MINT Magazine Winter 2022

MINT

photographed by kelsey wang

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

dear readers,

is winter, MINT is returning to print after a long hiatus of two years. We return as the same publication, but under vastly di erent circumstances. After all, this year is the rst time in a while where campus, and perhaps life in general, seems to be heading back to “normal.”

Our cover is a declaration of our collective re-emergence; the set is decorated as a stereotypical “grandma’s attic,” and the model is nally unveiling himself from underneath the sheets that have been collecting dust for so long. Together, we are slowly but surely leaving this “attic,” that is not just representative of the pandemic, but of an era of isolation and self-discovery. We are dusting ourselves o , recalibrating and adjusting to the new normal, as we prepare to present ourselves to the world again.

In this issue, we invited our contributors to examine their own relations and how they have changed, now that we’ve settled back into a familiar reality. We asked ourselves, how have our priorities shifted? What is still important to me, and what isn’t? We invite you to ask yourselves these questions too, as you read through.

ank you to the amazing team who made this issue possible, to all the photographers, writers, designers, stylists, and more. You are all endlessly inspiring, and we hope you, the reader, enjoy their amazing work in the following pages.

Kelsey Wang Natalie Zezza MINT Editors-in-Chief

MINT STAFF

editors-in-chief

kelsey WANG

natalie ZEZZA

creative directors

osadolor OSAWEMWENZE

bailey NICOLSON

managing director

laura FUTAMURA

design directors

katrina LIOU

victoria HILL

writing director

anastasia SOTIROPOULOS

photo directors

katie HAN

sherry MESTAN

modeling director

nicole DOMINGO

social media director

maddie BERNHEIM

events directors

caroline GRAHAM

selina ZHANG

fnancial offcer

ron ROCKY COLOMA

IN THIS ISSUE

skate!

escape to the city

artifcial intimacy

half full yet?

born of water: to drown

make it fat.

they say visions of separation touch no contact redefnition

editorial outtakes

photographed by Laura Futamura

writing by Russell Lacara

design by Laura Futamura & Russell Lacara

The relentless barrage, crests like mountains and troughs like valleys, would see our relations forever claimed to the sea—heads bobbing just at the other side of an infinity of salt and brine, dancing like specks of stars in the evening sky. And so we went on like this. Wrapping and wounding the remains of the silver strings as tightly as we could around our palms, fruitlessly pulling ourselves over sweeping waves beneath the steady burning of the sun, closer to whatever relations we had left, floating on momentary patches of a calm sea ceiling with the shimmering hope that the gentle hands of sea giants would reach out and cradle us and deliver us back to shore in the night, only to wake up and find that our relations had drifted farther away. And so we went on like this without even the thought of shore in sight, ebbing and flowing with the tide.

As the world fought to stay afloat, connected by whatever tethers remained, I felt the weight of severance pushing me below the surface until my spirit was submerged, surrounded on all sides by damp sun rays that reached like outstretched arms into my new fortress. I began to sink, further and further down, and the lives of the earth still tossing above began to converge and disappear into specks that I could glimpse at through my fingertips. The light of the burning sun was growing thinner as I descended. I found myself newly embraced by an empty, cavernous darkness, enveloped by the low feeling of a monstrous pair of eyes just beyond my sight, watching me slowly plummet further below. In this darkness, there was nothing but my spirit. My voice called out towards empty ears. I began to plead, to scream and thrash for anybody to cast their silver strings around my waist and pull me closer into a warm embrace, but the biting loneliness only grew colder and colder around my wrists.

When the world began to waver all that time ago, it felt as if we were all cast into the open sea, the slender silver strings that tenderly wrapped around our spirits and connected to the hearts of our relations were severed when jagged waves came carving through.

Are they going to leave me down here? Are they going to leave me in the darkness of the sea? Will I never make it back to land? I look down at my palms and place them onto my neck. The coldness of the water is making me shiver, is biting at my ears. I am going to be forgotten. As I begin to swim upwards, the weight of doubt grabs me by the ankles and casts me back down to the floor. It was so warm down here, I can stay here forever if I find that warmth again. If I can find that peace again.

But as I look up, the loneliness sets in once more, stabbing holes into my lungs and filling them with salt and ice. I am not at peace. But those people, in my falling they have changed. They have lived lives upon the bobbing of the ocean waves while I have only fallen. Have I grown? Have I changed? If I return, will they see me? Will they even know me? The people are drifting closer and closer to the beaches. Before I can make a decision, the great eye blinks once more and a powerful stream shoots me upwards. I am rushing towards the surface, pushing past the water and darkness that grates and shreds my skin. I am getting closer and closer to the surface, and the light of the sun is beginning to pierce my eyes.

I break the surface and I am thrown onto the white beach where my landing calls the attention of the world. Everybody is staring at me. Looking through me and past me and around me. They are disgusted by me. The sun is burning the back of my neck. I collapse onto my hands and knees and feel the hot sand cutting into me. It is suffocating, the gaze of the people,

directed by rima makaryan

photographed by bryan de an & rima makaryan

writing by anna zheng

modeled by elsa wilbur styled by mariela santelices

design by sheena lai

REDEFINITION

Breath in and I cough awake the same Dust as yesterday the same Fans purring the same

Bleaching glow of overhead lights and I Don’t have to look to know no one is Watching me run e same functions as always the

Tucking in and pulling on of

Perfect porcelain smiles and careful Angles I can no longer hold onto Watching me run from e same functions the same Days bleeding blank in memory and me e listless center of the same Solitary drama

In my mind there are Bright bursts of orange with no Origin. ere are Blushing blues and Searing reds. I want something Pink today and I don’t know why. It is not

Sense as much as sensing, this Something inside that says pink.

And Silver and purple and green and Sometimes I scare myself with e strength of my heartbeat, e bass thud that echoes in my Fingertips and their smears of Light the way I can draw a

Line from wrist to ngertip a Curve from hip to stomach

e still air is safe harbor and I go to War with paints slash and Dash with no consequences, No Need for consistency what is Yes today may be No tomorrow. Yes. Try again. No. Another shade.

Behind these walls I ail and stomp I gasp I

Dance like no one’s watching because no one is but when I open my eyes. e beat withers.

the doorknob is an open question

Breath and stab my lungs into bloody pulp yes the answer is yes I will trip and fall and bruise myself in technicolor swathes of green and run on red blisters until calluses accumulate and burn in white hot sunlight just to let my limbs blush and dapple with brown and paint purple shadows underneath my eyes from staying out too late and drinking too much and laughing too hard and screaming yes and yes and yes to bad decisions good decisions any fall so long as it’s mine I breath and the air burns with my mistakes and laughter and I cannot see the mess I surely am but for the rst time I know I am beautiful I am here and the two are one and the same I am drowning in deep air and I breath in.

editorial outtakes

photographed by Sherry Mestan & Katie Han

modeled by Matthew Mettias

art direction & styling by Osadolor Osawemwenze, Kelsey Wang, & Bailey Nicolson

makeup by Isis-Kohle Jackson

“We have changed, we have grown, and that in itself is beautiful. There is a sense of warmth in this growing realization as we now welcome the unknown future since we know how easy it is for plans to be forever altered.”