Fault Lines 2017

A literary magazine of The Bishop’s School La Jolla, California May 2017

Fault Lines Staff Editors-in-Chief: Diana Ardjmand ’17, Katherine Finley ’17 Staff Members: Davina Dou ’17, Bettina King-Smith ’17, Anna Szymanski ’17, Andrés Worstell ’17, Simran Deokule ’18, Rita Kimijima-Dennemeyer ’18, David Wang ’18, Hannah Robbins ’18, Katy Elkind ’19, Elizabeth Szymanski ’19, Athena Tsu ’19, Crystal Wang ’19, Ryan Finley ’20, Meredith Hunter ’20, Eliana Petreikis ’20

Faculty Oversight: Mark Radley

Message from the Editors: In creating Fault Lines, we collect and compile a compendium of student’s memories, fears, imaginings, and aspirations. And in collecting, we reach out to take what we find speaks to us.

Crows often gather objects that shine―like tinfoil or jewels. This is our crow’s nest of words and brush strokes―the expressions that may reflect our sentiments, or make us question them. This magazine preserves a snapshot of our community at this moment in time. We hope you hold onto this photograph for your own collection.

This year we are excited to implement a sustainable change in our method of distribution. In digitally publishing, we hope to expand access to the magazine and encourage our readers to share this with others beyond the Bishop’s community. Fault Lines hopes to adapt to a growing digital world and connect with a wider audience.

Thank you: to our staff for their tireless dedication to the promotion of literary and artistic talents, to those who shared their work with us and the Bishop’s community, and to Mr. Radley for his essential counsel and support.

Dedication A few students from the Class of 2017 help us dedicate Fault Lines to Dr. Clara Boyle:

“She has the truest and most genuine appreciation for the English language I have ever seen, inspiring me to look deeper within a text and explore the art form.” ―Justine Chen ’17

“Dr. Boyle is the kindest and most caring teacher I’ve ever had. She’s always supportive of not only my writing, but everything I’m involved in in my life. She asks about my artwork, my tennis, my college decisions. I’ve had hour-long conversations with her, curled up in her upholstered chair, just talking about life and hopes for the future. She’s endlessly cool (other than being a very learned individual, she also owns a vintage record store with her husband in North Park. Do visit.) and has an endless amount of incredible writers and books to recommend for when I’m in a rut creatively, or nearing the end of my list. Once, I came into her room, extremely excited after reading Dharma Bums

by Jack Kerouac, and she told me, “Jack Kerouac made me want to major in English.” Dr. Boyle, with her encouragement and friendship, made me want to pursue English and art in college. Thank you, Dr. Boyle, for being my teacher and my friend.” ―Claire Zhang ’17

“I always got the sense that Dr. Boyle genuinely cared for her students and took the time to get to know us as individuals. Her extensive knowledge of TV shows and movies always led to very interesting discussions and comparisons in class. Whether comparing Shakespeare to Game of Thrones or Emily Dickinson to modern art, Dr. Boyle made the class very interesting and engaging.” ―Nataliya Bystrova ’17

“Dr. Boyle is like green tea. She detoxifies stress with her calm demeanor, warms you up with her kindness, and invokes a feeling that you have changed for the better. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better friend―she is trustworthy, beautiful both in and out, and is, simply, good.” ―Helena Kim ’17

Contents Cover Artwork

Allison Zau ’17

What Writing Is

Nikita Krishnan ’18

1

The Morning After

Isabel Dumke ’17

2

The West Wind

Claire Zhang ’17

3

A Mistress

Allison Zau ’17

4

Crossing the Line

Nathan Huynh ’19

6

And Still

Rita Kimijima-Dennemeyer ’18

7

Summer, 1924

Will Griffith ’17

8

Day 362

Claire Zhang ’17

10

Meteor Shower

Kira Nolan ’17

12

Toxic

Mary Kimani ’17

13

On the Nature of Snowflakes

Elizabeth Szymanski ’19

14

Tongues

Evan Peng ’18

15

Half and Half

Justine Chen ’17

16

A River Divides My Imagination

Isabel Dumke ’17

17

Melusina

Rita Kimijima-Dennemeyer ’18

18

Tranquility

Nicholas Truong ’20

20

What Defines Me

Ignacio Lazo ’20

22

Unwelcome

Grace Cannell ’17

23

Zero to Ready

Tobey Shim ’20

24

An Unfinished Story

Ian Walker ’18

26

Here’s the Battle Hymn Paradox

Davina Dou ’17

30

Lucid Dreaming

Claire Guang ’17

32

The Over-Lined Lips that Control America

Sophia Acker ’17

34

Whoops, It Got Beheaded

Carly Phoon ’20

36

Epiphany

Alyson Brown ’19

37

To Say Goodbye in Pieces

Madi Chang ’19

38

Don’t Be Square

Sarah Gooley ’18

40

Perfect Posture

Sayeh Kohani ’18

42

California Stop

Hannah Young ’19

44

The Death of the Author. The Death of Me?

Nick Barber ’17

46

Don’t Follow Instructions!

Julia Ralph ’17

48

Toska

Katherine Finley ’17

49

Is

CJ Delfino ’18

50

What Writing Is Alchemy, of course. Practiced by few and debunked by most, alchemy marks the threshold between scientific genius and fruitcake. The truth, however, is that alchemy lives―thrives even.

From the universal principle of Plato’s Republic to Camus’s The Stranger, alchemy exists within us, around us, between us, and beside us.

My name is Nikita. I am sleepy and through the ringing in my ears I can hear my subconscious chanting, “God is dead.” I am tempted to reach to my left and snatch my annotated copy of the Bible and re-read John 3:16 for a midnight chuckle. But I shouldn’t, and I won’t, because I will end up reading the Song of Solomon, and I really don’t want to go there at this hour.

Instead, I turn to alchemy and how it exists in our world. Do I practice alchemy? Yes. Did Shakespeare? Absolutely. Do you? Probably. The principle behind alchemy is simple: turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. In the chemical sense, it is turning metals into gold in order to create a universal elixir: money. In the literary sense, alchemy, the process of creation that devises the universal elixir, exists thanks to the magic fastened by ancient musicians, authors, and philosophers whose alchemy is prevalent throughout our society today.

Take Arthur Schopenhauer. He was not born a philosopher. He transformed his ordinary ideas about hope into a universal elixir: hope, the alloy. While many will practice Schopenhauer’s thoughts, a majority of people will not recognize that Schopenhauer popularized the idea in On the Sufferings of The World. But that does not matter. What matters is that Schopenhauer’s idea has become a universal principle, and, for some like myself, a way of life.

Alchemy has virtually nothing to do with the ordinary or extraordinary idea, but rather with the process of transformation. The golden seed of a universal literary truth is in the basic premise.

Writing is like alchemy because of the magic that happens on the page and in the author’s mind.

When Nietzsche said “God is dead,” it was not what he said, the gold, that people immediately cared about; it was how he arrived at such a vociferous idea and what he meant by it. Nietzsche sparked a movement that will last for eternity. Alchemy and writing undergo the same magical process of creation and transformation.

Nikita Krishnan ’18

1

The Morning After He says: “Saharan sunrises are milk pearls capturing the universe.”

Red dances on my tongue as a strawberry explodes between my teeth.

(This red has a delicious voice.)

I contemplate: “But the universe won’t fit in a pearl.”

Isabel Dumke ’17

2

The West Wind Claire Zhang ’17 watercolor and ink

3

A Mistress Whenever I visit my great grandmother Tai Tai, she is sitting. At 97 years old, her body is bound to her armchair. Her home is small, her television smaller, and the window, which opens directly onto a view of the next apartment building, is the smallest. The walls are lined with metal handrails that herd the already crowded furniture even closer. However, despite all this, Tai Tai remains a formidable presence―but not formidable in the way my uncle’s drunken chatter can sweep through any conversation. She is formidable like a golden figure of Buddha, eyes half-open and one hand touching the earth. Her stillness demands a reciprocal silence, so I keep quiet whenever we meet. In any case, I never learned to speak Cantonese beyond yat yih saam, one two three, so our languages are mismatched. When we try to speak, our words get tangled and trip over one another; we get stuck helplessly stuttering, waiting to see some spark of understanding in the other, wanting relief. The silence is easier, and it was in silence that I first began to study Tai Tai. Up until that time, I knew only one thing about her: she was something more than old. My grandma and grandpa were old, but Tai Tai had reached an age where she had sidestepped the passage of time altogether. While her features were wrinkled and her skin dotted with liver spots, I’d never known her any other way. For 18 years she was the lone matriarch, perfectly preserved just as I first remembered her, as if caught in amber.

When I asked my family about her, I expected to hit dead ends, but my father and his siblings were quick to the draw, telling tales of Tai Tai’s life that snapped like red firecrackers. They spoke of her as though she were a folk hero, as though she were a clever villager or a fierce soldier, not the concubine of a factory owner. These stories always began with, “A long long time ago.” She was born in a time of war and its greasy war lords, long before the Communists began to rise above the eastern horizon. In those days, capitalism still reigned, so markets still depended on the will of consumers and entrepreneurs. Tai Tai was an entrepreneur. She recognized a demand for women and sold her supply. Her currency was in the curves of her waist and the dip between her breasts.

Her body was her business, and the man who would become her husband wanted to buy her out.

For her, the path was clear. She would barter away the small space between her thighs in return for his cash.

While the actual act of sex was unappetizing, Tai Tai would endure. The morning after, she’d sit up in bed, roll her shoulders, and stretch her back trying to undo the knots the lumpy mattress dug into her. Her legs would shake when she’d try to stand. The combination of one-two punches and a quick knockout didn’t do much for her personal pleasure, but it had definitely left his mark on her. She’d feel a pang in her gut at the thought, but dismiss it as an ache for food when she was aching for much more.

As the second wife, Tai Tai was despised by the first. This woman is an unknown. All ties were severed when her husband passed. All my family knows is that she bore seven children for her husband. Each of them must’ve come out squealing for air and milk, gripping her breast with their

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pink mouths, and left her with sore nipples, still healing from the last baby. One child after another after another, she must’ve felt like she had built a whole mountain of children she couldn’t contain.

This first wife would watch passively as the fruit of her labor overflowed into the streets. Their soft skulls crushed under passersby and faces turned down into the dirt. She was more concerned about her husband. There couldn’t have been any more room in her home for her to hide him away from other women, so maybe the first time he returned with Tai Tai, she wasn’t surprised. Though, this is all irrelevant to Tai Tai. She knew the first wife despised her, but she had her own matters to handle.

Tai Tai didn’t only sell sex to her husband. She also sold her potential children when her debts were due. The biology of the situation was clear. Sixth grade health class taught me enough to understand the fallout of a collision between a boy and a girl, but the mechanics were still unclear. In physics, I had learned Newton’s laws of motion. These principles frame all movement. Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so when Tai Tai pushed her three children out into the world, there was also something that pulled her backwards into herself, as if each birth left her with a womb so hollow it caved in. Or, maybe she was pulled backwards into the past, inching closer to the moment she first lost her virginity, the moment she first met her husband, the moment she split her mind from her body.

Newton’s first law states that an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force, so when Tai Tai launched herself at a strange man, her trajectory never changed course. Her body tore past the sound barrier, hurtling into dead space, past her children, her children’s children, her children’s children’s children. She seemed to land in that living room with its crowded furniture and metal rails. She seemed to be sitting in front of me, bound to her armchair, but Tai Tai was still moving farther and farther away. It was only a body left behind for me to know.

Allison Zau ’17

5

Crossing the Line Nathan Huynh ’19 mixed media

6

And Still This is my body.

This is the miracle of skin and blood, Fat, flesh, meshwork Of a living thing.

This is the body of a mind That lives within, A web of thought and feeling, A web of time and being.

Here is the body unloved, Unsung, come alive, Unforgotten through these years Of longing for another, and, Still beating, The heart Will sing on.

Rita Kimijima-Dennemeyer ’18

7

Summer, 1924 1 Love’s a lovely scrimy scrubbed table Of supine women and expedition men, Which must be scrubbed and scrubbed and loved And scrubbed and loved and scrubbed and loved And moved just so to the gentle left So salt-shaker lines square The shadow upon the melting stair Will show that all is truly well.

The happiness of others’ mother’s love Condemned to depths; the green depths of Psyche, hearth, and rougher seas Shall never slip to garotte me.

For I may die in Golder’s Glen Or find my rest in Abbey West, The fits and finicks of poet-critics Die with me while mem’rys last.

2 The fuddy-duddy’s ego’s snow, The painter-girl’s rhythmic doubt, The mother’s table dinner love, All mired in fame and legacy.

3 What then is that wolfish bearhound Always getting on about?

Flitting between infertile ground And fuddy-duddy self doubt.

He planted his wroth, it did grow; 8

England’s Kings and Queens hate him, The booby scuds through ego’s snow, Poor girl sees fireside scrim, Dissertations form a trellis, Pipe-smoke clouds of buzzing gnats, In time the painter-girl will tell us What fuddy duddies they are, those armchair Gnat-buzzing fame-smothered pipe-smoking buffoons.

For trellises of all kinds only last To support the knowledge of what is past.

William Griffith ’17

9

Day 362 You’re twenty minutes late, but when you sprint to the steps that lead to the squat building in the middle of a forest, you’re enveloped by voices, the burning smell of weed, and the tangible sound of laughter. Even in the sleepy mist of the night, the neon colors of the murals peel off the walls, flashing signals at passersby. Figures begin to emerge out of the fog, and you can place faces, tufts of dyed hair, and slow smirks to the voices that precede them. They mingle in the courtyard behind smudged sliding doors, aggregated in pairs, girls in corduroy jackets and deep purple lipstick, guys drifting past as little bits of conversation trail in their wake, “Dude, but the Llamas?”

I seem to have slipped into some kind of rabbit hole, except instead of the White Rabbit with his pocket watch, time has trickled to a stop and I’m standing in the center of a rose garden.

People sway and whisper around me, their giggling mixing with the static in my ears. Turning in the small room, I see two women, dressed in matching combat boots and chokers; a couple share a smoke, and in the corner, a man sits, his foot tapping, limbs slung over a metal folding chair, the kind that smell like pennies and crumbling rust. A girl with a sleek bob sits perched on one of the buzzing speakers. The cold press of a stamp on my wrist brings me back to my body, and I find myself standing in front of a man with a Cheshire Cat smile, wielding a tribal engraved stamp and carnelian red ink pad.

“Enjoy the concert.”

It’s obvious that the bands are not the main reason for the congregation tonight. While thousand-person concerts are filled with a kind of nervous energy, a murmuring anticipation for that first step out onto the stage, the slightest dim in lights causing a rush forward, this seems more like a gathering. People rotate on their own small planets, gravitating around the barely elevated stage, but still absorbed in their own conversations.

The bassist powers on his amp and a screech tears through the murmur of the crowd. A nervous chuckling fills the sudden silence, and the bassist swings forward into a bow, like a door sagging off its hinges, hair flopping in front of his eyes but not his devious smile, teeth glowing under the blue overhead lights.

“Thank you all for coming today. We are Spooky Cigarettes.”

People pull out of their orbits, congregating toward the stage. The girl with the bob slides off her perch on the trembling speaker, floating to the center of the nodding crowd as the lights dim, washing over bowed shaggy heads, tinging bleached ends a brilliant cyan. The floor shifts beneath me as the crowd wavers away from the unstable epicenter; heads bob in time to the crooning notes floating out of the lead singers rounded lips, and I imagine cartoon smoke rings puffing out in perfect Os. Behind him, a small sign hangs, inscription barely visible under the reflective surface.

“Max Capacity, 50 people.”

I’m hanging towards the back of the crowd and all I see are the slouched backs of the people in front of me, draped in dark colored jackets, hands hunched deep into pockets, heads bowed reverently as each person nods intently at their feet. Although there couldn’t be more than a couple 10

of inches of space in between each person, that space seems to embrace each body, enveloping them in their own bony loneliness. I reach out to push my way to the front, but at the slightest pressure, the crowd melts away at my fingertips, leaving a path wide open, and in the resonance of the last note, the only beat comes from my feet, hurricanes of dust swirling around my ankles as I tap across the wood floor. In that moment, with eyes turned to the stage, I feel something rising against the fluttering in my chest.

But the moment passes as the next chord is struck, and in my new position, the speakers stare me in the eye, each note causing a dry vibrating in my chest; I can’t formulate thoughts, much less hear the actual music. Hearing becomes feeling, and I imagine this is what Beethoven felt, stroking the keys in order to hear each note in his fingertips.

The girl with the bob is next to me now, and with an inch of space between us, I see the halo of baby hairs fringing her temples in a wavering golden halo, the light illuminating her upturned face, her eyes shut tremulously, nose glistening with marbled beads of sweat, the corners of her mouth curled in a kind of ecstasy I associate with bacchanal rites. I never knew what the word “revelling” really meant, but watching her, lit up in a mass of gray coats and deferential heads, shedding her self-consciousness like dead skin, she revells.

“Last one, Spiritual Hypochondriac!”

At his words, beams of light swing onto the crowd, the dust trickling through the air suddenly visible and pulled into the vortex of the singer’s mouth, his chest rising and falling rhythmically with the beating of the bass drum. Dust particles escape from the moist caverns of his mouth, avoiding ivory teeth, dancing down his vibrating throat, traveling through trachea, bursting through bronchi, until finally, settling in alveoli, joining the layers of the previous night, and the night before that, and the night before that, and the night before that for one year now. Each night adding a new layer until his alveoli fill up, then his bronchi, then his trachea, then his throat, then his mouth until every time he breathes out, a cloud of dust explodes from his lips, the product of years of repetition, of singing the same songs with that hoarse drawl, of staying young and young and young forever.

Live forever.

He punches the air on the last note as if he can see his fate, the dust sent into a frenzy around him. With his chest heaving, sweat rafting down the hollows of his throat, his eyes closed, I have never seen someone so triumphant. But as his fist trembles in the air, I see the dust gravitate towards his skin.

Claire Zhang ’17

11

Meteor Shower There’s something comforting about driving in the dark. About driving east, without a route, winding through farmland and small towns paved over with cement and neon gas stations where a greasy-haired, acne-faced 19-year-old stands in harsh lighting through the night. There’s something comforting about driving without any forethought or direction (but east), and pressing against the door as the VW takes a turn on a narrow road. About entering a deeper dark than our yellowwashed night, peering out the window to see galaxies come into focus. Something comforting about taking the road to the lake at one a.m. and pulling onto the dusty shoulder among the hulking shapes of other cars, about setting up rickety wooden chairs before the silhouette chain links and beyond that the gray lake and beyond those rolling hills and beyond the sky. Something comforting about lying back, cocooned in a blanket, wandering through thoughts and the black well of the sky. And there’s something comforting about seeing lights burn into being and zip through the black, then fade just as quickly, and with each meteor hear the awed murmurs. Because when you’re watching great chunks of matter burn into nonexistence, you don’t want to be alone. You want to hear the whisper of voices, the dark shapes shifting in the back of the pick-up, murmurs confirming what you saw, a light in the sky as we sit amid darkness and grazing cattle, on a roadside somewhere east.

Kira Nolan ’17

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Toxic Mary Kimani ’17 ink on paper

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On the Nature of Snowflakes The nature of snowflakes is one of impermanence and chance. The snow crystals of water vapor form from supersaturated clouds that hover low in the atmosphere, forming a dense blanket of frigid air weighed down by its over-full contents. At the core of every snowflake is a particle of dust. The microscopic speck reaches the sky and disturbs the expansive clouds sending a cascade of ornate frozen molecules down to earth. A snowfall.

Hexagonal snowflakes grow long, dendritic arms that extend from their core like firing neurons. Their patterned arms branch like petals, probing and reaching toward another flake, forming a strong hydrogen bond. The simple geometry tessellates outward, each design infinitesimally smaller than the last. A clear look into a single snowflake’s makeup tells of the precise humidity and temperature it had at its creation.

However, what appears to the eye to be flawless is in fact asymmetrical, especially of those with more ornate designs. Snowflakes are infinite creations. In the history of the planet, no two crystals have ever been the same. Their balanced structure leaves room for individuality, while at their core they all come from dust.

And then they melt, leaving a dew drop memory on the bridge of our noses and our warm tongues. They are lapped into our bodies or absorbed into our skin or brushed off on welcome mats. Chilled necks and hot breaths now mingle in with the now liquid water that seeps into our pores and slide down our coats. But the dust remains on our bodies, worn proudly, because we, too, were imagined from dust.

And yet, inside our abounding nature is a finite sequence that affirms our place in the universe ―we bear God’s fingerprints. The Fibonacci Sequence is seen everywhere in Nature. It is in the ingenious design of plants for the efficiency of absorbing light. In the womb of a sunflower. In the architecture of waves. The double-helixes of our own individuality are woven in the same pattern as the spiral movement of the galaxies. A form of mathematical perfection and constancy in our bodies, and yet, we are beings of miraculous imperfection. Of impermanence and chance.

When we press our ear to the cochlea of a seashell we can hear our own blood circulating within us and we can calculate the precise similarity of our humanity to the sea. To the flowers. To the universe.

We are the results of a flawless design. We are formed on a particle of dust, our unique, infinitesimal existence. And yet, we rise up and disturb the great clouds above us, form a single crystal, and fall like snowflakes, back to the earth.

Elizabeth Szymanski ’19

14

Tongues Façades of gold like Sol Invictus shine And cast forth brilliant beams of yellow light, Illuminating creatures of the night Outside our ancient gnarled wooden shrine.

The ancient beam of our colossus whines Its prayers―tongues of heat the words ignite.

Our former sanguine faces fall at sight Of chambers draped with fire intertwined.

The memories of past soar to the skies, And we, like fallen monarchs, stand in strife As off’rings burn and aspirations die.

But soon the beaming disk shall once more rise, Reminding of our evanescent life; Perhaps the time has come to say goodbye.

Evan Peng ’18

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Half and Half Justine Chen ’17 digital photography

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A River Divides My Imagination On one side, A sergeant stands alone in the middle of the universe, saluting.

Her flag silently hangs (Her) For the patriarchy that Hollywood has enforced.

Painted in her blood, “Don’t be so anachronistic.”

On the other, Standing uniformly, just beyond a ship in turmoil, That fat, slutty bitch: A happy mutt in a judgemental world, Looking up from the bottom.

A crackwhore’s fallen sheets: beauty will command the beast.

All the others say, “Don’t be so anarchistic.”

I ask that you Sew our belts together Or send me a postcard Where you repeat, and re-repeat, repeat, and re-repeat, “Tear my paper, strip my mind. Unearth my lightbulb―” So I can burn it in a blaze of unrequited Fury.

You are only a fleeting sparrow, And I refuse to be your worm of the day.

Isabel Dumke ’17

17

Melusina I think this city is haunted by ghosts and my father just joined them. I keep forgetting how gray it is here, all misty stone buildings and cracked pavement. There are forgotten messages engraved on the walls, and the faces of wooden children covered in dust stare out into the world as if beckoning―for what, I don’t know. It’s funny how these streets haven’t changed at all in the past five years. Hell, I don’t think they’ve changed in a hundred.

The graveyard is the only thing that is different. I remember when my grandmother died, and we buried her in the fog. My parents wouldn’t let me see the body. The last thing I remember is an oak casket with a bouquet of red and yellow carnations; they were the only flowers we could find in the winter. I wipe morning dew from her headstone.

I’m the first one here. So many fading names that I do not recognize. The plot where my father is to lie has been dug out; rich, brown earth breaks the monotony of black and white stone. I chat with the gravediggers about the weather―they, chewing cigarettes between their yellowed teeth, me, wishing I had worn a better coat. Soon my brother arrives. Then my aunts, my cousins, my who-knows-what relations. I greet them all, one by one―that is, until she arrives.

The priest enters the graveyard now, black robes swinging as he walks. There is no sun to be caught in the gleaming metal edges of the cross around his neck. He walks over to my brother and me, shakes our hands, asks to begin. I nod my assent. And so the chanting begins―a low but clear wave of never-ending words spoken first by the priest and then by us, words repeated so often since childhood that they have become meaningless. ―hallowed be thy name, I don’t know the names of half these people. ―and lead us not into temptation, I cannot help but glance over at her. ―the power, and the glory, I feel so helpless in the cold. ―for ever and ever, My father is gone. ―Amen. ~~~ “John.”

She only speaks to me after the service. We stand together by the church doors where the sickly sweet scent of incense isn’t so suffocating. The altar boys are up front looking bored in their red and white robes; the priest collects the meager donations left by the funeral attendees. At first I don’t know what to say.

“Béatrice.”

She doesn’t look at me, but instead rummages through her purse.

“Want one?”

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A cigarette. I shake my head. Her golden hair drapes over one shoulder, no longer braided like it was in high school. She steps outside as she ignites the lighter.

“So how have you been?”

I shrug. The roads are still frosted over from the night’s chill. I would rather stare into this eternal winter than meet her eyes. Footsteps echo on the cobbled streets.

We stop at a cafe we used to love as children. I order coffee, black; she orders an espresso and a honey-colored macaroon. I glance at the corner table where I sat with Béatrice and my father each afternoon as a child, clenching a pencil between my teeth and an eraser in my hand. The waiter presents our drinks. I don’t know what to say. Béatrice looks anxious, just like she did when my father used to get angry with me.

“The crema looks excellent,” I note. Her smile is cynical.

“You were always pretentious.”

I finish my coffee. I don’t say anything, just walk outside. The air is still biting cold even though the sun is beaming down on the earth. As I step away from the warmth of the cafe, I feel her hand grasp my arm.

“John, wait.” She bites her lip. An old habit. “Don’t you want to, I don’t know, say something? About your father? It’s not good to keep it all inside.”

“My father was an asshole.”

I try to leave her but she keeps my pace, makes me face her.

“Look, your father was the best teacher I ever had. I know he was… different, with you, at home. But I know, deep down―” Her voice shudders and breaks off.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wide eyes filling with tears, and I’m tempted to wipe them away with my fingers, but I don’t.

“Why did you leave?” Her voice shakes. “We’re all here, we’re all still stuck here. Doesn’t home mean anything to you? Where were you all these years? Why didn’t you come back?”

A droplet of frost lands on my cheek, and I look up.

“It’s snowing,” I observe. Béatrice won’t look at me. “Let me show you something.”

I take her hand and the wind gathers the tendrils of her hair, scattering them across her cheekbones. We are like children again, leaping over loose cobbles, our hearts skipping to the beat of our drumming feet. These streets are worn, dark, and known; this place where I once made my home welcomes me back with a gust of cold air splashing the scents of fresh bread and snow and urine against me, mixing, morphing, becoming. Somewhere nearby I hear the laughter of a girl twinkling through the icy air. If a diamond could sing, this is how it would sound. ~~~ It’s funny how the river is always changing but somehow it still looks the same. The river has always been here, before the stone banks and the townhouses set up their long vigil. I take a pebble and toss it into the murky waters, where it splashes and sinks and disappears, forever. (continued on page 21)

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Tranquility Nicholas Truong ’20 digital photography

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“This is where my father told me the story of the mermaid Melusina.”

Béatrice tightens her scarf around her neck.

“I must have been five, maybe six years old.”

She sits by the bank and dangles her feet over the edge, barely above the rushing water.

“You see that rock jutting out? He told me that was where she sat when Siegfried first saw her. He said the Alzette must have been much more beautiful then. Waters clear and blue. And there she was, the most beautiful girl in all the country―” My father’s voice echoes in my ears “―golden hair and blue eyes like sapphires, the fairest skin in the entire realm and wondrous lips like roses.”

“We all know the story. Why are you telling me this?” I sit down beside her, cross my legs.

“It’s my happiest memory of my father.”

There are cherry trees on the other bank, their branches bowing humbly toward the water’s surface. I can just make out the spring flower buds.

“I still thought I loved him back then.” I suffocate my doubts and reach for her hand.

Béatrice looks at me, finally meets my eyes, searching for something.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I say. “I tried, okay? I talked to him. He hated me―” “He didn’t hate you.”

“He hated me. You know, after awhile you get tired of having to deal with his crazy delusions and him blaming you for every little thing that goes wrong, and―and he’s dead now! There’s nothing more I can do.”

She slowly takes her hand back from me. A paddle of ducks glides by as she stands up.

“You can’t live like this forever,” she says.

“I know,” I mutter and throw another pebble into the water. “You look beautiful today.”

Not that it matters, she is probably thinking. I hear her light another cigarette and I look over at her, blonde hair blowing in the wind, pale lips around the white butt.

“You know those things’ll kill you.” I pause, think about the way her blue eyes look gray under this gloomy sky. I’ve never known a life without her. “I was kinda hoping you’d stick around.

You know, in case I wanted to come back.”

It might be my imagination, but her mouth looks like it’s smiling.

“You should stick around, too. Here, I mean. See the town again.” She drops her cigarette onto the concrete and steps on it. The small red flame fizzles and disappears. “We missed you.”

As I stare at the waters my brother and I once scooped into our palms, I cannot stop the hot, angry tears soaking my cold cheeks. The wind cuts through my skin and into my bones, and I can’t stop, I can’t stop, I can’t stop. I promised I wouldn’t regret any of it―coming home, seeing her, seeing my father. I didn’t think it would feel so warm and sad and surprising all at once.

She touches my shoulder before she leaves. Her footsteps take too long to fade into the distance.

Rita Kimijima-Dennemeyer ’18

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What Defines Me It was at the hour the clock struck twelve. Around me, celebrating people jump up and down, but I don’t bother getting up. These people and their ridiculous smiles. All I can think about is going home, being in my bed, sleeping. Never had I liked family reunions. The smell of wine and beer filling the room, loud music bumping through speakers, and awfully drunk relatives. So, instead of judging these people, I think of something else.

Surrounded by the Spanish tongue, Sounds of trumpets and bass Combine with the tune of a sad man’s song.

These songs make no sense at a festivity like this. A singer, his voice loud and harmonious, describes the loss of his lover to an upbeat tune.

Cousins laugh with glee, Aunts and uncles with love on their faces, While I sit at the trunk of a tree.

Alone at this tree I watch the coches pass by, their headlights radiating an eminent glare. My heartbeat is a constant thump circulating in my ears, but I can hear someone’s step in the damp grass, leading right to me.

“Que pasa? Vente de vuelta a la casa!”

“No quiero! Dejame en paz!” I yell, backing away from my cousin, her face now a bright pink. Though I know she is trying to help, I prefer to be isolated.

As the tick-tock hits three, I am lost in space; Somewhere I can stay or flee.

Ignacio Lazo ’20

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Unwelcome She knows from the start not to complain As her appearance perfectly fits the frame Of a culture she can never claim.

Foreign lips ignite confusion; The noise travels to her brain in search of a conclusion, But all she finds is exclusion.

“Are you paying attention?”

Her uncertainty mistaken for pretension Because miscommunication always provokes tension.

Muted by an invisible remote, The unfamiliar words catch in her throat; Her flawed voice struggles to stay afloat.

“Do you have anything to say?”

But her hope is bruised by yesterday, And her presence crawls away.

This can never be her home.

Make her go home.

Let her go home.

Grace Cannell ’17

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Zero to Ready Sometimes, when you start up an older car that’s been sitting in the garage for a while, the cold engine sputters at ignition. After wheezing out a series of hacking, mechanical coughs, it’ll get going, but it won’t accelerate the way you know it can. The engine’s sound won’t have that familiar smooth purring quality. You’ll hesitate to get going, to really step on that gas, because of that coldness of the engine, that offness. What if you overwork the engine? Hesitation will hold you back, and you’ll keep driving along like that until the moment hits. Maybe it’ll be when you turn onto the open freeway, maybe it’ll be winding through some narrow surface roads, or maybe it’ll just be cruising along a wide central avenue. But then, in that moment, the engine will wake up and shake off the foggy clumsiness of disuse. You’ll find a sudden confidence in gunning the engine and accelerating forward. You’ll know that you can drive ahead. That moment is when all the parts are in perfect alignment and everything is in order once again.

Joining the track team was a similar experience. I had always enjoyed running, but I was nobody’s first pick for the field day relay team. I wasn’t the fastest little thing to ever grace the sixth grade, but I pushed on.

“Chin up. Relax shoulders. Keep the arms pumping. Breathe.”

Each bit of advice helped me polish my technique, and I began noticing a difference in how I ran. 13.9 seconds, 13.5 seconds, 13.2 seconds, each little improvement fueling me with another boost in confidence. The days went by like this, just like a runner circling around that 400-meter track, until I found myself confronted with my first meet.

I pride myself in maintaining calm even during situations like the dreaded exam-week. Weeks like that can reduce even the titans of time management and planning to stressed-out wrecks. But I hardly waver from my normal, take-things-as-they-come self. Yet riding the bus on the way to the meet, that familiar tranquility in the face of new experiences left me. A little niggling tension inside my gut replaced it, tightening with every jolt and bump in the road on the way to the little middle school hosting the meet.

We pull up to the school and events fly forward from there. Scrambling through the aisle to exit the bus. Finding a nice spot on the grass, not overly bright, fairly central. Securing the white pop-up tent to the ground there. Taking out the 24-pack of water and the Tupperware containers of sliced watermelon and grapes to snack on between races. All the little things we had been over a thousand times during practice, in preparation for the day. Warming up―and feeling the subtle tension in my legs as I sit down and reach for my feet, stretching. Then the loudspeaker calls out “100 meters,” the announcement booming across the whole track. My cue. So I step out from under the tent, head across the track and over to the starting line, still with that peculiar combination of tension and simple apprehensiveness gripping me like a too-tight jacket. I feel the blood rushing to my head, fueling my nervousness. Not good. Not good. Not good. Would I fall victim to a false

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start? Would I stumble coming off the block? Would I trip and lag three seconds behind my competitors?

I set my hands down on the white line drawn on the brick-red surface of the track, comforted a bit by the familiar grainy feeling on my hands. Get into position. Inhale. Exhale. A painful silence follows. Tension. Then a sharp knife of a voice cuts through.

“Runners!”

I close my eyes for a moment.

“On your mark!”

Knees off the ground, body up, ready to shoot forward.

“Set!” Inhaling for the last time.

Then the precise snap of the pistol rings out, slicing through the air. Leaving my thoughts behind on the white line, I sprint. And that was when “the moment” comes. The gears click. The engine roars to life. I know that I can run, know that I can accelerate, know that I can just drive forward. All the other sensations around me fade as I hear only my shoes pounding the ground in perfect rhythm, feel only the chilly air brushing past my cheeks as I surge forward, see only the wideopen finish line in front of me. Arms, legs working together, all cylinders firing, propelling me forward directly toward my goal. Not even an Olympic gold can match the bliss I feel throughout those short, those perfect 13 seconds.

It was the gunshot that did it. It must’ve been the gunshot. I can think of nothing else it could be. The gunshot let me shake off those psychological chains, and burst forward. I think I got second place in that race. Didn’t win, no trophy for me, not a hair-raising photo-finish. But that was the most memorable race for me, the first time I went forward with confidence. The first time I ever really ran.

Tobey Shim ’20

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Ian Walker ’18 29

Here’s the Battle Hymn Paradox A bell above the door of a warehouse jingles. Two figures drift in: my mother, her back hammered perpendicular to the floor, and me, the knobs of my spine curved under my shirt. Within just a few minutes of entering the store, I look up from my phone to find that she has already retreated to an adjacent showroom depicting the pages of an Ethan Allen catalogue.

When my mother’s lilting voice tosses the rope that loops around my feet and drags me to an island in the center of the store, I find her and a saleswoman swimming deep in negotiation. They float on cast-iron bar stools at a black table strewn with blocky drawings for a couch. My mother’s slim index finger hovers on the inked edges of one design, a pillowed reclining armchair of copperbrown leather.

Mom, I say. I want to leave. I have homework.

What? Really? Which subjects? Call Daddy. You should have finished your homework before we went shopping.

Wait. But you never even asked me about my homework.

She swivels her chair at a 40-degree arc toward the saleswoman, leaving me to stare at her rigid back. It’s not my job to ask you, she says. You must know your priorities.

Priorities. Priorities. The word fumbles at a switch in the back of my mind, releasing a catharsis of images from our Family Nights. Before we moved from my childhood home in ninth grade, my mother would carry home stacks of jigsaw puzzles, some presents from colleagues, others storebought from the new calendar store at the mall. My parents, sister, and I would then sit on the dark circular rug in the living room, clicking together the cardboard pieces, lock-and-key, to complete a picture of a whale blanketed in blue sea or a tan kitten resting its paw on a pink knot of yarn. I would look up to see stern concentration etched on my mother’s face as she filled in the outer framework of the image, and I would try to piece together the jigsaw of her mind―her complex hierarchy of priorities. The boxes of puzzles, now shoved behind a dusty bag of stuffed animals in our garage shed, nonetheless serve to remind me of playdates cut short (You have homework), bleeding into forced interactions with neighbors (Make some new friends), and later avoidances of family friends at parties (Lock yourself in the bedroom. Don’t come out until your college essays are done). As my mother establishes priorities that do not match mine, I scramble to fit the puzzle pieces that do not click.

My mother’s work follows the foreign housing market demand, from showing houses to meeting with clients to negotiating with lenders to phoning up contractors, and in some cases, to shopping at the furniture store. Her mission at the furniture store then completes a full circle to enhance her attention to detail when she rearranges chairs and paintings for an open house showing.

After years of studying my mother, one activity leading to the next, I have discovered the pattern to her priorities: preparation. Looking at her cluttered work desk, every square inch of the cheap mahogany littered with loose mail and Chinese medicine bottles and stolen hotel pens, one does not have the natural inclination to call her organized. And recounting the number of times my mother

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spent the greater portion of an hour rooting through drawers for her car keys, thus making me late for my dance lessons; the number of times she pulled up in her white sedan to my school’s garage long after the other students and faculty had deserted the campus; the number of times I asked her to provide me with a house key to avoid standing alone on the porch under the scrutiny of passing drivers for thirty minutes; I do not have an inclination to call her prepared, either.

But organization does not always define preparedness. In my elementary school years, my mother demanded obedience when she snatched away the Warriors novels that she thought distracted me from studying, when she sat next to me on the bench in front of our black console piano and would not budge until I could play “Ballade Pour Adeline” twice in a row without missing a note, when she rocketed me across freeways within the steel frames of her car to one of my five extracurriculars: dance, piano, soccer, ice skating, swimming. Ask my second grade self about how I would define my mother, and I would have replied, strict and unforgiving. In my high school years, my mother stressed discipline, a concept that either left me tense to face the consequences of my condemnable acts―shopping instead of doing my homework―or ready to instigate an if-you-makeme-do-that-I’m-packing-for-Canada rebellion. After all, I had yet to fill in her jigsaw framework with its tessellating center, the center stating that the word prepared, as it pertains to my mother, takes on several meanings: serious, with foresight, in-the-right mindset, a mild Type A personality, an “Asian tiger mother.”

My mother was born in Yong Cheng, a small city in the Chinese province of Henan. Starting at age seven―the age where spoken language solidifies, attention spans lengthen, and written words begin to rearrange themselves out of hieroglyphics―my mother copied pages of words every day. By high school, her daily schedule required her to wake up at 5 a.m. to bike to school, returning home only for an hour between class sessions for lunch and dinner, and did not see her siblings or parents again until 10 at night. She surrendered long stretches of afternoon to sitting flat on itchy wooden benches in preparation for a merit exam taken in the last year of high school, a test that remains the sole deciding factor for college admissions in China.

In high school, my mother rose in the ranks, leaving her classmates behind as she graduated in the top 1% of her class. While her friends spun woeful tales of petty rivalry and long-forgotten high school romances with kids who have since pursued farm work instead of a higher-level education, my mother never once snapped her own books shut, not even when her classmates started buckling under the impossible weight of academic pressures borne by them all. But my mother, she did not find an activity of greater magnitude than going to college, so she plowed through her math textbooks and stayed late to ask questions about chemistry problems that precluded her from going beyond the second step. She maintained this single-minded dedication through her four years at Nankai University in Tianjin, through a legal visitation period in the United States with my father on behalf of China’s official study abroad education program, through her immigration to the U.S. And beyond. (continued on page 33)

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Lucid Dreaming Claire Guang ’17 watercolor and ink

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Her devotion contributes to the most famous motto in the Dou household: always do the right thing at the right time and place. It holds the status of an inside joke between my mother and me, a tacit agreement on a way of life, a pact. My mother does not entertain, and with every piece of wisdom she slips into the world with tireless elucidation, she continues to press her lips together in a thin line. So I don’t take her words for granted. Most of the time, anyway.

Aiyah, she says on San Diego’s version of a weather anomaly: a cloudy September morning.

I glance down at my limbs―bare, save for the short-sleeved edges of my maroon polo and the hem of my plaid skirt―knowing what she will say next because the colloquial Chinese term aiyah expresses disappointment. Because many a school day, she begins with the same exasperated expression, ending with a simple command in Chinese: to put on a jacket.

Mom, I took biology, I say. I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing. Being cold does not make you sick. Viruses do. Mother does not always know best, I add, as a trivial, snide thought.

A few mornings later, my mother hands me a 30-mL cup of syrupy orange DayQuil. I can make out her lips coming apart, phantom words hanging off her downturned mouth. You never know when to do the right thing at the right time.

My mother’s uncanny ability to anticipate events does not cost more mental effort than a simple reordering of her priorities. When I ask about how she predicts the future, she spouts a proverbial mixture of Chinese and English, which I translate, Most of the time (I don’t even look at the) small things. (But it is the important things) I never forget.

Is there anything about Mom, I ask my sister next, that you think makes her prepared?

Then, my mind catches up to my speech. She catches my colds before they happen. She does things for our future, but we don’t always realize it. She prepares and prepares and prepares, but we don’t always realize it. The words bubble up and die on my tired lips.

There are a thousand inconsistencies about Lu Dai that mix like blue and orange paint. She kicks the dog out of her room come nighttime, but she takes pictures of the dog barking at hot air balloons outside her bedroom window during the summer. She claims that all social media is horrible, but she follows some 200 colleagues and friends on WeChat, a Chinese mobile service. She buys matching furniture, but she lays them out in the hollow interiors of homes she does not own.

She drives her white sedan. By the end of the day, her odometer skips ahead 50 miles. At any given moment, she dashes out the garage door carrying nothing but a purse, her jingling car keys, and a stapled packet of house listings.

My mother’s expectations for obedience reveals a side of preparation, a side that does not reflect organization, but rather a youth locked away in colorless, gray-splashed classrooms. She had to pass that exam. She has to succeed. And later, her real estate business became successful because she could channel her energy into it. Later, she would not need to waste a single drop of sweat in prioritizing what she loves the most―her children, thus her business.

Finally, I can put the boxes of puzzles back in the garage shed.

Davina Dou ’17 33

The Over-Lined Lips that Control America Teresa Guidice’s pinot-fueled table flip. Snooki’s sucker punch to the face. Two-year-old Mia Grande’s gyration in a Madonna-esque cone bra. Despite its name, reality television portrays images as far from reality as possible. The faces are fake, the characters are fake, the dialogue is fake, and the boobs are―well, you get the idea. But reality stars have become the norm, namely the buttinjecting, million-dollar-closet shame to Armenian-Americans everywhere: The Kardashians.

And one Kardashian in particular has clawed her way to the forefront of American culture.

Kylie Jenner’s recent app KYLIE rested for weeks at the top of the iTunes chart, eclipsing Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and even Snapchat. The app targets her teenage fans and “features exclusive content like Kylie’s fave clothes, makeup, and the truth about her boobs!”

So how does Kylie Jenner charge $2.99 for a self-titled app and make 32 million simoleons?

The answer lies with America’s youth: Kylie Jenner emerges as America’s main female role model.

Say goodbye to Miley Cyrus, Amanda Bynes, and any other virtuous, poster-child-of-sobriety pop stars that we’ve come to know and love. Kylie Jenner has replaced them and thus embodied the enigma of the popular yet incompetent female role model.

Her whirlpool of scandals began as most whirlpools of scandals do: at the age of nine. The first episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians features the 60-pound body of a nine-year-old Kylie sliding upside-down on her mother’s stripper pole. And escalated from there. Kylie proceeded to (illegally) date 26-year-old rapper Tyga at the age of 17 and became the muse for Tyga’s song “Pleazer,” inspiring endearing lyrics such as, “business-minded but most of all she nasty for me” (the song’s least sexually explicit line).

Despite Kylie’s controversial history and lack of redeeming qualities, she enjoys extreme success. I decide to judge the source of Kylie’s popularity for myself. I swallow a gulp of air and search “kylie jenner,” dart my eyes over both shoulders, and click “pay $2.99,” making sure to drag the black logo with KYLIE in turquoise letters to the corner of my iPhone screen. With fingers hovering above the glass, I press the logo. The screen assaults my eyes with a full-screen photo of Kylie in a bikini, acrylic fingernails tracing the words, “King Kylie” on the glass of a gray window.

Separating into different sections, it reads: Eye Candy, NEEEEED, Shop the Selfie, and Lyfe.

Unsure if Lyfe stands for “life” or a misspelled verb referring to the bursting of cells through lysis, my finger presses down on the logo. Tacky reality TV background music fades in as Kylie’s overdrawn lips appear on the screen.

“Like, I feel like every year has a new energy,” she whines, “and I feel like this year is really about, like, the year of just realizing stuff and just coming into your own and finding yourself. I feel like all my friends around me and everyone around me―we’re all just, like, realizing things.”

Realizing stuff, indeed. As I listen to Kylie’s nasal voice I can, like, feel the hot air, like filling up my ears, you guys! But I also understand the reason for the app’s success―it offers the world a friend. Though Kylie would rather part with her statutory-tainted Ferrari than befriend one of her middle class fans, she puts on a friendly façade each morning with her lip liner. From affordable 34

versions of her outfits ($60 Old Navy swimsuit in place of her $2500 custom-made Balmain bodysuit) to live video streams of her lounging in her $2.7 million mansion pretending to act like a normal teenager, her app contains countless Saran Wrap transparent offers of friendship with her fans. And they work.

As Saheeelllllllll from the Apple Store Review section writes, “it feels like u r living with Kylie and she talks to you guys like u r her bff.” For what is a role model for young females other than someone who talks to them like they r her bff? Despite Kylie’s bratty indiscretions, America’s youth desire her friendship because they idolize her life. They want to feel close to her because they desire her fame, her wardrobe, her friends, her lifestyle, and they hope that one day they can live that lifestyle, too.

But they can’t, and one day, five, ten, fifteen years later, Kylie’s fans will just, like, realize stuff. They’ll realize that the enormous, wasteful excess they so desire lies beyond their grasp, and they’ll turn off their televisions and delete the black and turquoise square from their phones. And there Kylie will still lie, engulfed in an ocean of empty $2.7 million air, furiously living her life into a camera with no one on the other end.

Sophia Acker ’17

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Whoops, It Got Beheaded Carly Phoon ’20 ink on paper

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Epiphany Come here, cower Face-first in the limelight, Underneath these trembling hands; A question Lingers upon our Lips, our tongues, our throats, “Oh, why is This our End?” With the undone skies Above crying out, They grieve for our loss, Those Huddled masses, those Hymns of faith in Absolution, in baptisms while The landscape cracks open And floods.

Alyson Brown ’19

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To Say Goodbye in Pieces It is as if I am more ghost than human.

I wonder if Earth has memorized The weight of my footsteps, Or if she’s been alive too long To remember, Or if she’s missing the weight of your smile; Either way, Things seem heavier without you.

I want you to know, I believe in loving; I believe we are Not truly alive without it.

I believe the stars Are collapsing for us, And we have all known that ache.

Just know That God will reach Into your chest And curl his fingers Around the sun As it scorches your heart.

There will be days When the world Will lean back and laugh At the sorrow Staining your cheeks And pooling in Your collarbone.

There will be days When you are a lark Caught in the claws Of a lion, 38

Tiny, ruffled feathers Drifting down One by one.

There will be days When there is scarcely Enough air to Fit your shrinking lungs, And you find your lips Sewn shut Against the cold.

There will be days Where it seems like The vast entirety Of the oceans Has welled up In your eyes Because they have.

The oceans live in your eyes, Sunlight billows across your face, Blood sticks under your fingernails, Flowers tangle in your hair; What else would it be To have a soul?

It’s okay to want to feel sometimes.

It’s okay to be enough.

You can pick enough dandelions To wish a miracle and swallow Each memory to the pit Of your stomach.

I need you To believe in loving, Believe in the sweetness (continued on page 41)

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Don’t Be Square Sarah Gooley ’18 mixed media

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It takes to Get me drunk on secrets, To hide your face in my hair and Whisper them into my skin, To twist my tongue into knots and Let your palm kiss my lips To keep me quiet.

You have more life that you think, Yet you still have less life than you deserve; Take all of me you need.

Sometimes I wake up with Ink smudged on my eyelashes, And when I blink, Your voice dances across my vision, And I think I would run out of words Trying to say how much I want The world to be happy, And I have just learned how to Hold my own hand Without letting go Of anyone else’s.

So, in spite of everything, I’ll tell you to Breathe Again and again; I’ll tell you to listen to Your heart beat Again and again; It’s the only way To teach yourself How to smile.

Madison Chang ’19

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Perfect Posture Trembling fingers reach for clothes. A luggage zipper slides to the right. She throws open the flap. Fists pound fabric tight into corners. A pink, cashmere sweater with a moth hole under the arm. A summer dress sprinkled with red polka dots and a tag reading “Made in Tehran.” Her arms whisk the piles of clothes into the luggage. Only a plaid skirt and a blouse stitched with “Sohail” remain on the shelf. She won’t need them again. Sweat beads above her lip. Fingers reach for the zipper. The clean zip echoes past a mob of shouting men in front of the gate, torches and bats in hands. The luggage handle unclips and she treads into the hallway. A quick glance back. The last one. A hand falls against the light switch. The dark drowns out any motion―biting nails, wiping tears. The back door swings open; she trudges down the stairs and pulls the luggage against the friction of grass.

Forty years later, she again packs a suitcase. This time for a business trip to China. “You keep your neck straight. Look ahead,” she says. Look ahead at the flickering lights of the plane; look ahead at the pilled fabric of the seat; look ahead at the sun streaking the bay during the descent; look ahead at the United States of America, the new, shiny home at 5640 Calle Miramar, La Jolla, California. “I looked ahead.”

I know it’s in the past, but I can see her standing in a plaid skirt and white uniform blouse.

The pastel-yellow school bus slides against her driveway as she scurries inside to meet her friend Sima. They remove traces of the weekend’s polish with a pad of acetone, pencil-in their eyebrows to cover the few hairs the parlor had plucked, clip fingernails to avoid confrontations with the nuns, fold collars, tighten bolo ties, and polish crosses. A usual Monday morning, it seems. But the whir of a motor silences all chatter and giggles. Metal crunches against asphalt. Men shout in salute. “‫ ”!ﻋﺒﺎﺳﻨﮕﺎ‬She spins around, her nose squashed against the glass. Eight battle tanks stamped with the Shah’s seal roll aside the bus; men fitted with khaki helmets rotate the guns; a line of troops march, each foot slapping the ground at one time; the belts grind into the corner where a mob awaits, waving signs of Khomeini and copies of the Qur’an in the air. The revolution had begun.

Banners pop up on the side of the street. “‫ ﺑﻬﺎﺋﯽ ﺑﺮ ﺗﻒ‬, spit on the Bahá’ís.” Later she avoids the mob in the bazaar, ducks past rows of rug shops, past the Chattanooga Cafe, past the fruit stands, keeps her neck bent on the main street until she reaches the dark haven of a movie theatre.

Then again, her neck bent, knees on the ground, she scrubs paint off of her driveway, black paint, staining the concrete, bleeding into the sponge and seeping under her fingernails. ‫ﮐﻔﺎﺭ‬. Infidels. ‫ﭘﻠﻴﺪ‬.

Defiled. ‫ﻫﺎ ﺳﮓ‬. Dogs. Shame spills when she tells the bus driver her family has moved to the next street, only to avoid the laughter and stares of classmates who see the graffiti on her door.

Then the neighbors turn. At the end of the cul de sac, the three Samimi homes―the first occupied by my mother, Abbaseh, her father, Ehsan, and her mother, Mehrain; the second occupied by her grandparents, Yaghoob and Maryam; the third occupied by her aunt, Baher―become a warzone. Neighbors climb in high trees and pelt rocks as the six cross from home to home. For eight months, the six of them cover heads with metal pots to cross the backyard. Gardening 42

becomes hazardous. Swimming in the pool leads to cuts and bruises. The walk from her bus stop to the front door becomes a race home.

Visitors reject offered food. If their tongues touch anything in contact with her hands or her feet or her skin or her hair, their cleanliness sours, their bodies fill with filth. When she offers a plate of kabob to the electrician, he pushes the plate away. “I have not touched the food, Mehdi. You can eat it.” Still, he backs away and smiles in disdain. She presses her face against the window, watching him unlatch the car door with his pinky, unhook the dashboard, empty a puddle of Dettol in his hands, rub the antiseptic up his forearms, under his fingernails, on the soles of his shoes, on the door handle and the steering wheel, fear of human virus.

She rustles awake from a crescendo of bangs and chants. A mob of ten men pound their bats against the metal fence, pass their posters from one man to another, wave torches, press their lips between the posts, curse, mock, and threaten: You dogs, Go home, We’ll kill you! For two hours the men lean against their cars and wait for a light to flicker inside the house. For two hours the bats bang, the flames burn and the shouts ring. For two hours she sits in the arms of her mother, tears dribbling into her hair, her mother’s hands clinging, clutching her sweater. Her father steps inside the dark room: They’re gone. A triangle of glances against the silence. He pushes over the empty suitcases.

She has looked ahead. She can straighten her neck now. A yellow taxi screeches to a stop.

The driver hurls five suitcases from the trunk and they trudge toward the door in the car headlights.

On the door mat she finds a white envelope. “Ethan, Merry and Abba: You will find the keys in the lockbox under the flowerpot. I am sure you remember the code from our previous letter.

Welcome!” She flickers the light switch, stares at an empty room, no couches, no tables, no lamps, no beds. Only a thick, white carpet. Against her squeaky air mattress, she fumbles and kicks in a restless sleep. School starts tomorrow. La Jolla High School. For the first time she can keep the nail polish. She won’t tighten a bolo tie, fold her collar, clip her nails. She won’t respond to Abbaseh anymore. It’s Abba now.

She clanks down the hallway to first period. The teacher leans against the chalkboard as she scurries to the back. “Please introduce yourself.” Her eyes circle the room for a while―“What did he ask?”―until she blurts out, “Abba.” The teacher continues with the tale of American history but she notices only the slur of consonants, a series of widened eyes, raised hands, pointing finger, then at the board, at the white chalk, the straight lines and curved lines and dots and points, at the teacher’s arm moving from left to right. The same confusion she feels in Government and ESL. Flipping through dictionaries, circling words in textbooks, drawing lines, copying, making a pile of snapped pencils. Over and over. She reads the same sentence ten times. She doesn’t understand it ten times.

And repeats.

Then at the lunch table with the rest of the “Iranian Chicks,” she learns to keep her head white text (continued on page 45)

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California Stop Hannah Young ’19 digital photography

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down. The American girls slap down newspapers with headlines THREE AMERICAN HOSTAGES TAKEN BY IRAN. “Here to take more?” They flip cafeteria trays in her face. They stick gum in her hair. Neck bent: a Baha’i in Iran, an Iranian in America. “We not coming from them. We running from them.” She points to herself: “Baha’i.” The girls redirect their eyes and walk away; she speaks a foreign language. ‫ ﭼﻪ ﻫﺮ‬.‫ ﺑﻬﺘﺮ ﮐﻪ ﺩﺍﻧﻨﺪ ﻧﻤﯽ ﺁﻧﻬﺎ‬.Whatever. They don’t know any better.

My eyes flush back from the glaze. “Sayeh, Sayeh!” “Huh, sorry what?” “Stand straight. You look like a hunchback,” as she pushes her hand against my spine. Stand straight. Perfect posture. She tucks the suit, buckles the luggage strap, and walks towards the door. The mirage of a black pantsuit in the doorway. She turns around, smiles with no teeth, and blows a kiss, “I’ll see you in three weeks.” Her shoulder blades squeeze tight as she steps into the black Escalade.

Sayeh Kohani ’18

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The Death of the Author. The Death of Me? In the spirit of Roland Barthes’s “The Death of the Author,” I (yes, please take a moment to recognize and ponder the implications of my ability to say and state my own existence, within utterance, as the author of this piece and the meaning of which that implies) will delve, without hindrance, into unorthodox coping methods that a psychologist might diagnose typical of one with knowledge of one’s own rapidly arriving demise and death. I am the author, after all. So, let’s endure ourselves before my passing, shall we?

As I write to you, I write as a person: My name is Nick Barber on Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 7:31 p.m. and I’m sitting in my room at 5961 Germaine Lane in La Jolla, CA, and please, by all means, come find me, because I would love to chat about the probability that you will keep me alive. And, oh, I must say, at this time and place I do have all the wonderful human rights and protections provided to me by the United States Government, a functioning liver, a box of Ritz crackers, along with any of the numerous amenities you believe a great author would have with him while writing. (Take note of the end of that last line. I just gave you, the reader, boundless power there. Please take advantage of it! Imagine whatever you want to imagine; what else do I have with me while I write? A cup of tea? A Snuggie? A family of talking ducklings waddling around my computer allowing me to plagiarize their ideas to hopefully convince you that I am a great author?

You tell me; it is your imagination that can add the infinite variations, not mine). So, even though I invited you to “come find me” in the lines above, you can’t really find me because I’m lost. That is, Nick Barber on Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 7:31 p.m., sitting in his room at 5961 Germaine Lane in La Jolla, is lost and will never be found again, nor will he ever be seen again because he is simply what the language makes him and what the reader makes him. (What does the reader make him, you ask?) Each reader has so much room for interpretation he can create enough variation that all the slightly different renditions of Snuggies and ducklings put together will likely overshadow the reality of the situation―the reality of Nick Barber. (What does the language make him, you ask?) The language constrains him to nothing but a subject. And yes, it constrains me right now, even when I say: look at me, I’m here, you know I’m here, look at me! It is a lie. There is no person on this page.

There is not anyone in front of you because written language restricts every “I” to nothing but a subject on paper, and that’s all any “I” that has ever been written, in any language, at any time, has or ever will be. All the personal nouns you’ve read in this piece are nothing but subjects, so much so, it makes the author, me, nothing more than a man who wrote “I” on a page; someone who can not even be a real person within his own writing.

However, with this author, like all the rest throughout human history, there has been a real Nick Barber, and this Nick Barber may not live on this page, but he’s lived on Germaine Lane, he’s breathed in the Californian air, he’s relished the human rights granted to him by the US government, he’s enjoyed a pristinely functioning liver, he’s even indulged a box of Ritz crackers, and he’s shared

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all of these moments with you. He may not have had the Snuggie, tea, or talking ducklings that the reader inserted, but that doesn’t change a thing about the Nick Barber on Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 7:31 p.m. who was a human being who wrote this piece you read today. That is the author who needs to be remembered and recounted, until his death. That is the author who needs to be remembered for his life.

Nick Barber ’17

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Don’t Follow Instructions!

When falling off a cliff, you should take in as much of your environment as you can. The cliff I fell off is known to Google Maps as Kipu Falls. This bluff, carved by many tributaries fused into one stream that tumbles over it, surrounded by a thick canopy of Moluccan albizias that whisper eerie cicada-secrets, rises thirty-five feet above an opaque-teal jungle pool. I stand at the top.

Sweat trickling through the creases in my palms, I watch my family members and friends plunge off the edge. Despite the large, fluorescent No Trespassing sign and a few yards of rusty barbed wire fencing, dozens of pale tourists sporting lace-up hiking boots, swollen Camelbaks, and crinkled bucket hats, enjoy free admission to a spectacle much too adventurous for they, themselves.

Tanner goes first, testosterone pumping through his blood vessels as he looks back to make sure that Megan, his crush since third grade, watches; Paul follows his son, trying to show that age doesn’t matter and forty-year-olds can have as much fun as college students; then Kirk, but only after an annoying ten minutes of coaxing his daughters to jump with him; Stacy and Shelby hold their four-year-old sons Spencer and Grayson by their waists, are pressured by their husbands and the crowd of tourists below, and applauded as they plunge off the edge; Olivia, last in line before me, can’t resist turning around and smirking “Look who’s the braver one now, Sista.” Splash.

Eyes fixate on me. My right leg twitches—a nervous habit—and my stomach feels weighed down with stones. Echoes rise from below. C’mon Julia, jump! My fear of heights emerges from its resting place in my amygdala, assuming the role of king of my neurons, ordering me to step aside from the edge and live with the shame and torment of having a younger sister braver than I; as I place my right foot on the moss-covered rock, my size-three feet skid like a truck on black ice, plunging me over the cliff. A four-foot-seven, seventy-pound body weightless in the humid air. I forget about the pool below that will break my fall, so I take one last breath, clench my fists, and brace my twelve-year-old self for the end.

I return home with a hibiscus lei, a patchy tan, and a story.

Julia Ralph ’17

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Toska Toska is a Russian word that encompasses the nuances and generalities of the soul that cannot translate to a single English word. Nabokov defined it as “a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause… a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning… nostalgia, love-sickness…it grades into ennui, boredom.” The difficulty of interpreting toska parallels the struggle of interpreting writing. A single meaning or right answer cannot contain its concept. At its simplest, writing is the act of putting words on a page; at its most complex, writing arises from the tremors in our hands, the itching behind our eyes, and the cracking of the skin on our feet, all driven by what we want to communicate; it captures words and sustains them in amber. The subtleties of the act of writing, of the sentences themselves, resemble the niches of the earth crushed into the loops of the letters that form the representation of sound. We write in order to preserve existence, like bodies in ice.

Katherine Finley ’17

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Is CJ Delfino ’18 watercolor, ink, and poetry

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