Electric Eel Zine: Time Passes Us By

Electric Eel Zine

Issue No. 1

Time Passes Us By

Comic by Nadu .........................................................3 Live With Me by Joy ............................................... 4 Contact by Nadu ....................................................... 6 Time Bound Activities by Nadu .......................... 8 Truism by Nadu ......................................................... 9 Funeral Dance Party by Kymberly ................... 10 Necessities by Melly ..............................................12 Dispersion Map by Nadu .................................... 14 Untitled by Leo ........................................................ 16 Untitled Observation by Melly .......................... 18 Comic by Nadu ........................................................ 19 Collect/ Discard by Nadu .................................... 20 Planes by Nadu ....................................................... 25 2

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Live With Me

By Joy

Things I used/borrowed/stole/tried on from my roommates, without their permission A One of those plastic Ted Baker structural purses, cream with floral and fauna. You left it in the car and it’s edges melted, slouching this way and that. We could never bend it back to Rectangle; it stayed sunken.

You never stopped using it.

B Stacks of black against grey against black—leggings, rompers, over-sized t-shirts. You didn’t own a single dress.

A Individually wrapped crackers carried by hand from Taiwan: with nugget in the center and salt sprinkled on top. They would disappear, after midnight, when you were asleep and my face was lit by the glow of the web C A pastel blue jumpsuit, from the thrift store over in Echo, with yellow and coral stripes. You didn’t even get to wear it first, Michael insisted on debuting it.

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A Tank top after tank top, because—for a while—I did not have my own out of shame for shoulders 1. long light grey, dotted with shadow 2. Periwinkle blue with a brass ring at the heart of its back 2. D’angelo, its black hugging my waist 3. The identical feline blue and wolf gray—cropped 4. Two floral, dark and half translucent pieces that I thought were they same, but you in fact had two 5. All saints pale blue, with that gentle fold in the shoulder blades D I actually cannot remember anything.

C Barthes, A lover’s discourse, in which I fell into the comfort of absence, and its presence. It still lies on our shelf, even though you have long since left. I have not thought to tell you.

E Saltines that come in packets of four, your black corrugated shirt and advil.

A silver chain with rust on its last links That black cotton backless dress that you wore the first the time we went to the roof and you were seduced by the Los Angeles air (To add: Zara shirts, Haagen Daaz ice-cream bars bought at CVS in a box of three, Made in America, pencil with a square rectangle) 5

Contact How to maintain contact with friends while simultaneously growing apart from them

By Nadu B. Teach each other new skills, crafts or new languages. invent a new language, skill or craft together.

Experience something new together (an event, roadtrip, concert). Respond to the new experience. Avoid the loop of discussing past experiences.

Ask each other if your thoughts on life, death, and ethics have been changing with age. What changes them ( or ) what stagnates them?

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Talk about possible apocalypse scenarios and which ones are becoming more likely. Bring up fresh apocaolypse scenarios.

Do something illegal together. An act that will bind you in secr ecy once you’ ve compl eted i t.

If you live far apart, be creative.

Invent an ongoing project that you can contribute to at leisure, from your respective loca tions. Give and ask for f eedback .

Observe each other’s changes in identity. Discuss how these changes are related to your life contexts.

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Time-Bound Activities

By Nadu B. Pay attention to how the compliments you get change as you age.

Over months, years and decades.

Photograph your living space every day to document how your environment grows around you over time.

Map your sense of time.

Map out when in your life it speeds up and slows down. Find the fac-

Remember the smell of every house/apartment you’ve lived in. Note which smells you remember most clearly, and which you don’t remember at all.

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Funeral Dance Party

by Kymberly

Mom’s funeral as I imagine it: Everyone is gathered in the same church that we had dad's begins playing Bill Withers' 'Lovely Day.' down the aisle and remove all the toxic people. I think she - led I sit down in the front and the service proceeds. We are into a brief meditation followed by short vignettes from her close family and friends. I'm supposed to speak at the end but I don't know what to say. So I thank everyone for being a -

audience that she wishes to have a dance party. Everyone is crying, but they stand up.

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Lovely Day- Bill Withers September-Earth Wind and Fire Superwoman-Alicia Keys Shining Star- Earth Wind and Fire Can you feel it- Jackson 5 Sing A Song - Earth Wind and Fire Let’s Groove - Earth Wind and Fire Gone Too Soon- Michael Jackson Say - John Mayer Dido

day I found a sticky note in my bathroom with a song title on it, then in parentheses, “the playlist.” Mom said she wanted me to be prepared for her death, so making the playlist makes it fun for her. She imagines most of it as a dance party. Maybe I should have it just be a dance party. Just play the playlist and let people dance. It seems so abrupt to do it that way, but I’m exhausted from pre-mourning her death for the past 10 years, through it, but I've heard losing a child is incredibly painful, so I wouldn't want to intentionally put her through that.

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Necessities

By Melly

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Dispersion Map

By Nadu

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5 Poems by by LeoLeo Levy Levy

I thought of her as “the one that got away” All through highschool I texted her I kept trying to get her to reiterate what she liked about me She was cool I remember she believed in ghosts

I felt powerful when I was driving And he was mad at me but I was very civil I dropped him at his house and said he shouldn’t be angry and that I was the one who should’ve been angry

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I’m remembering late-night sushi And being called an “amazing person” after a very frank conversation we had in the park

Now that my friend has left I try to be more like him Picked up some mannerisms Sometimes I laugh like him I now dress like him except with darker colors Some of the things I say are for him

I like it when I say something and her eyes open really wide like she’s surprised I look straight in And she lets me My sight is immovable Whatever she does I can keep looking

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Melly In Korea you're supposed to call anyone older "unni" or "oppa" and anyone younger "dongsaeng". It was really weird for time. People were friends even though they were not the same age. You’re supposed to bow to anyone whos older than weird how in Korea, all my friends are my age but here I have friends who are way older than me or younger than me.

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Oh the S paces You’ll Oc cupy!

By Nadu B.

Collect/ Discard Thoughts on bad memory

By Nadu There are a few people in my life who have terrible memory. I imagine that we build our knowledge of each other very differently, though I can only speculate.

I have a relatively sharp memory: I remember the stages of knowing someone, the changes they go through, the contradiction they make. I imagine that the people in my life with a bad memory have more of an impression of me than a chronology. They must have some idea of who I am, built over time, though they might not remember the events that caused those impressions.

One of these people is my older sister.

When we talk about childhood events, vacations, experiences we had together, she draws a blank about 50% of the time that I mention something. Occasional20

ly I’ll jog her memory, and something she hasn’t thought about in years will re-surface. This reminds me of an idea philosopher David Chalmers argued in The Extended Mind. He claimed that a notebook with information could act as an external memory for someone who’s biological memory is unreliable. In the same way you encode something in to your brain cells, you can encode something in to a notebook. In some ways my sister relies on me as her external memory: when she has only traces of a memory she asks me to remind her what happened. I lend her my memory to compensate for hers. She says “oh yeah!” and laughs at her poor recall.

What’s amazing to me is that the spottiness of her memory doesn’t bother her at all. Over the years I’ve come to think

Her

Least Recent

Most Recent

Me

New information is the clearest. Over time we compress and erase memories at different speeds

that I know the chronology of her life in greater detail than she does.

My sister studied business in university, and after receiving a job offer from a particular company she was interested in she began telling people that she’s dreamed of working there since high school. But this isn’t true. My sister didn’t even consider studying business until the middle of senior year of high school when she had to submit

her applications and settle on a major.

In fact, in the beginning of her senior year she was thinking about becoming a neurosurgeon (despite having a fear of blood). Before that she also considered becoming a pilot, going in to polihad never mentioned that company until she was three years into university.

But oddly, she didn’t seem to remember the chronology of her past career ambitions. She wasn’t lying; she actually

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Him

Least Recent

Most Recent

Me

New information takes precendence for both of us, but the amount of old information that we hold about each other differs.

just didn’t remember. Her present state colored how she saw past versions of herself. When I reminded her about her desire to study neuroscience she remembered it faintly. We’re all prone to hindsight biases- I’m sure I have plenty too. But when I notice them in someone else I wonder how they would see themselves if they remembered what I remember. I wonder what versions of my past self I’ve conveniently deleted. I wonder- when she thinks back to 22

her past ambitions, does she remember the transitions between the different life plans she was considering?

Does she remember what ultimately changed her mind? Maybe she has an awareness of the things that changed her mind without needing to have a concrete memory of it, I’m not sure.

I have a distant friend who also has a terrible memory. I call him a distant friend because he is someone I’ve

known for years but we communicate in semi-frequent bursts throughout the year. His memory of me is mostly limited to the most recent things we’ve talked about. As a result, we have a lot of repetitive conversations; something he isn’t aware of unless I mention it. He asks for my opinion on topics we’ve already discussed sometimes more than once, completely unaware that we’ve discussed it. I remind him that I’ve already told him my thoughts on this, and sometimes even remind him of what he said in our previous conversations. He’s always surprised when I accurately recount the things he’s told me. This is how I see our relationship: as time passes I learn more about him, adding to a him, but he doesn’t really collect new knowledge about me because he forgets the majority of what I tell him shortly after our conversations. He only holds on to the most recent things I’ve said.

I’m sure he has a sense of who I am and remembers the basic things about me despite his evaporating memory, but still there are things I’ve told him that I imagined he would see as sigtotally forgets. Maybe his sense of my

identity is something transienthe remembers what I’m like right now, not what I’m like over time.

In both cases neither my sister nor my friend seem to mind that shocking. One of my biggest fears is memory loss- the fear that I’ll forget things and not realize I’ve forgotten them. I’ve been a semi-active journaller since I was a child and suspect that this is a reason behind my good memory- instead of encoding something once I encode it twice. Like the idea in David Chalmers’ The Extended Mind, my journal functions as an external memory (though technically I wouldn’t count it as part of my memory the way David Chalmers does).

If I’m trying to recall something that’s become foggy I can always go back to my journal to see what I wrote when the memory was fresh.

Part of knowing someone with a bad memory is the sense that you know them far better than they know you. And not only that, but that you have more knowledge on them than they are aware of. When I remember the entire conversations that 23

other people mentally delete, I feel like I’m in on a secret. Not only in the case of these two people- any time I realize I remember a conversation that someone has forgotten I feel that I’m in a position of power. People don’t always remember what they’ve revealed to me.

Something I will always wonder about however is how people have a sense of me, without remembering concrete things I say. I have a big capacity for remembering information that people tell me. But for the people who don’t rethem: how do they form an idea of me without mental evidence to back it up?

What is the system that selects which few things to remember and which to forget? All of these questions stem from my own personal biases. I have a good memory and so I think I know people better than they know me. But then I consider my own mental gaps- I don’t remember the moment I found out Neil Armstrong walked on the moon but it’s a fact I know. There are many facts I know without remembering the moment I learned them. And then I consider that memory, even when you have it, is faulty.

People edit their memories every time

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they remember them, and over time the story morphs. In either case we very well could be constructing inaccurate images of each other by deleting memories or reconstructing them.

We are always warping our memories of our lives- who we are and what we’ve done, without realizing it. I want a record of that history, so I journal.

I imagine that even with mental evidence, journals, recordings, we still construct our ideas of other people by choosing what we pay attention to, and which qualities of a person we mentally magnify over others. The associations we have with someone (where we met them, how old we were when we met) surely color how we see them too.

"Knowing someone" might have as much to do with vague associations we've built over time as with the concrete information we remember about people.

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You are your context 26

Your context is you

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