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LIBERTAS

V o l . 19 , n o. 3

the home issue

SATREBIL editorial EDITORS IN CHIEF Jordan Luebkemann | Will Reese POETRY Rachel Beeton & Tom James FICTION Tim Rauen & Meg Mendenhall NOT FICTION Ben Wiley FILM Claire Samuels & Edie Nicolaou-Griffin MUSIC Michael DeSimone TRANSLATION Katie Kalivoda & Graham Whittington ART Vera Schulman & Dani Steely

Contributors Teresa Lacks, S. Marshall, Kaliya Burton Akright, Yuxi Lin, Eleanor Yarboro, Sarah Hay, Elizabeth Harry, JohnMichael Murphy, Scott Walker Cunningham, Annalee Kwotchka, Justin Smalls, Elizabeth Welliver, Lauren Wilson, Gage Holloway, Cameron Gainey, Katie Kalivoda, Majo Arias, Charles Pennell, Graham Whittington, Keyne Cheshire, Michael DeSimone, Ben Wiley, Claire Samuels, Jordan Luebkemann Libertas belongs to the students of Davidson College.

Contact the editors at libertas@davidson.edu

special thanks to. ..

Faculty Advisors: Paul Miller, Scott Denham (emeritus), Zoran Kuzmanovich (emeritus), Ann Fox (emeritus) Previous Editors: Emily Romeyn, Vincent Weir, Mike Scarbo, Vic Brand, Ann Culp, Erin Smith, Scott Geiger, James Everett, Catherine Walker, Elizabeth Burkhead, Chris Cantanese, Kate Wiseman, Lila Allen, Jessica Malordy, Nina Hawley, Kate Kelly, Zoe Balaconis, Rebecca Hawk, and Hannah Wright Founder: Zac Lacy visit us online: sites.davidson.edu/libertas

LIBERTAS H

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F eb r u a r y 2 1 , 2 0 1 4 S. Marshall

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Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

Kaliya Burton Akright Teresa Lacks

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Iterations Art

Yuxi Lin Eleanor Yarboro Sarah Hay (trans.)

Elizabeth Harry

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Taking Off Life in Pastel To a Country House Where a Lady Was Celebrated Art

John-Michael Murphy

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Among the Redwoods

Eleanor Yarboro Scott Walker Cunningham Elizabeth Harry

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Drift, from Poems That End in Blue My Blue and Grey Flannel Art

Graham Marema Elizabeth Harry

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How to Find Out Where to Live: A Step by Step Guide Art

Annalee Kwotchka Justin Smalls Elizabeth Welliver Lauren Wilson

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Found: Home Song First Day Home from Prison Quaker Oats Kenmore Elite

Gage Holloway Cameron Gainey

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An Anthology Where is My Home

Katie Kalivoda (trans.)

Majo Arias Charles Pennell

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Excerpt from El Confidente Hogar Making Our Dorm Our Home

Various

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Stories from Abroad

Graham Whittington Keyne Cheshire

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Homer is Where the Heart Is: An Interview With Keyne Cheshire Justification, Iliad 1.68-85

Michael DeSimone

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#Most Relevant Tunes of 2013

Ben Wiley

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Last Word: Tunisian Hospitality

featured artist TERESA LACKS Teresa has been painting for her whole life. Last summer she went to Tanzania and taught young children basic art techniques, and hopes to incorporate art and travel into her future.

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

B

and totally sucks,” Andy offered sympathetically as Cameron slumped onto the bus seat across from him. “And Mr. Davies sucks. He gives that practice lecture to literally everyone.” Cameron nodded and watched the gate swing open, bearing a flood of boys in Delphi HS jerseys. At home in New York he had played football—only JV—but down in North Carolina the boys were big-shouldered, trained by their daddies to play from the cradle. Cameron and his mom had moved in near his grandfather after preseason started this summer anyway. He played violin now. It would have been fine, if the school band actually played music. Instead, they sawed away at endless screeching scales. Mr. Davies had just taken Cameron aside after practice to impress upon him the values of repetition in sight-reading. “Hard work, this stuff is, I know.” Mr. Davies’ speeches always sounded like cartoon posters in a library. “But with a little elbow grease, anyone can Keep the Squeak At Bay! Just- just- really read your sheet music, and use your metronome at home. There are lots of study tools,” he added as Cameron packed up his case. “The circle of fifths, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge… And remember—repetition is your friend!”

“Thanks, I’ll work on it,” Cameron promised as he slid out the door. He caught a last glimpse of Mr. Davies waving, his hairpiece maniacally askew. He didn’t need to lecture. His enthusiasm was worse.

Cameron got off the schoolbus at the end of Turner Street. From the Starbucks on the corner you could see the even set lines of Mount Blue Ridge, the development where his granddad lived, from the foot straight up to the smooth rock crest rising like a moon above it. Miss Cynthia made an exception for him. She was usually very strict about picking up kids at their houses, but Cameron had talked her down. His mom was a clothing designer, or had been after she moved out of here to New York. This had been fine in the city. Here he was highly conscious that all his clothes made him look like a fashionable newsboy. Miss Cynthia took pity, and got him on Turner Street so he could change into a tee shirt and jeans and look normal for school, and change back before seeing his mom. She understood that a little lie is okay, to make life easy.

Starbucks is the same the whole world round. The worn balsa wood tables, the soothing jazz, the buzz of a blender. But for the mountains in the back, it could have been California or Kentucky. He waved at Adam, the barista. Adam couldn’t be more than 50, but he had fewer teeth than the Kindergarten class at Hunter Elementary, on the Lower West Side. Cameron gave himself a mental kick. He tried not to think about it, really, but New York rose up like an epic dream. Highrise buildings haunted the corners of his eyes, and sometimes he heard phantom rumbles of an impossible subway.

When he came back outside a heavy winter rain had replaced the chill. Cameron walked on the thin sidewalk beside the highway, swinging the violin bow through the drops.

“Hey son! Got an extra string in there?”

A man was peering down at him, hanging out of the window of a beat-up Jeep.

With his long arms slung over the steering wheel, he looked like a praying mantis.

“What?” Cameron said stupidly.

“You got an extra fiddle string in that case? Buddy snapped an E string, he’s getting frantic. You’d save me a trip into town.” Cameron unzipped his violin case and was about to thrust his arm in when the man interrupted him. “Get in the car, boy! You’ll get your instrument wet.” Cameron paused. He knew better than to get in the car, but he didn’t see what choice he really had unless he wanted to run away. The rain plastered his hair to his forehead. He splashed around to the other side and jumped into the passenger seat. “You live in Mount Blue? Mm. Buddy and I live on the other side, I’ll drop you there. Got that string?” Cameron fished it out of his bag. “Henslowe,” the man said, extending his hand while he pulled into the left lane. “Want some pot?”

“No thanks,” Cameron said quickly.

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LIBERTAS, Vol. 19, No. 3

“Suit yourself.” Henslowe plucked a joint from the dashboard. A little cluster of crinkles sat in the corner of his eye, but Cameron couldn’t decide if he was old or just smiling. As they drove around the mountain—instead of straight up, like Miss Cynthia did—he asked Cameron about his playing. His friend with the fiddle was mute, he said, didn’t speak a damn word, but he had the gift for fiddle.

Out the window, the pines got wilder and even the shanties thinned. A neon sign flashed “Earl’s Girls.” Henslowe chuckled. “Haven’t gone round the other side before, huh? We tells fortunes with his fiddle,” he continued. “He tells the past and I interpret.” Cameron laughed uneasily, thinking Henslowe sharing a secret, how he took advantage of the people who lived back here. “You mean you tell the future,” he said.

“Sure,” Henslowe shrugged. “You’ll see. Here we are.” They turned. At the end of the lane lay a clearing and a trailer. A man stood up from a rocking chair the porch. He was thin and hugely tall, a skyscraper of a man, holding a tiny violin by the neck. Henslowe tossed him the paper package with the string inside. “Buddy, Cameron. Cameron’s from New York City,” Henslowe said. Buddy nodded, ripping the envelope with a gnarled finger. “Maybe we should go to New York once that development swings around. Sell out and help some Wall Street cheat.” Buddy had restrung the fiddle in one move, and swung his bow across the instrument casually. A phrase like birdsong flew out. “You’re right, still a little time left here,” Henslowe agreed. Cameron stopped easing off the porch. Henslowe laughed.

“Won’t kill you to listen. Buddy, we got to give this kid a little taste. Payment for the string.” Buddy jerked his head and looked Cameron up and down. He lifted the fiddle again and closed his eyes to play.

Cameron was spellbound, fixed to the porch. There was something so abnormal about this. The rubbing together of normal people and geniuses gone mad—for it was clear that they were crazy—that one found on subways and sidewalks, but not here in some antiseptic, metronomic suburb of Roanoke. “What piece of music is this?” he whispered to Henslowe.

“He writes it. Sometimes he repeats phrases—this right now is the introduction, you know, boy, big city, father left, back to old roots. All the stuff we already know.

He used to play for the silent movies, you know,” he said. Cameron wondered when the last silent movie had been set to live music. Then Henslowe closed his eyes too, and started to translate the sounds into a story. Later, Cameron couldn’t remember Henslowe actually talking, just the story. This is how it went.

Long ago, a girl spent a year learning bird cries so that the birds could tell her about her roving love. But the birds came back to her and said they could not fly across the whole sea. She put her life in a bag and took off to find him herself. On the way she learned the songs of sailors, of slaves on the boats and the words of mutiny, and she learned the language of the fish and the whales and the words that sea salt sings to the sand. She was full of new things and she held herself like a cup full to the brim. Then one day bathing in a river she sang the song of the stones, the low burble sound, and he saw her. He knew not to knock her over all at once. He pretended to be a stone and hummed back. He pretended to be a reed and sang through his nose, and then a fish at her feet, and then he talked to her as himself. And they could love in the way of the oaks, which is a loyal and a slow language, and they could fight in the ferocious songs that the lawnmowers sing.

They had the whole world to pour themselves into.

The fiddle stopped. Cameron asked, “Did they live together? You know, happily ever after?”

Henslowe looked at Buddy, who played a thin note for far too long. It seemed impossible that the bow could sustain that note.

“Well, anyway,” shrugged Henslowe, “they lived.”

Cameron didn’t understand. Was this the story of how his parents met? There was a lump in his throat where his Adam’s apple would appear in a year, or maybe two. An ugly flush crept up his neck. Just a bunch of stupid old men. He thought of the barista at Starbucks with the broken teeth who couldn’t always write peoples’ names on their cups.

“Rain let up,” said Henslowe. Cameron was dismissed. He thanked the men and jumped off the porch.

“Hey kid,” called Henslowe. “Maybe you’re playing the wrong instrument.” He held out the violin case. Cameron had forgotten it. He came back.

“Can I learn to do that?” he asked, before he could help himself.

Henslowe smiled at Buddy. “To do what I do? Sure. But what he does, you got to practice scales.”

On the walk home, a toad hiccupped a loud note and grinned widely at him. He passed through the lamplit streets of Mount Blue unnoticed. Unlocking the front door to his granddad’s house, he went to wash up, humming in the shower.

At the table, his mom watched him play with his dessert. “Where did you learn that song, honey?” she asked. “Band practice?”

One: I was a home-schooled-hippy-nature-freak child.

Henna’d feet Climbing trees Dirt under my nails Eden tangled into my wild hair – We had oranges And tangelos And grapefruits And lemons And limes And bananas And grape vines And pineapples And a vegetable garden Every year.

We had care.

Home was messy sunshine.

Innocence is a fickle light switch.

Two: What happens when home is a poison?

What, when freedom plays the part of prison?

Destiny is a cancer.

Do not trust it.

Nostalgia is dementia.

Natural does not mean healthy.

There is a foul rot Under my nails Behind my eyes At the base of my spine – The floor has grown claws It is pulling at the skin on my knees In the window I see a jungle The vines are encroaching But only When I’m not looking I said do not trust it.

Three: I hang a blanket over my new window.

Warmth is in the lamplight.

In the corner Clothes Are boiling over No surface is free Paper Paper Paper Safety is in the colors Empty space Is a vacuum That eats unsuspecting Toes and souls Comfort is in Baubles Buttons Boxes I put eyes on the wall And tucked the secrets into bed I flip the switch off As I walk –

IterationS K a l i y a B urt o n- Ak ri gh t

LIBERTAS, V o l . 1 9 , N o . 3

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Life in Pastel My world was colors softer than light pastels and warmth and sleep My world was fences on the bed, fences in the hall, fences in the yard My world was cotton mittens with snow seeping through and spring striped shorts with string y holes at the knees My world was someone who loved me enough to mince everything into sweet mush and to buy a spoon small enough for a pink little thing like me to use

I am always taking off My clothes for boys.

Yuxi

A piece here, a piece There. I assemble them In matching shambles.

A macabre ensemble, They crumple on the floor.

When it comes to boys,

Taking Off

Lin

Older now, I contemplate the things my mother has told me about this child I was for a time tiny, softer than light a comma curled against my mother’s front.

Eleanor Yarboro

I am always taking off, Before they take off.

This is a temporary stop, They are on a transit flight, Moving toward the connection To take them home.

I wait for a boy, Who chooses to stay.

He watches me take off My clothes, Then puts them Back on. He would say I have arrived already At my destination.

To a Country House Where a Lady Was Celebrated If the sight, from tired crying, Of a thing can already promise certainty, So beautiful is that fortress And nobly built.

The palace is from my celebrated beauty, Temple of Love, fortress of nobility, Nest of Phoenix of the greatest beauty, That flaps golden feathers in our age.

Wall with which you conquer the green plains, Towers with which you defend the noble wall, Battlements by which to the towers you are a crown, When from your sovereign owner You deserve to see the celestial person, You, represent my hard exile.

Luis de Góngora trans., Sarah Hay 5

LIBERTAS, Vol. 19, No. 3

Among the Redwoods John-Michael Murphy

I

spent the summer in northern California pressed between two mountains in an abandoned valley with a lake and a rock cobbled riverbed and a forest. I saw it all first from a distance as my truck rounded the highway that clung high to the side of the mountain.

The only way into the valley is a small road that rises deep from its silence and spits out at highway mile marker 39.5. Descending from the busy highway, the road switchbacks then settles as it meanders first past old houses, the farm, the grasslands, the dried stream bed, the lake, and then disappears into the forest.

I spent many evenings in the valley following this quiet, untraveled road— I would walk toward the forest and the road would slowly fade to gravel, then to dirt and then disappear. Here, the silence settled permanently around me. The soil padded my footsteps and I would quietly trail deep into the forest until I saw the redwoods.

Many evenings I would sit under their giant shade in solitude. I would hide for hours within the bowels of the valley, until night and fear of mountain lions drove me home. I knew the path to the redwoods, but I could always orient myself by looking towards the mountain to the steady stream of cars as they whizzed by in the distance.

They appeared and disappeared. A new wave of cars would come; they appeared and disappeared.

At night, I often lay in my bed, and through the meshed window listened to the animals that night had awoken— coyotes, deer, raccoons, and mountain lions. But I listened most for the call of the animal I befriended throughout my travels in the forest. I never saw it, but I knew it lived high in the redwoods. I spent many evenings in its company. I know this, because I sat among the mouse carcasses it dropped to my feet. I know this, because in the forest, I never felt alone.

At night, I often lay in my bed and imagined I was this creature. I would fly clear of the highway, and peer down at the valley. I would live alone with the redwoods and the lake and the rock-cobbled riverbed. I would live happily in solitude, in the abandoned valley, dependent on no one, far from the highway, and away from the pains of attachment. I would live in peace. ***

I spent the summer mourning the loss of my father. He wasn’t dead, but after a suicide attempt, he ran away with another woman to adopt another life. The feelings of pain and abandonment destroyed me that summer—he was gone.

And it was only among the redwoods, in the company of the owl, that I found solace. We are social creatures, however, it’s funny how relationships can be so painful but solitude and the forest so healing. ***

I spent the summer in a valley that was once occupied by a thriving commune. The road in the valley once connected the school to the mechanic to the dining hall to the dairy to the church to the people to the farm. It was the community’s

sole artery, but today the road’s organs have failed.

Most of the members have died and the road connects nothing but rusting infrastructure to the few, final, aging members of the community.

I remember most an unpleasant old woman in her nineties who still lived in the valley. She was reduced to little more than a shadow of her history. She talked to no one, had short grey hair, spotted, tired, skin and always wore the same, dirty outfit: a heavy trench coat, purple socks, and sneakers. On her cheek grew a dark blue, eggsized lump of skin cancer. I think she left it there because she wanted to die. I didn’t blame her, because I often felt the same way.

In this woman’s youth, she forged a life of companionship. She lived in a network, emotionally and physically dependent on her community.

She lived and breathed as an organ of the commune, living off and finding meaning through her static companionships. But today, she exists as a final surviving cell of a body that died without her consent. She never learned to live alone; she is unable to move on. I think she, like me, felt betrayed by her relationships and mourned the death of permanency.

It’s funny how even one lost relationship— a friend, a boyfriend, or a father— can cause so much pain. Are they worth it? ***

I spent the summer more than a thousand miles from home working in a valley on a farm once owned by the commune. I spent the summer in a remote Northern Californian valley, because I needed distance. I needed to stay off the highway.

I needed to live like the owl. Like the unpleasant old lady, I wanted to talk to no one. I needed solitude.

But I worked on a farm and lived in a small yellow house in the company of nine strangers. Each morning we rose and groggily made our way outside. We spent hours tending fields under the dehydrating Californian summer sun.

We worked together, we cooked together, and we dined together. We lived in community. In this short time, I came to intimately know the cadence of my housemates’ voices and their songs that echoed throughout the fields. But these relationships scared me; I knew they would end with the summer. And I think that is why I found myself distancing from the yellow farmhouse in the evenings. I feared the pains experienced by the unpleasant old woman; the pain from my father already consumed enough of me. I wasn’t ready to lose anyone else.

I spent the summer hiding from the farm and the highway. Sometimes I would climb to the top of the mountain, and look down upon the highway and the valley from a distance that detached me. More often, I found myself sitting alone in the forest near the mouse bones. I found myself drawn to the simple company of the owl in the redwoods. We sat together; we sat alone.

I was comfortable here. I found peace in the redwoods near the rock-cobbled river. I had a view of the highway, of the constant stream of people that whizzed by. Here I could see clearly the importance of learning to live alone and in doing so, accepting the transience of companionships and lives. ***

I left the yellow house that summer know-

ing I would never see the unpleasant old woman or my housemates again. I knew that when my truck heaved up the valley and rejoined the cars on the highway, the nine voices I knew so well, the unpleasant old woman, and the faces in which I became familiar would vanish. They would vanish like my father.

But I left that summer in peace, knowing that I could come back— maybe not to this sacred valley— but that I could always go to the forest and to the rock cobbled river and to the lake and to the solitary owl.

LIBERTAS, V o l . 1 9 , N o . 3

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Drift, from Poems that End with Blue Eleanor Yarboro Damp street big city sidewalk tilting from lack of sleep on the corner of Harlow & Griffin as streetlights lengthen with reflection I think about how absence is the beauty of this world the lonely desert cloud stealing our attention Worn thin in the eleventh hour I’m rattled by the suggestion that I could ever be anything else but I find myself flagging a taxi hastening my instinctual drift home to you Like monarchs tracing ancestral lines or birds magnetized by the idea of snow melting back home Hotel map clenched in hand I button up my coat and step into a hive of shadow directing the stranger behind the wheel The rain-speckled window rattles at me as the world drips with inertia and my thoughts another plume of mystery originless in a sky of bottomless blue

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LIBERTAS, Vol. 19, No. 3

My Blue and Grey Flannel Scott Walker Cunningham I sit on the ground because the earth is damp, just wet enough to remind me it’s there; that beneath iron and asphalt is the moist touch of earth.

I anchor myself in the mounds of dirt, wondering if the soil cools the trees like a breeze on my face; I wonder if they ever feel old, or if they’ve never known that they’ve even grown old.

How long have they waited here?

To my far left hangs my blue and grey flannel, its panels of color cutting creases into the menagerie of nature’s nursery; I look out over the expanses of trees, the sea of fallen leaves, and the sun, which heaves down, firm upon the landscape like an ocean might crush down upon a snail in the sea. A sapling holds my shirt like a little brother, eager to help, willing to wait.

And so I will sit and stare at that shirt, succulent blue, choked by the smoky-concrete grey.

I will sit till the sun passes by, while a woodpecker ticks away at a tree, counting seconds like a kitchen clock; but no matter how long I wait, the tree won’t walk away.

The sapling is still and stubborn, holding that shirt, with my scarlet letter, a succulent scar, until I leave the damp dirt and slip my shirt sleeves over my skin, and feel once more like a bird amongst the men, like a stranger amongst the trees.

How to Figure Out Where To Live: A Step-By-Step Guide Step One: Grow up in the mountains. Go outside for every dawn and see dark things in wide spaces, see the sun sitting on top of the earth, see trees green, aqua, blue, purple, fading into the mist. Your mother will sing you old mountain songs when you are too scared to fall asleep, because it will be very dark there. Listen to mountain voices—you will know them when you hear them. Think about the big world, and why there are different places, wonder what all the space in between is for.

Step Two: Visit cousins in Maine. Hear the coast in their voices, and wonder why people speak differently, why not all voices are the same voice. Realize that mountain voices are much too slow, with such ringing egoism, despise the stories they tell. Tell yourself that anyone who speaks like a mountain is as slow and thick as one. Find yourself trapped, find yourself in a high school that works just as well as a prison, with walls of barbed wire fences and a desk as your cell.

Step Three: Move. Find somewhere far away, flat and cold, full of steel, and there are no more mountain voices. Hear it like a song, sometimes, a song you used to know, and pretend you aren’t homesick and soon enough you won’t be. Throw away your accent. Find someone. Love them. Listen to punk music. Listen to Feist and John Mayer. Listen to Irish folk.

Step Four: Cry one night on the floor of the bathroom, and hold yourself, and say to the one who asks that it has been a long day. Do not tell them that you heard the song your mother used to sing to you, when there were mountains in her voice. Get a job that weighs on you like granite. Become frustrated. Paint murals on your apartment walls because something is inside you and needs to come out or it will start oozing from your pores. Cut your hair. Yell. Get fired. Try to remember something. Realize you can’t. You are floored.

Step Five: Pack. Bring warm clothes and boots. Move to the mountains. Get a job no matter what it is and work and find someone. Love them. Have your mother sing you a lullaby one night over the phone because you’ve forgotten how dark it is here, and sleep through the entire night and don’t dream. Wake up and see dark things in wide spaces, see the sun sitting on top of the earth, see trees green, aqua, blue, purple, fading into the fragrant mist. Wonder why it takes people so long to remember what they knew at the beginning.

Wonder how much time you’d have saved if you just didn’t forget, but also how much you wouldn’t learn. Touch the hair you cut. Smell a storm on its way in. A storm sitting like a cap on the peak of the tallest mountain, calmed by the rain.

Graham Marema

LIBERTAS, V o l . 1 9 , N o . 3

8

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Found: Home Song

Annalee Kwotchka

First Day Home From Prison Justin Smalls

K E N M O R E

T

hat damn washing machine is shaking the living room again, probably leaking hot water into the trays my mother has carefully placed under her beloved machine. It’s older than I am—really. It was a type “so you’re nineteen and poor and knocked up, here’s a washing machine for all the cloth diapers you’re gonna have to do” from my grandparents. There’s a fake mahogany panel where the dials used to be and white sticker letters that have peeled and cracked beyond recognition. The corners of the lid are badly rusted, and there are layers of bleach caked on so thick only the most versed fingers can close the fucker properly.

Even when we moved six hundred miles to rural Virginia, the machine replaced my stepdad’s newer, less crotchety appliance. And despite the noise it makes and how it sputters and how no one else can use it ‘cause it’s so temperamental, her inviolable machine remains. My mother says it still works and until it breaks down completely, we don’t need a new one.

Frankly, she’s right. It’s annoying, but why waste four or five hundred dollars on a machine that does the same damn thing, albeit a bit more quietly?

All my life, my mother has done my laundry. She washed all my shitty diapers in that machine and hung them out to dry behind the little green house on Buffalo Street. She’s washed countless poor fashion decisions and found my first thong while doing my laundry. Laundry is a sacred ritual in my house, always has been. You bring your laundry to momma, wait a couple days, and then go back to pick it up—shorts and

9

LIBERTAS, Vol. 19, No. 3

Quaker Oats

Elizabeth Welliver

E L I T E

pants on the left side, shirts on the right, socks and underwear on top.

If you leave chapstick or five bucks in one of your pockets, it’s always laid neatly on top of your clothes, and no one’s stuff is ever switched up.

Every night after she’s driven three hours to work and back, and worked in the market for three or four hours after her eight hour day job, and cleaned up after my stepdad’s messy amateur gourmet dinner, you can find her in the laundry room, smelling like Costco brand allergen-free detergent (because I have sensitive skin and momma’s always taken the best care of her baby girl). Even though she was hospitalized once for her bad back, she insists on being the only one to reach down into the laundry basket and back up into the washing machine, to precisely fold each and every piece and put it in its proper position back into the laundry basket.

Sometimes she hums to herself, but mostly she calls me or Rocky or the dog in to talk about something, anything. She comes up with questions to ask, like did you get all your financial aid stuff done? have you filled out your taxes yet? isn’t your car payment due soon? ‘Cause I’ve been trying to lighten her load by taking my responsibilities into my own hands, but she just can’t seem to let me go completely. So I take care of my bills and do the store’s taxes and balance the books every night while she does the laundry. She’s more resilient than that damn machine, so I let the houseshaking, leaking machine without complaint ‘cause I know it means a lot to her that it keeps chugging along.

L AU R E N

WILSON

AN ANTHOLOGY

G a g e H o l l oway

I

am a regional product. I come from the broad, rolling hills of the Ozark Mountains, a region and people known for their persistence and self-reliant, hard-fought way of living. I am a creation of my father’s hard, working spirit, rough hands, and conservative upbringing. I am

the work of my mother’s worldliness, the chronicles of her travels, and the watch of her perceiving eyes. I have grown to who I am by careful nurturing and generous freedoms to explore where I want to go and whom I want to become.

I was once told that the Ozarks are some of the oldest mountains in the world. Eons ago they stood, cragged and cruel like the steep peaks of the Sierras, but just as it does everything else, time has dulled them. Blurring their wicked edges, wind and rain have beaten them down into soft, lulling submission. Like the rough, cracked, domed shell of an ancient tortoise, the hills swell out of the western plains, steadfastly, like the people of the region, holding onto the past, traditions, and the rocky soil in which they are rooted. Just as the hills are resilient to be pounded down, I am persevering.

No man will ever match my father’s work ethic. His calloused hands tell the story of his life, laborious and industrious. A man of few words, his actions speak his morals. No tool put away soiled, no friend unaided, and no lies told. He is an honest man. A strong-standing oak, knotted and gnarled; my father is rooted in his convictions. Not swaying from my beliefs, I am my father’s son.

My mother devours literature. Nabokov, Faulkner, walker, O’Connor, the greats, the unknowns, the worst, and the best, she reads

them all. The child of nomadic workers, she found a home in books. Stories flow from her. Bubbling them out like a quiet spring through my childhood, she filled me with words, places, people, and things. I used her stories to imagine myself taking on the world. Just as in the days of my childhood, I am still her writer, adventurer, detective, and teacher.

Wrought by the history of my home, the lessons of my father, and the words of my mother, I am a compilation. What I will become

is an exhilarating prospect, and where I have been tells a beautiful story. I am coming of age and fighting to discover a passion of my own.

WHERE IS MY HOME? The earth clings warmly to my feet.

With every step my senses speak, But they convey no peace for me.

Where is my home?

My lungs take in the swirling air, Extract the life it holds with care, Yet no vitality I bear.

Where is my home?

Such wondrous sights pass through my eyes From all that nature can provide, But in the end tears always rise.

Where is my home?

Existence mirrors make belief, For all things border frightful dreams.

It’s always been this way, it seems.

Where is my home?

A garbled din of voices rears.

I scream my heart, but no one hears The whispers that betray my fears.

Where is my home?

Perhaps the things in which I’ve hoped Are not foundations for my soul.

That realm must lie beyond these shoals.

Where is my home?

Places Ben Wiley Has Slept at Davidson College: A Definitive Guide

CAMERON GAINEY LIBERTAS, V o l . 1 9 , N o . 3

10

excerpt from El

Confidente

T

he interesting part for Pedro, for Antonio, for all of them, was the comment by General Murcia, the old officer, who was once a vivacious symbol of his people’s revolutionary unrest, of his race’s desire for freedom. He was an interesting man. One day, eager to serve his country, he abandoned the military to devote himself to the people; the next he revolted against the tyrants who were smothering his homeland. He had to flee; he lived abroad, preparing the revolutionary movement, in contact with prominent individuals.

A noble, glorious figure, the town idol in moments of exaltation, by the time he succeeded in overthrowing the odious monarchic dictatorship forever. But now, however, the general, defending the position he reached, said referring to Juan, to the four anarchists: “Those criminals have got to be stopped. They live off thievery; sometimes they throw themselves into the unions just to corrupt them and they use their ID as a picklock.”

Then he announced that he would attend and preside over the demonstration that would arise at the burial of the murdered police officers.

Antonio, after reading that, felt rage, disgust, pain. He had lived next to the old general in exile; he had suffered persecution and anguish along side him. Even starvation.

Distressing days when the dictatorship seemed invincible and they had nothing to eat in exile; when every door was slammed in the emigrants’ faces. And when all they had to eat off were the pesetas that friends from their oda v i faraway homeland sent. l Ka e i How the memories of that period came to life in Antonio’s memory! And the days t Ka . s when the old general did not die of starvation thanks to the money that Juan sent n ra t him from home. And now he dared to call him a criminal! Maybe he was , n right; maybe Juan had committed some crime. But it was not to zma ú G personally profit off the money. Yes, he mugged a pubdo r a u lic official, an insignificant person in the fallen d E dictatorship, stealing some money from him—which had been During my stolen from the people befirst week of international fore—and sending it to the orientation, people would ask me, at the end of the emigrants so they could day, “Are you going home?” eat. The exiled general I remember being confused, annoyed, and angry at this innocent question, because alhad subsisted off though the person asking the question really meant “Are you going back to your dorm room?” I couldn’t that money for help but be frustrated at the assumption that my tiny, cramped room in the second floor of Richardson was some place I could call home. some time. And The walls in that room were bare and empty, my bed was extremely uncomfortable, and for weeks I couldn´t now in sleep without waking up in the middle of the night. Secretly, I wanted to reply with “Oh, you mean go back to return!…

GA R

s a i r A o

by Ma j

HO

Ecuador?”

As time went by, I started getting used to the idea that I would spend a lot of time in the 11'6" X 17'8" room other people insisted I call home.

Perhaps my definition of home needed to shift, along with everything else that was rapidly changing in my world.

Perhaps home—as some sappy song claims—is not places.

Is it love? Maybe I´m home when it´s okay to have cheap spiced rum and moldy cheese in the fridge, or when I know my dirty laundry is piled behind my dresser, making everyone think my room is actually clean.

Maybe home is meaningful connections and community and understanding.

I used to think of home as the Andes Mountains and the city I grew up in, a merely physical location on the planet which I absentmindedly called home.

Home is talking impromptu walks in the woods at midnight, in search of adventures.

Home is stargazing on warm summer nights and seeing a shooting star for the first time.

Home is watching the leaves turn orange and red during the first autumn of my life.

Home is being excited about the first snowfall.

Home is music. Home is poetry.

Home is being silly.

Home is a feeling.

In Spanish, the word for home, hogar, also means “the place where fire is made.” I have been given stars and warmth and inner light here.

At first it was just the bacon, and that was no big deal. In fact, I liked the bacon at first and I was all for CJ's initiative to make our dorm "just like home." True, when he served me the bacon from his desk-top griddle he barked at me about "that shifty-eyed sand Jap in the White House," but CJ said that misdirected prejudice was just a part of the authentic home experience. Then CJ started insisting that I "call him down from his room" whenever I wanted to go to class. He was just sitting up on his bed, but unless I called to him in a voice that struck the balance between lilting and insistent, he would pretend he hadn't heard. He gave me a lot of fucking lip too, for somebody sitting on a bunk bed and insisting on being called "ceejie." All that wouldn't have been too bad, but CJ started ranting about the lack of “a carefully cultivated maternal ambience” in our dorm, until one day I came back from class to find six mothers with a variety of children, just hanging out on the futon. That was pretty fucking jarring, but when I confronted CJ he said that we had to jam twenty years of motherly love into a few short months, and that he hoped I wasn't too disappointed in the presence of only six mothers. So now we've got six mothers and 10+ children, one of whom is 23 years old, living in our room, our room’s water needs are at an all-time high, when CJ off and destroys the sink. Just wantonly smashing the sink with a sledgehammer, screaming about remodeling and D-I-Y. And when I stepped to him about doing that in front of toddlers and the 23 year old, he just started barking about “the marble vanity top” like that was a thing, and then pulled out some paint swatches and forced me to choose between “soothing seafoam” and “creamy robin’s egg” – saying that our relationship depended on the successful completion of the bathroom remodeling project. Clearly fucking unreasonable, but shit, here I am, tending to the skinned knee of one of the kids, in the calming glow of soothing seafoam. CJ won’t let me forget that he really preferred creamy robin’s egg, though.

Charles Pennell

Making our Dorm our Home 11

LIBERTAS, Vol. 19, No. 3

Abroad in the fall A particularly rough and tumble Englishman threatened to stab me with he and his “mates” over a taxi cab quarrel, in which he told me, after hearing my accent, told me to “get the fuck out of my country,” I quickly said I was Canadian and all was forgiven. I told him it was an easy mistake I make it all the time so no worries.

-Bo

I came downstairs one morning and found my host family eating waffles with olive mayonnaise.

-Will Reese NYU kids contemplating taking MDMA before going to a steam bath or writing a 12-page paper -act397

I blacked in looking down at my shoeless feet. Feeling my pockets, I could feel that my phone had also been stolen. I looked up to find myself arguing in a different language with two men dressed in all black suits, trying to find my shoes. Apparently, these men were impersonating police, and had demanded to see my identification. They told me if I wanted my shoes back, I would have to see the police tomorrow. For some reason, even the city's trash men, out on their early morning rounds, were in on the grand conspiracy to steal my shoes, and they encouraged me and my friend to leave the scene. In my inebriated state, I refused, so both Men in Black took out an extendable whip-like thing and proceeded to whip me and my friend. Eventually, my friend, who had his phone stolen as well was able to drag me away, and we walked home to my apartment. Fortunately, one of us still had shoes on. The next morning I discovered my jacket had been stolen as well. If you're ever in Europe, keep your eyes out for a gypsy wearing Sperry's. And be careful with your shoes.

-Stone Cold Soup

I had been living in my home stay for a little over a week when my host mom mentioned someone named “Toto.” When I asked who that was, she exclaimed, “you haven’t met Toto yet?!” then grabbed my arm and pulled me out into the backyard. Toto, as I found out, was her full-sized pet monkey whom she ordered (illegally) from the Amazon jungle and who spent most of his time screaming and shaking the bars of his cage. Toto and I were friends until I got too close one day and he grabbed my hair and wouldn’t let go.

-Kate Sanford I was staying with this very conservative Christian family, and one of the kids from the homestay started dating this American girl, which was not okay with his parents. He decided to have her over secretly, which was very taboo, just living in his room. The day she came it was the biggest snowstorm in a century, so she got stranded at the house.

She had to be hidden away for five days, with us smuggling food to her.

The parents got pretty suspicious by the end.

-A Junior

Ok, so, this one time, in India, I got pretty violent food poisoning and had to come home from school early. I should probably preface this story with an explanation, to those who haven’t traveled to India, that the expectations for privacy boundaries are very different in India than they are in the U.S. When I had gotten sick before, with just a cold, my Indian parents had been really confused about why I wanted to stay in my room, away from other people when I was sick. They were sort of insulted by my wanted to be alone when I was sick and they were worried that being alone would make me feel worse, because I would feel sad because I missed people, or something.

So this time, after this really bad case of food poisoning, I decided, because I really love my Indian parents, that I would humor them by not resting in my room. My host mother made up a bed for me on the couch in the living room and left me there to nap while she went out to run errands. I fell into a very, very deep sleep. When I woke, I immediately realized that I was surrounded by people. My parents had invited the entire extended family over to hang out. So the takeaway image from this story is me, in my pajamas, still looking pretty green, probably drooling because I do that in my sleep, on a couch, surrounded by about 30 Indians that I barely know.

-Quinn Libson

LIBERTAS, V o l . 1 9 , N o . 3

12

Homer is Where the is Graham Whittington

D

avidson professors inspire student academic pursuits daily, but sometimes their work with students inspires them just as much. Dr. Keyne Cheshire, Classics professor and co-instructor of the college’s increasingly popular literary translation course, has experienced the receiving side of this relationship, and it’s greatly influenced his recent scholarly work.

As Dr. Cheshire taught an advanced Greek course a few years ago, he asked his students to translate lines of Sophocles, pushing them to render works aesthetically on par with the originals. He asked them what aspects they would want to bring out of their renditions to allow a contemporary audience to viscerally connect with the translation.

Working with the student shaped the translation’s composition, but in the end Dr. Cheshire wanted the work to breathe better than it often does when others try to apply the meter of the original’s language to English. Dr. Cheshire took advantage of English features like rhyme to create a pleasing work that still sticks with the story. Instead of treating these classics as artifacts under glass, he aims to bring them to life and create a new visceral relationship between the audience and the work.

While Murder at Jagged Rock became an engaging challenge, Dr. Cheshire has taken on quite the Herculean task with his new project. After giving a Humanities lecture on Homer, professors asked the classicist how Homer’s oral tradition would sound today. Dr. Cheshire immediately landed upon spoken word and rap as modern forms of story telling that resemble the spoken word aspect of the ancient Greek canon. He quickly devised an original justification for his answer (see below), but he didn’t settle his thoughts there.

This idea inspired an innovative translation, placing Sophocles’ Trachiniae in a mythical wild west. While religious elements in Trachiniae suspended belief for the Greek audience, Dr. Cheshire’s dramatic play, Murder at Jagged Rock, allows readers to connect to and suspend their own belief in a familiar “mythscape.”

This idea caught hold of him, and he soon taped the impulse. Now he is in the process of translating The Illiad into a modern oral tradition, giving the world a spoken word and rap fusion update of a western civilization classic.

As a student of dead languages, Dr. Cheshire had always practiced the decoding involved in reading ancient texts, but he began pursuing formal translation when he came to Davidson. He started translating as the spirit moved him—a poem here, lines of other works there—but this work became his first major project.

Justification ‘Bout time Homer came home back to the limelight extending his hour by a fall from the ivory tower resurrecting the Rage from its grave on the page and winging that word heard once again on the lips of women and men who write wrongs on the wind

Iliad 1.68-85 With that Achilles sat And up stood Calchas Thestor’s son interpreter of birds 13

LIBERTAS, Vol. 19, No. 3

Keyne Cheshire

Dr. Cheshire did not stop his innovative project with translations of ideas, objects, and settings. A Davidson Research Initiative grant allowed him to work with a student to create musical compositions of the text, bringing the work to life with an array of Americana and folk music.

And then it dawned upon him: Greek tragedy shares many elements and themes with stories of the old American Wild West.

Deciding to translate not only the words, but also the setting of the story gave Dr. Cheshire room to transpose certain elements of the story as well. Some of these transpositions fit seamlessly. In this mythical Wild West, arrows that never miss became bullets that always aim true. Tall tales took the place of religiously influenced scenes, allowing such scenes as the one in which a river woos a woman.

i nterviews

Dr. Cheshire has already recorded lines of the translation rap. Looping and editing technology allows him to create a piece that harkens back to this oral tradition but that avoids creating a static work. Again, he aims to innately connect to his audience with this translation, and he hopes that his approach will allow him to do so.

He has eclipsed the 100-line mark, but has thousands to go before finishing. Thankfully, at a college like Davidson that values creative scholarly work, he can focus much attention on the task as well as spending time on close readings and analysis of ancient texts. He intends to complete at least the first book of The Illiad, and he doesn’t even want to think about what he’ll do after that.

The task ahead is a lifetime of a journey in itself.

by far the best one He knew what was what was done what was to come By his prophecy he’d led the Greeks across the sea to Troy his gift from Phoebus Apollo And so with goodwill now he addressed the crowd as follows Achilles Zeus-esteemed you induce me to elucidate the rage of Apollo the lord and crack shot god I will talk But take note Swear an oath not to balk in word or deed

but protect me ‘cause I expect to gall a man who holds full sway above us all a man the Greeks obey A king is superior all the more so when galled by his inferior Say on the day of he swallows his anger Still there’s the rancor he retains in his chest till its aims are manifest Tell me then will you defend me?

In reply the nimble-footed Achilles told him Be bold and prophesy

Defeated No More feat. Edward Macfarlane- Disclosure Hibiscus- Le1f Ice Cream Man- Rome Fortune Buchla- Four Tet 216- Lee Bannon Thousand Year Old Child- Pure X The Love Quadrant- Space Dimension Controller Burn Rubber feat. Joe Moses & YG- DJ Mustard The Fall- Rhye Steelspittin(mp3codec errorincluded)- Lil Ugly Mane Getting Wood- Trippy Turtle x Booty Beaver Faithful- Jacques Greene You Want Me (Demo)- Justin Bieber Who The Fuck is Paging Me At 5- Tuamie Furthest Thing- Drake Bimmer feat. Frank Ocean- Tyler, the Creator Giorgio by Moroder- Daft Punk Brothers Can’t See Me- Quasimoto Put On- Galcher Lustwerk Collard Greens feat. Kendrick Lamar- Schoolboy Q Come Thru (Screwed and Chopped by Drobitussin)- Drake 5 Days- Inc. Undress U- Giraffage 4 In The Mornin- Nipsey Hussle Ultraviolet- FKA Twigs Q.U.E.E.N. feat Erykah Badu- Janelle Monáe Heathrow (Children Of The Night)- World’s Fair Midnight Sun- Tinashe Numbers on the Board- Pusha T Sunday’s Best/Monday’s Worst- Black Milk Sleep Sound- Jaime xx Paranoia- Chance the Rapper Black Skinhead- Kanye West Difference- Ginuwine Change feat. How To Dress Well- Flume Strawberry Bubblegum (2nd Half)- Justin Timberlake Play by Play- Autre Ne Veut Track 2 (Str8 Out of Mumbai)- Jai Paul Doin’ it Right feat. Panda Bear- Daft Punk Track 7 (Crush)- Jai Paul

picks

michael’s

#bestof 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

20 13

Y.R.N.- Migos After Dark 2- Italians Do It Better S- SZA The Electric Lady- Janelle Monáe Kismet- Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXqurie Tree House- Le1f PLACE/CRUSHER EP- Lee Bannon True Romance- Charli XCX Yugen- Koreless Needs- Giraffage fuckwalker_33.om- fuckwalker Japan- suicideyear Settle- Disclosure Beautiful Rewind- Four Tet Ketchup- DJ Mustard Woman- Rhye Crenshaw- Nipsey Hussle Anything in Return- Toro y Moi Welcome to Mikrosector-50- Space Dimension Controller Beautiful Pimp- Rome Fortune Hanging Gardens- Classixx Three Sided Tape Volume One- Lil Ugly Mane Yessir, Whatever- Quasimoto Bastards of the Party- World’s Fair The Gift Vol IV- Tuamie Old- Danny Brown Immunity- Jon Hopkins Three Kings- TGT Cut 4 Me- Kelela Pull My Hair Back- Jessy Lanza Black Water- Tinashe Random Access Memories/Random Access Memories Memories Yeezus- Kanye West EP2- FKA twigs Flume (Mixtape)- Flume Blowing Up the Workshop Mix- Galcher Lustwerk Wolf- Tyler, the Creator Anxiety- Autre Ne Veut No World- Inc. Jai Paul- Jai Paul

this is jai paul’s world, we’re just living in it.

(I don’t know if I even like those albums anymore — Michael)

LIBERTAS, V o l . 1 9 , N o . 3

14

LIBERTAS last word

In honor of the upcoming issue of REDACTED, “HOME,” I am sharing pictures of a home that, as I understand, belonged to a nephew of REDACTED, the former president of Tunisia, ousted during the revolution that touched off the REDACTED Spring. It is no longer inhabitable. Prior to the 2011 revolution, graffit was not commonly seen in Tunis. The REDACTED security situation during the last few years (including a period of essentially no police force) has facilitated a growing interest in grafitti and hip-hop among Tunisia’s young REDACTED.