THE SHADOW PARADOX

Brianna Burke

There is a stretch of road on Summerfield Street here in Lebanon where the streetlights run out until the next road. This stretch of the road falls into near-complete darkness at nightfall, leaving you with the simple quiet of the graveyard beside the road and the silence of the stars above. Normally, that stretch of darkness might be foreboding or misgiving, ; a threat of the unknown. After all, who knows who or what could be lurking in the shadows when the streetlights run out? While that may sometimes be true, the 200 feet of shadow on this street is rather a reinstatement of modesty. The patch of dusk on Summerfield Street is ultimately paradoxical to the domineering nature of material life. Without the streetlights to silence the night sky, the constellations become all the more present, a reminder of the higher world. It’s a shame, isn’t it? Humanity has fallen so in love with material production and capitalistic power that we need to be reminded of where we live in our solar system and our place in the universe. The foundational needs for everyday life, such as lights, create a world that forgets our transcendental connections to the stars. It is a world so blinded by industry and commodity that the infinite universe becomes a subtlety. The stars stand as a beautiful enigma to our egotistical civilization, and reduces us to our diminutive and original state. It’s what I like to call the shadow paradox. What this paradox entails is humanity’s belief that we may take a god-like approach to our society by reinventing nature’s thresholds, and in turn forgetting our true place in the vast cosmos.

Coming from a big oil town in Northern Canada, I grew accustomed to living in a place where the stars were never quite as present as they should be. The pollution clouds from the oil sands would place a contaminated curtain over one of humanity’s only signs of humility. Consequently, I would often forget to appreciate the overarching reminder of our microscopic role in the universe. I am therefore not here to place myself on a pedestal of environmental superiority, given that I am equally as culpable of falling prey to the commodified conveniences of life, such as succumbing to the environmental ignorance created by pollution. Global warming as a whole has reached a point of no return, a point that makes the prospect of mass exodus more appealing as opposed to putting in a true effort to preserve the planet that we currently occupy. Neither situation would be easy, but leaving the planet would be much simpler than reversing generations of environmental damage. The “simplicity” of the former option encapsulates our governments.

Humanity likes to believe that their morals include compassion, love, and care for others. But unfortunately, those in power possess a different agenda: convenience, commodity, simplicity - all of which do not allow for a mere adjustment of streetlights, for example, so as to not disrupt the original condition of the universe. Of course, a mere remark on how life’s artificial simplicities interfere with the natural state of the night sky may seem trivial. After all, some of the only emotions this reminder can evoke are those of disappointment and hopelessness. However, while environmental advocacy should be on everyone’s agenda, a simple reinstatement of universal modesty is the first step in the right direction for foundational means of change. So, the next time you walk down a gravel road without streetlamps, humble yourself. Look up and remind yourself of your place.

Country Church

Sensory

Hannah White

She hears the call of a songbird, drifting in the lazy early-June breeze. The wind snakes coolly across her skin, kissing it and leaving goose bumps; Nice chills that raise and then vanish almost as fast. She closes her eyes and takes in the shadows that dance through the light behind her lids. The warm, fire-like tones subtly interrupted by black; shadows of the things that move around her. She takes in a breath, letting the air fill her lungs and tastes…nothing.

Clean air that hasn’t been filtered.

Clean air that’s never been touched by city pollution.

The water of the creek slaps lazily against small rocks. They’ve been rounded and smoothed, broken and smoothed again. She reaches blindly, eyes still closed, and grabs one of the small stones. No bigger than her thumb, she rolls it around in her hand and feels the many pathways in the stone. The side that had been resting is slightly cooler. She turns her face to the sound of the water, her ear pressed against the ground, and places the cool side on her head.

Taking an odd comfort in the slight weight on her temple- letting the cool seep into her skin. She sees a flash of shadows, smoke, pavement, and rubble in the back of her mind- she pushes it away. Resisting the tug of memory, she counts silently in her mind the things that she feels around her.

“One.” She whispers, noting the weight on her temple.

“Two.” A blade of rough grass grazing her resting hand.

“Three.” In acknowledgment of the breeze.

“Four.” The hair that tickles her face.

“Five.” Her heart beating slowly in even pulses.

She moves her hand silently and slowly across the grass and rocks. Touching and counting what she feels as she goes.

“One.” Each tiny petal of a dandelion.

“Two.” The many different shapes of the many different stones.

“Three.” A handful of dirt and grass now crunched in her limp fist.

“Four.” The creek water licked the fingertips of her opposite hand.

She takes her hand from the creek, releases the dirt and grass, and lays them across her stomach. She takes a deep breath and her head swims.

“One.” The sweet smell of wildflowers.

“Two.” The earthy smell of the dirt and grass.

“Three.” Perfume, her mother’s.

She turns her head to the right, eyes still closed toward the sky, and feels the rock slide off her temple. She listens.

“One.” Two songbirds now; they call each other.

“Two.” The hushed cascade of the creek.

She finally opens her eyes, shocked at the sudden light. She twists her head slowly, letting it loll first to the left where the creek lays, then to the right.

“One.”

She breathes. She stares. She sits up slowly and feels the heavy weight of her head back on her shoulders. She turns slightly and leans out, reaching towards a large stone – the only one. Her hand stops just before the stones surface. The sun has passed its highest point from when she first laid down. Though the breeze has died, her chills resurface for one…two…three…five seconds and subside.

“One.”

She repeats the word to herself. Creeks of her own slide ever slowly down her cheeks. She doesn’t touch them but lets them run and drip…drip...drip. Tears hit a dandelion as that one word echoed through her head. She turns away from the large stone. She doesn’t need to feel it to know the pathways that will never smooth out.

“One.” The grave of her mother.

Ella Lehman

Preparing to give yourself a tattoo is an intense process. You have to use a specific type of ink, burn your needle to sterilize it, breathe through the adrenaline, and most importantly: plan it out… Unless you purposefully forego the latter. Or even better, trust a friend to give you a mystery tattoo. The worst part of receiving a DIY stick-n-poke isn’t the individual sewing needle stabs. It isn’t the bleeding or the swelling. The worst part is the time between sticks when your best friend apologizes over and over again for hurting you even though it was your idea to give each other tattoos. It gets repetitive after about a minute.

Stick, stick, “Sorry!”

“I’m fine, keep going.”

Stick, stick! Poke! “Shit, are you okay?”

Every morning I make a thirty-minute commute to school. I get to decide whether I take the main highway (the boring way) or the country roads (the fun way). Usually, I’ll choose to take the country roads because I can drive at twice the speed limit. I drive east to get to school, and as the sun rises, it blinds me when it hangs low in the sky. Usually there are pastel-colored clouds or a thick morning fog to disrupt it, but sometimes I find myself hurtling down the road at high speeds with next to no visibility. For almost the entire journey, the roads are bordered by woods on both sides. When the woodlands disperse, corn fields replace them and herds of deer forage for a meal, ears piqued as they hear my approaching vehicle. I might drive the whole route without passing a single car, these back roads disrupted by me alone.

“Three Figures” by Russian artist Anna Leporskya features three faceless people standing together. The painting is exhibited in the Yeltsin Center in Ekaterinburg, Russia, where a security guard decided to draw eyes on two of the figures with a ballpoint pen. What would motivate a person to do such a thing is beyond me, but I do find it rather funny. The juxtaposition between carefully brushed paint and a few scribbled circles is ridiculous. Similar to when a toddler draws on the walls in crayon: a messy, out of place, nuisance. I know I shouldn’t laugh about a nearly 100-year-old work of art being vandalized, but I can’t help it.

**

The day after our stick-n-poke adventure, I tried to hide my new tattoo from my mom. I didn’t think she would be angry, but I did think she would question my judgment. To be honest, I was questioning my own judgment. The tattoo my friend decided to give me was a small flower on a stem, and it was very swollen. You see, when you get a mechanical tattoo, the swelling is minimal to absent. Maybe the lines of the tattoo raise a little, but this stick-n-poke was completely raised. The entire area was, for lack of a better word, lumpy. At the time, I didn’t know this was irregular, so I simply moisturized the area and stuck a band-aid on top.

**

Even though I disturb the mornings of dozens of woodland creatures every day, I am proud to say that I’ve never hit a crossing animal. At least, until a few days ago. I didn’t do it on purpose, I don’t think anyone makes roadkill intentionally. I was driving at my typical speed, and the sun was in my eyes as usual. A bird flew across the road just a bit too low. I’m not sure what type of bird it was, but it was small. I saw a flash of wings and heard a light thump against my windshield. It’s not like there was anything I could do. If anything, it was the bird’s fault. It can fly hundreds of feet off the ground, and it chose to glide right in front of my (low to the ground) vehicle.

But birds don’t understand how roads or cars or velocity work. All they know is to fly away from danger, scrounge up a meal and find their mate. It would be selfish to blame the bird, but it would be foolish to blame myself.

The painting can be restored, the damage isn’t permanent, just as a toddler’s crayon mural can be cleaned. The faceless figures will be faceless once more, but I still wonder what compelled that security guard to “add” to the painting. After all, his entire job was to keep people from tampering with the art. Maybe he was bored, though I can’t imagine the thirty seconds it took to draw four circles was worth losing his job.

Perhaps he thought the painting was incomplete. Is a person without a face really human? But who was he to decide whether or not someone else’s piece was complete. Or maybe, he thought the painting was pretentious. A person without a face? Seriously? The most difficult part of portraying a person is perfecting their face. It was lazy for the artist to skip the face altogether.

My efforts to hide my tattoo lasted for all of three hours. There was no dramatic discovery. I didn’t make a mistake that led to my mother seeing the tattoo. Frankly, I just didn’t care to try and hide it for an extended period of time. I showed my mom, and I was right, she did question my judgment. She asked me “Why?” and I couldn’t answer, I just wanted to have some fun.

“What was the point?”

“Why would you do that to yourself?”

She thought it was unwise to get a tattoo at such a young age. She got her first tattoo at age forty-eight. But, after a few minutes I was able to convince her that it wasn’t that serious. What’s done is done, it wasn’t very big, and she knew that it was my decision.

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that everything has its natural state. My skin was unmarked before I decided to let my friend doodle on it. The countryside I drive through every day is marred by a winding road. And the painting was finished when the artist decided it was. Each sequence of events that cause a state to be altered are coincidental. Life is random, it’s unpredictable, it’s cruel, and then it’s over. Control is an illusion.

If I had been just a little more tired after my shift that night I would have gone home and gone to bed like I usually do. If I had left for school just a few minutes earlier, the bird would have lived. And if the guard had been assigned to patrol a different section the painting would have been left intact. But those caveats are only obvious in hindsight. Control is an illusion.

It’s better to accept things as they are rather than lament about how they could have been. Our choices, once made, cannot be unmade. The painting can be restored, but it will bear the marks of its vandalism. I can do my best to avoid hitting more birds, but I cannot bring the dead back to life. And I could remove my tattoo, but it would be painful and likely leave a scar. I can accept that control is an illusion.

Chicago Thoughts

Two Of A Kind

Jasmine Gage

“Stupid phone!” a woman shouted out as she held her cellphone into the air. The lady walked down the dark road a bit more, still holding her phone in the air. Her phone had no service, and it didn’t seem that she would be getting any anytime soon. Frustrated and a bit of anxiety getting to her, Dorothy continued down the lonely road and hoped one of her friends would stop by.

As the night continued to grow, Dorothy began to worry. She had no phone service, no car had passed her for miles, and it was getting late. A quick rustle from the trees sent a chill down her spine as she jumped to see what could pounce at her. A cute bunny appeared from the bushes as she calmed herself down a bit and carried on down the road.

Walking for a while longer, she noticed a bright light flash in front of her. She held up her hands to shield herself from the brightness of the light. A rusty pickup truck slowly pulled up next to Dorothy as she took a step back. Interior lights cut on from the inside of the truck as a man stared at Dorothy as she clutched herself in the night.

“You alright, miss?” the man said, his deep and brash voice startling her.

She answered with hesitation, “I-I’m fine overall. I just need a ride to the nearest payphone. I have no service and all of my friends that I was with have already left me. I’m just trying to get home.”

The man scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Some friends you have, huh?” Dorothy heard the clicking of the locks. “I personally think you need new friends. Hop in.”

Dorothy nodded and took her time to make her way to the passenger side of the truck. She pulled on the rusty door handle and opened the door. The interior of the truck actually looked better than the outside. The seats seemed to have been freshly cleaned as the inside smelled of bleach.

Dorothy climbed into the truck and shut the door as the man kept his eyes on the road. Silence filled the car as Dorothy shifted in her seat, deciding whether this was a good idea or not.

“So, where ya’ coming from?” the man said, breaking the silence.

“A party, bonfire actually.”

“Bonfire, eh? Let me guess, college kids?”

Dorothy said nothing, only giving the man a curt nod. The man scratched his stubble, “Mhm, college kids. That’s who mostly come up to these woods anyway.”

“Where are you headed at this time of night?” Dorothy asked. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to make a bit of conversation, right?

The man began to side-eye Dorothy. He watched as her chest lifted up and then down, showing signs that her breathing was steady. As the man continued to stare, he made a short glance toward the purse she was clutching.

“Headed into town.”

“What for?”

“A few items,” the man replied, shifting his eyes back to the road.

More lights appeared in the distance as the man pulled the car into the gas station. He parked by the nearest pump and opened the door to get out.

“Payphones should be on the side of the building. Here’s a few dimes,” the man said as he gave her the last dimes he had. Dorothy took the dimes and headed toward the payphone.

“Thank you, sir,” she called out. The man fixed his cap and watched as she walked to the side of the building. As he took the gas pump from its holster, he filled up a tank and put the pump back.

Reaching into the side of his truck, he slowly pulled out a switchblade and stashed it into his jacket.

“Slot holes are rusted. Phones are busted, and you will be dead. Need to start running before I start coming, and you just might have a chance,” the man sang in a very low tone as he made his way around the building.

As he turned the corner, the payphone light flickered, and the woman was nowhere to be seen. Confused and also intrigued, he approached the payphone and saw her purse laying on the ground. He grabbed her purse and made his way back to his truck and turned on the radio.

The radio stuttered a lot before saying, “Howdy night dwellers! It’s Old Man Buck delivering your late-night news! As much as I hate to bring bad news to your lovely ears, be on the lookout for a woman with an ID belonging to Dorothy Matthews! It is a fake, and the person could potentially be the Mistress of Darkness. She is known for standing in the woods and tricking men into taking her to safety. She is very dangerous and armed. If you see this woman, call—”

The man shut the radio off as he quickly whipped around to grab the woman’s hand that was holding a syringe. He twisted her hand, making her drop it, and pulled the blade from his pocket to stab her. Dorothy used her other hand to block his attack and smashed her head against his. Both of their heads clashed, but neither of them seemed to be phased.

“Did you really think you could trick me, Mistress of Darkness?” the man said as he pushed the lady off him and touched his head.

The woman tilted her head to the side and wiped the blood from her head.

“It’s not every day you get to meet The Hunter. Wanted to try my luck and I found you!” the woman shouted happily.

Another car pulled into the gas station, and a drunk couple got out of their vehicle and went into the store. The man and woman slowly turned their heads and watched the couple closely, stalking their newest prey.

“How about a truce, Mr. Hunter? I take the male while you get the female.”

“Know what, Ms. Darkness? I think I like that idea.”

A wide smile appeared on both of their faces as they made their way toward the store.

Madison Rohn

I have yet to understand humans. Indecisive. Skeptical. Breakable. Often afraid. Their worries drown out any memories of past promises, fatally forgetful. But I do not forget anything. If any one of these beings beheld the glory I have seen, they would certainly fall back in awe. What I am witnessing now, however, stuns the very core of me.

I stand in front of a dying man, condemned by his people for a crime he did not commit. His execution draws masses of onlookers, including me. I never want to consider myself simply a bystander; I take my role as a protector very seriously. Yet, my orders for this darkened day are not to protect, not to fight, not to sing praises, but simply to watch.

The humans know nothing of my presence. Surely seeing my concealed companions and I would reveal to them the gravity of the situation or at least stop some of the mockery. But the loudest of the crowd continues their insults as the innocent man’s breaths grow more labored. I mentioned humans are forgetful. Well, this man spent his days healing the sick and conversing with outcasts. Who remembers that now as he is taunted by frenzied mobs? But I cannot forget. With one swoop of my wings, I wish to show these earthly beings the truth they have forgotten: this is not merely a man broken in front of them, but a king, my King … and theirs.

However, here is my King publicly displayed as a warning sign for any who dare defy the conquering empire. Usually, time does not matter to me, but the hours of this whole day have passed excruciatingly slow compared to the timeline of eternity. Watching – something humans do so passively – has been my hardest assignment yet. How am I expected to stand by and let my Lord, the very One I was created to serve, be killed right in front of my eyes? It takes every fiber in my being to restrain myself from bursting into action. I yearn to clothe his bare torso in a robe of light, like the splendor he wore on his heavenly throne room. But today, he is only crowned in piercing thorns. His hands, hands that I saw create the planets, are now pinned to coarse wood and held in place by thick nails in his wrists. His feet, which used to walk on top of surging waves, are treated the same way. By saying a word, he could heal any wound, but now his ripped skin is decorated with stripes of deep gashes and crimson blood.

I wonder if my Lord can see me from his uplifted position. When he looks down upon the crowd with his weary eyes, can he tell that a host of angels is among them? Or does the burden of many millennia of sin veil his vision from any sign of holiness? Perhaps all he sees are the mixture of scowling, weeping, and indifferent faces. He tilts his head up to the overhanging sky of black clouds and cuts through the cacophony with a cry of utter despair, citing an old Psalm of forsakenness.

Why can I not help him? Why will he not give me any orders? If he just says a word, I would unsheathe my glowing sword and rush to his aide. My companions and I assisted him before on this earth. We declared his birth along the countryside, we tended to him after he resisted the evil one’s temptations in the desert, and last night I gave him encouragement while he waited in the garden for his betrayer. But at this hour, he says nothing to his heavenly servants. Instead, with a voice trembling in agony, he forgives his executioners.

I still do not understand it. I know this is all part of my King’s plan to save humanity from the clutches of sin. But … why? Why for these creatures who disobey, who coward, who destroy? Why would he cast aside his powers and my help to allow stoic soldiers to treat him like a treasonous criminal? Why would he bleed so easily for the sake of people who spit in his face? Why would he give his life for any human who will likely only speak his name to curse? My King looks down at the crowd once again, and a tear mixes with a streak of blood on his cheek. The soft look on his face says it all. He is not bitter nor regretful like the crucified criminals next to him. Rather, his expression is one of love. The humans are his creation, in his image. He loves them and will sacrifice himself for them as I stand here. Watching.