8 When Inspiration Strikes Stephanie Shih
10 Untitled
Kayleigh Day
11 Hello Fellow Wanderer Miles Millikan
14 L’avenir Est FÊminin Camila Fagen Guitron
15 Echoes of a Fallen Curtain Katharine Hanifen
18 Tattoos of Another Kind Dominique Nieves
19 Homeless Bard Miles Millikan
20 Bubbles in Barcelona Mia Cappiello
21 Home Is Jamie Molnar
24 A Masterpiece 200 Years in the Making Stephanie Shih
26 Memory and Death are Sisters, Did You Know? Kaileigh Fox
27 The Moon and the Church Camila Fagen Guitron
28 Mi Fido Di Te Miles Millikan
31 Rebellious Mickey Megan Hatch
32 The Sounds of Salzburg Stephanie Shih
33 Journal Entry from February 24, 2019 Abby Ladner
34 Family History
Camila Fagen Guitron
35 Bookshop on the Water Mia Cappiello
39 A Street in Venice Mia Cappiello
40 Stay Strapped Anna Cappello
42 Paris: Tease Miles Millikan
43 Breathe Walk Die Camila Fagen Guitron
44 Well Sweet Well Stephanie Shih
46 Adjustment Period Who? Anna Cappello
48 Street Art Megan Hatch
51 Rialto Bridge Megan Hatch
52 Finding Religion Without a God Jamie Molnar
52 People of the Mona Lisa Zachary Cargie
54 Between Seconds Anna Cappello
56 Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II Megan Hatch
57 Moenen
Camila Fagen Guitron
58 Untitled
Clarah Grossman
61 Untitled
Madison Douglas
62 Tattoos of the Castle Journalism Committee
Tattoos. They seem to be all anyone can talk about while studying abroad at Kasteel Well, so naturally, we had to reflect that in the theme of our magazine. The Castle was our home this semester, but it was also our tattoo parlour. We stumbled through its gates in January not knowing what the next 90 days would bring, and between these walls we’ve felt immense excitement, anxiety, joy, fear, happiness, comfort, relief. Once we leave, we’ll take the marks that it has left on us and carry them in our hearts for the rest of our lives — just like tattoos. While some of us are walking away with new ink decorating our bodies, others, like myself, are departing with fresh ink printed on these pages. Our time in Europe has been short, but each precious moment will be remembered for a lifetime. Every spectacular sight, every missed flight, every sleepless night has shaped our experiences, many of which are now immortalized in this magazine for future generations to discover. I’m so incredibly proud of how this issue turned out. To the Black Swan team, thank you for all your hard work and dedication. To our advisor, Robbert, thank you for your valuable guidance and unconditional support. And to the Castle Dwellers of Spring 2019, thank you for your inspired contributions and for the amazing semester together. Here’s to our future adventures! — Stephanie Shih, Editor-In-Chief
When Inspiration Strikes Stephanie Shih
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Untitled Kayleigh Day
Hello, Fellow Wanderer Miles Millikan
Hello fellow wanderer From beyond the years, I speak to you through the pages. There may be other eyes who read this My current castle-mates or my friends back home And that is unfortunate as this is not for them This is for you, fellow wanderer You, who do not know my name or my experiences But who feels as lost as I do. Perhaps you’re missing home Or more likely perhaps you don’t want to go back home, but this other place isn’t exactly a home either Without a home, you’re just as lost as I am Perhaps your heart is very tired Perhaps it has been overworked by others or yourself Perhaps you can’t stop falling in love And you want so desperately to shut off your heart Perhaps you’ve kissed someone who you shouldn’t have Perhaps you want to keep kissing someone, but they don’t want to keep kissing you And it probably hurts to have the complexities of heart troubles boiled down to that Perhaps you want to enjoy Florence and Paris and Barcelona for all their beauty
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You want to have life-changing experiences You hope that because you’re travelling you won’t be sad Your depression will take a breather while you travel the world, But the truth of the matter is You’re still 19 or 20 or 21. You’re still young in the mind and the body and the heart And your growth will continue—bumps and all—whether you’re in snowy Boston or foggy Paris So, fall in love And kiss them Or say no to them And be sad And dance yourself into oblivion And get sleep Or stay up all night But live for you I don’t know what you’re going through Nor do you know what I’m going through But we’ve each inflicted hurt and taken hurt We are human, just like everyone else, we just show different amounts of it I mean imagine how scary it is to write this hahahaha But you and I—we are each other’s fellow wanderer And I reach out my hand to you from an Airbnb in Florence To say I’m sad and I really wanna be done being sad, but I think it’s gonna be a while until that’s true I want love to get easier and homework to get more interesting And the sun to always shine except for some nights when I want it to rain or snow
I want the summer to be peaceful and exciting and not stressful month to stressful month I want Lucid Youth to take full flight and for me to dance and cry and laugh and smile in the Common one late November night But some of that is in the future The present, however, is life and I must take it as it is I truly hope you can do the same And then reach your hand through the pages to another fellow wanderer But as this will most likely be our final goodbye, let me just say It has been a pleasure speaking to you Enjoy your time Soak it in and feel it all You beautiful little wanderer
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l’avenir est fÊminin
Camila Fagen Guitron
Echoes of a Fallen Curtain Katharine Hanifen
When my roommate and I arrived in Berlin, the first place on our list was the Berlin Wall Memorial. The memorial spans several blocks, with half of it being a closed off section with a guard tower and barbed wire to remind us of what it once looked like and the other half being a memorial for those killed escaping to the other side. One hundred and thirty-six lives in total, many of them teenagers and children, their faces, names, and dates immortalized in the Window of Remembrance. People left roses and candles in front of some of those faces, perhaps family remembering lives cut short just as escape was in sight. I can’t say for sure. Across the street stood the museum, a building as stark and grey as the wall. We walked through all three floors categorized by the building of the wall, the wall’s expansion, and, finally, its fall. From there, we climbed to the top of the museum to the observation deck where we could get a full view of the memorial and take photos if we wanted. And I did. Photo after photo of the cold, cement walls against a cement colored sky. Looking at the camera roll, I thought of my second cousin, Teddy. He’s a career travel writer in his seventies now and living in New York City. As a little girl with a travel bug, I always loved his stories of places and people from all over the world. He told me this story the year before in a D.C. restaurant after I mentioned that I wanted to visit Berlin while studying abroad. As it turned out, he also visited the city when he was my age. While there, he befriended someone willing to take him by boat from the west side to the east. Even though in the early seventies, the wall was at its most fortified, he made across with little issue and explored the city. As I put away my phone and pulled my gloves back over my frozen fingers, I wondered if the day was as cold for him as it was for me.
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I doubted it. He was on vacation, and no one in their right mind outside of students studying abroad would visit Berlin in the early doldrums of February. After the observation deck, we made our way to the memorial park. There, I stood from East Berlin and snapped photos, a near fatal mistake for my cousin fifty years ago. At the time, it was illegal to take pictures of the wall, but he didn’t know that. As any cop or lawyer would say, “ignorance of the law excuses no one”, so the police, run by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, arrested him. They separated him from his friend and put them both in separate interrogation rooms. Though he didn’t describe it this way, I pictured a younger Teddy waiting alone for hours in a dingy room under too bright fluorescent lights, his only companion the droning hum of electricity. According to Teddy, a grim looking man and woman entered the interrogation room holding papers. The woman, clearly in charge, spoke in German while the man translated. They wanted him to sign a paper admitting he was a spy. He balked at this, and they admitted that they didn’t believe it was true but told him the only way he’d get out was if he signed those papers. So, he signed, and they reunited him with his friend, threw them both in black cars and drove them to the train station. Needless to say, he did not get his camera back. He said this ride was the most terrifying part because they drove with reckless abandon. They left them at Friedrichstrasse station facing down a mob of angry union workers. By crossing the border from east to west at this station, they broke the picket line, accidentally becoming strikebreaker. After the wall, by sheer coincidence, we found ourselves getting off at Friedrichstrasse on our way to the next stop on our journey through the city. I tried to imagine a mob of angry workers holding signs and yelling in a language I couldn’t understand like my cousin saw as he passed through the station. Luckily, his friend took aside the union leader and explained the situation. The mood of the crowd shifted from anger to cheer. They weren’t scabs. “The Man” caught them but couldn’t keep them down. That night, they drank for free.
As I walked along the murals on the East Side Gallery, a monument of peace between nations, I thought of my mom, who studied political science behind the iron curtain two years before it parted. She never went to Berlin but saw Austria, Poland, Russia, and the Czech Republic. I’m a year or two younger than she was during her travels but grew up on her stories of staying in bugged hotel rooms and being followed by the police. Despite this, she took risks, meeting with Russian boys and exchanging goods from their respective societies. Until I lost it by mistake, she kept a communist flag, cossack hat emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, and Soviet propaganda in our basement. Looking back on it, she believes it was a stupid risk, one that put the boys she met in more danger than she was in. The tensions between east and west were easing but not quite gone. I don’t think they ever will be. I wondered where I stood in all of this. The wall fell almost exactly seven years before I was born. I live in a post-wall, post-curtain world. Traveling between East and West Berlin is as easy as getting on a tram. I like to think that the world is different from all those years ago, but is it? I live in a world of surveillance. I’ve walked past thousands of cameras without batting an eye. Online privacy is an oxymoron. My data is compiled and sold to third parties so they could make me buy their products. The world is a digital panopticon where it’s not a matter of if I’m being watched but who is doing the watching. And yes, while people don’t follow me around out of suspicion that I’m a spy and most certainly wouldn’t arrest me for taking pictures of an infamous landmark, the story would look vastly different if I wore a hijab instead of my ninja turtle beanie. The discourse, too, echoes the Cold War paranoia. Forty-five minutes and a world away from my hometown of Woodbridge, Virginia, the rhetoric in Washington has changed from “tear down that wall” to “build the wall”. And almost every day, news breaks of presidential intrigues involving Russia, a Cold War spy thriller played out by the nightly talking heads. East met west, and relations thawed but remain cold. The Iron Curtain fell, but not quietly. Its echoes reverberate from the past through the present and into the future.
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Tattoos of Another Kind Dominique Nieves
Tattoos of another kind. Although I have not taken a needle to my skin in all these months, the castle has left me with tattoos of another kind. For every trip and stumble I am given a new reward, a scar upon my skin forever. Made by laughs and falls and tumbles. A memory held in flesh. Tattoos of another kind.
Homeless Bard Miles Millikan
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Bubbles in Barcelona
Mia Cappiello
Home Is Jamie Molnar
Panting, I took my last steps to the ledge where my friends were sitting. We stayed there for a while just looking out at the city. My chest burned from the hike, but I felt alive. It was there, in Edinburgh, Scotland, nowhere near the top of Arthur’s Seat that I realized what home is. Home is where you feel alive. One of my first nights away from the comforts of New York and everything that was familiar to me, I was with some new friends, one of which knew how to read tarot cards. I shuffled a deck of cards—aces through nines— three times and she showed me my fortune. The ace of diamonds came up in my reading. One of the meanings for this particular card is home. What she told me resonated completely with me. She told me the card could be me leaving my home or possibly finding it. I always thought that I knew where my home was. I always believed it to be New York, the only place I had ever been where I felt free to be myself and where I felt most comfortable. Surrounded by nothing but skyscrapers and one dollar pizza is the only place I ever wanted to be, and it still is. However, throughout the last month and a half or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that home is not a singular place. It doesn’t even have to be a physical place, but a person or multiple people. It’s where, and with whom, you feel most alive. I found this to be true in two cities in particular. In Edinburgh, I found the perfect balance of urbanization and nature. Growing up in a rural area with nothing but farms and wineries and large expanses of land, I feel more magnetized to big cities with lots of people and lots of things to do. In Edinburgh, there’s the city with museums and
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restaurants and palaces, but there’s also mountains and the ocean. I had never been fond of climbing—too much physical activity—but getting to the top of that mountain was worth the exhaustion. I could see the entire city from up there and I felt that I could do that everyday for the rest of my life. In Barcelona, I smelled the ocean and I felt at peace. Bodies of water tend to have that effect on me. Salt water heals all wounds even if all you do is inhale it. I can still feel the sand sifting through my fingers and the sun painting my skin a glowing tan. I could have laid on that beach for hours. If it wasn’t for the palm trees, I would have thought the Spanish streets were those of downtown Manhattan. The beautiful architecture of the buildings brought a smile to my face as I pictured one of them as my home. I would have colorful plants hanging from window and flags draped on my tiny balcony. I pictured myself sitting in a small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant eating tapas and drinking sangria as if it was water. At night I would take a stroll to the Font Màgica de Montjuïc and watch the lights— yellow, orange, red, blue—as the water danced to the beat of the music. Home is where you feel most alive but it’s also where you feel safe and secure. In both of these gorgeous cities I wasn’t as afraid as I thought I would be. Being that I was in a foreign country, a lot of times at night, I expected to want to be in the safety of my hotel by the time the sun set so that I wouldn’t risk something bad happening. In Edinburgh and Barcelona I never wanted to go to my hotel. I wanted to stay out all night just walking the streets and witnessing the beauty of the lit up city. There were other cities though where I was always looking over my shoulder. They were breathtaking when the sun was out, but then the sun set and the darkness set in, I was struck with an uneasy feeling. Luckily I was not only discovering new homes throughout this journey but traveling with them as well. I had old friends with me as well as new
ones that I was able to hold on to, to calm the storm of what-ifs that was spiraling in my head. Like the cities I fell in love with, they were my safety net, my security blanket, and they awoke a sense of adventure in me for which I am grateful. Finding new homes doesn’t replace old ones. Finding new homes doesn’t mean you’re leaving your old ones behind forever, because the old ones are still as much your home as the new ones you’ve discovered. Finding new homes, whether it be places or people, simply means you have more places to escape to when you need to feel alive, when you need to feel safe. New York will always be my home first and foremost, but I also know that Scotland and Spain are only a plane ride away and I will always keep that in mind.
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A Masterpiece 200 Years in the Making Stephanie Shih
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Memory and Death are Sisters, Did you know? Kaileigh Fox
In Rome, I see my ghosts. It’s easy there. There’s something in the air—no—in the ground— City built on sound, on story. It’s rare, to see the dead. I’m dizzy in the crowd, the shards of all the people at my side breaking skin with what ifs, maybes, shoulds. (death’s always sharper than being alive.) Some names are carved in marble, some in wood. It’s hard to hold translucent eyes that plead— Bleeding soldiers pass as tourists do, camera flashes unable to see children crying out in Latin, faces blue. In Rome, I see what being human costs. In Rome, I meet the people we forgot.
The Moon and the Church Camila Fagen Guitron
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Mi Fido Di Te Miles Millikan
My hair was too long. My head was becoming a mop and I was becoming more of a myself I didn’t like to see, but the castle’s hair cutter was booked for 2 weeks, the friend who cuts hair didn’t have hair-cutting scissors, we were going on travel break for the next week, and I could not go looking at myself for another week without it getting cut. We’re on our mandatory excursion in Milan, the last day. I was leaving for Florence that afternoon and found myself with three hours to kill. Naturally, I decide to get a haircut from the barber shop I passed this morning while I was getting toothpaste from the supermarket. To escape the absolute storm that was the hostel: noise and smoke and looks and tension; dancing and looks and hearts and hands—Anyway. I was in a tough spot, lost and losing. So maybe because of that—or maybe because of something else—I decided I would tell the barber to do whatever they wanted to my hair. I would give them complete control over my look for the next few months. On my way to the barber I looked up two phrases: “taglio”— which meant “cut” and “mi fido di te”—which meant “I trust you.” My friends met me at the barber shop. It was the kind of thing that could either go really well or really poorly, and they wanted to get to see it in person happening live. A worker smoking a cigarette blocked the small entrance door. I stopped in front of him. “Bon journo,” I said. He politely repeated the phrase and stepped out of the way. I walk into the doll house of a barber shop, and the atmosphere immediately makes me feel as though this is either the workplace of a wizard or a troll. There’s literally nobody in the store when I walk in, only three stations to cut hair, and a little couch for people to wait. And then the troll/wizard himself appears from the back of the store; I could not tell which side of the wizard/troll spectrum he fell on. He was older, but not quite old. He had the haircut
the younger Italian men in the store had, just a little less kept. He was a quiet soul. He greets me, asks me if I speak any Italian. I say “poco… taglio?” He motions to one of the chairs and tells me to sit. I do, he sets me up with the whole cape and collar situation, mutters some Italian to me, and at a certain point he’s pointing to my hair. I brilliantly decipher he is asking what I want done to it. “Mi Fido Di Te,” I faux-confidently say to him. He’s happily surprised, says I do know some Italian. I don’t know how to tell him it is literally the only phrase I know so I just say again, “Poco, poco,” and he gets to work on my hair. He took his razor and began mowing down the bush of hair that rested on the side of my head. The nerves only began to creep in when I started to see the pale scalp that rested beneath all that bushel; the scalp that had never seen the light of day it was so white, but I said nothing. I promised him—and more importantly, myself—that I was going to trust him. He used his razor and scissors like a master. With precision in his eyes, he looked at my head like I was a block of marble. There was a wonderful moment where I was watching him try to get the fade on my sides so perfect and I realized there are thousands of Michelangelos and Da Vincis living all around us, but there’s no way all of them could possibly be remembered. Because I’m alive now I get to experience all the genius lost artists the future will never get to appreciate! That being said, he cut my hair way too short. I know taste is subjective, but he made me into an Italian fuckboy, which is fine for some, but something I have tried my whole life to distance myself from as much as possible. I was in a state of true shock for about two hours after that, like a dog who had just been sheared, shaking and wanting so desperately to hide in a dark room. I felt embarrassed and ashamed of my head. Even now that feels a little silly to say; it’s just my hair. But silly or not, it is a total change in my humanity. And that’s what I asked for. I asked a man to style me to his liking, literally asking him to alter who I am because I don’t want to make the choices anymore. And I feel fucking terrible about the results hahahaha. It’s been about a week since I got the cut. At this point, I really like it. It grew in really quickly and I’m back to feeling good and slick in my own skin. Unfortunately, I think the whole cut situation is more
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of an illumination of a bigger underlying identity funk that I’m in than anything else. The big romantic me had this idealized version of this semester abroad: that I can travel through Europe for 3 months at 19 years old with a bunch of other college kids, and I won’t have any sadness, identity crises, heartbreak, or gossip. That these three months would be an escape from me in a sense, but the reality is I am still me. I can’t escape me, and I shouldn’t have to. I will always be dramatic and fully feeling whether I’m 9 or 54. Vacations are not the time when I run away from myself, it’s the time when I get to run away with myself. I made a rash decision while in an emotionally unstable place in a foreign country, and in a way that’s the most beautiful human thing about this trip.
Rebellious Mickey
Megan Hatch
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The Sounds of Salzburg Stephanie Shih
Journal Entry from February 24, 2019 Abby Ladner
We’re spinning through the hills in Salzburg, and we haven’t slept—not a wink. And our feet are cramping. And it’s so much colder than we thought it would be. Still, we’re spinning through the hills. And I can’t stop staring at the mountains. In my head, I know how they were formed, I know how they got here. But, my god, how did they get here? Standing in front of something so massive and beautiful and strong, I suddenly know that my life means nothing, and the realization comes as a relief, like I’m free from the burden of having to do something great or change the world. That’s the mountain’s job. I just have to sit here and spin.
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Bookshop on the Water Mia Cappiello
Family History Camila Fagen Guitron
When my friends and I first got the invitation to go to Salzburg, the thing that convinced me to go was Julie Andrews. Everything I knew about the place came from her. I pictured all the iconic sights from The Sound of Music, the Alps stretching across the horizon, the palaces, and lakes so clear that they yelled: “Come on, have a swim!” I wanted to hear the music she so fondly sang about. We happily accepted the invitation. After struggling way more than is necessary to book a train ticket, I called my parents and told them about my plans. In parent manner, they asked who I was going with, if I had a place to stay, and to send pictures, “Pictures of you dammit, not of the place. We can Google those.” I assured them that everything was taken care of and that I would try to take pictures of myself this time. Soon after that, I was on the first of three trains to Salzburg. I tried and failed to fall asleep on the train. The journey there was going to be over 12 hours. I knew I was going to need the sleep, but the lights were too bright, the seats too upright, and the leg space too tight. So, instead of drifting off to unconsciousness like the rest of my friends did, I sat there and looked out the window for 4 hours and saw nothing but darkness. The train came up to our stop and we dragged ourselves and our bags onto the next one, and then we did it again. Finally, halfway through our last train, the sun came up from the mountains, allowing us to see the sights. We passed through snowy fields and, at one point, we passed through a wood processing factory with thousands and thousands of tree trunks stacked on top of one another, prepared to be turned into wood. I quickly took a picture of it and sent it to my mom thinking “she’ll probably love that.”
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After my entire body had gone numb from not moving for hours, the screens on the train announced the Salzburg stop. We all sighed with relief and practically jumped off the train when it stopped. We braced the winter air as we walked to our hotel, our hands and noses getting red from the cold. We clumped into our rooms, dropping everything on the floor and collapsing into the beds “just for a second” before going out again and exploring the city. I texted my parents about me getting there safely and went to change out of my traveling clothes. When I came back, I had a series of texts from my dad that said “My dad’s mom was from Austria-Hungary. It was an empire. It collapsed after WW1. You are the only Fagen who ever traveled to Austria. Not even my dad.” Normally, I would’ve told him that I knew about the AustriaHungary Empire, but I was more interested in this small piece of family trivia that I didn’t know until that day, so I just replied how crazy it was that no one else had gone back, especially because most of them are big on travel. He then said “Austria (is where Hitler is from) and Hungary wiped out over 1 million Jews during WW2. I guess my dad’s family didn’t feel comfortable. Haha.” It made sense to me then why they never went back to the country. I keep forgetting that part of my family is Jewish. I only found out about a year ago during my first semester of college when I casually mentioned how different it was to see Muslim and Jewish people at school after going to Catholic school for three years. “You are part Jewish, too,” my dad said, to which I responded “huh?” “Your grandmother was Jewish,” he said, pointing at the sky, “I’m half Jewish,” pointing at himself, “and you’re a fourth,” pointing at me. I didn’t know if that was really how the whole being Jewish thing really worked, but it was still strange to learn this at 18 years old. One of those things that dads think it’s not important to mention, I suppose. Another ding from my phone pulled me from my thoughts. The new texts read “My dad was cheap anyway, he didn’t like to travel a lot. My mom preferred Paris! Enjoy your day!” followed by multiple Trip Advisor links on things to do in Salzburg. I sat on my bed for a while and when my friends were ready to go, we grabbed our sunglasses and cameras and went into the city. We walked
through streets of pastel color buildings into a small restaurant where we couldn’t find a table big enough for 5 of us, so we resigned to sit down in the smoking room, where we ate Austrian pastries and cigarette smoke. We went to Mozart’s house—who for some reason I kept calling Beethoven in my head, even though I know they’re different people—and took pictures of the yellow walls because they were the only thing with no “no pictures allowed” signs on them. We played with the music boxes and golf balls in the gift shop and walked out, hopefully not annoying the cashier too much. We walked to a vintage wood shop with figures of saints and intricate looking clocks hanging on the walls, tables overflowing with all kinds of decorations, and furniture that looked too expensive to breathe by. I slowly walked around the shop, careful not to knock something over with my bag. I got nervous around the trinkets and decided it would be best to just stand by the door and wait for my friends to be done looking around. We wanted to go up to the Hohensalzburg Fortress before it got dark outside, and after deciding that taking the stairs up was not worth the couple of euros we were going to save, we bought tickets to the railway. Going up, you got glimpses of the city without all the billboards and all the cars, making it look almost as old as it was. I pictured how it might’ve looked like with red flags dancing in the wind. Before going into the museum inside the fortress, we made our way to the terrace. We were all quiet for a little while admiring the Alps. I have seen many mountains in my life and most don’t look different from one another, but these do, with their immensity and the snow laying delicately on top. One of my friends turned to me with teary eyes and asked: “how does Earth just get like that?” I couldn’t help but laugh a little at her getting emotional over mountains. My own eyes teared up a little from seeing her cry. I gave her a side-hug and said, “Tectonic plates, Abby.” After going around the fortress for a few hours, we came back down to the city. We had dinner and walked through dark roads back to the hotel. We talked about food, parallel universes, and, how can time travel exist if time is not even a real thing anyway? The next day we went on a guided The Sound of Music tour, where they took us to all the iconic
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locations like the church where Maria and the Captain get married and the gazebo where Liesl unknowingly kisses a Nazi. After the tour was over our noses guided us to a Korean restaurant and our tired bodies back to bed. In the morning, we dragged ourselves to the train station again, preparing for another long week of classes. Those two days in Salzburg started only as something I was going to do for fun, but it ended up being so much more than that. I kept looking around and thinking about my family. Maybe long ago they were walking down the same streets I was in. It hurt me that they had to leave their home because existing there wasn’t safe and that it took 80 years for us to be back there again. It reminded me of how it felt to be back home in Mexico and back in school in Boston and how I worried about my friends and my family all the time and just hoping the next day doesn’t get worse than the last. I shook my head like an Etch A Sketch trying to erase those thoughts. I kept repeating my dad’s text on my head like a mantra “enjoy your day, enjoy your day, enjoy your day.” I was in another country with some incredible people and I was having a good time. I was enjoying my day, but I thought about Nazis—the old and the new—too.
A Street in Venice Mia Cappiello
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Stay Strapped Anna Cappello
A collection of media done in the moment, compiled in little books I keep on me during my travels.
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Paris: Tease Miles Millikan
A city with an energy, certainly with a love Stick your head out the window and listen close enough— I swear you can hear lost souls using their lips to find their way home Perhaps it was the perfume of the city that did it, perhaps it was a trance But that trance was a waiter named Ceril who poured champagne as slow as one last kiss That trance was the stars dancing across the Eiffel tower while we watched from the river of dreamers That trance was Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald having never sounded that good Tapping along the walls of our hotel room to their sweet music and she sang Unbeknownst to us, she took a picture Which is so like her to do Thank god. Everyone marvels at the look in the Mona Lisa’s eyes But if you look into the eyes of any person sitting at the edge of the Seine You’ll see the same complexity, the same searching heart, the same mischievous key holder That is one of the things I’ve learned from that great city These are the rest: You’ll get to a point where the thing that’s impossible will be so easy you won’t be able to remember what impossible felt like A head out the window is just as good as a glass of water The juxtaposition of a city’s romantic allure and its homelessness reality is something I have no idea how to be comfortable with
I get to be me A nod is one of the sweetest gestures humans have :O is universal The middle is a fantastic place to be 6 hours is not that long I am so grateful for how much my heart has loved, I have learned so much from it; my little companion through life And sore lips should only be cured with more wine. Paris, you were my fantasy I never could have dreamed of, But now my lips are purple and my heart has blossomed again, even if just a little bit It feels easy here. It’s good
Breathe Walk Die
Camila Fagen Guitron
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Well Sweet Well Stephanie Shih
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Adjustment Period Who? Anna Cappello
You push the strange skeletal key into the sticky lock on the front door. The funny blue door with the knob in the middle. You fiddle with both the key and the knob, using a wild technique, knowing you will eventually wiggle things into place. After a short struggle, the lock clicks and you lurch into the room. The comfortable lodgings of your Airbnb are exactly as you left them: the bright red cabinets of the kitchenette, the fake flowers on the kitchen table, the unmade bed jutting out from behind a room divider. A metal staircase ascending in tight spirals leads up to an open second floor bedroom, but you and your friends keep forgetting that’s even up there. The large windows, open just a crack, let in every noise from the street outside — excerpts from conversations in Italian and English, cars revving and honking, people laughing and shouting. It’s comforting, almost as if the soundtrack of Florence has always scored your life. Your suitcases lay half open. Your passports wait for you on the desk. It is late afternoon, and by this time tomorrow you will have whizzed off to the next city. But now a breeze ambles inside, circulating a sweet scent through the stale room. That smell, the dim room, the chatter from the adjacent sidewalk — you cannot remember it being any other way. If someone asked you right in this instance how long you had lived here, you would say forever. And just like that, this is your new normal. ***
When I left for my 90-day abroad program in the Netherlands, I was prepared to feel out of my element. I was prepared (or as prepared as anyone can be) for the inevitable moments of confusion and homesickness and overwhelming unfamiliarity that must accompany moving halfway across the world. It was repeated to me that the threes would be the hardest: the third day, the third week, the third month. And so, I arrived at the 14th-century medieval castle in the Dutch countryside with the 70 other students whom I would be living with for a semester, and waited for the symptoms of change and upheaval to set in. But the third day passed, and I felt… nothing. The uneasiness and disorientation that I had expected did not come. More than that, I was hardly even shocked by my new living arrangements. Before this I had never even seen a castle, but 24 hours into my stay, I thought of her only as my surrogate campus. Despite it being only my second time out of the country, and first time ever in Europe, the clean landscape and throaty language of the Netherlands felt hardly new or strange at all. Was this normal? Was there something wrong with me? Surely the reality of my situation would sink in and I would have that anticipated “oh shit” moment. I would wake up one morning, for the first time expecting to be back in Boston, back amongst the familiar, and it would all hit me that I am, in fact, 3,500 miles and an ocean away from my own bed. My own mom. My own city, and language, and customs, and comforts. The three week marker came and went, and still — nothing. Ten minutes into my first weekend trip to Amsterdam, I had already envisioned myself living in some teeny tiny flat at the top of a crooked, candy-colored building, my bike chained up on the sidewalk between the front door and a carefree canal. Even in Berlin, my next stop, I ended up at a threestory electronic night club in an abandoned factory building, and hardly stopped to question the absurdity of such a predicament. It seems that no matter where I went, my mind hooked up and adapted almost instantly. I would go to sleep in a strange bed, listening to strange sounds and contemplating the day’s strange adventures, and
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Street Art
Megan Hatch
whatever city in which I happened to be would silently morph into my new normal. As you may be able to deduce, this is not at all how I expected this adjustment to go. Change and I do not have a very harmonious relationship, and the fact that I was even doing a semester abroad was a bigger surprise to me than anyone else. Even when I was young and hardly anything in my life had ever changed, my parents would tease me — “for someone who changes outfits five times a day, you’d think she’d be okay with us changing our brand of cereal.” Alas, no, she was not. Even before we started picking up and moving around New England for my dad’s jobs, I had a great aversion to any change in routine — anything switching up on me. When I turned eight, however, the changes just kept coming. I hated goodbyes, but I got used to them. I dreaded rebuilding, but it got easier every time. Never would I have expected that in ten years time, I would intentionally commit myself to three months so far removed from the life I had carefully curated — had come to know and care for and depend on. However out of character that choice may have seemed, I wasted only the minimal time and effort doubting myself. After getting into the program, I can remember only one (and a half) instances in which I ever questioned my compatibility with the prospect of so much self-inflicted change. Now, about to enter that ominous third month away from home, with a whole host of cities and stories under my belt, I have never been more shocked by my newfound adaptability, nor more appreciative of the break in character that led me here. *** You step out the door of the bakery, letting a woosh of warm, sweet air out into the quiet street. The day is cool and absent of wind, with a wide, white sky. The main road in Well is empty of people, bikes, or cars, and you get the sense that everyone is tucked away inside, lost in conversation or thought. Your bag of fresh baked goods swings as you walk the path out of town and to the castle — humming absentmindedly.
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You pass homes, some with tall hedges, some with bird baths and tidy gardens waiting for clearer signs of springtime. Further out, the street is bordered by farmland, and the division between earth and sky becomes even more pronounced. With the castle’s fortress now in sight, you pause and light a cigarette to occupy you for the remainder of the walk. You could not be further removed from your home campus, squeezed into the dead center of Boston. This silent, secluded substitute exists in a different world than the one from which you come; they operate in tangent, or tandem, or perhaps even total autonomy. With four weeks to go before your departure, you wonder what kind of adjustment period awaits you. Wonder if readjustment will come as easily to you as this semester of perpetual newness and unpredictability has. The road curves, delivering you gracefully to a stone bridge, across which stands the striking facade of the castle. The first breeze of the hour floats by in no hurry, but its passing stirs your exposed face and bare hands to become hyper-aware of their strange surroundings. Your ears are suddenly sensitive to the soft sounds of water and wind and birds, that wage quiet resistance against the amorphous silence. You savor the taste of the air, and register in one long breath the smells of soft earth and cigarette smoke. For the first time, you come close to a moment of lucidity. You smile, wide and true, at the walled building before you. The place that had so gently and patiently become a home. Your home.
Rialto Bridge Megan Hatch
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Finding Religion Without a God Jamie Molnar
Sunday mornings were always something I dreaded. My mother would wake me up at eight o’clock in the morning on my day off, make me wear ridiculously uncomfortable clothes, and we would sit in a freezing room for an hour listening to a man drag on and on about another man who could apparently walk on water. Even from a young age, I didn’t believe any of the stories I was told in church. Even from a young age, I didn’t like the idea of an almighty being watching me from the sky telling me how to live. As I grew older, I realized that I also refused to believe that my achievements weren’t my own but were determined by a being I wasn’t even sure existed. I’m not saying that after walking into some of the most beautiful cathedrals on Earth—the Dam in Cologne, the Duomo in Milan, La
Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, St. Paul’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel— I’m suddenly on my knees praising the Lord, but I can understand why such buildings are created. These artists believed in something so wholeheartedly that they spent their life and beyond creating a home for it. A home for other people who believe in the same thing. Sitting in the courtyard of the Sforzesco Castle in Milan, Italy, I listened intently to Dulcia tell the tale of Michelangelo. As we were about to see his unfinished Pietà, she enthusiastically went through his entire career. During her performance she told us how Michelangelo, even when painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, would never sign his works. She explained that he didn’t credit himself for his talent, but credited God and so he felt it would be wrong to sign his own sculptures and paintings. Giving credit to God was apparently a trend among artists of the time, but now, centuries later, I see the stained glass, the architecture, the sculptures, the paintings and I disagree. God didn’t bestow this talent on any of these artists— religion did. Somehow, by witnessing these amazing works of architecture I have finally realized what religion is, and it doesn’t have to include a god. Religion is what drives you, what keeps you afloat. It’s the thing that makes you feel whole, makes you feel loved. The Almighty being in the sky did not give these artists the talent to create such immaculate works. Hell, I don’t think he’d have the time. It was their undying faith in such an Almighty being that drove them to even imagine their masterpieces. Every fiber of their being put forth for that belief and it manifested in the form of art. I have never been a religious person, but I hope to be religious one day, just not in the way anyone would expect. I hope to one day believe in something so unconditionally that all of my art revolves around it. That is religion at its purest.
People of the Mona Lisa Zachary Cargie
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Between Seconds Anna Cappello
Thinking about a conversation between two chess pieces. Thinking about seeing the same wave twice. Thinking about that song I heard in Macy’s once and remembered being someone I had never known. Thinking about glass planes. Thinking about the tides within the confines of my skin. Thinking about white socks and white shoes. Thinking about What if we have all been tying our laces wrong our whole lives? Thinking about sitting on the piano bench as my mother cuts my hair. Thinking about What should I tip the Domino’s kid? Thinking about girls. Thinking about a cake left in the rain. Thinking about Who names the rivers? Thinking about swimming out to a dilapidated raft in a still pond. Laying there naked
Orange under my closed eyelids instead of black Thinking about an aged armchair on the surface of the moon. Thinking about dirt under my nails and sand in my teeth. Thinking about piles of buttons and post-its and cigarette butts Waiting for me In the place between Thinking about What was that song? Whose life did I remember? Thinking about seeing the same cloud twice. Thinking about garlic wafting from the kitchen to the porch Beach towels hung over the railing Bell tolling rhythmically from a bobbing speck Between calm water and flaming sky Thinking about Will you always remember the way to my house? Thinking about wet cake. Thinking about the spaces between blinks Between bricks and stitches and teeth Between an end and the next beginning
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Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II Megan Hatch
Moenen
Camila Fagen Guitron
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Untitled
Clarah Grossman
I obviously missed the memo that established this was a business casual flight, not a casual, sleep-in-these-clothes flight. I pulled the provided airline blanket over my lap to hide my stained sweatpants, but I think combining the throw blanket with my sweatshirt, littered with holes, would make me stand out even more. I shift in my seat, smoothing down my pants. I look out the window, and crack my fingers. I can’t see my apartment building from here, but somewhere out there, is my home with new residents. I fiddle with my seatbelt. It isn’t too late to get off the plane. I could tell the sub-letters that I changed my mind, and I would give them all their money back, even help them find a new place. I could let them stay, and I could go live on someone’s couch for a year An older man with half a head of grey hair takes the empty seat next to me, and the urge to leave subsides. I wouldn’t want to make the man get up—especially after I watch him rearrange his pillow beneath his back to perfection. He got the message about the dress code: loafers that have decades on them and slacks that could be right out of the store. The holes in my sweatshirt can’t be larger than my thumb, and yet, I can feel the cold air coming from the vents all over my skin. I take a deep breath and relax myself. I need a distraction. I reach for the bag at my feet. My hands feel the canvas material as I push it aside, looking for the only thing I packed besides my one duffel. The leather is warm to touch, and even without seeing the cover, I know the picture drawn on the front. I take another deep breath, and pull out my journal. The braided string that keeps the book closed has frayed; I braid the strands together, calming
my doubts and refocusing my thoughts. I can’t go back to my apartment. I won’t get off the plane. The edges of the journal are cracked, and stain my fingers a warm brown every time I open the cover. It’s good for keeping people from opening or touching the journal. I love it. It reminds me of early mornings spent wrapped in a gray comforter with sweet humming I would fight to stay awake to hear. It reminds me of hands reaching for mine. It reminds me of everything I want to be, and everything she didn’t have time to be. I rub my fingers on edges, and open the cover. My handwriting is just like how Mom’s was: big and loopy, and a little sloppy and hard to read. As I flip through the pages, I can tell which pieces she took her time on, and which ones she wrote down in a hurry. Random thoughts and ideas litter the canvas pages. There were notes that didn’t make sense even to her—she wrote next to some passages big question marks. Pieces of paper were stuck into pages with no order. Since the journal had been given to me, I placed a photo next to the passage that meant the most to me. Mom saw the world as a whole. She loved that her home was the Earth; she loved to dream about all the fun she could have. I flip to that page, the list of things my mom wanted to do but wasn’t able to, and pick up the photo with my stained fingers. It shows Mom and I when I was young. We’re in our bathing suits in the sand of some forgotten beach. She sat with her legs crossed and I sat in her lap with my tiny legs in front of me. Mom leaned back on her hands with her eyes closed, head tilted towards the sun. My hands were in the air. Both of us smiled wide, showing off our similar dimples and how our noses both crinkle in pleasure. I was barely a child when this photo was taken, but even then, Mom filled my head with dreams of travel. She wanted to be able to show the entire world to me, and all the delights that it can offer. She would say that there are terrible things in this world, things to fear and to ignore, but there is so much beauty as well. The beauty reminded Mom that things were going to be okay, no matter where she went. She said, as long as you can find something beauty in the horizon, then everything would be okay. After
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she passed away, the world lost its beauty. My world shrunk to the size of my apartment and the surrounding radius. I would venture out for classes, but towards the end, I spent so little time on campus. For three years, I let fear and ignorance get to me and isolate me from the world, my mom’s home. Mom added to this list since she was a college student. She wrote about silly things like creating a message in a bottle and going to a masquerade ball. She wrote about beautiful things like seeing the sunset at the top of a mountain and watching a celebration of colors and culture. She wanted to see cemeteries where our ancestors laid, and to kneel for every religion. Mom wanted to understand things and never to leave something unturned. It’s time for me to unturn things for her. I look over the list in the leather journal. I don’t want my world to be so small anymore. I’m done with classes forever; I saved all the money I have made over my lifetime. I look out the window, knowing that my apartment is out there and it will be waiting for me in a year. For now, for Mom, I need the world to be my home.
Untitled
Madison Douglas
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Tattoos of the Castle A Glimpse At The Ink We Carry With Us
My tattoo is a poppy flower. I knew when coming to the Castle that I wanted a tattoo while abroad. I just didn’t know where or when I wanted to get it. It took me a while to figure it out, but I decided that Italy would be the perfect place to get it since I am Italian and Italy has always been a place I wanted to visit for the longest time. I was in Florence when I got my tattoo and made no appointment. I found a shop that was all female artists which was very important to me and we hopped on public transport to outside the city. It was a small shop but very cool inside with tons of vintage posters. I was super excited but also nervous since this tattoo was going to be a lot bigger than my last and I’d only had the idea for about a week. Surprisingly it didn’t hurt that bad, though the shading was a bit painful. It didn’t take that long. The tattoo doesn’t have some big meaning behind it. It’s more of a reminder of an amazing trip and experience I had and am still currently having. I see it as bookmark for a chapter in my life. — Noelle DeConzo
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My tattoo is the three stars that are at the top of the Harry Potter book pages. I got it in April of last year. It didn’t really hurt for the most part, but the star that’s right on my vein really hurt and I kinda stopped breathing. I almost blacked out completely, and the tattoo artist realized how pale I was and went to get glucose tablets and water. I felt so embarrassed because there was a woman next to me covered in tattoos getting a huge back piece and she was just laying there chilling while I’m getting this tiny tattoo over here. Harry Potter means a lot to me as a reader and writer since it is such an iconic piece of literature. I got it on my right wrist because I'm right handed so when I’m writing I can look at it and remember to keep going. While we were in Scotland we went to The Elephant House where JK Rowling actually wrote the books and it was very surreal. That’s where this picture was taken. — Nicole Turner
My tattoo is just three dots behind my ear. I got it in Prague at this place called Black House Tattoo. It didn’t hurt at all, it literally took two seconds because it’s so small. The woman who did it was also so cool. It really has no meaning whatsoever. Actually I changed what I was going to get about five minutes before walking in. Originally, I was going to get a tattoo that I saw on a girl I follow on Instagram. Hers was five dots behind her ear but it followed the natural curve of her earlobe. Impulse made me get only three dots. I honestly just wanted to get a tattoo while abroad and I thought this was a cute spot and simple tattoo to get. It’s kinda hidden so if I end up hating it, who cares? — Madison Douglas
My tattoo is taken from the cover of the Grateful Dead album, Terrapin Station. It symbolizes lots of things for me, namely my love of music, love of animals, and the connection I have with The Grateful Dead’s music. I got it at a tattoo parlour in Miami with one of my best friends. It was kinda painful. I wanted it because I’d wanted a tattoo for awhile and the moment was right. — Ian Zigel
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My tattoo is three tulips. I knew that I wanted to leave this study abroad program with another tattoo. I also knew that I wanted tulips because that’s what I looked forward most to seeing in the Netherlands. I’m planning to see them before we leave. The day trip to Rotterdam presented the perfect opportunity to get another tattoo and it would be healed enough for me to continue playing sports as soon as I returned to the U.S. in April. The shop that I went to was incredibly clean and also served as a shop for spray paint. My artist (who I cannot recommend more) was absolutely amazing, he executed my idea perfectly and I adore how my tattoo turned out. I was expecting pain because I have two other tattoos but given the fine lines of my tattoo, I wasn’t expecting the session to be over as quickly as it was. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t painful because it was. The whole appointment took an hour total with table setup and the actual tattoo took maybe twenty minutes. The tattoo has two meanings. First, tulips are very well known to the Netherlands and I knew that if I got another tattoo while I’m abroad, I would most definitely get tulips. The second meaning is that they remind me of my mum. From a very young age, my mum had me work with her in our garden and though I didn’t enjoy getting dirty, I loved to look at the flowers and I love how much joy they bring my mum and I. We both send each other flowers sometimes just because we know that they’ll make us feel better. — Katie Rhee
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My tattoo is of a honey bee. I knew I wanted a tattoo while I was in Paris, and there happened to be a cool shop right by the apartment we were staying in. I wasn’t nervous because this was my third tattoo, but I was curious because people had told me that getting it on your ribs hurt a lot. I have a high pain tolerance, but I wasn’t sure what to expect. They brought my friend and I back behind a curtain and set us up in the same section of the room. My artist was a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, and she spoke a little English so we got to chat a little bit. The whole thing took about an hour, and it honestly wasn’t that bad pain-wise; there was only one part while she was doing the detail in the wings that I had to distract myself with the memory of eating a giant macaron in a park in the sunshine. The coolest part was the fact that she didn’t have a full sketch before she tattooed it-towards the end she actually took a sharpie to my skin and drew it out on my body. This is my first tattoo that doesn’t really have a meaning. I genuinely love bees and I’m fascinated by them, so it felt right to get one. Also, one of my best friends from home designed it, so it’s special in that way. — Julia Rouillard
My tattoo is two koi fish in a circular shape. There are waves behind them and a tiny hidden heart in the scales of one of the fish. I got it freshman year at a tattoo shop in Boston called Redemption Tattoo. The shop was tidy but small. There were two or three spaces for people to get tattoos, and I took the one in the back of the shop. I wasn’t nervous leading up to it. I was excited. Maybe too excited, because I forgot about pain as a factor. When I realized that getting a tattoo feels like being burned, I became tense throughout the process. It was over quickly though — my artist took forty minutes to finish the intricate design. My roommate and I are pretty much inseparable, and she came with me for moral support. I decided to get my tattoo because I wanted to do something major on my own. I thought about it for six months. Being away from my parents gave me the chance to be bolder and braver. Honestly, I think I just wanted to spite them because they treat me like a baby. I’m their only child so I understand, but it just made me want to get the tattoo even more. I don’t regret it at all, and my parents still don’t know. It’s been a year. — Emi Shibayama
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My tattoo is a sun rising over a mountain/face on my left arm. It’s my own art and it’s really simple. I got it over travel break in Paris. I had thought about getting a tattoo in Europe, but I knew I could only get something if it had meaning, I didn’t want to get something random just because I’m studying abroad. I remember thinking “well, this is it!” when I heard the buzz of the needle and just kind of accepted fate. That’s one of the things I love about tattoos — you kind of have to breathe and let go of any fear when realizing this is going to be on you forever. It’s a crazy feeling. When the needle touched my arm I was like “oh that’s not bad at all!” and it was really comfortable compared to my other tattoo experience when I was gripping my brother’s hand the whole time. My tattoo only took about 10 minutes and as soon as I saw it in the mirror I was in love with it. This tattoo has a lot of meaning. I grew up 30 minutes north of San Francisco and since moving to Boston for school, I’ve realized just how much I need the sun. When I was little, my family and I used to watch the sunset from our dining room window and we would say “Goodbye sun, thank you for the day!” I had almost forgotten about that until freshman year of college when I was really homesick and was watching the sunset out of my dorm window one day. That phrase suddenly had a whole new meaning for me because it reminded me to be grateful for everything the natural world has given us even during really hard times. I mean, the sun gives us life. The face below the sun on my tattoo also has meaning. The eyebrows on the face resemble the mountain that the sun sets behind in my hometown, it’s actually the specific view of the mountain from my house. The mountain is nicknamed “the sleeping lady” so the face below the eyebrows kind of represents that. Honestly I kind of just thought it looked cool with a face and then was like oh hey that works! Another couple meanings it has is that my brother and I used to dance around our living room to “Here Comes The Sun” by the Beatles when we were growing up and the musical that inspired me to do theatre has a recurring theme of the sun. — Marlee Mesarchik
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My tattoo is the letter “u” with a period at the end. I got it in Prague with five other people who were also getting tattoos at the same time, which is definitely part of the reason I wanted to get this. I didn’t originally feel like I had to get a tattoo while I was abroad. Even the morning of, I had no idea what I was going to get. But when we walked into the tattoo parlour, I felt drawn to the place and I knew I was going to get one. I have two other tattoos, one that is a flower that both me and my best friend have on the inside of our middle fingers, and the other, on my ankle, is the word “Millstone” which is the name of the street I grew up on, and also the full name of my dog, Millie, who died a year ago. My other two tattoos are for other people or things, so as I was walking into the tattoo parlour, I felt like I had to get something for me. I’d been playing around with the idea of getting a tiny initial tattoo but I didn’t know whose initial to get. Nothing felt right. I wanted to get something that would serve as a reminder to me, but I still don’t know exactly what the reminder is. I finally decided to just do the lowercase letter “u”, and then a friend suggested adding a period to the end. That sort of just clicked. The short answer to the question of what it means is that it is talking to me, saying “You. Period.” The long answer is more complicated. I want to say that you always have yourself to help you get through things while also reminding myself that I have gotten myself to this point and I have the ability to continue doing that. I also wanted to have the forever reminder that, in short, you’ve got this. So I’m not exactly sure what it means because, all at once, it means so much, but I do know it’s for me and I know that it is important. — Samantha Wiener
My tattoo is just the handwritten word, PepperPot. When I was little, my family and friends used to call me a PepperPot. It basically just means someone that is really opinionated. People often use it to refer to women because women aren’t expected to be opinionated or able to do a lot of things. So it’s not a tattoo for anyone else, it’s just a tattoo for myself. I got it in a hidden place and at a time when I was really young, so it’s about being selfish and getting something for myself. I got the tattoo in Prague with my friend Maddie. We wanted to do it in Prague because we knew it’d be the cheapest tattoo. We walked in and immediately I was like, “nope I can’t do this, I’m too scared.” But then the lady asked what I wanted and made the little drawing. It only took fifteen minutes because it’s pretty small. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it was going to but it did hurt a little which validated that I had actually gotten a tattoo. And then it was over and it was awesome. — Meredith Stisser One of the first movies my dad showed me was A New Hope. He even took me to the premiere of Revenge of the Sith and I got a picture with Darth Maul despite being scared out of my mind of the mask. Even after that, I always had a love for Star Wars. It was a huge reason I got into screenwriting and wanted to pursue it as a career. I came across the outline of the millennium falcon and knew I had to get it tattooed. I went to a tattoo place near where I live at the artist added the stars in for me and I fell in love. — Kaley Sirois
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My tattoo is a one-line drawing of a turtle with the initials “M.K.” inside of it on the outside of my ankle. I got it at The Art Den in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and I was acting like I wasn’t nervous but was fully freaking out the days leading up to it. There’s so much to be nervous about with your first tattoo. You don’t know if it’ll hurt, how people (parents) will react, when it’ll be done healing—it’s just a lot to think about. But, most of all, I was excited, and that beat my nerves by a landslide. When I sat down to get my tattoo, I felt a little foolish for being so nervous. It didn’t hurt at all and only took ten minutes. I feel bad for my parents because those ten minutes after all that worrying took away any reluctance I had for getting more tattoos. It also helped that this tattoo holds a lot of meaning for me, and I was determined to get it no matter what. When I was young, a close friend of mine named Madison Karno died in a boating accident. Her death was very sudden and came as a huge shock for me—I even had plans to see her the day that she died and was wondering why she never showed up. Her loss was my first real encounter with death, and it was a defining moment for my childhood. I found myself thinking of her at every milestone in my life. Moments that should have been nothing but exciting for me always came with the reminder that she wasn’t there to experience
them with me. This was especially true my freshman year of college, when absolutely everything was a milestone for me. I moved from a tiny town on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi to a big city, made new friends, saw snow. It was all so new and fun, and it was all just a little sad. I talked about my friend Madison more in that year than I had ever before, even more than the year following her death. I was young. I didn’t know how to talk about her then. Suddenly, she was all I could talk about. The end of my freshman year, I decided to commemorate her with a tattoo of her favorite animal: a turtle. This summer, it’ll be the ten year anniversary of her death. It’s gotten easier to deal with in those ten years, but it’s far from easy. But now, when people ask me about my tattoo, I get to tell them all about my wonderful friend Madison, the girl who was the same age as me but acted like my mentor, who was so outgoing but always gave her shy friend time to speak, who I planned to open up a pet store with when I wanted to be a vet (she’d work the front, I’d work the back.) When Madison died, my mom gave me some advice. She said I’d never stop missing her, but I would learn to live life without her. I miss Madison every day. But at least I get to walk through life with a little part of her with me. — Abby Ladner
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I have a tattoo on my inner arm in the center near the crease. It’s pretty small. It’s a sunset, but also a sunrise. It represents both. I got this tattoo in Prague during our second independent travel weekend. I had heard Prague had really inexpensive tattoos and all my friends were getting tattoos too. I wasn’t just getting one because of my friends, I’d had this idea in my head for a long time and this seemed like the perfect moment. The tattoo artist was really cool. We looked up her artwork after we’d gotten all of our tattoos, and saw how massive and detailed the tattoos she usually does are so it meant a lot that she took the time out of her day to do our simple tattoos. On the same place on my other arm, I have a waning crescent with a star. I’d been wanting to get that as a match to the sunset, but it has a completely different story. I got this one in Barcelona over Spring Break. Originally I was going to get a waxing crescent which means change but when I got the tattoo, afterwards I realized that it was waning. Freaking out, I looked up the meaning of waning crescents and I found out that they mean rebirth and womanhood which means more to me than change. The tattoo shop we were at was run by all women so it was empowering to get something that represented all women. — Olivia Luisi
My tattoo is a rendition of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. He painted two series of sunflowers for his friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, who was coming to stay with him for a while, only a few months before he cut his ear off. It’s believed that the flowers represented his gratitude, and he talked a lot about them in letters to his brother, Theo. During our trip to Amsterdam I messaged a tattoo artist I have been following for around two years on Instagram, and she was incredibly accommodating! I explained that I only had that weekend in Amsterdam, but would gladly come back for a travel weekend if she couldn’t fit me in, to which she answered: “I have a spot tomorrow at 3PM!” I was so so happy and also a bit scared, as it was my first visible and big tattoo — it’s on my right forearm. The next day I went into Ink Your Skin, the tattoo shop Chiara, the tattoo artist, works at, and met her face to face. She had already drawn some designs from our brief conversation over Instagram and the designs were perfect! I sat down on her tattoo chair and whew just talked for a whole hour, and I did not see the time pass by nor did I feel any pain – actually there were moments I completely forgot that I was getting a tattoo! And so I left Ink Your Skin with a brand new tattoo and some amazing conversations I don’t think I’ll ever forget. — Bia Bauzys
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Robbert van Helsdingen Advisor
Stephanie Shih Editor-in-Chief Multimedia Journalism, Marketing, and Design 2020
Nicole Turner Design Committee Leader Publishing 2021
Clarah Grossman Art Selection Committee Leader & Editing Committee WLP 2021
Jamie Molnar Editing Committee Leader & PR Committee WLP 2021
Rishona Michael PR Committee Leader & Editing Committee Publishing 2021
Samantha Wiener Journalism Committee Leader & Editing Committee Creative Writing 2021
Jordyn Vasquez PR and Journalism Committees WLP 2021
Meredith Stisser Art Selection and PR Committees VMA 2021
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Megan Hatch Design and Journalism Committees Journalism 2020
Emerlynn Shibayama Design & Art Selection Committees VMA 2021
Camila Fagen Guitron Art Selection & Editing Committees WLP 2021
Lillian Cohen Design Committee Journalism 2021
Abby Ladner Editing Committee WLP 2021
Dominique Nieves Design & PR Committees WLP 2021
Bia Bauzys Anna Cappello Mia Cappiello Zachary Cargie Kayleigh Day Noelle DeConzo Madison Dougla Kaileigh Fox Clarah Grossman Camila Fagen Guitron Katharine Hanifen Megan Hatch Miles Millikan Abby Ladner Olivia Luisi Marlee Mesarchik Jamie Molnar Dominique Nieves Katie Rhee Julia Rouillard Emi Shibayama Stephanie Shih Kaley Sirois Meredith Stisser Nicole Turner Samantha Wiener Ian Zigel
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