Worship

TO WORSHIP IS TO INSTILL FAITH IN SOMEONE OR SOMETHING. TO TIRELESSLY DEVOTE HOURS, DAYS, DECADES, OR CARELESSLY, EVEN SUBCONSCIOUSLY, CONSIDER ITS LOOMING PRESENCE BEHIND EVERY CHOICE YOU MAKE.

WHETHER YOU WORSHIP A GOD, A FIGURE THAT WEARS MANY FACES OR NO FACE AT ALL, OR REVEL IN A PLACE, AN ITEM, AN IDEA, WE ALL FIND OURSELVES FAITHFUL TO SOMETHING. HOW DOES THIS FAITH DICTATE OUR EVERYDAY LIVES? WHEN IS ITS POWER OVER YOU MOST POTENT?

WORDS Sophia Kriegel

EM SPRING 2023

Where are your places of devotion? Places of passion?

What do you immediately associate with worship?

What makes something “worthy” of worship?

How do your rituals give meaning to your life?

Why do we worship the things we do?

What does it mean to witness worshiping?

GUIDING QUESTIONS

Do you worship something because you want it? Or do you like that it is unattainable?

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Reagan Allen

PHOTO DIRECTOR ASSISTANT EDITOR

Maya Seri

PHOTO DIRECTOR ASSISTANT EDITOR

Drew Mitchell

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Sophia Kriegel

VISUAL ARTS DIRECTOR

Hadley Breault

DESIGN DIRECTOR

Daria Shulga

MANAGING EDITOR

Mary Kassel

ADVISOR

Mary Kovaleski Byrnes

EDITORIAL

Mary Kassel

Sara Valentine

Sasha Zirin

Mariyam Quaisar

Erin Norton

Arushi Jacob

Caroline Shaheen

Annabelle Adams

Sisel Gelman

Ryan Yau

PHOTO

Graysen Winchester

Drew Mitchell

Maya Seri

Lida Everhart

Marina Man

Jonah Hodari

Hayley Kaufer

Lex Jimenez

Kyra Badger

VISUAL

Hadley Breault

Gina Foley

Sydney Grantham

Mason Vaughan

Julia Lippman

Ning Chen

Ella Fields

DESIGN

Maya Menon Freeman

Note From the Editor

VISUALS Maya Seri

These days I’m thinking a lot about obsession. It’s the theme of my poetry workshop this semester so I’ve been writing a lot of poems about it, too. This is not only my letter for EM but an apology to the other students in my workshop, as I am not a poet.

At the beginning of the semester I made a list of my obsessions. Not things I might claim obsession with on a daily basis (a few hours ago I said I was obsessed with the cold foam on my cold brew) but things that I am truly fixated on, for better or for worse.

Design. Paper, posters, signage. Air signs. Silver, shell, soft scrambled eggs. Enhypen. Efficiency, urgency. Cherries. Chartreuse, vermillion, and powder blue. These are things I actively choose to devote energy to, and things that claim real estate in my subconscious. And that dichotomy is the thing I’m obsessed with the most; the tension between being active and passive.

To worship is to assert your obsessions, to put your devotion on display. There is no such thing as passive worship– it’s maybe the most active choice you can make. I’ve gone down many worship-related internet threads recently, and the range of things people worship is wide. Searching “worship” on Pinterest reveals a plethora of concert photos,

not all (but admittedly most) taking place at Christian megachurches. Under a Wikipedia tab titled “ritual behavior in elephants,” psychopharmacologist

Ronald K. Siegel hypothesized that elephants practice “moon worship” by waving branches when the moon is waxing. I found an ominous tweet simply warning “ocean worship is going to make a resurgence.”

From Anaïs Nin’s Diary, Volume One: “I don’t want worship. I want understanding.” From Brandon Thurman’s Diagram of the Body Held in Worship: “Praise is an instinct our bodies can’t unlearn. God becomes whatever can open these empty hands.” From David Foster Wallace’s This is Water: “There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”

I worshiped EM before I came to Emerson. My friend Mariely (famed EM Mag allstar) showed me an issue back in Texas, and I knew if I went to Emerson that I wanted to be part of the organization that produced such a highcaliber publication. Writing to you now, for my seventh and final issue of EM, I know just how much work goes into making this magazine. For me, and so many others on staff, creating EM is an act of worship. The energy and effort we put into production reflects how much we honor its value. Which is a lot.

Above all else, my goal is to make as cohesive a magazine as I can. To take our staff’s individual creative interpretations of a theme and present them in a way that makes a unit– that tells a story more complete and meaningful by their being brought together. It’s both exciting and devastating to get the printed copies because there are always a million things I wish I’d done better. When the thing you worship requires that you make a definitive artifact representing your devotion, of course it can’t measure up to its potential. Because its potential is your passion; which is all-encompassing, which is absolute, which causes you to make sevenfoot paper mache swords in your three favorite colors (listed here, pictured left).

I often worry that I am too passive. It’s like the central theme of my life and something I think about constantly. When it comes to EM, though, I don’t have to fear passivity, because I actively love this magazine a lot. I’m excited to watch it grow with people that are just as passionate about it as I am, and I’m excited to find this passion in other projects after I graduate. From John Green, as is tradition: “I’m on a rollercoaster that only goes up.” From Wendy Cope, lines of poetry EM likes a lot: “I love you. I’m glad I exist.”

Thank you for reading, Reagan

THE C ULT OF WELLNESS

I N TH REE PARTS ⁄ MY BODY

WORDS Mary Kassel

VISUALS Reagan Allen

Body as Stone

My body is not a temple, but I wish it was. I wish I was made of something stronger than flesh, like stone. Something that could be carved into and become even more beautiful. That I could be fashioned into Gothic Revival or Brutalism by someone who really knows what they’re doing. Created with firm hands that have studied the art of building the world. By tools made for cutting limestone like butter. Strong, imposing, and admired. Not one of those new American pop-up mega-churches. Not something made of plastic and

plexiglass that doesn’t have enough respect to rot. This, at least, I have in common with the monuments of a time long before me. I will rot. I will erode. My body will cave in from years of sun, sweat, salt, and sin. Cracks will form in already flawed skin and I will shrink down to an even smaller stature. In this way, I suppose I am a temple. I am made from the natural world and by the end of my life, the toll that it takes will be visible. It already is. So, I will treat my body the way the world treats its temples.

I understand where the phrase comes from. Temples are a place of sanctity, holiness, respect, and communi-

ty. They are the place where our reality comes the closest to brushing against the walls of others. If I was trying to sell nutrient supplements I suppose I would attempt to convince people that their body must be treated as sacred as well. But, they never tell us that our bodies, as they were built, might be the closest place to divinity on Earth. They say that we must continuously cleanse them in our preparation. Physically, spiritually, and psychologically. To even the most stubborn among us, this messaging can be effective. I was recently under the impression that if I healed my gut my anxiety would be cured. That there are all these bacteria hidden

I.

in my stomach lining that would unlock an unlimited supply of serotonin if only I would stop drinking coffee on an empty stomach and start eating yogurt. To my true and real devastation, I hate the texture of yogurt.

It’s easy to take a stand against wellness culture. It’s consumerism, and it doesn’t take that much forethought to critique this. More often than not it’s a cult disguised as a community in which we can take refuge against the evils of unclean eating. I’m not saying we shouldn’t care for our bodies. But care means so many things, and to me, it will always mean kindness. We should all drink less and eat more vegetables, but

I can manage that without thinking that my body will be desecrated by the occasional beer.

As with all industries, there are levels to the cult of wellness. There are companies hawking products that do more harm than good. Influencers who feel no qualms about promoting disordered eating and harmful supplements. I witness their ads, videos, and the product that is their lifestyle every day. In turn, I become wary of my body as a temple and angry at its implications when the act of living my life is bombarded with the message that my body, in its natural state, will never be good enough. And more often than not this an-

ger turns inward. This is how I come to hate my body for not being made of stone.

There are people genuinely concerned with nutrition and climate protection as it pertains to food. As well as people showing a helpful and healing way to treat eating as a form of kindness towards the body. It would be beautiful if this was the norm. These individuals are not who I condemn when I call wellness a cult. They do not use fear and hate to claim my allegiance. But others do. They’re glad I ache at the soft give of my flesh and hope that I waste my nights begging to wake up like rock. Immovable and unshakable.

AFTER I HAVE BEEN RAVAGED BY THE SPOILS OF WELLNESS, THE LUSH GROWTH OF NEW LIFE CREEPS BACK IN IN THE ABSENCE OF HUMANITY. GONE ARE MY PREDILECTIONS FOR A CERTAIN TYPE OF BEAUTY.

II. Body as Earth

My body is not a forest, but I wish it was. I begin to imagine myself as the green apocalypse. After I have been ravaged by the spoils of wellness, the lush growth of new life creeps back in in the absence of humanity. Gone are my predilections for a certain type of beauty. In my dreams, I grow tall and sturdy as a tree trunk and I expand as far as I can; catching sunlight in my hands. All I come to care about are the leaves growing new and strong on my skeleton. Only my foundation remains. The truth of my body and soul are laid bare with only their necessity at the

surface. I revel in my ability to be skin deep. We keep no secrets from each other because there are no secrets to be had. Our roots grow deep and intermingled. We work together to care for the forest of bodies. In the forest, there is enough water and earth to go around because we create it for each other. There is no metric to reach for being cared for. There are no requirements for the body to meet to be considered a body.

What are our necessities? It may be that we have lost sight of what they are. So, I will speak for myself. I want the rain to come down fresh and clean so I can drink it. I want to taste something delicious every night. I want to run as

fast as I can, whatever that might mean. Only my fastest. There is no reason to be the greatest who ever lived. That accolade is taken by someone who cares a lot more than I do about it, and it deserves it a lot more. I just want to get where I’m going. More than anything; I want where I’m going to be there when I arrive. A dream that didn’t used to feel so tenuous. Before all the forests were cut down in pursuit of the American dream.

Recently, I have developed a theory that the new American dream is being an influencer. Maybe wellness, maybe not. On paper, yes, a shallow dream. In practice? Could it be our voices screaming out

as one about the desire to create something, anything, and receive a livelihood for it?

We can’t all be suffering artists. Too many bodies would wither away under the pressure. Instead, we stretch our bodies as far as they can go. Anything to live as best as we can. Even now, we reach toward the sun. We adapt to survive. Survival has just become different. The niche for life management opened up, and people sprang to fill it. That’s what the cult really is. It’s a to-do list for how to live our lives.

As technology reaches its apex and the lucky few reach total luxury through their wealth they no longer have their health to worry about. They have their wellness. A

full-body strategy that requires a team of people to get there. An ongoing battle to be better, more beautiful, and further from your body in its natural form. To be striving for this constant wellness the baseline of a person’s motivation must come from self-hate or will develop that soon enough. The psychological toll of setting frequent and taxing goals and then not reaching them is astronomical. It tanks self-esteem, creates anxiety and obsession, and cultivates a culture of perfectionism. Not just the body but the entire life. There is always something missing. Something that could be trained to be more beautiful.

And, these new anxieties do not replace the old ones. The

hurt and shame surrounding a body that might draw someone to wellness only increase as these practices become more ingrained in their behavior. The beauty that wellness strives for is not subjective. It’s not wild and ever-changing. This beauty does not take the time to consider how many moments had to happen and collect just right to create the person you see in front of you. The beauty of wellness is thin white men and women. The game is rigged from the start. Of course, it is. No version of wellness cares for your beauty. That is thoughtful and kind. That would care for you no matter what you look like. But, there are people who do, and I’m looking for them.

Body as Body

My body is a body, and I’m glad it is. I watch my knees bend when I ask them and feel my eyes squint against the sun. The sun that withers me. The sun that I’m reaching toward. I wonder how I could be so angry with the body that cares for me the only way it knows how. If there’s a home I carry with me, it is the one that carries me everywhere I go. I once took comfort in the fact that this body was not me, just where I lived. I hid from the physicality of my life and took refuge in the places deep within my mind where I thought I truly dwelt. As if my soul were too pure to be on this plane, in the land of

the living. There I was; eating and drinking and laughing and kissing and acting like I was already dead. But I can’t live outside my body, and I no longer want to.

I don’t know when my health became tied to my physical beauty and personal gratification. Perhaps some of us have an exact moment, in childhood, when we realized that our bodies were no longer ours. That they would always be watched, and scrutinized. That no matter what something would always be wrong with them. Perhaps there was no one moment, only years. Years of walking through the world and getting the message everywhere we look.

Here is where I am stopping myself. I am no longer looking and no longer punishing myself and those around me for the anger I feel toward my body. I have been guilty of yearning for wellness. I have felt its pull. Of course, I can be better, but not because of how my body moves and works. Not because of how I look. There is a duty we have to each other and our bodies, and that is care, it’s kindness. I invite us all to be bodies together. Not rocks or forests. Not the perfect version of ourselves. To care for each other, it could be enough to be bodies together.

III.

THERE IS A DUTY WE HAVE TO EACH OTHER AND OUR BODIES, AND THAT IS CARE, IT’S KINDNESS. I INVITE US ALL TO BE BODIES TOGETHER.

TRUST FALL

VISUALS Graysen Winchester

MODEL Meera Singh

VISUALS Hadley Breault

THE DETAILS DON’T MATTER

WORDS Sara Valentine

VISUALS Daria Shulga

When I was younger, religion was the smell of mothballs and rich green chairs on Easter. I grew a little older and God became something of a joke. A punchline begging the girl in my passenger seat to giggle. We thought so highly of ourselves. Fell victim to the same complex calling out to every seventeen year old alive. On nights where I felt particularly romantic, I waxed poetic and named her my personal God. Worship was something striking and grandiose. Love was something new and exciting. When we fell and skinned our knees, the bruises were

plum-colored, not painful. Never painful. I found myself out-of-touch with pain itself.

I keep catching myself slipping into something prayer-like. Less precise than Our Father, more intentional than a daydream. My heart catches and hangs itself to dry.

When I was born, my mother gave birth to a Prickly-pear. My parents had expected a baby girl, beautiful and pink and wailing, but there I was instead. Bloodshot and blooming, sharp and flinty and unnervingly silent. The nurses took me away, told my parents there was something wrong. The baby isn’t crying. I didn’t know that I was supposed to. If the

world was cold and harsh outside of my mother’s womb, that’s okay, I would be colder. I spend my time molding a new version of myself these days. Something softer. It’s growing new muscles, to learn how to drop these weapons I’ve carried with me all my life. Like carving out chunks of clay from my center, hoping to reveal something beautiful in the dark.

I work at it, I work at it and I think of my mother. She is sitting at our kitchen table, plucking her way through a jigsaw puzzle in the hazy light of my memories. I can never remember what puzzle she is attempting, the details never matter. I watch

her spill the table salt as she reaches for another puzzle piece. I see her take a pinch and toss it over her left shoulder. I know that she is a superstitious woman in ways that I will never be. I understand what this small ritual does before I open my mouth to ask. She is full of love. Every move she makes is about protecting her loved ones.

I am so afraid that I’ve let my teenage self down. There is nothing more precious to me than that scared little girl. I wish I could apologize to her, and beg her to understand.

I got tired, I would say.

It was so heavy, carrying that mallet around. Putting on

the armor every morning. I got tired where you didn’t.

I dream about apologizing to that tumbleweed of a girl. Apologizing for abandoning her. In my dreams I tell her about other things too. I tell her about the sorts of things I’ve seen. The emotions we’ve felt. I would admit to being jealous of her. If I could go back and relive it for the first time again, I would. Hesitation has never been my failing. Very Nietzschian. I tell her that this is a very funny joke, and she will laugh when she’s older.

Stories of salt thrown over a mother’s left shoulder. Fathers and sons laying in cool grass, taking in a show

of shooting stars. What it feels like to watch girls blow out their birthday candles. New girls, dressed in their best with firelight gleaming in their eyes. I want to talk about all the things she didn’t understand before. Flicking pennies in fountains, knocking on wood for luck. The sort of rituals you can only perform with a little hope tucked away. I want to tell her that something good is coming her way. I want to tell her that the details don’t matter, not in the face of love. Life is a work in progress. Life gets so much better when you love being alive. Worship it.

IT’S GROWING NEW MUSCLES, TO LEARN HOW TO DROP THESE WEAPONS I’VE CARRIED WITH ME ALL MY LIFE. LIKE CARVING OUT CHUNKS OF CLAY FROM MY CENTER, HOPING TO REVEAL SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IN THE DARK.

The Culture

VISUALS Jonah Hodari MODELS Daphne Bryant, Liz Farias, Luke Hutson, Stephyne Weathersby, Angelo Gontier, Nicole Smith, Josie Arthur, Arlo Winokur, Sophie Beers-Arthur, Zachary Poulin, Sophia Cheung, Jonah Hodari

ASSISTED Talia Smith, Tima Swaray

VISUALS Ella Fields

The sky felt so blue he thought it would fall on him, Its saturation too heavy to be held by itself, And so he closed his eyes and thought he knew what it could feel like To have it all collapse like a pangea of rain drops. Light with air resistance, He thought it would feel like heaven, Like he could finally atomize into the sky’s divinity. Then he would relay this clumsily to his closest friend, Who he knew was in love with him because she could handle his endless awe, That heightened everything he saw and thought, That drenched him through and wrung him out, That made even the most despairing emotions feel like burning stars. So when he told her she smiled in a lack of surprise And they laid together and she heard all about how she was exactly like the galaxy and the galaxy was exactly like her. And she, half an exhale’s range away from his eyes, Could see the glittery milky way in his pupils that made him believe every word he said. It softens her, Distracts her from the humanly balance of treacherous cycles That will leave him irritated from the incessant intensity Of seeing the imperfect earth as holy as he does.

The despair that can control him

When one of the astounding bursts of life lets him down, Leaves her unsure of how he’ll react to her presence

One that is fiery, One that is beautiful,

One that his avid, equalizing love manifests itself most distinctly, For maybe it’ll make his bones within and the ground underneath angrily buzz And she will be left with her familiar duo of

Anguishing worry

And swallowing empathy

So she lets him be,

Releases into the vast space in which only he resides, The version of the world that only his eyes know, The place where he can wander and find something divine enough

To distract him from the crushing disappointment. She tries not to feel like it’s impossible to compete with something suffocatingly greater than her.

He couldn’t sit still long enough to write or talk about it

About loving the world to the fullest extent possible, About a constant heavy wash of emotions that control him, Grab onto his limbs like they’re teaching him how to dance

He tries to release his charged mind with art, Beckoning it with the flow of his paintbrush. It won’t respond warmly to careful, small strokes, The canvas’s display almost as Big and fast and vibrant and wonderfully messy As the universe is to him

And as she tries to decipher the means of the paintings that crowd his bedroom and his heart

That stain his walls and his sheets from lack of being dry

Fearing the idea that he does this because he doesn’t want to Confide in anyone but the sky above and ground beneath. All the things he says feels like it was hastily written on a post-it All the sentences of beauty and love punctuated by panic and disappointment

But she tells him she loves his creations While instead of listening He’s transfixed on the stars outside his window, In love with the temporary, cavernous wall fixtures And she finally understands why people Feel so small and insignificant

When faced with the vast, expansive night sky, And she holds back tears as he starts to turn around and tell her, Eyes and tone of voice bright like the stars that got them there, How wonderful it is

That such depths can be gravity defying, That such depths can shoot straight upward

To a place just as or more beautiful

Than here

THE GROUND YOU WALK ON

VISUALS Lida Everhart

MODELS Lida Everhart, Genevieve Cook

A Convoluted Journey to Acceptance

WORDS Mariyam Quaisar

Religion took me on a roller coaster, despite its mental turmoil, that ended in cheering and smiles once I reached the bottom.

My family, a ginormous group full of love and laughter, is a relatively religious one. Years and years ago, my ancestors began practicing Islam with a group of Muslims deep within the Shia sect—the Dawoodi Bohras. While this sect originated in Yemen, I am familiar with its existence in the beautiful village I call my second home: Udaipur, Rajasthan. Older generations grew up practicing Islam in this quaint town. From crowded jamaats where everyone gathered around one large plate—a thal—and devoured a delicious, oil-filled meal, to meeting friends in the masjid

for Friday night prayers and coffee; the bonds within the Dawoodi Bohra community were bulletproof.

Practicing Islam in this comforting town combined the pleasures of faith with those of having family. While the majority of the community abided by Allah’s guidelines, it was more about having many shoulders to lean on and laugh with than strictly following rules and regulations put forth by the Quran.

Eventually, the customs of Udaipur traveled across borders to the United States and beyond.

I grew up surrounded by Dawoodi Bohras, all of whom bring an indescribable light to my life. The presence of

this community has shown me loyalty, love, and spiritual connection—and that is why I continue to participate in religious practices despite identifying as agnostic.

From a young age, I was immersed in the history and teachings of Islam—who brought it to life, how it was translated into humanity, when major events took place, where it spread. All of this information shaped my decision to not identify as Muslim.

During the month of Muharram, a month for Shi’a Muslims to acknowledge the sacrifices of our ancestors and mourn them, my cousins and I—in all our pre-teen glory—would stand up in front of friends and family with neon

green trifolds and “present” our research on the Battle of Karbala, the dreadful day when Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussain was defeated by Yazid in his feat to preach Islam. We gathered findings on the various members of Muhammad’s family, from the oldest woman to the youngest child, and recited their significance to Islam with infographics and supporting evidence.

The presentations I did may have made me a better public speaker, but they also forced my young self into absorbing information about supposedly-real people whom I’m meant to “serve.” That one word—serve—nauseated me every time I heard it, whether it was repeated during prayer or drilled into my head by an aunty

I did not want to be Allah’s servant, or anyone’s servant for that matters—and it confused me that the God I was meant to put my faith in wanted me to bow to him.

This confusion eventually paired with the ignorant opinions I was hearing across the media and the small town I grew up in. When I allowed white supremacy to dictate my perceptions of Islam, that’s when my definitive retreat began.

Constantly hearing terrorism and patriarchy in the same sentence as Islam repulsed

me, and I formed an uneducated opinion on what the Muslim community’s ideals are. I cursed the religion and spewed hate on its foundation because I allowed myself to trust what people like Judith Miller convinced America to believe.

However, this roller coaster ride was not equipped with a single peak; rather, my opinions on Islam morphed into opinions on organized religion which settled as opinions about worship.

My negativity towards Islam quickly turned into hate against organized religion as I convinced myself that the concept in general was inhumane. I took the few-badcompared-to-the-many good

examples of Islamic extremists that I heard across the media and in the highschool hallways, and embedded that thought process onto extremists of every religion. I perceived them as people who weren’t given a choice in their faith, or as people who used organized religion

That night, I unshackled my brain to explore the idea of what my worship is.

as a path to gain power over others.

I believed that organized religion was nothing more than a way to control mass groups of people—that it had no true purpose of worship.

Looking back, I realize I was a naive teenager, one who was vulnerable to the world around her and jumped to conclusions like many others her age. But, even though I was a teenager, a species known for making rash decisions, there was little excuse for how ignorant I had become.

It was not until an aggravated conversation with my father—the one without whom I would not be an ounce of who I am today—that my warped perception changed its course.

We were sitting in the living room; he was relaxed on the sofa, I was curled up on the arm chair, and he was dressed in a white kurta pajama and kufi waiting to leave for a religious event during the month of Ramadan. As we sat there, my ignorant mind was perplexed at how my father can be part of a religion that is so horrible to women—so I senselessly decided to share those thoughts.

We got into an argument, and it ended with him saying, “Rani, have you ever researched Islam and how Muslim women truly feel?

Have you ever looked beyond these baseless assumptions to understand how Islam actually empowers women?”

In the moment, I reacted as most defensive teenagers do, talking about the unnecessary dress codes, and niche statutes that women have to follow in places like rural Saudi Arabia. I brought up any and every baseless “fact” I knew that could (but wouldn’t) waver his faith in Islam, but failed to realize how “white washed” my argument sounded. Every single word that came out of my mouth was influenced by the uneducated world around me—and I am better than that.

That night, I felt self righteous and in the mood to prove my dad wrong—of course, I was the one proven wrong. I read through blogs, mementos, essays, articles, all to realize what a positive impact Islam has on its followers; what an impact worship has on people regardless of their association with it.

Worship is the most personal phenomenon there could be—it is between you and whoever you choose to bestow all your trust in. For my father that’s Allah—the God in whom his faith lies and his worries subside. That night, I unshackled my brain to explore the idea of what my worship is. And still to this day, I am exploring and redefining.

VISUALS Julia Lippman

NEVER WRITE POEMS ABOUT ME

WORDS Erin Norton

When I was looking for my resume in Google Docs, all I could find was your poetry. Stanzas that hadn’t crossed my mind in months. So rich with images of nectarines, wounds, and myself. It was like looking into a funhouse mirror. A distorted image of myself I learned to accept when we were still in each other’s lives. Come to think of it, your words have been a permanent fixture of my camera roll. Screenshots of

documents and notes apps filled my phone, but for a long time now, I’ve chosen to keep them safe. Their continual presence was a result of my perpetual laziness to go through my phone. I’ve always scrolled past them, but then I finally found myself confronted with the reality of your verses.

The power of your words gripped me, like the soft ever tightening embrace of

nervous fingers clasping. The first day we met, we sat on your dorm room floor, covering every topic of discussion as an excuse to stay in each other’s presence. Eventually our conversation shifted to our writing. There was nothing I was working on, but you had a whole library of poems just waiting to be read. How lucky that person got to be me. You asked me if I wanted to read some of them, and how could I possibly

refuse? Everything you put on the page was so fantastical and so blissful. I never could have imagined how your words would eventually link us together.

In the autumn we met each other, a time so full of brilliant oranges and reds, it felt like the universe’s brief burst of beauty celebrated the beginnings of our relationship with us. But as nature’s decorations faded to

deep browns and mustards, you reinvented November to be a month full of lavender and blooming willow trees. You refused to let a month where our love was the most robust be wintery and hollow.

Just as I hoped, everything you wrote shifted towards me. A selfish desire I reveled in. I craved to be amongst the beauty in your poetry. You learned about my home and you added it into everything

you wrote. Soon each stanza was filled with sunflower seeds and Vermont skies. The result of your beautiful brain at work melted away the guilt that came with wanting to be wanted. You made me feel as brilliant as a sunset from a mountain top view, as divine as the first daffodil in the last days of winter. Everyday, more and more poems fell into my hands. Each one felt like looking into a mirror, I could see

myself so clearly. But some felt like a request. With each new poem, I wanted to be something more, to become what you saw in me. My rural roots were replaced with worn down sidewalks and skyscrapers. I was happy to reinvent myself in small ways for your art.

But there was one night in February you had me read a poem of yours and I almost couldn’t recognize myself

in it. Suddenly, I was a lover of winter, a wounded girl. Was I broken? Did you revel in the hurt from the life I had before you? Maybe you understood me in a way I had never chosen to see myself. I learned to fill the mold your words created and convinced myself that I simply needed to love my wounds too. For a while, I saw this as a form of self-care and it brought us together. But as February gave way to warmer spring

months, we got colder and a silence grew between us. You were critical in your writing. You dissected my past life and romanticized it. Soon enough your words were sparse. Both to me and on the page. I felt myself become filled with yearning, desperate for what we once had back in autumn. The picnics, mirror balls, love letters—everything. I wanted everything again. I chased every word on your pages,

WITH EACH NEW POEM, I WANTED TO BE SOMETHING MORE, TO BECOME WHAT YOU SAW IN ME.

WHEN I WAS WITH YOU, I WAS A CHARACTER YOU REFUSED TO LET FALL FLAT.

AND IF THAT MEANT I COULD BE YOURS, I WOULD BE ANY CHARACTER YOU WANTED ME TO BE.

annotating each line, analyzing every little detail, symbol, and clue, to try and insert myself into the literary canon that we built for each other. I read your poems so many times, I could recite them from memory. Even after each page was mentally scribbled and covered with the red ink of my worries, the form and content of each remained clear in my mind. Even when I was met with an abrupt sheet of white paper, my anxieties would not cease.

When two writers love each other, it’s the most divine pairing, until it meets a hideous ending. A fresh bouquet of lavender turns into the ghosts of what could have been. Good morning texts with couplets turns into crumpled up loose leaf filled with resentment. Without your words flowing through my mind like lyrics of a song I just can’t get out of my head, I felt empty. I needed the ink to return to the tip of the pen. I refused to question exactly why I needed to know that you missed the way the moon would illuminate my face. All I knew was that your words would fix me. They would write me into existence again. When I was with you, I was a character you refused to let fall flat. And if that meant I could be yours, I would be any character you wanted me to be.

I thought I was written without an ending, until I saw that a poem of yours was published in a literary magazine we both loved. It was the first poem of yours to come out since we broke up. Your writing was so completely foreign to what I once knew. Every description that once resonated with me was now replaced with new ones, which depicted a world so different from the one I once understood. Writing of tales that stated plainly that love never existed between the two of us. I felt myself crumble. I saw myself between the lines and placed in the spaces separating the stanzas. I was disgusted with myself. A love so perfect in my mind was tarnished in just ten lines.

With just a swift flourish of a pen, I was crossed out. Our relationship was revised and revisioned in your new poems and suddenly I was at risk of being erased. No longer was our blank page waiting to be filled. I lost myself in eraser dust, competing with who I was a long time ago, before my fingers flipped through the pages of your poems. Eventually your words were buried by my own and I learned to forget. Documents of my own poetry filled my computer and a new life surfaced in my camera roll. I let my previous delusions die. Finally my character had met its ending.

My Fallen Angel

VISUALS Drew Mitchell MODEL Victoria Interiano ASSISTANT Payton Shepardson

VISUALS Sydney Grantham

My Best My Worst Friend, Enemy

WORDS Arushi Jacob

For as long as I can remember, I didn’t think I would make it past 18. There was no particular reason, except that when I thought of the future all I could see was a dark abyss. It didn’t seem possible to me that there would be a day when I genuinely, truly wanted to live. And for the longest time, there wasn’t.

My depression has been present throughout the entirety of my adolescence, a shadowed caress that becomes

a corporeal chokehold on my worst days. Waxing and waning like the stages of the moon, it grew along with me. It darkened every moment of happiness I experienced, whispering “this is temporary.” Ironically enough, that was my most permanent thought. It never left, riding the highs of falling in love and the lows of falling out of it. It stood right by my side, bored at parties and running wild on vacation, nestled close in the comfort of my bed. It fol-

lowed me across oceans and continents, competing to see who could reach shore first. In a way, my depression is one of the only constants I’ve ever had.

Perhaps this is why the idea of recovery is so hard. It is a betrayal to choose happiness, to let this massive part of yourself go. The familiarity of mental illness is equally comforting and concerning. When you’ve been immersed in a mental illness like depres

sion for a long time, it strongly influences the way you see yourself and your behavior. It completely warps your sense of perception, both of yourself and everything around you. The world and everyone in it is terrible, especially yourself. You’re crazy and stupid and alone, and none of it matters because it’s not like your life is going anywhere. This starts creating a new normal, a sense of familiarity that begins to envelop you.

What does it matter if the entire world is out to get you?

You’re miserable and bitter and hate everything and everyone so deeply that nothing really matters. This is just the way things are, and the way they always will be. And after years of thinking like this, happiness can feel like a stranger - not necessarily unwelcome, just unfamiliar. A depressed mind sees feeling good as something wrong, and feeling depressed feels

safer.

When that feeling of security starts to slip away, it can terrify you. It terrified me when I started to get better. I used to wake up each morning and wish I could’ve stayed asleep forever. I can’t pinpoint when it happened but eventually, I started waking up each day, excited to get out of bed and go about my day, and the day after that, and the day after that. It wasn’t a linear

or smooth sailing path but it was one I wasn’t sure I was really on, certain everything would fall apart. One summer night, my best friend and I were in my bed, talking about everything from pop culture to childhood memories, eventually landing on mental health. We started talking about therapy and she tried convincing me it was what I needed, that a life without depression would be incredible. “I don’t know if I’m ready

to be better,” I replied. “My depression is kind of my best friend.”

My depression was such a massive part of my life for so many years, I didn’t believe I could ever really be free of it. I’m not sure I really wanted to be. It was comforting in a way. If I didn’t have anything else, at least I’d have this profound sadness, my oldest friend, my worst enemy, a nearly tangible piece of the person I was.

If I let all of that pain and anger go, would it really just be against the world, vulnerable and alone? My depression was like body armor - it didn’t matter if things went wrong because I never believed they could go right, and it didn’t matter if someone didn’t like me because I always disliked them more. What if I started caring? What if people hurt me? What if life really wasn’t worth living? More than anything, I was scared I wouldn’t

recognize myself anymore. I didn’t know who I’d be, the way I’d act or see the world, now that I actually wanted to be in it.

I used to think my depression was on my side, a protective force against everything I struggled with, and it took a long time for me to realize that it was my biggest adversary, refusing to let me be happy. I’m 19 now, almost 20. I’m older than I ever thought

I would be and happier than I ever dreamed of being. For a long time, I held onto my depression, unhealthily attached and feeding it constantly, but not anymore. There are very few things in this world worth worshiping. Pain is not one of them. Idolize peace, prioritize happiness, place contentment on a pedestal. The future is nothing but golden light.

If I didn’t have anything else, at least I’d have this profound sadness, my oldest friend, my worst enemy, a nearly tangible piece of the person I was.

blame them for losing themselves in their infatuations. I have to admit that if I were them, I would probably do the same. In fact, I have.

In her book, “The Second Sex”, one of my favorite writers, Simone de Beauvoir, sought to explore the complexities of women in love amidst our existence of inequality and otherness. I am a woman, yes. But have I ever been in love? I’m not sure. I know people say that “when you know, you know” but all the seasons of “The Bachelor” that I’ve watched with my mother contradict that statement. You seem so certain about Mark or Justin or whoever and then they’re not so sure about you and then you’re not so sure how

you felt or even why you felt it at all. I suppose that’s why de Beauvoir’s writing caught my attention. I wanted to know what happens. I still want to know what happens. What it could possibly feel like. All of my romantic conquests have been, at least on my end, in the pursuit of eventual or supposed love but I have yet to achieve the possession of it with certainty. These explorations are always half of something, never to be met with completion; half chasing, half heartsickness; half committed, half indifferent; half causal, half calculated. I never acquire all of love, just some doses and snippets here and there, inconsistently so that I stay hungry for it. I’m always trying to balance between what it should be and what it actually is. Even after I read Simone de Beauvoir’s work, I’m still not sure what’s right or what’s catastrophically wrong. Maybe, what I suppose is the special thing about love, is that it looks different to all of us, yet we feel it all the same.

The word love has not at all the same meaning for both sexes, and this is the source of grave misunderstandings that separate them. I summarized de Beauvoir’s arguments for a man I deeply care about. For a moment he looked like he wasn’t listening. At another moment, he looked afraid. He concluded his reaction by simply saying, “Yeah. Men don’t love like that.” De Beauvoir says that when a man is in love he cannot be referred to as “a man in love”, for men never completely abandon themselves in it as women do. They remain at the center of their story and their universe. The woman is just something they wish to possess.

I have this problem with expecting too much. In all realms of life, but especially when it comes to romance, something I blame partially on the fact that I watched too much TV when I was a little girl. The naive young girl is taken in by virility. It really did rot

my brain as your parents tell you it will but not in the way you think. Watching movies didn’t make me unintelligent, but unsatisfied. Unhappy with my lack of it all. Before I was capable of understanding what love was, I felt quite a compulsive need for it. It’s cliche though; the moment you realize that fairy tales are not and can never be reality. Sunsets don’t mark endings and princes don’t wake you up but instead let you go on dreaming because they know it’s far easier. This childish dream haunts many feminine loves. All of the expectations I have for love have failed me so far. You think he’ll be one way and he is another. You think you’ve said the right thing and you haven’t. You realize that you’ll never know what he truly wants. Maybe you’ll never know what you truly want either. Love at a distance is nonetheless merely a fantasy, not a real experience.

When finding myself in love, I think it would be easy to conflate love with a sense of total devotion. Little by little she loses herself; all reality is in the other. But this kind of devotion is what famously scares men off and prompts them to say those horrifying words that I and many other women I know have been told when their feelings swell up and fall out of them, gloriously and painfully: “She’s too much.” I’m afraid of being “too much” of anything. Too clingy, too needy, too loving, too devoted. Love quickly turns into religion, the lover assuming the role of God. A radical destruction of the self. We find that we will never stand on a pedestal that has been built for a man. Yet, to be saved, we convince ourselves that love is the ticket. In order to save herself, she ends up totally disavowing herself. This woman, de Beauvoir, and I will become self-actualized by the other whose gaze glorifies her.

When I’m with a man, a man who has chosen to spend time in my arms, I hold him tightly. What a gift from God!

Or I suppose, a gift of God. In all religions, the adoration of God is part of the devotee’s desire for his own salvation; by giving herself up entirely to the idol, the woman hopes he will give her possession both of herself and of the universe contained in him. In these twenty minutes that he has allotted, I must make him love me. I cradle his head, bat my eyelashes, and prop myself up in a certain way to make my body look skinnier. The woman in love resigns herself. I think about him and what he could possibly be thinking about. When I ask him to reveal what’s resting behind his eyes, the answer is never what I hope it is. It’s golf, it’s “Breaking Bad”, it’s the comedy show he went to last week. He’s never thinking of me, of course not. But that’s okay. One day he might be. Everything that belongs to her escapes contingence and becomes necessary: she is a marvelous gift at the foot of God’s altar.

Without him, it feels like I am dirty, unwanted, and unprotected. I seem to be purified in his inhabitance of me. I pull him in tighter. If I could crawl inside his chest I would. The center of the world is no longer where she is but where the beloved is. Breathing the same air doesn’t make him close enough, being on top of him doesn’t make him close enough. He still feels unattainable. He’s tangled up in my arms and he still feels unattainable. Possessing something that I desperately want but he can never give to me. He doesn’t know how much I want it anyway. And if he did, I wouldn’t expect him to do anything other than run

away. I would step outside of myself to make room for him. The supreme aim of human love, like mystical love, is identification with the loved one. This woman no longer wants love because it is not enough anymore. She wants to melt into him. She’s a mirror for him.

When he is no longer worshiped, he has to be trampled on.

A fallen God then is not a man: it is an imposter. No man can ever be God, and we realize this soon enough. His love will never exalt us. He was looking for his own reflection in her but if he finds it too faithful, he becomes bored. He wants to be free from her but wants her to give herself to him. How could she begin a new life when outside her lover there is nothing? So the woman must lie to herself. Desire then equals love and from love spawns a religion.

Love-religion only leads to catastrophe. I grasp at something I will never reach and wait for it to settle into my palms. A passionately demanding soul cannot find tranquility in love.

I believe that this inauthentic kind of love that women drown in is real. We all feel it, we just don’t recognize it as such a monumental mistake. In the moment, it feels like we are living out some kind of divine purpose. We feel that it is our duty to find love, nurture it, and try our best not to let it find some prettier, smarter, better-in-bed sort of love. But it doesn’t need to be this way. We can make love how we wish to feel it. Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms; each lover would then experience himself as himself and as the other. Women must learn to love in strength. Neither would abdicate [their] transcendence. We will not love in desperation or weakness. They would not mutilate themselves. We love to affirm rather than resign ourselves. Together they would both reveal values and ends in the world.

My biggest fear is losing myself in the pursuit of love. And I sometimes find myself sinking into him; his life, likes, motivations, and interests. I’d like to smell him on me, listen to the songs he loves, be pretty for him, be useful to him, be with him, always. Usually, the feminist within me pulls my mind out of that spiral before I hit the bottom, hard. Yet, I still think that there is some satisfaction in being completely absorbed by someone. They call it falling for a reason. But once you realize that you’re giving yourself to him completely and he’ll never give you the same, nor should he necessarily, you’re left feel-

I WOULD STEP OUTSIDE OF MYSELF TO MAKE ROOM FOR HIM. THE SUPREME AIM OF HUMAN LOVE, LIKE MYSTICAL LOVE, IS IDENTIFICATION WITH THE LOVED ONE.

ing empty. I have been left feeling empty. And your lover should fill your cup, not drain it for their own thirst, right?

I’d be lying if I said that the idea of love doesn’t occupy my mind, my body, and my consciousness and I feel embarrassed to admit it. But we women in love, although sometimes fail in our execution, are just trying our greatest to reach serendipity. Love is all we’ve been taught, specifically the acquisition of it. The chasing of men is our sport. But no one really mentions what to do once you’ve found it unless it’s in an article from Cosmopolitan magazine titled something like “How to Keep Your Man Always Wanting More.” We try to navigate as best we can and maybe it’s something you need to do wrong a few times before getting it right. When one considers all of the factors women are taught to keep in mind and all the things we can’t help but feel, it seems rather easy to confuse love with worship.

This woman de Beauvoir speaks of is me. I think de Beauvoir is this woman herself. We are united in our ability to love and love fully. I admire our commitment to loving others but perhaps we must drive that commitment inward. I will never stop seeking out romantic love. It’s a beautiful kind of magic that I wish to hold on to, even if it’s for a brief moment in time. But, I will try my best not to let myself collapse into whoever it is that I find myself loving. I shall simply center myself with love. My own love, not the expectation of theirs. I realize that it’s cliche to say you must love yourself before loving someone else but in my years of observation and attempted experience, I’ve realized that all of the cliche, dramatic, gut-wrenching, compelling, wonderful, horrifying, and beautiful things about love are true. Every bit of it.

DOUBLEEDGED SWORD

VISUALS Maya Seri ASSIST Drew Mitchell MODEL Reagan Allen

I dipped my toe into the cold water And lost my breath in the wind Before, I was born to lose Feelings hands stroke my back Then feeling the heavy air of absence, Now, I have been born to love My head rose to reach the air again Swallow a shallow breath

And thank the hands that shaped the Earth At last, my body has felt hope The letters etched out in my bones Underneath moon kissed skin Spell out a message that I’ll never Get to read, but I know what it Means

I sit between ghosts

Herding me towards the Path

Where i’ll bleed myself dry With all of the body I have My necklace charm bouncing on my collarbone

Yearning to be taken by the stars

Where everything is cleaner than my Skin

Could ever be

My head rose to reach the air again Swallow a shallow breath And thank the hands that shaped the Earth

The shadow of my body, The shadow of a strand of hair, The shadow of a passing thought That I had already put down for the night Casts over my entire body Visions that sew promises on to my LipsI swear that I will live through This life alone

And everyday I will see again That the only one I need is You

My old necklace staining my skin My hands are feverish, hot to the touch of no one The promise of new life in new love Brought me to a place that none can go Carved on to me

Written in to me

After all this time, though Loving you isn’t enough It has never brought you here

VISUALS Marina Man

MODEL Lori Liu

THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON

VISUALS Ning Chen

THE STAR

WORDS Sisel Gelman VISUALS Maya Menon Freeman

If God exists, and he is good and fair, then why does injustice exist? If you have not yet read Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Star,” I am about to change your life.

In 1955, the magazine Infinity Science Fiction published the four-page story that narrates the thoughts of an interstellar Jesuit astrophysicist who discovers the remnants of an extinct ancient alien civilization. The human-like aliens, on the brink of total death at the hands of their dying star, preserved a representation of their culture in an underground bunker on a neighboring planet that the supernova’s explosion would not touch. Unfortunately, not a single alien survived. These aliens did not have the technology to evacuate everyone to the nearest habitable solar

system a hundred light-years away.

The crux of the story lies in the discovery that this monstrous supernova is what we know on Earth as the Star of Bethlehem—the star that allegedly announced the birth of Jesus Christ to the world. The story ends with the famous line, “Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?”

To no surprise, “The Star” became an instant classic of modern science fiction and won the prestigious Hugo Award in 1956.

This story calls to me because of the multiplicity with which

it can be read.

When I first read this story, I phoned my mom and dad to talk about it. I was drawn to the story’s theme of sacrifice. I blabbered on and on about how it was morally ambiguous that the aliens died in service of a God they did not know. The story was about the injustice of being murdered in the name of a higher purpose without even consenting to it, and how the term sacrifice was misleading because it implied a conscious choice—

“Wait, what do you mean?” my dad asked.

“Well,” I continued. “The story is clearly an allegory for the sacrifice of Christ and how he died to purge humanity of its sins in the same way that the

aliens died to help humanity receive the savior…”

I’m Jewish. So is everyone else in my family.

“I read it as a story on preparation,” my dad said. To him, the story was about planning ahead: The supernova was located three-thousand light years away from Earth, therefore, God had to plan the birth of Jesus three-thousand years earlier to time the Star of Bethlehem just right.

“What if you’re reading it all wrong?” my mom chipped in. “What if the story is about avoiding waste?” Her theory was that God did not choose for the star to explode. Rather, God knew the star had exploded, and unable to do anything about it retroactively, he chose not to let the light go to waste. He honored the aliens’ lives one last time by aligning the birth of Jesus with the star’s light.

We looked at each other over the phone’s video feature and shrugged. As it is with most literature, all of our interpretations were correct, so we decided to put the topic aside and talk about the cold weather in Boston. Nevertheless, “The Star” was stuck in my mind.

Regardless of how the story is interpreted, there is something profoundly moving

about the unjust death of the aliens. Unless God knows something about the alien civilization that the narrator doesn’t, there is no evident reason why they all had to go. Why would God be so cruel? Cruelty is a direct juxtaposition to the public perception of who God is. I have been taught that God is a kind entity, so why would he be heartless to the aliens?

Arthur C. Clarke and I are not the first two to ask this. Other writers throughout history have written about this too. In 1794, William Blake published “The Tyger.” This famous poem asks the question, through the metaphor of the tiger, why would God create evil? Why would he permit injustice in our world? Why would he allow suffering? He disrupts the image of a benevolent God whose purpose is to bring good to all—he was a revolutionary of the time to question the nature of God. But it’s important because these ponderings point toward a God that makes mistakes in the form of evil, that takes great pride and pleasure in creating dark creatures, and that allows injustice to occur if it benefits him. This is a humanized God.

The Jesuit astrophysicist in the story interprets God’s cruelty differently: he gives up his faith entirely. To him, it is less painful to believe

REGARDLESS, I DO BELIEVE THAT A ‘DIVINE’ EXISTS— GOD AS ENERGY, THE UNIVERSE, A HIGHER POWER, ANYTHING— AND I BELIEVE THIS ENERGY IS FUNDAMENTALLY GOOD. I CHOOSE TO TRUST THAT POSITIVITY GUIDES THE WAY THE UNIVERSE WORKS.

in a universe without God and without purpose—a universe where all tragedies are random—than to believe in a God that can tolerate and willingly inflict suffering onto others.

I’ll be honest with you…I don’t know if God exists in the way the Jewish faith has taught me. I don’t know if he is a singular entity that observes all and plans ahead for us. Part of me would pity God if he were stuck to an eternity of looking after the entirety of humanity. The other part of me does want that to selfishly feel watched over. As a child, I would thank God every night as I fell asleep for everything good that happened to me during the day. God and I were best friends in how we were intimately connected and communicated. I don’t remember when I stopped talking to God. I don’t remember when I lost that childhood charm and innocence. Regardless, I do

believe that a ‘divine’ exists— God as energy, The Universe, a Higher Power, anything— and I believe this energy is fundamentally good. I choose to trust that positivity guides the way the universe works.

I have no way to prove it, but it is the values that I am faithful to.

It might just be hopeful thinking, but whenever something bad happens in my life, it usually leads me to a positive outcome. I was rejected from college 36 times before coming to Emerson College. At the time, the rejection felt like the end of the world. Now, I am happy I got rejected for two years because it gave me the time to pursue my passion for teaching as a third-grade English teacher. Now that I am in the process of choosing what to do after graduation in just two months, the anxiety I feel is minimized by the acknowledgment that all my failures and pitfalls have

a purpose. I am on the right path to my highest destiny. I just have to believe that the Universe, or God, knows this path and is guiding me toward it. They know how to attain it better than I do.

I don’t want to end this reflection with the impression that I believe the aliens should have died. I do not. I find it cruel that they perished, regardless of the reason why. No higher purpose merits the death of a single being, and much less, an entire civilization. Nevertheless, the more I think of the story, the more I feel inclined to learn from it with a positive mindset. Even our darkest moments can be part of a larger purpose. The aliens did not know the full story. Only the astrophysicist did. I think that in my day-today life, I am the alien civilization. I do not know the entire story of my life. I do not know how it ends, nor the impact I have on others. I am blinded by my perspective and my

temporality. But if I have faith that there is an astrophysicist out there that in time will look back and understand why things happened the way they did…if they are able to reconstruct a beautiful story out of tragedy…maybe it would all be worth it. Tragedy is bound to happen—either by random chance or at the hands of a humanized God. We can not stop it, but we can choose to grow from it. We can choose to see beauty. We can choose to believe that we are connected in ways beyond our moral understanding, and nothing is ever truly lost or done in vain.

ANDRO G YNÉ

VISUALS Lex Jimenez

MODEL Caroline McGinn

VISUALS Gina Foley

karencarpentyrdom

WORDS Ryan Yau

For EM Mag readers who weren’t attentive in the 70s, Carpenters were once among the biggest musical acts in the world. They were Karen and Richard Carpenter, a brothersister pop duo who sang oddly intimate love songs, a sort of proto–Billie Eilish.

Their saccharine softrock sound was at a time unavoidable, and their squeaky-clean family brand drew them the goodwill of Middle America and the Nixon administration. They were always pictured with corny smiles and conservative outfits, each photoshoot a tableau of 50s-era complacency.

At the age of 32, Karen Carpenter died after years of suffering from anorexia. She was the first high-profile victim of an unacknowledged national plague. She has since become a neo-martyr of quiet kyriarchal subdual, and for women suffering in the public sphere.

Karen Carpenter’s life, like with all martyrs, is only narrativized in relation to her death. The fact her story is indelibly framed by factors out of her control: her stardom is owed to her parents’ influence, and her persona is a product of her management. The Karen Carpenter story is the tragedy of stardom, that the ball starts rolling before a person can ever be themselves.

Lately I find myself drawn to her singing. Her voice satisfies some inarticulate longing for an uncomplicated existence outside my temporal domain,

a hazy existence that never existed in my or her reality but only ever in the Carpenters’ pop arrangements, or maybe I just want to feel simplistic comfort.

This has formed in my mind a crude Jeff Mangum–esque fantastical desire to save her, from the literal perils of her foregone life and from her symbolic modern existence: Karen Carpenter the girl in the public sphere for over half her life, before she got to be an adult, Karen Carpenter the mold cast by the perceptions of everyone around her, even in death.

I think everyone feels this way. Perhaps it’s a quality inherent to her voice, or our perceptions are molded by the mythos of her story. But before I interrogate why, I want to reify the Karen Carpenter story, at least the way I see it.

This is a story about family and fame in the golden land, and begins with a dream. The New Haven Colony was settled in 1638 as the collective ambition of five hundred Puritans: at once a church-governed Christian utopia and a place to hide away, far from English

be a piano prodigy and, as is typical with family-driven music acts, their parents’ realization was the impetus of their careers. So when she was 13, the Carpenter family moved to the suburbs of Downey, California, a small city in southern Los Angeles County.

in their coming rise to fame she is gradually pushed out from behind her drum set and onto the stage.

Today, videos of Karen Carpenter playing the drums have seen a resurgence. Certainly there’s novelty in watching a girl play the drums, let alone fulfill the unusual double duty of drummer/singer, but what’s most captivating is her unveiled immersion—it’s hard not to read these videos as the moments in which she was most truly carefree.

persecution and modern ideologic ills, to serve as a paradigm of traditionalist principles.

It was only ever a fleeting sanctuary. Because the colonists lacked a royal charter, they had no legitimate basis to exist; the Puritans were forced to assimilate into the larger Connecticut Colony. The bygone dream has become an obscure failure in American history, and eventually formed the city of New Haven.

Here Karen Carpenter was born, in 1950. She was raised under a quintessentially working-class roof, with an archetypally square mother-father-brother family unit. Early on, her brother Richard was discovered to

At high school she joined the marching band to dodge gym class. There she fell in love with the drums, an instrument she was told girls don’t play. But she convinced her parents to buy her a set, took lessons from a classmate, and enthusiastically practiced every day. By all accounts she was a natural, and was encouraged by her parents.

Karen Carpenter is known as a vocalist, but she had considered herself a drummer who sings, the way David Lynch considers himself a painter who makes films. By 15 she played the drums for Richard’s band, and they played jazz at nightclubs to mild success. It would be five years until they found their mainstream footing, but

In 1969 Karen and Richard Carpenter—now Carpenters— released Ticket to Ride, a softrock antithesis to the psychedelic zeitgeist of the time. It was a failure, apart from an offbeat ballad cover of the titular Beatles track.

Tenaciously, just a year later they released Close to You, an even softer-rock record that went even further offbeat with a dour cover of the Beatles’ “Help.” They sang about romance without sex and ecstasy without drugs, and the album propelled them to international stardom.

The success of Carpenters music is the very dream of the New Haven Colony. They sold a Puritanical all-American concept to a Woodstocked world, offering easy-listening pop arrangements counter to the disjunctive psych-rock song structures, and lyrics that only

We’re drawn to the irony of a transparent facade: it’s the same allure of artificial sweeteners and plant-based meats, why Marilyn Monroe is the most commodified person in history next to Jesus, and what frames the entire plot of Twin Peaks.

ever suggest a facile Christian notion of lifelong love. Amid the wave of counterculture Carpenters appealed to the extant culture, a musical duck and cover against the atomic attitude of revolution.

What Close to You enduringly brought the world is the voice of Karen Carpenter, her three-octave contralto with a notable absence of vibrato—what this makes it lack in warmth is offset by an overwhelming wistfulness, that even fifty years past could feel nostalgic.

Though everyone has tried, no one has been able to pinpoint the texture of her voice, to characterize the tonal radiance and inherent longing that makes her singing timelessly resonant: Like honey. Like sunshine. Like velveteen. Like love. Like the nuclear warmth of a family unit.

The one quality her voice consistently evokes is an all-knowing irony, that you feel she sees endlessly past what their Panglossian lyrics present. A quality that whispers I know everything as they sing about how we could end wars by loving each other.

When on “Rainy Days and Mondays” she sings how the eponymous occasions always let her down, you can hear the grin on her face, that she really revels in the opportunity to stay indoors.

When on “Goodbye to Love” she sings how after years of romantic failures she plans to live a hermetic life, you sense that she’s fully conscious of the farce and delights in the melodrama.

When after years of attempting a music career to modest success she sings “We’ve Only Just Begun” for

it to be the opener on their breakthrough album Close to You and the song that defines Carpenters’ lasting musical legacy, you believe that she foresees the entire trajectory of their career.

And after listening to enough of their music, you begin to understand that she knows everything. You see, Karen Carpenter is god.

So this is all conjecture. But it’s so easy to fall into the Karen Carpenter myth.

Part of this is undeniably inherent to their music, conscious or managerial choice aside. Almost all Carpenters songs are directed to the second person: “A Song for You.” “Can’t Smile Without You.” “Close to You. “Baby It’s You.” “You.” You. You.

Their songs so often feature elaborate choral arrangements and intricately layered instrumentation; moments when it fades all away to leave the silence with her voice are tantamount to the most intimate human experience imaginable.

And though the narrative of her life is marked by a lack of control, there’s a reclamatory liberation in her perfect pitch control. Many critics have noted the performative code-switching Karen Carpenter does on stage: nonmusically she appears cheery but reserved, though once she starts singing she ostensibly reaches into some unknowable wisdom.

The paradoxical rift of their public conception and private reality is certainly a big allure. We’re drawn to the irony of a transparent facade: it’s the same allure of artificial sweeteners and plant-based meats, why Marilyn Monroe

is the most commodified person in history next to Jesus, and what frames the entire plot of Twin Peaks.

Listening to Carpenters is an exercise in dramatic irony: it’s hard to hear these idealistic easy-listening songs and not think of their circumstances. Reading contemporary accounts is a greater trial, with the obvious fact of Karen’s illness always present but obliviously unquestioned.

The universal takeaway is that the happiest public personas are the most plagued. Hayao Miyazaki hates his son. As for me, I should interrogate my quasi-obsession with a woman I can never know, plagued by issues impertinent to myself. Or maybe I’ll stop.

You’re always finding something is wrong in what I do But you can’t rearrange my life because it pleases you

VISUALS Kyra Badger

MODELS Rose Hanish, Mason Grammer, Carrie Deaville, Devon Night, Kate Herrick, Tony McGrath

and FOUND FORGOTTEN

I S A N IG H T N OT A LI G H T GO D?

As a child, I wanted a god so badly. Someone to pray to. To wrap around my neck, a thin gold chain with a cross dripping from the center like all the pretty girls wore, even during soccer practice. I wanted to love something that way. By that way I mean: enough to ask for it on my birthday, to spend an infant wish on what I thought would bring the kind of serenity every Sunday school student passed down the lunch tables like a game of telephone. You know how children are, always listening. Always needing something,

WORDS Sophia Kriegel

reaching up towards the sky, screaming to be held. To hold on to someone. I had a night light and it never ran out of batteries. I liked to think this was God. I liked to think there was God inside that light, unconcerned with science and driven solely by what I wanted to be true. And isn’t that faith? The foreshadowing of a life illuminated by religion? Is a night light not a god? What I didn’t know was that every other week my father pulled a battery from the pack of triple A’s underneath the sink and switched them out so that I

never had to sleep in the dark.

I was a contemplative kid and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a writer or if I’m a writer because I was a contemplative kid. I never stopped wondering why things were and are and I can’t help myself even here. At its center, the soft beating core cradled in the bottom of my ribcage, that faceless thing that keeps someone alive, gives her life, I think I wanted something to have for myself. Too eager for ownership to notice what was in front of me.

I wanted to make a god out of glue and tissue paper and glitter. I wanted to build something with my hands, something lasting and laughing and alive. I hadn’t read Frankenstein yet but if I had I would’ve called myself a sort of holy Mary Shelley. If I had made it into the advanced English class for fourth graders whose parents felt were above average I would have known the word prophet, I would have known the word puppet. If I paid attention in bible study I would’ve understood the word birth and how this thing,

God twisted in between snips of twine, was born from someone’s brain, their body, out of and into Himself. I wanted to make God because I wanted that overwhelming, guttural feeling that made my grandma throw her arms up at worship and my father scream GODDAMNIT when he stubbed his toe. I wanted to make God because I wanted a friend. I wanted to make God because I wanted a Father. Not one to throw the baseball with but one who would give me things (like a cell phone or forgiveness). I needed to make God because

I was so afraid of the dark and damnation which is a concept I wasn’t quite clear on but I knew it felt heavy when spoken. Crushing, even. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to do the wrong thing.

I’d try my best to pave a path towards religion. Except for our Christmas Eve church visits and the Passover prayer we spoke every spring, my family didn’t partake in religious services often. There was something about the herd of people, all standing shoulder to shoulder, swaying their bodies in unison and

shaking their heads in agreement, that mesmerized me. Like a child with their nose to the glass window of a toy store, I saw something I wanted. Something I need so desperately to be mine.

I spent two summers at sleepaway church camp where the sun spread itself across my neck and we slept on thin mattresses in wooden bunk beds to build character. Girls had to wear t-shirts over their two piece swimsuits, a uniform that anchored our bodies under

the water, doing our best to keep our heads from dipping below the surface. The boys, plucked from their suburbs and placed in the middle of this wilderness, jumped from rocks and splashed our faces with water. We were all in love with one of them, all of them. Any one of them that looked in our direction. We wanted, so badly, to love and be loved. Looking for a savior in the summer before sophomore year and finding a boy with his Father’s eyes. That summer, Katherine told me I’d go to hell if I kept

kissing boys behind the cabins after the counselors went to sleep. Kept falling asleep during church. Kept asking questions about everything

We spent the entire day in church services, short breaks for meals taken every few hours but each second not spent eating was centered around God. I envied the other kids in the pews. I watched them press their hands together, close their eyes while I squinted and surveyed the group. And Gianna, with her

grandmother’s gold cross wrapped around her wrist or her neck or her tongue, cried as the pastor screamed DO YOU BELIEVE???? I stared. He yelled DON’T YOU WANT TO BELIEVE????

Gianna threw her hands in the air. She felt it. Coursing through her. She won it. Whatever the prize was at that swollen summer’s traveling circus. She’d done it.

Those summers spent yearning drained a large part of me of my passionate pursuit of a god, an unsuccessful

attempt at acquisition. I grew tired of trying so hard to feel something. I was detached, untethered by a thin gold chain, palms raw from trying to hold on for so long. I’d dedicated so much energy to spinning some god out of yarn, needle-pointing a holy presence, and I couldn’t find it.

My mother says she believes in some kind of god. She doesn’t know its name yet but she doesn’t believe that this god is dictative in their distribution of wealth and poverty, success and tragedy, love

and loss. My mother’s God is a cornucopia of resources, a starting point that gifts one tools to live a meaningful life - tools with which we have the power to use to construct our own stories driven by our own choices.

I Google the definition of the term ‘god.’ The word means as follows: the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.

My mother shows me a photograph from my birth.

There is blood but she is smiling. I try my best to remember what it must have been like to grow inside of somebody else. A puzzle of flesh pieces, the cultivation of my body and then my soul, accumulating inside of a small universe. My mother’s stomach, a world within itself, the home of being. She is the starting point.

Once, my mother found a note in my backpack that I’d written to Ryan Jones professing my undying love. I planned to give it to him in the library after we finished in the fourth grade science lab because I believed in

love the way all children believe in things that are bigger than themselves. Things they can feel in their bones. She told me not to hand him the confession. There are better ways to go about this kind of thing. I didn’t listen. Ryan returned the letter, wordless and giggling. Somehow, she always knows.

My mother has a box in her closet that I have to stand on a chair to reach. Inside, I find the two elves that visit us every Christmas. They play tricks on Ella and I when we’re asleep, leave us candy, and scribble notes in scratchy lettering. In this box, they

are less human. In this box, they are just dolls. I shove the cardboard back on the shelf. I don’t tell my mother that I know of her secret. Instead, when December arrives and Ella and I receive a letter from Sparkle and Glitter, documenting their year at Santa’s workshop, I smile and believe. She breathes magic into things and then, there is life.

My mother, the creator of my universe. My mother, the source of moral authority. My mother, the supreme being.

And if God is all of these things, then I think my mother might be God. I think my mother is my God. I think the more times I say it out loud the truer it becomes. The more words I type in this essay, the more it begins to make sense - religion, I mean. God. How my mother was my God when I left her body. And how my mother is my God when I feel myself beginning to leave my own. I’m scared that one day I will tell her that I hate her, and mean it.

I’m scared that I will forget to call her on her birthday and I will grow tired and busy and swollen with my own children. I will forget about

Ryan Jones and the elves and the way it might have felt to be connected by that umbilical twist. I’m scared of losing her, and with that, the sanctity of this realization.

Maybe then, I’ll find myself crouched in the pews of some church. Maybe then, I’ll glue my knees to the ground in search of guidance. But, for now, she is here.

Religion, faith, life, is not about belief. It is about idolization. It’s about admiration. It’s about protection. It’s singing in a school variety show and the music skipping and your mother humming the tune

so that you can keep going. It isn’t praying for guidance in the dark, rather, knocking on your mother’s bedroom door at 3 in the morning to ask if you can cry in her lap about a boy. About leaving for college. About life.

Why must I seek answers elsewhere when my mother knows everything? Why modge-podge a man out of fabric scraps and fear? Why search for an intangible god when my mother sleeps down the hall, creating my universe, guiding me through it?

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