Other People Collection No. 3

SELF-IDENTITY

Fall 2021 Collection No. 3

EDITORS’ NOTE

Welcome to Other People Magazine’s third issue, Self-Identity. We are thrilled to hit the presses with our newest major collection, shining a light on the talented and diverse artists among the UCSD undergraduate community. The whole team is excited to start the year by bringing you these outstanding works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art. As a literary and artistic community which seeks to explore the collective human experience, it is our hope that the creativity within this collection resonates with you.

The majority of the pieces in this issue were conceived, created, and assembled for publication in the late stages of California’s lockdown and the COVID-19 pandemic. The writing and artwork in our third collection reflects the sheer amount of time our contributing artists spent with themselves this past year. The self may never be fully known, but through finding and embracing our self-identity we strengthen our abilities to make sense of the world, our relationships, and our reactions and preconceptions. With Self-Identity, Other People Magazine hopes to pay homage to this era of introspection among the undergraduate artistic body while welcoming students—both old and new—back onto campus. The conclusion to the COVID-19 pandemic is yet to be seen, but in the pages of Self-Identity we know you will find proof that this time spent within has made us stronger, more empathetic, and more appreciative of our loved ones.

Family played a large role in this collection. In reviewing submissions, our editorial team found that many of our contributors had centered their work around their families or their cultural backgrounds. It is through family that we gain our original roots of self-identity; the love, challenges, responsibilities, and growth we experience with family shape our own selves. So, too, does family lend shape to this issue of the magazine and its works of art.

So many thanks to everyone involved with this project. First, thank you to all of our incredible team members for the beautiful work you do. Team members who have graduated—you played such a huge role in lifting up the project of Other People from the beginning. Special thanks to Geraldine, our recently graduated Design

co-director, whose artistic touch transformed the magazine drafts into stunning finished products. To the authors and artists of this collection: we are honored to showcase your work in this issue. Thank you, too, to the authors, artists, photographers, and other creative individuals who sent their pieces to us—although we had to limit the length of this issue and could not publish every piece we received, reading your work is a highlight of this entire process. We owe so many thanks to the professors and faculty of the Literature Department who have supported, encouraged, and spread the word for us. And thank you to our magazine’s online followers and our readers. We hope you find this collection to be a journey of self-identity, whether to experience a piece of someone else’s through their creativity, or to find a piece of your own through the lens of the artwork here.

-Montanna Harling (Co-Editor-in-Chief) and Isaac Kopstein (Head Editor)

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Abiding Vestige

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Say Grace

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The Middle of All Middles

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Pomegranates

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The Divine Diablo Dichotomy

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blame and balm

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An Interview with Mariah v.n.

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High Tide

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Block Cockroach

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Origami for the Soul

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Sing

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grandfather

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The Joy of Having Low Standards

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mother moon

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Creative Write-up by Janelle Kim

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by Hope Koyama

by Trinity Hansen

by Hannah Xu

CONTENTS

by Dharma Gutierrez

by Eli

by Mariah v.n.

by Riley Sutton

by Marina Lee

by Matthew Wills

by Ryan Phung

by Katrina Ngo

by Jillian Calilung

by Xiaoxing

Based on an Interview with Xiaoxing

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Abiding Vestige Hope Koyama, photography

Say Grace, Trinity Hansen The sky is a purple I’ve only ever seen in dreams the wind is calling out to me in coos I might identify as warmth and moths have begun to weep at the resignation of my overhead lamp the room is filled with ebony albeit hushed and mute My love lies in my grandma’s contorted palms and the deep tortured roots of all our connected hearts our time is tied to this earth tied to names and cities we will never own our bodies sacred and seething we are pressed flowers bound to bibles and woven into memory I kept every fan from that summer shields against the frothy and dignified Texas heat sun shining emerald and melting my chest into the weight of butter stained glass figures completed by sky church hats peering down at me like halos grandma said God is in everything

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Illustration by Hana Tobias

I can still feel the ridges and grooves kneaded into my scalp the stiff joints of our dining room table my family’s hands coming together in bellied laughter and quiet love sweet gospel say grace

The Middle of All Middles:

On Quiet Tears and the Manifestation of Guilt

by Hannah Xu

Illustrations by Kristy Lee 3

Sometimes I wonder how I will feel when my parents die.

I acknowledge that conjecturing about such a thing doesn’t make me a special person. In fact, I bet that almost everyone has thought about their parents dying in some capacity. But lately, I’ve been spending a little too much time indoors and in my head. So, I wonder.

I know I’d be sad, go through the agonizing stages of grief. (Of course I would; I’m not a terrible person). But there is also a part of me, microscopic, that thinks that along with all the sadness and ache, I’d also feel a bit of relief.

So, maybe I am a terrible person.

When I was 17, in the mellow heat of late California springtime, I went home after school one day and was immediately told to start packing. My dad, anxious, said, “We’re flying to China in two days.” I already knew what was happening. For two years, my grandfather had struggled with gastric cancer. Three months before the end of the school year, my mom, an oncology nurse, had gone back to China to take care of him. I never asked, but during the early days of his diagnosis, I assumed that she thought taking care of her father was her sole burden to bear, despite having two brothers, since she had experience taking care of cancer patients. Did she feel she neglected him? Pursued a “better life” and left her family in the dust?

We flew to China on a Saturday. After a grueling 16-hour flight, my dad, sister, and I took a train ride to my parents’ hometown, a small rural village eight hours south of Beijing. On a bullet train, the trip takes only two-and-a-half hours — not nearly enough time to mentally prepare for the coming weeks. Upon arrival, my oldest uncle met us at the train station to take us to the hospital. We would be saying goodbye to my grandfather soon.

The concept of China is something of a mystery to me. It’s one of those places that I know but I don’t. Every other year until I was ten, I spent my summers at my parents’ old homes. Some of my fondest childhood memories consist of playing with my cousins with whom I couldn’t even communicate. I know China because I have felt China — in the dust that collected in my hair and on my clothes from the unpaved streets; in the lukewarm water that my grandpa would collect from a local well and 4

bring to our shower; in the sizzling heat that would radiate off the enormous wok my grandmother used in the kitchen.

And yet, despite having grown up going to China frequently, I am still a stranger. The first night of every visit, family friends stop by in a non-stop barrage, inquiring, “Do you remember me? Do you remember me?” Even if I don’t, I feel obliged to say yes. The women in my family grab my wrist, squeeze, and say, “She’s getting a little fatter!” I can never tell if this is a compliment or an insult, or a little bit of both. I think my parents, with their Western-trained ears, always think those comments are in poor taste, but I don’t care. I’m just happy to see everyone again.

When I’m there, I am a guest. I can tell because when I visit, my grandma fishes out an old fork and knife set reserved for my sister and me. And yet nothing made the fact more obvious than my own grandfather’s funeral.

My grandfather died the day that we arrived. I’m not a hugely spiritual or superstitious person, but I believe he was waiting for his whole family to be with him before O(THE)R PEOPLE MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 - SELF-IDENTITY

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he let himself rest.

Traditional Chinese funerals are an exhaustive affair. They last a week at minimum, with rituals and events happening throughout the entire day. Almost as soon as my grandfather died, we were whisked back to my grandmother’s home to start preparing. When we arrived back, my cousins gave me a white head scarf and white capelike drape to wrap around my shoulders. They asked, “Do you have anything white to wear?” I pretended to check my suitcase, but I already knew — everything I had packed was black.

I learned that evening that white is the color of death in China. Funny, I thought.

Where I’m from, white is the color of life.

Luckily, my mom had a pair of white jeans and a neutral shirt that I could wear. The rest of the week was busy — during the day, villagers from the small town walked into our courtyard and stopped by my grandfather’s casket, which was kept in the living room, and presented food and gifts to him. A constant stream of strangers milled around the kitchen, the halls, the dining area. Except these people weren’t strangers. My family knew all their faces. The only unfamiliar person was me.

At night, our family poured out into those unpaved roads that I knew from my childhood and marched across the town. My oldest aunt wailed at the top of her lungs, screaming my grandpa’s name. Others cried after her, almost reaching her volume but not quite. I never knew what to do — crying is such a reserved act in the U.S. Overwhelmed, I constantly moved my head, looking around, to try to figure out my role in this. Was I supposed to be screaming too? My cousin, once, gently pushed the nape of my neck, indicating to keep my head bowed. It was like everyone had read some sort of funeral manual, and all I could do was grasp for my cousin’s hand and hope I wasn’t making a fool out of the family.

Afterwards, and every night, we held a vigil. During the first one, my dad told me, “They were alarming the village. Your aunties, they’re making sure everyone knows someone’s passed away. It’s a really old tradition, and not everyone agrees you should do it anymore. But your aunties thought it was a good idea to do it anyway.” Not my mom, though. Her tears were quiet ones.

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At some point, my parents decided they wanted to diversify their vacations, so we stopped going back to China during the summers. In this last decade, I’ve only been back three times, the third time being for my grandfather’s funeral. When I was in my early teens, I thought nothing of it. But as I got older and older, I became more suspicious. My dad once remarked, “You know, when I first met your mom, she used to tell me that China had no culture. She would say, ‘Look at all these other countries. They all have their dancing and singing and look at us! We have nothing!’”

My parents grew up in poverty during some of China’s toughest times. They were born at the tail end of the Great Chinese Famine, and lived through Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution. My parents were only able to go to college as a result of a government sanctioned program that they had to go through rigorous testing and interviews to get into. My mom was the first woman in her small village to go to college; my dad was the first person to ever leave for Beijing, “the big city,” and eventually America. When you go back to their old high school, there are pictures of them on the school wall, proudly labeled as “notable alumni” — all because they escaped. It makes sense, then, that we stopped going back to China as I got older, when the familial obligation died down. They escaped, why would they want to go back?

“She doesn’t even belong here. She can’t speak Chinese. What a waste,” some man grumbled to the air in my grandma’s living room.

It takes a lot of audacity to claim that a granddaughter doesn’t belong at her grandfather’s funeral. I think he assumed I couldn’t understand Chinese.

When I told my sister what this man had said to me, indirectly or not, she was immediately furious. “How dare he say that when people are grieving?” she fumed.

“Don’t pay any attention to him. You just remember that even at 17, you are more educated and more skilled than he will ever be.”

She didn’t mean it, she was just mad. I know because she later admitted how ashamed she was to lash out like that. “We can’t help that we were born from parents that have stable, well-paying jobs. We will always have more privileges than the majority of the people here, you remember that.”

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What my sister felt that day is what writer Cathy Park Hong would call “political shame.” It’s a kind of shame that manifests from not knowing your place in a social hierarchy, being both the afflicter and afflicted of stifling social expectations. For my sister and me, it’s knowing that even though we will never measure up to our white colleagues, we will also never have to work nearly as hard as those in the Chinese countryside to earn a livable wage. For my parents, it’s knowing that they’ve turned their backs on their families and on their pasts in order to have a so-called “better life” and yet have to endure being called racist slurs at their workplace. The shame you feel when you trip and fall in front of people eventually dissipates. Political shame follows you everywhere.

On the last day of my grandpa’s funeral, we had to take his body to the crematorium and watch it be put into the oven. The people that worked there asked if we would like to keep the bones. There was a deeply uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before my grandma declined. His bones were put into the urn with the rest of him.

Once the process was done, we took the urn to an expansive field in the middle of nowhere. My uncle dug a hole into the grass before planting my grandfather down into the ground. “We would normally bury his body, but there are too many people to bury now, so the government says we have to use ashes to save space,” my cousin told my dad who told me.

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My uncles heaped piles and piles of dirt on top of my grandfather’s ashes to form a small hill. They staked a modest gravestone into the side of the hill. Again, confused and uninformed as to what I was supposed to be doing, I followed my cousin to the ground where we kneeled and prayed three times over. Lastly, my aunts passed around fresh fruit and buns to throw on top of the grave, giving my grandfather sustenance on his journey towards the other realm.

The week following we revisited his grave to give him more food. Chinese folklore says it takes a year for the body to reach heaven, so the family has to visit every weekend for a year to make sure he has enough food. Once we were there, I was surprised that my aunts and uncles didn’t clear away any of the rotting food that had started to attract flies. It seemed disrespectful, but tradition is tradition.

Chinese funerals are better than American funerals in my opinion. American funerals only last a day and then you’re expected to move on with your life. At least with Chinese funerals, you are so overwhelmed by the grief and spectacle of it all that, by the end, you’re too tired to be sad. The biggest difference between the two, though, is how death is treated. White people are so scared of death, they want the corpse tucked away and gone as soon as possible. In a Chinese funeral, the corpse stays out in a refrigerated casket for a week.

Chinese funerals are about confronting abjection, or the discomfort one feels from being separate. After all, the corpse, as philosopher Julia Kristeva says in her essay Powers of Horror, is the “utmost abjection.” Kristeva argues that the best examples of abjection happen when you are confronted by things that represent a transitional state, a corpse representing the transitional state between life and death.

Abjection and shame go hand in hand. They are both unwanted feelings that stem from a state of middle-ness. They both deal in the transition that convinces you that you are both good and not good enough, ensnaring you in the worst case of learned helplessness. Abjection is the feeling of displacement in a country that doesn’t accept you but isn’t out to kill you; shame is the realization that you’ve resigned yourself to accept those bounds. And in the middle of all that is guilt. If abjection stems from expectation, as in the expectations that a culture or a country sets for a person, and shame stems from failure, as in a failure to break out of the restraints of expectation, then guilt rests in between.

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Guilt is a strange emotion. It’s why my mom, despite wanting so badly for me to fit in with my white peers, still kept trying to instill aspects of Chinese culture into me.

And why she felt so desperate to take care of my grandpa on her own during his last days. Guilt is perhaps the most burdensome of all emotions. The problem isn’t that it feels bad; it’s that you’ve done something to make you feel good, and the feeling good feels bad. My mom was comfortable with her life in America, and resentful of her harsh upbringing in China, so she was content with letting go. But Chinese culture holds onto things, every little thing. There was the expectation that she would raise Chinese children and uphold Chinese values, but she was okay when she didn’t do either. And when her father died, and she suddenly had to confront that she let go a little too much, she was overwhelmed with guilt.

Now, as I grow older, that guilt has transferred onto me. On my college admissions essays I boasted about being a unique candidate having grown up in an Asian American family, and being the unfamiliar face in a white community. And yet, in college, I try to set myself apart from the Asian international students in fear that I will be drowned out in the sea of faces that my TAs will inevitably confuse me with. Despite my family’s roots, I can’t guarantee that once my parents die I will want to visit China anymore. I can’t even communicate with my extended family, so what’s the point? The guilt lingers because I have paradoxically become accustomed to Chinese culture while separating myself from it. Have I turned away too much in my attempt to find success in this country? This is a uniquely first-generation American problem.

No one else has to pick and choose the pieces of their culture that they want to keep or want to discard.

My sister once asked my parents if they would like a traditional Chinese funeral or an American funeral when they’ve passed. My mom frowned and scolded her to not speak of such things. I think she didn’t want to talk about it because she’d feel bad regardless of what answer she’d give. When my parents die, I think I will find some relief, perhaps in an unfounded hope that the guilt will die with them.

It’s not that I want to feel relief. I just don’t know how to find freedom otherwise.

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Pomegranates, Dharma Gutierrez To resent the sight of rotten flesh decomposing inside my palms.

Its scarlet seeds dried, stale, and scorched from the sun.

A competition lost between me and the birds, now lies only a peel, the abandoned shell of a fruit’s innards.

Conceived from a flower, birthed as a fruit, pecked and plucked by the perverse crows And I picking the pieces of the abandoned corpse.

Illustrations by Kristy Lee O(THE)R PEOPLE MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 - SELF-IDENTITY

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The Divine Diablo Dichotomy Eli, photography

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blame and balm, Mariah v.n. my baba told me i wasn’t hers when she learned i would be a daughter i couldn’t carry on the name so i could only carry shame now my baba lies limp in a floral garden bed so i swallow my pride like a fireball and reach out for her head and call, “are you hungry, baba?” but she spits the rice into my fingers the warmth of it running like water, calling me granddaughter, the last of generations of fathers

like a crime, she is ashamed of what she will leave behind so i threw away her little bottles of tiger balm scrubbed away every trace of her aroma left her obituaries woven in every psalm but i couldn’t wake her from her coma no, she has woken me from mine

Illustration by Caroline Tjoe

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An Interview with Mariah v.n., Author of "blame and balm" Questions Asked by Isaac Kopstein

Q: Over the past year we’ve seen a lot of people making art centered around family. This piece stands out in that it is not entirely rose-tinted in its depiction of a family dynamic. What kind of place were you in, artistically, which prompted you to write about this part of your life?

A: I think it would be unfair to say that my piece necessarily stands out because it’s not exactly a rose-tinted description. Rather, I think family itself has its ups and downs. There are beautiful yet ugly things about family and this is simply a poem that reflects on the more “ugly” parts. They’re not necessarily ugly because these details … expose a complex truth behind family dynamics. Similar to works that depict family in a more positive light, there’s often more to it than how it’s represented — but why it’s represented the way it is. I wasn’t necessarily in any sort of place when I was writing. Very often when I write, it’s whatever comes to me. As vague as that sounds, that’s how a lot of the writing process works for me — I go my entire life thinking and then I jot down whatever comes to mind.

More artistically, it was something I developed and then worked through with my gracious editors. I guess I could say it rose out of raw emotion or whatever else is in me but in the end, I don’t really feel the need to have an artistic place in my mind to create anything. I’m human and I just choose to create something out of that.

Q: Did you feel that the conflict explored in this poem defined your relationship with your grandmother?

A: I can say that my relationship with almost anyone in my family is strained, often due to intergenerational conflict.

I think the first thing that struck me with my grandmother’s death was how little I knew about her. Going through her photo albums and other items made me realize I didn’t really know her as I thought I did. When it comes to defining a relationship with her, it’s rather complicated. There are many things she always forced on me for which I resent her yet whenever she was sick or weak, I would immediately come to help her.

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I didn’t like her nor did I think that I was particularly her favorite person but we both loved each other in the way that we had some sort of common ground of what our family was. There’s not too much I can say about defining our relationship other than that what we had was complicated and perhaps that is the best way to explain it.

Q: How did experiences like these change the way you interacted with the greater world?

A: How I interact with the world is based on the knowledge that there are many different sides to someone — but that doesn’t make them false or invalidated. Rather, we all choose to show sides of ourselves that we want to. In my family, there’s often a need to put on some kind of front. Often my older family members put up a front to establish their historical traditions while it’s vice-versa for the younger generation. It’s understandable — we don’t want to lose our individuality in a culture that values the family more. Going outside, I often understand that I will meet many people I will like or hate and as for people I hate, I remind myself that there is a side of them they present at home that deserves the love and forgiveness of a family. I approach the world with a forgiving lens because I am at fault as well.

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Q: Is family a privilege or an obligation?

How in your mind can it lift us up or weigh us down?

A: There is a fun — well, not too fun — saying in my family that the older generation drinks from their war trauma and the younger generation drinks from the older generation’s trauma. Family is both a privilege and an obligation; a privilege in that you will have those who will forgive you for the front you need to put up or the flaws you decide to show.

As for obligation, there’s a sense of duty that’s often prevalent in my family—that even if we despise each other, it’s our obligation to help out whenever others are sick or injured. It’s the understanding that family is imperfect and yet accepts that imperfection from all of us.

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High Tide

by Riley Sutton

Illustration by Kevin Phan

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“I think that one’s occupied.”

The sun beats on the back of my neck like a tribal drummer. I look up, squinting.

“What?”

“That one.” My sister reaches over, taking the rock from my hands. She turns it over.

Inside is a tiny red crab—thrashing around, looking miffed, and maybe a bit scared.

“Oh.” I bite my lip. We place the rock down in the sand, and the crab scuttles away.

My knees are all scraped up, from the constant kneeling in the sand. I don’t know why we’re still out here. But I wanted a paperweight, and Dad got tired of looking, and now we’re 2 hours into a terrible, sandy hole in the ground.

My sister stands, offering me her hand. “Let’s go. There will be some more rocks by the ocean.”

I grimace. “I don’t need you to help me. I can look on my own.” I straighten one of my water wings, trying to look professional. This is probably how geologists dress.

My sister smirks. “I know. I wanted to help.”

Saint Claire. Claire the Great. Claire the Super Nice Big Sister, Who Never Lets Me Do Anything. Perfect Claire.

My mouth starts moving, even though I want it to stop. “Thank you, Claire.”

She looks smug, and smiles. I want to groan, or maybe run away. Instead, we walk toward the water, hand in hand.

The ocean is sparkly today, like dimes when they first come out of the factory, and they’re all smelly and metal in your hands. But the water is hiding. It rushes toward us, excited, but then creeps away while the crabs glitter in the sand. This water is clear, like glass, so you can see everything inside. One wave peeks up, and there’s a big fat piece of kelp in there; and then the water runs away, spitting out the kelp so that it sits plump on the sand.

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“Did you learn any new words today in school?” asks Claire, stepping over the kelp.

“Yes.” She pauses for an answer. I say nothing, and thankfully, she doesn’t use her Claire Crowbar to pry into my life.

There is a cluster of rocks nearby, past one of those brown and white sand birds, with the long skinny beaks. I skip to the rocks, dragging my sister along with me. She may be kind, but she is slow. My water wings thump happily against my arms, but Claire almost twists an ankle in the sand dunes.

“Jamie, stop!” She’s upset. “I could have hurt myself!”

I pretend not to hear. If she wanted help, she should have asked Dad. I just want a paperweight.

I let go of her hand and kneel down next to this new collection of rocks.

As Claire clambers down into the sand, I pick up a pretty blue stone. It’s covered in wet, cakey sand, which gets under my fingernails. The rock has white ridges running through it, like veins of marble. When I hold it up to the sun, the light glints off of the rock like a disco ball.

“I found it,” I tell Claire. She smiles. Reluctantly, I offer up the stone. Her fingers trace circles on its smooth, glossy skin—lazy circles like the seagulls in the sky.

She nods. “Yes. This is definitely the one.”

Off to the side, there’s another tiny crab, smushed by the rocks. This crab is clear, ghostly. You can see right through him. His arms are all curled in like a hair bow, not a big bow, but a dead one. He isn’t moving at all. I poke him with my finger, but nothing happens.

“Let’s go, Jamie. We should show Dad the rock.”

But I need to poke the crab, again, and his squishy little body doesn’t budge. I frown, 19

ignoring Claire’s outstretched hand. How can he be dead? On this living beach, with the twinkling water right there, and these gorgeous little rocks. I look over at the bird with his beak, still sniffing for food— “Jamie?”

The bird burrows into the sand, and comes up, and goes in, and comes up, and his mouth is empty all the time. He’s bad at this. And yet, he bristles when I push the crab toward his weird, spindly beak. This crab is a perfect snack for him. I shove it a little bit closer. But he titters away, shuffling over to another hungry patch of sand.

What a silly bird. So stupid, to turn down help, even when it’s right in front of him. I try to get closer, but he opens up his wings, and hurries off down the beach.

My sister lowers her hand, and walks away.

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Block Cockroach

by Marina Lee

Illustration by Kevin Phan

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You feel that? Fuck yeah, black mold. You get closer—why? You haven’t put your glasses on and everything is blurry. Three years ago, you learned dorm rooms looked better that way. If you were a masochist, you’d take a blacklight, absolutely. If you wanted to make a night of it, you’d make a shroom tea first. Or one of those mugwort teas you keep seeing on TikTok. I could see a psychedelic sludge being more pleasant. Maybe it would appear to you as little friends greeting you from the cute little darkened corners of your cute little residential cubicle. Hiiii.

Heyyy… what’s that? You’re doing yoga because you promised yourself you would try to be flexible this year. You’re on the ground, face up. You glance to the right and what do you see? A cockroach. Obviously not a registered student, and frankly really disrespectful when there’s a no-guest policy in effect here at the university. Literally so incredibly rude. It’s the largest insect you’ve ever seen in your life, and you lie completely still as you watch it scuttle about with its spiny disgusting legs. Back it up right now! Too, too close. You have to bust out the household cleaner. You have to. It gives you the ideal bug-to-self ratio, though you must mind the furniture.

Oh god, where did it go? It left while you were internal monologuing.

Knock-Knock? They’re drilling through your sexy bathroom floor. You curse the sulfurous ceiling of the room below you and sigh as a maintenance worker tapes off your toilet in lovely orange. You were fully prepared to seize the day, but now the whole day is shot, and all is completely lost. You take calls with sawing in the background and contemplate the consequences of screaming. You apologize for the mess.

You weren’t expecting anyone to see your ADHD goblin lifestyle. Now they’ve seen.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to clean a bit. You glance at the mango you’ve left on the shelf, the roasted potatoes on the desk, the coffee cups in military formation, your collection of bed pens and bullet journals. At least you’ve kept your plants alive.

If you don’t look at them, they aren’t dead.

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Cuh-motherfucking-caw? A group of crows, or ravens, or whatever—you never took the time to learn San Diego birds—dances on the tree outside of your third-story window. They crank out what you honestly imagine to be a really homophobic bird song from about 5 A.M. to about 5 P.M. Their beady little goddamn eyes mock you every day of the week as you attend calls. They know exactly what they’re doing and they simply don’t give a shit. When they grow tired of the tree’s texture on their stupid bird feet, they head on over to the roof and perform a little tap routine just for you, just for your own personal enjoyment. Isn’t that so nice? You love it.

Uhhh, excuse me? The night’s storm has apparently brought you globs of water to fall through your window and startle your 3 A.M. self, right in the face. You stare your rainwater eyes at the popcorn ceiling, waiting to graduate. If the rain falls once or twice more in the same spots, it will most definitely poke itself all the way through, and it will most definitely not be a good morning. Your university housing wakes up daily and chooses absolute violence. You stretch your arms out and slap your knuckles into the thinly painted walls. Ugh. You look up. A bright red fire alarm glares at you with a condescension worthy of a queen. Fear of that fire alarm keeps you from lighting candles and that’s why the energy is so, so off in here. You get up and attempt compensation with three essential oil diffusers. The solution to internal conflict is to make a cloud for yourself to sulk in. One that smells like eucalyptus and thickens the air to taste like droplets. Petrichor pills for the slumber send-off, over the eyes, and in the nose. Sleep.

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Origami for the Soul Matthew Wills

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O

rigami for me is a form of creativity that works really well with modern life.

It is a way for me to channel my energy and step away from the computer screen after a long day. Giving origami models to others is also a way for me to express gratitude to those who have provided me a lot of friendship and support during the last year. Origami is unique, I think, in the sense that it can be done by anyone, anywhere, with a piece of paper. The origami community is also distinctive for its fellowship — designers freely share designs and instructions, you can find an abundance of online folding sessions where you can meet people from around the world, and there is no such thing as a ‘wrong turn’ when you are folding paper.

— Matthew Wills Origami model folded and photographed by Matthew Wills. Model, “Flores de la Montaña,” originally designed by and published here with the permission of origami artist Diana Horta Ruiz.

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Illustrations by Caroline Tjoe and Elysia Mac

We were walking home, it was quiet. And when it was done, it was quiet.

Tell it again.

She had just gotten off work. We, I should say. While she chiseled nails and massaged the feet of soccer moms who loved to talk about the best authentic phở place in town, I had to deal with the mental exhaustion of knowing my friends were at the mall getting boba as I spent a sunny Saturday cooped up in the back of a salon. She never gave me any money for treats anyways, but still.

Tell it again.

The sun had just set. Only the streetlights, casting an eerie orange glow across the street of red-brick apartments, were there to bear witness. A car would zoom past from time to time as we made our way down the street, blowing a gust that would leave goosebumps on my arms. I could smell the leftover pizza rotting in the trashbins we passed. (“What a waste of food!” she said to me, like I was the one who threw it out.) She held my hand. I was annoyed at the time—imagine a twelve-year old getting caught holding hands with his mom! I didn’t need protection, I thought to myself, for myself, of myself.

“Sing for me, Kevin,” she said.

I didn’t always hate the sound of my voice, the way it runs nasally and high, a bit like an alpaca’s. I don’t hear it myself in my head, but I can see it in the faces of strangers when I introduce myself. The first day of school was always the worst, heads turning towards the voice whimpering “present,” iron bars shooting out of their eyes to surround me. She always told me that my voice was a gift, though. I believed her.

Get to the good part.

As I was deciding between humming the melody of some random song from Paris

by Night or seeing if she would enjoy the latest T-Pain, a red pickup truck pulled up, the window rolled down, and two freckled men stared out of the car, nasty sneers plastered on their faces.

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“What are you doing out so late, bitch?” they yelled out with a snicker. Her grip on my hand tightened, and her pace quickened as she began to pull me along like a pug on a leash. I felt the wrinkles and calluses on her palm, battle scars from years of trying to exist in this world. She looked straight ahead, not saying a word.

More.

The rickety pickup truck, adorned with what looked like decades of scratches and rust, stayed at our side like a police hound, as the men continued to jeer at her, words slurring into each other, intent the same. Their tone quickly changed as they realized they were being ignored, a crime of the highest order for men of their status.

“Why the fuck aren’t you saying anything, fuckin’ dirt-eater?”

Even more.

The car stopped, and the man sitting shotgun fell out, a Bud Light can tumbling to follow. His beard unkempt, his flannel dark with the stains of ketchup and dreams deferred, he shoved her towards the brick wall of an apartment building as the man in the driver’s seat simply watched and laughed like this was Saturday morning cartoons. I tried to say something, I think, but only a half-hearted gurgle sputtered from my lips.

Give us your pain, and we will heal you.

The bearded man loomed above her as she lay crumpled on the pavement, head bowed down before her judge and executioner. In the orange glow of the streetlights, he reminded me of a villain from Teen Titans, beautiful in a haunting way. He sputtered out an alien sentence, spit dripping like acid onto her graying hair, then looked back to the man in the car, questioning, as if he had never gotten this far before.

Sing for us.

If any passerby out for an evening stroll had seen us at that moment, we probably looked like a scene from a Renaissance painting. I tood a few feet from the man towering above my mother splayed out on the sidewalk, my limbs locked in place— whether by fear, doubt, or a force beyond human, I didn’t know. The ragged, irregu28

lar breathing of the bearded man was the only sign that time was moving forward, ticking, ticking, ticking. He looked over to me, giving a long stare that almost seemed disappointed, like he expected more resistance. I wanted to scream, I wanted to grab my mother and carry her out of danger, I wanted to beat this man’s head to bloody bits on the concrete, but I did none of those. I simply stood there face-to-face with Medusa, my mouth opening and closing but no words coming out, until a car passed by. It slowed down for a brief second, as if curious about the whole affair, but not enough to stop. It was the fourth one since the pickup truck had arrived.

“Come on, let’s go before shit gets out of hand,” the accomplice called from the curb. The bearded man turned and stumbled back into the pickup truck, and they drove off, leaving behind a cloud of exhaust fumes and silence. After they left, my mother just laid there on the sidewalk. Bathed in orange light, she gave me a quizzical look, but I couldn’t meet her gaze. The rest of the walk home was deafening.

Tell it again.

I’m awfully tired.

Tell it again.

Please, I’d rather not.

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Tell it again. Let the world hear your story.

Okay. Our story.

When I was four years old (or maybe five, I can’t remember), I woke up during the middle of night in a panic, my bedsheets wet with piss. I called out into the darkness for her, and she rushed from her bedroom to my side. After replacing my sheets, she sat on the bed stroking my hair, my head in her lap, quietly singing an old Vietnamese lullaby.

No.

“Oh, my beloved! Stay with me! Do not go home!

You are leaving and it makes me weep inside, And the flap of my dress is wet with tears on both sides as if it has rained.”

Her raspy, crackling voice would get her booted off an American Idol audition, but that night, it enveloped me in a warm blanket of music.

What is this garbage?

It’s hard to remember the happy moments sometimes, when the screaming matches and shattered plates surge to the forefront like starlings to a bedroom window. That doesn’t mean they’re not there, though.

Stop. This is not your story.

When Taylor Swift was starting to pop off on the charts with hit after hit, she and I would belt out the chorus of “You Belong with Me” in our beat-up Toyota every time it came up on the radio. She barely knew the lyrics to the verses, but that didn’t stop her from singing the melody at the top of her lungs, a warm glow beaming from her worn face. We would close our eyes and jam out in the McDonalds drive-through, and I would forget for a few minutes that my voice could leave crickets quiet, only returning to Earth when the cars behind us would begin to honk.

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Stop this at once. We want the moments that matter.

We would go to the park sometimes, when she got off from work early after a slow day, and she would push me on the swings, up and down, up and down, up and down. I would try to push her too, but she was way too big. Larger than a cloudless sky.

You are OUR minstrel.

She always made me work in the backyard in the fall—she said that with the days darkening soon, we needed to sow the land for some winter melon. But there was one exhausting day when I didn’t give a damn about my clothes, I just plopped myself in the middle of the empty plot and lay there in the pillows of brown. The sun looked beautiful, so I stared into it until the world flamed violet. I remembered the way she would take my hand during harvest season and have me caress the smooth soil, the cool, bumpy skin of eggplant. It was so easy to love back then. That day, I took a handful of the dirt into my hands, and raised it to my lips. I closed my eyes and slowly pushed it all into my mouth, yearning for the tastes she talked about with beaming eyes as she made dinner, how she felt when she saw the plump, red tomatoes in the summer, the memories of a home long forgotten by the invaders who left nothing but ghosts. It just tasted like dirt—I don’t know why I expected anything different—and I laughed by myself, at myself, with myself, until my voice was hoarse.

Give us what WE want.

One evening, after a long day of work, she plopped down on the couch like a ragdoll, her foreheadcreased with frustration and fatigue, and said to me,

“Kevin, please sing for me.”

She knew I hated the sound of my voice, but her baggy eyes pleaded. So in my warbly alpaca voice, I sang for her the old lullaby she used to sing for me,

“Oh, my beloved! Stay with me! Do not go home!

I still watch you leaving until I lose sight of you,

As I am watching water flowing,

As I am watching water ferns drifting.”

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Her brown irises renewed with life, she took my smooth hands in hers, and we danced like our windows were shielded with velvet drapes, like our floors were covered in wool blankets—like the whole world was watching, but the only sound they could hear from outside was the faintest whisper of a story sheltered.

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O(THE)R PEOPLE MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 - SELF-IDENTITY

grandfather

by Katrina Ngo whisper thank you, bitten words mumbled trembling at the sound of shame when you know you mean to say more you wish you knew how to say more reaching out for the tones of a language that is supposed to be yours how do you even begin as he traces history on his left hand and hands you the remote with his right green veins splayed on skin like rushing tunnels of buried memories the stories dissipate into the blue screen what language does silence speak but anticipation and closed eyes

Illustration by Elysia Mac 33

The Joy of Having Low Standards 34

by Jillian Calilung

Illustrations by Hana Tobias

The morning of June’s nineteenth birthday, she was very aware that he was planning to end things. She knew this to be true, and just like that, she was right. Self-fulfilling prophecy, intuitive manifestation, observing what was objectively there: call it whatever you want, she was right. Whatever unholy bond that existed between June and that boy was unceremoniously torn apart. Like the breaking of a wish-bone, she took home the bulk of the splintered carcass (make a wish!). With the decaying remains of something that was supposed to mean more than it was, June entered her last year as a teenager. Make a wish.

The end of this union was much like the beginning: uncomfortably comfortable in a situation that was designed, by nature, to be terrible. The first couple dates are always atrocious, right? June knew this to be true. With her small sample size, she could pick out ludicrous moments worth sharing over cheap vodka like bingo numbers. There was that scruffy beanie kid that told June, with a little bit too much pointed enthusiasm, that he just “adores Asian culture” (completely unprompted, of course). The sweet and shy boy from class that admitted, on the second date, that he’s had fantasies about saving her from a murderous white supremacist (with, like, a machete or something). The guy that started crying when she refused to give him head in a Taco Bell parking lot (she bought him a burrito afterwards to console him).

Within this eclectic range of questionable dating experiences, there was one constant—she’d always somehow find a way to romanticize the situation, make it just tolerable enough to linger around, let them embarrass themselves a bit more. A sniffling man-child in her passenger seat nibbling on a plastic burrito somehow seemed a bit more palatable than being alone. Nibbling the burrito, like a rat. Rats are cute sometimes. She’d take a rat as company over herself any day. Being alone was just a little bit too sad.

The summer after high school came and went, a grey drag of half-hearted romance, utter despair, and becoming a Legal Adult Woman. As if standing on some demented assembly-line fueled by financial anxiety, June found herself ushered into the world of higher education. Something small inside of her was dimly aware of the implications of becoming a real College Girl. It was time for a reinvention; maybe the circus cluster-fuck of her dating history could be attributed to some kind of underlying characteristic of hers. Maybe she was emanating a sound frequency only audible to the ears of the most emotionally-stunted of men, maybe she just kind of hated herself, or maybe it was both. In her free time, she’d agonize over what exactly it was about her that wasn’t working; she’d systemically run through every feature of hers, O(THE)R PEOPLE MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 - SELF-IDENTITY

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every personality quirk, until she found the potential culprit. The anxious restlessness of her hands, the unnerving nature of her forced smiles, her lack of childbearing hips—in any case, she resolved to eradicate whatever it was that was holding her back as she entered college.

Thinking about the endless ways in which she could shape a new life for herself made her chest swirl. All of the freedom, the opportunities (for a new boyfriend)! Images of cute coffee shops, cute tote bags, cute boys who don’t hate women. June and Him, Him and June—reading a book together on a campus lawn, over-exposed and blurry pictures, staying up late in his dorm room. She fixated on these possibilities; maybe the key to reinvention would be a cultured college boyfriend. No more settling for the backseat of old Toyotas with obnoxiously loud engines. No, the new one would be different. Cheers to change!

Strategically, June conceptualized the person she would be in college, and she knew exactly how to manifest her vision into reality: manufactured dreamy look, cool outfits that weren’t cool enough to be intimidating, bold comments about film or music on stand-by. Like birds signifying their fertility with flashy shows of preened feathers, she hoped to attract the right kind of dude with her thrifted sweaters and effortless cool. Ultimately, she wanted to emulate the perfect prototype of a college girlfriend, the flighty and intellectual ones that the protagonist never truly gets over.

If you pulled the string on her back, you’d get something like, “Darren Aronofsky is just a cheap knockoff of Satoshi Kon!” or maybe “House of Leaves was poststructuralist dogshit!” Deep enough to indicate that she did in fact possess the ability to read and think (she’s not like other girls!), shallow enough to not threaten the men who don’t hate women. Nuance isn’t sexy, ladies.

June settled in nicely with the first boy who was up to her new, more rigorous, standards (naturally, it was the first one). He was spindly, rather stiff in demeanor, and quite frankly, a bit of an asshole. His redeeming qualities? He listened to the same bands as her, called himself a feminist, and was tall-ish. Progress is progress. On their first date, she made a momentous effort to not say anything stupid, because he definitely wasn’t the type to laugh it off—with his snide comments and rolling eyes, it was as if he was actively seeking out signs that she was dumber than him. It became exceedingly difficult to prove him wrong, as she had haphazardly agreed to sharing a joint.

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With her mind racing and body slow, June watched as the dude tossed the glowing roach out into the field, embers fading dimly in the grass till they faded to black. A dull panic creeped over the edges of her consciousness. As he rattled on about some dead author, she repressed the urge to run out and properly throw it away, in case raccoons tried to eat it or something. June’s mind spiraled as she imagined a mother raccoon, hungry and cold, searching for absolutely anything to take home to her litter of frail kits. How eagerly she would seize the ashy remains of the joint, triumphantly returning to her nest (or wherever raccoons live), only to accidentally poison her children. She’d wail in despair, and collapse to the unforgiving pavement, and it would be all June’s fault. The end. Fourteen more of these raccoon-laden scenarios later, June realized it was 4AM and the date was over. The guy was telling her he had a great time, he really liked her, yeah yeah yeah. By the time June had invested 32 hours into their talking phase, they were Boyfriend and Girlfriend. How easy it is to not be alone.

Nine and a half months later, June is nineteen, alone, and is earnestly trying to pinpoint why she made for such bad company. She was sure the last guy must have mentioned something to suggest where she went wrong, but she just couldn’t recall his words very well. In fact, she couldn’t recall any of the guys over the years very well.

What she did remember was the shedding of her own skin, over and over again; a snake of a girl, she felt the venom of her heart leaching out into her own blood. The endless characters and personas that never seemed to stick danced around her head deliriously, taunting her with their failures, each more lethal than the last. But they weren’t really there—June was alone. Maybe she was alone all along. Who would choose a snake as company? After all, people have standards.

Once again, after all of that effort, and all of the men with their nice words, the only person left was herself. She desperately wished it were absolutely anyone else.

Looking spitefully in the mirror, she concluded it was time for another reinvention.

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mother moon Xiaoxing

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Based on an Interview with Xiaoxing, Artist of “mother moon” Creative Write-up by Janelle Kim There will be time enough later for noticing the grass stuck in her hair, the ants crawling across the curves of her ankles, and the morning dew soaking sweatpants that had been warm in the dryer minutes ago. In the waking sky’s gray horizon, the only color that exists is moonlight silver.

The moonbeams are staggered through the tree branches, a staircase with too much space between the steps. She traces their path a few times with her fingers in the sky, then once more with worn-down paint brushes on paper. She no longer can recall walking down those stairs, away from the grasp of someone who would call her beloved. She could not recognize her mother’s features beyond the moon’s cratered face.

The blank circle on the page meant for sketching the moon now instead reveals eyes, reflecting the loving gaze of a worried woman bound by nighttime visitations, misted over with raindrop tears. As the sky takes the color of perfectly ripe apricots in the sunrise, she draws the clouds for the blind guardian angel who gave up twenty years, and where there are eyes there is color, a path of light and beauty for Xiaoxing to walk in the painted footsteps of her birth mother.

A Note from the Artist, Xiaoxing: “My piece titled ‘mother moon’ holds a lot of sentimental value to me and is dedicated to my biological mother who I have never met, as I am a transnational Chinese adoptee. My inspiration for the ‘mother moon’ stemmed from my childhood belief that my biological mother sent the moon to watch over me every night to protect me. To this day I find comfort in knowing the moon will return every night to remind me I am not alone.”

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A Literary Magazine at UCSD ISSUE 3

2021