UNROOTED by UNROOTED

UNROOTED ISSUE ONE // DECEMBER 2013

UNROOTED ISSUE ONE | DECEMBER 2013

STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF Erin Borzak CREATIVE DIRECTOR Mary Coggins FEATURES EDITOR Courtney O’Connor LITERARY EDITOR Emily Bills SOCIAL MEDIA Christine Hillmann Ramna Safeer Caroline D’Andrea

CONTRIBUTORS Clare Dalingwater Rachel Perkins Annie Stokes Maddie Maschger Trevor Richardson Phillip Russell Parker Woods Jessa Tremblay Nicole Holman Sarah Kennedy Katey Alegre Alizabeth Patterson Colleen Brown Raleigh Dale Kristina H COVER PHOTO: MADDIE MASCHGER INSIDE COVER PHOTO: ALIZABETH PATTERSON

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 4

Dear readers, Some people know how to change the world. And the rest of us are just flailing in the dark. But have you ever stopped to think that maybe we’re not? That every day, every little bit of our existence is changing the world? I’m here to tell you that we are, that it will be, and that we always will be changing the world. Some people are out to save humanity in massive ways. I have friends who have started nonprofits, who volunteer in the community every week. Who spread love and acceptance like wild-fire. And then there’s me. For a long time I envied those people. The ones who could start something like a budding supernova turning into an entire galaxy. A small idea that turns into to something incredible, and wholly unprecedented. All of that is to say that this, this wild and crazy dream of mine, is my supernova. What I want more than anything is to create a place to share, a place to dream, and a place to explore. To bring together the confusion and beauty and magic of the world around us and the world inside of us. Our memories, stories, pasts, and talents. The music we love and the music we create. The art that moves us and the way we move art. You might think you’re small in all of this, but let me tell you now - you’re not. The things you put into the world, however small, are changing it. Everything is in flux, and your stories are a part of it. The goal of Unrooted is to bring that together. To remind, embrace, and accentuate the importance of every story we are a part of. No matter how we tell them, no matter how long they are, we ought not to forget those stories. Any of them, for any reason. So I’m collecting them and sharing them. It might not change the world in some monumental, explosive way. But it’s the best way I know how. Always,

ERIN 5

UNROOTED +

Dazey

Images by Rachel Perkins and Erin Borzak

MIDWESTERN SUMMER + BEACH HOUSE MADDIE MASCHGER

NEWFOUND CLARITY Trevor Richardson

Te a L e a v e s by Phillip Russell She drinks her coffee slowly when she is thinking of what to say. I know this because she did it back then, so many months ago, when we’d met up the first time. She sips it so slowly that her muscles telegraph the liquid’s descent down her throat. She didn’t have coffee in her apartment today so she started making tea instead. It was a sweltering summer the year I met her. The kind where heat comes alive embracing you in its arms. The kind of heat that makes you wonder if you’d left the oven door open at home. I spent most of my time at the lake trying to cool off. For some reason, I thought no one would have the same sentiments. You’ve changed the place up a bit.

I was ready for a change. The lake is where I first saw her. She was swimming out in the deep, much further than anyone else dared to go. She was the kind of girl that didn’t mind getting her hair wet. Even though my vision without my glasses was about as clouded as an old man whose eyes were adorned with a murky cataract I could tell that her beauty was simply unfair. She came to shore with such grace I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told me she was born in the water, but no one said a word. We allow extraordinary things to pass us by so often nowadays. I wiped my grimy glasses off and fumbled to plaster them back on my face before she walked passed. Her hair mimicked the sand that was caked so adamantly on her feet and at that moment I wished I was that sand. I wanted to cling on to her even though I knew she’d probably brush me off eventually. No one on the beach seemed to notice her. She was a diamond hidden in plain sight and for once my vision hadn’t failed me. She walked passed sparring a smile that made me question whether I was sweating because of the heat or because I’d just fallen in love. I’m not sure what came over me, but without a second thought I ran up and asked her to coffee. She told me she couldn’t that day, that she had to work, but she asked for my number. You’ve been a little distant lately. I think I was right about us. Right about what? I left the beach that day wondering if I’d ever see her again—if

I had even seen her at all. Weeks went by and I didn’t hear from her. Instead, I spent my time hugging a microscope. The leaves were beginning to turn, or at least that’s how it looked from the building’s surveillance cameras. Burnt coffee and vending machine sandwiches kept me alive in that empty lab. It’s funny how close you can get to the vending machine guy when there’s no one else around. And then one gloomy day, when the parking lot trees bent and their rotting limbs broke violently in the roaring gusts of the grey evening, she called. A week later I found myself sitting in her apartment in front of a steaming cup of dark coffee—its earthy brown color favoring her eyes that were nestled between two sets of pine needle lashes. She pushed a sugar dish toward me. It looked to be hand painted, lime green with deep red polka-dots, piled to top with shard after shard of the sweet sugar. I piled teaspoon after teaspoon of the white crystals into my cup stirring them into nothingness. The coffee was sweet, I would later find out her lips were too. The tea is done. This is pretty bitter. I can’t help that—that’s just the way it is. I asked her question after question, with each inquiry she sipped at her coffee slowly, deliberately and I watched her lips curl around the porcelain cup, her eyes closing as she formulated her responses. I’m not really sure when it happened. I guess you never really know. The little things just add up.

Little things like forgetting to put the toilet lid down after you piss or laughing at her when she says something stupid. We only ever acknowledge the little things when they are sweet. When they are sweet fragmentary crystals that stir into the bigger picture. Each word of her responses rolled from her tongue and sang in my eardrums and I found myself falling harder with each one. She’d said she wasn’t sure about me at first, that she just had some feeling that we weren’t meant to be, but decided to give me a shot anyway—decided to take a nice slow pull and see where it led. That was the reason why it took her so long to call. Don’t you have any sweetener? I think I’m all out of sugar.

VOID PARKER WOODS

I wanted to explore the human form while capturing a darkness that is within every individual- myself included. The photographs juxtapose an ethereal darkness within oneself with the familiarity of benign forms and figures that are rooted in every individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s memory. Darkness - innocence.

image by Jessa Tremblay

BABY TEETH SARAH KENNEDY

Everybody looses their baby teeth. At the time it is all fun and games: tying string around a doorknob, showing off the gaps, & checking under pillows. It really wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t until I reflected back on these incidents that I realized how important of a transition this was. With the roots of the baby teeth exposed, childhood begins to end. Life moves on. A new phase begins.55

The woman on her break asked if she could sit with me. She seemed wary of me. As if I might be offended that the cigarette she was smoking might taint my virgin lungs when in fact she had no idea what I have and have not inhaled. I encouraged her to sit down. I took a deep breath; I hoped that some of her smoke would crawl into my lungs. Smoke is not a threat to me. I feel as if I am immune to the deadly addictiveness our teachers taught us about in elementary school. It gave me the intense desire to go out and buy my own pack of cigarettes. I like to think that I can smoke or drink or whatever the fuck I want and be able to come out unhurt. - Katey Alegre

Roots & Reflections Alizabeth Patterson

Typewriter Series Colleen Brown

CONFETTI DREAMS by

Raleigh Dale

The harsh lines and marble expressions of passing faces starkly contrast the whirls of confetti laid to rest in grungy street corners and filthy storm drains; Firenze is a confetti graveyard. We travelers and tourists, like confetti, are interesting for a short time, that brief moment when we arrive, incandescent with our childlike glows and sparkling, eager eyes. We’re accessories for a good time, but excitement wanes as we float to the ground, becoming an every day nuisance rather than an occasional joy. I’m an American, discarded like Italian confetti: I fit in where I can, sinking into corners, slipping into alleys, sliding past natives, yet I somehow still feel under foot - pretty but useless. We wear our confetti clothes, speak in our confetti voices, and we live in a flashy, false reality that tells us we belong here, this could be our home. But the reality is that we’re only confetti at night, when we’re smoking outside bars and clubs, wearing our confetti jewelry, drinking our confetti drinks, selling ourselves as the Americans Italians already know we are. Men love us, and we love the attention of being - for a moment - risen to a new height. In the morning, we’re passed by without notice, pretty but useless, like confetti laid to rest in grungy street corners and filthy storm drains.

I AM FOR YOU Kristina H.

UNROOTED ISSUE ONE DECEMBER 2013 FOR MORE VISIT US AT UNROOTEDMAG.COM