THE BELL: VOL IX, ISSUE 5 by The Chapel Bell

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THE BELL Creative content for a brighter Monday

NOV 15, 2021

VOL. IX ISSUE. V

The 1996 Western New Mexico Men’s Recreational Rugby Tournament, Sponsored by the Coyote Moon Cafe by graduate student jake head

When I wear it, my mind forces me to bridge the gap between the seemingly unrelated front and back. I imagine a young man, a man who used to be my age, sitting in a well-worn western cafe; a cafe that always has cherry pie and a fresh pot of coffee. A cafe I’ve only been to via TV show plots and beatnik books. The man wears a cotton headband restraining long, feathered hair. He is lean and mean, sweaty from the match, drunk on both joy and lager. He and the rest of the rec team drink gallons of booze and eat piles of lean beef in celebration of their small-town victory. Yellow fabric camouflages mustard, beer, and sweat stains. I imagine their rugby league is sponsored by the cafe, the owner being heavily invested in his community’s minuscule triumphs; the community being heavily invested in the cafe’s continuous supply of saturated fat and lite beer. The man wearing the shirt (my shirt) is a high school football star turned recreational rugby leaguer. Maybe he plays in the summer on break from New Mexico University. Or this is what he does to blow off steam after a long shift at God knows where. Maybe he doesn’t play at all, he just works in the cafe, and for some reason, they advertise the tournament on the back of the shirt. Perhaps there was no original owner at all, and this austere t-shirt is just a factory defect. A factory defect that advertises for the Coyote Moon Cafe on one side, and a men’s recreational rugby league tournament on the other, and the character I’ve made up to match an austere and bright yellow article of clothing is actually just the product of some guy in a screen printing shop mixing up two files. I have invented a thousand other narratives to explain the origin of my favorite t-shirt and this is just the one that makes the most

THE CHAPEL BELL: A POSITIVE PRESS PUBLICATION

sense. All I know for sure is that somehow, in the past 25 years, this shirt has managed to travel from New Mexico to Georgia and from someone else’s shoulders to my own. I prefer the romantic approach. To me, the fabric is soft because it is worn. It has felt the sweat of a nostalgic championship and the dirt of well-worn turf. It has traveled the continent in a van. It has made its home in desert storms and sweaty Southern cities. I feel powerful in it because someone else felt powerful in it before me, and I stumbled upon it in Value Village because some force decided that I was overdue for a mundane object to

romanticize.

photo by prashant kolachala

Photographer Highlight 1: Aranxta Villa

Photographer Highlight 2: Catherine Campbell Carineht Calbepm Carineht Calbepm Carineht Calbepm Carineht Calbepm Carineht Calbepm THE BELL VOL. IX, ISSUE V

Photographer Highlight 3: Sophie Mcleod

THE BELL VOL. IX, ISSUE V

Nature’s Love by second year erin o’keefe I left it all behind me in a blur. The stress and woes of my life were easily set aside the moment I started out on my way into the lush woods ahead. I inhaled sharply the cool rush of air and exhaled in the same way. I smiled at the thought of having no thoughts at all. I simply walked. The walk turned into a climb as the incline increased and I welcomed the challenge as a new distraction. At this point, I couldn’t even remember what I was distracted from, I just knew that I was. There was no one around me, but I was far from alone. Rather, I had a thousand different friends whispering to me at things I could hear but could not understand. Their leaves swayed, causing me to pause and sway with them before moving past my spot where I had stood. In sharing a dance with the forest dwellers I felt I was one of them and soon I could feel my heart beat in time with theirs. It was a feeling I loved in a way different from the love I feel for people. This made the feeling somehow more special to me.The wind whipped around my hair, pushing it back from my face, fully exposing my smile to the audience of trees all around me. The path is more grown in more than my memory serves me, but my feet still know all the right steps to take. The smell of the pines fills my senses and reminds me to breathe a little deeper. The feeling of my breath triggers my body to run, against my mind’s wishes, and I find myself striving faster and faster to the top. I am desperate to get there, so desperate the current sights around me fade into one similar blur of familiarity. I see the large boulder and curve the corner as the ground beneath me begins to flatten. The chill of the wind is faster still and I welcome it as a warm embrace. I slow as I see them, the two trees that reach from the ground up to the clear blue sky, parallel next to each other. I feel as though I could cry the most crystalline tears of joy, yet I do not. Instead I continue onward, brushing my hands against the bark of the trees as I pass through the doorway they have created for me. I climb up the last rocky slope and I’m there.

photo by aranxta villa On top of the mountain that is my whole world. But what is next? I wonder to myself. I must venture down. I know it is true and so I do so willingly, because I know that there will always be a day I can climb it again. I know that there will always be a day I can leave behind the weight of society in favor of something clearer. Mother Nature’s embrace will always be there, waiting to envelope me in comfort of something I could never manufacture on my own. It is a gift that I willingly accept with nothing to give in return, for she asks of nothing from all the same. In this way, I am free to enjoy the beauty of my surroundings without fear of a day when I am alone in this life.