loam
Spring 2015
“The photo is from a box of old negatives I bought - I printed it but can’t totally claim credit. I guess it’s not really how I inhabit a place, but I keep coming back to this photo trying to make sense of this one girl’s interaction with her environment.” Adam Macalister ‘17
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Caroline Caitlin ‘15
contents Editors Note..................................................................................................................3 Driving Through Kentucky by Morgan Hill..............................................................5 The City That Never Was by Maya McDonnell.........................................................9
Marble Maze by Nicole Stanton................................................................................22
Artwork by Caroline Caitlin, Lizzy Elliott, Elijah Stevens, Nicole Stanton, Kate
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welcome to loam, spring 2015.
loam is an arts magazine dedicated to illuminating Wesleyan’s enviro third edition, we will be exploring place.
the following pages use word and image to attempt to make sense of experiences that make this encounter sacred or exploitative. we ask concrete, spaces of dwelling.
within these pages we express how, why, and where humans inhabit Kate Weiner ‘15 Nicole Stanton ‘15
onmental community through the creativity of its student body. for our
f human interactions with, and integration into nature. we navigate you to consider the foraging human, the entanglement of roots and city
t place. enjoy.
Driving through Kentucky Morgan Hill ‘15 “When they talk about nine feet of loam, this is what they mean.” It’s warm on this side of the mountains. We’re on our way to see horses and men. The walls of the freeway are a hundred million years old. The bedrock scabs up along dynamite skewers.
Stripped tires sun along the road like fat shells. I want to see it a thousand years from now.
“The point was to dig in the right spots, but they started strip mining, so.” The coal belts rise and bend.
It’s the toughest. Mountains are just that but thrust up. A dead coy dog on the median. Heat passes through the loam. At home you won’t see horses with their heads down for another month. The blue heron was a sign. There’s so much fence. The speed limit is just fast. There’s a whole entrance for stallions. “That’s all one big pasture.” “You need a horse to go get your horse.” “Don’t you miss the green you know it can be?” “Do you think zombies could break down that fence?” 5
Nicole Stanton ‘15
Elijah Stevens ‘15
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An Anthropology and African-American Studies double major, Savannah Turner is a vital presence at Wesleyan. Her work with the Ankh and the CT Hip-Hop Initiative—an arts program that uses hip-hop as a tool for transforming the structure of our education system—has impacted many people on and off campus. -
It is this process of transformation that especially excites Savannah. As she shares, “I would love to
spaces to transform.” Savannah’s emphasis on the push and pull exchange of energies between people and place reminded me of the necessity of exercising reciprocity in our relationship to the earth. And her articu-
to the transformation and retransformation of people and places.”
Cecile Emeke, “Strolling”
Petra Collins, “Making Space”
Noelle Hiam ‘15
The City That Never Was
They say she looks like a sleeping lady from a certain angle, but I’ve driven north and south on High-
watchtower at her highest peak as a nipple, the mountain itself one giant boob.
Mt. Tamalpais looms above my very idea of home, a dark mass of trees, blurred and silhouetted against the setting sun. She hangs around my neck. She casts shadows over me as the light bends in the afternoon. The trees mesh into a mass of variant shades of green.
would have poured over Tamalpais in the headlands that face San Francisco and turned a mountain into a
a distorted, futuristic mirror of the city to the south.
apartment buildings and single residences would house 30,000 new people in the lump hills of Tamalpais. A
trailhead, not even a bus stop. A dirt road climbs up Tamalpais’s spine, footsteps brushed lightly into the
drives home that never happened.
conservation efforts sweeping over Marin County. Most of Tamalpais remains untouched, guarded by rules and signs. 9
The trail at the highway exit is called Marincello. It is one of many that web across the mountain like
in between. The open spaces that sprawl like Dr. Seuss illustrations when winter rain turns the grasses a vibrant green, and the trees that lie a few feet from her trails with nooks begging to be sat in, the forts and fairy houses that have been left behind like miniature ruins.
skirts of the city that never was.
I imagine myself meandering through Marincello, a place I know only as photos of the 3D model and the entrance gate that was built but eventually torn down. It smells like plastic and the pavement is smooth, the kind I used to love to ride my scooter along. The high-rise apartment buildings are sterile and white. They simultaneously tuck into Tamalpais’s curves but their futuristic stylings cannot resist jutting out from the mountain. All the roads curve at perfectly circular degrees, and the women smile as they walk along the mall and talk about the fog in the summertime. None of the cars make noises and the trees have been uprooted and replanted, sitting only where they belong.
and unmaintained. I learned it in the dark, so I know the way by touch -- how the damp dead wood feels as I hold it to climb up and over a fallen trunk, how the branch gently rocks as I tiptoe over it to cross the
sleep soundly, nestled safely in her crevices in the city that never was. 10
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and mountaintop removal, forming a portrait of how its residents envision their futures.
project near impossible, often resulting in them getting hollered at as “tree huggers” and doors slamming in
so deeply entangled in coal, that if you are not in defense of it, you risk your livelihood. The very thing that leaves countless families fatherless and makes their children ill is that which they defend. Mountaintop re-
mining is eliminated, a victory for the environment, what happens to these peoples’ lives?
from which to view environmental issues such as coal mining and mountaintop removal. The images are thoughtful, unexpected, empathetic, and powerful, suggesting the ways in which placing preconceptions aside can be a way of accessing unforeseen truth.
Nicole Stanton‘15
Elijah Stevens ‘15
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Nicole Stanton ‘15
A ectomycorrhizal mushrooms and measure forest productivity. This experience, coupled with her work at a wildlife hospital in her native Marin, laid the groundwork for her endeavors in the realm of compassionate conservation. During her work with the wildlife hospital, Alexa fostered infant raccoons that had been affected by hostile human/wildlife interactions and habitat fragmentation. “We leave wildlife,” Alexa notes, “to exist in these small pockets of wilderness or in the shadows of our more developed suburban spaces, encourage a culture that creates a space for wildlife.
collaborative research is a vital contribution to the conversation on compassion conservation. After graduation this May, Alexa will continue to strengthen her understanding of wildlife welfare. She’ll spend the next year traveling from an exotic animal sanctuary in Hawaii to the California Wildlife Center in Malibu to the ences on the blog “Alexa’s Ark.” Stay tuned for her updates on what promises to be an incredible experience in cultivating compassion and healing wildlife.
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Marble Maze Nicole Stanton ‘15 Summer heat sat in salty pools on my lip, that year. It lived between damp thighs and sticky leather, that year. He sat in the front seat. that year. Windows wide open to lure out the red in my face he put there. Fingers curled like vines around wheel, young tendrils acting grown up, steering straight. Sun roof beaming white hot onto my blonde head, dripping nausea into my gut. He sat to my right, that year. Sandy soles of feet scratching raw into wooly carpets. We will never grow trees, I thought. These tiny grains and itchy sweat and pounding wind into ears beg your vocal bombardment elsewhere. There are not roots, here. Sack of pearls, We are in a marble maze. Wind rattles, heat rattles. Thank god. With the rattle I forget I can see and forgetting a sense is sometimes to master it.
Kate Weiner ‘15
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Kate Weiner ‘15
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and cuts through the plains of Nepal into India. The immense change in altitude and wide rain-catchment area causes the river to carry one of the highest sediment loads in the world. Every monsoon, the water
say. She is celebrated as both the giver and taker of life. It seemed that every person I spoke to would say the mation about the project with the communities by the river, it appeared that almost everyone knew, perhaps from past experience, what to expect from damming up a river as powerful as the Koshi. Upstream, behind sweeping away land, houses, animals, and people. Downstream, the river’s natural course will be diverted such that farmland can no longer rely on it as a source of irrigation, rendering the most fertile land in Nepal dry and unproductive. And then there’s the possibility of enormous destruction if the dam were to fail. “The
without compact soil, it may break the mountain or hill and cause an explosion. It will force its way through and make a new place for itself. Nobody knows where, but this explosion will be very dangerous, and it may be the biggest disaster to happen in Nepal.”Flooding upstream, dryness downstream. The words replay in my mind as the small bus trembles down the road. I am travelling to Prakaspur, a village downstream of the dam site that is primarily inhabited by farmers. I push my head against the win-
Nepal, and apart from the dusty road and the occasional house hung with lines of drying laundry, all I see is ment to its life-giving power. A woman with a white cloth tied around her head chases a herd of goats with a stick. The water that sustains all of this will be transported elsewhere—and what of the farmers? When the path in the middle, the ground is covered in long strips of burlap, upon which are piled vegetables like I’ve my eyes burn, deep purple onions and dark okra stems, tomatoes glowing like red suns, knobs of ginger encrusted in dirt and cucumbers covered in rice sacks to protect them from the heat. Women who shade themthe ripest picks for their 25
had agreed to show me around the village, pauses by a heap of long green leaves and picks up a handful, dle under his arm. “My wife will be happy;” he says, “her favourite.” We wander through the village and buy gate fashioned from sticks of bamboo, and we slip through into the outdoor courtyard of the village school. The classrooms are built from clay pasted over bamboo and straw, with long rectangular windows cut into the walls and rows of benches lining the inside. A stack of bricks at least six feet high rests outside expectrees. Near the edge of the farm, I notice the rusted indigo frame of a soccer net. Three middle-aged women emerge from the schoolhouse, two wearing traditional clothes and one wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the geeta, and Sushila, three farmers from the village. Maya, sitting on the right, speaks the most, followed by fering mentally. If the dam is built, it will be dangerous. We are mentally tortured by the worry of an earthnearby. Maya follows my eyes. “We are farmers, most of us in this village, and downstream from the dam will become dry. Agriculture will suffer and our income will decrease, so we must build canals to get water. We are against building the high dam because—we aren’t sure about technical reasons, but we are scared. It will suffer. We will have problems with water if the dam is built, and many disadvantages.” Sangeeta is nodding her head vigorously now, and she places a hand on Maya’s knee, as if to signal that she has something to share. She keeps her hand on the wrinkled cotton of Maya’s skirt while she speaks. “Women will be very come will suffer. It is a social and economic issue. The soil will not be moist and we won’t have water.”There is something about the three women sitting here across from me, hands on each other’s knees, now and then
Kate Weiner ‘15
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Elijah Stevens ‘15
Elijah Stevens‘15
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Awake in the City
Mush of old soaked posters was ground into the concrete among dappled points of light, highlighting bits of color, appearing to hold the form of a secret picture I could see if I just strained my eyes. Above, the sky was a soft, light blue all the way to the horizon, where it took on a rosy hue. Somehow, the light was so clear, so beautiful, it felt as if I’d just put on glasses to discover that my eyes had been woefully impaired, and with the new, bright, clear world, everything was possible.
of everything, along with the imperious chill, drew me into what can only be described as a paroxysmal yearning. The tops of trees were at the same distance as the clouds, as the heavens—all was in my reach. It blood than seemed necessary or safe. So I stepped on the poster pulp and walked down the city street towards the park, where I sat on something vast that poked hazy wings out from behind trees, hidden in the networked threads of frost in the combed grass. Nearby a group of youth was laughing, their arms around each other. They had stayed up all night and were discussing the music they had seen and the bars they had gone to. I felt like crying, and felt or was buffeted to and fro in a wind that came from nowhere and everywhere. The laughing people passed
Forward. So I began to walk the cold city as dawn cracked its translucent eggshell and spilled pellucid crystal light over everything, the yolk slowly pulling its vast self from behind the borders of language, treetops illuminated by dusky pollen. I walked as the city slowly woke. I pointed and the lights came on, beckoned and a man exited his doorway for the early shift. I conducted the song of the birds outside the window of a woman’s apartment; she pulled the curtains back and yawned. Then I wondered if time went backwards, would it make a difference.
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Sienna Courter ‘15
Nick Martino ‘15
Silence in concert with A marriage of hope and superstition That we, steadily, are powerless To bear the aspect It was no use. In the end We arrived. They slept In a mantle of white beneath The underside of a woman’s arm.
Kate Weiner ‘15
pear-insides
ourselves out as well. Safer stuck in a time before now, sweater caught on the handle, holes forming where I am most tender. When he writes that everything is womb, it is all warm around. Next time I’ll ask if my face was recognizthe stem off, bite directly down. The insides are pulpy. I want to be in a space so small with you that it is full with you and our eyes forgive us for they don’t have room to open. “subsiding sea” unraveling, broken at the bottom. how many tides until shattered ruins become sea glass? -grow soft with mespill from the ceiling i can only imagine the splash. i will tie your knots for you if you untangle the seaweed from its embrace in my hair.
Elijah Stevens ‘15 37
Elijah Stevens ‘15
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“Why do I recognize these things?� unconscious grocery store maps modern art aesthetic to banal grocery story yellow graphics have nothing to do with sugar
clamshell holding a fast food burger
chicken soup made with tiny whole chickens
loam makes a terrarium.
a sealed transparent globe or similar container in which plants are grown.
a clear glass jar, bowl, vase – a beautiful glass container of any kind rocks, pebbles, or recycled glass chunks activated charcoal potting soil that will make your plants happy moss – only if you want a scoop, shovel-like tool scissors
poison your charming plants glass chunks. this will allow the water to settle, as to not over-hydrate your plants. charcoal. just a layer will do. this stuff keeps odors and mold out of sight. they’re a bit too long and breaking up the soil with your hands. little selves to secure them.
keep in indirect sunlight water just enough so the soil isn’t dry trim the dead leaves off your plants to keep your terrarium vibrant now love the heck out of your little plant globe.
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Sisters Kate Weiner ‘15 She stood barefoot on the stoop snaked in moss. The pink of her hands emerged like salmon in the dawn light. Most days were waking early to get to work. No soap in the bathroom. Sore legs from standing behind the deli counter. Iceberg lettuce. Salami the same texture as rubber. Today she didn’t go to work. She fed her sister’s cat, up his grey water, liked to clean the muddy-colored cat food from the aluminum lid and recycle the can in the blue bin by the backdoor. As a child, her stepmother kept the week’s groceries—dried cherries, beans, rice, cereal—packed into pearly Tupperwares that were nothing like the wrinkled bags and dented boxes most food came in. Years later, she still saw something of paradise in the process of transferal. From red-patterned wrapper to neat container, from used can to car wheel. Satiated, Mouse sat at her side on the cold stoop steps. The salmon run came later. Maybe earlier. She’d dreamt before of salmon carcasses lying limp on the Watching the morning unspool, she thought of this empty house that wasn’t hers, soil she ate from without touching, trees she breathed in without holding, and sensed her body dissolve the way chalky
Sunsetting Noelle Hiam ‘15 Staring into the geographical void that is unplanned And I think “we are scraping� Cold, our metallic bodies carve glacial grooves in malleable rusting pavement Awoken from that dream-scene that is mostly a feeling feeling stones and my hands growing solid and stuck and knowing I am naked, I am clothed. This is a joke I have made before and will make many times again. tasted cement but its taste offers the picture of a day at the beach, my scalp full of sand and scratching it free ancient glass
After the pictures, the sand is gone and I am looking into your eyes and seeing Nothing, besides what could be the light of our entire universe in each individual axon, turning color to message and black and back again. this is synchronicity- the rainbow made by a plastic prism When we have completed our scrape across the vast and sloping metal Earth, tiny crevasses are birthplace the repopulating family of species. Among these a lone poppy. petals cast a glow and held in its understory is the inside of my eyelids when I look into the Sun, with eyes closed. When it is trampled and tilled it will be Sunset and I won’t want to open or close my eyes until each of its seeds may rise and set with the rains.
Elijah Stevens ‘15