Suburbia Vol. 3 • The Garden

Suburbia

Cover Collage by Josh Gundred

Garden Wall illustration by Usha Venkatasubramanian

Comic by Angela Lee

In Our Garden

This volume of Suburbia is seperated into five different sections corresponding to five different types of gardens: meadow, japanese, desert, rose, and greenhouse. For many of us, gardens represent a safe haven where we can escape and take solice in the beauty of nature. Nevertheless, gardens themselves are often times artificially constructed, only an impression of what nature is in its pristine, much like suburbia was created to be. Still, we choose to escape to our gardens just as we escape through art from the stresses of life.

Thank you to our staff, our adviser Ms. Frame, and all of the students at West Ranch who submit their work and appreciate what we produce.

- The Suburbia Team

the meadow

cover graphic by Mina Jang

Photos by Skijler Hutson

Makeup by Alana Pelaez

Hair by Ayden Mckenzie

Flowers of the Meadow

by Quynn Lubs

sunflower: a sunflower’s leaves follow the sun to maximize photosynthesis how does one adjust? when you are facing darkness and the light fades each day how do you fight it? simply, you grow. you learn from mistakes you take things slow do not rush the process do not be afraid for life can be dark but you must look on the bright side turn and face the sun

daisy: daisies are actually two flowers blended together in harmony. they represent true love

he loves me he loves me not he loves me i know it’s true and i’ve grown to love every little thing there is to love about you from the way you smile to the way you speak and every time i hear your voice i can’t help but hope you will one day be mine

dandelion: people have been wishing on dandelions for hundreds of years, yet no one quite knows why i give hope for you need this more than me and with one simple breath in the blink of an eye your wishes fly by if only i was there to see to see you smile to see you laugh but as long as i can simply provide something as simple as hope it’s okay that it hurts me

Meadow Music

Playlist by Maya Christensen

Left page illustration by Maya Jackson

Right page illustration by Kenny Cosme

Sugar Magnolia - Grateful Dead

Here Comes The Sun - The Beatles

I Will Miss the Jasmine - Shannon and The Clams

China Cat Sunflower - Grateful Dead

California - The Growlers

Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ - The Velvet Underground

Fire on the Mountain - Grateful Dead

San Francisco - Be Sure to Wear Flowers In Your Hair

Morning Dew - Grateful Dead

Late Bloomers - The Growlers

Coachella, Woodstock In My Mind - Lana Del Rey

Ozma - Shannon and The Clams

Uncle John’s Band - Grateful Dead

Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks

I’ll Follow The Sun - The Beatles

Turn! Turn! Turn! - The Byrds

I, The Watering Can

I pour myself into people with such softness

Such clean water coolness

It is my best quality

And my worst

These roses

Wilted long before I arrived

But I will still water them

I will still wait for them

Because I know one day they will

smile again

In this garden

Of gold dust and good things

One day they will not hang their heads

In hollow heaviness

They will look at me

They will love me

I, the Watering Can

The fickle flower warrior

I gave them all of me

Their roots

Wrapped around my wrists

So tightly

They must love me

Why hold on so tight

If they do not love me

These cold corpses of petals

And pale pink

I pour out all the pretty pieces of me

Watch them soak up my sunshine

Now I just wait

I just water

One day I will give them enough

Poem by Sophia Kriegel

Photo by Jenna Nichols

Sunflowers

Poem by Sidra Mirza

Illustration by Jesselin Quezada

Beauty in yellow, you are oh so sweet It seems the silent winds keep you lively And rising tall throughout the summers heat May your petals never fall, stay lovely

Colors glisten as the sun strikes your leaves

Warm and bright you sure are like the sweet breeze You lift one’s spirits and they never grieve People will smile with happiness at ease

And often forgotten you are alive They crush your existence for oils and dyes And with scissors and sharp knives they arrive Coming at your grace by complete surprise

For people pick petals and let them fly But dear Sunflower, hold your head up high

japanese garden

cover graphic by Mina Jang

Photo by Ashley Pagsibigan

GOODBYE MY LOVE AND TUN AROUND - ZOMBIE-CHANG

Everybody Want to Love You - Japanese Breakfast

Dream Boy - The 5.6.7.8’s

Japanese Alice - Wild Nothing

Life in Tokyo - Japan

Woo Hoo - The 5.6.7.8’s

Postcards Holiday - Boys Age

Fish Bowl - Kero Kero Bonito, Frankie Cosmos

Sho-Jo-Ji - The 5.6.7.8’s

In Heaven - Japanese Breakfast

Lilac - Bombs Jun Togwa - Vampilla

Youniverse - Dumbo Gets Mad

Small but Enough - Shinatro Sakamoto

Photos by Anna Suh & Alana Pelaez

Illustration by Sam Haro

Playlist by Maya Christensen

Floating World

There is a dream

In the secret garden

Where love has grown

Where we are finally found

Where we can run away

From everything and anything we have ever seen So kalon

You would never believe something so amazing ever can exist in garden

The melodious splashes made by magical creatures gently glisten my skin

Building new skins around me

To put up my protective shield

To let me stop hurting

And to stop taking so much hatred from everyone

But despite the water such globe

A series of paroxysm erupt from me

I let my naked foot stomp gently around the plants feeling the earth

The small heartbeat

Beating quickly out of excitement

As a human finally acknowledges its presence

An unknown void of green lays in front of me

And I want to do nothing but just run and let the wind comb through my hair

And lift the hem of my skirt ever so gently

To be closer to Her

To let Her gently hold me in her soft arms as I jump to her

Hiraeth beckons with wordless call In my soul, with heart quivering, Hiraeth whispers in the garden I roam; As I wait the the call “come home”

Ethereal light dances across my face, Making my smile ever so ludic

Flowers dance all around me

Telling me

“Don’t go, please play with me”

And I will listen

As a surge of adrenaline roam through my veins

Shaking me uncontrollably

As I am looking for me

I have this ineffable feeling inside me

An epiphany

That I

A wanderer

am no longer missing

Because I am home

Right here in this garden With Her

And her little flowers glowing around her

Because I have loved life so much, I have no sorrow dying

Poem by Chika Winston

Photo by Sophie Legler

Senses

Written by Kyle McCrea / Photo by Amanda Fife

Get lost in your own gardens of hope, that only you alone can create. Listen to the open call of the bird’s that have the freedom we all desire. Don’t let other’s create your garden for you rely on yourself always, no matter how much they mean to you, because the one’s you love the most have all the power to destroy you. Feel the soft grass of hope and love. See the beauty in every flowing river bend. Love what you have not what you want. Smell the fresh air of everyday that your alive. Taste the sweetness of every little thing you can.

Little Steps

One step forward, One step back.

Our steps are small And our journey is long, Excruciatingly so; And still, we trek on.

The destination, the journey, That is up for you to decide.

But wherever we strive, Let the truth be our guide.

They are a perpetual dance In which both hope and despair lead.

Redemption may not come, Our hearts may not be freed.

But we may hold onto that There is a story to be told.

A beginning, middle, and end, No matter how bored and old.

A journey we must finish, And memories we will hold.

Two steps forward, Two steps back.

And so we trek on.

Anonymously submitted poem

Photo by Amanda Fife

the desert

El Jardín en el Desierto

cover graphic by Mina Jang

Photos, Styling, and Makeup by Dana Saulo

The Diary of a Desert Flower

Written by Austyn Malynn

Illustration by Cason Berrendaffan

I don’t recall explaining to you the story of how I came to be. Developed over time or potted by the gloved hands of the divine The truth is irrelevant because regardless, there was a seed. This seed grew into a plant and that plant bloomed Unfortunately I grew conscious, so my mind did too. With consciousness came questions that no one could answer And I developed the ability to feel things and I no longer wanted to But time passed, and surly enough other seeds sprouted Gardens and bushes intertwined with separate heads To think and reason but towards what, I still don’t know.

Although I am confined to my soil and roots

And limited to the rain of ever clear skies

The dry heat of the desert will one day consume me And I will wither up and die

I will never stop searching

And until my stalk cannot bear my weight any longer I will never be content

And I encourage you to stay hungry too Because those who thirst for more Will always have something to look for Instead of being someone just to be looked at.

Wild West Tunes

Sugar Magnolia - Grateful Dead

Here Comes The Sun - The Beatles

I Will Miss the Jasmine - Shannon and The Clams

China Cat Sunflower - Grateful Dead

California - The Growlers

Oh! Sweet Nuthin’ - The Velvet Underground

Fire on the Mountain - Grateful Dead

San Francisco - Be Sure to Wear Flowers In Your Hair

Morning Dew - Grateful Dead

Late Bloomers - The Growlers

Coachella, Woodstock In My Mind - Lana Del Rey

Ozma - Shannon and The Clams

Uncle John’s Band - Grateful Dead

Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks

I’ll Follow The Sun - The Beatles

Turn! Turn! Turn! - The Byrds

Playlist by Maya Christensen Collage by Lauren Franco

Photo by Dana Saulo

The Dead Flower

Poem by Morgan Baker

Top

photo by Angie Noblejas

Bottom photo by Kara Karatsu

I’m sitting here next to my grandma there’s a flower here It’s different from the rest this is the one that she picked It’s beautiful, and different, and alive just like her we would come back to the same spot everyday and see the beautiful flower But it’s dying so I stopped going one day I came back to that same spot to that spot with a flower to that flower that was different from the rest to the one my grandma picked to the one that was beautiful and alive but it wasn’t beautiful anymore it wasn’t alive anymore

I came back to that same spot where my grandma picked a flower I stood there the beautiful dead flower in front of me watching it die that spot with a flower the flower that was different from the rest the one my grandma picked the one that wasn’t beautiful anymore

I watched the flower die Dying... Dead... Decomposing... Gone

that spot with a flower had others around it that flower wasn’t different from the rest maybe it wasn’t the one that she picked but none of them were beautiful anymore

I watched them all die and in the end all the flowers will be Dying...Dead...Decomposing...Gone

the rose garden

La Roseraie

the Rose garden

cover graphics by mina jang

cover graphic by Mina Jang

Uproot

June 1967

by Zoey Greenwald

The summer air makes everything melt a little bit. That’s something I’m sure of. The days have been melting for the entirety of the month now, each second dripping away from a solid ounce of hope to translucent film which I find more and more difficult to catch between my fingers. It seems like time moves all too slow. Everything around me— everything outside of me— moves so fast, but I just stay put. In this little garden, with these little petals, moving slower, slower, slower. And that’s how June’s been.

One thing that melts into the air is the stench of the roses. Their perfume almost blends along with the humidity here, caught right in the middle of the atmosphere. It reminds me of last summer. It reminds me of you.

Some roses get sent out to San Francisco. Some get handed out to policemen or woven into chains that try to hold the nation together. We see it on TV. From TV it looks like they never die. They never show them wilting, anyway. Because everything’s so fast, I suppose. The camera doesn’t have time to catch decay.

When Alice went through through the looking-glass she found roses and they were jealous. I remember just how jealous they were. Alice was a flower that could move. I wonder what my roses think. I’d hope that they would be jealous, too. Unless they don’t know that I am a flower who can move. Do they think that I’m one of them, frightened into a spine-straight shock with roots that reach past where my soul ends?

Some Flowers Who Can Move get sent out to San Francisco. Some disown men like you and find new lives in dreams that smell like herbs and sweat and charcoal. They join the whirlpool stirring up around them. They uproot. They call it Flower Power, what they’re doing. I wonder if they know how much power it takes to stay right here. To wait. To remain.

The power’s not in the flower at all— not for me. It’s in the roots. Because no matter how much you feel like uprooting, you just can’t avoid disrupting the soil.

Clothing, styling, hair, and photos by Ayden Mckenzie

Makeup by Alana Pelaez

Everything and Nothing

I am trying to explain to myself

That sometimes things can just be And that is fact enough.

I can undoubtedly say

There are lessons that will not become concrete for me for a long time

But I trust that there is a lot more good Closer than may seem.

Yet why am I still so small?

I am trying to find comfort in my smallness

My growing

My everything.

There is something still holding me back About the smallness of the flowers in the wind

And the swaying of the meadow. Maybe it is because they sing of quiet

A name I cannot fathom.

I moved on and left

That dark shell compressing me

And found that the white roses I told you about were growing in my own backyard.

These little things are genuine comforts

Reminders that there is enough quiet peace in the world

To will myself to stay alive.

Its beauty is not in the delicate folds

Nor the sweet smell coming off of its petals. But rather because it is just there.

I do not have to wish for it

It is already is being.

That fact is simple enough for me to believe in

Enough to inspire me to find a complicated beauty in the simple.

Poems by Emily Marcelino

Left Page:

Top photo by Sophie Legler

Bottom right by Kelly Duong

Bottom left by Angie Noblejas

PLAYLIST BY MAYA CHRISTENSEN / ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON SCHROEDER

Black Cherry - Las Rosas

Veni Vidi Vici - Black Lips

Black Lipstick - Chicano Batman

Breakfast Is Over - SadGirl

Sleepwalking - Couples Only Dance Dance Prom - Modest Mouse

The Nest - Pinky Pinky

Beautiful People Beautiful Problems - Lana Del Rey, Stevie Nicks

Ramble On Rose - Grateful Dead

Twelve Roses - Beach Fossils

Bel Air - Lana Del Rey

Hot Tears - Pinky Pinky

Wander - The Aquadolls

Nothing More Than a Body - Skating Polly

Paint It, Black - The Rolling Stones

Baby in Blue Jeans - L.A. WITCH

Little Queenie - SadGirl

Femme Fatale - The Velvet Underground

Gewächshaus

The Greenhouse

Jang

jang

cover graphic by Mina

Magnolias

by Olivia Go & Abigail Abraham

Magnolias wilt in the fall, as she does Like a flower, she’s gentle and kind But no one understands what’s on her mind Girls say mean things behind her back They ruin her self worth over their lunchtime snack She walks home alone, leaves crunching beneath her feet In rhythm with how her broken heart beats She tells herself live one more day

Magnolias die in the winter, as she does Winter Formal she gets a date She sits in her dress waiting for him as it starts to get late He never shows He only asked her as a dare

She expected a limo and a rose

But all she got was a dress she would never wear Feeling pathetic and alone she shuts her eyes closed She tells herself live one more day

Magnolias bloom in the springtime, as she does The mean girls never stopped talking But now her heart had an unbreakable blocking Prom rolled around

She got asked by another boy

But she said no and went alone Because now, her own company gave her the most joy She found happiness within herself

And when she walks home along a path of fresh flowers

She tells herself to live another day

Except this time, living wasn’t a chore

And that is the way it would permanently stay

top left: Paulina Gruzdev / bottom left: Angela Lee / right page: Remy Tetrault

Foggy Morning Music

April Come She Will - Simon and Garfunkel

Expectations - Belle and Sebastian

A Well Respected Man - The Kinks Into a Dream - Shannon and The Clams

Piazza, New York Catcher - Belle and Sebastian

Anyone Else But You - Michael Cera, Ellen Page

Dearest - Buddy Holly

Grizzly Bear - Angus and Julia Stone

Falling Apart - Surf Curse

Sad Dream - Sky Ferreira

This Feeling - Alabama Shakes

Autumn In New York - Billie Holiday

Mickey’s Dead - Elvis Depressedly

Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan

All I Want Is You - Barry Louis Polisar

Sound & Color - Alabama Shakes

The Boy With The Arab Strap - Belle and Sebastian

Don’t Be Shy - Cat Stevens

Leaves That Are Green - Simon & Garfunkel

Playlist by Maya Christensen / Photo by Sarah Ziskind

left page: photos by Aleksa Artes

top right page: photo by Rachel Dyer

bottom right page: photo by Angie Noblejas

Our goal is to highlight the creative, talented minds within our school, and to do that, we need your work! You can submit just about anything: poetry, prose, art, music scores, photos, fashion inspiration, videos, etc. You can even submit your work as “anonymous.” Your masterpiece might just end up in the next volume of our magazine.

1) Go to the submission page on our website (www.wrsuburbia.com), fill out the needed information, and then email your work to wrsuburbia@gmail.com

2) DM us your pieces through Instagram (@wrsuburbia) along with your name (if you prefer, you can write “anonymous”) and the title of your work

@wrsuburbia

www.wrsuburbia.com

illustration by Ashley Blackwelder