Janus a magazine of literature and arts ____________________ volume 534 2014—2015 Winter edition ____________________ The Williston Northampton School Easthampton, Massachusetts
Staff Editors in Chief…………….Cameron Hill Alex Li Layout Guru……………….Olivia Smith Arts Editors………………..Sabaat Karem Brenna Quirk Online Editors……………..Kenzie Possee Emma Kaisla Members…………………..Matri Dalal Umi Keezing Pinky King Noah Jackson Anna Wilinsky Emily Yeager
Table of Contents Temple of Heaven by Lu Zheng Monkey King by Yu Wei Cao A Day in France by Alex Li Yearning by Anonymous Sawyer by Kenzie Possee Beach Day by Noah Jackson The Monk by Yu Wei Cao Stressed Student by Umi Keezing Savannah GA by Kenzie Possee by Harshvardhan Shah A Path by the Lake by Cameron Hill Hand Study by Sabaat Karem The No Brainer by Umi Keezing The Scottish Rite Temple, Savannah, GA by Kenzie Possee The Cylinder by Norio Chan Groceries by Olivia Smith
“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” ~ Max Ehrman, “Desiderata”
Temple of Heaven By Lu Zheng
Monkey King by Yu Wei Cao
A Day in France By Alex Li
I have read of lovers who have locked their love in the Seine and who take away their open eyes from it to view unblemished reality.
I have also read of lovers who have looked towards the Seine and who have thrown away their promised bands, embossed with demonstrations expressions that lay heavy, like the free consciousness of birds.
Yearning By Anonymous
I want to paint the blank canvas of your mind And form gold skies And unimaginable realities. I want to crawl into your nightmares And turn them into your fantasies.
I wonder if I am in your dreams.
I want to know what you think of me Moments before you fall to sleep. I wonder if it’s the same way I think of you Before I let my mind fall into the deep.
Sawyer by Kenzie Possee
Beach Day By Noah Jackson I heard the monotonous waves roll in against the shore. The vast expanse of the sea opened before me. The sun was blinding and it warmed the sand beneath the soft, cotton towel I was lying on. The breeze ran gently across the ocean, free to move however it wanted. The smell of low tide permeated the air as soft footsteps came closer and closer. “No, I am not going to marry you!” I yelled. “Mommy, Dad is going to take us to the ice cream truck,” a small voice chirped. “Sounds great, dear.” “Would you like to come with us?” another voice added. “Not now, dear, Mommy is trying to relax.” “Oh, okay.” The small footsteps scattered away as relative silence ensued. It was short-lived. Soon a large flock of seagulls flew overhead. They could first be heard, chirping their obnoxious screams. Then, what seemed to be one hundred flew overhead their shadows like a net, weaving in and out of each other as if to capture the beach. As if to capture me. My chest soon tightened with the sense of confinement. “No, I am not going to marry you!” I yelled. “You’ll regret that.” He grabbed my arm but I pulled away and ran. “Just keep running,” I thought. “Just keep running.” “Relax,” I told myself. I soon realized I needed to doze off to get the relaxation I needed. I closed my eyes, trying not to think of anything. “Sweetie, we’re back,” a voice boomed. Soon all that could be heard were the growing echoes of footsteps in my mind, perpetually rising until the sound was too unbearable that I had to open my eyes. “Great,” was all I could muster. “We’re all going to take a dip in the water. Do you think you’re up for it?” “I’m very tired, actually; I think I am just going to try to sleep a little.” “Oh come on, the water is nice, just what you need to be invigorated.” “By all means don’t let me spoil your fun,” I said, knowing how truthfully dull the water was.
“Suit yourself. Come on kids, Mommy is tired.” They soon left and the breeze quickened. “No, I am not going to marry you!” I yelled. “You’ll regret that.” He grabbed my arm but I pulled away and ran. “Just keep running,” I thought. “Just keep running, I will never hear from him again.” The calls kept coming until I changed my number. I moved out of the town. I could be free. Free from the life he wanted me to live, traveling in his van to sell whatever it was he sold. “You’ll regret that,” was all he had the chance to say. As I read in the paper, he later went to jail. Freedom, just as I had wanted. I relished the lonely nights sitting in darkness by myself, just thinking. “I will never get married,” I decided. Once again I closed my eyes, needing more than anything to sleep. Soon a calming sensation rushed over me. The darkness grew darker and darker as I continued to sink into my own mind. Suddenly my stomach turned as if I was falling slowly and the ground had simply vanished below me. With every breath a dark-colored energy would enter my body and push out the memories of my life, dropping me farther and farther into the earth and away. As the distance developed further I could feel more. I could feel my thoughts. I could feel every single thought I could create and know it was my own. I could feel my heart pulse with every realization and I could feel myself. As the energy grew, I grew, and soon I became more than I had ever been. I was unstoppable. My body felt paralyzed but my mind was free; in this darkness I could see more than I had ever been able to see. The memories were soon gone and I felt complete. The falling had stopped and I was suspended, just floating in the space I had to myself. The journey was over. “You must get married!” her voice yelled. Soon a small light permeated the darkness. It vanquished everything around it and started to engulf me. I awoke to a bright light. “The sun,” I thought, wondering if I had put on sunscreen. Then I realized I was cold. The towel was gone. The waves, the breeze, and the seagulls were all gone. I tried to get up, but there were two straps restraining me to a metal table. The sun was a light, shaking as it hung from the ceiling. I could hear the rumble of tiers and realized I was in a van. Strapped down, all I could see were walls, decorated by saws and knives. The floor was tinted with red and the doors were chained. Soon the van stopped, the light flicked off, and I was once again in darkness. “You’ll regret that,” I knew.
The Monk by Yu Wei Cao
Stressed Student By Umi Keezing as papers fall around me enveloping me in calculus problems and physics tests and grades I bat them away with a pencil but they only withdraw when the graphite forms the words or numbers that solve the puzzles which I attempt to address in the vain hope of completing my homework in time for a brief reprieve before the next onslaught of assignments threatens to engulf me because I immerse myself in academics the view through my window becomes abstract art the tree house in my backyard a fairytale from my childhood while the story in my English binder becomes increasingly real the letters sharpening as the autumn leaves outside blur with my deteriorating vision whether or not I study obscure concepts to gain insight into reality I end up distancing myself from the scent of my backyard the hubbub of Northampton and the embraces of my long-lost friends who also abandon the world to better analyze its mechanisms to be accepted to college where the workload piles higher and higher as offices replace dormitories the ceaseless cycle of studying synchronizes with the sleep cycle more than the revolutions of Earth dizzying me though I barely feel the lightheadedness due to my perpetual headache that only abates when I have time to pause on the sidewalk a breeze caressing my face and remember that tangibility exists outside of hands-on chemistry experiments and poignant poetry for an instant I recall the existence of a third dimension and search for escape routes from the two that imprison me before realizing that no such route exists without exertion that is not merely mental and is therefore beyond my brain-dominated self so I avert my nearsighted eyes from the treetops and fix them on my desktop of artificial wood and sharpen my pencil
Savannah GA by Kenzie Possee
By Harshvardhan Shah
A Path by the Lake By Cameron Hill There’s a path by the lake. And when you walk it at midnight the pebbles that reel under one’s feet make no sound. And the gray stones turn purple and green and clear as gemstones. She knew the path by the lake. I came upon it quite by chance, the way one does. The best mistakes are made by chance. It wasn’t midnight. Nearly twilight. The dusk settled like a fog. First around my forehead, I could feel the dark dampness tug my curls under my hat; then my eyes and noes and I could smell something malevolent creep into the air; then down my chest and legs where it stopped right at my ankles so a line of daylight lay over the ground. The bundle that auntie said was on no account not to be thrown in the woods thrummed against my thigh when I stood still, contemplating the strangeness of not-absolutely-nighttime. I had meant to find the woods. But I was not in the woods. I had found the path by the lake, the one she must have found years ago. The woods were all around. I might have easily retraced my steps and gone to find the place where I was to forget the bundle that was on no account to be remembered to be brought home, but I did not. I walked the path around the lake. Why didn’t she show me the path before? As I walked around I noticed things I would have liked to know. A quarter way ‘round and I decided that goodness was useless. Half way and I realized that wickedness was only wickedness because people called it so. Three quarters and I dropped the bundle that was making strange noises and left it for the next person to pick up off the path by the lake that she found before I. The dampness on my head was pleasant now, and the way the air curled up my nostrils no longer bothered me. And just before I got back to the point where I started, I saw something strange. A little girl sat on the grass off the path with her knees tucked under her. She rested a cheek on one knee so she could watch the path as I walked down it. She was so small and so curled up that nearly all of her was in the sliver of sunlight on the ground. Her bright hair was worn loose and the ends of it glowed while the rest was dulled by shadow. And suddenly, I realized. It was her, as I had known her a decade ago, when we were children. And her eyes, once I could see them, were as welcoming as they had ever been, and that spiteful little grin she wore was just like the one I saw after she cut the arms and legs off Mary’s dolls because she had pointed out her freckles. She does have freckles, poor darling. “Why have you come?” she asked, when I sat beside her. She turned her face up to look at me now, when I was the smaller one then.
“I was meant to be in the woods,” I said, because she was the one who told lies. “But I like this place better.” “You haven’t really seen it yet,” she smiled. “But you will soon, you see, if you do as I say.” “What choice have I? I always do what you say.” And soon she was tugging at my coat and hat and gloves, and my skirt and sweater and shirt, and my stockings and petticoat and slip. And she was leading me across the path and down the sloping grass by the lake. “You must see the path at midnight,” said she. And now I walk the path at midnight, with her. I walk the path when it changes in the night and opens into the void. Round and round and round in an endless circle. For what is life but that?
Hand Study by Sabaat Karem
The No Brainer By Umi Keezing I stare blankly at the white room. White walls, white sheets. The surgeon in the white uniform sits beside my bed, watching me with an expression of—of what? I’m blanking out. “Are you awake?” says the surgeon. I’m too tired to think about hard questions. I also feel kind of sick. “I don’t know,” I say. “Are you pleased not to know?” says the surgeon. His voice sounds like it’s far away. “What?” I say. “Never mind.” The surgeon sighs. “Looks like the operation was a success, at any rate.” I sit up. It makes my head hurt, so I lie down again. There’s a piece of paper with black writing on my pillow. “What’s that?” I say. “A letter you wrote to yourself,” says the surgeon. I look at the black writing. It makes my head hurt even more. Still, I feel like it’s—how do I say it? Oh yeah, like it’s important. I kind of remember writing it, but not what it says. I start to read it. It says “M-Y, space, D-E-A-R.” “What does ‘dare’ mean?” I say. The surgeon’s eyes make a funny circle. He picks up the paper and says, “Let me just read it aloud to you.” “Okay,” I say. The white light makes my head hurt a lot. I put my pillow on my face. That feels better. “‘My dear post-surgical self,’” the surgeon reads. “‘How have you fared during your convalescence?’” “What does ‘convalescence’ mean?” I say under my pillow. “Save your questions for later,” says the surgeon. He reads, “‘Congratulations on your acquisition of dimwittedness. The removal of your superfluous neurons will serve you well. “‘Paradoxically, your simplicity of thought will ameliorate your ability to express yourself. Due to their lack of intricacy, your emotions will require little effort to articulate. They will range from grief to joy, bypassing solipsism, and nihilism, and other tiresome “ism”s. You will discuss them with others, who will…’”
I open my eyes. The surgeon is looking at me. He doesn’t look happy. “What?” I say.
“As draining as the surgery may have been,” says the surgeon, “I thought you’d have the decency to stay awake while I’m doing you a favor.” I look at the paper in his hand. “Oh yeah,” I say. “What does it say next?” The surgeon reads, “Due to their lack of intricacy, your emotions will require little effort to articulate. They will range from grief to joy, bypassing solipsism, and nihilism, and other tiresome “ism”s. You will discuss them with others, who will understand you. ““You will derive genuine pleasure from your everyday activities. Your classes will stimulate your brain enough to hold your interest, motivating you to complete homework assignments and secure a successful future for yourself. Your trips to the mall with your friends will be intellectually bearable, even the hours of comparing nearly identical shades of nail polish. At the school cafeteria, you will never hear the voices around you fade to meaningless babble as you tire of their predictability. Neither friends nor family will accuse you of indifference when you decline to pose questions whose answers you already know. “‘You will never flee to a mountain, the valleys too crowded to accommodate your surplus of thoughts. You will never inch closer to the edge of a cliff, gazing longingly at the abyss beneath you, until you catch sight of a hospital building and recall a newly legalized brain surgery. Most importantly, you will never probe too deeply into the contents of this letter. You will no longer concern yourself with introspection, which will automatically erase your internal strife. “‘Please do not blame me for your mental debilitation. Between you and your brain, I chose to kill your brain. Sincerely, your pre-surgical self.’
“And that’s that,” says the surgeon. “You’ll never be able to reply to her, since she doesn’t exist anymore. I hate that I played a role in her self-destruction.” “That’s sad,” I say. “Did she die?” I don’t really care, since she sounded kind of full of herself. Nothing she said made any sense. She did say something about nail polish and the mall, though. I want to go to the mall.
The Scottish Rite Temple, Savannah, GA by Kenzie Possee
The Cylinder by Norio Chan
Groceries by Olivia Smith I have always been very accomplished at dropping the groceries. Really, ever since I was a little kid one of my greatest accomplishments has been trekking up the apartment steps with two stretched-out white grocery bags in each hand, and dropping them. It’s always oranges, I swear to God. Suddenly there are oranges and grapes and jars of peanut butter bouncing down our small staircase, rolling all the way to the bottom to meet my mother’s feet as she starts to heave her bags up. She rolls her eyes at me every time. “Pick it up!” she says in an exhausted voice. I’m not even that clumsy in other parts of my life. I play three sports, pretty well actually, and I don’t trip a lot. Ninety-nine percent of the time I am a picture of grace. Until of course it comes time to lug the grocery bags up stairs, then I am a mess, scuttling around the apartment to pick up apples that have rolled into our neighbors’ shoes. We even bought those cloth bags once. My mother thought if I couldn’t break the grocery bags I wouldn’t lose control of the groceries. It was a good effort, but generally ineffective. I think we always thought I would grow out of it, the way I grew out of picking my nose and crying every time Clifford The Big Red Dog came on TV because I was scared of him. I grew out of refusing to eat vegetables and I grew out of hating to read. I grew out of always putting my shoes on the wrong feet because I thought it was funny and I grew out of covering my eyes in stickers and pretending to be blind. I did not, however, grow out of dropping the groceries. I guess that I’ve held on to some other things too. I have not, for example, grown out of kicking walls when I’m angry. I still occasionally jam my toes and break my fingers from smashing them into a wall, or a tree, or, more recently, people. I always feel like if I could just hold on to the grocery bags for one walk up the stairs, if I could climb three flights of stairs without tripping on someone’s shoes, or stubbing my toe, or getting distracted and just accidently letting go of the bags, if I could control the grocery bags, maybe I could control my anger. The therapist the school makes me see since I punched that kid in the cafeteria says that it’s a dumb theory. He says that I have control over myself and my body and I’m choosing to hurt people. I tell the therapist for the thousandth time that the kids in the cafeteria were making fun of this girl, and she was about to start crying, and one time in third grade this girl gave me a valentine with a Hershey kiss attached to it, and I didn’t care if she made valentines for the whole class, she made me a valentine and that was damn nice and I could not let these losers in the cafeteria make her cry. He tells me that I could have gotten an adult, I could have done a lot of things, but I didn’t. The therapist is always asking me to pinpoint the anger. What was my breaking point? What made me go crazy, he seems to be asking.
“Can you tell me about your parents?” he asks, and I smile a little. The school must have told him. “My father left when I was six.” He nods, but is not surprised. “And are you angry at your father for leaving you?” The funny thing is that I don’t remember him leaving; I don’t remember coming home and realizing his stuff was gone or anything like that. He and my mother were in the middle of a divorce anyways and they were always fighting, so him disappearing for a day or two was normal. I think about a week in I realized he wasn’t coming back. I never asked my mom about it. I just knew. Turns out he went to the nearest airport and bought the cheapest plane ticket and ended up in Cleveland, Ohio. After three months he called and I answered the phone. I remember I was learning manners, so I answered in a very official voice. “Hello this is the Holland residence, Tommy speaking, how may I help you?” He laughed, said he missed me and loved me but things were very difficult right now, then he asked to talk to my mom. Difficult is a slimy word. Another three months passed and I got a package from him filled with five jars of peanut butter; local grown organic bullshit peanut butter that he bought at his new favorite fair trade coffee shop. “I’m mad at him for sending me peanut butter,” I say to the therapist. “I’m mad at him for being the kind of person who likes expensive organic peanut butter.” “Are you angry with him for leaving you?” He presses. I want to tell him that it’s a ridiculous question; that my father didn’t leave me. He left a five-year-old who loved trains and Shel Silverstein, and drew a lot of questionable cartoons of talking purple frogs. I was angry with him for being the kind of person that could leave a five-year-old, sure, but I wasn’t angry that he left me, because he didn’t. “I’m angry that he sent me peanut butter,” I say again, stuck on that one point. I always get stuck there. I remember the day the package came; it was the first rainy day of the summer, cooling down a month of intense humidity, and the cardboard box was damp. Our air conditioning unit was broken so before I went home I spent a lot of time on the sidewalk jumping in puddles to cool down. My mother was visiting my grandmother in the hospital and had left me a home alone with instructions to eat some pretzels, drink some grape juice, and watch the dinosaur movie. His fancy new Cleveland address was written on the corner in runny black pen. There was a note, but I didn’t read it, I just looked at the peanut butter. When I was little I pretty much only ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches, breakfast lunch and dinner, so in theory, in this abstract and removed way my dad thought it was a nice gift. I opened one and tried it. It tasted like peanut butter. I walked out of the apartment and gave it to some homeless man on our block that was always playing a 5-gallon bucket on the street for spare change.
“If it’s not your dad, what are you angry at?” the therapist asks for the thousandth time. I don’t know, my head screams, and I feel my fingers clenching. I can’t even imagine doing the things people tell me I do, that’s the thing. I saw the kid in I beat up in the cafeteria a week later. His eye was still all black and his nose was covered in tape. He glared at me in the hallway, but he was scared too. I leaned in to apologize to him, and he leaned away, his green eyes huge and frightened. I’m sorry! I thought, feeling a desperate pit growing in my stomach. I spent the next class period sitting in my car doing the breathing exercises the therapist taught me. It wasn’t anger though; it was emptiness. I was a deflated balloon desperately doing breathing exercises with its last puffs of air. They all promise me that if I think about it long enough I will figure it out. They promise me I’m not some kind of monster roaming around waiting to explode at people. Find the breaking point. Locate toxins, the triggers, and remove them. That’s what everyone says, and they look at me with these large sympathetic eyes. They tell me I’m angry, not violent. I should probably get that printed on a t-shirt. One of those obnoxious screen printed Tshirts you can buy at mall the with neon letters, “Angry, not violent.” “Okay let’s try something else.” He sighs, giving up a little bit. “Close your eyes and picture yourself in a doorway.” His voice has taken on this meditative quality. “When you open the door you see the places and the people and the things that…cause emotion” He side steps using the word anger this time. “What do you see?” I see myself standing in the hallway of my apartment, surrounded by uninviting hay welcome mats and cold cement walls. I have a good view of the stairs from where I stand, at the right angle I can see all the way down to the bottom floor. There is a ripped grocery bag hanging from the railing and squished oranges at the bottom, bruised and leaking juice. I blink, shake my head, and try again. But I’m still there, staring at spilled groceries at the bottom of the stairs.