Lhsp journal 2004 2005 selected writing & art

Other Homes Selected Writing & Art Lloyd Hall Scholars Program University of Michigan

2004-2005

“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.

The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.�

-- Ray Bradbury

1 LHSP Faculty & Staff

Faculty Director .......................................................................... Carol Tell Associate Director ....................................................... Charlotte Whitney Arts Coordinator ................................................................... Mark Tucker Administrative Assistant ...................................................... Tina Kokoris Program Assistant ................................................................... Ruth Marsh Program Intern ............................................................. Jamillah Bowman Art Instructors .............................................................................. Beili Liu ...................................................................... Mark Tucker Writing Instructors ................................................................. Paul Barron ........................................................... Louis Cicciarelli .............................................................. Lizzie Hutton .................................................................. Matt Kelley ............................................................... Valerie Laken .............................................................. Ray McDaniel ................................................................... Alex Ralph ................................................................ Naomi Silver ..................................................................... Carol Tell

Journal Staff

Editor-in-Chief ......................................................................... Carrie Luke Illustrator ......................................................................... Camille Johnston Advisors ............................................................ Carol Tell & Mark Tucker Graphic Design Liaison, UM Housing Media Group ............. Lee May

Thanks to...

Camille Johnston, for all your incredible drawings and artistic insight. Lee May, for your advice, guidance, suggestions and support. All of the LHSP Resident Advisors, Student Assistants and Instructors, for collecting submissions and promoting the journal. George Lee, Senior Graphic Artist for UM Housing Media Group, for helping us coordinate with the printer. And of course, thanks to Spectrum Printing.

Cover Art: “Home” by Jaclyn Hornstein acrylic on canvas 4’ x 4’

2 -- Contents --

Foreword ................................................................................................

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The Other Home -- Geetha Iyer ...........................................................

Tangerines & Morning Glories -- Carrie Luke ..................................

Going Home -- Samantha Gordon ........................................................

In Honor of Steven Adams Miller, My Friend -- Justin Heller ........

Breakthrough -- Leonardo Caion-Demaestri ..........................................

The Mask -- Hyatt Michaels ...................................................................

One Moment in Time -- Jacqueline E. Howard ...................................

Learning on the Job -- Andrew Kahn ...................................................

Untitled -- Gillian Goldberg ....................................................................

Untitled -- Michelle Dorman ...................................................................

Digital Self-Portrait -- Amy Aronoff ....................................................

Untitled -- Alissa Koloff ........................................................................

Untitled -- Benjamin Lack ......................................................................

Untitled -- Jeremy Beday ...........................................................................

Untitled -- Kimberly Peven ......................................................................

The Sweetest Thing -- Joann Teo ..........................................................

A Girl Named Hope -- Betsy Perlman ...................................................

Role Model -- Camille Johnston ..............................................................

6 12 14 20 21 25 26 29 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

3 -- Contents --

Togetherness and Joy -- Larissa Szwast ...............................................

First-Year Fiasco -- Alyse Dunn ...........................................................

Cubist Self-Portrait after Picasso -- Khalil Morrison ..........................

Untitled -- Billy Heisler ...........................................................................

A Spot of Tea - No Milk, No Sugar -- Carol Moser ..........................

The Likes of Me -- Jade Way ................................................................

Frankey’s Pearls -- Noelle Williams .......................................................

Sweetness -- Carrie Luke .......................................................................

The Deafening Street Was Screaming All Around Me -- Emily Lawrence .......................................................................

The Weekend -- Ryan Solomon ..............................................................

A Day at the Pool, A Life of Secrets -- Michael Lohr .......................

Suicide -- Hyatt Michaels ........................................................................

Portrait of an Artist -- Matt Weil ..........................................................

Kiss -- Justin Heller .................................................................................

Daddy’s Girl -- Anonymous .....................................................................

I am the Lord thy God -- Laura Nichols .............................................

“You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you” -- Carrie Luke ................

43 44 45 46 47 48 50 55 56 59 60 66 67 69 70 73 76

Biographies ............................................................................................. 77

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Foreword

Foreword When young children cover their eyes, they think the world has disappeared because in their minds, what they can’t see isn’t there anymore. We call them silly, youthfully naïve, but are we much different? When we leave a place, we assume that it has disappeared because we have stopped watching it. We are stunned to return and feel differently, displaced, changed because the world we remember is not the world to which we have returned. As Samantha Gordon says in her essay, “Going Home”: “You go back to the same house as a different person, and it isn’t your home anymore, just the place you grew up in.” As we age and move away to school or to work, our new surroundings, experiences, and friends change us, making us too big for the confines of our old house, our old friends, our old life. This realization can be difficult, especially if you haven’t come to feel completely at home in your new world.

Think of it as walking up a spiral stair case, essentially covering the same ground, but on a new and different level with more challenging steps and fewer railings. The writers and artists in this book are on one of the most awkward levels of all: the one between childhood and adulthood, security and independence, freedom and responsibility. Is their art an escape from these responsibilities? Is it what they go to when they have a day off, when they pause on a landing? Some may say so, but even on those days off, we cannot escape our conflicted lives, because they continue to define us, even when we try to break away from them.

All of the pieces in this book are exactly this sort of art. They address definitions of home and self; from digital self-portraits, to narratives of massive life changes, to poems about tremendous loss, they all ask the same questions: what does it mean to be at home? What happens when we leave there? Can we take it with us when we go? Can we have more than one home? How does the idea of home change as we grow? How can we

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learn to create a feeling of home within ourselves, or embrace that state of “homelessness,” even for a little while?

While not every piece directly mentions home or its change, all the pieces are inevitable products of that change. These narratives, essays, poems, paintings, and photographs are all the result of steps taken into new worlds: the university; the abstract, artistic expression; and the creation of new selves. Just as we evolve, our writing and art evolve too, to express those new conflicts and challenges that we face.

If you have ever been in a dialogue group and discussed sensitive and controversial topics, you have probably heard of the comfort wheel: there is the safe, comfortable zone in the center, the panic zone on the edge, and then a place in-between where you feel uneasy and unsure, but not yet crazy with unfamiliarity or threatened by difference. The university hopes to create that “in-between” space for its students here on campus: a place with fewer railings than before, but secure enough to explore freely and at least somewhat comfortably. It hopes to create a place its students will call home for the four years, decade, or lifetime that they spend here.

Because the idea of home is exactly that: defined by the individual, and based on thousands of factors, experiences, challenges, successes, failures, and needs. As Geetha Iyer says in her narrative, “The Other Home”: “Bombay’s still my home, India is home, if only for the fact that some of my most vivid memories come from that place, especially because every time I go back, I’ll be submerged once again in the unchanging intensity of life there.” Geetha has spent most of her life in the United Arab Emirates, but she can also call Bombay home because Bombay meets the criteria that she has set to make it her home.

Leonardo Caion-Demaestri expresses similar ideas in his narrative, “Breakthrough,” not with places, but with himself. He moves from Brazil to California, but he still feels at home because he and his family come to accept him for who he is. He quotes his mother: “Life is a process of realizations, and you only know what life means when you understand who you are.”

The artists and writers featured in this collection will continue to climb up their spiral staircases, but this book has captured the experiences they had on this level between comfort and panic, in what hopefully will be (or has been) their academic and artistic home for a part of their lifetime.

Enjoy, Carrie Luke Editor-in-Chief

6

GEETHA IYER

The Other Home

by Geetha Iyer

Mid-morning, early August 2003: I was entrenched between doubledecker buses, huge trucks, and lorries transporting bales of hay, sheets of glass, and sweaty, disgruntled construction workers who gaped incessantly at us in our car until it became physically impossible to maintain eye contact any longer. This was Bombay during the rush hours, 6 am to 11 pm, where the time it takes to get anywhere on wheels equals the time it takes to get there on foot, where traveling for five hours to get home is typical.

This was Bombay from my childhood memories. I saw all of India as my wondrous, exotic, other home, where mere paving stones could have me riveted because they were so novel, so utterly unlike everything I was used to seeing in the real world, back in Dubai. I gawked openly at so little a thing as rain, hitting the trees, dripping off windows.

Those construction workers did the same to me. The people here have a way of looking at you, of staring ferociously at you in your sneakers, you in your car, you with those wide eyes that they all know have not seen enough of the world to take it for granted yet. Catching their eyes means playing their games. And falling into their trap is unavoidable. You do the double take, and a glance becomes a gaze. Then it begins; they leer, relentless, taunt you with those unspoken questions: “Don’t you think I’m fabulous? Don’t you want to keep staring? Don’t I intimidate you? How long before you look away?” Painfully self-conscious of being a spectacle, you will always be the first to break away, to stare at the tires of buses instead. When at long last we’d cleared into the fifth and edge-most lane of the three lane bridge, I had already worn out the novelty of staring at the dried mud that coated the lower sides of the larger vehicles, but I certainly did not welcome the now-unobstructed view of the city below.

Imagine a plaster block. Imagine it dribbled upon by a constant stream of water for six months. Obliterate every right angle. You can now appre-

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ciate the physical dynamics of anything that has been constructed over a year ago in this country. Anything that is not organic to begin with is well on its way to becoming so in less than two years. Exciting, yes. Fresh and surprising in its irregularity, Bombay’s general lumpiness never bothered me. Far from it. But now I’d come to associate the grime with the decrepit.

No matter how I looked at it, everything here was unwholesome. Seventeen summers can make anything lose its brilliance, and I’d seen enough dirt for today.

Count cows, I thought. Count dogs. Anything to stave off thinking about how much longer it would take to reach home. I started combing the passing street. We were on the highway now, and both roadsides were bordered by the slums. They looked like patchwork cubes, each house half the size of a small room, boards of corrugated iron for walls, and sheets of blue, plasticized fabric piled across the tops in stretches to form roofs.

I pressed my face against the tinted glass of our car. People live here, I thought in fascination. Little children ran about from house-front to house-front playing unidentifiable games, dressed in the barest minimum of clothes; the youngest were naked but for a piece of black thread tied across their bellies. Young men and women carried things, or carted them, to and from wherever they went each day. Old women sat on rickety wooden beds held together with string and gossiped with one another. They were the only ones who looked overweight, but not because of fat, more likely because their muscles had passed the point of resisting gravity and now rested in expansive folds under their flesh. The older men gambled outside one of the shops (which were indistinguishable in construction from the houses.)

Because there was typically only one room per house, people bathed outside, out of tin buckets. Children took dumps on the pavement.

That struck a chord. Their lives were so simple, so blatant. People passed by in their cars continuously, but they still cooked and played cards in the streets. They ignored, and were ignored in turn; they had nothing to hide because no one cared to look.

I watched two little kids wander past a dozen house-fronts, idly poking at things they found in puddles, accompanied only by a stray dog they’d half tamed. Call me naïve. Call me stark raving mad. But I wanted to live the way those people did, in a tiny house that flanked the road. I wanted the strange comfort that closeness of space brings with familiarity. I wanted that sense of adventure in stepping out of the front door into the world, instead of into the garden of a home inside a walled-in compound. Except for having to do my business in the streets, I could really get used to this, I thought.

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GEETHA IYER

Ever the resourceful adventurer in my head, I imagined how wonderful it would be to thrive in what most people would call an uninhabitable environment, to experience every day with abandon because no one was looking. I don’t even need to worry about TV, I realized, as I caught a glance through one of the doors. Somehow, these people had tiny TV screens glowing from within their homes, or little electric lights framing the back wall, where they’d put up pictures of their gods. I nudged my father, asleep in the front seat. “How do those people get electricity?”

He said that they tapped into the electricity illegally. That the slums themselves were illegal. The only reason why the government continued to let them exist was because they couldn’t afford to relocate so many people, to provide homes, food, sanitation. It was a delicate issue, something to be ignored, because if the laws were observed and the slums were razed, it would be a complete breach of human rights. Almost sixty percent of Bombay would have nowhere to live. He fell asleep again. I continued to stare out the window, entranced. Sixty percent, echoed in my mind, sixty percent. No sanitation. The tin house in my dreams fell to the ground.

We’d stopped at the traffic lights. This always made me uncomfortable. We were immediately deluged by street hawkers, teenaged boys selling newspapers, roasted peanuts, garlands, and paper flags. Theirs was a job of canny footwork and impeccable timing, since they had to dodge from car to car less than a meter away from each other, pressing their bunches of wares against the windows, peering to see if any interested buyers were inside, and then hurriedly scurrying out of the way again when the lights changed.

Along with them came the beggars: the blind, the lepers, the mothers with children. Most people, nearly all in fact, refused to acknowledge them.

It was their belief, I presumed, that if they pretended these people didn’t exist, then it would somehow soothe the awkwardness of ignoring them in the first place. I couldn’t ignore them, as much as I couldn’t ignore a slap in the face. A woman approached us, her baby hanging listless in the crook of her arm, asleep, drooling. She gestured to the child and made pleading faces, pushing guilt onto anyone who would look at her, and held out her cupped palm. “Shoo,” my aunt said to her. I cringed. “Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for them,” she told me. “Do you know what they do with the money they get? They buy sleeping pills to drug their babies so they can carry them around all day while they beg. Why else do you think those babies never move, never cry?”

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As much as I was disinclined to believe anyone who could “shoo” another person, I knew she couldn’t be making it up. The beggar was staring at me now; she must have realized I was the only person paying her any attention. “Sister,” she whined in Hindi and then rattled off a string of laments.

I couldn’t understand the words, but I got the gist. “How could you be so heartless?” she accused me. I dropped my gaze, and helplessly tried to study my fingernails, embarrassed that I couldn’t say anything she’d understand, embarrassed that nothing I could do would change things for her—we both knew that. The lights changed; she vanished among the peddlers.

At home, my sister and I waited by the gates for our cousins to return from school. We hunted for frogs in the grass to while away our time. Bombay always makes me feel intrepid. Everything runs wild here. We’d been told not to play in the grass outside because we could get bitten. We were told not to wade through weeds. Not to crawl through bushes to pick wild flowers. Snakes, they said, or rats live there. Only mosquitoes attacked us, and they lived inside our houses. The mere thought of standing in kneelength grass felt exhilarating, because we were breaking the rules. And because only the rain could paint the leaves so green.

The street had no curbs, like most streets here. Instead we have trenches about two feet wide along both sides and right against the outer walls of residence compounds, shop fronts—anywhere with roads. Because it rains so much, drainage is an absolute necessity. Hygiene and aesthetics evidently are not. The water collected is opaque—a grim, pearly grey. My sister cautiously edged up to one. “How deep are they?” she asked me, scrunching up her face trying to ignore the smell.

“I couldn’t tell you. The water’s never cleared up enough to see the bottom.”

“You know, we learnt at school that mosquito babies grow in pools of water. They hang upside down under the surface, and if you disturb the water, they fall down and die.” She threw a couple of pebbles into the ditch. “I bet there are baby mosquitoes in there. Look, see those bubbles.

I’m going to kill them. Serves them right for biting me.” She threw in some more. I stared at her, bemused. She still hadn’t developed any immunity to mosquito bites. Her arms and legs were covered in mountainous sores, and she had scabs over them from scratching. I knew how she felt. For a moment, I imagined her trying to disturb every pool of standing water in Bombay. I imagined the face she made now, one of controlled irritation, and thought of her walking determinedly through every street with a bag

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GEETHA IYER

of pebbles slung over her shoulder. She’d make it. Give her a year and no sleep, and she’d have stirred up all the water in the city. And then she’d start all over again, because that’s how long it takes for anything to return to normal here.

That week, I remember we walked some way along the same streets we’d traveled past earlier with our windows rolled up to block out the elements. This time, amidst the stifling exhaust fumes and the smell of rain and drain-water, we could smell corn cobs roasting on vending benches. That smell, the crackling of flames, seeing red-hot ash fly up off the cobs—it never grows old. You don’t get corn like that anywhere else, not even in my mom’s kitchen. It’s the sort of thing I lived for every summer, and I smiled at the vendors in appreciation. But when they tried asking me how many I wanted, I lurched. My mom bought us corn. I just watched.

Outside India, I invariably meet people who ask me where I’m from, whether I’m Indian. It’s a part of conversation, “Where are you from? Oh, really, I’ve been there once, wonderful food,” or “Oh, yes, I’ve heard it’s an excellent place for hiking.” “Beautiful country, isn’t it?” someone says every once in a while. I look at their beaming faces, expectant, waiting for confirmation.

“Yes, yes, it is,” I smile, honestly. But I don’t know what beaten tourist trail you’ve taken, because it isn’t nearly all as pretty as you imagine. Of course I won’t tell you that because I don’t mean to be disagreeable and ruin everything they say in the tour guides for you. And of course you won’t bring up the subject of poverty, or grime, or neglect—all those things you’d find only in newspapers, things that I really don’t want to talk about because the shock has dulled off through repetition.

“Will you ever go back there?”

“Oh yes, someday.”

Of course that’s the silliest resolution I’ve ever had. Sure, I’ve loved every summer I’ve spent there, but perhaps only because I’ve had my family with me. They’re immune to the city’s festering; they already know it would take a geological upheaval to cleanse the place. And I’ve always lived in that shelter, in that façade of believing that as long as we have running water and two cars, Bombay is still beautiful.

I don’t speak the language, and I’ve never lived the life that sixty percent of the citizens have lived. I couldn’t live it if I tried. I have nothing with which to relate to them. In their eyes, I don’t even look Indian, in my jeans

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and sneakers. But Bombay’s still my home, India is home, if only for the fact that some of my most vivid memories come from that place, especially because every time I go back I’ll be submerged once again in the unchanging intensity of life there.

But some things should change. I want to be able to walk without rolling up my jeans to avoid the dirt. I don’t want to hold my breath. I don’t want to ignore the newspapers, because all they’ll do is depress me. One day, after I’ve done all I need to satisfy my needs, I’ve promised to retire to Bombay, to do something because I want to change all that. I’m not going to be self-gratifying, though, and say I’m doing it out of charity, out of a belief that things can be better if I put my mind to it, that things should be made better because it’s the right thing to do. The real reason? I don’t want to face those needling eyes, to endure how those people can manipulate my sympathy, to sting because they don’t want my pity, but my kind of life.

There’s no such thing as doing something out of selflessness and generosity. Altruism is just another word for trying to escape the guilt.

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CARRIE LUKE

Tangerines

by Carrie Luke

Where do yesterdays go when yesterday is gone?

Do they become the-day-before-yesterdays, a-couple-days-agos, last-years, long-befores, once-upon-a-times?

Yesterday, I saw a young woman at the coffee shop on the corner of Fifth and Main. She had all these red curls restrained with bobby pins and butterfly clips, those weird things my wife threw away when she cut off all her hair after the accident.

The woman stood just ahead of me in line. I don’t know if I would have given her a second glance if she hadn’t ordered her coffee black and strong. Impressive. Nostalgically robust.

Like tangerines, out-of-season.

Morning Glories

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Morning Glories

by Carrie Luke

Why do morning glories bloom only once?

Do they just switch from vine to vine, trying on new colors and new outlooks from the same lattice, the same vineyard, the same patch of Earth under different clouds?

That was the first time I ever saw her, in that cafe at Fifth and Main, but even now when yesterday has become a definite long-before, I still see her ginger intensity occasionally in my rear-view mirror, navigating my guilt from different venues on the trellis of my memory.

14

SAMANTHA GORDON

Going Home

by Samantha Gordon

People say you can never go home again. You can return to your old house, sure, but it’s not the same. Maybe it looks smaller or darker than you remembered; maybe it brings back sweet, nostalgic memories, or maybe seeing it again is a letdown. It’s not that your home has changed; it’s the opposite. It has stayed the same, but you haven’t; once you left, your home stopped changing along with you. So you go back to the same house as a different person, and it isn’t your home anymore, just the place you grew up in. And that, Jen says, is weird.

“Weird” is a word that has come up several times in our conversations over the last few hours, as we drive up the New York State Northway towards our old camp. We’re ostensibly going up to visit my little sister since I hadn’t been able to make it for the official visiting day (“It’s weird that Dana’s there without us,” Jen says); we are actually going up because we feel like we should pay some sort of homage to the place we spent seven summers together, from the time we were eight years old. We want to stand back in our old bunks, to smell the familiar scent of pine trees and sunscreen, to retrace our steps back to when we were the children that we no longer are. In past years, camp seemed too recent to go back to; we had only just ended our last summer and all had better things to do than drive for four hours to reach an all-girls camp in New York’s isolated Adirondack Mountains. However, this summer, when we are free of any obligations to either high school or college, enough time has passed so that we remember camp only in a positive light, but not enough time so that we can barely remember it at all. Even though we still identify with the campers, we know that the little girls will probably see us as adults. In some way we fall into neither category, and in some ways we fall into both. Being in limbo this way, waiting to completely move from our high school lives into college, a trip back up to camp feels appropriate: in this unsure time, we want to find

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the solidity we felt back when we knew exactly what we were. So for this weekend we are trying to reprise our roles as campers, at least to the best of our present abilities.

As Jen waxes philosophic about what it is going to be like when we come back from college for Thanksgiving, Dani and I roll our eyes at each other in the front seat and head down memory lane, where we find ourselves echoing Jen, talking about how different it is now to be going to camp than as campers. I remind Dani of how we used to cry and hug our parents as the bus would pull up, sobbing that we would miss them and didn’t want to leave home, but would be laughing with each other by the time the bus pulled away. We laugh about how different it was this morning, when Dani ran into the car as soon as we pulled up to her house and we drove off, forgetting in our excitement to say goodbye to her mother. Dani mentions how it’s weird that I’m driving my car up to camp, when we still think of each other as little girls. “You seem so old,” she tells me.

I’m starting to feel a little old as we get closer to camp. A little jaded, at least. The amusement part we used to visit once a summer now looks rinky-dink as we drive past it, not like the Adirondack Disneyworld it had once seemed to be. We stop at a McDonald’s to use the bathroom, and the french-fries we buy don’t taste as good as they had when fast-food was a once-a-summer treat. When we are back in the car, Dani’s mom calls her for the fourth time in many hours; Jen jokes that she has now surpassed the number of phone calls that we were allowed to make home all summer in camp. We laugh at ourselves as we tap the ceiling of the car when driving over a bridge, as camp tradition dictates. In some ways, we are neither here nor there: we are still campers who believe in superstitions, but not yet adults who can discount them.

When we turn off the highway and drive into town, I am surprised to see how small and run-down the shops and houses along the main street look. When we are settled in at the local motor lodge, we joke about how our room resembles a camp bunk. It’s the late afternoon, and for a second I feel like a rebel: I am out and about with my friends when all my fellow campers are supposed to be in their bunks resting or washing up before dinner. I am taken aback by the thought that they are no longer really my fellow campers; I am no longer one of them.

Jen wants to eat at the pizzeria where our parents used to take us on visiting day, the one that was famous among the Point O’ Pines girls for having the best pizza in the world. Deprivation may have improved its taste during those summers, but my slice is as delicious as I remembered. In a

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SAMANTHA GORDON

good mood from dinner, we go across the street to see what is playing at the local movie theatre. We can’t believe how cheap the tickets are: we knew that they would cost less than in New York City, but every other time we had been there, the tickets had been bought in advance by the camp. We sit down in the broken seats and joke about how they haven’t been fixed in the four years since we were last in the theatre; the joke lasts half-way through the movie before the squeaking and discomfort just become annoying.

Dani and I wake up with a start the next morning, when Jen jumps on the bed we are sharing and hums the Reveille loudly in our ears. Jen and I get dressed quickly and go downstairs to eat breakfast, and when we come back up twenty minutes later, we find Dani standing in front of the mirror, trying on different T-shirts with a sheepish look on her face. “I want to look nice for camp,” she explains to us, and I think how far we must have come now to feel like we have to make a good impression, instead of feeling like we can let our hair down and relax. I see Jen looking at Dani with her styled hair and matching outfit, and suddenly I feel like the old T-shirt and gym shorts I’m wearing might not do the trick.

I change into khaki shorts, and we pack up the car with the junk food and small gifts we brought for my sister and hit the road. The five-minute drive around the lake seems to take much longer; every few seconds one of us squeals as we spot a landmark that we recognize: a distinctive tree, a house, a barn. I am holding my breath as I drive through the gate into camp; I cannot believe that I am back. Everything looks the way I remember it, and all of a sudden I feel home, like I had never left. I park the car and open the door and hear a group of girls walk by us, laughing at some inside joke, and I am surprised not to recognize any of them.

We go up to the office and sign in. The woman behind the desk doesn’t know us, but the director comes out as we are making name tags for ourselves, greets each of us by name, and gives each of us a hug. “My girls are back!” she announces, and, right then, I feel the same way. My sister walks into the office, and for a second I understand why my parents claim that she and I get taller and more grown up all the time. She looks like a teenager, all messy hair and long limbs and bad skin, not the baby as I picture her.

Dana wants to show me around so I let her, both of us ignoring the fact that I know where everything is already. Dani and Jen want to go around and do activities with the campers, so they peel off from our group. Dana and I run into them later in the day on the tennis courts: you can spot the two of them from a mile away, the oldest and biggest girls, the only ones not wearing their Point O’ Pines uniform T-shirts and navy shorts. Playing

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on a court next to a group of nine-year-old girls, my friends look silly, out of place. I think first how the camp will always belong to us in some way, but then how it will never be entirely ours again.

We stay to eat dinner in the dining hall, and even though we are supposed to leave before the evening activities begin, we can’t seem to make ourselves go. Dani and Jen tell me how, earlier in the day, a group of campers came up to ask who they were, and didn’t believe them when they said they had been campers a few years ago. Jen is offended by this, her credibility as a Point O’ Pines girl being questioned. We sit with Dana in her bunk and ask her the standard questions: is she having fun, are her counselors nice, which team is winning color war, have they had any socials? Dana starts to whine to us a bit: she is bored with the all-girls camp, she wishes she were back home in the city with her friends, she doesn’t like being this out-of-touch from the world. Dani and Jen and I fall over ourselves to respond to her, trying to explain how special and ephemeral this bubble she lives in really is. I want to tell her not to grow up too fast, not to wish her childhood away, to take advantage of this opportunity she has to escape from real life and all of its stresses and responsibilities for even a few weeks.

Instead, we let her walk us to the car where each of my friends and finally I hug my sister goodbye. I get into the car and watch her walk back into her brightly-lit bunk to join her friends, and then I drive away, the gravel on the road crunching behind me. In my rearview mirror, the camp sparkles like a little jewel next to the blackness of the forest and the lake.

We wake up early again the next morning, and even though Dani wants to spend the day up in the area, Jen needs to get going early because she has an appointment that afternoon. I tell Jen that it’s no problem to drive her to where she needs to go, it’s right near my boyfriend’s house and I can stop by and see him on my way home. Dani jokingly reminds me that there are no boyfriends allowed at Point O’ Pines, and I respond that we are not at Point O’ Pines anymore. We are much more subdued on the ride home than we had been going up a few days ago; maybe because it’s early, maybe because we are all a little pensive. We get to talking about school, and Jen reminds me that she is leaving in only a week. When we were younger, a week felt like a year, and a summer seemed like forever. Now we are approaching the end of the summer designated as our last one living at home, and Jen’s last week here seems like no time at all.

As we drive down the West Side Highway into Manhattan, Dani says how nice it will be to eat good food again and sleep in her own bed that night, as if she had been away for more than two days. Jen and I agree.

18

SAMANTHA GORDON

Dani and I used to cry when our bus would pull up in the city at the end of each summer, crying because we did not want to leave our friends and go back to real life. Even then, we knew that camp was just a respite, an escape.

For two months, we lived without responsibilities, without the pressures of home and boys and school and the stress that is an unavoidable part of a normal, day-to-day routine. Every August, we would close that summer and start school in a new grade, moving on to our lives without each other but knowing that, come June, the cycle would begin again.

This time it’s different, though. Instead of measuring our distances in stops on the cross-town bus, Dani and Jen and I will be counting hundreds of miles and plane fares between Madison, Ithaca, and Ann Arbor. Even though we are just saying goodbye until the summer, as we have for so many years, this time it seems more permanent. We have outgrown our camp and that absolutely carefree portion of our lives, and now I am scared that when we come back from college, we will find that we have outgrown each other. We were able to go back this weekend and pretend that Point O’ Pines was still our home, and in some ways, it always will be: it was the place where we grew up. We don’t belong there anymore, though. Now we have boyfriends and appointments to go home to, now we have driver’s licenses and now my little sister is at camp and it is going on without us.

As camp was once our escape from childhood, our homes will become our escapes from college, as we take on more responsibilities than we had when we lived with our parents; we are going to come back to New York and find our old homes different because they have not changed as much as we have.

Camp ends and childhood ends and though you can visit, you really can’t go home again.

Going Home

19

20

JUSTIN HELLER

In Honor of Steven Adams Miller, My Friend January 26, 1986-February 10, 2005

by Justin Heller

The brown chair lay silent, My friend laughed and labored.

Inside the chambers of his heart His warm blood stands severed.

He floats amongst the clouds, now To fly and swim never-ending.

No more the agony of fear of foe No more the slaughtering.

Now frolics amongst Cherry Trees All are touched by his blossoming, None are without grief And the hope of once returning.

He who was Strong, Brave, And Proud grew tall Turns to community Faith Young friend to all.

Breakthrough

21

Breakthrough

by Leonardo Caion-Demaestri

I had lived through thirteen years and nothing, for some odd reason, seemed different or unique about me. True, I had been diagnosed with kidney cancer when I was only nine months old, and had to go through surgery and one year of chemotherapy, but nonetheless, in my eyes, life still seemed dull. So I started to explore my interests. I came to see that design and art, as well as anything that dealt with aesthetics, caught my attention, and since people had always considered me artistic, I felt that maybe that was my calling. I was naïve enough then not to recognize that I had something much more important that would soon come to a point of realization and personal confrontation.

For a teenager, especially nowadays, the process of going through puberty and getting to know one’s body is nothing out of the ordinary, and with the constant advances of technology, with the introduction of the Internet, DVD’s and web cams, information has become more accessible to everyone. So that is how I believe the “something much more important” started. I remember being at home, in São Paulo, Brazil, watching TV: both my mom and I are on the couch watching the news in the family room, while my dad cooks dinner in the kitchen. My brother suddenly calls me into the office. Once there, he asks me to close the door. I close it, and sit on the floor right next to his chair, which faces the computer. We start talking about random topics, and he mentions something about some “really awesome” pornography web sites to go to. I say, “OK!” without a clue of what he is talking about. The media at that point was starting the frenzy against free-accessed pornography, and so far that was all I had heard about the topic, and all I really knew, since I had never searched for it. We visit several web sites, and for some reason seeing naked women does not spark my attention or affect anything in my body. It surely seems odd, but being so young, I do not think anything of it.

22

LEONARDO CAION-DEMAESTRI

After a while, on my own free time, especially when my parents were not at home, this world of computer-pornography became an addiction.

However, not just any type of pornography. While “surfing,” I was drawn to a couple of words – gay porn. This was a completely new world to me, so I decided to check it out. I was certainly not prepared to see what I saw and feel what I felt. For some reason, I was really excited by seeing hot guys having sex. Everything around me seemed to move; I was not sure of what was going on. Was I interested in guys? People of the same sex?

Was I wrong for liking guys or seeing them as attractive? Society has always portrayed love between a woman and a man as the right kind of love, and I never had realized until that moment that rules were meant to be broken, and that love should not follow a certain “formula” that society and the Catholic church dictated.

It was a shock; however, the amusement and interest in the manly figure intrigued me over and over again. The Internet had prematurely made me extremely interested in sex – a topic that before then, I had hardly devoted any interest to. Although this introduction to sex and pornography was lifechanging, it did not affect my day-to-day life at first. I was still number one in my class, and I was always considered the smart kid, had tons of friends, and never thought of myself as “different” from anyone else.

Then, during my growing dependence on the Internet, I was introduced to the famous chat-rooms and instant messengers. Definitely curious about homosexuality, I started talking to people online, trying to grasp how this new world functioned, what was different, how people acted, where they frequented, what activities they were interested in. Conversations here, conversations there, I can truly say I met some quite interesting people, and some I even thought of myself entering into a relationship with. Society has always portrayed talking to people online as creepy, or a first step to physical assault, but I have been extremely lucky. I have met wonderful people online, people who have become friends, shoulders to cry on, helping hands. I never, though, mustered enough courage to meet them in person, basically because I, at fifteen, did not feel safe taking such risks.

When I received the news from my parents that we were going to move to the United States, I felt excited, but at the same time I was sad to be leaving my life behind in Brazil. I had just graduated from middle school and, in December 2000, I was at the airport taking a plane to San Diego, California. Moving to the United States was the perfect opportunity for me to be myself and not have to worry about what friends would think or how they would react to me finally being who I am. After a month or so, my family

Breakthrough

23

found a nice home and I soon began my search again, this time for gay guys in San Diego. I wanted to have friends in the “scene” – the gay community – and be able to understand what I felt.

I started high school in January, which made me already one semester behind, and although I had a lot to catch up on, I still made a lot of friends and dedicated myself to my studies, extracurricular activities, sports, and my personal life. I grew to be a social guy, which I never thought I would be, since I used to be shy. This change was something quite unexpected and very exciting; I was experiencing a new beginning, a new me.

New life, new challenges, I thought. All I had done so far with guys was talk on the Internet. I had never had the courage to meet someone or even make the first move. Fast-forward to my senior year in high school. I took a step from the virtual world into reality. I decided to meet someone from the Internet whom I had talked to for quite a while. I never expected I would have the best time of my life. We lived close to each other, only a ten-minute drive, and neither of us was “out.” His name was Richard, Rich, and he was a senior in high school, like me.

One Friday, we decided to get together, have dinner and go to the movies. I woke up super excited to meet Rich. Needless to say, I was anxious and nervous. Driving to the restaurant was the most nerve-wracking experience.

I questioned myself, I questioned meeting him, I questioned if he would like me or not. What seemed so special before was shadowed by thoughts of doubt and insecurity. We met at the restaurant, and I was surprised that we did not have any “awkward moments” during our conversation. We had a very pleasant meal and a lovely time at the movie theater. Afterwards in the parking lot, we spent ten minutes trying to decide what to do next, until we finally took off to his place and ended up talking for hours, from eleven o’clock until seven-thirty the next morning. We both went on a journey into each other’s life, and found so many unsought similarities in our personalities. I had never spent such an enjoyable time with a guy friend. When I got home, he kissed me, which was unforeseen, but very sensual. From then on, I met more and more people; I created my group of friends.

One big factor remained: I was not “out” to my parents, and I was not really sure myself whether I was gay; I thought I may be going through a bisexual phase. This was all a secret. My parents had no idea of what I was doing or whom I was hanging out with. This secrecy concerned me, but not to the point of stopping. Why would I anyway; it was a blast!

Then, when I least expected it, on a normal day, Tuesday to be exact, my mom calls me to come downstairs to have lunch. I walk down the stairs

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LEONARDO CAION-DEMAESTRI

and peek into the office to see my mom comforting my dad. I have no idea of what is going on, and do not think much of it, since my dad has been stressed the past few days. Lunch is served, and we make regular table-talk, when suddenly, to my surprise, my dad makes a comment about finding a flyer in my room about a club opening in Orange County that night – I already have made plans with my friends to go. He tells me that I am not going to go! I am in shock and appalled by his words. My mind starts going crazy. “I want to go, I was going to have a good time with my friends and dance, one of my passions…” Suddenly, his voice interrupts my thoughts, saying: “Sprapas, are you gay?”

HOLD UP! I could not believe, of all people in this world, my DAD was actually asking me that question. A millisecond in real time seemed like eternity in my head. At that moment, I remembered the times my mom had actually confronted me about my sexuality and how I had always denied it, saying I was going to marry a woman and have kids. However, when my dad asked me that question, I had a sequence of flashbacks that made me realize there was no point in living the lie anymore, saying I was going out with certain friends, when I was actually going out with my gay friends, or meeting someone from the Internet. My parents had never prohibited me from doing anything I wanted, so why did I lie to them? I believe it wasn’t until that moment that I realized who I really was. At that point I heard my mom’s voice: “It doesn’t matter what you say, honey; we have always told you that we will support you in any decision you make in life.” Hearing those words, I realized how lucky I was, and how selfish I had been for lying to my parents over and over again, for not being honest with myself. I came to know who I was when I answered my dad – “Yes dad, I am gay.”

Was I crazy, or had I just told my dad I was gay? I finally uncovered a secret that I had kept for so long At that moment, I was not completely sure that I had made the right decision. I was perplexed to hear silence.

However, it was not an intimidating silence, but a gratifying silence. As I confessed to my parents that I was gay, I felt like I had silenced unsettled business, that we had all reached a common ground.

Now I live the life I always wanted, where I do not have to lie to anyone, much less myself. I have become me. I am happy and so energetic that I feel that no one can stop me. It seems like the world has finally made a complete turn and settled down. I remember my mom always saying, “Life is a process of realizations, and you only know what life means when you understand who you are.” And now I can honestly say, “I know what you mean Mom, and you are so right!”

The Mask

The Mask

by Hyatt Michaels

Everyone looks at it No one gazes into it It stares with sarcasm-filled eyes Face silver with condescendence Mouth sealed forever hiding unpleasant sentiments Once used by leaders of our society But now gawked and stared at by oblivious onlookers Viewers unaware of its history There seems no purpose for it at all Beyond the silver and wood exterior The Mask is angry Stolen from its home filled with riches and praise And now only viewed as a thing An object once owned in some foreign location The mask is lonely and sits idly Only able to secretly judge those who explicitly judge it

25

26

JACQUELINE E. HOWARD

One Moment in Time

by Jacqueline E. Howard

Music has always been a part of my life. As a child, I fell asleep to the whispers of Mozart, danced on the ceiling with Lionel Richie, and shed tears as my soul embraced the gospels sung by the church choir. I take musical art so seriously because I grew up playing the violin. My first instructor founded a diverse music group composed of his students, and we learned about the importance of culture in one’s artwork. My second instructor was younger, less philosophical and more mechanical, and one evening, he put on a large recital in which his students performed. That was the first concert I had attended where I was the only black performer. I knew very well, by the way the other students stared as I walked towards the stage that they were labeling me as the “Negro artist.”

I wish Langston Hughes had been a member of the audience that so blatantly gawked at my “blackness.” I think Hughes would have burst with pride. Why do I think this? In Hughes’s essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” he anxiously awaits the rise of the Negro theatre and, to him, just seeing a young colored artist is promising (96). His people had been oppressed for so long that Hughes preached pride to help them out of that oppression. While he may have beamed when he witnessed black art, he would have felt “ashamed, too, for the colored artist who runs from the painting of Negro faces to the painting of sunsets after the matter of the academicians because he fears the strange unwhiteness of his own features” (95). In my case, Hughes would have shared my feelings of discomfort but he also would have waited to watch me perform, to then witness whether or not I would try to run from my own “Negro face” with shame. Black artists become caught in a complex problem: to create art that mainstream white America will accept, or art that the black community will accept, and this decision can cause constant internal struggle and shame. During the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes analyzed the way black artists were confused with whom to please and whom to become.

One Moment in Time

27

Many black artists, including Hughes, began exhibiting Negro art during the Harlem Renaissance. During this time period, the children of emancipated slaves slowly connected with their ancestors’ underground culture.

Also during this time period, some blacks were ashamed of their heritage.

The African American community had been chained down for so long that many blacks feared the unknown: their culture. Black Americans wanted affluence, security, etc.; in other words, they wanted what white Americans already had. They strove to be a part of that better life, “and so the word white came to be unconsciously a symbol of all virtues. It held for the children beauty, morality and money” (91). Therefore, black artists felt as if their art accomplished nothing but worthlessness, unless their masterpiece was actually white America’s masterpiece. This caused many black artists to run from what their heart desired and toward what white people valued. Hughes described this misunderstanding in the black community as an obstacle: “the Racial Mountain.” And the obstacle is “a very high mountain indeed for the would-be racial artist to climb to discover himself and his people” (92). To overcome the mountain, one must completely meld with his or her true self by not being ashamed of who they are, who they represent and where they came from; this means they must reach selfactualization, which is the successful development and use of personal talent and abilities.

Hughes theorized that once someone accepts him or herself, he or she will “interest [him or herself] in interpreting the beauty of [his or her] own people” (91). Hughes was revolutionary in the way he introduced the “black is beautiful” motif. This slogan, along with “black and proud,” was a part of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement. Hughes introduced this idea, before the Civil Rights activists preached it, to persuade the black community to reach its full potential and to break social restrictions by not limiting community culture to the standards of white society.

An artist could heal the community and open its eyes to “the present vogue in things Negro… (which) has brought him forcibly to the attention of his own people” (93). Then the Negro artist rids himself of the burden of “working against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites” (94). This burden is one of the huge boulders that dangerously protrude out of the side of the racial mountain.

As a black artist, especially born in the middle class, I understand how it feels to be patted on the head by whites and then slapped in the face by my own people. Black artists question who to please, which could easily

28

JACQUELINE E. HOWARD

cause a black artist to wish to be white. However, once the Negro artist comprehends the confusion and climbs to the top of that racial mountain, then he has found the way to create and therefore “to express out individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame” (95). Artists must fight to free themselves by being unashamed of their heritage and the art they truly want to express and by being proud and expressing who they are uniquely.

Hughes tells us “an artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose” (95).

At that violin recital where I was the only black performer, I walked to the stage without fear, carrying my instrument and my pride. As I overlooked the crowd, the only dark face in the audience belonged to my father.

There, I reached self-actualization by conquering the “racial mountain” and freeing myself as an artist. I found freedom by not playing my musical piece solely for myself, but for him, my father, and for my entire black community, whom I represented. I understood that I was playing for the black artists everywhere, so I played from my heart.

During my performance, I felt strong. I stood on top of the racial mountain; I felt free. I was the only performer who received a standing ovation that night – and I was the only black performer.

Work Cited Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David Levering Lewis.

New York: Penguin Books, 1994. 91-95.

Learning on the Job

29

Learning on the Job

by Andrew Kahn

“Kahn!” Dan shouted. “Take Mr. Parker. He tees off in five minutes.

You’re with Kenny.”

Dan was the caddy master at Ridgefield Country Club, where I have worked for the past four summers. He smoked at least three packs of cigarettes a day and did not seem to be very happy with his life. On this particular Friday afternoon he assigned me only one bag, as it was my first month on the job. When he told me I would be working with Kenny, I felt privileged to go out with such a veteran “looper.”

“How’s it going, Kenny?” I asked.

“Not too bad, Andrew, not too bad.”

Although it was probably due to the black, bold letters across my name tag, I still felt proud that he knew my name. Kenny was well respected among the other caddies. He had his own unique style. Despite the weather he almost always wore shorts and a khaki bucket cap that made him seem younger. I had only come in contact with him a few times before, but I knew he was a cheerful, friendly man. Although it was hard work, I was looking forward to a relatively pleasant and enjoyable loop.

The round began and I quickly found out how awful these golfers were.

I felt bad for Kenny, as their poor play forced him to go back and forth across the fairway chasing after their errant shots. I only had to follow one hacker; Kenny was running after two. The ninety-plus degree heat made it worse as the brim of my hat started to become heavy from perspiration.

We finished the first nine holes in what seemed like an eternity. (At this halfway point in the round, caddies are allowed a complimentary drink.)

I offered to walk up the fifteen or so steps and pick up Kenny’s drink. I opted for a fruit punch Gatorade while Kenny simply wanted a bottle of water. We sat down on a bench, enjoying our ice cold refreshments before heading out for the back nine.

30

ANDREW KAHN

“You have any idea what you want to do?” Kenny asked. “You know, like with your life.”

I paused for a second. “Uh, no, not really.”

“Well, you sure don’t want to be working here all your life. I’m trying to get my life straight, you know what I mean? I got a son now; I gotta provide for him and what not. I mean, I’m forty-two years old, I can’t fool around no more.”

I wasn’t really sure what to say, but luckily I didn’t have to say anything as he continued speaking.

“The most important thing is education. I really mean that, too. You gotta get a solid education.”

This wasn’t exactly a motivational halftime speech and it seemed slightly out of place, but I enjoyed listening to it. Besides, we had time to kill as the golfers wasted time in the halfway house, rolling dice to determine who would buy the drinks. I had been up there once before, so I had seen the “Don’t Be a Golf Turtle” poster they clearly ignored. Finally, the door opened and they proceeded down the stairs. We picked up our bags and continued onward.

Despite the unskilled golfers, the round went relatively smoothly until we got to the fourteenth hole. On this hole, the caddies go out ahead in front of the golfers to get a better view of their tee shots. To my surprise the first two golfers, including Mr. Parker, hit the fairway. Mr. Friedman’s drive, however, managed to sneak into the rough on the right side.

“Almost three for three, would have been a miracle for this group,” I joked.

“Miracles can happen, Drew,” he replied.

This statement confused me at first, but I soon found out what Kenny meant as he strolled towards Friedman’s ball and casually, with the aid of his right foot, moved it onto the fairway. This was the first - but not the last - time I had witnessed a caddy cheat for a player, and to be honest, I was shocked. If anything, I would have expected a caddy to depreciate the outcome of a particular shot.

“Gotta keep the golfers happy, right Drew?” Kenny asked.

“Uh, yeah, yeah, of course,” I hesitantly responded.

I kept trying to tell myself that this was not a big deal. All the guy did was move a lousy golf ball. Kenny sure didn’t seem to think much of it. The problem was I couldn’t shake the incident from my mind. I was quiet for the remainder of the round, but I don’t think Kenny realized how I felt.

Learning on the Job

31

Kenny’s form of cheating, although minor in its consequences, was still wrong. He was advising me on how I should strive for a better occupation than a caddy, and I got the impression that he wanted more for himself also.

But what if Kenny landed a corporate job? His cheating in the workplace would have much more serious ramifications.

“Time to get paid,” Kenny said, still in ear shot of the golfers.

“My favorite part,” I responded.

And it was. There was nothing sweeter than being rewarded for my hard labor, especially when that reward was tax-free cash. However, it felt different this time. As I saw Friedman hand over a wad of dough to Kenny, I knew he didn’t deserve it. Obviously he wasn’t being paid to cheat, or at least I didn’t think he was. I did know that this was not a tournament, and therefore there was virtually no incentive; Kenny most likely came up with the idea to cheat all by himself. We walked back to the bag room to clean the clubs and put them away.

“Nice loopin’ with you Drew,” Kenny remarked.

“You too, Kenny,” I replied. “I learned a lot.”

33 Untitled

by Gillian Goldberg acrylic on canvas 4’ x 4’

34 Untitled

by Michelle Dorman acrylic on canvas 4’ x 4’

35 Digital Self-Portrait

by Amy Aronoff digital transfer on wood 16” x 16”

36 Untitled

by Alissa Koloff acrylic on board 18” x 24”

37 Untitled

by Benjamin Lack acrylic on canvas 4’ x 4’

38 Untitled

by Jeremy Beday tylenol gelcaps 500mg, fluoxetine 20 mg, buspirone 10 mg & hot glue human head-size, fully wearable

39 Untitled

by Kimberly Peven photo illustration of “Daddy’s Girl” see page 72

40 The Sweetest Thing

by Joann Teo acrylic on canvas 4’ x 4’

41 A Girl Named Hope

by Betsy Perlman acrylic on canvas 4’ x 4’

42 Role Model

by Camille Johnston color photograph 8” x 10”

43 Togetherness and Joy

by Larissa Szwast acrylic on canvas 4’ x 4’

44 First-Year Fiasco

by Alyse Dunn acrylic & marker on board 20” x 24”

45 Cubist Self-Portrait after Picasso

by Khalil Morrison acrylic on board 20” x 24”

46 Untitled

by Billy Heisler acrylic on canvas 4’ x 4’

47 A Spot of Tea - No Milk, No Sugar

by Carol Moser teabags bound with glue lifesize

48 The Likes of Me

by Jade Way acrylic on canvas 4’ x 4’

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

-- Pablo Picasso

50

NOELLE WILLIAMS

Frankey’s Pearls

by Noelle Williams

When Frankey gets on the bus, everyone stands up and moves a few seats back. The driver still doesn’t recognize her, or at least doesn’t seem to, even though she always comes on the same day. But this morning, she’s staying on a few stops longer.

The wind bites today, coming straight across the avenue. And climbing on the bus is like sticking her finger into the middle of a fresh chocolate cake. She feels guilty for sitting down since her neighbor just broke her hip again. Frankey realizes how lucky she is. But, she’s just so exhausted from waiting for the bus, and besides, she’s had her whole life to stand up.

Not too many people on the bus this morning. Then again, there never really are this early. She stares out the windows across from her and thinks about things: how she’s never been to that cute little shop there, by the gas station, and whether or not June’s husband finally passed away. She slides her tongue around inside her mouth and then chews lightly on it with her back teeth; she needs something to munch. As she brings her bag closer and opens it for a search, the bus driver steps on the brake, harder, and it hurts Frankey’s back a little as she tries to balance her body.

“Geez,” the driver says under his breath, shaking his head. She smiles and notices the ring on his left hand as he waits for the car to turn in front of him. He must be happy. He smells good, that’s one thing. Frankey remembers walking past him after zipping her dollar through and he smelled like incense. A strange incense that made her think about Thanksgiving.

Last year, she had felt awful from that darn new medication. No matter, things were fine now. She thought about other Thanksgivings before that, better ones with her mother and father and cheap cranberries overtop the largest, most expensive turkey in town. Mom had been sneaky like that.

Everyone had raved about the cranberries and she had just winked.

Frankey’s Pearls

51

Some music drifts from somewhere to her left and Frankey watches the middle-aged woman in the seat behind her answer her cell phone.

“Hello?” The woman’s mouth reshapes, with a little more perk toward the edges, and she lets her shoulders relax. “Hi honey, how are you? Oh, I’m fine. Just on the bus on the way home. Yep, the bus. Well, your father has the car today.”

Frankey tries to not to be nosey but can’t help it. She continues to look through her purse for stray pieces of chocolate she might have slipped in there for later, but only finds the newspaper ad she brought from home.

So she opens it again and studies the black and white picture of the pearl necklace. Her thoughts are back to her mother. The skinny strings of fresh-water pearls from Daddy only ever hung around her neck during parties or at Christmas, in a sort of annoying, messy, beautiful way. Frankey had asked her about it once, why only on special occasions? Her mom had told her it was all in the illusion, with a smile as she hooked the clasp behind her neck. Later her father had told her those pearls were fake and Frankey added that trick to the list of cheap illusions, but Frankey wasn’t out on the town to get any of those today.

“Well, I only would use a car twice a week anyway. This saves us a little money,” the woman was saying. Frankey knows how that is. Her car was sitting in Janelle’s driveway, an extremely early graduation gift. Together, she and her children had decided Frankey couldn’t really afford it anymore.

Maybe soon she would call Janelle and ask her to come visit her and let her drive around a bit; Frankey sort of missed it. The first time she’d driven a car she had been sixteen and not legally allowed. But Joseph Gunther had allowed her to steer his father’s convertible for a mile or so for her birthday.

She had looked like a Queen with her pearl earrings and driving a nice car, he had told her. When he asked if she was having fun, Frankey had nodded rapidly with one finger twirling her left earring.

Smiling, Frankey folded the ad back up and fit it into her bag. The woman was talking about her volunteer work at the hospital in town now: “Oh, it’s nice. The women there are so much fun to be around, you know.

You’ll have to come stop by and meet them sometime… yeah? You think you will? Did you know your brother’s coming home this weekend? Well, don’t you ever talk to him?”

They were moving along the avenue again. After passing Eyeglass World, Frankey got excited, realizing they were almost to the mall. The woman said goodbye and stuffed the phone back inside her purse. The woman caught Frankey’s eye and smiled.

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NOELLE WILLIAMS

“Was that your daughter?” Frankey asked.

“Yes,” she answered, and then felt the need to add, “She’s a senior at the college.” Her hair was cut short and just barely draped over her ears.

Frankey noticed the shimmer of an earring on one side and, as the woman tucked some stray hairs over her ear, a pearl emerged.

“Oh, look at those beautiful earrings,” Frankey sighed and smiled at her. “I’m just on my way to buy pearl earrings for my granddaughter.”

“Oh really? Well, thank you. These aren’t real, but I still like them.”

The woman shrugged. “How old is your granddaughter?”

“She’s going to be sixteen on Monday. When I was sixteen, my mother gave me pearl earrings and I want to give Janelle some.” Frankey smiled and the woman nodded with her.

“Well, I hope she likes them.” She pulled the bus line and stood up to get off at her stop.

“So do I, so do I.” Frankey nodded and then said goodbye as the woman stepped off the bus. She turned her attention back to the window and Fannie May’s Candy Shop, which resided on the corner of Fulton and East Paris. The pink and white striped canvas across the front made her mouth sizzle for their sweet, tender chocolates and taffy. She used to take Janelle there, when she could drive, and her taste buds would hurt because she couldn’t untie the little bow around the candy box quite fast enough. Now, she thought about how her back hurt. And how her stop was next.

Frankey pulled the line and started to stand up. Smiling, she tapped the bus driver’s arm and thanked him. He nodded and paralleled Frankey’s step on the ground to his own on the gas pedal. She stood there at the bus stop for a moment and looked ahead at the entrance to the mall. A bird’s nest was nestled in one of the deteriorating letters of the sign. Slowly, she walked to the door, clutching her bag to her side and thinking about the day she got her pearls from her mother. It had been a year since her father’s death and six months since her mother’s second marriage. Not as many illusions were necessary with her new husband, her mother told her, and that year Frankey hadn’t liked the turkey on Thanksgiving as much as in the past.

But she had thoroughly enjoyed her real pearl earrings.

She partly wanted to call Janelle now and tell her where she was and what she was doing, just so they could be excited together. Frankey had always been bad at keeping secrets. She remembered a few years ago when she let it slip out that she was buying Janelle a horse for Christmas. That had been a disaster. Janelle’s mother told Frankey it was a “silly idea” and that they didn’t have enough money to take care of a horse that Janelle

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would never ride. But Janelle had called the next day to thank her grandma for the thought. Frankey asked if there were anything in particular she wanted instead. Janelle had suggested gift certificates for clothing, quickly.

The mall looked different. But maybe it was just the summer decorations. Well, not really decorations, more like the lack of Christmas adornment, since Christmas was the only time Frankey ever went to the mall. She found an information area and asked a red-haired boy where she could find Zales. He didn’t know and Frankey wandered off before he could reply.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” a young man asked her as she finally entered the store.

“Yes.” She stood solidly and pulled out the ad from her purse. “I saw this and I want to buy pearls for my granddaughter.”

“All right, let’s have a look.” He carefully took the ad from her and walked behind a counter. “So, you were thinking of a pearl necklace then?”

“No, pearl earrings,” she said and the man re-checked the ad in his hand, a picture of a three-layer pearl necklace. But he shrugged it off.

“Well, here are our pearl earrings. You can choose many different sizes, from five to seven and a half millimeters, and between white or yellow gold backing, freshwater or cultured; are you thinking more of a basic design?

Or would you like to look at drop earrings, perhaps some diamond additions?” He brought out a tray of earrings, and Frankey sighed.

“Aren’t they gorgeous?”

“Yes, ma’am, they are.” He smiled.

“My mother got me pearl earrings when I turned sixteen. So I’m getting some for Janelle. She’s turning sixteen.” Frankey picked up a larger, vague earring and held it in her palm.

“That’s a wonderful sweet-sixteen gift.” He smiled.

“This one is perfect,” she stated.

“All right then, let me see that.” He snatched it out of her hand and examined it, “This would be around six millimeters, freshwater -- you like the gold backing?”

Frankey nodded. He told her the total would be $101.

“One hundred?” Frankey asked as she pulled out her check book.

“And one. Yes. ” Frankey mumbled the price to herself as she opened her check book to nothing. No checks. No registry. Her face became hot at first, until she remembered that she’d talked about this with her children just the other day. She didn’t have checks anymore. All she had was that new card thing.

They had told her it would be easier to monitor her spending, and harder

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for her to overdraw.

“I have this new thing now. A de-bu card or something. My kids, they made me…” She searched for her pocketbook.

“Oh yes. A debit card. I use one myself. They’re very convenient.”

He smiled his white smile and folded his hands, patiently. The maroon felt on which they rested was faded and rubbed down to the black plastic on the other side, as if his motion was procedure. Frankey found the card and gave it to him. While he went to take care of it, she looked at Janelle’s earrings and had another craving for chocolate. Janelle would look beautiful, just like Frankey had looked on her sweet sixteen, with her hair all done from the salon earlier that day, and her new pearls neatly pierced through her ears. The morning after, Joseph Gunther had twirled one of the pearls between his thumb and forefinger before kissing her nose and politely rushing her out of his bed. Her mother hadn’t ever known that those pearl earrings first slept on someone else’s pillow.

“Uh, ma’am, there seems to be a problem,” said the man behind the counter. “Your card has been rejected. Apparently there are not enough funds in the account.”

Frankey sat at her vanity and wiped away a tear with her frayed tissue.

She stroked the drawer handle for a moment before delicately pulling it open. Inside was her finely structured earring section, and in the middle sat her pearls. So perfectly beautiful. The hint of orange. Or is it blue? With her other hand she popped a piece off from her Hershey’s bar and brought it to her tongue. The chocolate held fast at first before she pressed down a little with her teeth, sweet juice spilling around her gums. Then she took the pearls, placed them in a small green box. Tied a ribbon around it and wrote, “To Janelle. Have a fun, sweet 16. Love, Grandma” on the tag.

Sweetness

Sweetness

by Carrie Luke

No one denies the sweetness of an eighty-year-old man dressed in argyle shorts and polished brown Oxfords, on his way to the market to buy parsnips and bell peppers to make dinner in celebration of his sixtieth anniversary with his wife who sits quietly on the mantle, dressed in her best porcelain, watching him julienne carrots as his hands shake slightly.

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56

EMILY LAWRENCE

The Deafening Street Was Screaming All Around Me:

1

The Development of Hyper-Consciousness in Mark Tobey’s Broadway Melody

by Emily Lawrence

“…I’m firmly convinced that not just too much consciousness, but even any consciousness at all is an illness.”

--Dostoevskii, Notes from the Underground From far away, Mark Tobey’s Broadway Melody looks like an avant-garde drip painting à la Jackson Pollock. Standing in the Michigan Museum of Art, I’m seeing it out of the corner of my eye, an electric splotch of spattered pigmentation. Beyond a playful Miró and a washed-out Klee, the painting burns up the scene, crackling like the visual equivalent to static on the radio. Close up I notice that Tobey did not create the piece using the somewhat haphazard aerial method of later years. Rather, he constructed an intricate web of gray, white, and black fragments, sparking in all directions, flickering one on top of the other. Layered light. Layered energy.

My first thought—the painter formed a picture of the human brain, of my brain, after too much coffee. My eyes swim in caffeinated color. A moment later, I realize that, peering out from the interlocking jolts of paint, Tobey drew in little people, animals, living forms that resemble the doodles I make in the margins of my notes during lecture. The entire piece pulls me beyond, or through, each level, further and further into Tobey’s complexity. Seemingly arbitrary words, like “tomorrow,” tremble behind nervous streaks of paint. No smoothness, no artistic or emotional resolve emerges from the depths of Broadway Melody. And I have the distinct impression that it’s meant to make us entirely too anxious, so that we can feel the itch of

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every aspect of the image itself, every detail, every jolt, every word: Ritalin for the soul.

The piece abolishes perspective, and this is part of what makes it so utterly overwhelming. We can find no focal point, none of the traditional structure utilized in most paintings prior to the popularization of the avantgarde. Instead, Tobey drove his medium in all directions, starting from no particular spot on the canvas, leaving us with a sense of simultaneous motion. Furthermore, we do not witness painting as defined image, but painting as wall, as form. Broadway slams forward solidly like a piece of public art, graffiti on a dilapidated building, Keith Haring in the subway. The image somehow feels out of place in the cool tranquility of the museum, amidst creamy lighting and hushed conversation. It belongs some place uneven, noisy, and adamantly alive.

Broadway Melody strives to articulate a new collective loss of context.

The artist’s “cosmological eye,” as Henry Miller termed it, appears to be unearthed and shivering, pulled out of the darkly messy bowels of some random member of an urban crowd and dashed across the canvas. Moreover, the work is cluttered and manic, but also full of coherent images removed from their context. As in urban life, the painting consistently hits us with a barrage of stimuli, mobs of people and advertisements and noise.2 The mess of modernity. The painting pounds to a gory pulp the subtle framework that ought to draw these stimuli together in our minds, and we are nearly crushed by a series of separate, bitter blows. We lose any sense of a personal position in time and space; we can’t quite situate ourselves.

If I am anxiously lost in Tobey’s painting, it is largely because the artist has effectively simulated the different levels of consciousness that result from being placed in a congested, metropolitan setting.

Upon first viewing the painting, we interpret the “mass [as] the agitated veil.”3 With no single, dominant current of motion our eyes lose the ability to ‘progress’ through the work in a logical manner. Instead, we see a square of sloppy color, oddly unnerving and overpowering. Like walking amongst a crowd of hurried city-dwellers, we acquire a distinctly urban remoteness coupled with agoraphobia. Something widens out, space and people swirl, only at the same time we have no ability to meet the eyes of individuals or make personal connections. As a result, we descend to a second level of consciousness, in which we become more aware of the painting (or our environment) as a system of shocks. We seek out reciprocity in a flood of aura-less, separate components, molecules that move erratically in all directions. We then acknowledge that Tobey’s work is not a swamp of color

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but an intricate image built up of defined pieces that overlap. Immediately following this realization, we move to the final level of consciousness, or the emergence of modern hyper-consciousness. “The greater the share of the shock factor… the more constantly consciousness has to be alert as a screen against stimuli;”4 the overwhelming nature of the painting hereby necessitates, or perhaps demands, a new kind of neurotic attention. We begin to notice the defined, miniature images interwoven in the muddle.

As in a crowd, we might anxiously take note of every detail, of things we think we see but don’t, of looks and feelings that we manage to project onto other individuals. We then witness a snapshot of modern, metropolitan obsessive compulsive trait: In order to protect ourselves against the devastating effects of the piece in its entirety, hyper-consciousness works to sort out the entire mess, to cling to seemingly coherent entities within an incoherent whole.

We have the ability to make ourselves absolutely ill with this kind of awareness, although such illness might simply be a reality of life in modern industrialized America. Unnerving as it is, a good deal of my immediate connection to this piece might result from a kind of troubling empathy.

I can’t help but sense that Tobey painted Broadway Melody from the precise perspective of people like me. It might just as well be a depiction of the panicky cerebral muck layered behind my own eyes. Unfortunately, my identification is a far cry from therapeutic. The viewer mostly senses a confirmation of deep-rooted neuroses, pulsing through multiple strata of consciousness.

Nonetheless, I am drawn to this piece. I return to it, maybe, as evidence of a universal perception: it isn’t only me. The city, this country, my home—all conducive to a certain brand of environmental sensitivity. Mark Tobey clearly draws attention to the very act of seeing. He constructs a world of painted shocks, a picture entrenched in form. I look at Broadway Melody and I am centered upon my ability to see. Not to interpret, not to locate symbol or to think metaphorically. I am frightened eyes, shaky vision, my whole being pressed against this muddied window. I am no different from the artist; his cosmological eye is all-encompassing.

1

Endnotes

Baudelaire, Charles.“A une passante” Tableux Parisienes, line 1.

2 Benjamin, Walter. “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt.

New York: Schocken Books, Inc., 1968. 115-200.

3 Benjamin 168.

4 Benjamin 163.

The Weekend

An Excerpt from

The Weekend

by Ryan Solomon

Thankfully, a masterpiece Saturday.

Greenhouse at capacity, sun radiant, flowers in full bloom, hydration leading to perfect buoyancy.

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60

MICHAEL LOHR

A Day at the Pool, A Life of Secrets

by Michael Lohr

“Do you know this boy’s parents?” the nurse demanded.

“What? Oh, yes, I do,” I replied, as her words snapped me from my daydream.

“Then call his parents, and wait for them in the lobby.” I did as I was told and found the lobby, where I sat for the next five hours, my mind racing over the events. I could have stopped this! I am such an idiot! The warning signs were as clear as day. I knew I should have told someone and stopped all this years ago, but that went against my promise to my best friend: I would keep this a secret, no matter what.

I sat in the uncomfortable red chair in the hospital lobby, head down, mentally kicking myself, feeling helplessly responsible for the events that had unraveled. A million thoughts ran through my head as I awaited the arrival of Dave’s parents, but whatever came to my mind always led back to the first day I went to Dave’s house, back when I was eight years old. *** “Now you be careful, hear me?” my worried mother lectured as she clamped my chin in the buckle of my bicycle helmet.

“Mom, that hurt!” I yelled. “And stop treating me like a little kid; it’s only around the block.” I jumped on my bike, rode down the block, and like any other kid ignoring his annoying mother, closed my ears to my mom’s shouts of “slow down, you’re going too fast!” The warm summer wind blew at my back as I turned the corner and headed toward my third grade classmate’s house. We had been best friends all year, but he had never wanted to go to his house. I had convinced him that we should go swimming in his pool, since the temperature had soared to well over one hundred degrees.

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Sweat poured down my face as I kicked down my kickstand and left my bike in Dave’s driveway. I ran to the door and rang the bell, anxiously awaiting the cold water. No answer. I rang it again; still no answer. I guessed he hadn’t waited for me; he was probably already in the pool out back. I headed around the driveway alongside the house toward the backyard. As I walked around calling Dave’s name, I decided to peek in a window, since I didn’t hear anyone in the backyard. When I looked in, my heart dropped; I turned around and ran, tripping as I did so. I got up immediately, headed for my bike and jetted home, not turning around for a second, as if what I saw would get me.

When I got home early my mother wondered what had happened. I told her Dave had to go to the supermarket with his mom and that we were going to do something later. I knew my lie hadn’t worked, but fortunately my mom dropped the conversation. I went to my room and played video games until dinner time, trying to erase what I had seen.

Around seven, Dave came by to see why I never showed up. I told him I got in trouble and that my mom didn’t even let me call to tell him I couldn’t come. “You saw, didn’t you?” He could tell; I couldn’t even look at him.

“I didn’t see anything. What are you talking about?” I tried to act surprised, but all that came out was anger that he didn’t buy my lie.

“Listen, I know you saw what happened today, but it’s not a big deal, trust me.”

“What do you mean it’s not a big...” He cut me off.

“Just don’t tell anyone, you promise?”

“OK.” “Pinky swear?”

“Yes, I pinky swear.” My tone was still angry as we interlocked pinkies and moved on to playing catch on my front lawn, both pretending what had happened didn’t bother us. From that day on, I never said a word to anyone about what I saw, not even to Dave.

I never saw Dave’s dad again until one Saturday afternoon in July, three years later. I was at the supermarket with my mom, and as we were leaving, I saw the same face I saw had seen that afternoon back in the third grade.

I pointed him out to my mom; she was thrilled to finally meet my best friend’s father. She had only spoken briefly with Dave’s mother, when we would come by his house for car pools. My mother, the gossip queen, went

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right up to him. “Hi, Mr. Wright, you’re David’s father, right? I’m Taylor’s mother, Jean. Nice to finally meet you.”

“Hello, Jean. Robert.”

“Well, Robert, I see you’ve got a lot of bottles to return,” referring to the five garbage bags he was lugging to the bottle return area.

“Yeah, you know how it is, the Fourth is real crazy.” He gave my mother a smirk. Those bottles aren’t from a Fourth of July party, I thought to myself as my mind immediately shot back to that hot summer day.

As I looked in the window, I still saw no one. Maybe he forgot I was coming and went out with his parents. Just as I turned to leave, I heard something in the house; it sounded like something had fallen. I peered in again and this time looked further into the house. In the kitchen, I saw Dave’s mother kneeling on the floor picking up a pot. She looked upset but I didn’t know why, seeing as she was the only one in the house. Why hadn’t she heard the doorbell? I figured maybe it was broken and decided to knock on the window when suddenly, my arm froze. What I saw couldn’t be happening, could it? I decided to go to the next window to get a better look. The window was a little too high for me, so I jumped to get a look.

Something was going on, but I couldn’t see what. I looked around for something to lift me up and found a basketball nearby lying on the ground.

I positioned it under the window and stood on it in order to see clearly into the house. As I held onto the ledge and stared into the window, I was stunned. I tried to get away as quickly as possible, except I was still on top of the basketball and fell. I felt no pain; I was too shocked about the events I had just seen inside of Dave’s house.

“Taylor, say hello!”

“Oh, hel-hello Mr. Wright.” I gave him an odd smile.

“Hello Taylor,” he smiled at my mother and then gave me a look as if to say, you better not open your mouth, you little rat.

In high school, Dave always started fights and got into trouble, and as a result, he dragged me in with him. He would get detention at least once a week and got suspended on a couple of occasions. Every weekend he would get drunk and stoned at parties, and he even got me involved in drugs and alcohol, too.

My mom didn’t like the person I was becoming; she always got calls from administrators and teachers about my problems in school and my poor grades. She hated when I came home past my curfew and when I refused to do my homework in order to hang out with Dave. But she kept

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pressuring me, as most mothers do, to get my act together. She threatened to punish me and not allow me to see Dave. During the first week of my senior year, these threats turned into reality.

I had a couple of friends over to drink before we went to a party. We were all really drunk when my mom came home unexpectedly. She flipped!

She kicked everyone out of the house and screamed at me until morning.

My mom must have known that I drank and smoked, at least moderately, but she refused to admit it until she actually saw it. And when she did, she grounded me for a month and even worse, forbade me from seeing Dave for two months.

During those two months, Dave got progressively worse. He had detention on a daily basis and often came to school intoxicated. He would cut classes and go smoke pot with a bunch of guys I didn’t like. I felt like I couldn’t do anything to help him anymore, especially since I could only see him during school, a place where he was rarely present. One day while in Calculus class, I looked out the window to see two cop cars parked outside the front door. I hoped it wasn’t what I expected, but I felt almost positive I was right. After a couple of minutes, people noticed what I had and they all ran to the window to see. My teacher told everyone to sit down, but no one listened. I immediately walked out of the room toward the main door. As soon as I turned the corner, what I saw confirmed my intuitions; Dave was being questioned by two cops. I ran down the hall and screamed “Dave!” As I reached him, one of the police officers stopped me and told me to go away, unless I too wanted to get arrested. I asked Dave what he did, but he just gave me a blank look as he turned his back to me and cuffs were put on his wrists. After the police took him away, I just stood there, unable to move.

The principal later explained to me in a private meeting that Dave had been arrested because a custodian had found cocaine in his locker. I said that couldn’t be, but I knew the truth. Dave would be suspended for two weeks and his parents had to post bail, the principal told me. I knew that his arrest and humiliation at school that day would be nothing compared to what would happen to him at home.

When the bell rang to end school, I headed right for my car and drove to Dave’s house. His mother answered the door and said that Dave could not see me right now, and that he probably wouldn’t until he was allowed back at school in two weeks. I respected her and headed back to my car.

Before I got in, I heard Mrs. Wright cry out, “WAIT!” “Yes, Mrs. Wright?”

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“When you can talk to him Taylor, please try to help him. I’ve tried so hard, but I think you may be the only one who can.” She was in tears.

“I’ll do my best.” Little did I know that before the two weeks were up I would be doing something else besides talking to Dave in order to save his future.

It happened the Saturday night before Dave could return to school and two months after my punishment. That morning we played our homecoming game, and my friends and I supported our football team by attending.

During halftime, I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket. To my surprise, I had just missed a call from Dave. I thought he would never be allowed to touch a phone. I tried calling him back, but my call went straight to voice mail: “Hi, you have reached Dave’s cell phone…” I tried calling again; maybe he didn’t have service. Same thing. I called his house. No answer.

Something was wrong. I left the game and went to his house. All three cars were gone. I rang his doorbell, but no one answered.

I went home worried that something terrible had happened. I called him repeatedly until dinner time. My mom had gone out with friends for the night, so I ordered in, just in case Dave stopped by. When the doorbell rang, I expected a man in a blue shirt and a red hat that sported the Dominoes’ logo, but the only red I saw was the blood covering Dave’s face. I looked past him to see his blue Oldsmobile parked half on my lawn, and he was holding an empty bottle of Vodka in his hand. There was vomit on his sweatshirt and he appeared strung out. “Are you alright, man?” But before he could answer, he collapsed on my doorstep.

On the way to the hospital, Dave kept throwing up on himself. I kept talking to him in an attempt to keep him from passing out. As I looked at his swollen bloody face, I saw the same anger I saw in his father’s eyes nine years ago…

As I balanced on the basketball and held onto the ledge of the window, my eyes focused in on the kitchen. Dave’s mom was indeed on the ground picking up a cooking pot, crying. I looked further into the kitchen and saw Dave’s dad. He looked furious and was holding a beer in his left hand and a belt in his right. He took a chug of his beer and then slapped the ground with his belt, only he didn’t strike the ground. He struck his eight-year-old son right on his bare back. I gasped at the sight. At that very moment, Dave’s dad looked up and saw my innocent face in the window. He gave me a nasty stare. That’s when I fell off the basketball. ***

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65

“Taylor,” Dave’s mom woke me with a shake; I had forgotten where I was. “Thank you so much for taking care of Dave; we owe you our lives.”

I still felt a little foggy about tonight’s events, but as the nurse explained to Dave’s mother and me what they had done to resuscitate Dave, everything came rushing back. “We pumped most of the alcohol out of his stomach, and we stitched up the cuts on his face. It’s a good thing you brought him in when you did,” the nurse said, looking at me.

“Yes I know; thank you again Taylor.” Mrs. Wright then turned her attention to the nurse and asked, “Can we go see him now?”

“Yes, you can, but I’m sorry, family only; he can’t go in.”

“Please, after all he did, he deserves to see him, and besides, he is like a brother to my son.”

“OK, follow me,” the nurse said and led us to where Dave was resting.

Right before we entered the room I asked Mrs. Wright a question to which I could already guess the answer. “Mrs. Wright, where is your husband?”

“He couldn’t make it, too much work,” she replied, as if she really believed it. I knew he was far from his desk at that moment, sitting on a bar stool ordering another Budweiser. The only thing I didn’t know was how Dave kept it hidden all these years.

66

HYATT MICHAELS

Suicide

by Hyatt Michaels

The sky: a dripping pot of navy We feel as blue as the carpet Our gray cats walk around like depressed humans The weather rolls through as bruised as our emotions My heart beats at the pace of the ceiling fan We all sit down Our minds like one soul We agree: Either someone’s lost Or someone must go My tear Ducts so dry I need some lotion

Portrait of an Artist

67

Portrait of an Artist

by Matt Weil

It is hard not to stereotype the artsy teenager. Many have the same “dare to be different” attitude, wearing those French hats and brightly colored clog-like footwear. Well, this one didn’t have the French hat. I was desperately trying to finish my biology homework a few nights ago, but I couldn’t help glance over at the other person in the room. With art supplies scattered across the desk, Kelli Ferrara stared at her drawing as if she were looking right through it. I could tell she loved what she was doing.

In a way, I almost wished she wasn’t so talented. It was stupid of me to generalize, but figured she would be another pompous vegan pacifist/artist who would do nothing but babble about how her art reflected everything wrong with mankind. She agreed to do the interview, and I was a little relieved to see the flattered look on her face. I figured it was a reasonable assumption that this would be her first time getting interviewed by a complete stranger. As my superficial first impression began to gradually melt away, I wanted to know more about this mysteriously modest young woman.

If I had to pick an adjective to describe Kelli, pompous would be the antonym. To me, there is nothing more admirable than humble talent. “Not everyone is going to like my art,” she said, “but all I can ask for is that people look at it with an open mind.” There were a lot of things I was eager to find out, so I figured I would start from the beginning. Her story was nothing out of the ordinary; she loved to draw and excelled in her high school art classes. Kelli’s parents, although they didn’t love the idea of their daughter majoring in art, supported her decision. Yet, her dad and her brother would occasionally make comments such as, “What are you going to do with an art major?” and, “You should think about your career options.” She then told me how she’s considering a career in graphic design, but for the time being she wants to focus all her energy on her drawings. I asked her if I could see what she was currently working on. She showed me a large black piece

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of construction paper. Gray, ghost-like figures drawn with an incredible amount of detail surrounding, more like haunting, a single person drawn in color. I had never seen anything like it.

“So would you mind telling me a little about it?” I asked this question, hoping for a direct answer, but knowing that many artists don’t like to talk about the meaning behind their work. She casually replied: “Well, the person in color is the individual. He’s sort of the unique one. The gray ones are kind of like society. They’re pressuring him to become one of them. I guess it sounds a little cliché, but I think I can kind of relate to it. I mean the unique person over time is eventually going to be pressured into conforming, and I wanted to show it in a different way.” Once I understood her motives behind the drawing, my appreciation for the drawing and the girl grew to a new level.

Her drawings are incredible, but what makes Kelli a better artist in my opinion is her attitude. She simply doesn’t care enough about other people’s criticisms to let them influence her. She recognizes that not everyone will like her art, but all she can do is accept it as inevitable and continue to create. This bashful, humble girl has enough talent to be justifiably pretentious, but her coy, welcoming manner proved to me that her seemingly “too good to be true” attitude is legitimate. Her mantra is something, I think, that we all could live by: “Everyone will critique you in society,” she said.

“You just have to ignore it.”

Kiss

Kiss

by Justin Heller

Heart beating beating beating Cupid floats closely in the light night sky White moon rays dull the suns Leaning, leaning, leaning in Heart beating beating beating Pink aroma paints the air My cheeks tickled by her Breath getting louder Heart beating beating beating Suffocating thick tension Eye lids blinding Slight, so very slight fall forward Heart beating beating beating Crimson red, dark beautiful crimson red Lips softer than the largest cloud Blood rushing Heart beating beating beating Minds focused confusion Angels of pleasure scurry about Tired heart beating with lovely blissful love

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70

ANONYMOUS

Daddy’s Girl

by Anonymous

I’ve been a daddy’s girl for as long as I can remember. I always believed I was his favorite out of my three siblings. When my dad told me he was going to separate from my mom and move out, I cried for days. I was only eight, but I remember it like it was yesterday. He had just come home from work, wearing a khaki-colored suit and his typical bow tie. He looked down at me crying on the floor and told me that everything would work out. I had never experienced hurt like that and wouldn’t again until he left us forever.

August 25, 2004 Daddy, I am having the time of my life in Tanzania. I think about you all the time. Everything is so different here; that’s probably why I love it so much!

Before I left, you told me to do everything that you wouldn’t get the chance to do, but at least I can tell you all about it so you can pretend you were here, too! We’re eating lots of healthy food; you would be proud! I learned the traditional way to cook rice and beans, and the other night I made your signature curry African style! I’ve been reading tons of books; maybe someday I will conquer the volumes of classics on your bookcase. We have a lot of free time when we’re not working, so we have discussions about politics and world events. Every time I bring up a point, I hear you saying it. You have truly shaped who I am and I cannot begin to thank you for the wisdom you’ve passed on. I hope all is well at home, and I can’t wait to see you—only two more months!

I really was having the time of my life. Lying out in the sun, making new friends, learning Swahili—it was everything I had imagined and more. Nothing could bring me down now, except maybe my friend Anna; we hadn’t been getting along over the past couple days. We got into a fight,

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which only ended when the volunteer organization’s Land Rover pulled up to our camp. It was so great when they came to check on us in the village, such a great change of pace, and they usually brought us some sort of treat.

I hoped for chocolate, but when they handed me a small piece of paper instead of food, I felt surprised. The note said: “Call home,” and listed my mom’s cell phone number. I suddenly knew what this was about: my mom and I had gotten into a fight before I left, and we hadn’t talked since. I couldn’t believe she was so worried about me that she would call Tanzania!

I picked up the satellite phone and dialed.

“Hello?”

“Mom, look, I know we haven’t talked, but I was going to call you this weekend,” I said. “It’s a little embarrassing that you called long distance to check on me.”

There was a silence. “I didn’t want to tell you like this,” she started.

“Your father killed himself last night. The police called several hours ago -- they went to check on him, because he hadn’t been to work.”

I felt a sharp pain inside my stomach, as if someone were twisting a knife inside of me. Then my hearing went. The sounds of strong desert winds and our five dogs disappeared. I hung up the phone, unable to breathe or move. When the others informed Anna of the situation, she ran into the tent and held me tightly until I fell asleep in a puddle of tears. I knew this would be the beginning of a pain that would stay with me for years.

Depression is a disease; it’s a secret emotion that someone feels inside but hides on the outside with smiles or pills. I had known since I was little that my dad suffered from depression, but how can a child understand that?

“Daddy’s sad today.”

“Why? Did he wear two different socks?”

When you’re a kid, the thing that consumes you is, “What will make me happy right now?” When you’re depressed, you’re consumed with how to make yourself not feel intense sadness any longer. I never thought that my dad was upset or angry. He never cried and rarely got upset with us; my mom was the disciplinarian of the two. I thought it was just his passive nature. It pains me now to think of the evil thoughts that possessed his brain while he watched my sporting events or ate Sunday dinner. At a certain point, when you’ve tried everything, it seems that there is no other option but to end the pain.

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ANONYMOUS August 25, 2004

All, My cats are probably hiding in the garage. Mary Hogan will take care of them.

My dog ran away last night. Not sure where she is now.

My daughter is not to interrupt her responsibilities in Tanzania.

No memorial service.

--You have meant more to me than you will ever know Leaving Africa was out of the question. No flights were available and it was a six-hour drive to the nearest airport. I stayed with some of the most caring and wonderful people in the world. My friend Anna was there for me whenever I felt down, as she still is today. She calls me from Australia almost every night to check on me.

I’m fine. My dad told me a psychologist once said that meant: “fucked up, insecure, nervous, and emotional.” Now every time someone asks me how I am, I just say “I’m good”; if I say “I’m fine,” then they will know how I really feel. The truth is, few people know. One of my mom’s friends said, “I know it’s a horrible way to grow up.” And on many levels she is absolutely right. It is a horrible way to grow up: without a father. Trying to deal with his death is one of the cruelest lessons I’ve encountered. The thing is, I haven’t learned how to deal with it. It’s still an open wound, pouring out fiery blood each time it rubs against something. And no matter how many band-aids I put on, the flow never stops. I’m constantly filled with questions, ones that may never be answered. I lie in bed at night and wonder how he could leave me; his death hovers over me like an angry storm cloud.

Now, I think I understand how he felt. I have a hope and desire to do great things and move forward, but indefinitely this cloud will be following me, telling me that unless I get rid of it, I will never truly be happy.

Whenever I’m upset, I think of all the great times we had and look at his picture on my desk. Dinner and a movie, trips to Mackinac Island -- he is immortal in my memories. Forever he will be watching me, wearing his khaki suit and bow tie. He still tells me everything will work out, but now I believe him. With time, the pain will ease and it will be easier to reflect on the good times without thinking about the bad. He’s smiling at me and I know he is proud.

See photo illustration by Kimberly Peven on page 39

I am the Lord thy God

I am the Lord thy God

by Laura Nichols

I. “The readiness is all,” Hamlet noted, yet the twilight brigade still came in all the trappings of a captain coming for his sailor.

God will be my last performance in one of those delicate crimson theaters cuing me my last line, so that ending curtsy will be one of love like the back of a postcard, short and sweet.

II. The secret is… the answer is nothing.

We made our own recipes with our own gritty ingredients, we kiss the cook for a life that science taught, each multiple choice question after another.

They were storytellers of condemnation choosing a future tribe as their dominions

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LAURA NICHOLS nothing more than praying children huddled in a blanket of itchy questions.

We are but stars, inside bursting out stars walking to crowded markets trying to buy a piece of the blame before we die.

III. Oh please, God I’ve lived here too long my voice could break, pieces crunching under, my starving sleeves bare in need of want.

Like the one who slouches with pen eager, will you dirty your pearl hands one more time?

The ink never leaves mine clean.

I’ll never smoke again if the maple dies before me to the desperate few, too many breathe and swell and sicken and disease, we prefer our tunnel of darkness.

A drug for the cure, I forgot the prevention thing… I’m sorry.

The first step is hollow, distant, daunting fill it and I’ll walk to the Sierra, book it, I’m there with just one hollowed step filled.

IV. They say their loving God can’t love us with the pitch we spread on the skin of our souls.

They say they are the messenger, the courts, the president… God-like men in clean pressed suits only marrying the conformist few.

I am the Lord thy God

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Teach your children love is for those honored few One recipeOne blind man bound to one blind woman.

They say bricks and isolation will cure us lock us away -- feed us Bible bits and then the townspeople will water down their fire lit torches, saving them for a rainy day.

V. God be my escape, a device that smoothes the warm weight into a thousand metal butterflies whispering off into the forest, where my mother was taken where my Mother was found in secret songs.

I see the fields my Lord, red and wild and in need of repair, but who will come first, this tired land or the wasting man?

VI. God is the anonymous face in the grainy weight of my birth the foundation that wasn’t there to build a house of brick and stone.

I lost that one feeling of how the “heart grows fonder,” and was left with stale greasy tidbits of something called the past, unknowingly unraveling me like a baby’s doll string by string hair by hair until I was staring down God with eyes wide asking if he brushed his teeth with Colgate like me, nine years old and the sixth Ninja Turtle.

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CARRIE LUKE

“You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you”

by Carrie Luke

Frank and I were born on the same day so we always celebrate together.

He serenades me while I adapt his voice to the oven and frost it with caramel cream.

I can’t imagine ever spending my birthday alone.

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-- Biographies -Writers Leonardo Caion-Demaestri was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. After fifteen years of living there, he moved to San Diego, California, to attend high school and college. He will graduate in 2008, with an Architecture major and International Relations minor. Leonardo has always loved art, making the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program the best fit for this first year away from home. He is sure that his love for fashion design, interior design and urban planning will benefit him a great deal later in his life once he graduates from UM. His piece “Breakthrough” was developed in the LHSP 125 course with professor Naomi Silver.

Samantha Gordon grew up in New York and she is interested in art and politics. She spent her summer as a legal intern in New York City. She will attend the University of Chicago this fall.

Justin Heller is from Jericho, New York, and will graduate in 2008. He hopes to study business and anything related to marketing. He enjoys writing poems because they cause readers to think harder than they would for a novel or short story. He does not plan on pursuing poetry professionally, but for now it is his most preferred form of writing.

Jacqueline E. Howard was born and raised in a small town outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. As she grew up, she realized her voice could be heard through writing, which is why she is pursuing a career in journalism, and she plans to graduate in 2008. Right now, Jacqueline is a freelance writer for the Cincinnati Tri-state’s community press, associate editor of Teen Scene Magazine, and President of the UM chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists. Her hobbies include dancing, playing the violin, running, and fashion.

Geetha Iyer is South Indian and has lived in the United Arab Emirates nearly all her life. She is a dual major: she studies biology because it gives her a sense of perspective on life, and she studies English because it allows her to rant about it. She hopes to go into research or conservation in the future.

Geetha loves reading science fiction; it is the only way to dream. She also loves art because it is the only thing that she can do without having to think.

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Lastly, apart from cockroaches, mosquitoes and houseflies, she would gladly keep any living thing as a pet.

Andrew Kahn comes from New Rochelle, New York. He plans to graduate in 2008 and, though he is currently undeclared, he is considering majoring in English. He likes to play sports, particularly basketball, and also enjoys writing and recording rap songs under the name Buttaz. He is considering journalism as a potential career.

Emily Lawrence was born and raised in Concord, California, a suburb of San Francisco. She will begin her sophomore year at Michigan this fall. Emily wants to major in either comparative literature or English. She aspires to continue on to a Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing following her graduation in 2008. Currently, Emily is spending the summer months reading, watching a ridiculous number of movies, and commuting from Concord to Berkley, where she works as an acquisitions/research intern for Heyday Books.

Michael Lohr grew up on Long Island, in Merrick, New York. He intends to graduate from the Ross School of Business in 2008 and is considering concentrating in Business Management. Michael enjoys writing very much and looks forward to continuing with it in the future.

Carrie Luke grew up on Mohawk Avenue in Ypsilanti Township, and is proud to call herself a “local.� She will graduate in 2007 with a dual degree in English and Women’s Studies. After graduation, she will pursue a Masters of Fine Arts Program to study creative writing, hopefully at Michigan.

She hopes to go into some form of social service work later on and help raise awareness of social problems, such as domestic violence, poverty, and unequal opportunity, access and rights. Carrie intends to make the world a better place in some way during her lifetime.

Hyatt Michaels was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts in 2003 before enrolling at Michigan. He is currently a junior majoring in Film and English, and he hopes to become a writer. In his spare time, Hyatt writes articles for the Michigan Daily arts section and acts in plays, like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Over the summer, Hyatt interned at Clear Channel in New York City.

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Laura Nichols lived in Holt, Michigan, for most of her life. She will attend UM’s School of Art and Design this fall and plans to graduate in 2008 with a degree in graphic design. She started writing poetry at age eight and has been creating art ever since she was old enough to hold a paintbrush. Laura also loves the cinema. She hopes her career will involve all three of her passions, possibly in cinematic advertising.

Ryan Solomon is from Potomac, Maryland. He plans to attend the Ross School of Business and graduate in 2008. He is currently working to build his company, iKon Productions, into a successful, profitable, nationwide concert company whose venues are mainly on college campuses. Ryan does not consider himself to be a very artistic person and struggles when evaluating poetry. “The Weekend” was his first poem.

Matt Weil is from Ocean, New Jersey. He is studying sciences and will graduate in 2008. He considers himself sort of a philosopher, a deep thinker, when it comes to writing essays and creative writing. He enjoys being creative and explaining his beliefs in writing, no matter who his audience may be. Currently, Matt plans to become some kind of doctor; however, whatever his profession may be, he will always play guitar.

Noelle Williams was born in Lake Odessa, Michigan, a small town south of Grand Rapids. There she learned how to have fun with little things, like playing tennis, running, reading and writing. She plans to graduate in 2008 with a major in English with creative writing emphasis, and perhaps a second major concentrating in film. A few of her favorite authors are Stephen King, William Shakespeare, and David Sedaris.

Artists Amy Aronoff grew up in Buffalo, New York. With a long standing interest in art and design, Amy took LHSP 140, a mixed media class. She has prior experience in drawing, painting, and printmaking and would like to expand her studies in digital art. She will graduate in 2006 with a degree in Communications, and she hopes to be able to incorporate art into her career, perhaps within advertising or publishing. In addition to her art, Amy enjoys listening to music, playing rudimentary piano, and singing very loudly to herself in her room.

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Jeremy Beday comes from the Ann Arbor area and majors in English Literature. He has no current connection to the arts, but soon plans to film a series of dogs eating, then edit the footage to create an alternative music video for a Coldplay song. He plans to finish it in August, then spearhead a new admissions policy to ensure that every incoming UM student owns a matching parka, fleece, and backpack from “The North Face.”

Michelle Dorman’s hometown is Los Angeles, California. She is majoring in Psychology and will graduate in 2007. While she doesn’t have an extensive background in painting, she has always been interested in the arts. She plays the piano and is a member of the Michigan Marching Band. Michelle always puts a lot of thought into her work and strives to create something meaningful to herself and to others. To Michelle, art is personal. She did not title her painting because she wants individuals to look at the piece and see different things based on who they are.

Alyse Nicole Dunn grew up in Toledo, Ohio, and is currently undecided about her major, but plans to graduate in 2008. The fine arts are her biggest love, her biggest frustration, her biggest waste of time, her savior, her enemy, and everything else. There’s no question as to whether or not she could live without them because they are such a large part of her. To Alyse, living without art would be not living at all! The only passion in her life that comes close is music, which creates all the same emotions for her.

Gillian Goldberg, born in Detroit, Michigan, will enter her senior year this fall. She is preparing for a future in medicine while studying Biopsychology here at UM. For Gillian, creative art gives her the opportunity to escape the confines of her science studies and journey to a different world. She always enjoys this place to which her work delivers her.

Billy Heisler is a second-year student who will probably major in Psychology.

He enjoys playing the piano, waterskiing, and playing golf with his father and grandfather. Billy will be a Student Assistant for LHSP this fall.

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Jaclyn Hornstein resides in Woodbury, New York. She is a sophomore in UM’s School of Art and Design and expects to graduate in 2008. She has been engaged in art since the age of two and has had experience with a vast array of media. She loves painting, drawing, and sculpture, and has recently become interested in collages and fibers, working with random and earthy materials. She would like to explore all options, but she plans on doing something creative and indefinable with her art in the future.

Camille Johnston grew up in Madison Heights, Michigan. There, Camille came to see the beauty in old dilapidated buildings and was fascinated with the concept of entropy. She decided when she first could speak that she wanted to be an artist. She has taken many art classes, including six lessons at The Center for Creative Studies while in middle school. At UM she is majoring in Art History and minoring in Marketing and Global Media Studies.

She would like to go into advertising, or any other creative field to use her talents while still creating studio art in her free time. She dreams about becoming notorious and filthy rich. In her free time, she enjoys making clothes, having morality debates, eating anything with crushed red pepper, and swinging on the playground.

Alissa Koloff comes from Farmington Hills, Michigan. Her interests include dance, reading, film and any artistic activity. She will graduate with a degree in Psychology in 2008.

Benjamin Lack grew up in Okemos, Michigan, and will graduate in 2006 with a degree in Biochemistry. He is currently applying to medical schools across the nation; Duke is his first choice. When he’s not in the lab, Ben can be found picking awesome licks on one of his many guitars or working out at the CCRB. Spanish is his least favorite subject; he loves classic rock music.

Khalil Morrison is an Economics major from Detroit, Michigan. He enjoys painting, listening to jazz, and counting his future fortune. Over the summer, Khalil interned at Citigroup in New York City. He is currently working on plans for world domination—the world of business, that is.

Carol Moser graduated from Okemos High School and lives with her parents, Alexandra and George, in Brighton, Michigan. Carol will graduate with a degree in Communications studies in 2006 and plans to go to law school. A great source of inspiration for Carol’s artwork last semester came from her mother and a four-month stay in New Zealand.

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Betsy Perlman was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. She is currently prebusiness, but if that doesn’t pan out, she plans to major in Economics and graduate in 2008. Over the summer, she is taking Introduction to Museums and Galleries of New York at New York University along with interning at a public relations firm. Betsy has always enjoyed visual arts, particularly drawing and painting, and she hopes to find time to paint throughout the rest of her life.

Kimberly Peven is from Farmington Hills, Michigan. She is in the nursing program here at UM and will graduate in 2008. Although Kim had never picked up a paintbrush until taking Mark Tucker’s class, she has always enjoyed drawing and editing digital photos.

Larissa Szwast is from Novi, Michigan, and will graduate in December, 2005 with a degree in Film and Video Studies. Larissa is enthusiastic about all types of art, from writing, drawing, and painting to dancing, especially Salsa.

She wants to pursue a career in screenwriting and producing and is currently training to be a Writer’s Guild of America signatory agent.

Joann Teo graduated with a Cellular and Molecular Biology degree in April 2005. The mural she did for Mark Tucker’s LHSP 140 class was the first one she had ever done, and she says that it is symbolic of her character and perhaps her life. She loves painting, drawing and writing poetry in her spare time, as well as dancing and singing. In the long run, she aspires to contribute to medical research, probably in a research institute in her native country of Singapore.

Jade Way grew up in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and will graduate with a degree in Psychology in 2008. She has always been involved in sports; she plays basketball, volleyball, and tennis. Jade has always liked to draw and make sketches, but she never engaged in any art education before college because of her involvement in school bands, where she played clarinet. In the second semester of her first year, she decided to finally take an art class and loved it. She says that the LHSP art program taught her a lot about art and about herself.

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Faculty & Staff Paul Barron received his MFA in creative writing from UM in 2000. He has since taught a variety of classes in the English Department and worked in the Sweetland Writing Center. He recently completed his first novel.

Jamillah Bowman grew up in Ann Arbor, and graduated from Georgetown University. Jamillah is a competitive runner and was All American while at Georgetown. She completed her Masters in Higher Education in the winter of 2005 and will continue on to a Ph. D. program.

Louis Cicciarelli is a fiction writer who completed his MFA here at Michigan in 1999 and has taught in the Sweetland Writing Center since then; he has received the Outstanding GSI Award and the English Department’s Moscow Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition. Before coming to Michigan, Louis taught at Cleveland State and Kent State Universities.

Lizzie Hutton received her MFA in poetry from UM in 1999 and has since taught in the English Department and the Sweetland Writing Center. Her interests include everything from ten-line poems to epic screenplays.

Matt Kelley teaches in the Department of English and Sweetland Writing Center. He has also taught at the University of Illinois and Purdue University. An avid photographer, he is the author of a guidebook, Writing Literature Though Art, 2004, and his latest book, Pages Made Blank By Rain: The Poems of Allen Grossman is forthcoming in 2006 from the University of Maine Press.

Tina Kokoris is a native New Yorker, having moved to Ann Arbor in 1981.

For the past 14 years, she worked as a Program Administrator in the Ann Arbor Public School District. Her greatest joys are her family and friends, travel, film, reading, and graphic and culinary arts.

Valerie Laken is a fiction writer who received her MFA in creative writing and MA in Russian Literature from Michigan. Before settling in Ann Arbor, she worked as a translator in Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Her short stories have appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. She recently completed a collection of short stories and is at work on a novel.

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Beili Liu was raised in Jilin, China, and moved to the US in 1995. She holds an MFA in Mixed Media from UM. Last year, Beili participated in the Art Farm artists’ residency in Nebraska. She currently teaches at Eastern Michigan University and will be LHSP’s Resident Artist for the coming year.

Ruth Marsh has a strong background in Student Services with UM and has been with Residence Education for 12 years. When not on campus, Ruth can be found with her family enjoying travel, water skiing, and cooking.

Ray McDaniel is an instructor in the Sweetland Writing Center and the English Department. He is also a columnist for Fence Magazine, US Constant Critic, and is finishing a book on alternative country music and the authenticity of American Culture.

Alex Ralph graduated from Swarthmore college in 1995 with a BA in English and history; five years later, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from Michigan and has since worked in the Sweetland Writing Center and the English Department. He is currently at work on a novel.

Naomi Silver is a Detroit native who received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Irvine. Naomi spent the last fifteen years teaching at universities in California and returned to Michigan this year to work in the Sweetland Writing Center. Her academic interests include writing across the curriculum and working with bi-literate writers.

Carol Tell is a native of Washington, DC, and has lived in Ann arbor since 2002. For her graduate work, she studied contemporary Irish Literature in Dublin, Ireland. Before coming to Michigan, Carol taught at George Washington University and worked as a senior editor for several journals.

Mark Tucker holds a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University and an MFA in painting from Michigan. He has been an artist in Germany, Italy, and Boston, designing, constructing and painting sets for movies, television, theatre, and floats for parades. If you ask him about his career aspirations as a child, Mark will simply reply: “All I ever really wanted to be was a magician.”

Charlotte Whitney has a background in teaching, intern placement, and administration, and she loves to travel all over the world. Her volunteer work includes conducting non-violence training, ending racism, and working on issues related to the Middle East.

“Artistic creativity is a whirlpool of imagination that swirls in the depths of the mind.�

-- Robert Toth

Writing & Art 2004-2005

LLOYD HALL SCHOLARS PROGRAM University of Michigan