I was once told by a special someone that nostalgia is the most powerful emotion in the world. To remember the places, faces, sounds, smells and lights that make a person and their past, is to delve into the very fabric of our weaknesses. Despite this, there is also great strength in remembering. Moments of nostalgia are the reclamation and acknowledgement of the fleeting moments that define the good, the bad, and the ugly. Compiling the various interpretations of nostalgia for this edition felt like peeking into the brilliant minds of young artists from far and near. This edition is a testament to the fact that there is power in remembering, and art that captures the human condition is beautiful and vulnerable at the same time. Everyone’s translation of their past on paper, through a lens, or with colours and pencils, has left me standing face to face with the complexity and allure of art and all its modes. As you flip through these pages, I hope you acknowledge the stories that weave us together, that make us who we are.
Love,
We humans are cursed with a mind full of memories. There’s no way of escaping the past; it’s stuck in your nerves forever. That may be scary, but I mostly find it beautiful. You’ll remember every version of you in your body, even if you wish to forget. All the good days you had, all the times you laughed with your friends, all the mistakes you’ve made, all the things you regret. Some call this remembering, others spiralling, others nostalgia. We settled on the latter as the theme for this issue. With ten pieces of art in this issue, the Groningen creatives have done a wonderful job catching the numerous sub-emotions that come with nostalgia: joy, melancholy, resentment, anger, or/and peace. You can find them all between the lines if you look for them. I hope you can take the words and visuals of this issue and contemplate your own nostalgia. What do you really feel when you think back to that place, that person, that feeling you once had. What does it do for you now? Nostalgia is all yours.
Love,
Turin,
by Cat Joy-Boos
Italy
Rose-gold sunlight is pouring through the yellow-green leaves of white-picket-fence-high golden raspberry shrubs. a peaceful, sapphire-blue stream rushes, a harmony with banana-yellow goldfinches and crickets’ honey-sweet chirping. A young French woman in a white muslin babydoll dress with bohemian sleeves and a young American man in light-wash Levi’s and a baby-blue cable-knit sweater sit in the shade of a towering Gala apple tree. He pours them matching glasses of tangy-orange wine, feeds her cold and juicy slices of red-orange peaches and pastel-green pistachio nuts.
As she reads him poetry written of the first day they exchanged glances. From a beat-up, cherry-leather notebook.
by Noa Bente Maureen
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
He walks down the street, teeth sinking into the sweet flesh of an overripe nectarine. It’s a little bruised from sitting in the scorching hot sun all day, but he doesn’t mind. Actually, he likes his fruit a little bruised, it makes it all the more sweet. His feet skip a step, maybe from a small spark of joy, maybe from fear of falling over these goddamn cobblestones. A drop of nectar slips down his calloused finger and he grimaces at the trespassing stickiness. Some fruits are meant to be eaten behind closed doors. Where the kitchen is close by, an opportunity to rinse off all evidence just seconds away. He doesn’t realise it yet, but the nectar is seeping and creeping through his skin, his veins, the scar on his left ring finger, the crack on his bottom lip. It latches onto his brain and makes him stumble over his own tongue.
The sweetness clouds his judgement, so he doesn’t mind.
Two more streets and he’s home, then he can wash it all off. One street later, the overripe fruit is turning and diving around his stomach. He discards the excess that contains its core, a shot at resisting more of the sweet flesh that’s making him feel sick. He prays the garbage is taken out early this week. That way he won’t have to think about the abandoned fruit. He’ll forget it existed by the time the sun cools down. The feeling in his stomach will stop speaking in a language he doesn’t understand.
He won’t mistake this feeling for butterflies again.
Yet he can’t resist, swirling his tongue around his finger one last time, the one with the scar. His keys slip out of his hands but the sickness tastes so sweet. One more taste couldn’t hurt, he thinks, as he unlocks the door. The stickiness will disappear, he thinks, as he rinses off his hands. He forgets the garbage men are on a strike, and the nectarine rots in the sun. His faucet may be close, his hands clean, but some fruits will haunt you from their core. Not everything eaten behind closed doors stay there.
featuredartist EDUARD PRUNACHE
“Nostalgia”
In de stad proefden we elke milkshake, op zoek naar de beste (vonk of harms) stilletjes op de vlucht voor de toekomst
Zochten in onze ooghoeken naar mensen van vroeger: klasgenoten straatbewoners, allemaal verdwaald in afgelopen jaren
op de middelbare school staken ze mijn haar in de brand.
Een psycholoog zei later dat ik het verschil moest leren tussen plagen en pesten
Ik vroeg me vooral af of brandstichting juridisch een ander verhaal was Dit is geen plek die je kansen geeft. hier moet je ze uit de kleigrond houwen,
met gebalde handen kneden, vormvast maken elke
stap vooruit is een nieuw niemandsland, elke kroeg een loopgraaf; de beats een oorverdovende artillerie
Ik geef toe dat ik soms bang was. Dat kan ook haast niet anders met een marktplein dat naar je roept alsof je iets verkeerds herinnerd hebt
Deze plek is geen vangnet voor als je valt,
we heten niet voor niets Sodom; het is een rotswand waartegen je op leert klimmen,
je eindigt boven of je moet opnieuw beginnen
waar iemand woont is ook maar een plek
by Richard Nobbe
“Coloring around Nostalgia”
@beniamin_visarion
featured artist
BENIAMIN VESARION
by Anna Bezpala
THE CRIMEAN COAST
Run. Run as fast as your legs will carry you.
Run until your feet stumble and slip on wet sand and salt water. Run until your eyes see hills and hills green, shielding you from that far point where the sea dissolves into the sky. Only then will you remember the faint scent of lavender, of fresh figs and of that coast they took from you.
You will remember that last summer. You were just about nine. You took a train with your father. Kyiv – Simferopol. The one with astringent black tea in glass cups, trapped in beautiful metal holders. The one with fresh scents of linen, which mix with the thick, human scents of the strange women who board with you. You disembarked and travelled in a taxi up to the coast. Up to that coastline that will stay so engraved into your memory, so painfully burnt into your grey matter that you will no longer be able to enjoy any beach that doesn’t resemble it.
Then: the sweet scent of the treats the local women sell. Baklava. Something else. Years later, you will learn about the genocide of their people by a regime your parents were born into. One that struck before your birth. You will see those women somewhere in your hometown a year later, as they will be made to leave their peninsula once again by that regime’s successors. But you don’t know any of that yet. Nor do you know that it will be your last visit there. For now. For now
you’re a happy child. You play in stone-laden streets, staring up at the gigantic trees that surround them and whose names you do not know yet. You will remember those trees, the curves of their branches against the blue-sky backdrop darkening, growing in saturation. That image will pop up, for years to come, every time you hear that peninsula’s name.
you’re a happy child. You breathe in the damp scents of old books on high shelves, towering over you, endless in the long and numerous rows of your sanatorium’s library. Your dad speaks, he says something to the thin librarian; you will not remember what. You take your first borrowed book. “Mary Poppins”, it reads in big Cyrillic letters. That library will be what you’ll describe, time and time again - in your short stories, poems, and novels. No other library from schools, trips, summer camps, or university years will be vivid enough to replace it.
you’re a happy child. You feel the sun’s heat above you, the sand’s heat beneath you, as you follow a group of adults; trying to keep up with the active woman speaking in a strange language who leads the group. You are hungry for words. Phrases. Stories. “This hill is called the bear,” she says, as she starts a new story. You will not remember it, but you will remember that bear, that tall and grassy hill eating up the coastline. You will search for it later, again and again, on newer and newer coasts. In Egypt, Turkey, Montenegro, France, Dubai, Thailand, Portugal… You still are.
you’re a happy child. You’re smiling, braving the wind, holding the reins of your pony. You’re laughing at how hilariously uncomfortable your city dad looks on his horse. You stare forward, into the wide plain of trees and more mountains as far as you can see. You will imagine yourself in one of your adventure books, Cossacks and Crimean Tatars riding horses and drinking kumis in the nearby steppes. In fact, the mountain is named in their language, Crimean Tatar. Ay Petri. Strange name. In those adventure books, you read names of cities in their language, but you can’t find those on the map. Yet, you don’t question that then. Only years later will you learn that those cities were renamed; adapted to the coloniser’s preference. Centuries before you were born, by the same coloniser that will take that peninsula once again. Once you dismount your pony, pack your bags and take the train with the astringent black tea back to your hometown.
you’re a happy child. You leave that island of your free will. Just a year after, this trip will become a very dangerous affair. That train route you took will be cancelled. It will start towards the end of your fourth grade. Your teacher will say in response to a question in science class: “The Crimean Mountains? Russian soldiers are climbing them now.” And your closest friend will tell you she can no longer visit her grandparents safely.
Now. All you have is memories. Memories of that summer you can revisit, scratching them out, scratching them out so often and so much you bleed. You will have a wound. Until your mid-teens you will. Then the wound will scar. It will stay with you like that, aching dully, reminding you to pick at it between drawing posters for demonstrations and writing texts for donation campaigns.
Besides that… you’ll head out. And run. Run as fast as your legs will carry you.
Run until your feet stumble and slip on wet sand and salt water. Run until your eyes see hills and hills green, shielding you from that far point where the sea dissolves into the sky. Only then will you once again remember the faint scent of lavender, of fresh figs and of that coast they took from you. You will remember that last summer, when you were nine. You will be able to, carefully, lightly, dream of the next one.
Heaven
avondturen
by Maya Lichthart
Een lege toekomst, zonder jou opgevuld met iets zoals gekleurde knikkers uit mijn jeugd, een grijze, donkerblauwe, hemel met lichtvoetige wolken een verlegen maan mist over het water en een rekensom bestaande uit vier handen (twee onthouden die vasthouden), twee fietsen, één bankje en verstopte gebouwen met evenveel lichten als we sterren tellen, de uitkomst iets dat nog niemand kan berekenen, enkel voorspellen dat het goed zal komen knikkers als waarzeggingsbollen ontmaskert, wij als part-time toekomstvoorspellers part-time avonturiers die dingen ontdekken die al bestonden en mensen al vanaf wisten toch anders lijken in het avondlicht
featuredartist IULIA IGNAT
“melancholy is my middle name”
The feeling of home and nostalgia in the diaspora. Bottled-up memories resurface and remind me of myself away from the western space I’ve grown into. Set in the Saturday market on the Viskmart, Groningen.
“Wie is de volgende?”
Maureen inches forward from the throng of customers at the vegetable stand, her eyes sweeping over batches of produce. I squint at the carrots being sold in batches of five and contemplate inconveniencing the pre-teen working the stall with my requests. Hoi hallo goedemorgen wat wil je? The obscure chatter around us mingles with the occasional yelp of someone’s dog scattering away. I decide I will be next in line, so I sift through the fog of last week’s Dutch lesson and the flashcards designed for Op de Markt. I let someone else go before me as I prepare. There’s always some urgency here.
Back home we bartered until we collapsed with our heads thrown back in laughter - we knew each other’s names. We’d crouch at stands propped up by bricks and beer cartons, rolling tomatoes in our hands and asking about farm life and how it treated them. Mamuka sei? Ahh ndamuka kana mamukawo? My mother would smile coyly at the older women, pretending to concede on a price and including a disguised compliment where she could. Our words blended into each other, across language and culture, and we performed a dance.
Three oranges and a soggy box of strawberries have been tallied up by the time I realize I can’t remember my conjugations. Here, I stand muted behind Maureen and we move along. I could always speak English but it doesn’t blend the way it should. A mispronunciation, an accidental slip of my foreignness gives me away, and the music halts before it’s begun.
I’m conjugating willen in my head when we abruptly stop at a new table.
“Is it pronounced lie- chee or lee - chee?” She inspects the fruit pinched between her thumb and index. We say lee - chee as in litchi back home but I’m suddenly unsure of whether we are right. “Want one? We can give it a try?” Maureen tells me she rarely gets to eat these, and I laugh in disbelief. Pride bubbles up in me, knowing that I had something these people don’t.
My cousins had a litchi tree that towered over the sparse lawn of their front yard. The trunk, thick and sturdy, had good nobs and protrusions for climbing. In the heat of summer afternoons we took our shoes off ceremoniously, dug our toenails into its dirt, and clambered upwards. We followed each other like ants in a line, giggling every now and then at our own mock-seriousness. At the very top, we chose a branch to perch on and picked off its fruit, redistributing the bounty evenly where we could. Sticky-fingered and panting, we spoke about the discolored roof of their house, feeling as though we could see everything. We were suddenly larger and more important than we’d ever been. The litchis’ flesh would get stuck in my front teeth. They would swat away a lone bee.
Sometimes I feel like I’m trapped in these memories, other times they’re all I have. I could be embellishing these memories too, retelling them in this packaged way with an African stamp on top. This is what leaving is about.
I think about how they export fruit to this country: traveling miles to land in a brown carton labeled exotic. I question whether I’ve truly eaten this fruit at all, it’s been so long. Maureen hands me one and I suck on its flesh, knowing it will get stuck in my front teeth. I pretend I can see the roofs of the market stalls, the blonde crowns of Nederlanders’ heads. I pretend I know what aanbieding voor blauwe bessen! means. We move along to the next stall - the soggy box in her bag leaking red. I make a mental note to carry some flashcards with me for next time.
NOA BENTE MAUREEN
in chief
Hi! I’m Maureen. I was born and raised in Groningen, so I’ve been around for a while. I’m currently doing a research master in linguistics and working as a barista. I have always loved language (hence the linguistics) which is also the main reason I started this magazine. I believe any form of communication is the most powerful tool we possess as humans, and I’m eternally grateful and proud that so many beautiful narratives have been brought to life by Lelygaan. As coeditor-in-chief, I oversee the production of the entire magazine and organize our events. Welcome to our little world in the city of yellow pavements and endless markets!
co-editor founder & language
co-editor
Namaste! I’m Shrila and I’m from New Delhi, India. Currently I’m a MA Literary Studies student at the University of Groningen. As a writer, I always try to capture the experiences often hidden in between the lines. I believe words and storytelling truly have the power to change us, and after writing for Lelygaan in the past, Maureen very kindly asked me to hop on board as Co-Editor-in-Chief! I overlook the writings, stories and pictures that tell your tales and try to make sense of it all on paper. I’m always looking out for creative forms and outlets to explore!
BETH CASSERLY
editor in chief
I’m Beth, the Language Editor for Lelygaan! I’m a literature student from Ireland, a sailing instructor, a poet, and a professional video essay watcher. I really enjoy working with artists to formulate their vision, and I love that every issue introduces me to an amazing new group of artists!
SHRILA KANTH
graphic designer &
Hi, I’m Anca, a Romanian designer currently studying Graphic & Interaction Design at Academie Minerva in Groningen. Channeling my emotions in a visual way has always been something I’ve been drawn to, and design has become my perfect medium. I’m particularly passionate about the interplay between image and text, exploring how they work together to add layers of meaning and emotions. Through my work at Lelygaan, I hope to reinforce stories and inspire.
website copywriter & art director editor
SAVANNAH HENDRICKSE
Hey! I’m Savannah, an international student from Zimbabwe that is currently completing a Masters in Literary Studies. As a lover of words, the arts, and people, I’ve become more intentional about joining/ creating spaces where we can connect through our mutual love for creativity and ingenuity. My role at Lelygaan allows me to bridge the gap between our team and organization’s mission, with you — our readers, members, and future collaborators!
TY SANCHEZ
deputy creative director & illustrator
Hello! I’m Ty, main illustrator and current Deputy Creative Director for Lelygaan. As of now, I’m finishing a Design Bachelor and preparing to take the next steps in my career. I have been working on this project since its first issue and have had the delightful task of bringing artists’ work to a visual medium. This has also allowed me to hone in on my own artistic practice!
social media manager
Hello, my name is Ana and I’m the Social Media Manager of Lelygaan. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Advertising and Communication Sciences and a Master’s degree in Fashion and Advertising, so I’ve worked in the creative field for 6 years already! At the moment, however, I’ve refocused my attention to a passion of mine, which is theater, by studying it at the RUG. I love all forms of art, and I firmly believe that being part of a community of creative people is one of the most inspiring things that you can do. I hope that we’re able to foster such a community through this beautiful project.
ANA IRINA CANGE
COLOFON
EDITORS:
Noa Bente Maureen Prins
Shrila Kanth
Beth Casserly
Ty Victor Sanchez
DESIGN: Anca Barbu
ILLUSTRATION:
Ty Victor Sanchez
CONTACT: lelygaan@gmail.com
PUBLISHER: Lelygaan Publishing
ISBN 978-90-832610-4-1
No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written consent of Lelygaan Publishing.
