We talk about the origins of the Universe / As a Beginning / But what about what came before? / the space before space / What about the time with no beginning? / because what we don’t say / is that The beginning of the Universe / was The End. / We don’t mourn it / because it was the dawn of our time / but the beginning of everything / was the end of ‘nothing.’ / the end of a place that existed before ‘place’ / a nothing that we have no words for. / a nothing so full / that it was bursting at the seams. / the big bang / wasn’t creating / it was destroying /ripping apart the abyss / and we / we are stitched together / from the shrapnel / and the debris / of a nothing so massive / so all consuming / that we can’t begin / to wrap our minds around it / it has no beginning / but it does have an / end.
issue #2
our beginnings Established and founded on February 18th, 2014 at the USC Ground Zero Performance Cafe with the best of intentions by Chelsee Bergen and Erika Hang. Based in Los Angeles, CA and created as a means for expression for our angst and discussion of being a 20-something in the digital age. We welcome you into our take on modern life with a collection of essays, stories, art, and digital media.
founders
Chelsee Bergen, Editor-in-Chief, Content Erika Hang, Editor-in-Chief, Design
contributors
Belen Figueroa Angel Harper Joey Hines Gregg Lipkin Sara Mardam-Bey Ena Nielsen Grant Nordine
fueled & powered by
Creativity Pirate Chai’s from Blue Elephant Cafe Adobe inDesign CC Crashing Laptops
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letter from the editors Dear Readers, With one issue under our belt, we hope you getting a better sense of who we are and what our magazine is all about. Our second issue is “From Beginning to End.” We felt this was an interesting topic to embark on as we trudged through graduation and contemplated our “journey of life”. It also seemed fitting, as Umbrella Terms begins to grow and take shape, to consider what it means to start something, be it a magazine, watching a television show, or a relationship. We began to ask some questions:
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What does it take to start something?
2 Do all endings deserved to be mourned? 3 Does every new beginning come from some other beginning’s end? 4
How has technology changed the context of an ending?
5 How do birth and death function in modern life? 6 Does anything ever really end?
In this issue, we have a collection of stories, poems, and art about death, birth, journeys, first meetings, relationships and more that span from the most tenuous of beginnings to the most definite of endings. What we found is that, without any intervention on our parts, the issue naturally divided itself into two subjects: relationships and death. Neither of these are simple topics, both are intricately connected to our experiences of life, but we believe that herein you will find some wonderful efforts to distill the essence of these cosmic subjects. With love, C+E
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table
relationships PHOTO INTERVIEW SERIES: Katie H.
HELLO GOODBYE, a personal narrative by Joey Hines PHOTO INTERVIEW SERIES: Jackson B. TO MY NEW BEGINNING, an essay by Belen Figueroa PHOTO INTERVIEW SERIES: Keven J.
24 Stan, a short story by Grant Nordine 28 PHOTO INTERVIEW SERIES: Monica R. 30 An Interview with BRAID CREATIVE 32 FIRST DATE, a poem by Joey Hines 34 PHOTO INTERVIEW SERIES: Katie B. 4
of contents ATTACK: THIS IS THE END? 36 THEAn ANXIETY essay by Chelsee Bergen 38 PHOTO INTERVIEW SERIES: Youssef B. 40 GRADUATION, an essay by Gregg Lipkin 44 PHOTO INTERVIEW SERIES: Grace M.
death
48 WHY DEATH ISN’T SAD, an essay by Angel Harper 54 An Interview with DIANA BLAINE 56 I’M SORRY, a personal narrative by Ena Nielsen 60 DOODLES ABOUT DEATH, drawings by Sara Mardam-Bey
misc.
62 People Doing Awesome Things
64 Contributor’s Guide to Issue #3: Awkward table of contents
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Meet the Contributors These are the brilliant and talented writers, artists, designers and creative individuals that brought this second issue to reality. We asked each of them to write a bio about themselves.
ANGEL HARPER is a nearly 22-year-old college student who has lived in Nevada her entire life and is patiently looking forward to the day when she doesn’t. She loves light beer and has had too many epiphanies mid-cigarette to count. She intensely fears all cephalopods and that her kid(s) won’t at least appreciate the same music she does.
BELEN FIGUEROA, I am a lover of people. Seriously. If you’ve ever looked at anyone and thought, ‘that person is so __________, who would ever love them?’ then I have probably accepted your challenge. I am easily amused. I do what I want, and that includes using Comic Sans and loudly complaining about the minor inconveniences in my life. Also, you know that person who always gets a lucky break, like the universe is rooting for them or something? That’s me too. Hi, I’m Belen.
GREGG LIPKIN identifies as an adult even though he frequently comes across as a rather tall child blessed with a decent vocabulary and a propensity for very colorful cursing. For some time he has been engaged professionally in educating his own kind (other children) and after 16 years in this endeavor, he feels as though he might finally be getting the hang of it. Additionally he has found himself to be, on at least one occasion, the subject of a very pretentious photograph.
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GRANT NORDINE has been called a lot of things and only half of them are true. An actor, director, and hobbyist writer; Grant is presently studying to be a high school theater teacher at Dixie State University and will be married by the time you read this magazine! Grant’s voice can be heard on the ongoing radio drama The Adventures of Amphibiman and Banana Boy for which he also writes for and directs with 2 other schmoes. When he’s not doing those totally important things, Grant enjoys learning about dead presidents, pretending he’s a music critic, and making fun of Utah with his wife. If you like what Grant writes, you can follow him at ballycumber. tumblr.com
SARA MARDAM-BEY is not an artist, but sometimes likes to doodle morbidly to release stress and combat boredom. She is inspired by the world around her to do a lot of weird, crazy things, mostly in public and in front of a lot of people. Her passion is dance and performance art and she tries to push limits with everything she does. One day she hopes to be paid real money to do this. Her artistic mantra is “I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.” You can check out her website at www.saramardam-bey.com.
returning contributors See their bios in Issue #1: Identity.
meet the contributors
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intro: relationships
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This is gonna be cheesy. I think… beginning of a relationship feels… So basically to me the beginning of a relationship feels very similar to like when you leave where you’re originally from and you travel somewhere new, that seems so weird to say, but when you leave where you’re from and you travel somewhere new, there’s like this overwhelming… this overwhelming sense of… independence. Like you’re independent. And you feel like you know what you want in that sense, like you made that decision to leave what you’re familiar with and travel to somewhere you’re not familiar with. And there’s that beautiful initial period like wherever you travel to that’s like totally unknown to you, you’re almost blinded in a sense because everything seems so right and beautiful, like you feel like no matter what happens to you there, it’s okay. Say you got mugged in a city that you traveled to in like Europe or something, you’re still gonna be relatively happy and everything. So I feel like a beginning of a relationship is similar to that, because you’re exploring somebody else’s mind and body and heart as much as you’re exploring a new city that you go to.
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Recently I was having a conversation with August and we were talking about the end of relationships and kind of what I think would most accurately be the answer to your question the end of a relationship feels like a withdrawal. He made a great point that your body actually goes through biological changes when you’re with somebody and that when you end things your body is literally going through a withdrawal and that’s the heartache and stuff. I don’t know, the end of a relationship is weird because you share so much time with that person and you share a bed with that person and times and stories and nights and mornings with them and you have to transition from waking up beside somebody to waking up alone, and like getting coffee with somebody to getting coffee alone, and I think it’s like this heartbreakingly yet beautiful… it’s heartbreaking but it’s also beautiful because it’s the transition. Like every time a relationship has ended for me I’ve fallen more in love with myself after a few weeks because it’s like, it’s like the… I don’t know. I think that when you… you know, there’s gonna be a few weeks when everything is so shitty and everything is so dull and you feel like there’s not enough brightness but then there’s this weird sense of strength that you don’t acknowledge that you have until like a few weeks have passed. I’m always super bummed, because I’m a really sentimental person, so I’m always supper bummed when something ends because I feel like I just miss that person but then at the same time I feel like… there’s something really beautiful about being able to fall back in love with yourself and to realize that while other people may be temporary sometimes you will always have your self. As like cliche as that is.
photo interview series
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12
BY: JOEY HINES
hello goodbye
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hello goodbye
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Well usually it feels really great, but it has a big shadow. Like, it’s good because you feel like there’s a lot of possibility and you don’t know what’s going to happen. But also like you’re scared that you’re gonna mess up.
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Usually like you messed up. Like you did something wrong. And I feel like if it’s a really long relationship- at least all the longer relationships that I’ve had- you’re losing parts of yourself, like something was cut out of you. You feel like you did something wrong and it’s your fault. That’s how I feel.
photo interview series
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TO MY NEW BEGINNING I am the girl who spent three and a half years of her last four years in college in long-term relationships with nothing more than a breather in-between each guy. Both ended in heartbreak, but still amicably and mutually. Now, I have one semester left of college, and for the first time in 4 years I feel like I can actually start getting my life together. I’m not here to complain about why my relationships didn’t work out. I will, however, complain about myself in these relationships. I didn’t go to college for anyone but myself. I didn’t go to find the love of my life, or a man that would take care of me. So when I found two wonderful guys in 4 years who wanted to be with me, I thought of that as an added bonus. A career and a man, what a dream!
I WAS WRONG. I didn’t know I was wrong. I didn’t see what I was giving up to be someone’s girlfriend, to be someone’s everything. I made sacrifices for my relationships that ended up hurting me emotionally and academically in the short run. I let a guy follow me halfway across the world to study abroad with me when he said he would ‘miss me too much,’ that he couldn’t stand to be away from me for 4 months. I should never have let him do that. I was filled with all these romantic notions that college and all my experiences there were better because of my boyfriends. They weren’t.
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BY: BELEN FIGUEROA
I’m not saying people shouldn’t date in college. They should. They should fall in love, and out of love, and back in love again. You learn to deal and cope with different emotions, and you learn how to be a part of someone else’s life. But don’t do what I did. Don’t let someone else’s love for you consume you and lead you into a world of comfort where you believe ‘well, I guess this is it, found a guy that loves me, what now?’ Don’t get me wrong, I loved them both back, but there was a definite comfort in knowing that they loved me that somehow made it easier for me to not try and move forward with my life. I can only call this phenomenon stupid-girl-logic. Or maybe it’s just stupid-Belen-logic. I don’t know, but I do know that I lost myself in the throws of college love to the point where I’m here with one semester left, no boyfriend in sight for the first time in 4 years, and for the first time in a long time I can see farther than the tip of my nose.
I FEEL FREE.
to my new beginning
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This is supposed to be about new beginnings, right? I never realized the importance of being single and truly getting to know yourself before offering yourself to another person. I know this is far from an original thought, but hear me out: doing things for yourself is far more important and than doing them for/with the people you love. Remember the boy that followed me halfway across the world? I should not have let him do that. I planned that trip for me. I was so caught off guard by his romantic gesture to follow me that I didn’t consider what 4 months in one of the poorest, dirtiest countries would do to him or us. And overall, my experience was a little less spectacular because I didn’t get the personal growth I wanted from doing something so daring on my own. Starting over is scary. Fucking terrifying. I’m not used to doing things for myself anymore, I’m used to doing them for my partner and me. I’m full of doubt and fear. I find myself jealous of people who are single, about to graduate and take on the world. I’m shaky. But I’m confident. I never knew how much bigger the world looked from a single-person point of view. The freedom is absolutely intoxicating. I feel the way I felt when I left my parents house for the first time, like I could do anything because I was an adult. I am an adult. I’m a goddamn adult! I’m angry with myself for essentially wasting a majority of college being someone’s other half instead of figuring out to be whole on my own. It’s a hard realization, but now that I’ve come to it I can honestly say that I wouldn’t do it over again. You shouldn’t dwell on what you can’t change, even though wallowing over the past is so easy. I should know, I’m the wallowing expert.
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To My New Beginning.
I’M READY.
SINCERELY, BELEN
to my new beginning
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Beginning of a relationship, to me, feels funny. It’s weird and different and… to me the very, very beginning isn’t that exciting yet, it’s kind of scary.
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The end of a relationship, feels almost… very similar to the beginning in the fact that it’s still scary and still weird, but instead of something great to look forward to you’re kind of like… ‘well… alright… back to what I used to be.’ It’s kind of like a scary with a bad ending, where as the beginning is scary with a good ending.
photo interview series
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STAN
There’s this really weird video on YouTube that an ex-girlfriend had me watch when we were still in college and she was going through her “artsy” phase.
It’s these two self-proclaimed actors from the ‘70s named Beck and Malina or something like that and it’s primarily just this old guy walking around with a handful of dirt shouting, “NEW BEGINNINGS!” And it’s just the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Natalie, the aforementioned ex-girlfriend just ate that kind of crap up for an entire semester in our sophomore year. There were other weird things she had me watch, but none of them really stuck with me like this one absurdist freak-out always stayed with me. Years passed. Natalie changed majors, got into law school, married a police officer, and has more kids than I think somebody her age ought to have. As for myself, I ended up graduating with a communications degree and have found it impossible to find any use for it. I found it impossible to leave the town I studied in as it promised money and an education. I left the school with neither but did manage to obtain a lot of general apathy. I now work a nine-to-five job for a nameless corporation where I’m not entirely sure what I do. Whenever I ask the bosses at work what my job is or even what the name of the company is, they always respond with, “Well, we’ll figure that out eventually.” I work a literally meaningless desk job. On top of that, I don’t spend time with anybody apart from my cat and the cast of House. Essentially, I’m the “lame friend” stereotype from any one of your favorite sitcoms. The exception being that those characters have friends and I have a cat and a TV. One autumn evening, I dashed out of my office as fast as my legs would carry
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BY: GRANT NORDINE me and ran straight for my car. “Odd,” I thought, “I’m never in a hurry to get home.” A subsequent thought followed, “I’m gonna finally watch Arrested Development today.” I’m not sure what was so special about that day. I don’t ever recall having a particular enthusiasm about wanting to watch Arrested Development. But then there I was, racing home against unusually terrible rush hour traffic just so I could get home and watch a series that I had no prior interest in. I mean, apart from that I had promised Natalie I’d watch it with her someday. “Is Arrested Development really that old?” I asked myself aloud. I got to my apartment and immediately stripped down to my undershirt and boxers. I flung my briefcase across the room and it smacked against my pale walls which effectively scared the bejeesus out of my cat. “I’m acting very strange today,” I told my left leg as it struggled to get into the pajama bottoms that I had uncharacteristically hurried to get. I usually reserved putting my pajama bottoms on for 9 p.m. when I went to bed, but as mentioned I was acting very much out of the norm. I plopped onto my sofa and scanned Netflix for a few minutes to see if anything else looked good on the chance that I was just having a moment and would soon snap out of it but to no avail. Arrested Development kept showing up again and again until it got to the point where it seemed to be showing up in every search I tried. “Fine,” I mumbled. I began episode one. Then two. Then three. I only made it halfway through the fourth episode when the thought, “This show is either really stupid or I’m not smart enough to get it. Either way, I’m uncomfortable,” came to mind as if continuing to view wasn’t an option. I turned the television off and just sat. “What’s gotten into
stan
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me?” I asked nobody. I was supposed to watch this show with Natalie. I hadn’t even thought about Natalie since we broke up. I hadn’t thought about any of those feelings for a very long time, actually. I hadn’t been in an active relationship since then. Natalie always told me I wasn’t very exciting or ceremonial. Somehow I was supposed to remember that date night was a big deal or I should just know when she wants something to stop. (That sounds worse than it is. I’m talking more about insisting we finish the movie instead of doing something else that she wanted to do. I don’t claim to be a very efficient boyfriend.) Thinking back, I guess she got back at me for being unceremonious. She texted me, “I’m done with this relationship.” And I never got back to her. The relationship ended with the same ease that turning off Arrested Development required. I took a long, hard minute to revel in the comparison and feel guilty about the past. The night was young, only about 8 p.m. by this point. I needed something to occupy my mind before it shut down at the usual 10:07 p.m. “You could always try writing that novel you said you’d write,” something seemed to whisper in my ear. Odd. Another promise attached to Natalie. “I don’t think I’d ever actually do it, but I’ve had this idea for a book since I was a kid about a girl who goes out to literally find herself. My sister always told my dad whenever she was caught doing something he didn’t approve of that she was trying to ‘find herself’ so I wanted to write that. But like, she’s literally lost and looking for her physical self.” “Well, I can’t think of anybody who’s ever done that before! You should write it.” “I’m not good enough. I blow at essays, so books are out of the question.”
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“Hey, I blow at acting but I’m still tryin’ it, ya know?” “You don’t blow at acting.” “Stan. You liked The Benchwarmers.” “I have a soft spot for Jon Heder.” “Whatever. Shut up. Write the book.” “Okay.” “Serious?!” “Yeah, I’ll do it. Why not?” “Awesome! Ah! Stan, it’s gonna be great!” “No it won’t. But I’m gonna try it.” I think I’m missing a few details. It’s strange how you only remember parts of some things. I hurried off to my bedroom and fished my laptop out of the piles of clothes, empty chip bags, and cat toys. I set everything up, brushed off a TV tray, and set myself up against my head boards with only a pillow separating my back and the bed. Once everything had powered up, I opened up my writing program, changed the font size, threw my fingers at the keyboard and absolutely nothing came. I stared at a blank page for fifteen minutes. I tried to consult my mind, which was brimming with ideas up to this point, but now my sporadic companion had fallen completely silent. My spontaneity and recollection went from a sterling 100% to an empty gas tank on the way to nowhere. “See, I told you,” I whispered with defeat. I guess somehow I knew the night would end as every night does for me. Nothing was accomplished, my job still sucked, and I was ready for bed at 9 p.m. Though, I suppose a very small part of me was still determined to end the night on a slightly different chord than usual. I opened up my laptop and watched that video again.
stan
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The beginning of a relationship… I think the most prevalent feeling at the beginning of a relationship is anxiety, because, I think there’s a lot of growing pains. I mean it’s ultimately about learning to grow with another person and grow to fit another person in your life. I think there’s a lot of growing pains there, and I think there’s a lot of anxiety about the growing pains. So I think that is one of the things that is often unspoken and not something people talk about a lot, but there’s a certain anxiety- I mean if you’re falling in love, there’s a certain anxiety to losing your balance. So I think that’s one thing, that I always feel when I’m starting a relationship. But on the other hand I do think that it almost feels sometimes like, you are just so intensely into this other person that it feels almost like the air around you is saturated with droplets of them. Like this inhaling of their being that is so much more than their physical body but like the space around them, the air around them. It tastes different, it feels different, it smells different. So you’re battling those two feelings, and there is an interesting tension and a lot of people, I think that’s why a lot of relationships will kind of jump start and then fall apart for that reason. You either learn how to deal with the two battling feelings or you can’t, it’s too much.
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I think it’s almost the opposite. I was talking about growing pains- it’s a shrinking pain. Where you are aware of the fact that the space that has become intimate has now collapsed, or there’s like an immediate shrinkage and there’s a pain there. It’s almost like a phantom limb for that reason, I think people talk about feeling phantom limbs, often, it’s a similar pain- a similar phenomenon. End of a relationship… Yeah, I think… during the end of a relationship you never feel that absence has a presence more strongly. You’re very aware of the sort of shadows that once were, the shadows of limbs that once were, the shadows of thoughts and conversations and feelings that once were and there’s kind of just this over cast of what once existed but no longer does. But on the flip side, like the beginning of a relationship, the end of a relationship- especially if it ended badly- if feels dysfunctional at the end or you were ready to move on or for whatever reason, there’s a process of, at least for me, inhalation. I will go through cycles of feeling upset and feeling the shrinkage, but also like… rupture. This joyful rupturing. Feeling like I’m ready for the next chapter. I’m ready to sort of move on as this free agent, and this free being. And unencumbered and, you know, uninhibited by the consciousness of another person weighing on me. And I mean, that’s the assumption that that’s what they were doing, because the relationship’s over so it’s usually why- in some manifestation or the other. Those are usually the two primary things I feel at the end of a relationship.
photo interview series
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an interview with
kathleen shannon
By: chelsee bergen & Erika Hang
Q: Can you talk a little about what it
is you do at Braid, and how it is that the company got started?
A: Braid Creative is branding
and business visioning for creative entrepreneurs. That means we not only help solopreneurs with their branding (the look and feel of their business) we also dig deep to define their dream customer, their future business goals, and how their personal vision fits into all of that. I own Braid with my sister, Tara. She’s the methodical left-brain to my more intuitive and creative right-brain. We both have backgrounds in creative direction, graphic design, and writing. We started our careers at a small advertising agency and when I quit to start working for myself she quickly joined forces with me a year later.
Q: You left an advertising agency 30
to do freelance work— what was that experience like? Did quitting your job feel like an ending?
A: Quitting my job felt like a new
beginning! Sure I closed some doors on industry clout, big name clients, and awards ceremonies but I could never go back to working for someone else. The uncertainty and insecurities that can come when working for yourself aren’t for everyone but I thrive in the flexibility to do what I want.
Q: What’s the first thing you do at
Braid with new clients to help get them started?
A: The first thing we do at Braid with new clients is orient them to how we work. We show them exactly what they can expect when working with us so we’re all on the same page. Then we take them through our Start Deck process which is the first step of our
Kathleen Shannon and her sister Tara Street started Braid to realize their own independence and combine their creative powers, but realized their own creative expertise could help other working creatives better share and sell what they are best at, and what they really want to be doing everyday. Kathleen and Tara are no strangers to the overlap of personal and professional in the life of the creative entrepreneur, in fact, it’s where they thrive. http://www.braidcreative.com Braid Method. The Start Deck is a series of 7 cards they fill out – we go over them together via Skype to really understand everything there is to know about their business vision.
Q: Is there anything you wish
someone would have told you, or that you could have known, when you started Braid?
A:
I had no idea how hard the first year of business would be. We actually hired an executive coach, Jay Pryor, to help us make the transition from day job to working together as our own bosses. In hindsight, it’s clear that we hit the ground running at a million miles an hour and almost exhausted ourselves in the process. Now I’m learning how to slow down as I take on a new title of new mom with a 5 month old baby.
braid creative
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peanut butter and honey honey sticky sweet blueberry tea she’s gonna be a travel agent she’s gonna be the light fantastic
FIRST DATE
BY: JOEY HINES
in her Subaru just down the road they’re building a crater they’re paving away the desert peeling away the sand so there can be a big hole in the ground I dig it can’t get past the rain on your hand staining me on a Vegas afternoon weren’t you composing the words that came out when I wasn’t thinking
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the worms turn the dirt makes the earth turn away from me to you with love actually though I’m not so sure I’ll always be there for you waiting like an eggshell torn clean off like a rubber mask you looked like Natalie Portman standing on a rock shelf screaming at the old man say something meaningful I froze like a fool great job Shakespeare you’re a fox I’m not hitting on you I actually think you’re a fox in my heart I believe that you
it all started with the peanut butter and honey honey sticky sweet blueberry tea should’ve touched your hand should’ve kissed your face should’ve been a little braver how many nights I’ve lain alone so many years wasted like a mountain that can’t dance and it’s that dance I can’t get past
are a four-legged red-headed woodland dweller with triangular ears and a cute bushy tail I know this because I read the initials in the lining of your coat you sly vixen you
first date
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I would say the beginning of a relationships feels like happiness, potential, and hopelessness simultaneously.
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I would say the end feels like happiness, hopelessness, and potential.
photo interview series
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the anxiety attack By: chelsee bergen
this is the end
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?
yI k
t’s been said that I have a hard time with endings. This is not an unfair assessment, but in a world where closure exists more in the realm of the conceptual than the literal how am I expected to be good with endings? Some things have closure. Graduation, is closure. Even without the ceremony, even if you’re going on to eight more years of school, that chapter is unquestionably done. Death, certainly, is a closure. I’m sure some others exist (though none immediately come to mind). But relationships? Hardly. Even if you’re not one of the people for whom “this is the last time” is just a mile marker until the next time, there are still things that drag it out— the scarf you left at their place, that movie they loaned you that you never got around to watching, shared friends, favorite restaurants, a lingering resentment for that time they disparaged your driving. All these things drag your connection out. It’s not like cutting your hair, where the weight and the dead ends fall away with a sharp snip. It’s not just romantic relationships, friendships also lack closure. If anything, the end of friendships are
even blurrier because you don’t even have to declare the ending. In my experience, they mostly just taper off— fading into the black. The violent ‘endings’ my relationships have had have never really stuck. You get over whatever was so damning at the time and more than likely go back to whatever your definition of normal was before, until ultimately even that fades off into the distance and its unlikely that either person could identify when exactly your friendship ended. So how do you sit with that ambiguity? Sometimes ending aren’t even the end. Take my parents, for example. They’re in the process of getting a divorce, but with two children between them and 20+ years of history, the end of their marriage doesn’t even mean the end of their relationship. Sure, it’s a kind of ending— it marks the beginning of their being divorcees, of my sister and I have divorced parents, but there are just too many tangled webs holding us all together for me to buy into this as closure. So how the hell do you know when something is over before its a thousand miles away and you’re wondering when you crossed that vast distance?
the anxiety attack
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The beginning of a relationship…. The beginning of a relationship feels like… There’s so much to say. There’s too much emotional territory to cover for me to get in to it all at once. It’s like… It’s like you’re walking somewhere on a really hot day and there’s no one around and you’re thirsty and you’re tired but you know you’re going somewhere and then you come upon a well, a very deep well, inside you can’t see to the bottom but you know that it’s cool and it’s shaded and it’s comfortable and maybe there’s water at the bottom. And… some of us decide that it’s not worth finding out and just keep going and some of us decide to jump in and you hurt yourself on the way down- it’s bloody, it’s painful, there are rocks and we’ve all got our fingers crossed that maybe… maybe there’s water at the bottom to break our fall. But regardless, you can’t shake the feeling that no matter whether there’s water at the bottom or not you’re going to be trapped there for a long time, and you can only hope that maybe there’s a rope that you can grab to pull yourself out of it, maybe there’s rain that’ll fall and fill the well until you can climb out. Maybe someone else will come along. But all you can really hope for is that it’s not too painful. And… and I guess if you’re smart about it, you enjoy it while it lasts, that shaded comfort and the cold water at the bottom. That’s what the beginning of a relationship feels like.
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Fuck. The end of a relationship. The end of relationship feels like… okay you know that quote about how all happy families are alike, but all unhappy families are unalike in their own way? I think that the beginnings of relationships are all sort of echoes of each other, especially for any one single person, but the ends of relationships are all different. They all depend on… on who you are, and who you discover the other person to be, and where you are and they’re all mess and complicated and painful or not painful in their own way. It depends on if you’re the one ending it or if the other person is the one ending it. But what they all have in common…. I think is… is a hope that you won’t come out of it feeling numb. That you’ve experience a lot in such little time and… all you can do is hold out hope that maybe you can feel as intensely again.
photo interview series
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GRADUATION From beginning to end, huh? Is that the narrative? Summer is upon us. With the summer comes graduation, the perfect example of life’s broken narrative. Every year youths commemorate the completion of their education, be it: College High School Middle School: absurd because all you’ve learned by the time you’ve finished eighth grade is to be irrationally critical of your physical appearance Elementary School: sillier still because by the end of 5th grade all children have learned is to think they’re hot shit because they’re going to be in a completely different building next year Kindergarten: Congratulations! You’ve mastered “Z”! Now you have all 26 letters at your disposable. Go forth with your alphabet and conquer the world!
Graduations are tedious celebrations thrown for bored children, who only care about whatever party is going on afterwards, attended by bored families, who only care about one person out of the hundreds being recognized in the first place. There’s a lot of talking and walking and names and a song or two, but for sheer entertainment value watching one is similar to whatever cliché you like to use to express how boring something is – grass growing, paint drying, clock ticking, golf, whatever. The only thing interesting about graduations is that they are called commencements, a title which automatically breaks the narrative. A person finishes 12 years of formal schooling and they graduate in a ceremony whose very name means “a beginning”. “Pomp and Circumstance” blares through an auditorium’s speakers and just like that the difference between the end and the beginning is blurred, erased and finally switched. The end becomes the beginning.
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BY: GREGG LIPKIN
Full disclosure—I am not a 20 something. This may seem like a rather random point of little importance, but if you read the first issue of Umbrella Terms (and I’m assuming you did and enjoyed it because look! Here you are in the middle of issue #2!) it was described, on its very first page no less, as a publication that was, “ . . . created as a means for expression of our angst and outlet for discussion on being a 20-something in the digital age.” I am not a 20 something. I am an oldersomething (full disclosure again – I make words up), not old exactly, but too old to be young. I’m young enough to still remember youth, and old enough to know better. So how do I fit into Umbrella Terms? Well, I am an oldersomething that has been teaching high school for sixteen years. I taught two of the contributors to the first issue, including one of the magazine’s founders. In light of this issue’s theme, “from beginning to end,” she asked me to write something about what high school graduation means from a teacher’s perspective.
So, what is graduation like from this teacher’s perspective? I fucking love it. Not the ceremony itself, obviously. I hate graduation ceremonies, but I love it when students graduate. For many teachers it’s a time for maudlin instant nostalgia. They think about the students that they like and wax rhapsodic about how great they are and how difficult it will be to find students that they like as much. They cry on the last day of school or at graduation and tell the students how much they’re going to miss them almost like they’re trying to keep them from leaving (at times it’s a bit disconcerting, like a difficult, and ridiculously creepy, breakup).
graduation
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Fuck that. I have yet to cry at a graduation. I do not want any of my students to stay. I never have and I never will. Go. Get out. Go forth with that diploma and that alphabet of yours and conquer the world. Look, I’m not complaining. I love teaching and I love my students, but I don’t want them staying around. Graduate and become something truly special. Graduate and become former students. I love former students; they’re one of the two things I love the most.
You see, students are like groceries; at some point every one of them is fresh and new. Like most groceries though, they all come with an expiration date. This date is usually graduation, and that’s the beautiful paradox of it all. Students can’t wait to graduate, to finish high school and move on and begin something new, but it takes graduation, this supposed ending, this fucking expiration date, to signal the beginning of an entirely new relationship between teachers and their best students. The best ones live past their expiration dates. They remain an active part of your life. I have former students like this, several of them in fact, and I absolutely love them. They are mystudents and they always will be. Mystudents still send me texts or emails regularly. Mystudents still ask me what book they should read next (no seriously, I have 30 year old students with kids of their own that still ask me for their next title). Mystudents visit me at school. Mystudents send me stories detailing the ways I impacted their lives, and in doing so they continue to impact mine. Graduation is the catalyst for this.
“The best ones live past their expiration dates.”
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Prior to graduation I have students that are my students, but only a former student who is great enough to outlive his or her expiration date becomes one of mystudents. My students work hard in my class and try to get a good grade, but mystudents work hard in life and try to make me proud. They keep me posted on their successes and their failures; ask for advice and are finally willing to give some. Mystudents and I have history and I pay very close attention to their accomplishments because they are my accomplishment.
Mystudents are so much more than my students are (but here’s why my job is so great. The second of the two things that I love the most is new students. New students aren’t the best . . . yet. They are still too fresh and far away from their expiration dates. They’re not mystudents, but they are my students with potential!), and I am a bit more than just a teacher to them. I’m the one they have to try to figure out how to best describe to their college roommates when they are asked in confusion, “Why do you still talk to your high school English teacher so much?” I am the one who got to sit with one of them at a café for two and a half hours once drinking coffee and talking about an idea for a new online magazine.
I got to smile at one of mystudents and say, “Yeah, Umbrella Terms would be a great title.” When I met her at the beginning of her sophomore year in high school I doubt either one of us thought it would end up like this. Of course this is only issue #2, so it’s really just the beginning. Stupid broken narrative.
graduation
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The beginning of a relationship feels like‌ Invincibility. Or like taking a lot of drugs. Because you have all these chemicals rushing through your brain that are telling you that everything is awesome and nothing can go wrong, you just want to feel like this forever. And nothing can touch you.
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I feel like this one is a lot harder… Like you’re coming down from drugs. Like… I mean in a lot of ways it feels inevitable, because you know that it’s coming. Even if you’re not the one to initiate it. But it feels like the world is falling apart inside of you. But everything around you stays the same. Yeah, that’s all I got.
photo interview series
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DEATH intro: death
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why death
BY: ANGEL HARPER
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isn’t sad T
his is my first and, so far, only tattoo. I came up with the idea four years ago, but the story spans my whole life. This is the story behind it.
My first experience with death was my beta fish, Mr. Wiggles, when I was around 3 or 4. He had wiggled (ha) his way under the grate below the rocks in his tank and starved himself. My parents and I buried him on the right side of the garage in the front yard of the house where we lived at the time. They laid him on a sponge and put him in a baggie and they let me put him in the ground that night. Afterwards, I went into my room, turned the light off in his tank, and went to bed. I left the empty tank in my room for weeks. I remember staring at the empty thing on several occasions. I looked at it more when he was gone than I ever did when he was around. Fast forward a couple years to when I was in elementary school. My mom worked early in the morning, before school started, so she would drop me off at my grandparents’ house and I would sleep a little more there. Then my Grandpa Harper would help me get ready and take me to school, and after school I walked home to him. Every day, he told me he was gonna dance at my wedding. It was comforting. Every day he reminded me that he wasn’t going anywhere, and that he was actively looking forward to sharing my special day with me. I spent every morning and afternoon with my Grandpa Harper during school time up until sixth grade, when he had a stroke one Wednesday evening after I had already gone home. It was very touch and go at first, but eventually he stabilized. He was admitted to a rehabilitation center and the first time I visited him was on his birthday, March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day. He couldn’t move, speak, or eat. All he could do was roll his eyes around the room. I wasn’t ever sure he even knew we were there.
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This went on for three years. About a year in, I stopped visiting. I couldn’t watch him wither. The feeding tube could only do so much. He was a drooling, desperate-eyed shell of the man I knew. Towards the end, my dad called to tell me that it was probably time to say goodbye. He hadn’t been happy that I skipped so many visits so this was his last chance to guilt me into going, and I completely understood why. So my mom agreed to take me to say goodbye the next morning before school. He was in hospice now. My mom and I stood outside of his room, and she said I should go in alone. So I did. I crossed the big room to his bedside. He was lying on his back, eyes closed, and it wasn’t until I got close enough that I knew something was wrong. He was slack-jawed, and pooled in the crevices of skin stretched over his exposed collarbone was this creamy-looking vomit that had dribbled from the corner of his mouth. I left the room and told my mom something was wrong. She checked herself, then immediately called for the nurse. She told us that he must have just passed. I didn’t cry. I sat in the car while my mom called my grandma to let her know. Then, my mom dropped me off at school. The whole incident was so short that I hadn’t even missed my first period class. I was only minutes late. I didn’t cry at the funeral, either. There were moments when I thought I was about to, but for some reason I stopped myself. I used to have this thing about not crying in front of people. Outside, at the gravesite, I looked on as my family listened to the final prayer. When they started cranking the casket down into the ground, I saw my 3 or 4 year old hands lowering Mr. Wiggles in his sponge casket into the dirt that
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one night, and I was about to lose it. I calmly walked myself to the car. My mom followed, and asked if I was ready to leave. I said yes. I didn’t even go to the after-gathering. I couldn’t see that house again, the one where he told me day in and day out that he would dance at my wedding. ’Cause even though I didn’t see it through, I knew he was in the ground. And how could I be reminded of that promise when it was so painfully clear that he wasn’t going to be able to fulfill it? I didn’t go back to that house for a very long time. It would have been like watching the fish’s empty tank. Four years later, my senior year of high school, my favorite English teacher tasked our Modern Lit class with creating a 10-song soundtrack to our lives that was reminiscent of Charlie’s mix tapes in The Perks of Being A Wallflower, which we had just finished reading. The catch was you had to write a piece along with each song, and the teacher had to be able to look at the lyrics and your piece side by side and see the connection. The lyrics had to match your experiences word for word. Track 7 on my soundtrack was “Stop This Train” by John Mayer. The song fit my feelings about death at the time perfectly. Once I figured out what death was, it crept into my every thought. Every interaction was plagued with the realization that someday, we would all be dead. We were all just living in the in-between, chit-chatting and puttering around until we were all in the ground. By way of the song’s accompanying piece, I was able to put into words what I had been feeling for so long: “What I realized after he was gone was something I wish I hadn’t, because once you entertain the thought it’s real. It comes back when things are bad, but especially when things are good. It sneaks up conveniently when you’re laughing with your friends, or your family, or your mom. You remember that one day, they’re
why death isn’t sad
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birds, throughout
history
going to be gone. And you won’t be able to laugh with them anymore. And of course their memory is left, but that’s nowhere near the same, no matter how much you try to convince yourself it is. I had a dream once that my mother died. I woke up crying and went looking for her, positive it was real, that she was gone. I was so relieved when I found her. But the thing is, one day it won’t be a dream. One day she will die. Every moment brings you closer to being as far away as possible from every single person you love.” I realized that my grandpa’s promise to dance at my wedding had kept me from understanding death. He had me stuck in this unrealistic understanding of time where he wasn’t going anywhere but my wedding. And there, four years after his death, I finally got it. Over time, this transformed from a day-to-day worry into a concise understanding of the world. But that didn’t make it any less scary. Until later that same year, when our next project rolled around. We had just finished reading Watchmen, which is basically a combination of several archetypes of superheroes thrown into one story to tell a larger story. So, we were tasked with picking a story to retell through research about our chosen subject. I chose the story of Death and Persephone. In doing research for the project, I read a lot about death. Around the same time, I had this outside cat that brought a half-dead sparrow into my bedroom. The bird was in pain, and my mom told me to take it outside for a mercy kill. By my hands, the sparrow died.
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have
represented
death.
One of the first things I learned for the project was that the word for “four” and “death” was the same in Japanese––“shi”––and that in numerology, the number four represents fate. Second was that birds, throughout history, have represented death. But most importantly I learned that several civilizations, in one way or another, were built upon the idea of leaving a legacy behind after death. The point of doing anything worthwhile was to be remembered for it once you were gone. And while this may seem kind of selfish and archaic, the important thing to realize is that lives were built in the anticipation of death, and I believe they still are. But to anticipate death is to recognize it. And recognizing death is very important and healthy, I think. It’s like a light at the end of the tunnel, in a way. It’s knowing that nothing lasts forever. It’s knowing to appreciate what you have while you have it. It’s not existing in this absence of time or space where everyone you love will always be with you at your wedding. To represent this epiphany, I kept a picture of four sparrows sitting on a branch. I decided I wanted it tattooed on my shoulder so the idea of death would be right there, sitting on my shoulder, always. My very own memento mori. Four years after that, which is now, I finally had the means and the courage to do it. And here it is. It’s kind of my own way of remembering to look at the fish tank and appreciate what’s in it before its empty. And that’s the story behind my tattoo.
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an interview with
DIANA BLAINE Q: Can you talk a little about your field of study/academic specialties?
A: I study representations of death
in media--films, television, music videos, news--to see how these narratives interpret the phenomenon. In other words, do they tell a story of hope? or religious redemption? or revenge? or monstrous eruption? or brilliant detective work? or sad loss? or heroic sacrifice? Usually it is one of the above, and that tells us about who we are as a people.
Q: How did you begin studying death?
A: I was a graduate student working
on a PhD in American Literature at UCLA. I noticed corpses of women in several of the novels we were reading and when the professor failed to mention them I decided to make this my dissertation
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By: chelsee bergen & Erik project, to ferret out the symbolic significance. Over time it was brought to my attention by students that the corpses weren’t only in fiction. They also appeared in popular culture, so I expanded my research to include these areas. In fact I became more interested in what stories about death we consume in the mainstream. How many of us are reading Faulkner compared to watching CSI or The Walking Dead?
Q: How do you think people’s
interactions with death have changed as a result of the digital age, when things like Facebook pages can be memorialized post-mortem for instance?
A: In general Americans have great
difficulty letting go and accepting natural cycles. Digital immortality only exacerbates this as we now live online-life has become one big representation. So why accept death at all? We never wanted to anyway, at least since the early twentieth-century. Letting us focus on images and having interaction with
ka Hang
Diana Blaine is an expert on scandals, sexism and female body image. Blaine is an associate teaching professor in the Writing Program in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Her expertise spans from dead women in the media to post structuralism and the work of William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon and Toni Morrison.
them provides yet another way to avoid grieving. There’s even a website now, eterni.me, that constructs a virtual you after death so that your friends and relatives can continue to converse with you. I shit you not. Your answers are made up of a compilation of everything you ever posted online. My recommendation would be to face the howling loss of those we love instead of hanging onto this virtual lie.
Q: Can you talk a little about how your study of death has influenced your perspective on modern life?
A:
Studying death is the best thing anyone can do who wants to live fully and authentically. Pretty soon into the research you will find that it loses a lot of the mystery and the junk we’ve heaped upon it in this deathaverse nation. Then life becomes more meaningful since death isn’t something to be avoided. I find students are elated to get even a little bit of
information about actual--not fictional--death. It gives them a feeling of what I will call power. Any time we move out of ignorance on a subject we get that ability to make choices we never knew we had. I am mostly struck by the vast gap between actual death and our representations of it, which tend to be obsessed with sensational aspects that rarely attach to the actual thing. I just walked with a beloved mentor through her final days. It was awful and beautiful and silly and sad and transformational. Never did it remind me of what I see on the screen, sexy murder victims, shrieking corpses, homicidal robots, and that gap drove home to me how badly we need to be educated about real death so that we can honor the endings of those we love, including, and especially, ourselves.
diana blaine
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I’M
Outside the operating room disguise: robes hid my borro your room as a curious obse teach. And I’m sorry for that vulnerability to satisfy crass
SORRY BY: ENA NIELSEN
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You were a stranger. After, I though it was odd, how I didn’t know you at all. I didn’t know the sound of your voice when you got excited; your favorite food to eat on a sticky summer day; your hopes and your failures; your family. I didn’t know any of it. But I knew what you looked like at your most vulnerable–split open and passed out with masked men wrist deep inside you. And I knew you were going to die. And I’m sorry.
doors I donned the green armor that formed my impostors owed scrubs, a mask obscured my too-young face. I entered erver, brought to you by a generous surgeon eager to t too–how we used your body and illness and ignored your curiosity. I didn’t know you, so you became a curio.
Y
When I entered your room, I couldn’t see you. Too many surgeons bent over you, heads tilted like scrupulous, hungry carrion crows. So our introduction began with smell. It was bile, and preservatives, and medicines, and burning, cauterized flesh. It was unpleasant for only an instant, and then it was mesmerizing. It held a perverse magic–something simultaneously base animal and god-like. It was the godliness that bewitched me, I think. That men could grip the most sensitive parts of your flesh and stitch you up like a rag doll, preventing death like crude wizards. I wanted so badly to be in their club, to make my impostors armor real and defy death with brazen cuts and careful stitches. I wanted so badly to believe everything and everyone was fixable.
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And I’m sorry, but I don’t think they fixed you. I don’t think you were fixable. I didn’t know this, at first. It takes a while for childish fantasies of medical wizardry to succumb to the most depressing of realities, after all. I knew what Death was before you. I like to believe I was not so naive as to believe in the immortality that so often accompanied the magic of my youth. But you gave me something new. You made Death intimate and inevitable–you forced my abstract knowledge to apply to your too-tangible being. I could smell the Death–hidden cloying sweet and rotting behind the acrid burn of your charred liver and leaking intestines. I saw the Death in the surgeon’s eyes as he glared at your misaligned insides–puzzling out the knots of your flesh and the masses of scar tissue that marked ancient operations. I could hear the Death coming the words of professionals–phrases like “recurring” and “metastatic” and “malignant.” I think, sir, you changed my knowledge to acceptance.
Really, I had seen these things before. I had heard and smelled iterations of that operating room before. But only with you did I see they amounted to Death. Not immediately, but soon. And when I saw that, I wished you were not a stranger. So I made up a life for you. Is that odd? You looked so lonely and so fragile, lying on the smooth reflective surface of the operating table, surrounded by people who spoke of you as though you didn’t exist– as if the right combination of anesthetic made your humanness disappear in a puff of chemicals. But please, don’t blame them. I imagine it is hard to slice open flesh and dig into organs when the mind clings too strongly to the personality that animates them. I was too unpracticed in the art of cool detachment to emulate them. And I’m sorry, but I so wanted to disconnect from you and hide behind the paper shield of my doctor costume.
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Instead, I felt forced to connect in some way to you–an animal desire to comfort the lost and be comforted in return. I imagined a family for you. A smiling wife (was she dying too?), devoted children (did you even have any?), a house with a garden full of tomatoes and squash and blooming jasmine (do you even like that smell?). I gave you the kind of backstory they show on commercials–a shining, plastic-wrapped American Dream overflowing with profound and simple joys. Did you have that life, sir? Did someone take care of you after the half-a-dozen surgeries left you congealed and sticking with scar tissue? Were you loved? I hope so. And I’m sorry I didn’t know any of it. I’m sorry I wanted to hide from the knowing. I’m sorry I only knew you through your dying smell and dying organs and your Death.
i’m sorry
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BY: SARA MARDAM-BEY
doodles about death
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people doing awesome things
1
HANK BUTITTA
HANK BOUGHT A BUS : We could try and tell you about all the reasons that this project is awesome, but when it comes to exploring how an old school bus was converted into a tiny living space (!) you really need to see it to understand how truly awesome it is. Check out hankboughtabus.com and marvel at the coolness. Umbrella Terms tour bus, anyone?
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Know someone doing something awesome? Let us know via email, we’d love to feature them!
2 SHELTER CO.
In Shelter Co’s own words, they are “a pop up lodging service catering to groups looking for an overnight outdoor experience. The idea was born out of a love for California’s diverse landscape combined with nostalgia for the days of summer camp. Shelter Co. provides fully furnished canvas tents and all necessary amenities for group camping trips, weddings, family reunions, corporate retreats, and music festivals.” Like Hank’s Bus, you really have to see Shelter Co’s work to understand just how cool it is. Camping in 400 thread count bedding with a stocked library and a full bar? Sign us up. http://shelter-co.com
awesomeness
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issue#3: contributor’s gu FO R O U R N E X T I SS U E , W E ’ V E B E E X P LO R I N G T H E T H E M E “AW K WA R D. ”
EXAMPLE QUESTIONS: 1. What’s the most awkward thing that has ever happened to you? 2. Is feeling awkward connected to feeling ashamed? 3. What does it mean to be socially awkward? 4. Does technology allow you to be less awkward? How does it add to awkwardness? 5. How has the meaning of awkward changed as you’ve grown up? 6. Is there a formula to not being awkward? 7. What is the opposite of awkward?
EXAMPLES OF CONTENT: • • • • • •
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Cover Art Essays Creative Writing (Poetry, Personal Narrative, Short Fiction) Art (Photography, Drawings, Animation, Video, etc.) Creative Combinations of All of the Above Check out past issues for samples of some of the kind of work we’re looking for.
uide
AWKWARD
DEADLINES: Draft: Please submit a draft of your content by September 1, 2014. Drafts do not need to be a complete first draft, but should convey your writing style and intended content of the piece. Download our submission form at umbrellaterms.com and email it to umbrellatermsmagazine@gmail.com. Finalized Content: All content must be finalized by September 30, 2014. Publish Date: The second issue will come out October 31, 2014.
contributor’s guide
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Š 2014 Umbrella Terms Magazine Los Angeles, CA Editors: Erika Hang & Chelsee Bergen umbrellatermsmagazine@gmail.com umbrellaterms.com