'Change' - Winter Issue 2019/2020

CHANGE is the law of life

The Cavendish Chronicle Winter Issue 2019/2020

Alex Eldredge, editor, is a British-American MPhil student in Comparative Literature. Talk to her about Latin America, skincare, psychotherapy, travel.

Beatriz Valero De Urquia, editor, is a Spanish MPhil student in Comparative Literature. She is interested in Creative Writing, manuscript reading, travelling and feminism.

Carmen Hatchell Morales, editor and treasurer, is a Spanish-American ELAC MPhil student who loves Camus and Sartre’s polemic writings, truffle oil, and watching Snapchat’s DailyMail story (which she does religiously and would deny doing so even on her deathbed).

Christina Makri, editor, is a Greek MPhil student of Neuroscience. She decided on a degree after binge-watching Criminal Minds and listening to a few too many crime podcasts. Talk to her about art, music, mythology, (Japanese & Korean) literature and ghosts.

Irene Velicer, digital editor & graphic designer, is an American MPhil student in Medieval History. She is into xc skiing, medieval jurisprudence, persimmons, and pies.

She has, however, never had a persimmon pie.

Letter from the Editors Dear reader, We are proud to present 2020’s first edition of the Cavendish Chronicle! As you flip through the carefully curated pages, you’ll discover a collection of evocative poems, thought-provoking short stories, illuminating interviews and buoyant art, all submitted by our talented college members and alumni. Our team diligently worked to hand-pick and edit the magazine’s content and we only hope you can relate to and find comfort in the pieces we’ve chosen to publish. Thank you for your active engagement and for your support in our attempt to document a sliver of time.

We look forward to hearing even more from you in the future and hope that you join us in our long, yet thrilling journey with the Chronicle.

Your Editorial Team xx

Can you see the changes?

It seems as if time moves in a fluctuating pace and the only way to make sense of its capricious steps is by recording it. Through paintings, pictures or texts, we keep track ofboth the warm breeze and the howling winds of change and assign them meaning.

Perhaps, our persistent desire to maintain memories alive is the sole constant around which the world rotates.

Contents

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Letters 02

This morning...

Amy Mcginley

04

Change, culture, colonization Amy Hamizah

Poetry 06

‘Cauterize with Sugar’ Christina Makri

08

‘Sunlight on the wall’ Zara Neill

09

‘Departure’ Beatris Valero

10

‘Chasing Shade’ Christina Makri

Competition Winner

12

Short Story Silence Preserved Megan Lloyd

Artwork Art Contributors Patricija Šapokaitė Alex Eldredge Aris Kagiafas Christina Makri Irene Velicer

Christina Makri Cover painting

Congratulations to Megan Lloyd, Winner of the Winter 2020 Short Story Competition!

Interview 18

The Vegetarian Interview Christina Makri

Notice 22

Lucy Calls to Action in 2020 Lucy Cavendish Student Union

by Patricija Šapokaitė

by Irene Velicer

2019/2020 Winter Issue

LETTERS

1

Letter

2019/2020 Winter Issue

[This morning...]

by Amy Mcginley

I

heard the birds sing this morning. It’s not like they don’t every morning, but I’m not always there to listen. My phone has me, it draws me in like Medusa’s tendrils, leaving me frozen, gagging for content. I ply myself with photos, videos, and streams of thoughts decorated with gifs and emojis from the second I awake—but not today.

Today I remembered a life I had, a long forgotten-one, without curated smiles, finetuned bodies tinted with sepia and scandal, leaking into my pillowcase. I had pried myself free from its grip a few years back, with pride...

But I got sucked right back in again. I was a fool thinking I could use it sparingly and remain untouched by addiction. But boy, the dopamine hit was just too sweet to resist. So here I am, listening to the wind whip the streets of London again, after a day free of distraction.

A day free.

Today I deactivated the apps and wrote a love letter to my future self because the birds won’t be around forever.

8

by Alex Eldredge

2

2019/2020 Winter Issue

3

Letter

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Change, culture, colonization

by Amy Hamizah

“

W

hen I first came up to Cambridge from Brunei five years ago, my favourite food was penne arrabiata.

By far, I preferred Western food over my native Asian food.

I am only fluent in two languages. English is my dominant one while I tend to confine Bahasa Brunei to the home. I am not fluent at all in Bahasa Sarawak, a regional language spoken by my mum’s family in Sarawak; a state in Malaysia. Although I am from Brunei, the maternal side of my mum’s family is from Sarawak, a state that became Malaysian when it chose to join the Malaysian Federation to gain independence from the British Crown.

Cambridge has led me to value and rediscover my heritage.

” Over the years of living in Cambridge; penne arrabiata has ceased to be my favourite food, even though I do still like it. I don’t prefer Western food over Asian food anymore, to a point that a friend recently asked why would I eat something I can find in Brunei when I wanted to eat kuih linggang in a restaurant in London.

In terms of language, I am proud to say that I have now reached fluency in my mum’s language and Brunei Malay is no longer confined in the home.

by Patricija Šapokaitė

Food and language are part of culture. Thus, by now choosing to go back to my Southeast Asian roots in terms of my food preferences and languages, Cambridge has led me to value and rediscover my heritage.

It has transformed me from a colonised Southeast Asian to a decolonised Southeast Asian.

I leave Cambridge with a PhD and eyes that are teary, but wide open as this change has led me to obtain an awareness of how culture and colonisation are intertwined in one way or another.

Cambridge, I will miss you as you’ve changed me in ways I did not imagine when I stepped foot in you five years ago.

4

POETRY

2019/2020 Winter Issue 2019/2020 Winter Issue

5 2

Poetry

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Cauterize with Sugar

by Christina Makri i grew up surrounded by snowmen yet never any interest I bore myriads of stories I’d been told a few were happy, most were not yet there’s only one lyric I recall that I would get both frozen and burned if I touched any of them at all his pupils of coal left an instant mark on my soul his button nose i felt I’d eskimo-kissed a lot odd, how odd have we met before? everything I had and all I was missing resided in his heart of gold from afar he appeared so cold but up close his touch was burning hot

by Irene Velicer

yet with winter nearing its end and spring waiting to take its turn he began to quickly melt and soon all that was left was a puddle of murky water resembling an urn still I will always remember how in his lips I tasted sugar.

6

2019/2020 Winter Issue

77

Poetry

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Sunlight on the wall

by Zara Neill The sunlight on the wall has vanished.

Two strips of light, hazy and horizontal, beamed on the scratched cream plaster, glowing with the morning’s melancholy sigh.

But now, just a slip of morning later, those patches which gleamed so incessantly, so abundantly, have left the wall gaping.

Absence cries more sharply for those unannounced.

I wonder what will go next; my leaky water bottle, the old dog greying in her bed, a lover’s warmth: all potential wisps of abandonment.

8

by Alex Eldredge

8

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Poetry

Depature by Beatriz Valero

If I could say ‘goodbye’ like I have never before.

If I could still say that I want you by my side.

If I could say, I would but I promised oblivion I would never try.

I can love you, but prefer to escape you.

I can tell you that I never hoped to see us through.

I want to ask for a second, or even third look, but I cannot change my opposing point of view.

If it were that day again and I had said

If you leave like you used to be, and if leaving meant not making noise, I would maybe believe that you forgot me, instead of longing for something that destroys.

Not being sorry but still feeling the void of our departure written on the pavement, a whisper in the papers, a light up sign of danger. an ‘I love you’ spelled in the sand which blows away with the last straw of my smile an oath to myself, that this will be the last time, the last cry.

9

Poetry

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Chasing Shade

by Christina Makri You follow the sun blindly Does the gold hue call to you?

It’s just a siren’s song, don’t listen!

Do you envy the radiant crown?

The fire won’t cauterise your wounds You look, but you can’t see me, Always shielding your eyes with your hands The sun will always set, So let me remind you what it’s like in the shade The sound of the dancing leaves, Melodic whispers of the morning breeze The soft grass brushing your cheek, A loving touch lulling you to sleep It’s the shade you should be chasing The point where your shadow and self meet Stop falling for paper sunsets And fly back to me.

10

2019/2020 Winter Issue

SHORT STORY 11

Short Story Competition Winner

020 ter 2 ory n i W rt St Sho

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Silence Preserved

by Megan Lloyd

by Irene Velicer

Lily gazed through the bars at her great-great-aunt’s withered fingers, which were laying out digestive biscuits on a cracked plastic tray.

‘Eat’, came the croaking voice, and her aunt gingerly placed the tray into the rotating wooden cubby hole, which with the turn of a handle would allow Lily to reach in and lift one of the stale snacks to her lips. She chewed slowly as she gazed at the high ceiling, eyes roaming across the visiting room. A tarnished gold crucifix looked back at her, an eternal witness in this place. Tall pillars guarded the entrance, and shafts of light peeked through crevices in the weathered door. She looked back towards the bars separating her and her aunt, the barrier which they could never cross, save for clumsily clasping hands through the gaps when Lily arrived.

‘Mmm, delicious...’ she trailed off through the crumbs, trying not to let her face give away that it was like chewing cardboard. She wondered how long those biscuits had been there. She guessed that they saved them for visitors, and goodness knows there weren’t many of those.

Her aunt’s pale skin betrayed the fact that she hadn’t seen the outside world for almost seventy years, aside from the increasing number of occasions when she received special dispensation for trips to the hospital. She had joined the monastery when she was sixteen, and by entering a closed order she had cut herself off from the outside world.

Lily couldn’t even begin to imagine spending that many years behind locked doors, never again able to embrace a loved one, or feel the sea breeze on your skin. She imagined that within these dusty walls it would be easy to forget that the ocean was just a few minutes walk away. She searched her aunt’s face for signs of boredom or misery, but as usual she couldn’t see beyond the watery blue eyes and benevolent

12

Short Story Competition Winner

2019/2020 Winter Issue

smile. Maybe the brain had to shut down after so many years of near solitude. But no, that didn’t feel quite right. Her aunt’s expression was placid and content; she didn’t seem at all perturbed by the silence that was ringing in Lily’s ears.

Their lives couldn’t have been more different from one another.

Her aunt’s last memories of the outside world were of a small village in the centre of Malta in the early 1940s, when World War II ravaged the island and it became the most bombed country on earth. It’s strategic position in the Mediterranean made it a constant target and air raids were a daily occurrence for months on end. In a country so tiny, each explosion changed the face of the land she knew. Perhaps it was that loss that convinced her aunt to dedicate her life to God. Since then, she had lived and cleaned and prayed every day of every year, her unwavering dedication meaning that she eventually became the Mother Superior, the leader of her small community.

Lily smiled, taking in the hunched figure of her aunt sitting in front of her. Her own life felt impossibly busy when she reflected on it here in the monastery. How could she even begin to explain it to someone who hadn’t been a part of society since 1942? Rather than with quiet meditation, her mornings began to the relentless soundtrack of central Birmingham. She would gulp down a green smoothie she had made the night before in an attempt to feel that she was adhering to her new year’s resolutions, and clatter out of the door, inevitably arriving at work a few minutes late. She lived in a world of constant media overload, but somehow the stillness of the visiting room felt even more overwhelming.

Whilst these two vastly dissimilar experiences might suggest that there was much for them to share and learn from each other, there was one almost insurmountable obstacle. When Lily’s aunt had joined the monastery it was during a time of rationing, when military forces were trying to starve Malta’s inhabitants into submission. Understandably, for families struggling with mouths to feed, learning English hadn’t been a priority. Lily, on the other hand, had decided that French lessons in school were probably a more practical use of her time than learning an incredibly complex language spoken only by the inhabitants of a miniscule island. In this moment she was regretting that decision.

13

Short Story Competition Winner

2019/2020 Winter Issue

‘So, how are you?’, she ventured tentatively. Crap, she chastised herself inwardly. What an inconsequential question. Her aunt lived a life that was part of a rich and declining cultural history, of her cultural history. Couldn’t she think of something more profound to say? With the absence of her Nanna, who usually acted as interpreter, it wasn’t so easy. Lily scrambled for some simple words that could convey how much she wanted to connect, to show her love and respect, but her aunt’s frail voice answered first.

‘I pray for you every day, my child’, came the slow and laboured response. Lily knew it to be true. She could say with almost absolute certainty that if questioned, her aunt would not know her name, even after years of summer visits. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t included in her prayers. In a large Catholic family like theirs, to pray for the whole was more efficient than to dwell on each relative individually. Lily felt a warmth spread through her stomach. Someone was asking God to smile on her every day. That had to count for something. Admittedly, she wasn’t sure if she believed in God. At this thought, the image of the Virgin Mary that she wore on a gold pendant around her neck felt suddenly heavy. She glanced up at the crucifix again, fidgeting in her seat.

Lily’s eyes were once again drawn to her aunt’s fingers, as she noticed the affection with which her aunt idly rotated the tarnished ring on her wedding finger. Her aunt noticed, and sat up smiling, appearing much taller.

‘Try it, try it’ she smiled, fumbling the words. She slipped the ring off easily, her hand’s bony with age, and passed it through a small gap in the bars between them. Lily took it carefully, and slid it on to her own finger, holding up her hand to show it off.

‘My husband!’ her aunt responded gleefully, pointing at the cross.

There was such love in her expression, Lily realised, as her aunt’s already impossibly crinkled skin became even more lined as she beamed.

What Lily herself sometimes saw as an institution of isolation had been everything to her aunt, who was now waiting for the day when she would join God in heaven. To unite with Him whom she had made her eternal friend, husband, and father, and be welcomed by His warm embrace.

For Lily, who found life so endlessly rich and full of possibility, this

14

Short Story Competition Winner

2019/2020 Winter Issue

would never be something she could understand. She was glad, though, that her aunt awaited the end of her life without fear, and she continued to make small talk, as much as they were able. She reached for her aunt’s hands once again, and found that her own were gripped tightly in return.

‘Thank you, goodbye, I will pray for you too’, she assured, as she stood up from the low chair and waved a final farewell. Lily never prayed, but she always made an exception after these visits, just in case someone was listening. As she pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped out onto the street, she was blinded by the sun.

She hoped that this wouldn’t be her last visit, as she did each with each passing year. Lily knew that the way she imagined her aunt and the life she had lived was probably far from the reality. But, as families do, she would continue to visit for as long as she could, so that they might continue trying to find common ground in their misimagining of each other.

Lily and her Nena Aquilina.

by Aris Kagiafas 15

In

ter v

iew

2019/2020 Winter Issue

16

17

Interview

2019/2020 Winter Issue

The Vegeterian Interview

by Christina Makri On November 30 & December 1st (2019) the International Conference on Gender Studies: “Gender, Citizenship and Ethnicity” was held at Lucy Cavendish College.

Afterwards, an interview with one of the speakers was conducted: Dr. Theodora Tsimpouki from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece).

In her presentation, Han Kang’s book “The Vegetarian” is discussed and its connection to the Ancient Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo is explored.

Book Summary: “The Vegetarian” The Vegetarian by Han Kang is a three-part novel centred around Yeong-hye, a woman, who after having a disturbing dream about the extent of human cruelty, decides to stop eating meat. Plagued by questions of pain and death, she attempts to turn her back on violence and disengage from humanity by turning herself into a plant. This resolution ends up taking a toll on her relationship with her family and husband. The Vegetarian has received multiple awards, such as the Yi Sang Literary Prize, while its English translation (conducted by Deborah Smith) was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.

The interview contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the book.

Read at your own risk!

18

Interview

Q: Your talk is called “All I need is sunlight: the Ovidian narrative and the relational self in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian”. Can you explain the title?

A: According to the Ovidian myth of Daphne and Apollo, Daphne asks to be turned into a laurel tree so as to be saved from Apollo’s sexual assault.

Contemporary interpretations of the myth read Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne as symbolic of the pursuit of society for women to acquiesce to societal norms and expectations. In Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, the title character turns her back on violence by casting off her human body and transforming into a plant.

Q: In your presentation you highlight that meat-eating practices can be seen as metaphors for the patriarchal society from which the heroine attempts to escape. Can you talk a bit more about this?

A: In my presentation I wished to explore the novel’s re-telling of the Ovidian myth through a feminist posthumanist lens that disrupts the carno-phallogocentric order of the western philosophical tradition. This term belongs to Jacques Derrida and

2019/2020 Winter Issue

refers to the privileging of the dominant human, masculine, flesh-eating subject over non-human animals and nature.

Essentially, like Daphne, in the first part of the novel the heroine tries to rid herself from the mandates of patriarchal society. This attempt is exemplified in her refusal to consume meat. Her abstinence from meat-eating-practices sets in motion the severing of her ties with her husband, parents and siblings.

Yet, her resistance to carnivorous violence reaches its climax in the final part of the novel, where she gradually delivers herself from her humaness by claiming to undergo an Ovidian vegetal metamorphosis.

Q: Is that then the meaning behind her metamorphosis?

A: The heroine’s continuing refusal to ingest any kind of food suggests her desire to cast off her human body and to imagine experiencing a mutation in progress, a flowing into a new bodyshape of plant-like appearance. On the level of reality, we may interpret the heroine’s mental illness and subsequent death as a reflection of the heroine’s mental illness and subsequent death as a reflection of the impossibility to represent femininity outside the

“The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise.

It was a fact. She had never lived.” - The Vegetarian 19

Interview

2019/2020 Winter Issue

“

When a person undergoes such a drastic transformation, there’s simply nothing anyone else can do but sit back and let them get on with it.

”

Quotes from book

parameters of normative patriarchy. However, with the deployment of the Ovidian myth the heroine’s Daphnelike metamorphosis receives multiple meanings, one of which is that it opens to considerations of the natural world and the human’s affective involvement with species other-than-the-itself.

In this regard, much as its original theme owes to the influence of Ovid’s myth, it may also be appropriate to read the novel as a modern myth in its capacity to offer new insights in relation to feminist post-humanism and posthuman ethics.

Q: On a lighter note, why did you chose to attend this particular conference?

“

I’m not an animal anymore, sister […] All I need is sunlight.

”

A: I participated in the conference last year too, and I enjoyed it very much. So, I was grateful to be invited back and happily accepted. Also, I thought it’d be a good chance to see my daughter. (laughs)

Q: Mom, the day you attended the conference last year was also the day that I submitted my application to Cambridge.

And a few weeks later I was offered a place here at Lucy.

Weird right? I think they call that synchronicity.

A: Right! Last year I asked you to come to the event with me, so that you could get a glimpse of what life at Cambridge is like. But you insisted that you’d only visit the city and the college if you got accepted. I’ll go as a student or not at all, that’s what you said.

Q: And now we’re here, on the top floor of the Lucy Cavendish library.

The Vegetarian is here too.

A: Yes, we’re here…Now all we need is sunlight.

*The Vegetarian is available at the library to read and borrow. **Front photograph of quote from a Lucy Cavendish student.

20

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Notice

14 21

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Notice

a c ij tri itÄ— Pa ka by Ĺ apo Dear Lucians, Michaelmas term has flown fast and the next term is a one-way ticket to more opportunities and challenges.

Apart from the academic development, Cambridge is a place for you to grow as a person and a leader. Be aware that the college and the SU are eager to listen and support your ideas. Especially now, as there is a great quest ahead of us; to preserve the original values of the college, to create an environment to celebrate diversity and to tackle the challenges of the 21st century in the post-2021 Lucy Cavendish college.

Lucy Calls to Action in 2020 message from the Student Union

The SU has a substantial budget to kickstart your ideas. Do get in touch to make it happen.

Drop us an email to submit a proposal for a project or give us an idea of an event that you would like to see in the college to js2510@cam.ac.uk.

We wish you a successful Lent Term, Dana (President) & Jana (VP) 22

Photography

2019/2020 Winter Issue

by Irene Velicer 23

Contacts

2019/2020 Winter Issue

Website: http://cavendishchronicle.co.uk/

Join us on Facebook!

by Christina Makri

Twitter: @chroniclecav

24

CHANGE Copyright:

The Cavendish Chronicle Lucy Cavendish College January, 2020

Commemorating the past decade and looking to the future