the earth or maneuvered to coax hot, syrupy feces onto a shovel, hands peeling, while the sun painted my face with redder and redder shades

and a careless step smeared a festering trace of him, made spongy by paths of larvae and i ran from swarms that enveloped me and avenged their smudged little village because, when i had no choice, i combed his long, auburn hair to a sparkle sang softly while patting his neck and kept my eye on his long, lazy, idly swooshing horns then, laughing, i watched him shove his tongue in his nostril, then llllick a new twist in his hair, and lie down in his shit because, when i had no choice, i took the outstretched bat in my hands to help corral Buster into the trailer to watch him go one way as Buster, the other as meat because, when i had a choice, i gently asked “please save me the head” forgave the “you’re crazy” looks and an ugly, reeking skull later came to me

and i writhed in horror when once the shovel shifted the pile scattered and splattered poking a wet new freckle on my upper lip

because, when i had the choice, i polished that skull into marble and hung it where Buster once lived its horns jutting proudly, battling ghosts in the wind

because i had no choice but go near him and his robe of fat, black flies gnawing his crest, his eyes, his chapped, dripping snout to hose his hot body down and watch him play in the mist

there’s a good chance he does more thinking dead than alive but a name, and a decoration say “I was here.”

8 | Tuesday Magazine | Lance Johnson | The Bye Bull

come to my window SOPHIA YANIS | PHOTOGRAPHY

come to my window | Sophia Yanis | Tuesday Magazine | 9

By The Bookstore ANITA LO

Initially, we went not knowing what to order, asking for a couple more minutes to look at the menu, scared that the bouncer was guarding the restaurant and not the club. We were drier than a temperance union, but still MSG-hungover the morning after—we soon learned to diligently down the water, ice cubes in empty cups rattling like dice as we frittered small segments of our lives away to greasy hypertension noodles and steaming bowls of heart attack. We went, back when one of us still had to ask for a fork, when only half of us were really sold on the whole idea of food so bad that it was a must-have. We went and ordered hot mystery tea in oncewhite handle-less teacups, slurping noisily while the girls two tables over silently sipped suspiciously pink soup with crazylong straws. After, we swung through the glass doors with heads pushed down, hands in coat pockets, gastrointestinally queasy and mostly sated. Later, we went drunk. Sagging from the hot weight of liquor-laced sodas, sticky from a beery button-down, we went crookedly and sideways and stumbling. We went on non-Newtonian nights that were too fluid for real plans, too solid to pass up, nights turned in-between by malted gulps and lemonade and pretzels. We left in the middle of our meals to retch in the squalor of our own bathroom stalls (and, if we were brave, returned for a second round); we still haven’t paid someone back for the one time a card was thrown down carelessly (“Pay me back later!”), the receipts now lost or water-blotted to divvy it up right. We spent more time taking a piss, again, or fidgeting by the restroom door with our legs crossed, than sitting down and enjoying the spread. We declared it a classic. We declared it the grimiest place ever. We declared it a—a—but the words ran too slurred, and we too blurred, to recall exactly what. “But don’t you remember?” we lied the next week. “That’s definitely what you said.”

It was the ambiance, it was the have been the first time our waiter served experience, it was the terrible decor. We patrons a supermarket Oreo cake, the price went and got the same tables over and sticker still latching the lid to the black over. We grinned under the familiar sickly plastic bottom. There’s still a picture on yellow light that made smartphone photos someone’s timeline, from someone’s album, grainy. We retold jokes in the morning of us cutting the cake with a chopstick, remembering who was sitting across from into one-too-many slices so that we had whom. “You had to be there,” was the to convince one of us to eat two. We simple explanation for why we all laughed went before job interviews, after concerts, in the same way and at the same time, like because it was the only place open, because a hive-mind, like clones grown on the same it was the only place we could agree on. We soil. We grew sweaty, we shivered, we tried almost went for Thanksgiving. We went not to stand by the door in wintertime. for no reason and went to the gym the next But we always, always, entered—as a party day. We went before midterms, cramming of three, four, five, six, and always tipped dan dan mian instead of historical dates, fifteen percent. reveling in the questionably-clean tables We went craving salt and oil, and we and the feeling of, “Yeah—yeah! This is went craving company--never mind the what’s most important: time with friends. food. We went with spicy wontons even if Making memories. The real deal.” only one of us wanted them; we went with We collected the fortune cookie shrimp fried rice the one day we said we fortunes like coupons that never expired, should change it up; we got Peking special like receipts for a product we suspected sauce and beef chow foon every time, would fail. Air-padded packaging torn to though, every time, because they tasted like free a hollow blossom; a harsh scraping as last year. We we extracted a bullied some of “You will use your ideas for great slim slip of blueus into doubleprinted destiny, dipping scallion benefit,” we read. “The one you “You will use pancakes your ideas for love is closer than you think,” we and drained great benefit,” scorpion bowls said knowingly. We laughed at, but we read. “The three-straws one you love is believed: “You will soon achieve one-mouth, closer than you perfection.” hoping that think,” we said the big white knowingly. We bouncer, the one with the ears and the laughed at, but believed: “You will soon buzzcut, wouldn’t ask us for identification. achieve perfection.” We ate the cookies; we “We didn’t know it had alcohol,” we left yellow shards in puddles of soy sauce. claimed when we were asked, once, to Our calling card became a pentagram of prove our age. He left. We all stared discarded wrappers and a scattering of significantly at each other across the crumbs and between; at the center, the table: congratulations, guys--we dodged oily leather booklet in which one of us a bullet there. We were gluttons, sloths, had signed and calculated, incorrectly, the seven deadly sins and seven thousand tip. We saved the little notes on bulletin deadly calories apiece in the stupid young boards, in wallets, in drawers, and back throes of invincibility, the lateness of pockets, hoping to someday recover one consequence. and say sagely, “The odds of hitting your We went on birthdays. It might target go up dramatically when you aim at it.”

10 | Tuesday Magazine | Anita Lo | By The Bookstore

We went at the halfway point, before love and movies and mountains and money changed who was at the top of our text messages. That time, we stayed for hours. We talked about bathrooms, about failed hookups and (imagined?) sexual tensions, about tradition, about how this was the year we would turn our lives around. We admitted faults and confessed that yes, we probably didn’t pay you back that one time; or yes, we did get a bit annoyed that one time you came home, shirt translucent from drool and orangey vomit. Even: yes, sometimes you’re the worst. But the important thing, we concluded, the allimportant thing, was that we were in it together, and we were here together. We read our fortunes to each other, as usual, accidentally skipping someone. One fortune was left behind, floating in a full glass of water. Going to bed that night, we went various ways. We went home. We went to wilder and weirder parties. We went out of our way to bump into the kid we’d been texting all night. And for a few

months after, we didn’t return. We passed by the bookstore, approaching the place, and looked right, or became interested in the used-books cart. We ate burgers and burritos. We spent nights in someone else’s room rather than in the fluorescent vinyllined booths. We were too busy, too tired, too intoxicated, too full, too fat, too lazy to go. We tried, half-heartedly, to move in concert but strings had been cut, and we had, like crystallized honey, become hard, still essentially sweet, but left so long without a churning mixup that we clung fearfully to the bottom of the jar. In the time between, muscles and memories went unpracticed. We argued over moldy bowls in the fridge. We kept petty accounts of whose drinks were whose. We sullenly left the room when the parties were not for us. “She’s actually so annoying,” we agreed, privately. Or, “He’s such a douchebag.” We thought, sometimes, that we hid it pretty well: that our pointed comments could be dulled by the cushioning laugh beneath or that it had just been a bad day; but bad days

uninterrupted became bad times, and friends calling out friends during bad times became a slow constriction into worse. We found other people like us, but with whom our motivations, faces, platforms, favorite fruits were reconstructable, unguarded by the edifice of expectation that undergirds camaraderie. For months, we went swing dancing, rode the bus, sampled parties, rose through the ranks or slowly abdicated thrones, Snapchatted strangers, acquiesced to kisses, kissed someone til acquiescence, burned toast, played Texas Hold ‘Em, ran outdoors, divulged secrets, and practiced violin, until finally it’d been long enough that we could go back. But even when it had, it was a monstrous effort to even think of the return. We were busy with the dance, acquiescence, abdication, divulgence, indulgence, so we did not have time to remember to go back. We go sometimes, now, with girlfriends and new friends and nonfriends, or alone. We order out.

Face Frame Continuum SOPHIA YANIS | PHOTOGRAPHY Face Frame Continuum | Sophia Yanis | Tuesday Magazine | 11

Feedback Loop BRIDGET IRVINE

Boy is strung out high on wisdom teeth on the stuff that they give / make him zombie sleep and in this undream, in this film of white you can hardly see a spoke in the wheel of time. All the present that he gropes for spins on and on slips through like fluid on a helm spun strong and he is happy and loose. His mother soundless leads him there to the car by the hand, as he drifts, since he can’t think far and the marred magnetic tapes only clear in focus ‘round the locus of a pothole cover in the road. They pass over it quick and that bumping jar makes a move that he feels in his mind all raw all water current smooth. And for the first time since inhaling that crime he bumps down into being and can suddenly see that he’s sitting in a car and he’s speeding down the street. But of course he can’t stay. And he bumps back up in the dream, in the lost, in the cloud of fallen crust and after that can’t recall any jots, any moves and he is happy and loose. It (I that But all on a

seems to me such a tender little thing collect these kinds of moments like fish on a string): you get out of your haze with just a little jolt. that coltish memory can float unhinged from your ghost alone in vaulted darkness, all alone atop the hill an island full of light in a puddle of painkill, person left unnoted in a yellow stairwell.

All should be the cello jaw unclenched upon with the ear turned and the notes all and the soul all trying to listen in a never-ending self-forgetting lying ball that grows in the until it doesn’t

the to of

wood in good itself soot static know

Nature more careful more powerful than any guardian SARA GOTHARD | WATERCOLOR

that it once was a boy on a bump in the road.

12 | Tuesday Magazine | Bridget Irvine | Feedback Loop

Nature more careful more powerful than any guardian | Sara Gothard | Tuesday Magazine | 13

Fast Food Reverie CHRISTINE LEGROS

Decline an army of scorpions over that little ponytailed sandal-clad girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body, all jittery and happy like breakfast. Crispy chicken legs skip around carrying their empty upperbody shape like a foreign carcass, clicking blindness all over the counter. Fast news, a six page drunkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s script, when Coca-Cola bubbles pollinate my beard in commanded missiles I breathe microcosmic ash. The butcher plunged my hands into the boiling oil basin, so delicately breaded and butter-soft. Oh, how I die in the sea-salt-crusted afternoons, dreaming and giving away hugs like an awkward red-light shirtless pole dancer.

FLIES

GARRETT ALLEN | PHOTOGRAPHY

Belleville

EMILY FOX-PENNER | FILM

Belleville | Emily Fox-Penner | Tuesday Magazine | 15

A Field Guide to Entropy STEPHANIE GUO Symmetry is not a graceful thing. Rockslides are another story: I’m all for the ruptured knee, the skidding of bikes against concrete, the hacking ash every fire leaves in its wake. I salute the clenched jaw, the fumbling fist, the springing of limb against limb. I have taken my own common sense and roasted it; it is hoisted above my head like the tail of a fox. I invest in the uncut oak, the rings we cannot count, the years we will never know. We are on the move; we will not wait patiently with our heads on the execution block. Even as the guillotine falls, we’ll call out to the crowds. We’ll give them something to scream about. This is the sweetness of the drying throat. This is the itch that does not forgive, the itch that crushes pearls and slaughters swine, the itch that makes you realize you were born swimming at the bottom of every pond. Veni, vedi, vici. You learn how to celebrate the viscosity of a moment, how it thickens, how it falls. In time, you become a candle, fluent in the art of lighting rooms. You ignite conversations. You spray-paint murals. You, artist, you, writer, you don’t even need a flag; your colors live on the sides of every street imaginable. When your neighbors ask you when the revolution will be served, you shrug. You say, “Expect coffee,” but what you really mean is this: “Expect sugar dashed backwards on an upside-down map.” Tonight, give or take a city, that’s exactly what you drink.

Departure ELI KELLER

I was left behind The screens of Departing flights and Leaving buses As they all dissolve and leave. Behind the flickering lights Of the earliest of Christmas trees And of messages quickly And falsely foretelling: I love you. I’ll miss you. I will see you. Soon.

my mother SOPHIA YANIS | PHOTOGRAPHY

Now the tears behind Are all that Have stayed behind And what was left behind Is me.

my mother | Sophia Yanis | Tuesday Magazine | 17

The Calm Down IVANA VIANI

I wanted to die away from this machine (I have always hated electronic sounds: the beeps, the buzzes, the sirens; I had heard enough of those in my childhood when sirens meant bombs were falling and ambulances were speeding by) I wanted to die in a field, surrounded by tall green grass with eyes wide open, staring at the sky and wondering if those who found me would notice how the green in my eyes perfectly matched the grass and the hues of my skin melded perfectly with the ground

Stuck in Traffic for Thirty Hours CHRISTINE LEGROS

Establish a pact. The reader and their gun and barely a ribbon of air around the lips. The mice running in the back seat, juice boxes bursting with worms, a running joke. The trucks filled with seaweed, fish tanks, with dead chicken or bird poop. Don’t think about bathrooms. We decided we couldn’t live on a boat so we’re dumping our tons of cigarettes into other lanes, lurid post-war glows but no tulips or atrophied stars. The cracked-up highways, mushroom heads and screwed under the arms, flower-scented bats. A strange kind of nostalgia, like underwear on the radio; the glass eyes of a mass-produced pet. Give up breaking my window or I’ll call the cops. Soon they’ll order an airstrike.

Forgotten Classics

XINRAN MA | DIGITAL MEDIA

Forgotten Classics | Xinran Ma | Tuesday Magazine | 19

EXT. VILLAGE STREETS - CONTINUOUS Djem and Zoe wait in the moonlight besides a flickering lamp. DJEM

Dash

ZOE Only tip I got was, “This tastes like what I use to clean my bathroom.”

MICHAEL LUO

EXT. DJEM’S CAFE - EVENING - MANY YEARS INTO THE FUTURE A rustic blend of wood and steel. Branches crisscross through the ceiling, forming a treehouse-like atmosphere. CLOSE ON a rusty pot of tea brewing over a warm fire. DJEM (O.S.)

Tea brews with heart, not fire.

DJEM

It’s your own fault you never let your old man teach you his ways. ZOE Don’t need your help. Besides, you’re gonna be my competition. DJEM Oh, is that right? Maybe you oughta grow a few inches first. Djem ruffles Zoe’s hair. She tries to jump at him, but he holds her down.

DJEM (50s, tall), carries the teapot to weary families. DJEM (CONT’D) C’mon Zoe! Give the people what they want, and they want tea! A girl, ZOE (12, harried), rushes to collect plates and cups. She stumbles and spills tea on a young DOG, a complete mess. DJEM (CONT’D)

Get any tips?

Ah, he needed a bath anyway. Clean up the tables will ya? Zoe moves to wipe wooden tables as the last customers exit.

DJEM (CONT’D)

Say, school’s out soon, ain’t it? ZOE I guess.

DJEM Don’t y’all have a celebration? Zoe is silent. Djem continues as if she responded. DJEM (CONT’D)

DJEM (CONT’D)

Zoe fumbles towards Djem, who is all ready for a road trip.

Come to think of it, my first dance with your Ma was on a majestic night like this. At the mention of her mother, Zoe wants to ask more, but is interrupted by the SHRIEKING stop of a Taxi. The DRIVER, beard straight from a mall Santa, pushes open the side door. DRIVER Rough night, eh? Hop right in.

DJEM (CONT’D)

Zoe struggles to load her luggage. Djem tries to help her out, but she brushes him aside.

Tea for all! Cures anything from a broken heart to a broken car.

A WOMAN pours a can of iced tea into an overheated car engine. The car cools off and she looks impressed.

Not awful for your first day. Too bad I don’t have much to pay ya.

Djem flips Zoe a silver coin. DJEM (CONT’D)

Zoe beams.

I know you don’t like leftovers, but that’s from the war. A souvenir for a future master brewer. Thanks Pops!

20 | Tuesday Magazine | Michael Luo | Dash

ZOE

Djem shrugs and gets in the passenger seat. He hands the driver a brochure. INT. TAXI - CONTINUOUS DRIVER Industry Center. You two must be up to something big. DJEM Yup, this little prodigy and I are entering the tea brewing contest.

DRIVER Well, good luck with that. Line’s long as a dragon’s tail with everyone lining up for the race.

Dash | Michael Luo | Tuesday Magazine | 21

DJEM Hear that, Zo? War’s almost over! We should sign up. (beat) You say something, Sugar? ZOE What you said about Mom... Zoe shakes her head. “Nevermind.” She searches her pocket.

ZOE (CONT’D) Wait, I forgot it! We need to go back! Please, Poppy, I’ll be quick!

DJEM Alright.

(eyes on Zoe) It’ll just be a minute. Zoe nods eagerly. The Taxi makes a U-turn at the next light. EXT. VILLAGE STREETS - CONTINUOUS A group of DRUNK SOLDIERS waddle into a nearby parked Truck. The Taxi makes its way back around and parks at a stop light. ZOE Just stop here! I can go get it! Zoe gets out and runs back into the cafe. The Dog looks up and barks happily. INT. TAXI - CONTINUOUS

Djem stares out the window at Zoe, making sure she enters. Kid seems nice. DJEM

TAXI DRIVER

Yeah, sure got lucky with this one.

INT. DJEM’S CAFE CLOSET - CONTINUOUS Zoe holds a sketch of a LADY and a BABY. MONTAGE: The lady teaches the baby to walk. The baby stumbles and falls into mud. She fails to comfort the baby as it cries. The lady feeds the baby, but it sticks out its tongue, making farting noises. The lady is angry but then joins in the fun. The lady plays a Jenga-like game with the baby. The baby loses. The lady screams and jumps for joy. The baby cries. DJEM (O.S.)

We got a dream to chase! Back to reality. Zoe is still focused on the sketch. ZOE Be right there!

22 | Tuesday Magazine | Michael Luo | Dash

EXT. VILLAGE STREETS - CONTINUOUS The Truck speeds through the streets, swaying side to side. It finally loses control and slides towards the Taxi. Zoe exits the cafe. The Dog blocks her way and BARKS. ZOE What’s wrong, buddy? The Dog runs towards the light. Zoe chases after the Dog. She picks it up and to her horror: Pov - blinding headlights. The Truck and the Taxi swerve into each other. SCREECHING tires and a CRASH is heard. Zoe, Dog in hand, tries to navigate the blaze, but the explosion is too much. She is blocked by a wall of FIRE. ZOE (CONT’D) Dad! CLOSE ON Zoe as she realizes the gravity of the situation. INT. CAFE - EVENING - SEVERAL YEARS LATER Zoe, (20s, tomboyish, crown braid), closes up an empty cafe with broken appliances. Stains and rust decorate the walls. EXT. VILLAGE STREETS - CONTINUOUS Desperate vendors nag sumptuous travelers mounted on exotic beasts. It’s quiet except for the voices of solicitation. Zoe dashes through the village to a wall plastered with posters labeled “NO FIRE ALLOWED.” She hops atop buildings and jumps between rooftops to land on the other side. EXT. INDUSTRY CENTER - CONTINUOUS Metallic skyscrapers and airships dominate the skyline. Sounds of the future fill the streets. It’s as if Zoe has been teleported to the future, a wonder of high technology. Zoe vaults off a rooftop and onto a robotic bird-like SCOOTER. She steers it effortlessly to an unmarked garage. INT. GARAGE - NIGHT A lady, BETS (50s, stocky), opens the garage.

BETS Garage ain’t yours so be on time. ZOE Ship ain’t yours so let me live. BETS You still need a crew you know. ZOE No worry. I’m sure we’ll find eager patrons with this crowd. Zoe turns to gaze at a large poster plastered on the wall. INSERT - POSTER

of triathlon in the style of Soviet propaganda. It says “55th AIRSHIP TRIATHLON. NO FIRE. NO RULES. NO SCRUBS.”

Dash | Michael Luo | Tuesday Magazine | 23

The Murakami Recipe | Haute listlessness, served bubbly

EMILY FOX-PENNER

Ingredients:

• 1 male soul, drifting and stymied • 2 female bodies, nebulously sexual: several distinct traits okay, but avoid those ripened to point of personality (fragile male flavor base easily overpowered) • 1 piece of music, minced, for even distribution throughout batter • 1-3 stories about strangers, recounted by least hostile acquaintance: crucial to texture development during baking, do not omit • dreams, non-literally real, to taste

Nutrition facts, % daily value (serving size = one book): Calories, 0%; doubts sown about one’s own literary acumen, 70%; reassurance that although one often considers oneself strange and awkward, one is in fact fairly normal (that is to say, far less weird than one could have been) 100%

Verlig

SOPHIA YANIS | PHOTOGRAPHY

24 | Tuesday Magazine | Emily Fox-Penner | The Murakami Receipe

Verlig | Sophia Yanis | Tuesday Magazine | 25

Nebula Yousef Awaad Hussein, Guillermo Castello, Bryan Mendez | DIGITAL RENDERING

These Cities CHRISTINE LEGROS

don’t breed, don’t splinter, don’t preach, fuck, don’t belong to anyone. Haggard coffee beans poised like harlequins, burnished burn down gargoyles’ throats. The clouds arrange themselves over the heads like a salad dressing, making ear tattoos where no one will read the tar. don’t smile they won’t see you gather like spit on an orange road sign. don’t cast your breath when you walk. Drip down in soap-white gold, the cities gave rise to over-laced dwarves and silverware empires, don’t cradle the knocks of your feet’s treadmill prayers.

26 | Tuesday Magazine | Yousef Awaad Hussein, Guillermo Castello, Bryan Mendez | Nebula

These Cities | Christine Legros | Tuesday Magazine | 27

January ELIYAHU KELLER

This week has not Been a week for me And the day of today For me has no name And this is why My nameless days melt Into weeks with no names That only end Other weeks or days And it is the end That makes me feel That a day becomes nameless Or is born without one Or has always been And that this week Is the end of today And all I want To do is to punch something Gently.

It is the week to end All previous weeks And this day is The day, which starts to end As it starts with an end To the week of ends And the end of weekdays To the days of weekends And weeks of ending days As all of them melt Into weeks that start Other days that will also end At a time which Neither starts no ends And as everything remains Without a name, it is I That remins with mine In the end And all I want to do Is punch something Not so gently And end it only So it could start, Again

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INGRID BENGTSON | GRAPHITE ON VELLUM

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Untitled | Ingrid Bengtson | Tuesday Magazine | 29

The Ceramics Studio EGE YUMUSAK

The ceramics studio is a portal in my memory. The two memories I have of the studio and of ceramics are encoded in silent fugues. Memory is the death of the thing says Hegel. These memories are not dead. The first memory is of my first commission as a young artist. I am in ceramics class in 5th grade. Our teacher divides the class into four groups. Each group will make a piece of Istanbul out of clay. I am the leader of Group II, responsible for the northern district of the European side. We are roused by the promise of fame: Let’s start with the trees.

INGRID BENGTSON | CONCRETE CAST

Concept for Tower Grotto

It must be a few hours later. My class, 5A, visits 5H. Dozens of pairs of eyes watching the fire on the windows of Metrocity. Flames dance on glass. A window falls–down, down, down. Another jump and we are back in the classroom. They say Cem’s mother flew from one end of the floor to the other. I see her, Vitruvian woman, crashing into the wall. (She is a good cook.) We hear that classes are cancelled.

Somebody make the Metrocity tower.

Metrocity is burning.

Several months before the commission, we are in the studio playing with clay, and the ground starts shaking. Heads nod, whispering the same word in sequence. It’s like watching a fish dive into the water and emerge with a swish every few meters. The word travels to the shore. The teacher finally seizes: EARTHQUAKE! We drop everything in our hands; drop our little bodies. Little hands clasp around 32 legs.

I don’t hear sirens; sirens don’t enter memory. Memory is for images. Arabs bombed HSBC bank across Metrocity. We watch the fire.

My eyes are fixated on Zeynep’s. (We are best friends.)

We did not put the HSBC building. We should have painted Metrocity red.

We wait for a while after the quake ends. It is unexpectedly short. We know the way, teacher. She insists on coming. We let her take us–poor teacher, she must be scared. Little mute bodies travel in a long straight line–up the stairs. 30 | Tuesday Magazine | Ingrid Bengtson | Concept for Tower Grotto

The teacher’s long straight hair is a pendulum whose motion is outside time.

Six months later we exhibit our clay Istanbul at Hagia Sophia–a masterpiece captured by some thousand (we imagine) photographs taken by tourists.

The Ceramics Studio | Ege Yumusak | Tuesday Magazine | 31

THIRSTY THURSDAY ELODIE SAINT-LOUIS

THIS IS THE POEM I THOUGHT WOULD SAVE ME THIS IS THE POEM THAT WAS A SYNONYM FOR FUCKING THIS IS THE POEM THAT WAS REMEMBERED PARKING LOTS, AND THEN FLUORESCENCE, AND THEN SPIT TAKES AND THEN THE COLOR YELLOW. THIS IS THE POEM REPLICATING A MOUTH THAT DOESN’T QUIT: HERE IS THE SPIT TAKE REWOUND, HERE IS THE REVERB: EVERYTHING WATER, SAVE FOR TOUCH – LOOK, EVERYTHING IS BREAKING MY HEART: YOUR TEETH. YOUR HANDS. IT’S IRONIC, RIGHT, THAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT UNREQUITED LOVE AND I CAN’T STOP STARING AT YOUR HANDS, LIKE STATIC ARCHING THROUGH THE TELEPHONE-SILENCE OF MY BODY. DIAL TONE. WAITING FOR THE VOICEMAIL TO HIT. YOU LOOK LIKE A DOE, BUT ONE THAT’S FRIGHTENED. YOU LEAVE LIKE AN EARTHQUAKE COMING. EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT SEX BUT NOT TALKING ABOUT SEX WHEN I CAN SEE IT IN THE LINES OF THEIR BODIES. I’LL SHOW YOU THE TRICK WITH THE GLASS, THE KNOWING WITHOUT SEEING, WHERE I SMELL THE WEED BEFORE I HEAR IT CARRIED IN THE BELLOW OF A LAUGH. I FORGET IT’S THURSDAY NIGHT UNTIL THERE’S A HAND ON A KNEE, SWEAT CONDENSING IN A WINDOW.

sukupuoli

SOPHIA YANIS | PHOTOGRAPHY

32 | Tuesday Magazine | Elodie Saint-Louis | THIRSTY THURSDAY

sukupuoli | Sophia Yanis | Tuesday Magazine | 33

Heartwind BRIDGET IRVINE

System Larrea Tridentata DAVID PEARSON & MIKAELA SPIELMAN | PHOTOGRAPHY

(poet’s note: this “wind” rhymes with “mind”) I dumbly wish I grew as grass which lives in sun and snaps like glass smell sharp and sweet, and cast green light a soapless clean. It might remain, uncut, underneath your feet if left alone to cultivate itself. There was a dirty robin feeding itself, trapping an apple on the stone, sun-red. I heard him, dirty, sing a shock after winter. These bare hands feel tared when you hold him in your cupped palms: Each day is a cup filled to the brim with precious liquid and you mustn’t spill one drop. In summer I can lie flat in the road for ages until the skin of my under thighs forms a print gravity like graphite just from me lying flat on the macadam or asphalt macadam is like a topping of chopped walnuts or warm, still sand. asphalt is tar, untextured a terrible oil spill across the land that spreads and sulks and leaks black as coal dusted spit. macadam, though, is mineral.

sick of this sly not normal slinking feeling as if there is a way to be different from me and my heart’s wind I wonder how is it to be easy or to like. ‘adamant’ originally was something like a diamond we now give ‘adamant refusals’ or marvel at ‘adamant opposition’ but it used to mean ‘rock’ or ‘mineral,’ durable matter. so language can drift writers rolled off their tongues flung out their arms fell and awoke to find diamond persons, evolving indurate sentiment emotions could now become so hot and molten that they’d cool into an inviolate thing a sword or chain fence I think this word has changed, but its diamond core remains within I think lying flat on your back with no bed to comfort you is good for your sense of perspective and I think we fall into certain patterns of thinking

Such as: with this mess of conclusions drawn on my brain It’s time to stop shrinking with this tangle of what actually is and what my senses believe away and small I might just spill the yarn all over the lawn from the surface of things and people and start believing it grew there, instead I should expand and engrave myself uncut, untouched, spontaneous. I’ve thought if I made myself smaller, there’d be less of a chance to wound myself but I’ve wound myself so tight that any sort of mark or slash would flay the whole thing open like a grapefruit halved by a quick wet metal that licks sour from the corner of its mouth

34 | Tuesday Magazine | David Pearson & Mikaela Spielman | System Larrea Tridentata

Heartwind | Bridget Irvine | Tuesday Magazine | 35

Tavern Serenade DIERDRE CARNEY

I wanted to write you a poem like something Richard Siken might write. Have it sound like the color burgundy tastes. Like an indie rock song—but not from the first two albums. No, I’m talking Transatlanticism shit, love. I’m thinking snowy evenings with a scented candle and The Civil Wars crooning in the background. A poem by a 20th century British man who’s only ever read about war or seen it on TV. One who can’t even imagine an interesting life let alone write about it. One who’s so sex-obsessed or sex-repressed simply because society says he should be. But all that I write for you sounds more like Poe or Byron or Keats, all black cats, nightingales, and stormy mountainsides. Someone always dying, dead, or dreaming of that saccharine sweet release. All I can produce is a smack of soot on a speeding train headed to Romania, or perhaps Scotland. Ghosts and pills and pretty boys who see singing angels. I could try normal—coffee spoons, lousy workdays, a love so beautifully boring it’s a fucking tragedy. You’d like that, I think. What a shame my heart beats black blood and my veins smell like punk rock. Or maybe 90’s grunge. Either way, they’re always screaming and shrieking like a badly tuned violin in a smoky London pub, tasting of sweat and beer and flashing lights. You don’t like that too much, I think. Too loud for your quiet tastes. Because bloody snow might be pretty in the glow of Christmas lights at midnight but come morning it’s just a ghastly, sordid mess and sounds nothing like burgundy tastes.

Sisyphus Roots and Sections BEN CHABANON | FILM STILLS

DAVID PEARSON & MIKAELA SPIELMAN | DIGITAL DRAWING 36 | Tuesday Magazine | Dierdre Carney | Tavern Serenade

Sisyphus | Ben Chabanon | Tuesday Magazine | 37

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ETHAN PIERCE | PHOTOGRAPHY

gal . ler . ie /’galərē/ noun 1. a cultural organization operating in liminal spaces between pre-existing social, institutional and economic models, a gallerie bridges gaps through creative collaboration. 2. importantly, a gallerie does not have a fixed location, instead occupying various architecutral and non-architectural spaces with the aim of creating an alternative platform and interface for artistic discourse. _____

from BBP Gallerie

38 | Tuesday Magazine | Ethan Pierce | Untitled

Untitled | Ethan Pierce | Tuesday Magazine | 39

Et in Larchmont Ego EMMA ADLER

During that half hour of the day the girls set aside for airing their grievances like so many top sheets, Jill confessed to the others that she couldn’t see herself ever being really happy with Connor, and this so distressed Abigail, who had acted as matchmaker, and so delighted Fanny, who was in love with Connor, that the former began immediately to argue in the young man’s favor and the latter to privately imagine herself in a wave of mirth. The girls, aged fourteen and fifteen, were arranged in an equilateral triangle at the foot of a cherry blossom tree in Fanny’s front yard. They were sitting cross-legged, “Indian style,” and every so often Jill would come clattering to a halt midsentence to tug at the billowy ends of her not quite kneelength skirt. Jill’s mother had told her daughter when she was ten, “You are a very pretty girl, Jill, and must be careful about these sorts of things, because less attractive girls will soon be on the lookout for any opportunity to come up with a different explanation for why boys prefer you to them.” This was one hundred percent nonsense, knew pert-chinned, long-lashed Jill, because the “soon” her mother referred to had arrived with the fourth grade, and the less attractive girls (flat nosed Valerie, mannish Nancy) would attack her chastity the length of her skirt notwithstanding. Yet this scrap of advice, imparted with the infuriating, knowing smile peculiar to mothers who recognize themselves in their daughters, rattled in Jill’s mind whensoever she did up a button or adjusted her skirt. “I just don’t think you’re being fair to him,” said Abigail. “Even if you’ve known him since we were little you haven’t been dating him long enough to understand who he is in this context. Connor your boyfriend is a com-

pletely different person from Connor your friend.” Jill disagreed. So far as she was concerned the Connor who called her Jilly and preferred linking pinkies to handholding wasn’t any different from the Connor who had uninvited her from his ninth birthday party and had cried on that most predictably lachrymose occasion, the first day of Kindergarten. When they watched movies together in his living room he drummed his fingers on her kneecap. Jill shrugged, and Abigail made a face. She was anxious, because if Jill broke up with Connor the number of couples she could claim responsibility for would decrease to one. Abigail was renowned for her abilities as a matchmaker. In her prime she had had five couples to her credit. This was in seventh grade, that carbuncular bloom of pubescence, when it had seemed each Stonewall boy was chomping at the bit for a Maplewood girl to call his own. It was the sort of thing you tell your grandchildren about. Abigail’s reputation had endured even as middle school passions waned. But if Connor and Jill fell to pieces… Fanny regarded her friend. Abigail was experimenting with costume jewelry. An aboriginal bangle encircled her wrist and a brooch presided stupidly over her Peter Pan collar. Fanny regretted telling Abigail she should distinguish herself sartorially. This was at Oliver Pitt’s birthday party. “That’s a way you’re sure to get his attention,” Fanny had said. “It’s no wonder he keeps ogling Mattie Davis. Will you look at her shorts?” Yes, Abigail had a habit of failing to catch her drift. Fanny had discouraged her efforts to throw Jenny and Connor together – had cited their different

40 | Tuesday Magazine | Emma Adler | Et in Larchmont Ego

tempers, their lack of common interests. Yet Abigail had persisted. Fanny did not resent her friend, not really. Still, it was difficult to keep a level head as she blathered about context and being fair, and all the while that brooch bobbling up and down like a demented Adam’s apple. It would have been tolerable if she were at right – if it were indeed possible that Connor contained the multitudes Abigail hastened to ascribe to him. But Connor was uncomplicated, the ripplings of his mind no more abstruse than the black and white lines which marched up and down his referee’s uniform. He was a nice boy, a simple boy. Fanny had fallen in love with his simplicity. She was uncompromising and pushy. She craved a softening influence. The girls, weighing between 108 and 120 pounds, were the most popular in their grade. Jill was the prettiest of the three, and the smartest and most likable. But Fanny, though third prettiest, second smartest, and second most likable, was the recognized leader. When they were not all together the three of them communicated by way of an ancient group text. Fanny liked to tell Abigail and Jill what they should text to the others, deliberately setting them at cross-purposes. “Suggest a girl’s night in, Abby.” “Jill – say let’s go to the movies.” When by thirty Fanny had succeeded in alienating her parents, and had failed to produce a serious novel, she began writing young adult books about a cabal of preternaturally groomed girls at a British boarding school. Her agent pronounced the first draft “Hot with a capital H,” and by Fanny’s thirty-first birthday Mum’s the Word had achieved bestseller status. When an interviewer from a teen magazine asked her what her favorite part was of writing the series, Fanny told her, “Flexing my imagination.” Actually, it was the feeling of being in control. When Fanny decided which

fictional boarder to expel and which to send to Cambridge, she experienced the same delicious sensation of puppet-mastery she had enjoyed as Jill and Abigail came to blows in skirmishes of her devising. “I don’t know,” Jill said quietly. “I’m sure there’s more to him than I understand, but we may just be incompatible.” She did not say what she would have liked to say, which was “And I don’t think I could respect or fall in love with someone who wasn’t as smart as me. Or at least talented in an interesting way.” The fact that Jill felt this way made her feel small and uncharitable, like the kind of person who burns ants with a magnifying glass. But she knew she was extraordinarily clever, and understood things Connor never would. Very often when they were together she felt an urge to shriek, “I refuse to be the Jenny to your Forrest,” and run, run away. She glanced at Fanny, who trained her eyes on a tuft of grass. Eighth grade, thought Jill, she has been in love with Connor since eighth grade. When will she decide to do something about it? She pawed at her braid and imagined a world in which untwining herself from Connor would be as simple as loosing her hair. Seeing that Fanny did not intend to interject, Abigail continued her speech. She spoke of Connor’s manifold virtues, the characteristics they had scrawled in the “pro” column when he had asked Jill to be his girlfriend three months ago – his handsomeness, his likeability, the way he had of peering up at one with such an expression of earnestness as ought to render any Maplewood girl in her right mind defenseless. Eventually she ran out of things to say and still she kept going. Abigail prided herself on her ability to speak indefinitely. She considered it a quality much to be admired in an age riddled with awkward silences.

Fanny focused on continuing to project a façade of indifference. At any moment, Jill might shut her eyes, violently as if to squeeze the world away, and utter, “I’m going to end it.” Then and only then would Fanny allow herself to feel the full measure of her excitement – feel, but not show. She began to plot out the process by which Connor might be brought around. It would be a lengthy business, her ultimate victory the culmination of dozens of small, meticulous steps. The girls were learning about natural selection. As an invasive species sometimes will usurp a weaker native one, Fanny thought, she would supplant her friend in Connor’s heart. “And after all,” said Abigail, “Boys are supposed to be less mature than girls their own age. Compared to most of them Connor’s practically an old man. Think of Oliver! In retrospect I’m glad he went for Mattie…” It was September ninth, but felt more like the first day of summer than the twelfth to last. Jill wondered whether the heat was causing her to appear flush. Abigail will say I am blushing, she thought, will say I’m just embarrassed by how much I like Connor. Feelings were often “just” when Abigail spoke of them. It was an accidently belittling construction that Jill abhorred. When Connor proposed to Jill for the second time, the year they graduated college, he said “I can’t promise you much, just that I will love you until the day I die.” It was the sort of thing Jill had a hard time believing a person would actually say, and yet, studying his face (irritatingly well-proportioned, crowned with a discharge of straw-colored hair that would admit no prospect of balding), she could not deny, yes, he meant it. He screwed his great-aunt’s ring on her resigned ring finger. The girls, ranked third, twentieth, and fifty-first in their class of ninety-sev-

en, were supposed to be working on a group project, but neither Abigail nor Jill had had breakfast before bicycling to Fanny’s. The recipe for blueberry muffins Fanny extracted from her mother had required forty-five minutes. Their half hour of grievance airing was carved out of the additional hour required for digestion. A mew Fanny recognized as belonging to Abigail floated to her across the ether. Then a whine, “Back me up here Fay.” Fanny had gone by Fay since the first grade, when dimwitted Jordan Needham made a tasteless joke and shortly thereafter found herself with more elbow room in the cafeteria than she could ever have a need for. Abigail aimed a concerned look at her beleaguered friend, who had fallen to a perusal of her cell phone. Sometimes, Abigail thought, Jill was too levelheaded for her own good. She ought to manage a look of tortured stoicism, at the very least – a little less withdrawn, a little more Jackie O (certainly she had the cheek bones for it). And Fay, who shrugged and seized a hank of grass, ought to exhibit more interest. Jill examined the sequence of letters that glowed in her address book and stood for her boyfriend. A text would do it. No, a text followed by a call. It was a fact that breaking up with someone by text made you a jerk. She knew the most respectable thing was to do it in person, but blue-eyed Jill was a coward, and the less attractive girls would have a field day notwithstanding. Jill did not believe in God. Yet she wondered what He would make of her situation. Certainly, He would be able to tell her the wisest thing to do. The fact that there was definitively a wisest thing to do comforted Jill. Surely if she thought long and hard enough she could find it out; she was extraordinarily clever.

Et in Larchmont Ego | Emma Adler | Tuesday Magazine | 41

Her mistake had been confounding cleverness with clairvoyance. She had thought she could predict the trajectory of her relationship with Connor; had counted on Fanny’s being in love with him when she agreed to be his girlfriend. Fay would be unable to stand it, would find some way to ruin it. Surely, ultimately, the evolutionary imperative roiling up in the male – the mutual symmetry of her and Connor’s faces – would yield to the wrath of the female’s snub-nosed friend. It was an ingenious plan. During halcyon mornings spent alone in her living room with Dr. House and bowls of Trix, Jill reflected upon its neat machinations with a contentedness she fancied analogous to what she would feel reviewing patients’ case histories, when she as a neurosurgeon. Abigail was beginning to feel queasy. It was necessary, she decided, to issue her friend an ultimatum. “Maybe there’s nothing anyone can say,” she blurted. “If you’re not feeling it, you’re not feeling it. But it’s not fair to Connor to string him along if this is the case. Either commit, or end it now.” Puzzled expressions (one tempered by dread, one by anger) contorted Jill and Fanny’s faces. Abigail was not supposed to speak plainly. It was as if a drippy faucet had suddenly begun to impersonate Old Faithful. When Jill refused Connor, the first time he proposed, this was the memory she would fix on – the semi-lucid tableau that would elbow its way through a phalanx of years that crucial moment she uttered “No.” As the crushing syllable gave way to vocal fry, Jill would recall in particular the sour face of formidable Fay Davey. Fay had not been, was not, as smart or as pretty as Jill, but she was a vibrant organism. On occasion, Jill suspected her friend might be that rare thing: an artist. She had just had a short story published in her campus literary magazine. It was very good, if a little

lurid for Jill’s taste. Fay would have tired of Connor as surely as she had of sticker books and velour sweat suits. But she had loved Connor. It had been scrawled on her face, a furtive, wretched love that was like a raccoon clawing at a trash bag. Jill had known it since eighth grade, when Fay had stopped calling him Condor and started pronouncing declarative statements as questions in his presence. She had known it, and that day, beneath the cherry blossom tree, Jill believed that Fanny knew she knew. She fixed Jill with a horrifying, importuning stare. Lily-livered Jill wanted to be brave, to excuse herself and mount her bicycle and pedal, awkward in her skirt, to the Harris’ huge, ugly home; to ring the doorbell imperiously, to urge Connor sit down and tell him, in no uncertain terms, that they were through. Jill’s mother had told her daughter, in a poetical mood, “You are like me Jill. Ours is a quiet strength, but a steely one.” Mrs. Toohey was mistaken. Jill had inherited from her mother thin arms, and an ability to hold her breath underwater longer than most, but not any whorled-up courage. She had experienced a light bulb moment the previous year, following a conversation with a psychologist friend of the family. “I am,” she thought, eyes glued to the grave, gray face of Dr. Flip, “averse to speech acts.” It gave her great joy to diagnose herself. She was, she decided, a victim of her beauty – accustomed to affecting people merely by being; conditioned not to want to affect them in other ways. It was an aspect of her character as out of her hands as this, its latest progeny. And it always made things easier. Jill avoided Fanny’s stare, busied herself righting an errant tendril, and murmured, “I guess I’ll stick it out.” Abigail beamed. She touched her brooch, as if to suggest that a magical talisman and not cowardice had won the day. Fanny’s lips, paler than Jill’s

42 | Tuesday Magazine | Emma Adler | Et in Larchmont Ego

and thinner, disappeared inside her mouth. “I’m proud of you,” said Abigail. “Really Jill I am. You are doing the mature thing.” With that pronouncement the subject entered into the pantheon of cases closed, and Abigail saw fit to redirect the conversation toward herself. “If you guys don’t mind I’d really like to talk about Oliver. Like I said I don’t care about him and Mattie, but it’s hard when I see them together and she’s all over him. I swear we’re operating on the same schedule. Literally, every time I walk into town, there they are…”

Spatio-temporal Diagram INGRID BENGTSON | WOOD MODEL & DIGITAL COLLLAGE

*** It was to be a season of Great Happenings. Jill’s cousin Jeremy scored a 2380 on his SAT, skirts lengthened, Mallomars reappeared in pantries the county over, Abigail’s mother began preparations for a vegan Thanksgiving, and Jill found herself still on the ever more bulging arm of Connor Harris. She persisted in the belief that Fanny knew she knew, and often imagined her friend about to reveal a prescience she did not, in fact, possess. Propelled by shame into the realm of makebelieve, cut-and-dry Jill envisioned a future that would enable her to feel less awful about the whole business. Perhaps, she thought, my daughter and Fay’s daughter will find themselves in an analogous situation, and my daughter (prettier and smarter than Fay’s) will be able to do what I could not. It was an ill-fated prophecy. Fanny would bear sons only. Jill would give birth to a potato-faced girl equally ill disposed toward chemistry and coquetry. In high school her plainness would preclude the possibility of Jill living through her. When they did things together Jill regarded her with the confused, mildly horrified expression peculiar to mothers who see nothing of themselves in their daughters.

Spatio-temporal Diagram | Ingrid Bengtson | Tuesday Magazine | 43

City of Artificial Extrusion HARSHA SHARMA ARTIFICIAL MODEL

44 | Tuesday Magazine | Harsha Sharma | City of Artificial Extrusion

Panopticon Theatre HARSHA SHARMA

DIGITAL RENDERING

Panopticon Theatre | Harsha Sharma | Tuesday Magazine | 45

Ephemeral City It is indisputably trite to say that India is a nation of contradiction and chaos. A metropolitan apartment hovers over a slum; Hindus and Muslims worship the same protector-goddess in a Bengali mangrove where tigers devour dozens of people per year; the same devotees who rely on the Ganges as a source of existential purification use her as a sink for teethbrushing and an outlet for sewage, slowing her flow with garbage. My first hour in the country was spent hotel-bound from the Indira Gandhi National Airport, looking out at the industrial wastelands of New Delhi’s outskirts from the safety of a luxury van’s interior. When the driver turned off the freeway, we drove past two men standing on the side of the road burning a pile of garbage. The light from their flame illuminated a row of shanties and storefronts with colored signs made dull by a thick dust coating. The first man concentrated on the stick with which he stoked his fire, but I made eye contact with the second. A hard, intent, somber stare. At the van? At me? Are these windows tinted? I mused. The gaze was sharp, a precision indicating no tint to the windows and I wondered, what did he see? Western tourist, Delhi-bound in the crisp white service vehicle that could only belong to a hotel? My eyes held his gaze until his dull clothing disappeared into the backdrop of night. Only the flame was visible through the rear window; suddenly a speck, and then gone. The Kumbh Mela festival is a perpetuation of the cliche. Every twelve years the Indian government builds an ephemeral city and tears it down fiftyfive days later. It is an infrastructure not of steel, concrete, roof, or walls, but a city nonetheless. In December of such years, when the waters of the Ganges and

BRENNA MCDUFFIE

Yamuna rivers begin to recede around the northern city of Allahabad, a sprawling town of tented cloth and canvas is born in anticipation of a mass pilgrimage. For two months, a host of millions of human bodies comes in and out of this temporary city, transforming a space that was once flowing water and bare riverbank into a theater of activity. The Kumbh Mela has its origins in the the Puranas—ancient Hindu texts that tell the tales of deities, kings, and creation. According to the myth, when the gods and demons fought for possession of a pot containing an elixir of immortality, drops of the juice spilled onto the Earth. Every twelve years, when the stars and Jupiter align in the most particular way, the waters at the earthly site of spillage in Allahabad are believed to transform into waves of holy nectar, and Hindu pilgrims travel to the Kumbh Mela to bathe in the purifying mix. *** The weather is heavy during an Allahabadian winter, and a layer of haze filters the traveller’s lens. A dry and rainless wind picks the dust up from the ground, and the constant burn of ascetics’ holy hearths seems to add even more density to the smoky concoction at the site of the Mela. When I visited the festival in 2013, my eyes were glassy and I sneezed out dirt, but I quickly got used to the air’s hard substance. This was January, and the foggy film felt cinematically fitting for a site so movie-set-surreal. The grounds of the Mela are as spacious and wide as desert wasteland, but movable structure has been plotted atop the sand. The vast grounds are spliced into twelve seemingly arbitrary “sectors” in an attempt to bring some sort of order to the chaos, though each quarter is almost indistinguishable from the rest: uniform

46 | Tuesday Magazine | Brenna McDuffie | Ephemeral City

rows of red, blue, and taupe colored tents, tiny in size, that have been set up as shelter for those who come to bathe. In a few of these mini-districts, large, flashy performance halls replace the huts. In a processional drive through the festival on our first day at the Kumbh, I fixated on a yellow mock-castle whose turrets were lined with red, flashing bulbs and whose entrance boasted a multicolored electric display of light-up deities and elephants; a kitschy construction like the low-budget, somewhat sketchy kind of carnival you might happen upon during a summer afternoon in small-town America. Allahabad has hills, and from an elevated vantage point the Mela grounds stretch across the horizon like a miniature city-state of model toys—a carnivalesque image with that imposing yellow performance hall and several similar pastelcolored structures owning the skyline. You cannot see the city’s edges. At night, the toy-like city becomes a beacon of warm and muted heavenly light, the individual bulbs and sources of luminosity untraceable due to the thick haze. Looking at the embarrassment of electricity, a viewer might wonder how this same cityscape must have appeared centuries ago, or even just two or three decades back, when the masses weren’t as large and technology not as easily accessible for such an isolated event. The sound of this place strikes the eardrum with pleasant dissonance. Crackling loudspeakers project the voices of Bollywood favorites, interrupted at times by a droning list of missing persons. Hindi, English, Gujarati, Tamil, and Marathi sound waves collide to form the high-toned hum of a pan-national crowd. In the background of the daytime clamor is a constant, distant jingle—instruments

from street performers, the bell-ringing of temples, the accompaniment of nighttime plays. At the end of the day, the multifarious din begins to retreat until, at dusk, all that is left along with the sound of the wind is a rhythmic mix of bells and drums; the festival’s gentle heartbeat. *** The waters are undoubtedly the heart of the Mela. But although the bath at the Kumbh is paramount for some, it is secondary or trivial for others. For the two months of the festival, the ritual grounds also serve as a marketplace of goods and thought. Craftsmen and salesmen pitch their stands among the tents and sell their goods to visitors; during my stay, stations advertising a Viagra-equivalent miracle drug were a popular sighting. Where there are no such stands, blankets of goods and their vendors line the roadside ground. Amber-eyed Marathi women roam the streets with their children in tow, holding bracelets and trinkets out towards those who walk by. They do not beg, they do not ask, they hardly speak. They simply stand with goods in hand, pushing their arms out towards passersby, following for a few or several steps before giving up. They’ve come a thousand miles to reap the spare change of pilgrims. While some sell goods, others sell their faith. Those who come to proselytize stake out encampments within an entire sector reserved for religious organizations, where followers of Sathya Sai Baiba erect temporary libraries of the late Indian guru’s works, and the hare Krishna chant of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness drones from dawn to dusk. The sector’s religious valence is fortified by the settlement of a main attraction of the festival—the Naga sadhus. A quick web search of the festival and you will find hundreds of images of the ash-

smeared, dreadlocked, naked men. They do not come to the festival to spread their faith as much as to prove their religiosity through displays of physical strength and spectacle. To locate the sadhu’s great camp, Juna Akhara, you need only scan the skyline to locate its marker: a massive, orange triangular flag that ripples high above the grounds in the winter wind. All day, sadhus perform feats of yogic contortion and bodily strength or deformity. One baba’s right arm extends up towards the sky, a position he has allegedly been holding for years, and I believe him. The old man’s fingers have begun to twist like tangled garden crawlers—a sure a sign of his muscles’ atrophy. We stood among a crowd watching another sadhu shape shift in the middle of his camp, completely nude. There did not appear to be a single direction in which his limbs could not move. Some crowd members gasped when the man wrapped his genitals around a wooden rod and began to shift that every which way, too. Such stunts of phallic strength are common public displays for the sadhus; proof of their transcendence. Tamash, spectacle. Some people admittedly travel here just to see the sadhus’ show, and I got the sense that many lament the performativity of the holy men. A friend of my professor’s and a native of Uttar Pradesh scoffed when I asked him about the Naga babas. “Who is sadhu?” he said and paused, pointing at my professor. “She is sadhu. She is closer to enlightenment and knowledge than those monsters and molesters. They put on a show. They are actors.” And yet, for many, the sadhus are a veritable representation of the sacredness of the Kumbh. Naga babas sit in their camps, their bare bodies smeared with vibhuti, the sacred ash from the ever-burning hearths they gather around.

We met Baba Rampuri, a Western-born sadhu leader who had taken to the ascetic life when he first visited India around age eighteen. While we sat around his fire, dozens of Indian pilgrims interrupted to touch his feet and receive his blessing. Darshan, vision. People come to see expressions of holiness and enlightenment, and to ask for blessings in return. *** In the middle of chaos, exchange, and display one will find the Triveni Sangam, the clear center of the ephemeral city. This is the very spot of Puranic fame where the drops of immortal nectar once fell — the confluence of three rivers: the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the Sarasvati. An onlooker can see where the former two streams begin to mingle, for the hues of their waters are slightly different due to their varied depths at this particular point of crossing, the Yamuna greater than the Ganges. The two rivers resist one another. They fight for dominance, a tango in slow motion, until it becomes clear that complete convergence is more sensical than trying to carve out individual paths. An amalgamation of dark blue and light blue shifts and swirls and then, two rivers become one. The third river, we know from the name of this spot, is an important part of the theological equation, but she’s nowhere to be seen amongst the churning. Because Sarasvati is a rumored myth: her waters have been dry for thousands of years, though no one really knows whether they ever ran at all. On one particular morning, our group boarded a small boat and the man with the oars rowed us mid-river. In waters of the sangam all is calm, but the banks are wild with motion. Crowds of devotees strip to their undergarments to purify. Mothers and fathers come with

Ephemeral City | Brenna McDuffie | Tuesday Magazine | 47

their children and teach them to bathe. Some men come alone. Old couples hold hands and step into the purifying wetness, a holy dip that may be their last. While at the sangam, my focus fell not on such images of calamity and reverence, but on a little girl who protested haughtily as her father tried to dunk her small body in the cold, January waters. She screamed and cried and writhed in his arms, but the little girl’s persistent parents looked on laughing and at last, father managed to get her down. Another young girl crouched at the water’s edge with her mother, and in her hands she cupped a tiny cardboard boat that held a candle and a marigold. Her mother lit a match; together, they made a flame, said a prayer, and let the boat drift on. During Kumbh season the waters at the sangam are always littered with these tiny offerings — pink and gold petals speckle the glittering waves. Yards from the sangam there was a performance hall occupied by the environmental initiative Ganga Action Pariwar, a group that called for pilgrims to fight for cleaner river waters. Their events attracted what must have been every Western foreigner thirty-five and under. One young, white woman stood outside the hall donning an Earth costume decorated by warning signs. River in danger. Water wasting. Plastic burning. Among the ritual holiness and exchange of goods, the Kumbh Mela also serves as a platform for activism. *** The notion that those who worship one of India’s natural wonders simultaneously destroy it is a notion that seems to bother many, be it an activist, a religious leader, a scientist, a pilgrim. A week before I arrived at the festival, I spent six nights in Varanasi, a neighboring town

along the Ganges and the holiest of Hindu cities. In Varanasi we had also taken a cruise along the length of the riverside city. For people whose residences sit perched and stacked on the banks of the river, the Ganges is a goddess and a life source. She is their sink, their washing machine, their shower. In the morning, men wash their faces and brush their teeth in the waters. Wives and dhobiwallahs use soap and detergent to wash the day’s laundry in the river and then lay the clothes flat to dry on her banks. At the end of our cruise, we reached one of the sites that distinguishes Varanasi as the Holy City. A large cremation ground marks the end of the river side of the town. Pyres of wood. Flames fed day and night, ever burning. With a long tradition rich with religious piety, Varanasi is known as a place where old folk go to die. Terminally ill patients will spend their final days in hospice in the holy city of light. They long to be cremated on the city’s grounds, so that Mother Ganga can drink their ashes. “Tasvir nahin,” our boatman warned as we passed the land of the dead. No pictures. We lowered our lenses and looked on with only our eyes. A large burlap sack floated by our boat, and the general smell of burning flesh from the crematorium masked any stench that might have been radiating from the drifting lump, so it took a moment for me to identify the mass as a human body. I looked further down the river and noticed that this was one of two such bodies within the bounds of my sight. I couldn’t help but ponder the conflicting language of faith and reason. Those who honored the sacred Ganges also polluted her with chemicals, trash, and rotting flesh. Those who dumped waste into the river also drank her water and

48 | Tuesday Magazine | Brenna McDuffie | Ephemeral City

bathed in her waves. *** At the sangam, our boatman took us back to shore and we climbed onto the sand. My professor began to unbuckle her sandals and my peers began to gape at what she seemed to be insinuating. But slowly, my classmates, too, began to shed their garments—shoes, jackets, bags—and headed towards the water. I could only forget about Varanasi’s bodies long enough to let my toes touch the little, cold waves where water meets land. I watched a group of boys race through the waves to see who would be the first to reach a mid-river rowboat. I looked on as a saffron-robed man meditated on the riverbank, and an old woman muttered a prayer with closed eyes as she drenched her body, fully wrapped in her sari. We watched as thousands dipped their bodies in the river in acts of reverence, of tradition, of darshan, or perhaps just for the sake of doing, and our group of participant observers joined them in the waters, perhaps for some of the same reasons.

Prince and Mulberry BEN HALPERN | OIL

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Like a Finger Painting DOROTHY VILLARREAL

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am. Since it is my last year on campus, I’ve grudgingly begun to accept that I need to think about the next steps in my life. This has been difficult for me because I never really allowed myself to think about plans after college. For (essentially) all of my life, all I’ve focused on was getting into a good college. Once I was (miraculously) accepted here, I didn’t know how to move forward, so I did what anyone with all of Harvard’s resources would do. I procrastinated. I did so because anytime I thought about the future, I would begin to feel a sense of loss and desesperación. Where was the little girl that knew exactly where she would be in 10 years?1 Like most Harvard students, I am exceptionally good at being busy, so I did what I do best. I joined a ton of organizations, found my place in the Latinx community, and ignored the fact that I would eventually have to leave. It’s ironic that most of the things that I have been involved with on campus have dealt with issues of identity and intersectionality. You would think that my involvement in these activities and organizations would have helped me have a clear picture of who I am2. Instead, I feel like one of those finger paintings that kindergarteners do. You know, the ones with all of the colors that have been smeared, and pushed, and blended into one muddled mess? Mixteada. That’s me. I hoped that somewhere along the way, I would (again, miraculously) know. I would know who I was, what I wanted in life, where I was going to be in the next five, ten, twenty years. I hoped I would bump into a job that would be exactly what I wanted/needed. Surely all of those veladoras and prayers my grandmother lights for me every week have to be doing something. I hoped that I wouldn’t need to look for the next step. It would find me. I wish I could say, as I write this, that I have found something (myself3 or a job. I’ll take any of the two4). I haven’t. I’m still as confused as ever. I am lucky to have that, however. While I may not know who I am, it’s not something to be ashamed of. I think that we are too often pressured into knowing. We’re pressured into knowing that we’re supposed to look like the Latinas on the cover of a magazine (you know the ones, with words like “Hot! Fiery! Salsa!” surrounding them), into knowing con quien nos vamos a cazar and how many children we’ll have and when we’ll become the next president of the US so that we can fix the world that is going to hell.5 We’re pressured into being everything and doing everything. And why not? Our generation are the purported Super Women. We can “do it all.” Our moms Granted, it wasn’t hard as a 6 year old to know where I would be in ten years. Spoiler alert: High School Junior Year 2 For some reason, I am under the impression that as soon as I know who I am, everything will fall into place. Flawed, and self-harming, I know. 3 What even does that look like? Finding yourself? I have a mirror, I don’t really have to look, but… 4 Beggars can’t be choosers, you know. 5 Casi nada. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy

did it, las abuelitas también. So why should have I have the audacity to want something different? Personally? I’m tired. Estoy cansada de tener que saber y hacer; of having this sacred bundle1 of my Latinx identity, my family’s history and cultura, and the expectations of my community that lie heavy on my shoulders. We need to be allowed to be unsure. It needs to be okay to question who you are, what you are here for. I shouldn’t be having bordering on a panic attack whenever I think of the future because I freak out at the thought of failure. None of us should feel that if we fail to know, we fail. Failure should not be the grown-up version of the cucuy. I may still freak out about the future.2 Freaking out is okay, though. I’m not the first person going through this, nor will I be the last. I will, however, always try to carry my sacred little bundito with the elegance and grace that my foremothers have. I’ll still ask my abuelita to light the veladoras, and pray that el profe won’t hate me and that my boss give me a good recommendation. I’ll do all of these and more, but I’ll try to allow myself to be more conscious in knowing that I don’t have to always have it together, or know the next steps. I’ll let myself walk out of my dorm in mismatched socks, chipped polish, and only half of my readings done. It will be okay if I don’t. I may be a messy finger painting and have my Tamaulipas Brown, Rio Grande Valley Green, Cambridge Yellow, and Tejana Red, White, and Blue smooshed and smeared on this white sheet of paper. It’s imperfect. But just like those clumsy paintings, Mami and Guelis will still frame it up and show it proudly to the whole world. That’s enough for me. That’s all I need to know for now.

50 | Tuesday Magazine | Dorothy Villarreal | Like a Finger Painting

Sacred bundles are an idea in anthropology that we learned in Latin@s: Remaking America where we carry our family’s cultures and traditions with us wherever we go. 2 Listen, can you blame me? Have you seen the economy lately? 1

Like a Finger Painting | Dorothy Villarreal | Tuesday Magazine | 51

Romanesco

PARKING LOTS

Our feet could stroll the slowbending slope of this crisp wooded yellowfrond road for the rest of the planet and think nothing of it. Stop this gravelly excrement revelry or I’ll beat it right out of you.

are devoted to the insane who think glory got stuck somewhere beneath the cement. They are both starting points and echoes of survival:

MICHAEL MCGLATHERY

The trees make for colorful hillsides, and hide humans below. One day we’ll outnumber the branches. Look, now, how she beholds her babies, each throbbing head on its own goosepelt pillow: Behold the soccer father’s slobbering dung-slinging bloodlust: Note the bright face of this child, with its eyebrows bending fascist. Can’t you understand these vegetable fascinations? Run your broccoli-stained hands along the spirals once more. Doesn’t it feel surreal? Not the texture as much as the concept? Here’s the shit we can’t get away from: the fleshy things we inhabit crunch fuck and destroy are only there because they’re good at making more of themselves.

ELODIE SAINT-LOUIS

metal touching rubber, ridge meeting cotton, canyon receding behind valley. Here the ants crawl across spilled cans of soda. Blue Velvet dances underneath like an aftershock and reaches up to goosebump her spine. Girl sits still and watches them wander. Behind the pit sits the tear duct, excavated. She hears the absurdity of painted lines surrendering over implanted grass, for there is no nature-hear, only silence sings underneath it all as grey dirt, pristine knives tucked inside their plastic boxes, homeopathic, analog like the rest of us, waiting.

Where were your thighs when the shit hit the broc stalks? What did you taste when it all hit the fan?

Reference Section | Benjamin Ruswick, Josh Schecter, & Jorge San Martin | Tuesday Magazine | 53

Encount(h)er PIERIE CEGREN

new york was throbbing, thrumming through the heat, through me.

the vibrations in my heart and my heart in my lungs and on my sleeve, laughing down a dry cleaned suit to pool, butterscotch smooth, beneath my shoes in the heat of the new york summer she saw m e before I saw her, one of those half -‐ glances, barely sensation, suggestion,

then eyes falling from cliffs of her cheekbones into the perspiration adorning her upper lip, eye-‐lashes barring connection, convection, reductive awareness with casual nonchalance as if she hadn’t been watching.

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or maybe she hadn’t b een, self-‐importance forgot to pay rent this month, evicted by the butterscotch sticky air of the heat of the new york summer.

her eyelashes lose the battle against the moon crater curiosity of those aegean -‐-‐ seize the moment, nothing less than stereotypical temporal arrest

and in that instant our futures danced in the light-‐filled place called distance, no expectations or obligations, only unadulterated, innocent, humming hope.

our thoughts intertwined and in that second across a crowded bar with her eyes in mine and a future in hers in the heat of the new york summer i tipped my hat and walked away.

54 | Tuesday Magazine | Pierie Cegren | Encount(h)er

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