Submit to the Wonderland/Wasteland Issue! Deadline: February 2nd. 11:59 PM libertas@davidson.edu
Self-Insert Superheroes: In Defense of Mary Sues -Mandy Mage Homoeroticism and Mechanophilia in “The Fast and the Furious” -Smitty Pages Distorted Self-Image and Overblown Egos in 18th Century French Fashion -French Montana The Plummeting Rollercoaster of Sir Phillip Sidney’s Love Life -Isaac Asimov An Ongoing Controversy: Deconstructing the Hidden Algorithms behind Apple’s “Recently Used Emojis” Keyboard -Stephen Employment Blue Is Not the Warmest Color: The Light Spectrum in Contemporary French Media -Kenneth Baldwell Getting Nailed: Close Reading Martin Luther’s 95 Theses -Pope John Paul the 45th Love and Romance through the Lens of the Alphabet Song -Sigmund Freud Marbles, Mirrors, and the Overall Neatness of Kaleidoscopes -Spayse Cadette The Leap Year: A Government Conspiracy to Delay the End of the World by One Day Every Four Years -Anonymous In Defense of Nominalizations: Argumentation and Postulation via Obfuscation and Discombobulation -Maxamillion Jamarion Hephastion esq. The Emergence and Increasing Importance of the Phrase “OK Boomer” -Yuleftu Switharu Indworld A Psychoanalytic Wonderland: Nuanced Undertones in Phil Collins’s Drum Solos -Badumbadum Icanfeelitcom Inintheairtonight et al.
The Top 13 Most Influential Academic Papers of the Decade
A Reflection:
LIBERTASlast word
vol. 26. no. 3
the Indulgence Issue
LIBERTAS
we are
the observers BY BEN CALDWELL
(The Blue Ridge Parkway, 2019.) (I set out to write a nature poem; sorry.) -Swollen clouds, eddies of alabaster, of mother of pearl, slink through the green that clings like shredded veneer to the mountains’ stone faces-stacks of rocks that, extravagant and proud, show off their greys and browns (aged like fine milk), presumptuous, calcified to the Earth like food to an unwashed dish. Streams lacerate their wrinkled faces and dig gashes in their roots, flowing to oceans that the pit of fire beneath us wears as a lonely clown would wear a smile. The setting sun, nostalgic for an age when we prayed to its splendor, humble and stupid, drowns beneath the horizon, full of contempt, languid and indolent. Our planet, fighting away but falling forever toward, teetering and unbalanced, wails the panicked music of the spheres out into the void. Somewhere above us, clouds become of stars and stars become of clouds, eddies of alabaster, of mother-of-pearl. They burn their impressions into the charred, shredded veneer of existence. -We are the pieces of the shattered stars, the leftovers of the beginning and the makings of the end.
We are the antennae of existence, feeling and verifying, sensing, deconstructing, categorizing. We are parasitic consciousness dripping through reality and snaking across its body. We are the tendrils of matter and time, squeezing through them, permeating, feeling, and contaminating. We are the senselessness of eternity; it consumes us, like Cronos does his flailing children. We are the sentient pet project of all creation, brought forth to feed its narcissism. We are the vanity, our awareness the mirror, our progress the lamp. We are the universe observing itself, and that is our only purpose. -It curses us with minds and forces us see it-break mountains into stones, into sand, into nothing. It curses us with bodies and forces us to feed it-consumes us and shits us out and makes new of old and old of new. It curses us with sense and forces us to feel it-births and ages and kills us and turns somethings into someones into somethings. It curses us with strength and forces us fight it-trembling and lost, rising and falling in the sea of its past and future. It curses us with life and forces us suffer it-to concede to time and space and to oil ourselves on their pyres. And then, It curses us with hearts and hopes that we will mourn it-when it screams and writhes and withers and settles into a listless and infinite sea.
SINGLE by Emelyn Schaeffer
Amy had decided to try masturbating on Friday. She’d read about it online, so she knew what she was going to do, or she at least got the general principle. She locked her dorm room door and put some porn she thought she’d like–a couple who seemed to get themselves off from making these videos–in front of her. It felt a little awkward at first, touching parts of herself she only really touched in the shower, but with no water this time and way less focus on getting clean. She focused on the two women in the video in front of her while she played with her nipples like one of them was, hoping not thinking about her actions too much would help her get in the mood. After a few minutes, Amy felt the growing warmth in her lower belly travel lower, followed by a throb in her clit. That surprised her, but it felt good, so she chased the feeling. She moved one of her hands down to her vulva and tried out a few motions – circles, back and forth, up and down – until she figured out what felt best. No wonder people do this every day, she thought, laughing to herself. When she came, Amy felt like she floated off of the bed for the whole thing. When she opened her eyes again, she was still floating – about a foot above the bed and seemingly without any way to come down. *** After she finally landed back on her bed and went to the bathroom, Amy typed, “Superpowers appearing overnight?” into Google and hit “enter.” All that came up, though, was a video about how sleeping was a superpower and articles about what would happen if humans actually did have powers. “What causes superpowers to appear?” Now it was just things about superpower countries and their effect on world affairs. “Why am I flying?” produced results on getting over the fear of flying on an airplane. “I can fly now” only brought up the song “Gonna Fly Now” from Rocky. Amy closed Google and laid back on her bed, thinking about what she could do next. To make sure it wasn’t a fluke she’d just dreamed up in her postorgasmic state, Amy thought about floating again. Her ceiling moved closer and she tried to keep in a noise that would either be a shriek of fear or laughter and willed herself back down. Wanting to see how far she could push this, she grabbed the side of her bed and floated into the open air next to it, her heart pounding, but she stayed again. Amy then
made herself vertical and floated down to the ground. Laughing, Amy jumped back up into the air and floated around her room. Soon, she was flying up to the ceiling and back down to the floor, jumping off her bed and not worrying about disturbing the people below her with the thud of her feet. It was during one of her flights around the room that Amy realized she’d forgotten to lock the door again after she came back from the bathroom because her roommate walked in. Sarah stopped and stared up at her. “You can fly?” Amy landed and forced a laugh, “What? No, I can’t! How much did you have to drink?” Sarah thought for a moment and then replied, “Enough for me to believe you.” Amy helped her to bed and then crawled into bed herself, but it took a while for her to fall asleep. In the morning, Sarah said, “I had this crazy dream last night. You were flying around our room.” Amy laughed with her and resolved to be more careful about the door in the future. *** On Tuesday, Amy double-checked that her door was locked and read erotica instead of watching porn while she touched herself. On Wednesday morning, she discovered that the superpower wasn’t always flying when she broke her toothbrush handle while sleepily squeezing it too hard. On Saturday morning, she listened to a pornographic audio clip. None of the rain hit her on her way to the library from the union even though she had left her umbrella in her room. On the way back to her room, she thought about the rain hitting her and it did. On Thursday, when she finished trying out her new vibrator, she thought about dying her hair blue, and it was when she looked in the mirror. She ran her hand through the short curls and wished them pink, and they were. On Monday night, Amy tried a combination of touching her clit and penetrating herself with her fingers, and on Tuesday, she convinced the editor in chief to let her write the next front-page story in the campus newspaper, even though he clearly wanted to do it himself. On Friday, it was back to flying. On Monday, Amy requested a single room for the next school year.
seasonal repression by Savanna Vest
some people have tried describing such Sweet Sorrow to me, but I don’t know Her. the only one I’ve met is salty, and sharp, the words rolling off the tongue before rolling to the other side of the mattress. leaves the mouth parched, a bitter aftertaste, like it’s only five o’clock but it’s midnight.
Letter from the Editors Dear Readers,
CHINATOWN
by Jayleen Jaime
Written with excerpts of The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.
They stumbled underneath the Chinatown gate. The emerald pagoda, the engraved stone columns, the golden characters, everything about that gate was so ornate. They walk underneath a gate that is supposed to ward off evil. Two stone lions stand on either side, faces scrunched, ready to attack.
“They are supposed to ward off evil, hey did you know that.”
Drunk off a gluttonous feast of dumplings, heaps of noodles, flavorless broth he replies without thinking, “I guess my skin should be sizzling.”
“Know what?”
If you ask the Catholic Church, they'll recommend you not indulge; indulgence is too close to gluttony and therefore the third circle of hell. If you ask us here at Libertas, though, we would encourage you to TREAT. YO. SELF. Indulgence in the right doses is the perfect antidote to the perpetual decay of our souls in the face of constant assignments, work study, and summer internship and job searches.
They continued to walk, walk across old Chinese men and women in tracksuits and visors. Walk across a park where screeching children played freely under the vigilant gazes of their mothers. And together they took it all in not saying a word. Walking hand in hand not saying a word.
“If they were lovers they wouldn’t be looking at us so weirdly.”
“But they could be lovers.”
“Probably.”
“Do you think they are friends?”
And then they reached the fountain and they took a seat close to two old men playing a board game, but far from the children and the line cooks taking their smoke break. They sat at the end of Chinatown where walking one block further away made a big difference. She stared at the old men.
She looks at the gates with amazement it’s been a while since she has seen them, probably when she was a kid. She tugs on his shirt, like she pulling on his reins and they stop to admire.
“They’re... those lions they’re supposed to ward off evil.”
In this mini-issue of Libertas, our contributors indulged in different ways. From Emelyn Schaeffer's flash fiction on the power of masturbation to Savanna Vest's referential poem about emotions, definitions of indulgence can range from the pleasurable to the melancholic. There is also indulgence in the way that some of these pieces exceed the bounds of the pages’ folds. In any case, a little vanity never hurt anyone, right? We hope you all have an indulgent (and safe) weekend.
With love, Maddy and Raven Editors-in-Chief
Cover art by Paul Stouffer
She always had the desire to slap him and the day before she hated him, if she were with him the day before, she was sure that she would’ve struck. They had gotten in a big fight but today had a sense of finality. She was sure that today would be the end. They were in Chinatown, talking, getting their fill of each other, breathing in secondhand smoke and wetting their hands in dirty fountain water. It was the end that she knew, so she replayed the beginning.