Volume 1, Issue 3
Can You Hear Me Now?
Letter from the Editor
When I finish this letter from my home computer, I will send it by magic to our office computer and it will be formatted in our archaic (because it is seven-years-old) computer publishing program. It will be included in this issue and print four-hundred times to be distributed around campus and all of the issues will disappear to various desks, coffee tables, bookbags, and eventually wastebins It will also be posted on the website for everyone in the world to see. In out third issue we are asking you, “can you hear us now?”
In this issue, you will be able to almost hear out loud the voice of Megan McPhaden in her account of a transcendent yet intensely cosmopolitan experience in India. Also in this issue, Emma Wood gives a voice to her neighbor’s now silent gong, and Ben Gannon shares his space of the internet in “My Space". You can have your own space on the internet on the forum which is there for you to post fiction, essays, poetry, and casual thoughts on the themes of quarterlife. All we are trying to do our whole lives is communicate; I want you to hear me, I want to hear you.
.
The Dim Glow
Toby Kahn
Richard waited until the last credits of his nine o’ clock show had scrolled away before shutting off the television set. He had been watching a History Channel program about the techniques used in the construction of the first skyscrapers. Richard typically watched dramatic shows and classic films from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, but he found these skyscrapers fascinating. After the program was completely finished he checked his email and headed downstairs to the parking garage. Richard drove out of the garage of his Pasadena apartment complex with an air of deliberation. He maintained this care despite the fact that he was in no rush at all. It was a Los Angeles evening, that is to say, it was dry and 72? Fahrenheit as the sun glowed in dimmed defiance through the layer of smog covering the city. Richard turned onto Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena’s main drag. It was 8:40 in the evening yet the streets still teemed with hundreds of shoppers enthusiastically patronizing the wide selection of chain stores such as Urban Outfitters, Barnes & Noble, and Starbucks that dominate Colorado Boulevard. Richard did not particularly like or dislike these chain stores. They were not good places to shop or bad places to shop, moral or immoral; they were objects that should be avoided by his 1999 Volkswagen Passat.
Richard was on his way to meet someone for dinner. Her name was Anna and they were scheduled to meet at an Armenian restaurant in Glendale called Massis at 9:00. Richard calculated that he would arrive at 8:57 give or take three minutes depending upon his luck with traffic lights, and the availability of parking spaces. A man driving a red suburban with a crack above the right tail light darted in front of Richard’s Passat in an effort to merge onto 134. Richard cursed him. The suburban-driving rascal’s impudence only further cemented Richard’s hatred for highways. Drivers on surface streets were bad enough in the city of Angels.
The God of traffic lights smiled his emerald smile upon Richard and he arrived at 8:56. Anna had not arrived yet so he allowed a waitress to lead him to a table. The restaurant was large and ornately decorated. There were several huge tapestries scattered throughout the room that depicted men on horseback engaging in epic battles. These men were armed to the teeth and had jet black hair and sharply pointed beards. Richard stopped for a long moment as he became mesmerized by a pair of curved scimitars he noticed along a wall.
“I would like to sit near those swords,” he told the waitress. She apologized and told him that that table was reserved. She proceeded to show him to a table by a window. Richard selected the seat facing away from the street because the constant flow of cars and pedestrians tended to make his stomach upset. He adjusted the silverware at his place such that the distance between the fork on the left side of the plate and the knife on the right side were equal. Richard adjusted his napkin horizontally in front of the plate until it was precisely parallel to the table.
A waitress led a woman to Richard’s table. The woman wore a white dress. She had brown hair and Richard estimated her age to be somewhere in her mid thirties. Richard thought that she was very pretty.
“Hello,” said the woman, offering her hand to Richard.
“I’m Anna, you must be Richard.”
“That’s right,” Richard replied, shaking her hand with the same care he employed while driving.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Anna.”
“Likewise,” they sat in silence for a brief and not unnatural moment. Something about Richard made Anna feel simultaneously confident and at ease. He was probably five to ten years older than she was. His dark hair was slick and greasy; he had well defined cheek bones and an imperial nose. It was ambiguous whether the grease was the result of a lack of hair care products such as shampoo, or large amounts of expensive hair care products. Anna had a sneaking suspicion that it was the former.
“Have you ever been here before?” she asked.
“No, this is my first time.”
“It’s really a wonderful little restaurant, one of my favorites.”
“Did you know that Glendale has the highest population of Armenians outside of Armenia in the world?”
“No, I did not know that. That’s very interesting.”
“I love Middle Eastern food.”
“Well I’m very glad,” said Anna. “Jordan tells me that you met in college, is that correct?”
“That’s right. We were roommates our freshman year at UCLA; he was the first person I met when I came to school. How did you two meet? He told me but I can’t remember.”v
“We work together.”
“Oh, right. Jordan’s marketing firm. What are you guys working on these days?”
“We’ve recently taken on an account with Volkswagen.”
“I drive a Volkswagen!”
“That’s wonderful,” said Anna, smiling.
“Volkswagen has sent a dozen of their most promising young managers to America in order to better understand the market. We’re putting together examples of a bunch of archetypal American consumers to help them understand our culture. We’ve got the soccer mom, young professional, etc. For each of them we have a mannequin dressed as they would dress surrounded by samples of products that represent their characters. Today I sent out one of our interns to buy an x-box game console and a bong for the trust fund kid.”
“That’s very interesting,” Richard told her. Anna noticed that he had not met her eye with any consistency since the conversation began. After shaking her hand his eyes had flitted about like a nervous bird, but as she spoke for an extended period his eyes remained locked on her face. She could tell that he was attentive, yet he seemed somehow detached, as if his mind was two places at once. He finally broke his laser gaze to continue glancing through the menu. Anna had always been intrigued by eccentricity.
“Jordan tells me that you’re a writer. What type of writing do you do?”
“I write television shows for children. For the last year I have been working on a show about pirates.” Anna raised an eyebrow and Richard considered this action to denote interest.
“The twist is that the pirates are the good guys. They’re fighting to save the world of Honalin from a wizard who’s trying to cast a spell on the twelve seas. He turns the water into an evil murky blackness that nothing can live in except for monsters. The pirates have to steal magical treasures that protect the seas from Valindar. We’re on the sixth episode now and three of the seas have been tainted already.”
The waitress came to take their orders. Richard ordered lamb chops, Anna ordered Warak-Ianab-Bzeyt.
“How do you feel about wine?” asked Anna.
“What? Oh. Sure.”
“We would like one bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, please,” Anna told the waitress. The order was recorded and the waitress silently retreated.
“Wait, who’s Valindar?” Anna asked. Her question was posed with sincerity, as if this same question was likely being asked by any number of people on dates around the world.
“He’s the evil wizard.”
“Makes sense. Valindar sounds like an evil name. So does the show follow a plot line?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how it’s going to end?”
“Yes, but the problem is that our producers may pull the show anytime. It was a risky concept. Children’s shows that follow a plot line either go big or bust if the kids miss an episode, they might just lose interest all together.”
“How have the ratings been so far?”
“Mediocre.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” replied Richard, “I won’t mind if they pull the show,” Anna raised her eyebrows, “If they pull the show now, The Pirates of Honalin will be like a dream to millions of kids for the rest of their lives. It will be an elusive world that hovers between conscious and unconscious.” Richard’s voice rose as he spoke. He leaned in closer to Anna and his hand recklessly displaced a napkin as he clutched the table.
“I don’t follow,” she said.
“I think that we have succeeded in creating an engaging fantasy world. Our artists are really something and I’d like to think that it doesn’t take more than a couple of episodes to draw a child into the storyline. If it stops now with three seas tainted and only two of the twelve treasures found, it will be just like some vivid dream. Children who watch The Pirates of Honalin will always wonder about it. I mean, most kids who think about it will remember it was a television show, but there will be no reruns, no DVD twenty years later to alter their whimsical childhood memories.”
Richard delivered his ideas with fervor. He stared intensely at Anna; his eyes seeming to burn. The clatter of the restaurant seemed distant, muted in the enveloping silence. The silence was finally broken by Anna.
“That’s an interesting idea … although I would rather finish the series, have them all produced and aired. I would like the closure.”
“Oh, I’ve already finished writing them all. I know what happens.” She stared quizzically at him, pursing her lips, and Richard noticed again how pretty she was. Her dark hair was brushed back except for a few strands that had broken rank and settled against her cheek. Richard did not register the clichéd quality of the effect, it was just pretty. He suddenly realized that she might have found his speech strange.
A few minutes later the waitress approached the table with their food. She smiled pleasantly as she placed the dishes upon the table, Anna returned the smile. Richard picked up his silverware and began to scoop up a bite of rice with his fork.
“There’s parsley all over this,” he said, “I can’t eat it,” he lowered his fork back onto the plate, his face stoically blank.
“Are you allergic to parsley?” Anna asked.
“No. I just don’t like it, it gives me a headache.”
“You mean like … an allergic reaction?”
“No,” Richard replied vehemently, his eyes flashing angrily at Anna, “Parsley has always given me a headache. So does popcorn. That’s why I hate movie theaters.”
“I didn’t ask why you hate movies theaters. I asked why parsley gives you a headache.” Richard didn’t say anything. He stared down at his plate filled with lamb, rice, and little green bits of parsley.
“I’m sorry,” said Anna, lowering her gaze as well, “I’m sure they will take it off for you.” As Anna guessed, the restaurant’s staff was gracious in the face of their error, they swiftly returned Richard’s meal parsley free and the two diners continued to eat. Richard noticed that it had grown dark outside some time ago. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and glanced down to check the time. He conceded his 10:00 show but 10:30 would not be compromised.
Richard made the decision not to miss his 10:30 show with the utmost conviction. However, without his even noticing, his resolve began to fade. The wine was almost gone at this point and it was beginning to have an effect. Their conversation smoothly transitioned from the best movies (“Apocalypse Now” according to Anna) to a discussion of the best way for the survivors to spend their time after a nuclear winter. Richard forgot where he was for nearly twenty-six minutes.
“I’d play badminton,” giggled Anna.
“Why would badminton be any better after a nuclear winter?
“I don’t know … more choices for badminton courts? If you felt like it you could set up a court in the middle of 134 or in the Chinese Theater.”
“What else would you do?”
“I’d watch mafia movies and videos of volcanoes. Volcanology is incredible. PBS has a great series on the Ring of Fire; I bought is so I can watch it whenever I’m not feeling well.”
“I love volcanology!” Exclaimed Richard, “A few months ago I saw a show about Mt. blank. Did you know that blank?” Richard looked at Anna. He noticed that bits of her hair were over her face again, and he suddenly felt very nervous. She noticed that his eyes had begun to flit around again and wondered what he was thinking. In his mind he saw himself in his apartment with its walls covered in comic art and movie posters, the soft, silent carpet, the immaculate desk, the dining room table that was always set even though he usually ate in the kitchen. Anna was there too, she was sitting next to him on his couch, her hair streaming all around her face. With an effort, he brought his attention back to the present moment.
Dinner was nearly finished and Richard didn’t know what to do at this point, so he tried to tell himself that there was nothing that should be done. They chatted about volcanoes for a little while but Richard was barely there, he was watching himself speak. The check came and Richard, remembering what men are supposed to do in this situation from his hundreds of hours spent with silver screen portrayals, offered to pay for the meal. Anna told him that he was silly and said that they should split it. Richard wasn’t sure what men were supposed to say when women offered to split the meal and he was watching himself from a distance now, so by the time he thought of something to say the waitress had already come and taken away the check with both of their credit cards stuck inside.
“I had a very nice time,” said Anna as she put on her coat. Richard wasn’t trying to think of something to do anymore. He was focused on his 10:30 show, telling himself over and over again that it would be great. The last episode ended on a cliffhanger. It would be great, he would be comfortable again.
“I did too,” he mumbled, “thanks for suggesting the restaurant. I love Middle Eastern food.” Anna smiled warmly at him. She was slightly drunk and happy, and as a result, she was only slightly cognizant of his recent change in mood. Richard tried to force himself to think of something to say, but instead he thought about his 10:30 show. He said goodbye and began walking briskly towards his car.
Pete
Emma Wood
I wasn't around the day it stopped ringing. By the time I got back for summer break, Dorothy had kids and grandkids visiting, helping with meals, anchoring ladders in the back yard weed clumps so they could fix up shingles on the side of the house. Already people were bustling to fill the emptiness, patching and mending, like nothing had changed. It looked like that same old garden of my childhood, the same screen door and the crabapple tree strewn with its year-round Christmas lights; the lilac and honeysuckle that paid little heed to property boundaries. But in the middle of the weeds, the gong stood silent.
The garden was not unaccustomed to silence. On many a summer's night in high school I had peered down on it cautiously from the garage roof that adjoined my bedroom window, praying for that silence, melting into it as I descended from the roof, scaling the fence that divided our lot from the Petersons' and finally hopping down to freedom. The purring car that waited for me up the street was too far away to invade the silence; and both gong and garden kept my secret, quivering gently, obeying the night's stillness. Hours later when I returned, mind full of escapades and belly full of snack food, the garden greeted me with familiar silence. It hardly felt like silence at all, a pausing point merely, because I knew the garden would awaken when day came; and when the evening sun slanted to gild the screen door, Pete's gong would sound its evening call. I slithered in through my window frame, leaving the crabapple Christmas lights to keep watch over the night.
I came home that summer to a different sort of silence. The quiet had never lasted through the day like this. Usually, each night at eight o' clock the garden was bathed with the sound of the gong. Eight steady strokes. The first was likely to catch a person off guard, erupting from the concealed garden like a deep, rumbling voice gone slightly tinny. The untrained ear might have mistaken it for the nearby Sacred Heart church bell, from the way it resonated. But it was just old Pete in his flannel work shirt. Every evening just before the hour, the screen door squeaked as he came forth from the house. It took him a few moments to shuffle to the middle of the yard in preparation for the striking. He pulled back the weighted rope, rocking his body along with it, suspending rope in air for a moment before he let it strike grandly against the big hollow cylinder. The gong itself wasn't much of a spectacle--a hunk of metal, painted and peeling, strung up in the middle of a weed patch--but its tone disguised the shabbiness. There was just enough time between the strokes for you to wonder when the next would come, and to scan around for the source of the sound; not enough time, though, to take a full breath or do much of anything but stop and listen. Eight strokes hit like heartbeats, reminding the garden it was alive; reminding me, next door, of night’s approach and my unfinished homework. I wasn’t sure why eight o’ clock was so special. Our neighborhood had no reason to take note of it—really, I thought no one but me much noticed the gong. I myself had discovered the ritual only by accident, glancing down at the Petersons’ yard one night to see Pete's arm movements in sync with the sound. I understood how other people might have taken the ring to be some unremarkable church bell. But since I knew where the sound came from, it seemed an exotic sort of ring, a mysterious ritual. After that, whenever I was home at the right time of night, I scrambled to my window to see, feeling like I knew some grand sort of secret.
The night that Pete didn’t ring the bell, though, he had the whole neighborhood calling. Our neighbor Lu rang to see if we knew anything. Was Pete ok? Should somebody go over? Turns out he and Dorothy had family over, so he neglected the gong for a night. I smiled to realize that so many people counted on the ritual. It seemed it was their way to check up on Pete, as much an “I’m here, I’m alive!” as a measure of time. I wasn’t too worried about all the fuss. Pete always emerged to ring that gong.
In time, I traded that old window view for the courtyard vista of my college dorm room. I filed memories of summer escapades and neighborhood rituals for parties and times when home seemed too far away.
When I came back for the summer, Pete was really gone. The lilacs were here to greet me this time, but no Pete. My mom told me that he'd died a couple weeks earlier, and that Dorothy seemed to be coping. All I could think about was his eight o’clock ritual, his gong that I watched instead of evening news. The gong that I eventually told friends about—we’d huddle to watch, trying not to look obvious. It was something you just had to show visitors, like the kitchen remodel and the new begonias. But the gong without Pete doesn't give much to brag about--now it's just a dented piece of history, rusting away next door.
Walk Like A Slut
Stazh Zamkinos
"You walk like a slut!" yelled the jeering face hanging out the window as the van drove past us. His shoulders heaved with laughter.
Her hips suddenly restricted themselves in a way I've never seen them before. Rather than limitlessly stirring, her hips were faltering, teetering on that final balancing toe. She threw her arms out a bit to try to catch an uplifting breeze of self-esteem, confidence or compliment. I wanted to throw nails under their tires.
I tried to tell her last night that her walk was sexy, that it conveyed a confidence that I wanted, a peace, I ceaselessly sought after, and a model-like countenance I couldn't even mimic. I'd tried when I was younger to sway, disembodied like that; I balanced books, laundry, and shoe boxes on my head for moments before they almost inevitably fell on my toes. I'd told her that, but I don't think she got it. I think she was stuck in her own world, that world that's so much closer to perfect than she'll let herself understand...
"Like a slut". What does that even mean? That she seems confident? That she has sex appeal? Whatever it is, I want it. I want a hoot, a holler-- something other than “adorable” or “cute little girl”. I am twenty years old and damn it, I want to walk like a slut!
My Space
Ben Gannon
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Another Series of Events
"Congratulations," I muttered to myself. "Not only are you fucking, but you have no regard for the layout of the apartment and the traffic this bathroom gets."
The spent condom was a laughably transparent gesture. I could imagine the moments leading up to is disposal: (1) the boyfriend groans, grunts, and cums (2) my friend sighs and smiles, (3) he rolls off and goes to the bathroom to take of the condom and take a piss, (4) he thinks about wrapping the condom up in toilet paper or at least moving it under the piled paper already in the basket, (5) he hesitates, (6) the crisis of indecision is dealt with by finally tossing it with a nonchalance no doubt learned from movies.
And that was it. A signal to everyone that would use the bathroom was left: "I'm having sex" it said.
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Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Clear Signals
"Huh?" said her brother.
"He's a cable technician. His boss does this all of the time, apparently" she said, explaining herself.
"Weird" said her brother noncommitally.
"How are the burgers?" I asked, realizing that the boyfriend had left them to cook. I moved towards the grill and lifted the lid off, setting it down on the ground. "How well do you want them?" I ask my friend.
"I like mine medium. You?" she asked her brother. He shrugged his shoulders and pulled out his tobacco pouch to start rolling another cigarette. I followed suit.
"They still have a little ways to go" I said, stabbing the thickest patty with the corner of the grilling spatula. I put the lid back on and lit my cigarette.
"So," I said to my friend before I downed my glass of whiskey,"Are you looking forward to going back?"
"Totally" she said. "Its going to be sad leaving, but I have already been here too long."
"Fair" I said. "Its time for you to live in a real city again." I tossed my cigarette onto the wet grass. " I gotta go take a piss. I'll be right back."
I walk into the apartment of my other friend, the one who is staying in town and dating the cable technician.
"Hey!" she said enthusiastically as I walked past her kitchen. "Give me a hug!"
I do. "I have to use the restroom" I said to her. "I'll be right back so that we can catch up."
She released me from the hug and I walked through her bedroom into the bathroom. I started peeing and noticed that the waste basket was next to the toilet, and that perched right on top of mountains of toilet paper was a spent condom.
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Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Condoms in Waste baskets
We mixed ourselves some drinks from the random selection of liqour in a packing box on the kitchen counter. I poured myself a glass of whiskey and a second for the brother. His sister walked into the kitchen with a collection of dirty dishes in her arms. She weaved past us and dumped her armload into the sink before noting out presence.
"Can you pour me one too?" she asked as she looked a the open cupboards that had stacks of dishes in them waiting to be packed.
"Well, it is your liqour," I said. "I guess I could accommodate you."
"Let's have a cigarette, too' she requested.
Her brother nodded in agreement. We all walked out together just in time to hear the boyfriend who was grilling extract himself from his girlfriend's arms.
The grilling boyfriend shrugged and said, "I'll be right back. I got a call from a client."
My friend mumbled to her brother "Cable emergency" as the boyfriend ran across the lawn to his car.
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I can't tell you how amusing this never-ending story is....LOVE IT!!
Posted by The MegTrix on Sunday, January 07, 2007 at 1:52 PM
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Friday, December 29, 2006
Cable Emergency
The boyfriend who was watching over the burgers was, apparently, concerned about the heat of the grill and enjoyed the fireball that flew up every time he sprayed starter fluid onto the coals, and, every three minutes or so would spray more. He would get the plastic squeeze bottle, shake it (which seems both useless and somehow dangerous) and then give it a good squirt into the flames. The brother and I, in the meantime, stood on opposite ends of the small porch smoking cigarettes and shaking our heads.
Sure enough, the tenant from above come down. She was stalky and butch, and clearly a lesbian. She came out of her apartment and down the stairs, and then around to the open side of the porch.
"Hey," she said. "My apartment smells like ligher fluid and smoke. My air-conditioning unit and my window are right there." She pointed directly above the grill and, sure enough, there they were. The boyfriend was quiet for a moment, searching for something to say, and then stuttered out "We're sorry. We're almost done," as though the balls of flame and smoke that came along with it were mere accidents.
The neighbor walked off and the brother and I went inside.
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Monday, December 04, 2006
Smoke in Air-Conditioners
The brother of the birthday girl stopped by my house, which is across the street from the closest convienence store for both of us. He needed to pick up beer, and thought he would just stop by. We sat in my livingroom and drank several beers each with my housemates before we made our way to to the convienence store and subsquently to his and his sister's apartment.
On the shared porch a tall, thin but muscular man with red hair, who I inferred correctly was my friend's new boyfriend. The smoke that came up from the barbeque he was tending to smelled like burnt teriyaki sauce and singed canned pineapple.
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Friday, December 01, 2006
Teriyaki Burgers
I had dinner last November at the apartment of a friend of mine. It was a combined birthday and going away party for a mutual friend of ours. The two of them graduated the same year and were in the same pledge class in college, and had both found themselves, two and a half years after graduating, living as porch sharing neighbors in an apartment building two blocks from downtown. Because the birthday girl had to be moved out of the house the day after, her apartment was in a packing shamble, and so my friend offered to host a small gathering consisting of her and her new boyfriend, the guest of honor and her boyfriend, her younger brother, and myself.
To be sure, I had not been invited by either women to the party, but rather the younger brother. Needing to take some time away from home, and a rough break-up with his girlfriend of several years, he arrived in town in the early middle of the summer. I had befriended him upon his arrival. His lack if familiarity with everyone in town but his sister and her now ex-boyfriend, and my easy access to a permissive liberal arts college atmosphere, helped to cement our eventual friendship and my invitation to the birthday and going away party.
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Thursday, June 15, 2006
Buying a Saturn
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural
I have a vivid memory of the time that my brother, sister and I all went to the Saturn dealership with my parents to purchase a new sedan. When the sales woman gave my father the key to his first new car, the entire staff walked out to applaud the newest members of the Saturn family. It was horrifying; in the faces of all of the Saturn staff there was a look of desperation, as though to say, "I hate doing this, all this ridiculous clapping, but I have too."
So, thanks to all of those people who have welcomed me to MySpace. You poor, dependent sons of bitches. I'll meet you at the bottom.
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Falling Apart and Putting Yourself Back Together, For Dummies
Sarah McCarthy
When you were in the very heart of it, there were no similes--it was like nothing you'd ever experienced and (you thought) probably nothing like anyone else had ever felt either. Now, though, the similes are rampant: it was like trying to tug on wet jeans, like walking in shoes that are giving you blisters, like having the wind knocked out of you, like trying to convince yourself that a lukewarm bath feels good, like someone shining a bright light in your eyes with your eyelids stapled up, like red ants running all over your skin, like invisible mosquitoes whining in your ears, like hearing a dentist scratch metal on your teeth or like the taste of benadryl if you suck on it. It was all those things simultaneously and to say that these little tortures are anything, really, compared to what is happening all around the world every day in Guantanamo Bay and other places with locked doors is completely idiotic. If you've never been tortured though--if the closest you've come is walking through the Tower of London and marveling that in real life somebody, in fact, many people, were drawn and quartered and racked and thumb pressed--benadryl and mosquitoes and blisters and chills can seem like torture and when they go on every single day at every single second of the day, they can make life seem not worth living.
It is, of course, a valid question--if all those similes were real actualities rather than just by-products of a brain not quite firing through its synapses right, how long would a person hold out? "There is nothing in the world worse than physical pain," said George Orwell, and he is just dishearteningly right--you cannot talk about truth or beauty or fall in love or create nice art or do much of anything if there are even a swarm of biting flies or stinging bees around you. You are reduced down to one thought "Get it off! Get it off!" That is where it begins and ends. If ten people were surrounded by bees and flies for just one solid day and somehow knew that the bees and flies would never go away for the rest of their lives, I think that all ten of them would kill themselves right then and there.
Killing yourself, though, is faintly ridiculous, particularly in a body that feels crappy and like it is covered in mosquitoes and cold, yes, but that is otherwise healthy and cancer-free and refuses even to have the decency to even get a really good fever and make the world seem a little less sharply painful and clear. Killing yourself seems like an even worse idea when one of the REASONS you are depressed in the first place is because someone young and wonderful and close to you died and you cannot quite believe in anything when someone like her can die. You do not want other people to feel like you do right now, not even the people you hate. You would not wish that on anyone And yet, you want to—you know you don’t actually have it bad, you know you should shake it off and just feel better, breathe deep, sleep more, and eat right. And you will, but you can’t, you absolutely can’t because some fucker keeps shining a light in your eyes and the god damn ants will NOT get off your skin and the mosquitoes will NOT leave your ears. And so even when you are having fun, sort of—when you are talking or eating good food or even drunk or high, it is still within the context of “as much fun as one can have while being tortured.” The physicalness of it is real and visceral. You wish you were making it up.
One night, in what will appear in this year’s Guinness Book of World Records as the most half-hearted suicide attempt ever made by a human, you swallow 10 Tylenol PMs and hope that even if you don’t die you’ll at least get to sleep a lot. This fails. The only effect is that your eyes grow puffy and you feel confused the next day. Also, you feel like a crazy person, but a defective one, one that can’t even make herself pass out or sick. You want to get food poisoning, just so you can miss class legitimately, but you can’t quite face the spoiled milk or too-raw meat that this would take to make sure it happened. A few other nights you’ll want to take more pills again but you’ll settle for just messing up your wrists a little with scissors (further demonstrating your failure at being crazy is your inability to draw anymore than tiny streams of blood from this cutting. You marvel, in a sick way, that this could actually be a viable way of committing suicide. How do they do it? They are clearly more clever and/or desperate than you.)
To seek help is difficult, bordering on the absurd. You bike to the health center on one particularly bad night, in the fog. The fog is beautiful and the lines you make riding through it calm you down for a moment and you arrive a bright-eyed and healthy girl who spews out in one stupid-sounding sentence, “IfeelsuicidalcanIsleephere?” The benevolent building welcomes you, but is quick to remind you that staying at the health center does not excuse you from class.
You miss class anyways, and get an email that expresses concern about your attitude towards class attendance. You love school, is the thing—you love pencils (mechanical, at least) and Five Star notebooks and fat pink erasers and in your childhood you loved folders with dogs on them and Trapper Keepers and 4 function calculators. You love using them. But, of course, there’s just no way that you can learn when mosquitoes won’t stop whining in your ears. You can’t even last fifty minutes without getting up to leave, to have a moment alone in the hallway to convince yourself that leaping out of the classroom window is weird and un-OK.
The counseling center too, while it is nice and good to have an hour to talk about yourself, feels silly. You are being light-shined and ant-attacked and shoe-blistered and lukewarm-bathed the whole time you are talking and leave with it continuing. So it is after you have tried many other things—looking at the moon and the stars and yoga and doing a semi-random act of decency and being on top of things and letting them slide and talking to friends and being alone and trying to cry and trying to laugh and eating chocolate and eating apples and aromatherapy and real therapy and drinking and sobriety and cutting and self-love and books and TV and shopping and saving—that you come down to taking pills. Going to a doctor, you learn about your brain and how it has gone into hibernation and how the synapses aren’t firing fast enough, or something, and that it is not your fault because depression can happen to anyone and it doesn’t care how much you try and work.
And so, in the end (though it isn’t really an end, but it feels enough like one), it is not the crying on friend’s beds, not being told by those who love you how much they care, not your little sister’s smile or the beauty of stars in the wheat fields that makes you better. It is a white pill that you do not taste, that seems to have no effect at all at first. It has no effect at all, except that at first it just makes everything a little bit dulled—you still feel like a light is shining in your eyes, but you do not care as much. You feel a little drunker, a little less sharply yourself. You can sit still without bouncing your leg up and down at the knee.
And eventually, it is this pill—Celexa, a name you come to think is so beautiful that you would name your own child after it is what cures you. You wake up one day and feel like you are in the world again, like now you might not hate every second of existence. You know that nothing, really has changed—that it is just a pill that has made your brain surge back to life, like a resurrected computer, that the code is streaming through right now. You know that whatever tired metaphor you might use—that you were in a dark black pit of despair and now you are a butterfly flying free above the clouds, it’s not anywhere near as poetic as that. There is nothing about God, nothing about trials and punishment, nothing about redemption and resurrection or any of that that you can say with a straight face. It is chemistry, biology, and pharmacy, pure and simple.
But this fact, the fact, too that this story is utterly un-unusual, that statistically it is quite likely to be your story, to a T, is unable to bother me too much. When you have been in a lukewarm bath, when you have felt like nothing but pain, throbbing behind your eyes, you don’t care how it stops. You don’t care that you’re nothing, really, but chemicals and atoms and electrons, spinning around, and how even those electrons are nothing, really, like the planets going around the sun, even though it would be nice and tidy if it did.
.
Jasmine Music
Megan McPhaden
I spent last spring semester studying music in India: I learned the different scales of a raga; how to improvise within the scales; how to not be nervous to improvise because it was god that was singing through me; how to sing in tune with a tanbura; how to sing in time with a tabla; how to listen to Indian classical music performances-- how to be an active participant by grunting and nodding my head in approval; how to sing folk songs and bhajuns; how to sing Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa. I learned about patience-- I spent hours singing single notes, to make sure they were in tune, because they had to be in tune in order to be resonant with the divine. I learned how to sit and listen to a single raga for two hours, and how to appreciate it. I learned how much a tanbura should cost, what a good one looks like, where to go to have it fixed when the gourd cracks in half, and that the best music shop in Benaras is by the Shiva temple, above a store selling mirrored purses and clothing printed with sacred Hindu symbols, in an opium den where hippies with dreadlocks from western countries get high and talk about love. I learned that singing eases the pain of malaria. I learned that Hindus sometimes sing songs for Allah, and Sufis sometimes sing for Hindu gods. I learned how to listen to Qwalli music, and that the purpose of this music is to help Sufi saints reach a point of spiritual ecstasy while listening. I learned that although music allows for powerful communication, the very absence of music is sometimes even more profound.
I spent two months studying light classical and folk songs in Jaipur with Bhavna Bhatt, one month in Benaras studying Khyal with Mangala Tiwari, and one week in Delhi studying Qwalli with Sufi musicians at the Nizammudin Dargah. The Qwalli music had the most profound affect on me. One evening at the Sufi Dargah in Delhi, our host took some other students and me to the nearby Nizammudin shrine, where Qwalli musicians perform every Thursday. We covered our heads with our dupatas and walked through the 700-year-old streets of the Sufi village in the heart of old Delhi, and were told to avoid the eyes of men, out of respect and safety. As our host led us through the dark labyrinth of narrow streets, a faint din of joyous song grew close, and the cobbled walkways became pathways of glowing white marble. At the entrance to the Nizammudin complex, lights so bright that it seemed like day illuminated shops selling holy green and gold embroidered cloths, garlands of jasmine and roses, goulab jamoun and other milk sweets, colorful books on Sufism, gold-framed pictures of Sufi saints and musicians, and lotus, sandalwood, rose, jasmine, and opium scented incense and perfume. We took off our shoes and entered into the heart of the Nizammudin complex, soon standing among the oldest mosque in India and the tombs of Hazrat Nizammudin Auliya, Amir Khusoro, Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin. In the center, under a red, pink, white, and gold canopy, twenty Qwalli musicians-- voices expressing the utmost joy and love for the Infinite, arms raised in expression, two hands on a tabla, two on a dholak, and the two of the leader in the front on a harmonium—were passionately singing for the saints. Men walked into the tomb to pay their respects while women prayed outside, next to the sign Ladies are not allowed inside. The colorfully shrouded women clenched onto holes in the marble fence separating them from their beloved saints, sometimes weeping, sometimes chanting blessings. Begging women sat shrouded in a corner, whispering to each other, reaching out their hands to passing worshipers. Hundreds of people wove in and out, paying their respects, worshiping, sleeping, eating, chatting, and fanning each other from the powerful heat. I sat with my teacher and listened the musicians. I had never heard, seen, or smelled anything like what surrounded me and I was elated, enraptured, bewildered, over-stimulated, confused, shocked, and so incredibly thankful that I could be there, and experience that moment.
When my parents came to visit me, I wanted them to have this experience too. I wanted to show them something unlike anything they had ever seen in their lives, so I took them to Nizammudin on the last night of their stay in India. In the car on our way there, we noticed a family-- man, woman, and young girl-- on a motorbike beside us. A little boy ran through the traffic, selling jasmine garlands, and the girl bought one. She cupped the garland in her hands and lifted it to her nose. The motorbike family watched us watching them, and although we were used to being inspected, this interaction seemed special. So we greeted them with our hands and a smile, and they greeted us back.
When we arrived in the Nizammudin neighborhood, I couldn’t remember exactly how to get to the mosque, so we wandered-- through the narrow, crowded streets, past chai wallahs, steaming chickens and goats roasting on skewers, bangle shops, fruit stands, mechanics, tailors; through crowds of men chewing beetle nut and spitting the red juices out at their feet, cows nonchalantly sitting in the middle of the street, lean dogs scavenging fallen chicken bits, children with their hands cupped to us, asking, “Money deejeay. Please madam. Madam! Please!” -- until I could tell we were getting near the entrance from the bright lights and stalls of religious offerings and trinkets. Dad bought a plastic mesh hat; mom bought an offering of roses in a leaf bowl. Taking off our shoes, our feet unwillingly embraced the sticky marble floors. We walked through a defunct metal detector that beeped when anyone went through it, and proceeded to walk through a maze of long white marble hallways, rose petals strewn about, open to the air, into the womb of activity. My mother shared her journal with me later:
“We made our way through a twisting maze of pathways to the center of the compound—the walkways were lined with beggars, and with my scarf covering my head and arms, the heat, foreignness, and poverty started getting to me.” The heat was unbearable, especially with scarves covering our heads and arms; Delhi in late May is far from comfortable, at any hour. We finally found our way into the courtyard. The air was thick and heavy with the scent of lotus incense, sticky bodies, hair oil, squished cardamom flavored sweets on the marble floors, urine, and bare feet. My parents and I were the only white westerners visible.
Recorded devotional music blasted throughout the complex. We heard a man chanting the last call to prayer of the evening; a baby crying out in its mothers arms while the mother tugged on our pants, pleading, “Chipate, chipate, please madam, please madame”; the shuffling of feet as men went inside the Nizammudin shrine to pay their respects; a woman weeping as she prayed outside the shrine, pressing her forehead against the stone wall; embroidered saris sweeping across marble floors; a boy laughing while taunting his sister to catch him as he played tag where she was not allowed to go; and a crowd of old women talking to each other as they pulled blankets over themselves and proceeded to sleep for the evening. But no Qwalli music.
“We’d missed the performance-- I was frustrated, vulnerable, anxious, hot, and overwhelmed by the poverty, overwhelmed by a culture that I really didn’t understand at all that I found myself deep in the belly of. I felt really out of control…if the singers had been there, it would have been ok, but since there was such an obvious sense of worship that I had no clue of, I felt like we were taking up space in a place where we shouldn’t have, where people were there worshiping.”
Without the performance, my mom felt like she did not have a valid reason to be in Nizammudin; she had no idea how to act; she felt vulnerable in the heat, barefoot, with many eyes on her, unsure if she should meet them or look away. Breathing hard, she started panicking, then completely broke down. Mom turned to me, eyes wide. “I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here. GET ME OUT OF HERE!” she frantically choked. Her inflection terrified me. My mother is a reasonable, grounded woman. What should I do? She wouldn’t look at me, she wouldn’t listen to me, she couldn’t hear me telling her that it’s alright, it’s alright. “Mom? Mom, can you look at me? Look at me! Mom? Can you hear me? Mom? MOM? MOM!” But she was lost under her dupata. I couldn’t reach her, but I tried to stay calm. I didn’t want to exit the compound right away when she broke. I was worried that it might get worse if we moved too fast, or if we moved at all, like moving someone who might have a spinal injury after just falling from a ladder. I tried to console her as best I could, tried to help her feel less distant. But it was impossible.
Then the motorbike girl appeared out of the thick crowd. Her appearance was completely unexpected—we had seen her and her family in hectic Delhi traffic far away from Nizammudin. She went straight to my mom and offered her the jasmine garland with a loving smile, gesturing that she could not speak. When the jasmine scent wasn’t enough to fully calm my mom, the girl wrapped her small arms around Mom in a huge hug.
“The family we had seen on the motorcycle appeared before us and could see I was distressed. The girl offered welcoming hands to me (perhaps she was mute? Neither she nor her mother spoke)—I broke down when I saw the welcoming care in these people’s faces—the girl gave me a strand of jasmine flowers—that fragrance and her hug calmed me a bit.” My mom received unexpected love and support that night. The mute girl was able to comfort my mom; she showed her some familiarity in a foreign place, she showed her uninhibited kindness, and reminded my mom of the human connection that all people, no matter how different, can have.
“I was absolutely overwhelmed by her empathy, her understanding of my distress, her need to make me feel comfortable. I was awed by the hug she and her mom gave me. [The whole experience] was uncomfortable, powerful, raw. It was overwhelming-- more beautiful, real and scary than any I’ve had in India. I wouldn’t take back the experience for anything. More than anything on the trip, it opened up my heart to these people.”
I went to India to study music. As a student of Khyal and Qwalli, I had a purpose listening to musical performances, even when they were in places of worship. I was learning, which gave me a definitive role, and allowed for my comfort in foreign places. But without that purpose, my mom was lost. I led her into a deeply challenging situation because I desperately wanted my parents to hear the powerful music I experienced. Instead, we missed the music, and I lost communication with my mom. At first, I was disappointed with the experience I had with my parents in the Nizammudin complex—I wanted them to hear the music, to feel that connection that I had felt with Indian culture through music. My mom did not experience spiritual ecstasy or communication with the divine through listening to the spiritual Qwalli music, nor could she even communicate with her own daughter. But looking back, I am thankful for that night. My mother’s interaction with a mute Muslim girl, a jasmine garland and a hug, gave her something she could not have received by just listening to a performance. On that last night in Delhi, before flying back across the world, on her 62nd birthday, my mother got an unforgettable gift. She got what she wanted from her experience in India: something real, a deep human interaction and connection, something more intimate than music could have been for her. The jasmine garland is pasted in her journal, and still smells vividly of that night.
.
Continental Drift
Avi Conant
See how we are
monuments, far afield?
See how at once we crash
and glide apart
in a theory as ridiculous
as it is self-evident?
We form memorials
that steadily erode.
We build edifices
which in time are picked
apart. Our lithic earth ebbs
and flows like liquid.
And the details
of steady ground
become lost
in the shake-up
.
Our relationship remains
made of dirt, piled upon clay;
love might be bedrock,
but even it folds
in sheets under stress.
I might prefer a plainer
geography, without curves
or crags, a navigable distance,
but we are distanced
by an ocean of rock,
my wishes scuttling across,
like an insect, or a ship, mid-crawl.
I fear I might be drifting away
but on a sphere
every movement brings you closer.
Masthead
| Editor | Drew Arnold | |
| Layout | Kim Hooyboer | |
| Staff | Ben Gannon Danielle Alvarado Toby Kahn Ben Kegan Lizzie Norgard Diana Peabody Nicole Pexton Stazh Zamkinos |
