SPARK Magazine Issue No. 17: Contra

ISSUE NO. 17

FALL 2021

issue no. 17

to differ strikingly; in contrast or juxtaposition to the norm

rodrigo colunga pastrana editor-in-chief managing editor xandria hernandez design director adriana torres layout director jennifer jimenez assistant layout director juleanna culilap assistant layout director grace davila digital director diana perez creative director caleb zhang assistant creative director darnell forbes director of hair and makeup jane lee assistant director of hair and makeup yeonsoo jung modeling co-director mikaela medina modeling co-director presley simmons photography director alyssa olvera assistant photography director leah blom co-director of styling alex cao co-director of styling zaha khawaja co-director of styling noelle campos senior print editor kelly wei associate print editor eliza pillsbury associate print editor amber weir assistant print editor amelia kushner senior web editor ty marsh associate web editor kyra burke associate web editor leni steinhardt assistant web editor eunice bao social media director elain yao business director melanie che co-director of events kendall casinger co-director of events kelsey crawford marketing director deisy velazquez assistant marketing director jackie fowler

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staff aaron boehmer, aaron lurin, adrian weiss, aidan wilhite, alec martinez, alyssa skof, amanda garza, amber weir, amber bray, ana brown, anahi chavero, andrea claudia mauri, ashley guzman, athená polymenis, audrey ly, bella devega, blaire young, brandon muniz, brayden pomirko, callie kurpiewski, cameron wesley, carmen larkin, caroline blanton, catherine hermansen, cedar etherington, charlotte rovelli, chizaram ajiwe, chloe bogen, chloe landau, claire philpot, claire tsui, claire keegan, clara smith, clarissa abrego, cyril alinsub, daniel lopez, daniel garcia, danielle nicely, david garcia, david reid, eileen wang, elena talarico ribeiro, elianna panakis, ella claret, ellie stephan, elyssa sefiane, emely romo, emily wager, emily gift, emily cabello, emma roche, emma weeden, emma brey, erin dorney, erin toliver, ethan tran, eunjae kim, eva lopez ley, farah merchant, flora yiakras, gabe schulze, gabi vergara, grace harter, hannah ruthart, hedy zhang, isabella martinez, jackie magno, jackson quinn, jane liu, jaycee jamison, jaylin young, jeffrey sun, jessie curneal, jhyzel rojas, jialu sun, jillian le, jimini chae, jordan busarello, jordan teliha, julia garrett, julissa chapa, june yuan, justin gonzales, karen xie, karla lozano, karla villegas, kat tyll, katherine huang, kathleen segovia, kaushik kalidindi, kevin she, kin pagtama, kristen guillen, kristy thai, kunika trehan, lane rice, laura gónima, laurence nguyen-thai, layla penrice, legacy miller, leila williams, lily cartagena, lily rosenstein, lily jacaruso, livia blackburn, lorianne willett, maddie abdalla, madee feltner, maliabo diamba, manalie barot, margot purdie, marissa kapp, marta broseta castelos, mateo ontiveros, mckenzie fisher, megan shen, melanie huynh, meryl jiang, moises zanabria, nani villalvazo, neha kondaveeti, nereida jimenez, nicole rudakova, nikki shah, noura abdi, olivia abercrombie, olivia du, ophelia brown, pamela silva diaz, payson kelley, pixie tomacruz, priscilla takyi, rachel karls, rachel aquino, raishma kazi, ren breach, renata salazar, richard ahn, rosario mejia, ryan velasquez, sabrina lu, sara tin-u, sarah montgomery, sarah xu, serena rodriguez, seth endsley, shaina jaramillo, shania wagner, shianne lum, shreya rajhans, sonali menon, sophia amstalden, sophia santos, stacey campbell, tamara rodriguez, tanvi gupta, tara vathul, tiffany sun, vi cao, vincent luu, vio dorantes, wally naranjo, wendy rossi, yousuf khan, zayana uddin, zimei chen, zoe chetty, zuena karim

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sure that everything ran perfectly because our members deserve nothing but the best. I quickly realized that striving for perfection is both boring and unrealistic.

Spark is truly unlike anything I’ve encountered before. The amount of talent, creativity, and passion in our staff is what makes us so great. The fear of letting a single member down fueled my self-doubt. How do I know I’m doing the right thing? How will this affect the future of Spark? Are my efforts even comparable to those of previous semesters’ editors?

I never found the answer to these questions.

And that’s alright.

from the editor

Disclaimer: I am not a writer and I do not like to talk (let alone write) about my feelings.

Especially towards things that I deeply care for. Gross. But it’s part of the job — so here it goes.

I thought of writing about all the challenges and lessons that this role threw at me. Let me tell you, there were many. But that seemed like a pessimistic way to start my first editor’s letter. I then toyed with the idea of writing about how this role was nothing like I had envisioned it to be. Remember, expectations can be deadly. But that seemed a bit too stale. Finally, I came to the perfect solution.

I would disclose something that I have never told anyone else.

Reassurance came when I started seeing the assets for this issue. The level of quality, professionalism, and creativity in this magazine is truly unrivaled. Seeing it all come together was one of the most surreal moments I’ve experienced. I can confidently attribute our success to not only our wonderful staff, but also our kickass leadership team. Seriously, I have no idea how I got so lucky, working with 34 incredible human beings. Their hours of work, countless leadership meetings, and efforts to create a welcoming community really paid off, if I do say so myself.

So, yes. Maybe at the start of my tenure as Editor in Chief, I had no idea what I was doing.

But looking at where we’re at now, I have never been prouder of anything I’ve done. I hope you all enjoy Issue No. 17, Contra, as much as we enjoyed making it.

Now, let’s do it all over again.

This whole time, I had no idea what I was doing.

With love,

It’s true. That’s not to say that I did not have all the tools, preparation, and extensive knowledge to be capable of leading Spark. I did. However, when it came down to the actual execution, the pressure of disappointing myself and the team weighed heavily on my shoulders. I wanted to make

Rod Editor-In-Chief

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syn: to join; to create in union sincerely, mango order through entropy wealth, power, and the pearl necklace the curation of memory the star-crossed fancy the world v. kristen stewart as i fade with the summer breeze the bones we inhabit après moi, le déluge! freedom without fervor gaywalking he may bring you happiness. dawn of the techno sapien

8 70 78 92 104 114 124 132 140 160 170 178 194

anti: to challenge; to reimagine the old mise en abyme in the headlights where we bury our love my chemical imbalance inheritance ancient terrors but i would have found you anywhere they drink to bach and feed on our souls we marry in the last beautiful place on earth vanished into the clouds real life is elsewhere love and how it lingers we are all fools in love

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feature planet peelander

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layout ELIANNA PANAKIS photographer ALYSSA OLVERA stylists VI CAO & JULIA GARRETT hmua MARISSA KAPP & EMELY ROMO models RYAN VELASQUEZ & ERIN TOLIVER

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BUTTON UP BLOUSE | Prototype Vintage

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Sincerely,

MANGO

by JACQUELINE MAGNO

Being mistaken for a fruit should have been funny.

But, like a fruit, I bruised easily. layout JULEANNA CULILAP photographer ETHAN TRAN stylist SOPHIA AMSTALDEN hmua SARA TIN-U model PIXIE TOMACRUZ

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nurse to care for her two children. As admirable as my parents were, I was more concerned with blending in at school than shouldering their history. But my mother’s words intrigued me.

2009

I

s Jacqueline Mango here?”

My face grew warm as I raised my hand. The substitute teacher glanced at me over her horn-rimmed glasses and checked my name off the attendance sheet.

Before she could proceed to the next student, I said, “It’s Magno.”

A badge of honor, huh? I thought, sinking my teeth into an apple slice. Though I had no idea what she meant by that, I got the sense that it was important. So I tucked her explanation into the back of my mind and patiently awaited understanding.

She tucked a finger behind her ear and leaned forwards.

“You have to speak up, sweetheart.”

Like a fruit barely flowering from its branches, I patiently awaited to bloom.

“It’s Magno.”

1996

She looked at me blankly, as if she couldn’t tell the difference.

When you’re the only Filipino-American student in rural Pennsylvania, you learn to explain the parts of yourself that don’t fit in. This was by no means a tormenting experience, but I turned beet red whenever faced with innocent questions from my peers.

“Are you from China?” boys would ask me on the bus, their blue eyes peering at me from over the seat.

“Why is your nose so flat?” a girl once inquired.

“Is your last name really Mango?”

Being mistaken for a fruit should have been funny.

But, like a fruit, I bruised easily. Did people just not know how to read? Why couldn’t I have been born with a more American last name like Smith or Todd?

I expressed my grievances to my mother that evening, afraid that I’d be called a fruit for the rest of my life.

“Anak, you think too much,” she said, gliding her paring knife beneath the skin of a ripened Fuji apple. “You carry our family history with that last name, so you should wear it like a badge of honor.”

I thought about my father, who studied for eight years just to be called Dr. Mango by his patients. I looked up at my mother, who left her career as an operating room

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My mother tried to bloom in Washington, D.C., but the weather wasn’t ideal.

As she exited the subway car onto the station platform, the crisp winter air made her face turn pink.

She didn’t know why she’d gotten off the train; this wasn’t her usual stop. In fact, as she climbed the steps towards Michigan Avenue and shuffled across the icy sidewalk, she couldn’t remember why she’d come to America at all.

Watching the seasons change in Washington, D.C., was like falling in and out of love. Summer had been blissful for my mother — her days saturated with road trips across the city, idle walks to the supermarket, and latenight study sessions for the test that would deem her eligible for work. But as exam season passed and winter approached, the road trips started to cease. Idle walks became breathless sprints through Howard University Hospital. She no longer spent late nights at her desk, but on the couch in the nurses’ locker room, where she slept until the sunrise made it safe enough to leave.

My mother once saw America as a chance to reinvent herself. Now, she felt like she’d left too much of herself behind. She missed the Lagro sun that warmed her skin on the way home from school, the thick air that could only be cut by an oscillating fan. She yearned for her father, who’d passed a few years before she left. “Maida will take me to America,” he’d say with pride.

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" Watching the seasons change in Washington, D.C.,

was like falling in and out of love."

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Well, we’re here, Dad, she thought, fighting to keep the frostbite from searing through her scrub bottoms. It’s just a lot colder than I expected.

1994

The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was a 15-minute walk from the station. Her recruiter Eileen had taken her and several others here on their first Sunday in America, piling them into a shiny, red Lincoln without asking if they were religious. The Basilica’s archways stretched like open arms as my mother walked inside, found an available pew, and began to pray. America was full of novelties — snow storms, tall people. But at least the churches were the same.

She asked God for sensation to return back to her toes.

For a new friend, if she were lucky.

She was looking for a sign that the months she’d spent uprooting herself weren’t completely for nothing.

My father uprooted himself from the Philippines on a whim.

He shrugged on his coat and ambled down Sheldon Street towards the 7/11, away from his relatives’ house in Alexandria, Virginia, and towards whatever future God had in store for him. It was the morning of match day, wherein medical residents across the country found out where they would pursue their medical residencies. All matches had been printed in the daily issue of USA Today, and my father couldn’t wait to read his.

He’d had two months and $200 to impress a residency program in the Northeast, but this was more of an adventure to him than a challenge. In between interviews in Brooklyn and Queens, he’d scaled the World Trade Center and felt the entirety of New

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" I may be a fruit that bruises easily, but without my roots, I’d surely be rotten."

York City beneath his feet. When traveling to Far Rockaway, he’d pieced together subway maps and cut through neighborhoods that reeked of pot. Even on the two-day train ride to Chicago — during which he forgot to eat — he simply watched the trees zip by his window, clutching his cousin’s Walkman as Hootie & the Blowfish blared in each ear.

America was like a speaker with the volume turned all the way up, overexerting every sense, every nerve. But my father never flinched. Too many people had invested in his success for him to be anything but confident.

Lola Cora and Lolo Fred were generous enough to let him stay at their house upon his arrival in the States. His mother back in Quezon City left for the docks at five every morning so her children and their cousins wouldn’t have to. Everyone had wrapped their loving arms around him and lifted him up to higher places. Now, it was his turn to do the same.

The door jingled as he entered the 7/11 and made a bee-line for the newspaper stand. He picked up a copy of USA Today and flipped through each page until he saw his name. He raised his eyebrows in surprise.

hissed, passing champagne and cookies around the conference table.

The entire student affairs department crowded around the iPad as the celebration video I’d produced for spring graduation streamed across the screen. I’d been interning with the College of Liberal Arts for about a year now, writing articles for their website and designing graphics for Instagram. But this was by far my most daunting feat.

I glanced at my coworkers as they watched the video, and I thought about how lucky I was to be here. How privileged I was to have a job that I loved and parents who made that a possibility for me. When I was younger, I was more concerned with blending in at school than shouldering their history. But as I tucked each passing year under my belt, I began to collect the stories they told across the dining room table.

Stories of Basilicas and Walkmans, of insecurities and leaps of faith. My parents’ uprooting was the sole reason I was here.

And I refused to take that for granted.

By the end of the video, my name flashed across the screen: Written & Edited by Jackie Magno

Ferdinand Magno: Washington, D.C.

Howard

University

Hospital,

It was unexpected, to say the least. But then again, the best things in life were.

2021 My father always told me that I reminded him of his mother: Type A, easily unnerved. Always finding new ways to grow. I imagine her rising at four in the morning on weekdays and solving crossword puzzles in her spare time, and I wonder how I could ever live up to someone so diligent. Still, I try.

I tacked that last name onto everything these days — video projects, magazine articles, works of fiction, and digital art. I’d fallen in love with it without even realizing. My last name plants the seeds of a postgraduate career I have yet to begin; it reminds me of the woman whose diligence I inherited. It carries with me all the people who have worked so hard to foster my growth.

I may be a fruit that bruises easily, but without my roots, I’d surely be rotten.

Thank you. I love you. I promise I won’t let you down. ■

“Everyone, be quiet! Jackie’s video is starting!” my coworker

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Through

Entropy

layout LAURA GONIMA photographer LORIANNE WILLET stylist DAVID GARCIA hmua BRANDON MUNIZ & RYAN VELASQUEZ models KRISTY THAI & TIFFANY SUN

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BLACK DRESS | Revival Vintage BLACK & WHITE DRESS | Revival Vintage

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SUITCASES | Revival Vintage

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CONTRA

by KELLY WEI

layout JENNIFER JIMENEZ photographer LEAH BLOM stylists CALEB ZHANG, ZAHA KHAWAJA & NOELLE CAMPOS hmua YEONSOO JUNG & JANE LEE models MIKAELA MEDINA & DARNELL FORBES

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london,

1984.

Have you ever played God? We do, every night.

CASTING | Maggie Deaver KNIT TOP | Gabbi Melton DRAWSTRING SKIRT | Gabbi Melton PANTS | Gabbi Melton

HANDS CUPPING | Maggie Deaver ONE SHOULDER TOP | Gabbi Melton UTLITY SHORTS | Gabbi Melton CHUNKY NECKLACE | Revival Vintage

We are your sons and daughters, your objects of fear and reverence; man by dawn, myth by dusk. We are not your idols, not your gods, not your harbingers of holy tomorrows. Put nothing upon our altars! Put nothing upon our graves!

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We are the classrooms full of promising, young students, with knives in the folds of our blazers and bruises beneath our crisp linen shirts. Played a little too hard last night, one remarks, a corner of his split lip lifted up in a smirk.

Stayed out too late.

We don masks, but you know us, don’t you? You created us.

You are us.

Lock the doors all you like when the streetlights flicker out, dear citizens, but aren’t we still the subject of all your children’s favorite bedtime stories?

Don’t we still find a way in through their dreams?

The stories say we are heroes. They say that we are here to save you! Divine intervention dressed in a catsuit and cowl, angels sent to tear this town apart, yes, yes, OK. That’s certainly rich!

So we’ll burn crooked cities and raze crooked kingdoms for you.

So we’ll steal, lie, and cheat for you.

We’ll loot the spoils of an unjust country that has betrayed us all, just for you-ou-ou — but oh, cherry, you wouldn’t mind if we kept a cut, would you?

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(Divine intervention?

Someone, somewhere, is laughing softly in the dark.

If God couldn’t save the Queen, He sure as hell won’t save you.)

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Wealth, Power, and the Pearl Necklace

by ELLIE STEPHAN layout EMMA WEEDEN

Pearls started out as the adornment of the ruling class.

Now, they're subverting the status quo.

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ultry candlelight reflects off of Cleopatra’s pearl earring. It’s not just any pearl; it’s the largest in history, worth the modern equivalent of $1 billion. Raising an eyebrow at Marc Antony, she takes the earring off and drops it in a golden goblet of wine. The pale gleam of the pearl dims until it eventually dissolves in the swirling maroon. Lifting the goblet to her lips, Cleopatra swallows the dissolved pearl in victory. She won the bet.

on this legacy of prestige in the form of a pearl necklace. In Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Audrey Hepburn plays a showy socialite who wears a pearl necklace to appear wealthy and upper-class.

Paired with a little black dress and sunglasses, this look became iconic in Americana. If you wanted to appear affluent, beautiful, and sophisticated, you wore a pearl necklace.

Revolutionary fashion designer Coco Chanel enabled women to replicate this look. A pearlnecklace lover herself, she once declared, “Go and fetch my pearls. I will not go up to the atelier until I have my pearls.” Ropes of pearls perfectly juxtaposed her minimalist, simple style. But much to the astonishment of the wealthy fashion community at the time, not all the pearls were real. Coco Chanel’s faux pearl necklaces helped dispel the notion of costume jewelry being tacky.

In doing so, she made pearls more accessible to women of all social classes. The lower price point didn’t take away from pearl necklaces’ status, though. Stars like Coco Chanel and Audrey Hepburn, women at the height of beauty standards and wealth, characterized pearl necklaces as luxurious femininity.

According to legend, Cleopatra bet Marc Antony she could host the most extravagant banquet in history. There was one surefire way to impress the ancient Roman leader: pearls. The Roman Empire was obsessed with pearls. In the first century B.C., Julius Caesar, Marc Antony’s predecessor, passed a law declaring that pearls were only to be worn by the ruling class. Pearls' rarity made them treasured among royalty. Before the advent of mass production, one would have to dive deep into the Persian Gulf, hoping for the onein-200-million chance that a natural pearl would be perfectly round. Roman aristocracy flaunted pearls as a reminder of their wealth and prestige; Roman Emperor Caligula even adorned his horse in pearls. As the world’s oldest gemstone, pearls Pearls went on to be indicative of not just wealth began their journey in the fashion world as a sta- or beauty, but also feminine political power.

When the stylish Jacqueline Kennedy entered the tus symbol.

White House, women across the nation looked Pop culture icons in the 20th century carried to her as a fashion role model. Regardless of the

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"If you wanted to appear affluent, beautiful, and sophisticated, you wore a pearl necklace."

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occasion, a triple-stranded pearl necklace often graced her outfit. Kennedy put it simply: “Pearls are always appropriate.”

Twisting its history of tasteful luxury, he evoked cheap gaudiness by draping faux pearls with chains, bright colors, crystals, and ribbon. Unlike the quiet elegance of traditional pearl neckUnlike flashy diamonds, pearls convey luxurious laces, Elbaz’s necklaces brashly spelled out “hot” refinement without making female politicians or “cool” in shiny, gold letters. This collection seem out of touch with low-income voters. Fur- launched the phrase: “Not your mother’s pearls.” thermore, in a culture that associates feminin- In his collection, pearls became cutting edge and ity with demurity, pearls soften the power suits unconventional. Designers jumped to follow suit, of outspoken stateswomen. Sarah Pallonem, a incorporating pearls into countless, iconic collecWashington, D.C., jeweler to the political elite, tions. claims that “pearls are the power suit and tie for women.” From Martha Washington to Kamala In 2016, Chanel sent Pharrell Williams down the Harris, women in the political spotlight have ad- runway wearing a pearl necklace. Williams’ apopted pearl-necklace political armor to convey pearance opened the door to men in the hip hop the reserved elegance perfect for campaigns. All industry claiming the pearl necklace as their own. of pearl necklaces’ history — the royalty, wealth, Similar to Cleopatra drinking her dissolved earbeauty standards, and political power — cul- ring to brag to Marc Antony, rappers often wear minate in one conclusion: Pearl necklaces are a extravagant, gold chains and drive luxury cars to show off their wealth. As an alternative to a classymbol of the feminine establishment. sic chain, a pearl necklace evokes flex culture in a As the generation that grew up with role models refreshing way. By wearing pearls, jewelry that’s like Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy aged, so traditionally feminine, men show that they’re so did the reputation of pearl necklaces. In the comfortable enough in their masculinity to play 1990s, the expression of “pearl-clutching” came with the lines of gender in fashion. into the vernacular, signifying a prude having a shocked reaction to something morally wrong. This trend didn’t truly take off until 2019, when Pearl necklaces became dated, old-lady jew- rapper A$AP Rocky arrived at the Christian Dior elry. But in his 2013 Fall/Winter show, Alber El- show wearing a sheer, flowery top adorned with baz changed that. As head of the French house ropes of pearls. The accessory caught fire in the Lanvin, he flipped the idea of the pearl necklace. world of rap. It was frequently worn by artists

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such as Machine Gun Kelly, Gucci Mane, and Future. These men flaunted their manliness by maintaining machismo while donning the uniform of Barbara Bush. By being popular in a music genre entrenched in heteronormativity and gritty masculinity, the image of a dainty First Lady wearing pearls was shattered. Pearls were now tough.

For another facet of male celebrities, however, pearl necklaces aren’t just a way to boast about wealth or express comfort in their masculinity; rather, they are an outlet to experiment with androgynous fashion. In the same year A$AP Rocky sported pearls, Harry Styles arrived at the Met Gala wearing a singular pearl earring. Soon after, pearl necklaces became a staple in his wardrobe as a part of his wider brand of playing with gender fluidity in fashion. In 2019, he claimed “what men are wearing and what women are wearing — it’s like there are no lines anymore,” citing inspirations like Prince and David Bowie. Especially in the queer community, pearl necklaces have become a go-to medium for men to play with the gendered conventions of fashion. Gay men like Troye Sivan and Billy Porter have characterized pearls as a staple for men who reject gender binary in fashion. Rather than pearls flaunting hypermasculinity, pearl necklaces have become a tool to play with gender norms.

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The trend of men wearing pearl necklaces has exploded with Gen Z especially. But why now?

Male millennials and Gen Zers certainly aren’t the first to blur gender boundaries in their wardrobe. Icons like Prince and David Bowie pioneered androgonous looks way before Harry Styles ever stepped on to the cover of Vogue in a dress. Elton John even wore ropes of pearls back in the '80s. So why is Gen Z the first generation of men to replicate this look? Why is the pearl necklace a staple for Gen Z, specifically? Before the Stonewall Riots of 1969, cross-dressing arrests were commonplace. While public perception of gender fluidity rapidly changed in the '70s with the popularity of stars like David Bowie, androgyny still wasn’t widely embraced. But now, Gen Z men live in the most accepting time period of gender fluidity yet. Gen Z men have the freedom to emulate the flamboyant male celebrities they see on the red carpet in a way that was previously unheard of.

Men wearing pearl necklaces has become an indicator of machismo, experimentation, and disobedience to gender norms. Pearls are for everyone.

Rather than symbolizing the establishment, pearl necklaces have become a symbol of modern, nonconformist masculinity. Pearls started out as the adornment of the ruling class. Now, they’re subverting the status quo. ■

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"Rather than pearls flaunting hypermasculinity, pearl necklaces have become a tool to play with gender norms."

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The Curation

On days when every thought I have feels like a push further away from the person I wish I were,

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layout CAROLINE BLANTON photographer KAUSHIK KALINDINI stylists EMILY WAGER & CAT HERMANSEN hmua MERYL JIANG & SERENA RODRIGUEZ models NOURA ABDI & NEHA KONDAVEETI

of Memory

by KUNIKA TREHAN

the letters and trinkets I keep by my side remind me of those who love me from near and far.

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WHITE COLLARED BLOUSE | Flamingo’s RED EMBROIDERED VEST | Revival Vintage GOLD POLKA-DOTTED PANGS | Flamingo’s BANGLE BRACELETS | Revival Vintage

“What is maximalism, if not finding beauty in the mess?”

I

can’t seem to pinpoint when exactly things My father’s study housed a desk overflowing with started to go badly for my family. The ball was papers, notes to himself scrawled across whichset in motion well before my birth: two strang- ever stray envelope or business card was nearest ers bound not by any shared familiarity but by when he needed it. Persistent bouts of insomnia the desire to be married, freshly displaced in a resulted in sleepless nights, his keyboard clickcountry to which they had no ties, struggling with ing and murmured calls to offices halfway across grief and addiction and all the sorts of things that the globe echoing through our darkened house. foster an unhappy marriage.

My father, the addict; it was never in his nature to know things in moderation. His drinking, his Yet along came my brother and I, and, for a while, work, even sometimes his joy: It overwhelmed us, things were okay. Not good, by any stretch, but his moods switching direction with the wind.

OK. Our presence didn’t eradicate my father’s drinking or my mother’s neuroticism or their And my mother, a force in her own right. Her afgrowing distaste for one another, but through finity for bold patterns and vibrant shades came to opening their hearts to us both, I imagine they life in her closet, each overflowing shelf envelopfound a little space in there for one another as ing you in her kaleidoscopic mind’s eye. I rememwell. There were Sunday afternoons spent swing- ber vividly the glimmer in her eyes when she’d ing from our orange tree’s outstretched branches return from shopping trips, eager to reveal what and long drives home that lulled us to sleep; there she’d picked out for me. “I have a surprise for you,” was my father carrying us up the stairs from the she’d disclose as I crawled into the backseat of her car and my mother pulling on one of her many car. She was never a woman limited by means — wide-brimmed hats, shielding her delicate skin every outing was an adventure, each purchase the from the sun. push that would shift things into place.

Our house was always visibly lived-in: the kitchen counter stacked high with unopened mail, laundry awaiting folding piled up in the yellow loveseat by the TV, our neighbors’ Christmas cards adorning the mantle well into January. Intricately patterned throws my father had collected in his travels were draped across the backs of couches, and mirrors my mother had purchased were positioned to cast warm afternoon light across the walls — the living room a mosaic of their shared existence.

As the years passed, we strayed further and further from that approximation of “OK.” Perhaps we grew to the age where our parents’ issues were no longer some mystical, distant thing but instead a palpable weight on our backs. Our house, with its metal-casted dhokra sculptures and swaths of embroidered fabric stretched across the walls, grew congested by everything left unsaid. The gaps between us where the words should have been were filled with stuff: Garbage bags packed with toys

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and clothing we’d outgrown swamped our garage, nearing the ceiling in altitude.

As the fall of my freshman year of college approached, that shimmering hope stretched a bit thinner. Was I ready to make the big shift I’d been My adolescence was marked by passivity. I was envisioning? As the future, once distant enough to stuck in the passenger seat, the events of my life cast my aspirations upon, became the present day, floating by as though they were happening to I felt distinctly unprepared. The tangible steps tosomeone else. My bedroom, in which I’d tried to wards this new me had always been a bit fuzzy in find sanctuary, was never a space I particularly en- my mind: Now that the time had arrived, I wasn’t joyed. The room didn’t get much natural light, ren- certain how exactly one began a metamorphosis. dering my theoretically coral walls a gloomy red most days. I spent much of my time compressed In my dorm room, surrounded by heaps of my beby the immovable darkness of my surroundings. longings and truly alone for the first time, I realI’d picked up from my parents the habit of collect- ized how poorly I’d executed my reinvention. Uning, but much like them, had never made a habit packing slowly, I unearthed a new, unnecessary of organizing. Clutter accumulated in each dim treasure every few moments: a gift bag, stuffed nook, pushing me further into a hole I felt inca- with cards and notes from my loved ones; the pable of escaping. Etched in my memory is the delicate, ornately-patterned Varanasi silk scarf I’d singular light fixture I kept illuminated through never worn, feather-light in my hands; a collection the evenings — the hours I’d lie in bed, staring of tiny jars and boxes whose purpose wasn’t easily at it, feeling immobilized by a weight I couldn’t identified. I felt ashamed. How had I managed to name. Even after I’d fallen asleep, the light burned let so much of that messy child slip through? into the insides of my eyelids. I could never quite muster the energy to turn it off.

Yet, through those first few months, I found a purpose for each trinket I’d held onto. Those very Despite this sense of melancholy, I held onto one notes offered me solace, taped to the wall above glimmering thread of hope: the future. I’d some- my desk, providing me the imagined company of day hoard less — certainly, with age, I’d develop those who’d authored them as I slogged through the mental fortitude to get rid of what no longer red-eyed nights glued to my laptop. The scarf I served me. With my refined collection of belong- pinned to the wall above my bed, its silky pleats ings, I imagined a newfound sense of mental gently rustling from my overhead fan as I learned clarity. All I needed to do was escape my parents’ to sleep in the twin-sized bed of my new life. home; the rest would follow, the puzzle pieces Those little jars and glass bottles I’d been mysticlicking into place. I’d finally become someone I fied to uncover lined my bathroom sink, housing might actually like. hair ties and cotton swabs, each tiny piece of my

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VINTAGE GREEN DRESS | Flamingo’s PRINTED BUTTON-UP BLOUSE | Flamingo’s PURPLE PUMPS | Revival Vintage

“We don’t get to choose what happens to us. life finding an equally tiny home. Each fragment earned its place, and while there was chaos, it was my chaos.

Rather than overwhelming me, my tendency to collect grounds me. On days when every thought I have feels like a push further away from the person I wish I were, the letters and trinkets I keep by my side remind me of those who love me from near and far.

She is the woman who never leaves the house without a tube of the brightest red lipstick she can find, who unearths every item I’ve ever misplaced, who used to walk me to school every morning holding my hand, rehearsing our home address and phone number, warning me to look out for snakes in the grass at recess. “This is my favorite part of every day,” she’d tell me then. “When it’s just me and you.”

These moments didn’t make up the majority of my time with my family. In truth, the moments when I consider myself more a maximalist than a hoarder. I felt lost, helpless, and afraid far outnumber the What is maximalism, if not finding beauty in the beautiful ones. But I believe that from every ugly mess? I draw from each of my parents the traits I thing, something beautiful can be born. We don’t admire the most: my mother’s optimism, my fa- get to choose what happens to us. What we do have control over is what we choose to embrace. ther’s eye for beauty.

He is the man who wakes up for the sunrise every place we go, who emails me pictures of the owls in our backyard, who used to sneak out of his boarding school late at night and wander the streets of Delhi. Who told me once, “It doesn’t matter to me what you do. What matters is that you dedicate yourself to it entirely.” Who believes there is no point in doing anything halfway. Who tells me he is proud of me every chance he gets, especially when I don’t feel proud of myself.

I am not the idealized version of myself I’d imagined as a teenager. I likely never will be. I’ve yet to outgrow my proclivity for messiness, as any roommate of mine will tell you. Life did not, as I’d once dreamed, curve abruptly in the right direction when I left the physical confines of my parents’ home. Nevertheless, within each pocket of the mess I’ve accumulated, I find fragments of joy. I may spend the rest of my time on this Earth chiseling away, in search of these shards; in the process, I uncover the narrative of my own life. ■

What we do have control over is what we choose to embrace.” contra

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The Star-Crossed Fancy

by ANA BROWN

layout EMMA WEEDEN photographer ALYSSA OLVERA stylist LILY JACARUSO hmua LANE RICE & LEILA WILLAIMS models YOUSUF KHAN & EMILY GIFT

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“For daydreaming, romanticizing teenage girls like me, Romeo and Juliet was a step into la-la land. Nothing enchanted me more than watching Juliet rest longingly on a balcony, dreaming of her lover under a picturesque, starlit sky.” contra

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“Star-crossed love is said to be thwarted by forces beyond control. Hopeless romantics are pulled to madness like a fly to honey.

Like watching a burning building, the disaster begs us not to look away.”

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“The romantics of the world desire something more: a relationship that is, to be cliché, guided by the universe.

Dreamers run wild, straying away from the lives they lead to seek a fantasy they know will never be attainable."

“The mystery of traditional romance is no longer there, reoccupied by the tangibility of a finite period of time.

The fleeting relationship is clouded by the

intense desire for more.”

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“The butterfly of love is always just out of touch, and the chase is captivating for humankind.” contra

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Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s brooding celebrity vampire.

by AMELIA KUSHNER layout CAROLINE BLANTON

K

risten Stewart and Robert Pattinson met on the set of Twilight in 2008.

soared, so too did the regular-guy-gets-seemingly-unattainable-girl trope. Regular boys had plenty of evidence that they could miraculously date supermodel-looking girls, but the regular girls were starving for evidentiary fulfillment of their own romantic fantasies.

Later that year, the world met Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as mousy high school junior Bella Swan and pensive, sexy vampire bad-boy Edward Cullen. A racy Vanity Fair shoot and some intimate hand-grazing and eye-locking on red carpets ostensibly confirmed that Kristen had gotten the guy in real life, too.

At 18, Kristen Stewart became the latter half of the media sensation publicly christened “Robsten.” Thus, at the dawn of her celebrity, she was already fated for the wrath of Twitter.

The Twilight franchise marked a major shift in the international media landscape. For the first time, a major entry in the blockbuster film canon portrayed attraction from a uniquely teenage female perspective. The film’s sex object was the male lead; the female lead was the vehicle through which the viewer experienced the story.

For so long, the everyman vehicle in blockbusters had exclusively been male: Think dorky Shia LaBoeuf scoring Megan Fox’s Mikaela in Transformers (2007), Tobey Maguire’s geeky take on Peter Parker getting with Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane in Spider-Man (2002), Jonah Hill’s self-professed loser Seth ending up with cool-girl Jules in Superbad (2007). As the big-budget blockbuster

Enter Twilight. The books, the first of which came out in 2005, made immediate waves in the tween and teenage girl demographic. At the same time, the internet was blossoming into the ubiquitous entity it is today. By that time, more Americans had broadband than dial-up, cell phones could surf the web, and nearly three quarters of adults owned a computer. The advent of instant electronic messaging had accidentally spawned pockets of life, each with their own unique sets of vernacular and culture — chat rooms and fanfiction were born.

Fanfiction exploded across sites like Archive Of Our Own (colloquially, “AO3”). As fans used characters and settings from mainstream media like Twilight to write their own works, complete and sustained immersion in the world of a favorite franchise became feasible. A search for “Twilight” returns a combined 32,000 story results across major fanfiction sites, and some fan works, often called “fanfics” or “fics,” have amassed tens of thousands of readers. One Twilight fic on AO3 is over 100,000 words, or roughly the length of a 400-page novel. Many fanfiction authors released

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the sexual tension that ran through the nearlychaste books (Bella and Edward have implied sex in the fourth book, but sex is never mentioned in explicit terms, and the two hardly ever kiss), writing overt, graphic sex scenes from a woman’s point of view. In this way, Twilight provided an opportunity for women to express their sexual desire like no major piece of media had before; Fifty Shades of Grey was originally Twilight fanfiction.

Fanfiction quickly developed into its own genre with its own tropes. A trope distinct to fanfiction is the “Y/N trope.” In Y/N fics, the reader is a character within the universe of the franchise; they are most often told in the first person, and when another character says the reader’s name, the writer writes “Y/N,” short for “your name.”

Writers’ and readers’ desire for self-insertion becomes overt with the Y/N fic. This subgenre in Twilight fanfiction, which was incredibly prevalent, did away with the character of Bella completely, confirming that Bella was merely a conduit through which the world of Twilight was experienced.

Y/N fics about Edward Cullen quickly bled into Y/N fics about Robert Pattinson. Access to celebrities was at an all-time high: Twitter was just two years old but booming by the time the first Twilight movie came out, and tabloids were in their golden age. As the paparazzi industry grew, pictures of Pattinson became massively accessible and were endlessly circulated. Meanwhile, social media, particularly Twitter, began to move beyond personal pages and into cult-like fan accounts. In this way, Twilight’s predominantly young, female following began to develop parasocial relationships with the actor behind their favorite vampire. In a parasocial relationship, one party puts forth immense emotional effort, time, and care towards a celebrity who has no idea they exist.

Fans conflated their infatuation from a distance with genuine love. They felt possessive of Rob;

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they prayed for him; they supported his every move. Parasocial relationships with him ranged in depth — from occasional tweets calling him “my baby” to full-blown declarations of undying love on Instagram accounts dedicated to posting Pattinson content daily. But they were inordinately and concerningly prevalent, all while Kristen Stewart was dating the object of their affections in real life.

Kristen Stewart was on a precipice. An awkward nonchalance in interviews did little to ease the hostility of fans who coveted her boyfriend. Fans’ contempt spilled into industry contempt, as critics ripped into her acting skills, and major TV news outlets criticized her demeanor during public appearances. The envy of teenage girls was so potent that it had led to a real and seemingly universal hatred. But the hatred retained a patina of professionalism, because, really, Kristen had done nothing wrong.

Finally, all that thinly veiled hatred had become justified.

Tabloids ran the story, and social media exploded.

Kristen issued a frantic public apology via People magazine: “I love him, I love him, I’m so sorry.”

Twitter in particular was vicious. How could she have done this to my beautiful Rob! thousands of people who had never met either of them lamented. The scandal dominated the internet.

Her name was tainted for years. She escaped into small indie projects (The Clouds of Sils Maria, 2014) and serious high-brow filmmaking (Still Alice, 2014), attempting to bury herself back into the arthouse obscurity from which she had come. It didn’t work.

Why was the world so livid? Why did it matter so much that a 22-year-old girl had had a lapse in judgement?

Until she made The Mistake.

On July 17, 2012, Kristen and married director Rupert Sanders were photographed cheating on their partners with each other. Kristen was 22.

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Rupert was 41. She was starring in his movie at the time.

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As fanfiction about Edward Cullen blurred into fanfiction about Robert Pattinson, the character

of Bella blurred into a public perception of Kristen Stewart. As they found new agency within fanfiction and chat rooms to express their sexual desire, these girls stripped Kristen of her agency as a complex equal in her own relationship. Bella, written to be decidedly unextraordinary, was only special because strong, striking, secretive Edward had picked her — so Kristen was only special because Robert had picked her. As these girls broke free from the patriarchal structures that had suppressed their ability to articulate sexual desire, they entrenched themselves in the misogynistic ideal that a woman must sit pretty and wait to be picked by a man who will never view her as an equal.

Binding female desire within this ideal pits women against each other: They’re fighting to be picked. They don’t have the agency to seek out partnerships and set personal standards. As young girls without long, serious, adult partnerships under their belts, all they know of romance is a fundamental inequity.

Twilight may have been one of the first mainstream offerings to portray female desire, but it was nowhere near the first to portray a patriar-

chal structure of romance. The danger lies in the conflation of the two within the story. Edward treats Bella as a pet: He controls where she goes, whom she sees, what she does, and when she (spoiler alert) finally gets to become a vampire.

He is manipulative and cryptic, and though he looks 17, he is 86 years older than she is. And yet, because everything he’s done is in the name of “true love,” all is well.

Bella finds her agency toward the end of the saga and manages to establish herself as Edward’s equal. All it took was four books and five movies for her to get there.

Kristen has slowly but surely built herself back up. She’s put out at least three films a year over the last seven years. Most recently, she starred as Princess Diana in Spencer, which came out in November of this year to critical acclaim and rumors of an Oscar bid for its star.

Still, the rumblings remain: I still don’t trust her.

She’s so weird and awkward. She’s not even talented.

The damage is done. ■

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HEA

If it was all a blur, when would I finally find clarity?

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ADLIGHTS

IN THE

HEADLIGHTS

by OLIVIA DU

layout MATEO ONTIVEROS photographer RICHARD AHN stylist ANDREA CLAUDIA MAURI hmua LILY CARTAGENA model OPHELIA BROWN

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hen I think of my youth, I think of feeling safest in the backseat of my dad’s car.

The world’s sights seemed that much rosier to me when filtered through the looking glass of the window. I remember the rain droplets that raced each other down windows, road trips through Albuquerque’s fiery sunsets, driving to the pool on summer evenings when mosquitoes were hungry and skies bare, and visits to the library after which I would proudly come back with my new conquest of treasure.

Life was simple and contained. I could spot the yellow minivan from any distance, like a steady reminder of home. I knew who I was, even if my thoughts were much more elementary than now. My identity was as constant as the car that would pick me up every day after school: I was my father’s careful daughter and my mother’s mirror image.

As 16 candles were blown in excitement and my mom’s car keys were gifted to me in warm hands, I found new liberation: this time, behind the wheel. In my car, I was separate from the world. As everything outside blurred into vague mirages, I created time that belonged only to me.

I sped through billboards of heartbreak and piercing sirens of raw, gut-wrenching cries; I screamed my favorite songs until my lungs gasped for air and gazed in silence at the melancholy beauty of traffic lights flickering in the rain. I wielded my independence moment by moment, until I felt sure of myself in the same anchored confidence I had as a child.

When I drove, I found vulnerable and honest confessions of my feelings the way one finds lost keys between snug couch seats. I

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“If I had driven 10,000 miles alone, I believed I could do 10,000 more.”

GREEN DRESS | Never Knew Vintage

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defined who I was for the first time without association to anyone else, not even my family. I watched the odometer creep its way past 100,000 miles that year, and I drove for 10,000 more. It gave me a quiet satisfaction. If I had driven 10,000 miles alone, I believed I could do 10,000 more.

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inch of me being agonizingly stretched out in every direction was one I detested yet didn’t know how to resist. That’s why, when I drove, I thought I’d finally achieved independence. But every time I stepped out of the car, I realized I was still the same me.

I still cared about the same small things, worried about the effect of my actions on others, and couldn’t stand the feeling of isolation.

Three years later, after uncomfortable confrontations with growing pains, stinging realizations from hurting others, and overwhelming feelings of inadequacy, I lost security in driving. The same roads and sights no longer gave me the same rush. Each time, I drove farther and longer in attempts to find that peace again and to unravel my growing knot of discontentment. But freedom seeped into aimlessness. Happiness subsided into growing waves of doubt. The world that gave me vertigo from racing through the looking glass was now far removed and distant.

In New York, I forced myself to live my fears.

In the beginning, I let the predetermined times and set routes of buses, subways, and trains lead me without resistance: resting on cold subway seats, watching stations and people blur by; sitting in the backseat of unknown strangers, trusting that I’d find my way; riding the train to the end of the line to upstate New York. I spent every evening retracing my steps on Lexington Avenue in hopes of finding direction in my emotions. To relinquish the control I so desperately sought from driving made me feel like I was reverting back to my worst When the suffocation grew too much to parts. bear, I flew to New York spontaneously in an effort to escape my self-doubt. Without Yet to relinquish control was to finally bea car to fall back on, to nourish my identity gin experiencing the world underneath in the careful mold I had created before, I my two feet: one that was deeply satuwas uprooted. I was struck by the realiza- rated by textures, colors, and sounds. I tion that I had been so focused on the next began to notice the steady, concrete steps place, the next stop, that I didn’t even know of the Met that murmured beneath me as if I’d planted seeds in the past roads I’d trav- I scratched fervent love letters in wrinkled journal pages. Or that one evening, when eled. a thunderstorm kissed me, piercing and I grew up shapeshifting my identity to cold instead of its usual pitter-patter on the fit those around me. The feeling of every windshield. And the wind that raced like

“The world that gave me vertigo from racing through the looking glass was now far removed and distant.”

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youthful innocence beside me in the forest of a riverside town, where I was enveloped whole instead of just grazed across the cheek through cracked car windows. When I stood in Brooklyn and saw a million lives across the river diminished to tiny specks on the horizon, I found exhilarating freedom in my insignificance. An epiphany, of sorts. This time, I didn’t have to be separate from the world to find peace within myself.

These moments are the seeds I plant in the roads I’ve traveled. When I’m on my own two feet, I decide the pace. I determine where and who I want to be. I am in my own power, and I’m rooted in the same world I once peered at from beyond a glass wall.

I still worry that I’ll fall victim to habit and follow life’s tempo and not the other way around.

I’ve never been bold. Or determined. Or courageous. Or strong. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to live my life like I am those things.

I used to chase after past memories of a life simple and contained. But this time things are different: Driving can no longer be my crutch to define myself. Nothing and no one can save me but myself.

From outside of the car, I turn towards the glow of the headlights. I place hope in the idea that disbelonging and reinvention are inevitable lovers in marriage.

If I have found happiness before, I will again. ■

“Yet to relinquish control was to finally begin experiencing the world underneath my two feet: one that was deeply saturated by textures, colors, and sounds.”

SUITCASE | Revival Vintage

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where we bury

by ADRIAN WEISS

our love layout CLAIRE KEEGAN photographer MATEO ONTIVEROS stylist WALTER NARANJO hmua KATARINA TYLL model SETH ENDSLEY

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Where does all our love for someone go after they’re gone?

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he yahrzeit candle stood waiting at sundown on the anniversary of my grandmother’s death. My father’s fingers trembled as he struck a faulty match, twice scraping against the matchbox before snapping. He cursed under his breath and grabbed a lighter, its mechanical click breaking the silence of the dining room. The flame flared into life and enveloped the wick, sending shadows dancing across our faces in the dim light. I stared into the fire, hoping to see some spark of my grandma in its flickering. But it was just a candle. She’s gone, and all that’s left is darkness.

family I never paid much attention to her. I was young and self-absorbed; we had no common ground. What interest does an elementary schooler have in Wagner and Shakespeare?

One of the last times I saw her, she tried to teach me the Hebrew alphabet. She hadn’t yet given up on passing her heritage to me, despite the expanding distance between us. But to an 11-year-old, her scrawled foreign symbols were meaningless. I didn’t understand she was desperately reaching for some sort of connection. By the time I realized, it was too late.

In Jewish tradition, a yahrzeit candle is lit in remembrance on the anniversary of a loved one’s death. Although my father has long since stopped going to temple and raised his sons secularly, these small traces of heritage remain.

His mother, my grandma, passed down the traditions that were as much a part of her as our shared, curly hair and crooked noses. Though she’s since passed, some part of her still remains in us, the shadows cast from her flame.

Death came for her in pieces. First there were the surgeries, the joint replacements, and wheelchairs. Then, the emphysema and coughing fits from a decades-long smoking habit. Over the years, her cane became a walker.

By the time the lung cancer claimed its hold, there wasn’t much left of her to take.

There was even less to hold on to. A newspaper clipping.

A CD of clarinet concertos. A few framed photographs.

My memories of her are tenuous and faded, fragments seen through a child’s eyes. I mourn less for her than for our lost relationship, for the grandma I never had the chance to know.

My grandmother was a writer. I’d like to think that she’d be proud of me for following her legacy, but I can’t say for certain. I didn’t know my grandmother well enough then, and now I never will. It wasn’t her fault; she tried the best she could, but there were too many barriers to overcome and too little time. She lived on the West Coast, and flying became too risky with her emphysema diagnosis.

More to my shame, when she did make the trip to see my 80

I used to think grief was simply about sadness. I’d seen it in movies and on the news, knew the stories of blackclothed mourners breaking into uncontrollable tears at spark

“Though she’s since passed, some part of her remains in us, the shadows cast from her flame.”

SHEER OVER LAYER | Flamingo’s WHITE DRESS SHIRT | Flamingo’s BLAZER | Flamingo’s

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can’t. There’s an incomprehensible finality to death that transcends description.

the graveside. I didn’t know about the regret. The feeling that I could have done more, I should have done more, and now I’ll never get the chance to. I wasn’t prepared for the guilt that clawed up my throat, filling my lungs until all I could breathe was tainted with it, suffocating in the stale air of every missed opportunity. No one warned me about the wave of self-loathing that crashed over me until I didn’t know if I was angrier at her for leaving or myself for being left behind. When I told my grandma I loved her, did she know I meant it? Or did it just sound like another platitude?

That doesn’t stop people from trying — go to any funeral, and you’ll see what I mean. Eulogies are filled with desperate attempts to explain the unexplainable, to provide comfort in the face of grief. There’s a sense of closure in ceremonies, a way to tell someone all the things we never could in life, to say goodbye. But I missed the burial. I never got to tell her I loved her that one, final time.

My grandmother is forever frozen in my memory the last time I saw her, standing in the garden with a hand raised in farewell as my car door slams shut. I think she’s smiling, but her face is just a ghost in my mind.

Sometimes I wake up and forget that she’s gone. When someone dies, they leave a silence in every unspoken word that becomes its own form of white noise, the echo of their life a ringing ache in the ear. There’s a point when that silence becomes so loud it’s all you can hear, a new sonic register from which we measure our own lives.

I’ve been told that grief is born from love, but not with me, not for her. My grief is born from guilt. I wish I could eulogize my grandmother, but I don’t have the authority. The truth is, I don’t know who she really was. I’m sure there’s some grand conclusion about overcoming grief that people are supposed to come to, but I haven’t reached it yet. For now, I just have to accept death as the final separation between us, longer than any plane ride and wider than any cultural barrier.

With loss, we enter into the realm where words no longer apply. How can you write about nothingness? Death, then, is only visible to those left behind. It’s the darkness that defines the flame.

That’s the hardest part about grief: the absence it leaves behind. I want to call my grandma and tell her I’ve become a writer, that now I finally understand those Shakespeare plays and share her love of classical music. But I 82

With my grandmother’s death, I found the connection we had lacked in life. Through her absence, I’ve gotten closer spark

“That’s the hardest part about grief: the absence it leaves behind.” to her memory, and I think I understand her in a way I couldn’t while she was alive. Yes, she was my grandmother, but she was an individual in her own right, with her own private fears and loves. She was a mother and a daughter, a writer and a wife. She was a critic, professionally and personally, an acerbic but deeply loving woman. She was human.

cheap spearmint gum. Eleven, losing every game of Scrabble we played and storming out into the cooling twilight, only to be wrapped in her warmth, limping into the street after me. Fifteen, two years after her death, discovering an article she wrote and feeling the weight of her absence all over again.

I still remember her whisper in my ear as I kissed her goodnight, the moonlight pooling between our shadows.

Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I’ll see her reflection in my own. I inherited her contradictions, her unconditional love and casual cruelty, her vanity and her passion. Through finding my grandma, I found myself.

“You’re like me,” she said, her ravaged voice creaking out the words. “You’re going to do great things one day.”

Seven years old, sitting on her lap as she read The Tempest aloud, the scent of luxury perfume mingling with

I hope I will, Grandma. I hope I will. ■

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As I Fade with the Summer Breeze

by EUNJAE KIM

layout GRACE DAVILA photographer LORIANNE WILLET stylist GABI VERGARA hmua SARA TIN-U model PRISCILLA TAKYI

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I WAS A GIRL LIVING FROM DREAM TO MEMORY TO DREAM. contra

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n the sultry August nights, I melted underneath a buttermilk moon. I, along with my mother, aunts, cousins, and grandmother, would lay our picnic blankets in front of where the Hangang River glistened best along the Seoul cityline. To relieve some of the heat, we pressed our bodies to the cool earth, and I was finally one again with the place and people I loved most after a long period of separation.

Whenever the sun rose and swallowed the darkness whole, the air was thick with humidity and clung on like a second skin, softened and distorted by the fog and the almost sickeningly sweet scent of nectarines ripening in the heat. My little cousins and I spent our days looking for four-leaf clovers in the patches of weeds in the hills — precious, soft-leaved seedlings — and tying their stems around our ring fingers. I wished that I would never have to leave here because I, too, germinated under this hemisphere’s sun after months of darkness and dormancy.

I wanted to stay in Seoul forever, in the warm embraces of family, where everything was clear despite the milky air. Here, where I knew that my next step would land on solid ground, and I didn’t have to stumble my way through unfamiliar traditions and customs. Our annual visits did not fill the emptiness inside of me — I needed to live here, die here, feel the dirt under my toes, and bury my heart under the pine trees speckled across the sloping landscape.

And thus I spent my girlhood, bathing under the moonlight and making wishes in the sunlight, one summer month out of the 12. It was pure bliss, honey-sweet and beautifully bright, and I was sure I’d at least have these visits for eternity, if nothing else. But eternity isn’t so long-lived after all, and I haven’t set foot in my homeland for nearly five years. It was my ultimate sacrifice — I traded my happiness for academic responsibilities that were out of my control but necessary for my life in this part of

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the world. As the years went on, I found myself growing apart from the family on whom so much of my happiness depended.

I desperately clung to moments passed and people grown — things that existed only in my fading memories. Memories of when my grandparents were strong enough to walk across the flowerbeds with me, hand in hand; when my baby cousins knew me as family and not a stranger; when life was filtered through a golden light. All this no longer existed, and I was angry. I felt deprived. I hadn’t had my fill of childhood: golden sparks of laughter, love that poured down on me like scented oil. Some will call it naivete. Others will call me a fool who can’t let go of the past. But I’m simply a girl who had to grow up too quickly and realized too late that childhood does not last long.

There’s an innocent sort of beauty that lies in the youthful optimism of childhood. Ideally, children have no responsibilities, and their only duty is to absorb all that is beautiful and well in the world as they bloom. Mistakes are forgiven at the sight of a cheeky grin, and problems are solved with the drop of a perfectly dramatized tear. Many years ago in Seoul, that was the life I knew, but the life of an immigrant is drastically different. The lines between parent and child were blurred and crossed, for we all become children in foreign lands. My mom cried because of others’ belittlement and her yearning for her mom. I cried because she cried. I filled out paperwork and forged signatures for school.

My dad, the only one out of all four of us who could speak English, was never there. Every night, I prayed that we could go back home, where I experienced true childhood. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped feeling like that since.

Perhaps my fate has been sealed. I’ll forever be a ghost of a girl, chasing dreams that slip past my outstretched fingertips. A phantom forever floating in the hazy memories of a sweetly suffocating summer, unable to find her

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“BUT I'M SIMPLY A GIRL WHO HAD TO GROW UP TOO QUICKLY AND REALIZED TOO LATE THAT CHILDHOOD DOES NOT LAST LONG.”

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way back with no home to ground her in reality.

Sweet things often leave a sickening aftertaste. Youth and naivete are beautiful, but they leave you with an empty, bitter feeling. From afar, summer is a picturesque image of lovers sharing ice cream cones on park benches and ripe fruits that hang low from their branches, ready to harvest. But up close, the streets are sticky and stained with melted ice cream. Fruit, once sweet, begins to rot.

My childhood was slowly rotting; fixating on what I’d lost only furthered the pain and left me unable to move forward. I needed to let go.

Life comes in phases. We are born, we are young, we are old, and then we are reunited with the earth. Each comes with its own set of problems, but also joys. If there is a delight in innocence during childhood, there is delight in independence and the search for identity and purpose in adulthood. After all, was it childhood I was truly mourning? Or the sense of stability and feeling loved, which could be recreated in any stage of life?

Though my years of childhood are over, I still feel like a child. I miss being allowed to feel like a child, showcasing all my worries and doubts and love with no fear of judgement. But I’m slowly learning that the waning moon can fill into a full moon again, and I can start anew — but only once I’ve learned to set fire to the past and let go. ■

“SWEET THINGS OFTEN LEAVE A SICKENING AFTERTASTE.”

MY CHEMICAL IMBALANCE

by ELIZA PILLSBURY

EVERYONE’S EXPERIENCE ON PRESCRIPTION MEDICATION IS DIFFERENT. PLEASE TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR OR EVEN JUST A FRIEND IF YOU’RE STRUGGLING WITH MENTAL HEALTH. layout JAYCEE JAMISON

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“THERE IS NOTHING GLAMOROUS ABOUT BEING DEPENDENT ON DRUGS, EVEN IF THEY’RE LEGALLY AND SAFELY PRESCRIBED.”

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can rattle them off: Rexulti worked for 15 months then plateaued. Lexapro didn’t work at all. Buspirone worked for two years then began to make my anxiety even worse.

Prozac made me angry. Wellbutrin made me gain 25 pounds.

Xanax felt great, but I was always paranoid about the potential to abuse it.

I’m currently taking paroxetine and desvenlafaxine for anxiety and depression. (Don’t worry, it’s not a HIPAA violation if I self-disclose; this is just oversharing.) I love the way these words roll off of my tongue, like shibboleths. I used to stumble over that “sv” consonant cluster, but now I can say it with a knowing nonchalance. Then there’s Synthroid, which is a brand name, not the generic version that my mom takes. Thyroid problems and anxiety disorders run in the family. I’ll probably be taking some combination of these drugs for the rest of my life.

Zoloft is one of the only mainstream SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, for those who are not mentally ill!) that I can’t claim to have sampled. Then there are the more obscure medicines, like Lamictal or lithium. I haven’t taken those either. I’m left instead with only a morbid curiosity.

The pair of Blisovi (birth control) and Myorisan (acne medication) is relatively new for me, however. Neither name sounds very appealing. Blisovi hides the word “bliss,” but the first syllable is fol-

lowed by two distasteful glottal syllables. I’ve forgotten this name in at least two doctors’ offices, so I end up texting my friend who moved to a different city after her graduation but still takes the same medicine. Many friendships of mine have been strengthened by exchanging medical histories.

There is nothing glamorous about being dependent on drugs, even if they’re legally and safely prescribed. It’s unsettling to know that I could meet the world in a totally different way if I don’t take my medicine. Something outside of myself has more power than I might even know over who I will be on any given day.

Sometimes, I forget to take my medicine and don’t realize it until hours later, when all the colors become too bright and I don’t feel grounded in my body. But bodies are weird, and sometimes I’ll feel woozy for no reason at all. I’ll have a moment of paranoid panic, trying to remember the exact moment and motion with which I took my medicine that morning, or weighing whether it’s too late to take another dose, just in case.

Even while writing this story, I learned more about the quirks of my neurochemistry. I lived at home during most of the pandemic, and I adored the slower pace, independence, and time with my family. I was terrified of coming back to campus, and soon, it felt like my fears had been confirmed. A growing feeling of dissatisfaction and a hopelessness bordering on lethargy characterized the first few months of my first semester back.

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There was one week, however, when things felt different. I found myself literally skipping home from the bus stop. At a concert with friends, I felt like I was flying high above my body, looking down at the flashing lights with euphoric, bewildered contentment.

The next week, I realized I’d been on the placebo pills for my hormonal birth control. I’d heard horror stories about the pill affecting people’s moods, and I approached my gynecologist with what I thought to be a coherent narrative about my mental health. I thought I was self-aware enough to have perceived that this medicine was no longer serving me.

She suggested that actually, it was more likely that my acne medication was exacerbating my feelings of depression and anxiety and contributing to a lack of motivation. I realized I hadn’t been consistent with taking that medication during my good week either, and that I’d doubled my dosage of Myorisan right about when I left for college.

Before figuring any of this out, I’d come to the premature conclusion that I just wasn’t meant to enjoy college. I was trying to process what it would mean for me to seek moments of happiness in an environment with which I felt incompatible. While I still think there might be some truth to this for me, the whole truth is not that I’m constitutionally unfit for college, nor that I had sunk into a depressive episode after leaving home.

I don’t trust my body to care for itself. This is a rational position for me to hold. But even after years of productive drug therapy, I still feel ashamed sometimes. Whenever I travel or stay at a friend’s house, I try inconspicuously to quiet the rattling of pills in my bag. There’s still such a stigma around mental health and medication.

Besides, the aesthetic of an all-natural woman is seductive: She’s in touch with her truest self and freed from inhibitions to achieve a higher level of — what? Femininity? Morality?

Despite their very real benefits for many, the terms “holistic” or “natural” medicine are too often co-opted to push the latest fad diet, one that demonizes all processed foods or another that advocates quitting caffeine cold turkey (thanks, but no thanks). But truly holistic health does not require anyone to disregard scientifically proven methods of care.

I don’t want to hear any more of this “Van Gogh wasn’t medicated when he created his masterpieces” bullshit. How many more masterpieces could he have created if he’d had access to potentially life-saving psychiatric care? I’m grateful for my medicine. I’m proud of it; I’m even disclosing my medical records in a magazine article.

I am a whole person. I walk labyrinths. I pray and go to therapy. (I don’t work out, though I know I should.) I depend on iced oat milk lattes to get me through each silly little day.

And I take the drugs that my doctors give me. ■

I know all this now. I also know that I am not weak for relying on medicine. Asking for help is a show of strength. I know this, but I have a hard time making myself really believe it.

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“I am a whole person. I walk labyrinths. I pray and go to therapy. (I don’t work out, though I know I should.) I depend on iced oat milk lattes to get me through each silly little day.

And I take the drugs that my doctors give me.”

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the bones we inhabit IN THE RUINS OF MY MEMORY, I FIND HOME.

by CLARISSA R. ABREGO

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layout GRACE HARTER photographer RACHEL KARLS stylist MADEE FELTNER hmua JORDAN BUSARELLO & CLAIRE PHILPOT models CHIZARAM AJIWE, RACHEL LAZATIN AQUINO & DAVID REED

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t’s summer 2021, and I’m stand- through the wistful nuisance of caring for it. ing in front of the house. I can’t Once, they walked into their old bedroom, fathom that life once existed only to find photo albums and my mother’s there. In a way, I feel like I’m teenage clothes spread on the floor. Since looking through a glass box: then, most of the entries to our home have There it is before me, yet so out of reach. been blocked, even from those who are supI recall the afternoons of boredom that posed to belong there. Thick, metal rods extended beyond time, my long limbs brace the doors, and no sky gets through the laying on the cold floor, the cartoons on steel sheets covering up the windows.

TV illuminating my face. Now, all those moments dwell in between the nooks During the Renaissance, aristocrats delved and crevices of cement walls. As I see into the act of collecting by creating cabinets the frame that once held my memories of curiosities, or “wonder rooms.” These slowly dematerialize, I wonder, Can I spaces were like museums, categorizing trust my own memory? The bones of the strange objects that told stories about the house, once so big and encompassing, oddities of the world: bones of a majestic shrink down under my aged view. bird, paintings of faraway lands, a half-broken seashell. Humans have always believed My childhood home is a skeleton of the that physical objects can preserve memories, place that once held the hottest summers, and that aspects of our former selves can be the lavender smell of freshly cleaned held by tangible artifacts. floors, and my lovingly crafted play corner. It’s a mismatch of ruins where the A fossilized butterfly is not a butterfly, but undergrowth creaks and overcomes. a fragment of an almost mystical time, a The beige is chipping off the walls, and revelation of the life someone can hold in patches of paint showcase glimpses of all a glass jar. the colors that came before it. The front door can’t be opened. It’s stuck, maybe When I turned 2, the swingset in my backin time. The door net is unfit for light to yard was painted yellow to fit the Winnie shine through. the Pooh theme of my birthday party. When I imagine home, yellow is the only color I reGetting inside is an odyssey. In a town member. The swingset became the meeting with an overestimated population of ground for playdates, the piece that taught 1,300, it’s no secret that no one lives there me to move with the air, tilt my head and anymore. It’s been broken into — small- look up. town solidarity ceases to exist at the thought of finding something valuable.

Back then, the world looked bigger. In between the swinging push and pull of childBut every now and then, my parents go hood, I longed to devour life. I wanted to

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"This is where I lear to love the sunlight piercing through th trees and its warm on my skin."

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White Linen Top | TOP DRAWER

Knit Top | TOP DRAWER

rned t he mth

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"After moving cities and countries, I’ve come to realize home is not a set of walls carefully put together."

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run faster, jump higher, hold tighter. This is where I learned to love the sunlight piercing through the trees and its warmth on my skin.

The swingset remained yellow until it didn’t. Air and rain reclaimed it, and rust eroded its color. When my family and I moved, it had to be stored away. Sometimes, I get to catch sight of its state in my uncle’s warehouse. What now looks like just a dismantled piece of metal is still the host of my Winnie the Pooh memory, forever awaiting for the old familiar grasp of eager hands.

When I was 7 years old, my friend and I found a dead bird on the grass, its shattered body coming into itself. We named him and gave him a funeral. The scorching sun was our only mourner, and the headstone was made of Scrabble letters.

I can’t remember the name of the bird anymore. All this was before layers of dust smothered my toys and I grew too selfconscious for birthday parties.

Slowly, I try to let go of my fear of decay.

I remind myself of all the things I hold dear and can’t grasp. After moving cities and countries, I’ve come to realize home is not a set of walls carefully put together.

My old house is nothing but a frame, and home is all that happened inside of it.

My youth was filled with a secret craving for moments of turbulence, wishes to move, to go go go as fast as I could. Maybe I’m a hopeless explorer, or maybe it stems from my secret desire to constantly reinvent myself. Maybe it’s both. All I know is that as time passes by, I find myself craving some sort of stillness.

I long for the certainty of knowing there’ll always be a home I can come back to.

Even if it only exists inside my body, even if Mother Nature decides to completely reclaim what has always been hers. ■

I think of my old home as a fossilized butterfly, some sort of wondrous entity that reminds me of all the life that once inhabited it. Something that will, eventually, disappear. Poet Safia Elhillo says, “Home is a moment in time.” When I get to go inside, or picture it from miles away, 9-yearold me is all of me that is there.

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INHERITANCE

by KELLY WEI

layout CALEB ZHANG photographer ALYSSA OLVERA stylists OLIVIA ABERCROMBIE & MARTA BROSETA CASTELOS hmua JAYCEE JAMISON models JULIA GARRETT & JUSTIN GONZALES

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My grandfather was born into a wealthy, land-owning family in 1941, on the cusp of the Chinese Land Reform Movement. It was a time of great and terrible changes. contra

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THERE’S A SILENCE IN ME THAT I INHERITED FROM MY MOTHER, WHO INHERITED IT FROM HER FATHER. WHO HE GOT IT FROM, WE’LL NEVER KNOW. MY GRANDFATHER WAS FIVE YEARS OLD, THE YOUNGEST OF FOUR, WHEN OUR LINEAGE RECORDS WERE SUMMARILY STRUCK FROM HISTORY ON THE PARTY’S ORDERS. (IT WAS ALL VERY ROMANOVIAN. SOMETHING ABOUT THESE BRUTAL OLD COUNTRIES.) BEYOND HIM, THE REST OF MY FAMILY ARE PHANTOM BRANCHES OF AN OLD, DEAD TREE. GENEALOGICAL STUMPS. SO MUCH OF WHAT I REMEMBER HAS BEEN WARPED BY TIME, DISTANCE, AND LANGUAGE.

LESS MYTHOLOGICAL? HOW DO I AVOID SENSATIONALIZING, WHEN I MUST INVENT NEW DETAILS EACH TIME I REIMAGINE IT?

HOW DO I KNEEL IN THE SNOW BESIDE MY GRANDFATHER, BEGGING WITH HIM FOR WHAT WAS ONCE HIS — AND IN SOME OTHER WORLD, MINE?

(THE FLOWERS IN OUR OLD GARDEN WERE THE COLOR OF CRUSHED WINE.)

HOW DO I WAKE AT DAWN WITH HIM, WIPE THE BLOOD OFF THE SINK WHILE HE DRESSES, TRAIL AFTER HIM TO UNIVERSITY WITH FAKE PAPERS IN HAND? HOW DO I MAKE THIS STORY SOUND REAL,

(IT WAS HIS MOTHER’S HEIRLOOM PEARLS HE WAS BEGGING FOR.) I AM CHASING AFTER FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD NOBODY REMEMBERS BECAUSE I COULDN’T SAVE IT. OUR WORLD. THE ONE WHERE THIS FAMILY STILL HAS SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL TO GIVE TO ITS CHILDREN. I AM HUNTING IN THE LAND OF THE DEAD, DIGGING THROUGH CHRYSANTHEMUMS FOR SOMETHING I CAN CALL MINE. AND I AM REFUSING TO LET GO. “ALL THIS WORK YOU DO,” SOMEBODY ONCE ASKED ME. “DOES IT MAKE YOU HAPPY?” I OPENED MY MOUTH TO ANSWER, AND LIKE A GHOST, COULDN’T SPEAK. ■

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“The flowers in our old garden were the color of crushed wine.”

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“How do I kneel in the snow beside my grandfather, begging with him for what was once his

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and in some other world, mine?”

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layout CLAIRE KEEGAN photographer JEFFREY SUN stylists JULIA GARRETT & DARNELL FORBES hmua RYAN VELASQUEZ models RACHEL LAZATIN AQUINO & JAYLIN YOUNG

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layout LAURA GONIMA photographer JESSIE CURNEAL stylists ELLA CLARET & ZAHA KHAWAJA hmua JANE LEE model JORDAN TELIHA

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RED DRESS | Stardust Vintage

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BLUE DRESS | Revival Vintage

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by AARON BOEHMER

A CONSTANT PURSUIT OF PROFIT QUENCHES THE MODERN VAMPIRE’S THIRST FOR BLOOD. 132

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layout GRACE HARTER photographer REN BREACH stylists ALEX CAO & DAVID GARCIA hmua AMBER BRAY & JANE LEE models ANAHI CHAVERO & CAMERON WESLEY

resh, bloody steak with bones laden in fat is the Titan Cronus’s favorite meal.

He particularly fancies eating his offspring; their cries warm his heart dearly.

Quite picky about his dinner music, Cronus only ever listens to the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

“Such elegance,” he sputters, while chewing on his son’s tendons.

“I adore what Bach did in the opening flourish,” he moans, blood oozing from the corners of his mouth like a burger with too much ketchup.

I shiver at the mere sight of Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. God, I hate ketchup.

Love and Pain by Edvard Munch dances to the same chords. The painting depicts a woman’s mouth nestled into the side of a man’s neck. He drowns in her piercingly red hair. Some people wonder if she’s biting or kissing him, but one look at his lifeless body reveals the truth. His carotid artery is her evening entrée.

A tale of man-eating, feminist revenge? I wish. If it was, then let the woman feast. More power to her!

Unfortunately, the motif that became of Love and Pain is more similar to the ways of Cronus.

A toxic toccata In 1800s Berlin, Munch’s brushstrokes unearthed the modern vampire. Inspired by its ill-favored predecessors of European colonialism and Vlad the Impaler, this monster was nothing new. The only difference was that Munch made his vampire with oil paint. He must have not used enough varnish, as the

monster managed to paint itself outside its frame.

Now materialized into the real world, a constant pursuit of profit quenches its thirst for blood.

I wish this vampire took after the likes of Edward Cullen, playing bizarre baseball games and going to high school for the umpteenth time. Watching Twilight is what I assume a bad acid trip feels like, but at least its story is make-believe.

Robert Pattinson’s Edward Cullen came about 100 years after Munch’s vampire. Nevertheless, 1893 and 2008 were somehow similar. In both years, the art market and its collectors drained the veins of artists completely dry.

“Unlivable income and unfair copyright protections for all!” the art collectors chant. “Use these tools to inspire creativity for the world at the low, low price of your soul!”

Continuing their fit of rage, the collectors yank out artists’ withered veins, spin the veins into gold, and then use them as thread for regalia. Wrapped in fraudulent grandeur, the collectors spend the rest of their day gazing at themselves with erotic admiration.

In this spectacle of egomania, they sharpen their fangs with outsourced labor and powder their noses with the ashes of imagination. A tacky vanity set, to say the least.

The artist is left with no alternative but to write off their art for a profit. Their creations spoil like the corpse in Love and Pain. The market uses its waves of luscious, red hair to baptize art in riches, drowning the artist in a somber death.

The market uses its waves of luscious, red hair to baptize art in riches, drowning the artist in a somber death.

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A hellish fugue Just as with Munch’s painting, some see the ugly bite of commodification as a kiss. If it is one, I would say it’s sloppy with teeth, blood, and too much tongue. I guess some people are into that. The free market is their kink, and they harness themselves by the bootstraps to a ghastly sex swing of money and greed.

Free marketeers claim that selling art has merits because the artist earns recognition and resources. At the individual level, this may be true. A person who sells their own art has control over their work and the labor that goes into it. I confess that I partially say this to justify the selling of my own paintings.

Fret not! I’m not a vampire nor in bed with the free market because I didn’t outsource any labor to create the art. Although, like many other artists, I had to buy supplies from a local Michaels store.

Exploitation comes into play when the artist employs other people in the making or selling of their art; creators become reliant on the labor of others.

What was once intended to be ethical becomes filled with greed and corruption.

Once a vampire feeds for the first time, they can’t stop at just one drop of blood. The lure of money inevitably leads an individual to exploit other people, to see the artist and their work as nothing more than disposable transactions. Within capitalist logic, to claim that art is a creative and priceless outlet is sacrilegious. Well, damn. Banish me to hell then!

A coda of deceit and exploitation The vampire feeds on every corner of the industry, including work that directly opposes commodification. Anti-capitalist paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat adorn T-shirts and purses. Banksy knockoffs are for sale on Amazon despite his fervent anti-establishment stance. Like a vampire does with its prey, the industry demeans critical, artistic meanings to maintain its own legitimacy.

Sometimes artists indulge in vampirism. Pablo Picasso sold his art for high prices during his career.

By the time of his death, he was worth up to the modern-day equivalent of $1.3 billion. His mouth is frothed over with the thick blood of his creativity.

What a sellout!

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Unlike Picasso, many artists bear scars from the fangs of the art market. These scars aren’t random.

The capitalist values of the market and its collectors work in conjunction with racism, white supremacy, and misogyny, deciding those who receive respect and those subjected to exploitation. The experience of Basquiat as a Black Neo-expressionist artist reveals the vampiric iniquities of the art world. Constant remakes of Basquiat’s work show a lack of care and regard for his art. It’s like his neck provided too little of a supply, so the art world stabbed a needle into his arm to pump out bags full of blood.

These bags leave Basquiat’s art a sickly green, diluted of its intended messages. Large corporations like Coach place his artistry on their dull handbags without explaining its significance. The brand superficially acknowledges his colorful, abstract imagery and phrases inspired by African, Aztec, and Greek cultures; African American history; and social justice. Basquiat’s crown motif, for instance, is more than just an arbitrary illustration. It’s a reclamation of Black people’s royalty that has been whitewashed by westernized history.

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The art market is a vampire that props up white people & exploits Black & brown people.

In contrast, Coach created a wallet out of a 1960s Pop art symbol: the Campbell’s Soup Cans. The wallet looks tacky at best, but because its soup motif was created by a so-called genius, it’s automatically revered.

The genius in question is Andy Warhol. I just don’t see the brilliance. Warhol traced pictures of canned foods, while Basquiat spray-painted masterpieces.

Then, an alarm went off, and half of the painting shredded to pieces. Banksy had planned this demonstration to critique corporate greed in the art world. His display was a commendable exhibit, but all it did was garner gasps and warrant press coverage. The fragmented work is now worth a humble $8 million.

Moreover, the Basquiat collection is available for over 50 percent off on Coach’s website, while the Warhol wallet stands at steep resale values on Poshmark.

Limited access to products with Warhol’s work on it accentuates his commentary on U.S. consumerism. Unceasing reproductions of Basquiat’s work diminish his important messages of Black power and anti-capitalism.

Alas, we shouldn’t be surprised. One cannot reform something founded on corruption. Exploitation is the root from which the fangs of the art world grew.

The market couldn’t rid itself of commodification even if we tore out its teeth, leaving nothing but dry sockets. It would still thirst for blood, probably in new ways and even more than before.

This disparity outlines the racism of the art world, where white people’s artistic intentions are respected, while Black people’s creative aims are dishonored.

The art market is a vampire that props up white people and exploits Black and brown people.

Measly toothaches are not enough. Goya and Munch taught us that vampires stop at nothing for more power. The only way to stop the vampire is by completely ceasing its existence, releasing its soul of immortality.

A plagal cadence for the murdered sons & loved ones

With a wooden stake in hand, let us give the market and its power-holders a taste of their own blood. It is only then that we can build anew.

The commodification of art is a relentless evil. If artists have any more blood in their veins, the vampire will go on sucking the life out of them.

How do we kill the vampire?

Time after time, the art world shows itself to be inherently exploitative. Banksy tried to inspire change with his self-destructive Girl with Balloon painting.

At an auction, the work sold for just over $1 million.

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As the ashes settle on the art world, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor fades to silence. At the dawn of a new day, a major chord begins to play, one that is free of commodification. ■

layout MELANIE HUYNH photographer ERIN DORNEY stylist NOELLE CAMPOS hmua YEONSOO JUNG models MIKAELA MEDINA & PRISCILLA TAKYI

by KELLY WEI

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hloe wears a pink dress and her favorite cowboy hat to the reception.

The door to her house is spring green, wreathed in pearls and fresh bluebonnets. She elbows it open, and light floods out into the night, swaths of it settling across my boots, my dress, my gloves. The place is empty. Everyone is outside, talking and laughing in the clearing.

“I’ll be just a second,” she says, gliding past me and into a room down the hall. The ruffles on her dress trail behind her like a school of shiny fish.

While I wait, I pace with my hands clasped behind my back, the way my grandfather used to when I made him sad. I study the plants on her windowsill, the chipped floor-length mirror leaned against her couch, and the enormous clothing rack in the middle of her living room. The kitchen smells like fresh garlic. An abandoned candle flickers on the counter. Paranoid of housefire, I blow it out.

I have a hard time believing that Chloe’s house, though empty now, is that way on a regular day. It’s a beautiful place, so the people who move in and out of it must love each other. I look through the window, where — past the patio, past the unfenced yard, past the 10 paces of wild grass — two distant flood lights shine in the clearing, and a guest’s great, big guffaw echoes back to me.

I’ll deny it later to anyone who might have seen my face change through the window, but I suddenly feel an urge to sit down on the hardwood and dissolve into tears.

Love, beauty, the good life: I dress in black and pretend I’d rather read Cioran than be loved, but the truth is, there’s little else I want more.

I guess everyone does cry at weddings.

Then Chloe is waltzing back, ushering us out the door, and something must give away how I’m feeling — probably the distracted, gloom-anddoom glaze over my eyes that I haven’t been able to clear since last year — because she pats me gently on my arm and says something I don’t hear, but it sounds sweet.

Around the summer before the wedding, I collapsed into a dead-eyed, Sisyphean state of sorry existence. I staved off any coherent thought with midday naps, got up only to take my medication or decline phone calls, and came to in the evenings dizzy with weird dreams. I’d check the fridge for leftovers, for an appetite. Find neither. Crawl back under the blankets. Watch old sitcoms until I’d eventually doze off to the laugh track.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’d leave the apartment in a fit of uncharacteristic agitation, walk the half-hour to campus, and sit on south lawn to push my fingernails into the dirt and feel lucid in the June dark again, the way I used to before the pandemic sent us all home. Austin is a green city, hilly and lush if you know where to go, but it was the campus greenery I liked best.

Maybe because I’d trekked through it dozens of times my first two semesters at college, always late at night and always alone. There I was: carrying my heels as I walked down 22nd Street in a white initiation dress, bleary-eyed and feverishly hot, collapsing like Cinderella on a lawn bench when I couldn’t take it anymore. Crying like I’d never cried before — because I was 18 and not a virgin anymore, because he didn’t love me, because my mother could call me twice a day and never once ask if I was OK, too afraid to hear the answer. Because nothing in the world did not bruise-and-use me up anymore.

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All the sadness I watered that little patch of grass with must have made it feel like home. Now, whenever I felt bad — or, in the case of summer 2020, felt nothing at all — I’d go sit there like an open nerve ending, waiting for the oaks and dandelions to tell me something about myself, my future, whatever the hell was going to make the meteoric hole in my chest sew itself back up. Something like, This too shall pass, or Someday you’ll get this splinter out of your heart and thank the universe for putting it there.

“Chlo!”

As we arrive, a rush of hands and shoulders greet us, flurry of kisses, punchline to a “left at the altar” joke I missed earlier that makes everyone laugh. Jade is handing me a slice of lemon meringue. Maddy is tucking a wildflower behind my ear; stolen, I suspect, from the vase at the center of the long picnic table. Someone I don’t recognize merrily asks me if I’m drunk, how come I’m not drunk, and whether I’ll need a ride back later. A little brown dog happily follows Chloe to her seat, ears flopping, then curls up at her feet with a yip.

I think it was Inger Christensen who wrote, “When I was 9 years old, the world, too, was 9 years old.” I still remember when things were beautiful. I used to sing, running from one corner of my family garden to the other, lyrics pouring out of me like I was a child oracle.

I’m a bird, I’m a bird, I would chant and lean over to skim my hands along the edge of the pool, cutting through the aquamarine with tiny, outstretched fingers. I liked to pretend the water had hands of its own, and that somehow, through “touch,” we could hear each other. I blow bubbles and send them out like happiness on wings.

“There was no difference between us, no opposition, no distance,” Christensen writes. “We just tumbled around from sunrise to sunset, earth and body as alike as two pennies.”

When I held my palms out under the backyard magnolia tree, the wind used to come each time to send a petal shivering into my hands. I wanted to get married under that tree. Back then, we were healthy as horses — cerulean sky, pink cheeks, lush foliage. What happened to me? What happened to the world?

Above us, sparkling mirror balls and pink streamers hang from the trees — “Bree, you shouldn’t have!” — and these are what I look at for the longest time, while people murmur and shift all around me, their voices joining and separating and joining again.

Admittedly, I don’t know how to write about good things yet, nor about things that haven’t finished happening to me.

So this is where the moment on paper has to end. I’m still standing in the grass and watching the discos turn over and over, catching the rims of our champagne glasses, the sparkling jewels around our throats, and refracting all that light back onto us. It’s not exactly a dialogue, but I swear I can almost hear the woods say, Look at how beautiful you all are.

“Oh, baby,” someone’s hand, brushing my cheek. “Why are you crying?”

I feel small, like a child again — and I don’t know if that means I’m going to be OK someday, or if I’m ever going to meet the gaze of this earth and understand perfectly what it’s saying to me again. But it feels good. Like, something in me is breaking again so that it might set properly this time around.

The cake comes out at midnight, and we begin to sing a nonsensical mash-up of “Happy Birthday” and “Here Comes the Bride.” I can’t see anyone’s face, but I can hear our voices, smiling into the darkness.

When you’re in it, a bad summer feels like it’ll go on forever.

But here it is: the very first night of something else, grainy and cool, the sky and everything under it humming to the sound of us moving through dark lands. ■

Après moi, le déluge!

layout CEDAR ETHERINGTON photographer RACHEL LAZATIN AQUINO stylists GABI VERGARA & KATHLEEN SEGOVIA hmua JAYCEE JAMISON model CHIZARAM AJIWE

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YELLOW LEAVES THE WORLD HAPPIER THAN HE FOUND IT — ONE BURNED-OUT COLLEGE STUDENT AT A TIME.

PLANET PEELANDER

by ELIZA PILLSBURY layout ADRIANA TORRES photographer LEAH BLOM stylists JACKSON QUINN & DAVID GARCIA hmua SHANIA WAGNER

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When asked to introduce himself, Peelander-Yellow is humble: “Hi, my name is Tom Hanks, and I’m a very famous actor.”

Everyone in the room laughs, though a little caught off guard. But that’s his style.

We’ve set up a makeshift hair and makeup station inside Yellow’s studio in an otherwise nondescript area of East Austin, save for the blue, pink, and (of course) yellow mural on the side of the building. He’s in his uniform of yellow overalls and paint-splattered sneakers, beard freshly dyed a fluorescent neon for the Spark feature shoot.

“I came down from Planet Peelander to make you HAPPY!” Yellow screams while our photographer preps her camera settings.

Kengo Hioki has been painting, performing, and making people happy for decades, but he claimed Peelander-Yellow as his public persona upon the formation of the Japanese punk band Peelander-Z in 1998. With four members each sporting a different color, the band carved out an obscure yet popular niche for themselves, and were even the subject of an internationally screened documentary.

Rehearsing with the band became risky during the pandemic (even more risky than usual, for Yellow is known to do stunts on stage), so he’s recently dedicated even more of his energy to his painting and mural projects. He’s painted 60 murals across the United States, including 25 in Austin alone. His energy seems inexhaustible.

body’s frogs were pretty, pretty, pretty. Green, light green, a yellow one. But only me, purple and red, crazy frog! My teacher was scared and called my parents: “You have to see a doctor.” My mom went to check my painting and said, “Oh, this is the same as his father. Don’t worry, it’s Picassostyle!” That was my first art problem!

Has painting always been your primary medium?

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a comic artist. I went for four years to the Osaka University of Arts. My teacher said, “Hey, I know you like comics. Comics are fun. But fine art is more wide, more huge, more incredible, more fun, more crazy, more bad, more awesome, everything.” But my door was closed. I was 19. But when I got to 20 years old, everything opened. And I decided to work with art ‘til I die.

How did Peelander-Z get started?

After I graduated, I decided to go to New York to learn art.

I got a scholarship [to The Art Students League of New York City]. So I was happy — painting, painting, painting.

But when I got to 30 years old, I had a lot of stress [living] in New York City. Very hard to be[come] famous, to make money, and I had to go to school. And I wanted to scream.

That’s why I started my band. I released all of my stress because I could scream, and everyone [would scream back], “Yeah!”

When did you first discover your love for art?

Drawing was my first friend. My father designed events, displays for a party or festival. We didn’t have much money, and we lived in a very small house. But inside was his art! It looked like Picasso’s style, like, abstract everywhere.

When I was in preschool or kindergarten, I was kind of crazy. [The teachers] said that everybody needed to paint a frog face, and we would do a play for the parents. Every-

Around the year 2000, I decided that I had two ways. One is music making [people] happy, one is art. At that time, I didn’t know [how to do] both ways. I had to decide on one way, and I decided to do the band.

Why did you move to Austin?

I really, really, really, really wanted to move to Austin when I came here for the first time! (laughs) I was shocked. Everywhere: music, sound, film, food, everything. I mean, I liked New York. I had a job, and I had a studio. I had friends and everything. But everything connected in Austin. Almost every year, [I would visit] two or three times, and in the last three years, almost every two months. Finally, I moved here [in 2016].

How do you think your work has evolved over the years?

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Around 2000, I stopped painting, and then for almost 11 years, I didn’t do it. But if you could see what I was doing when I was 20, my paintings look the same. I would tell everybody, “My hand is free. I never use my brain when I’m painting.” But that wasn’t true. I was always thinking, and I was so scared about everything. I wasn’t free. But when I started my band — then I was really free. Now I can say, I never use my brain.

Okay, I actually use my brain a little bit before [a project]. 90 percent is pre-production, and 10 percent is happy time for me. Everybody says, “Preparation is boring. I don’t like it.” But if you do the preparation before your performance, that is how you can feel free. If I create something, it is happy to me. But before happy, we need preparation.

What does happiness mean to you?

Communication. For me, art and music are tools for communication.

Even if I’m not painting, I always wear these shoes. Everybody asks me, “Oh, are you an artist?” Then I can say, “Yes! Check out my Instagram @ yellowyellowart!” All my creativity is a very important part of communication, and as human beings, we need communication. I want to be a bridge. That’s my goal.

What inspires you, visually and spiritually?

Everything in my life [inspires me]. If somebody said they needed me to paint that machine, [for example,] before, I [wouldn’t] like it. “Oh, no, I like monsters. I like dogs and cats. That machine is too boring for me.”

But now, I’d say: “Okay. I want to try.” If I try, I can open new doors, to new styles and new people.

One last question. Why the color yellow?

Why the planet Earth?

I can’t argue with that.

Before arriving at Yellow’s studio, I too, could have screamed from the stress of photoshoot season, midterms, and trying to make time for selfcare. But by the time I left, my face hurt from smiling. He had the whole creative team clapping along to a song from Peelander-Z’s 2018 album.

The lyrics went something like, “Bike! Bike! Bike, bike! Bike, bike, bike, bike, bike. Oh, my bike!” It was the best time I’d had in months.

Yellow loves biking, making art, and making people happy. Oh, and eating tacos. There’s not much more you need to know. He is a man with simple joys, but a big mission. He’s leaving the world better than he found it — one burned-out college student at a time. ■

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by CYRIL GABRIEL ALINSUB layout JULEANNA CULILAP

How do I lead a life without a mother’s love when hers was the first I ever knew?

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he sun sat high, partially obscured by wispy, wayward clouds, and illuminated the face of my mother as we sat along the beach. We listened to the deep sounds of the ocean in front of us. As I turned to look at her, I couldn’t help but notice the pained expression on her face, marked by sunken eyes and the formation of wrinkles along her cheeks. I wondered, How long has she had those? Gone were the days of her vibrant laugh ringing throughout the house. No words were exchanged between us.

We shared a silent, wistful gaze. In my mind, I bemoaned the finality of her condition. As I watched the sea foam churning up on shore and dissipating moments later, I noticed that the sand had darkened where the waves had previously been.

There was a sense of serenity to be found in seeing how a brief moment left an impact beyond its existence.

My mom was diagnosed with colon cancer at the age of 53. Everybody knows they'll die eventually, but cancer has the property of accelerating one’s perception of time by a factor of five.

It strips away time, a finite resource we possess, and robs us of our agency. The average life expectancy of a Filipino woman is 71 years; how do you condense 20 years of life into four?

There will always be words left unsaid, promises unfulfilled. She passed away at the age of 58, when I was 18.

In the final weeks of my mom’s life, she was bedridden and barely had the energy to eat. Word had gotten around that my parents and I were staying in Nabunturan, a town in a province two hours away from Davao City. One day, a large group of her classmates from college came to visit. Despite some of them having driven for hours to get to our provincial dwelling, Mom refused to see them. At the time, I was confused how she could turn away some of the people closest to her when they had taken the time to see her. I now know that it was an act of preserving what semblance of control over her life she had left. She didn’t want to let them see her in her current state.

Temporality resides in everything around us, down to the very nature of the human condition. It’s found in friendships created during the formative years of youth, which often fade with time but can be looked back upon fondly. It’s found in the bliss of a child’s love towards a certain toy, which is eventually outgrown yet left undiscarded out of nostalgia. And it’s found in a mother’s existence in her child’s life. The Japanese have a term for

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" ife is composed L

of transitory periods, and finding significance in the impermanence can become a core tenet of a fulfilling life."

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describing the ephemeral nature of life: mono no aware. Often translated as “the pathos of things,” it expresses the poignant feeling elicited by witnessing the wonders of life, knowing that none of it can last. Life is composed of transitory periods, and finding significance in the impermanence can become a core tenet of a fulfilling life.

Historically, Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji is the epitome of mono no aware in the Japanese canon. The novel follows the life of Hikaru Genji, the son of an ancient emperor, and its poetic writing carries a profound sensitivity to the emotional aspects of humanity. Present in some manuscripts is a chapter in between chapters 41 and 42 called “Kumogakure” (雲隠), which translates to “Vanished into the Clouds.” The chapter consists of only a title, followed by a blank page, evoking Genji’s death.

The page becomes a threshold between what was and the next. It's in this liminal space devoid of words where I eventually learned to find solace.

At a point when I felt like my own life was just truly beginning, I lost my mother.

For a while, I, too, felt lost. Lost on what to do next, lost in turbulent emotional states. How do I lead a life without a mother’s love when hers was the first I ever knew? She was the one who lovingly cooked warm plates of pancit for our family dinners, encouraging me to embrace my Filipino heritage. She was the one who showed me the joy in service for others through her 30 years of bringing smiles to her patients' faces. And she was the one who made my childhood so joyful and naive to the

harsh realities of growing up as an impoverished, immigrant family in America. I desperately clung onto the memories I had of her, those vestiges of an idyllic past. Eventually, I sought out the guidance of a therapist. Through therapy, I began to understand that my current state was an opportunity for growth — this was my blank chapter. Grief is fraught with uncertainty, and sitting with it is a necessary struggle.

It took many months, but I learned to appreciate the significance of my past, while also seeing the beauty of change and allowing the next phase of my life to come. The degree to which we are comfortable or uncomfortable during times of uncertainty has to do with our own perception of circumstances. I had a choice to either fight against the change and struggle, or to flow with it and learn by listening and responding. Meaning was all around me; my job was to pay attention.

There will come a day when the amount of time I've lived after my mother’s death will surpass the duration I spent with her in my life: December 25, 2036. As time edges closer to that date, recalling certain aspects of my mother becomes hazier: her voice, the way she walked, the stories she shared. I sometimes wonder how much I’ll remember at that point in time, or if I’ll ever reach it. Yet my heart doesn't swell with sorrow.

As the clouds vanish into the ether — one moment observed, the next departed — so too does the individual, and it is all the more beautiful. ■

"Grief is fraught with uncertainty,

and sitting with it is a necessary struggle." contra

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Freedom Without Fervor

by ELAIN YAO

There is maturity & growth to be found in both independence & vulnerability.

layout JAYCEE JAMISON photographer KIM PAGTAMA stylists EILEEN WANG & LIVIA BLACKBURN hmua ZIMEI CHEN models JANE LIU & KRISTY THAI

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summer love. We spent countless nights talking until 4 a.m., and despite the miles that stretched between our homes, our infatuation with each other flourished this way.

o hold your own pen above a blank page hurts, especially when it has always felt as if someone else has been writing for you since birth. In my pages, scrawled in his handwriting, were lessons told to me by my father. These truths became the building blocks of my moral compass, and for the majority of my childhood, I accepted my father’s advice without protest.

However, out of years’ worth of parables and personal experiences uttered to me in car rides home and at dining tables, there was one lesson in particular that never stuck: Love exists, but don’t depend on it.

Love exists.

I’d only had the chance to see him once more before reuniting for our final year within the brick walls of our high school.

Suddenly, time no longer slipped by just for us. Responsibilities and prying eyes poured into our daily schedules like flooding water into a sinking ship, and I began to feel the weight of my future forcing me out of my ethereal affair. Aside from the lunches at school and never-ending conversations at home that I enjoyed with him, I spent many evenings avoiding the clutter on my desk and the pileup of tasks in the back of my mind. Lying on my bed without bothering to change out of the clothes I wore earlier each day, I couldn’t help but reflect on how much I’d changed since that spring.

At the age of 17, I nearly believed my father’s words. Spring had left me rancorously heartbroken by a boy who lied through his teeth and paid little mind to others, and I soon entered a busy summer with a bitter and guarded heart.

My desire for a relationship appeared to vanish completely, but during one humid evening at a research camp hours away from home, it found me. Love, in the form of a towering, dark-haired boy. Although we had already known each other from high school, it was the first time that we engaged in deep conversation. Under the night sky and its blanket of stars, I noticed his kind and receptive nature towards everyone, including those closest to me. His gentle giggles and tender smile seemed to warm my increasingly cold demeanor. Out of fear of being hurt once again, I despised him at first, but with each laughter-filled conversation and stolen glance during the morning hours in a dining hall or a coffee shop, a part of me softened in a way that it hadn’t before.

It came unexpectedly, and slowly, then all at once, I fell at its feet.

Before my first heartbreak, I was happier and more confident. Nothing seemed to scare me back then, but now, things were different. Something in me had shifted, and I was sure it had been for the worst.

Despite the assurance my boyfriend gave me about our relationship, I was still terrified that he’d turn out like the boy before him. I was also fearful about whether or not our romance would interfere with my academics. While everyone seemed to have everything figured out for themselves, from college majors to careers, I was struggling.

No one around me seemed to experience the same internal conflict.

Our friendship blossomed into a long-distance

It came unexpectedly, and slowly, then all at once, I fell at its feet.” contra

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PEARL WAIST CHAIN | Austin Pets Alive GOLD PEARL EARRINGS | Austin Pets Alive TULLE WHITE VEIL | Austin Pets Alive

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“Love has anchored the parts of myself that I could not on my own.”

But beneath the heaps of my father’s parables and my own sour experiences, I couldn’t seem to end things. A part of me felt unashamed of embracing passion and encouraged me to move along in pursuit of a balance between my future aspirations and my relationship. Although my anxieties surrounding love constantly overwhelmed me, I knew that I could not avoid it forever. What happens when you open the door and hang up your coat after a long day of work? It whispered to me at night. Who will greet you when you crave a world outside of your career?

Even during the lively Friday nights spent with those closest to me, I felt out of place. All of our views on love differed tremendously. One friend did not mind the idea of becoming a single mom later in her life, while another was com-pletely uninterested in committing to something longterm. Both prioritized their careers and education above all. I often found myself searching for consolation in my boyfriend but stopped as soon as I remembered that this battle was not his to fight.

— but don’t depend on it.

With a leap of faith, I made it to where I am now: someone who ventures more confidently through life — and is still with her gentle giant. Though I have yet to learn how to fully embrace the duality of being career-driven and relationshipfocused, the past two years have shown me that there is power to be found in trusting my own decisions. If anything, love has anchored the parts of myself that I could not on my own.

The concept of love had always been explored only within the shelter of my what-if fantasies. Loving a real person was different. With every argument made over petty comments or my insecurities about our relationship, doubt crawled underneath my skin. I pondered what life would be like if I just called it quits on love. Many times, I replayed my father’s words over and over, using them as a reminder that maybe this was not the right time for love. I convinced myself that I had full control over when I could finally embrace romance and that I was wasting my time by not choosing to end our relationship as soon as possible.

If you asked me if there is freedom without fervor, my answer would be no.

But freedom within?

Definitely. ■

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REAL LIF E IS ELSEW HERE

by AMBER WEIR

DEDICATED TO THE STARS, THE BALLS OF FIRE IN THE SKY, WHERE I FIND MEANING.

layout & photographer CHARLOTTE ROVELLI stylists NOELLE CAMPOS & ZAHA KAHWAJA hmua JORDAN BUSARELLO & MARISSA KAPP models MALIABO DIAMBA, RACHEL LAZATIN AQUINO & SOPHIA SANTOS

“TENDER AND CRUEL, REAL AND SURREAL, TERRIFYING AND FUNNY, NOCTURNAL AND DIURNAL, USUAL AND UNUSUAL. HANDSOME AS ANYTHING, PIERROT LE FOU!”

SCENE: THE DEATH OF BLUE

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arianne and Ferdinand are on the run together. They are “lovers” who are not in love. If true love is about accepting the other person as a reflection of yourself, this isn’t the case for them. They’re both sitting on the same beach, distanced from one another, taking a moment to ponder. They might speak the same language and see the same sky, but ultimately they experience the world very differently.

Ferdinand is further up on the beach, staring into the blanket of blue water. Ferdinand is ruled by logic; he wants to figure out existence, but each fact he learns takes him away from living and closer to his death. Has he spent his whole life centered around his final goodbye? Structures provide Ferdinand with the illusion that our world is ordered and logical. Thoughts and ideas are his friends, but also his unraveling.

He sighs, thinking, Ten minutes ago, I saw death everywhere. Now it’s just the opposite; look at the seas, the waves, the sky. Life might be sad, but it’s always beautiful. Moments later, the death of blue occurs to Ferdinand. He can no longer see the beauty of the ocean.

He’s totally consumed by his thoughts. The beach might be silent, but his mind is screaming. A blue and green parrot jumps onto his shoulder. He doesn’t care. Life is meaningless. Life is suffering. Ever since Ferdinard began questioning his existence, it’s opened an endless stream of doubt and uncertainty. He might be alive, but he’s certainly not living.

Marianne gets lost in a dazzling daydream, staring at the vastness of the ocean. The crisp scent of pink sea salt twirls across the shore. Marianne remembers people she’s shared moments with in the form of shapes and shades of colors. Her favorite people are spirals — they contain endless possibilities with depth and a range of complexities. Circles, on the other hand, are bland.

They signal repetitive paths she’s already taken.

She finds eternity in this moment: right here, where nothing but the beauty of the sun reflecting over the shimmering water matters. She might be alone, but she can feel the memories of those who came before her. Each grain of sand in between her toes acts as a reminder of those who have walked before her, and those who will come after her.

END SCENE.

Overhead, a fighter plane darts through an innocent cloud, leaving Marianne filled with sadness. She thinks, Life is so different from books. I wish it were the same: clear, logical, organized. Disillusioned by the thought of war and nuclear weapons, she wonders how humans have the power to destroy all that’s living and all that’s beautiful. Aware that her thoughts are subjective, Marianne pauses to feel and breathe. By accepting her insignificance as a human, she’s found a form of peace.

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PHILOSOPHY: ETERNAL QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANY RESPONSE Let’s be hypnotized by Jean Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965), where the beauty of in-between spaces rules supreme. The film flows seamlessly like air, capturing shadows and nuances between each shade of color. Silhouettes dance across the screen. Words are profound yet contradictory, mirroring the human condition.

“While we may never know the true meaning of Pierrot le Fou, we know how it made us feel — which is perhaps more important.”

The film begins with a story surrounding Ferdinand and Marianne, presented as lovers who end up on the run together. This narrative is intentionally underdeveloped and becomes completely disjointed as the film unfolds.

To enjoy Godard, audiences must enter his universe by suspending disbelief and falling into a prism filled with color, darkness, and questions.

This film is set during a wave of existentialist thought after two world wars. For the first time in human history, nuclear weapons had been unleashed, and there was a sense of despair from the sheer magnitude of lives lost. Godard was anti-imperialist, anti-nuclear weapons, and anti-war. His political philosophy is a theme throughout his films, and following Pierrot le Fou, he would go on to create even more radical films.

Eternal questions without any response — don’t expect any definite answers. Those are up to you — yes, you — the audience.

A film like Pierrot le Fou might be frustrating for audiences watching it for the first time. Godard’s film is the epitome of French New Wave cinema: stylish, experimental, reflexive, and absolutely absurd. Known for his erratic creative vision, Godard often didn’t have scripts, allowing spontaneous events to transpire in his films.

Continuity errors in the editing are incorporated into the narrative as intentional chaos.

Godard distinguishes between existentialism, where individuals believe life is meaningless, but humans can still create meaning, and existential nihilism, which states that life is meaningless and nothing matters.

Marianne is an existentialist; she can make her own meaning through art and personal style. Ferdinand is the existential nihilist, whom Godard uses as a warning of how not to live.

Godard is an honest director who reminds the audience that the film is a film. Characters often break the fourth wall; periodically, you can hear cues from the director, or one of the characters is doing something so bizarre that you can’t help but remember you’re watching a film.

“Pierrot le Fou is not a film, but an attempt to live,” says Godard. “It reminds us [that] one must attempt to live.”

While we may never know the true meaning of Pierrot le Fou, we know how it made us feel — which is perhaps more important.

Under the surface of this imaginatively constructed world, the characters struggle with a deeper question: Does life have meaning? If so, who or what creates meaning?

The film is extremely intertextual and borrows from different art forms. The narration is split into chapters like a book. Godard also chose to include the work of other artists: Picasso, Van Gogh, Warhol, and Lichtenstein, among others. Their images are often reimagined in the film, reminding the audience about the longevity of art which can live on past our lives.

“Does life have meaning?

If so, who or what creates meaning?”

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MINI DRESS | Stardust Vintage

I connect with this film because like Godard, I believe that if we share anything as humans, it’s our desire to create meaning across different mediums. Over time, as a species, we’ve connected to literature, paintings, film, music, and fashion.

Through art, we can project our own experiences when interpreting a work and find out about the human condition.

There’s power in accepting that the world we are living in is objectively absurd. Coincidences happen on a daily basis, and to try to rationalize such a life through intellect and logic alone, like Ferdinand, can bring the downfall of an individual.

“In this lifetime, I want to enjoy the beauty that is all around me, because one day the stars will expire, the ocean will stop moving, and all the art created by humans will be gone.”

Every night, I look to the sky as Marianne once looked to the sea. I admire the beauty of the stars and like to think that stars hold the light of people who have died. Maybe one day, I’ll return to space and be with the stars, emitting light to others.

Until then, I will embrace the unknown elements of my existence.

In this lifetime, I want to enjoy the beauty that is all around me, because one day the stars will expire, the ocean will stop moving, and all the art created by humans will be gone. There will be no explanation, and I won’t be here to see it.

But that’s OK, because real life is elsewhere. ■

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by SHIANNE LUM

Somehow, I forgot I was mine before I was ever yours. layout MARISSA KAPP photographer PAMELA DE SILVA DIAZ stylists SOPHIA AMSTALDEN & BIYUN YUAN hmua EMMA BREY & KATARINA TYLL models CHIZARAM AJIWE & NANI VILLALVAZO

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ven after 20 years spent in this skin, the reflection in the mirror never quite feels like me. We’re acquaintances, constantly shaking hands and reintroducing ourselves as the days slowly change us.

There’s a yearning in my chest for those past selves who were warmer and more trusting. Yet the girl before me possesses a new strength, a self-assurance that comes only through loss.

Can I ever revisit those selves again? They remain caught in pictures, detached from the moving, breathing entity I am now. I’ve found that the hint of a scent or the low hum of a forgotten melody breathes life into memories that have long lain dormant.

If you tried to transpose all the versions of me with one another, we wouldn’t fit in the same mold. Bits and pieces would fall outside the lines, reminding me of not only what I’ve gained, but what I was forced to lose.

Somehow, I never thought one of those lost things would be you.

Love is this elusive prize for which we all seem to be grasping. The first time I remember feeling it hang palpably in the air between us, we were spinning slowly beneath an inky blue September sky, as the homely yellow glow of a streetlight illuminated the curve of the cul-de-sac we occupied.

“Baby, I’m dancing in the dark with you between my arms … When you said you looked a mess, I whispered underneath my breath. But you heard it, darling, you look perfect tonight.”

You hated Ed Sheeran, but I didn’t, so “Perfect” hummed out of your beat-up truck’s speakers.

Skeletons of unfinished houses were our only audience, as the first chill of autumn nipped at our skin and you dipped me down, an inch above the concrete.

At the end of the song, you swung down the tailgate, and we laid down atop the cool metal, gazing at the stars. The little pinpricks of light that glittered in the blanket of darkness seemed

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within our reach. I don’t think I’ve seen a night that clear since. I recall being entranced not only by the cosmos beyond, but also by the small world of yours I’d been granted access to.

Two years ago, when I went back to our hometown, I drove down that street. Nothing looked the same, and I was three years removed, but I could still remember every detail from that night.

For the first time since then, I allowed the strum of the guitar and the sound of the gentle opening notes of “Perfect” to fill my car.

“I was slow dancing through our memories, tears in my eyes as I remembered the damaged girl who was so lost in love that she had none for herself.”

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With every word, I was slow dancing through our memories, tears in my eyes as I remembered the damaged girl who was so lost in love that she had none for herself.

I had an unwritten claim on that spot as your reliable shotgun rider. The fizzle of a Sonic Vanilla Ocean Water atop my tongue and the warmth leaking in from the open windows reminds me of our endless drives. Sometimes, they were filled with unrestrained laughter; other times, thick with terse silence and insults designed to leave a scar.

Now, that subdivision is finished, and so are we — the construction of dozens of homes traded for the demolition of an intangible one.

On this particular car ride, we were zooming down some obscure road in West Texas. The heartbroken warble of “White Ferrari” rang out, masking our silence.

Since then, I’ve lost faith in others to unfailingly do and be good. I also no longer possess the naivete to think that love isn’t a breakable thing.

However, I’ve gathered all the ingredients needed for self-love, something I placed no value in back then.

I remember the weight of knowing Frank Ocean’s lyrics said what we couldn’t: This would be the last time I’d be welcome in this loved and well-worn seat. As soon as we hit your driveway, we would no longer be an us.

Still, there are a couple of songs that make my stomach drop when they come on shuffle.

“I didn’t care to state the plain, kept my mouth closed.

We’re both so familiar, White Ferrari, good times.”

An internal battle waged. I wished the trip could last for an eternity, but also needed it to be over, for the ball to finally drop.

For so long, I struggled to get past the second verse of that song. Part of me would itch to turn the volume all the way up and lose myself in the sound of the synth in his voice, but the other half of me that wanted to skip it as quickly as possible would usually win out.

I sat, clinging to the scent of your cologne, musky with a tinge of dry warmth and woodsy undercurrents. I closed my eyes, and at that moment I could picture the last time we were truly happy.

Your arms were wrapped around me, and I was drinking in the sound of your laugh in your creaky old guesthouse. No one else has quite the same cadence in their laugh as you.

That song let me be who I was before you broke my heart for the last time. It allowed me to pretend for just a little while that things had never fallen apart, but after the first few lines, the bitterness of us and how we left things would creep in, forcing me to turn it off.

That scent used to be what safety smelled like.

Since then, the fragrance has morphed into a warning sign, an indication to run. The first time I smelled someone wearing the cologne you used to, I stopped dead in my tracks. Even the slightest hint of it would flood my mind with memories that were too heavy to carry.

In an instant, I can see my feet atop your dash in the passenger seat, a place I’d sat hundreds of times over the course of our four years.

“I was slow dancing through our memories, tears in my eyes as I remembered the damaged girl who was so lost in love that she had none for herself.”

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“For the first time, I consciously felt whole apart from you. And it hit me that I always had been.”

Now, it’s nothing more than a bittersweet aroma that reminds me of the girl who didn’t know how to be her own hero. Rather than longing to be her again, I’ve learned that love and happiness don’t have to look like being with you.

Just like any other day, there I was, lying on the soft grass of UT Austin’s south lawn in between classes.

The sound of the burbling fountain nearby was background music to my restless mind. As I lay there, sifting through my thoughts, it struck me.

Instead, love sounds like my best friend’s raspy laugh echoing down the highway as she speeds past the city lights. Love smells like the heady scent of coffee curling under my door in the morning as my roommates chatter quietly in the living room.

Love is the kiss of someone new, who tastes sweet and hopeful, like new beginnings, and who never makes me feel small.

For the first time, I consciously felt whole apart from you. And it hit me that I always had been.

For so long, I chased little moments and whispers that reminded me of you, clung to songs and scents to try and stay stuck in something that had long ago withered.

It’s smelling that musky undertone of your old cologne on a spring breeze and thinking nothing of it.

These days, “White Ferrari” is just a song, and I could drive down that road we danced on so long ago with no qualms - just an appreciation for what we were, who I was, who you were, and most important of all, who I am today.

I used to hate spring — the crushing pressure of wrapping up the school year, the sporadic April showers that never seemed to clean the slate how I hoped they would. Now I look forward to it, because when the sun’s rays reach down to kiss me just right and the wind bristles across my skin, carrying the dewy, delicate scent of the first season’s blooms, I’m back in the early spring of 2020.

While I can confidently say the bruises you left on my heart faded long ago, and I no longer search for you day to day, the presence of you lingers, in a whiff in the wind or a soft melody. In those moments, the girl I was back then murmurs a soft hello, but I finally have the strength to leave her where she lies. ■

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It seems to be a common notion on the internet that gay people

by TY MARSH layout ELIANNA PANAKIS photographer ALEC MARTINEZ stylists GABI VERGARA & JUSTIN GONZALES hmua SERENA RODRIGUEZ models VIO DORANTES & CAMERON WESLEY

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GAYWALKING

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begin most of my days nearly late to class. Sure, I still have time to dress to the nines and make myself an iced latte with honey and oat milk for the walk there, but only out of necessity. With my door locked and Maps open on my screen, I read that my trek should take roughly eight minutes, with my estimated arrival time set at 11:02 AM. Yeah, it’s very much giving late.

for speed as a fact of my life. But the question remains: Why do some queer people move around so quickly?

In my first week of college, I walked everywhere around my campus. My first exposure to life in a city, I was eager to explore my surroundings and find my new favorite places. I remember the corner I was on when a truck pulled up to the red light next to me as I waited for a walk signal.

Well, I’ll probably get there before 11 anyway, I think. These maps run on straight-walking time, but I’ll be there in five. With that affirmation in mind, I’m off.

“Haha! Nice bag,” a man yelled from the truck, pointing out the small, leather backpack I carried around my shoulders. I could tell from his tone that such a call-out was not a compliment.

Rather than speaking and causing more potential problems, I gave him a thumbs up and stared back with resolve.

I stood alone, blankfaced with my thumb up, as he hurled harassments towards me until the light turned green, and he sped off with a, “Fuck youuuu!”

I’m sure we’ve all heard some form of the joke by now: “Gay people walk so much faster than straight people!”

“Gay people move so fast because they’re walking to the BPM of ‘212’ by Azealia Banks.”

“If a straight person turns around on the street, there’s probably a gay person behind them trying to get past!”

It seems to be a common notion on the internet that gay people just move differently than straight people. And I can’t even say it’s incorrect. I usually manage to get to class with time to spare thanks to my gay legs, and it would be a lie if the lyrics, “Hey, I can be the answer,” didn’t accompany me on my journeys from time to time. While not every gay person should be expected to walk fast, you can take my need

With a smile, I watched him speed away and walked, a bit more briskley than usual, across the street at the sight of my pedestrian signal.

I’m not afraid of a straight man in a truck.

I was never afraid of being hurt by him, nor was I that fearful of the words he said to me. But to this day, every time I wait at that crosswalk to go to class, I remember him and how he felt it was OK to yell at me in public, all because of a backpack he thought I shouldn’t wear.

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T h e clothes queer people wear, the way we look, the way we act, all of our “otherings” turn our public existence into something political.

When we step outside, we must face the world and whomever we cross paths with before our destination. Especially when walking, the places we experience violence remain to remind us of what once happened there.

When we move from place to place, queer people are exposed to the judgment of others who may wish to do us harm. We must face the glances, the comments, and sometimes the physical assaults to which others subject us. And we have to remember these things so that they don’t happen again. The public domain isn’t safe for a queer person, so we walk with urgency from point A to point B out of necessity. It’s not a laughing matter, but we do our best to make light of the absurd situation, and even find power in it at times.

When I’m walking, I always have my surroundings in mind. But my imagination often wanders. I find myself thinking of the past – of those who walked before me.

I think about the people who walked the streets before me, those who made my city the weird hub it’s now known as. Did people yell at them from trucks? I think of the ballroom scene, which celebrates the calculated steps and extravagances of queer people in all forms. Did they walk the same speed as me?

I think of Grace Jones, strutting down 1970s YSL runways, unapologetic in her androgyny.

Did she know that I would find inspiration from her courage in 50 years? I think about the people I encountered in my childhood, whom I couldn’t help but stare at and feel an odd

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connection to.

Did they realize the impact they had on me?

That is the beauty of the “gaywalk.” A measure of safety turned into a self-identifier. An act of protection which draws eyes as it averts them. Having a “gaywalk” is a silent triumph; its agency exudes confidence to the drawn-in eye. It is a flash of something different in a world that encourages sameness, instantly memorable to those who recognize something within it. It’s a reminder to the world that people like us exist, have existed, and will continue to exist.

It’s not always easy, but I remind myself how important it is to be seen so that others don’t experience the same things in the future. So I walk with confidence. I keep my head up and pass strangers by with pep in my step, sharing glances with those like me who look and walk ahead of their peers.

When I’m walking in a crowd of unfamiliar faces, each with a different opinion on my existence, I do so with a smile. It’s the trope of my people, after all. And if any one seems to be moving a bit too slowly for me, I always know I can pass them by with a simple, “Move, I’m gay.” ■

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WE ARE ALL FOOLS IN LOVE

by RAISHMA KAZI

If the new normal for intimacy is increasingly leaning towards sex and physical romance, why is Jane Austen’s portrayal of love so consistently adored?

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t is said that love is the universal language.

Our expectations and assumptions about love and intimacy are molded through film, literature, and art. Love is something we are taught to expect, give, and understand. It’s kissing in the rain and dancing in the street.

It’s sex and desire and primal instinct. Love is everywhere. It’s in what we watch, read, and experience. People pick and choose their depictions of love, their models for what type of intimacy they want, and few authors are as universally appreciated for their depictions of romance as Jane Austen. Austen’s six books, four of which were published anonymously, garnered the attention of the Regency-era public for their intimate view of life and relationships.

For centuries, they’ve been the inspiration behind a plethora of media and still stand as honest portrayals of the human experience.

All of Austen’s novels tackle themes of morality, gender, social and economic politics, and society.

Her plots generally focus on her heroines coming to see themselves more clearly, and, as a result, becoming better and more moral individuals.

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The romance elements of Austen novels, despite being the books’ wide-ranging “claim to fame,” follow her more socially conscious narratives, but never lead any of the stories in their entirety.

Despite the economic requisites and societal pressures placed on young women in the Regency era to marry, exemplified through characters like Charlotte Lucas or Mary Crawford, Austen is an advocate for companionate marriage, or marrying for love. In Sense and Sensibility, readers see Marianne Dashwood fawn over John Willoughby, ultimately getting betrayed and heartbroken before realizing her true affections lie with Colonel Brandon. Pride and Prejudice introduces Austen’s popular pairing of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy.

Emma focuses on the youthful love affair between Emma Woodhouse and Mr. Knightley. All of these relationships are built on conversation and trust, with romantic interest developing through tension and chemistry. No lovers ever kiss in Austen’s works. They barely touch each other. Yet their love and passion radiate so profoundly that their stories continue to be shared centuries after their creation.

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“Austen’s work has always been a reflection of ordinary people. Her honesty perseveres through the bindings of her books, seeing her audience exactly as they are.”

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Ironically, Jane Austen never had a love story like the ones she wrote about. She’d been courted, proposed to, but never married. Some scholars say she might not have even been kissed, which could be the reason why she never allows her characters to experience such a moment themselves. Austen observed the lives around her. Because of her anonymity during the publishing of her work, she was allowed to be honest. She wrote what she saw, commenting on the nature of courtship and marriage from the most obscure couples that lived in the village to the high-profile relationships of aristocrats. During the original publications of Austen’s books, it was almost a game for noblemen and women to figure out whom this unknown writer was discussing in their novels, but time has shown that Austen’s descriptions of people weren’t necessarily as specific as those of her era believed and could be relatable to wider ranging audiences.

In the last 30 years, a consistent stream of Austeninspired content has made its way onto screens all across the world. While some liberties are taken with the presentation of Austen’s novels — compare, for example, the 2009 miniseries adaptation of Emma to the modernized version of the story told in the 1995 movie Clueless — the core narratives present in her stories are always maintained, including romantic subplots.

What’s more romantic than Colonel Brandon carrying home a sick Marianne in 1996’s Sense and Sensibility,

or when Edmund chooses Fanny over Mary in 1999’s Mansfield Park? One of the most adored scenes in all of cinema is from the 2005 Pride and Prejudice adaptation, when Mr. Darcy holds Elizabeth’s hand as he helps her into her carriage. Something noticeably missing from all of these scenes - all of these movies, in fact - are implications of sexual involvement. If audiences are lucky, they may see a kiss between romantic interests, but there’s no nudity in Jane Austen’s work, no impropriety, and no sex.

In the same 30 years that Austen adaptations have risen to prominence, so has the sexual nature of content in the media. Romance is when a man grabs a woman to kiss her before she leaves, or passionate sexual encounters after massive fights. Romance is fire and sex and animalistic desire. Films like 1999’s Cruel Intentions and the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise exemplify the sex-focused and nudity-heavy content that’s dominated popular culture in recent decades.

The rise of dating apps like Tinder has facilitated a rise in casual hook-up culture. Similarly, the growth of platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and OnlyFans, and communities within each have allowed for more sexual content to be made available to wider audiences. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does beg the question: If the new normal for intimacy is increasingly leaning towards sex and physical romance, why is Jane Austen’s portrayal of love so consistently adored? How has her work maintained its integrity through two centuries of changing standards for relationships?

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As different as times are in comparison to the 19th century, some things in human interaction will always remain the same. Romance in Austen’s time can be seen if a man and woman are walking side by side, sharing pleasantries away from their supervisors. On social media today, some of the most gushed over and shared videos are those of boys and girls walking next to each other, nervous to hold the other’s hand.

If a boy liked you in the Regency era, he would have to go through a courting process just to ask for your hand to dance. If a boy likes you today, he may have to go through extensive exchanges just to get your phone number. The attention to these small gestures is uniquely feminine, and these moments are thus rarely presented in the media unless done through the eyes of a woman. Women are predominantly attracted to seeing these interactions in popular culture; women facilitate the inclusion of these details in the media, women ensure stories like the ones written by Austen continue to be shared.

The beauty of Jane Austen is in the details. Her focus on the simple, overlooked moments of normal life is what penetrates modern audiences.

In everyday life, we don’t see the closed-door activities of couples around us, and neither do we see so in Austen. We see the buildup of intimacy, the flirting, and the tension. These are the things that create love. Austen’s work has always been a reflection of ordinary people. Her

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honesty perseveres through the bindings of her books, seeing her audience exactly as they are.

While Jane Austen never had her own love story, she witnessed and understood the truth about love around her. Maybe today, love is sex and desire. But it’s also nervousness and tension, anxiety and heartache. It’s courting a woman to dance and being scared to hold each other’s hand.

It’s helping a girl into a carriage and taking care of each other through sickness. It’s fleeting glances, whispers, and touches. It’s the small, undiscussed fragments of the human experience. It’s not always the story — sometimes, it’s the subplots.

Jane Austen’s work has maintained its place both in history and the hearts of audiences for centuries for these reasons. Female audiences especially flock towards her portrayal of love time and time again because of how she presents these widely understood emotions to the world.

Love is the universal language, and Austen speaks it fluently. Whether we meet Austen through the pages of her books or adaptations on screen, whether we choose to define ourselves as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy or Cher Horowitz and Josh Lucas, Jane Austen reminds us about the reality of our existence: “We are all fools in love.” ■

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BEFORE YOU OPEN THE BOX, CONSIDER THIS.

by MEGAN SHEN layout ADRIANA TORRES photographer AUDREY LE stylists JIMINI CHAE & NOELLE CAMPOS hmua SHANIA WAGNER model JILLIAN LY

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t’s strange what people think of when they’re going about their day.

“It’s a bit silly, but maybe there’s merit in processing life through these mundane little metaphors.”

My mom, for example, swims at the local recreation center. Every day after her swim, she uses the second shower stall to the left, even though it’s a little leaky. The other day, it was occupied, so she had no choice but to settle for the shower next to it. Turns out, the new one had the perfect water pressure, and when she came home to tell us about it, my mother somehow related the experience to the old adage, “When one door closes, another door opens.”

Sonny Angel dolls are blind box collectibles, which means you have no way of knowing which one you actually get until you’ve completed your purchase and opened the box. You could buy the assortment box, which comes with a pack of twelve dolls, but even then, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get twelve unique figures. With a slogan that says “may” and not “will,” it seems like Sonny Angel knows this. It almost feels mocking, the way they acknowledge the contingency of happiness.

It’s a bit silly, but maybe there’s merit in processing life through these mundane little metaphors. We spend sleepless nights thinking about our purpose in life and worrying over the uncertainty of the future, but perhaps relating these existential questions to something more tangible, like public shower stalls, would help.

For the longest time, I refrained from buying Sonny Angels. The thought of buying something without even knowing what I would get was already unsettling, and the company’s cheeky slogan made it worse.

So, of course, I developed my own objectrelated metaphor for life: blind box collectibles.

If you’re unfamiliar with blind boxes, they’re minifigures that people like to collect. My personal favorites are the Sonny Angel dolls, these funny babies with mischievous expressions. I was first drawn to Sonny Angels after seeing an unboxing video on YouTube. Intrigued by the cult following the dolls seemed to have, I began researching Dreams, Inc., the company behind Sonny Angels. I discovered that the company periodically releases sets of newly themed dolls, and these new series are announced with fanfare. The company dedicates an entire webpage to each series, introducing the twelve babies with their own glamor shots and clothing descriptions. The company treats the dolls like live companions, claiming that they will “gently look after you” with “warm smiles.” The strangeness of the Sonny Angel entity is solidified by their somewhat ominous slogan: “He may bring you happiness.”

I was won over when my sister surprised me with one three years ago. It was from the 2018 Flower series, and I was hoping for Cherry Blossom, a Sonny Angel with an assortment of cherry blossoms cradling its head. I ended up getting Rose, the baby I thought was one of the uglier ones in the series.

You would think that this setback just confirmed my apprehension about the Sonny Angel dolls — that because of this disappointing experience, I would swear off Sonny Angels and all blind box collectibles for life. But I continued to collect them. And I think I’ve cracked the code when it comes to finding genuine happiness with your blind box collectible, and, subsequently, life.

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“But before you get too bogged down in the specifics, in the terrifying unknown that is the future, maybe think about things like they’re a blind box collectible.”

At the beginning of my collector’s journey, I would set my eyes on a specific doll and make it my mission to get it. I wanted to stick it to the man (in this case, Dreams, Inc.), keeping my standards high and not settling for anything less. But really, when I look back, I was just setting myself up for disappointment. I clung to my nitpicky expectations, afraid that if I let up, I’d relinquish all control. In retrospect, had I opened my heart to the 11 other dolls in the collection, I think I would’ve saved myself from that frustration.

The same goes for life. Banking on one specific outcome is the easiest way to disappoint yourself. I’m reminded of my 18-year-old self applying to colleges, how I was so set on getting into my dream school that attending any other college would feel like a failure. And when I didn’t get into that school, I did feel like a failure — a huge one. I wish I could tell my younger self to approach life like I approached Sonny Angels: Be more open-minded and less picky. Because, at the risk of sounding preachy, I think if we took life a little less seriously, challenging the mindset that there is only one way for us to be happy, then it would be easier to achieve fulfillment.

Of course, the ideal situation is that you are fine with all of the potential outcomes, so that whatever happens, you’re happy. For that reason, I always look for collections where I find all twelve babies adorable. But things don’t usually work out that way. Sometimes, you just get an ugly doll, and no matter how hard you try to convince yourself it’s cute, you can’t get over the strange bumps on its head. That’s OK. After opening the box, the best you can do is be happy with what you’ve got.

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That’s sort of where the metaphor reaches its limits. Because at the end of the day, if you aren’t happy with your Sonny Angel, it’s just a plastic doll. Life is not as frivolous.

You could say that, in life, you should also just “be happy with what you’ve got.” But I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. Unlike Sonny Angel dolls, our lives aren’t limited to what’s preordained. When I was younger, whenever I would fail, a small part of me feared that I just wasn’t destined for greatness. That being rejected from my dream college meant I was supposed to live a life of mediocrity. But now I don’t think fate has anything to do with it. If we wake up one day in our mid-thirties with the existential dread that we have wasted our lives up until now, we’re not stuck with what we’ve got; we can try to do something new, we can make an effort to change.

I don’t believe that fate has us locked into a certain path in life. We all have the power to change ourselves, improve ourselves, to make things different than they are now. But before you get too bogged down in the specifics, in the terrifying unknown that is the future, maybe think about things like they’re a blind box collectible. A mystery Sonny Angel that, no matter what outfit he’s wearing, will always have that cheeky, little face. Because life shouldn’t be stressful and scary. It should be fun and playful and a little weird.

And, hopefully, it may bring you happiness. ■

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What Aphex Twin taught me about Stonehenge.

Dawn of thE Techno SAPIEN

by ANDREA CLAUDIA MAURI

layout JENNIFER JIMENEZ photographer LEAH BLOM stylist JACKSON QUINN hmua YEONSOO JUNG, EMMA BREY & LILY ROSENSTEIN models LAURENCE NGUYEN-THAI, MIKAELA MEDINA & BLAIRE YOUNG

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’d like to take you through the tunnel. There, in the ever-rumbling belly of a gentrifying Austin, lies a small nest of homicidal parasites. Squirming and writhing from a permafrost slate of sleep, the pathogenic deity of ecstasy dribbles an ancient sublimity. Narcan rains upon the aisle as the hypnotic growling of this man-made cave begins to shake the forest awake in the wee hours after midnight. Tonight, there will be a marriage. The lamb will take the machine, in sickness and in health, an unbreakable vow: Enter cybernetica.

In Germany, they do it in the mountains. In Italy, they do it in the ruins. In Austin, we do it under the freeway. Techno finds a way. The ancient rave was an exercise in the epicurean mode of thought: that pleasure of the entire mind should lead to the highest good. The hedons, maenads, and lunatics chased the north star of the global rave as the ensuing euphoria bore many a shaman, sometimes a god.

This summer in Austin, the scene exploded.

Walk through the woods, follow the call of gabber, cross a stream, and there you’d find us: a hidden, sweltering Cronenberg-mass of humanity packed into a pounding acid house. The tunnel beckons us forward into the dark. Parceling out

my oxygen, I weave through the cigarette smoke, graffiti fumes, and the suffocating masses. Our body is being thrown against the siding as we near the mosh pit. We push back and suddenly we’re in it, the throbbing gristly heart of the rave.

The punches fly, and I eat a few. The lights are off for longer now, as the indiscriminate swings are all we can feel. Here we are, strangers in a homeland, swapping kisses and blood and body heat.

Here is Austin, finally getting to know its organs.

Before I found the rave, I was sure Austin was unsalvageable. I vas born to be a Berliner, I taut. At least in Berlin, a walkable public is typical, existing beyond slim, slivering sidewalks. Our United States has been restructured for the wheel-fall of the car, resigning leisure to the body mechanics of privatization. There is no public gathering space here. Only the sorry-excuse, bourgeois public of a park comes to mind. The recent trend in charcuterie finally saw the complete manifestation of communal, Marie-Antoinette types experiencing the park in the architectural outcry it was born as. Heavily and covertly monitored, these spaces can barely muster a speck of communal color. The high regulation of these areas is meant to stave off a certain criminal unity. We have no space in which we can truly say the community plays captain, no real, public forum. The

“The lamb will take the machine, in sickness and in health, an unbreakable vow: Enter cybernetica.”

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deprivation of this local leisure public from the human will see a slow dissolution of local culture, exchanging itself for commercialized cyberscape cloning.

The underground rave has begun to reverse this trend, offering a space where revelers might engage in the strange, but most importantly, with one another.

Austin’s recent submissions to the demands of the consumer-driven, internetruling, Californian elite have otherwise made nightlife a virtual Chernobyl of culture, devoid of all the banging of shoes a public culture would instinctively entail.

Many an academic has compared the rave scene of the ’90s to the ancestral Incan practice of the shamanic journey. A partygoer will consume a point of MDMA and enter the dark, thumping, pulsating clamor of unidentifiable bodies, letting the rhythm and sporadic flashes of light guide their movement. The future shaman will drink a dark, swirling ayahuasca brew. They will enter the dark, swirling mountain path to the end of the tunnel, as glimpses of sunlight and panpipe flutes outside clear the way to epiphany. To dance out the other side: a successfully battled rejection of the darkest of one’s internal demons, an affirmation of life and communion on Earth.

At Stonehenge, pagans have long petitioned to reclaim the site as an area of ancestral worship. Wanting to engage in the all-devouring practice of venerationpleasure that is the rave, they organized parties at or near the site. Shuddering at the thought of losing the physical evidence of the site’s mystery, archaeologists shut down the raucous worshippers, arguing a protection of heritage surpassed the need for pagan rituals. Pagans pleaded with archaeologists, begging them

to consider the ancestral intentions for the site. A sacred landmark dog-eared by forefathers should not remain fallow; rather, an engagement in the continual consecration of hallowed values would carry the torch that their legacies meant to pass downwards. Legal protections be damned. Peace, love, unity, and respect (PLUR) would sustain Stonehenge.

The techno rave invites us to play in this interspace between the cyber and the present, the present and the past, removing the power of cyber as colonizer. We graduate from tools of the internet to the internet as embodied entity, as breathing mass made flesh and bone. If the only public space left after the commercialization death march exists in the internet, then our only hope is to plug in the present and induce cyberia. The very concept of a community is beginning to elude us. The days of submitting to rapture seem to be gone as we sing a soft dirge for village life in the quiet manner acceptable of an American individual.

Björk says techno is nature. Technology has inarguably played a key role in our evolution as a species. We grew smarter, and techno grew with us. From stone tools to cyberspace, we have contra

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techno to thank. As our lives online expand, however, when do we name the cyber as invader of the present? Too often, it seems as though we’re still online even when we’re offline. We even think and speak algorithmically, listing our traits in terms of the consumable, letting the AI move our minds in the direction of desire. But perhaps the demonization of cyber is only critique of the satanic offspring of techno and capital.

Design, for that matter, has lost its roots in the divine. The manmade human begins to function, programmed for automation in the death drive industrial complex of capital. Terrestrial reality sets course for the post-biological, transglobal movement.

Zeroes and ones scrap at each other for our sun and moon astrological assignments. It’s clear that all cyber oppression will occur under the beating sun in human evolution’s bleak outcome, where our communal need has been Darwin-ed out of us. Why bother with transhumanism?

In the tunnel though, perhaps in our naive youth, we swear to live forever, sharing everything we have with everyone we love.

Introductions are virtually unnecessary as we flow into one.

Fame, status, and money mean nothing here. All the strangeness of a public scheduled for execution tamps the soft earth before curling in for the night. As evolving cybernauts, we have no choice but to enter the techno evolution. Will you take the tunnel or the freeway? ■

“Why bother with transhumanism?” contra

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