Avatarotica 2: The Way of Wetter

In the final issue of our forty-fourth volume, the Nass interrogates the illusion of control in the beauty ideal, attempts to translate a scandalous conversation, and cracks open the meanings of “fault.”

The Nassau Weekly

Avatarotica 2: The Way of Wetter

Telescoping Fault

By Peyton Smith, Daniel Viorica, Otto Eiben, Jane Castleman, Daniel Vergara, Alexandra Orbuch, Emily Yang, Mollika Jai Singh

Designed by Vera Ebong

Giving Up on Pretty: Capitalism, Feminism, and the Illusion of Control

By Eva Vesely

Designed by Benjamin Small and Hannah Mittleman

My Sweet Galatea

By Otto Eiben

Designed by Synai Ferrell

A Marienda with Sappho

By Cece McWilliams

Designed by Eman Ali and Emma Mohrmann

Dear Readers:

Oh, wow, is that the time? We’ve gotta get out of here!

It has been an honor and a true delight to lead this weekly newsmagazine for the last twelve months. We laughed a ton, we cried a tad, and we learned so much from our community of immensely insightful, creative, and usually totally absurd (in the best way!) writers, artists, and contrib utors. Sometimes everything is silly and you simply need to not take it seriously. Sometimes everything needs to be serious and you just need the space to process it, bit by bit. For many, the Nass provides the physical and creative space to fulfill both of these deeply human needs.

Our community has been through so much. Writing and art can be vital modes of catharsis, growth, and healing—the process of creation opens windows into our hearts and minds, revealing things about ourselves that even we couldn’t see before. It provides opportunities for us to find what we need in the moment we need it, as both the producers and the audi ence of creative work.

As far as we’re concerned, the Nass is magic. It draws out the innate magic in those who bring it to life, and it allows them to share that magic. It has been a joy to watch this magic spread amongst you all.

Behind the VHS, Betacam, and GoPro: Ivar Murd and his Production of Cult Music Documentary u.Q

By Lucia Brown Designed by

Emily Yang

The scourge of the decaf fiend: thou shalt be unproductive

By Juju Lane

Designed by Hazel Flaherty

As we board the spaceship that awaits us on the roof of Frist Campus Center (where Juju once spent 24 hours for the sake of a Nass article haha!), we will remember our readers and the greater Nass community with immense fondness. Thank you for everything. It has been a wild ride.

Peace out, earthlings!

XO

Juju and Mina

Editors-in-Chief, the Nassau Weekly, Volume 44

Editors-in-Chief

Juju Lane Mina Quesen Publisher

Abigail Glickman Alumni Liasion

Allie Matthias Managing Editors

Sam Bisno Sierra Stern

Design Editor

Cathleen Weng

Senior Editors

Lauren Aung Lara Katz

Junior Editors

Lucia Brown Kate Lee Anya Miller

Charlie Nuermberger Alexandra Orbuch Art Director Emma Mohrmann Assistant Art Director Hannah Mittleman

Assistant Design Editors

Vera Ebong Hazel Flaherty

Head Copy Editor

Andrew White Copy Editors

Bethany Villaruz Noori Zubieta David Edgemon Teo Grosu

Events Editor

David Chmielewski

Audiovisual Editor

Christien Ayers Web Editor

Jane Castleman Social Chair

Kristiana Filipov

Social Media Manager

Ellie Diamond

This Week:

Mon Tues Wed Thurs

4:30p 185 Nassau

Cyberfeminism Index: Book Reading & Conversa tion with Mindy Seu, Laura Coombs and Lily Healey ’13

12:00p Betts Sick Architecture

2:30p Woolworth Princeton University Steel Band with Tiger Chunes

12:30p Chapel After Noon Concert

5:00p LCA C.K. Williams Reading by Raven Leilani

7:30p LCA L’Avant-Scène presents “Race in French The ater”

7:30p Chapel Candlelight Service of Lessons and Carols

7:30p Richardson From Darkness to Light: Princeton University Sinfonia

Fri Sat Sun

12:00p Morrison Crime, Safety and Justice in the 2022 Elections

1:00p Art@Bainbridge Open House | Colony / Dor Guez

8:00p LCA Play: Devised Theatre Performance

8:00p Richardson Jazz Creative Large Ensemble

1:00p Taplin La Vie en Cello Fall Concert

Got Events? Email David Chmielewski at dc70@princeton.edu with your event and why it should be featured.

3:00p LCA

House of Sound: MUS 314: Computer and Electronic Music

For advertisements, contact Abigail Glickman at alg4@princeton.edu.

Verbatim:

Overheard at RoMa breakfast

OvereagerEngineering freshman: “Going to McCosh is on my bucket list.”

Overheard at the Mint Boredfriend: “What are you doing after this?”

Goodoldersister: “Taking care of my dying sister.”

BobaAddict: “Do you wanna get boba first?”

Overheard in Spelman

Beleagueredadmissionsoffice worker: “He’s a tour guide, not a person.”

Hangin’ with old pals

Classof‘22visitinghis‘23 girlfriend: “That night was wild—I spent the whole time drinking beer and scarfing down deviled eggs.”

Overheard over a few drinks Sexuallyadventuroussenior: “What kinda racoons we talking about? Because there are some chubby racoons and they’re very cute, but I don’t want them up my ass.”

Overheard in public STEMtwink: “I’m not saying homophobia’s wrong but–”

Overheard at a study break Frosh1: “One of my high school teachers apparently went on a bender for two years.”

Frosh2: “That’s not a bender, that’s alcoholism.”

Overheard at Thanksgiving dinner

Buddinganarchist: “I’m going to end the world. It will look great on a resume.”

Overheard at 3am Artmajor: “Have I shown you my fly impression?”

Overheard in an email to an advisor Aspiringwriter/murderer: “The overall theme this week seems to be a lot of dead kids. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!”

Submit to Verbatim

Email thenassauweekly@gmail.com

About us:

The Nassau Weekly is Princeton University’s weekly news magazine and features news, op-eds, reviews, fiction, poetry and art submitted by students. Nassau Weekly is part of Princeton Broadcasting Service, the student-run operator of WPRB FM, the oldest college FM station in the country. There is no formal membership of the Nassau Weekly and all are en couraged to attend meetings and submit their writing and art.

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We meet on Mondays and Thursdays at 5pm in Bloomberg 044!

Telescoping Fault

To telescope, we begin with 300 words, then slice the word count in half for each successive section. We stop when the numbers stop divid ing evenly. This week, eight Nass writers tele scope the word “fault.”

food on the counter as far as possible to evade the

reach of “noo-noo.” Nonetheless, some times matter fell be tween the cracks and into the black depths of her mouth.

those glossy round black eyes, she was incapable of shame. After all, it was just her nature.

Greta, in her 120-pound Bull Mastiff slobbery glory, was a black hole when it came to food, or anything remotely re sembling food. She had gorged whole loaves of bread in record time— not letting the plastic wrapper heed her appe tite. Sometimes she opt ed for chewing off a leg of a Barbie doll or even once, consuming part of a container of iron vi tamins, which resulted in a rare trip to the vet.

Through these impres sive feats, Greta earned one of her many nick names, “noo-noo” after the vacuum in the TV show Teletubbies.

Our household built habits around this oth erwise amiable force. We had to remember to pick up the floor of any toys and push back

One incident oc curred the morning after my 8th birthday, right before I was about to leave for school. I heard a sudden crash and the scuttling of nails across linoleum tile. The next thing I saw was the leftovers of my double-layered choco late cake on our kitch en floor being inhaled by Greta. After witness ing the tragic end of my birthday cake, I vowed to not pet her for the remainder of the day (I broke my promise).

The pettiness of 8-year-old me over such trivial stakes as birthday cake always entertains me to reflect back on. It was not her fault—it was ours for not knowing better than placing the cake where she could pull it down from below; and despite that face of ostensibly eternal pen itence, that droopy wet mouth, those delicate forehead wrinkles, and

Volleyball relies on a theory of “bettering the ball.” Your team is given a spike, serve, or tip that you must “better” incre mentally from a pass to a set to a hit. Volleyball doesn’t ask for perfec tion; volleyball asks for doing the best you can with the conditions giv en to you. Consequently, the blame of a lost point, a fallen ball, is almost always collective.

Take a serve going deep into the middle of the court, where the libero is. The libero reads the serve late, in sufficiently moves back, so the ball catches her high up her platform, the angle of which is nearly parallel to the ground. The ball goes straight up, instead of following a parabolic arc to the setter. The DS hesitates when the set ter doesn’t call “help,” and attempts to salvage the play by diving dramatically—but she’s late and the ball thuds to the ground.

An asteroid killed the dinosaurs. Well, the non-avian ones, anyway, in addition to killing countless other families of mammals, reptiles, and fish. The asteroid struck at a particularly vulnerable time, too, for dinosaurs, with herbivores such as Triceratops already in decline and food webs in disarray. Also, there was another asteroid 66 million years ago, grant ed this one had mostly regional effects, but it was an additional con tingency effectuating the extinction of the non-avian dinosaur.

My mom tells me to stop saying sorry when it’s not my fault. Maybe, my frequent invocation of the word dilutes its power. But I contend that the presence of fault merely intensifies the sympathy within “I’m sorry.”

PEYTON SMITH

Igrew up in a tworoom house in the mountains outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Between the first room and the sec ond, at the entryway, terracotta tiles are cracked and blistered. It seems like something we should fix. Below the French doors an edge that could cut our bare feet. We never really noticed. Just another source of dust.

The woman before us added the second room to the first, hap hazardly; she was par anoid. The basement is like a bunker, with a heavy metal door, in case of bombs. (Why was she worried about bombs? Never clear. People have their neuroses.) She added the second room later. It has different walls, sharp plaster instead of smooth; the roof is tin, not shingled. But it was built on a different foundation, it must be sinking, the terracotta tiles between the rooms have cracked.

The Little House was temporary, until my father could build the

New House. He planned meticulously; build ing wasn’t started until after years of sketching, planning. Those were my early years. Looking at lines that would be walls. When I was two the ground was broken, trees were cleared, con crete was poured. You can still find my hand prints in the porch.

There would be no mistakes. Maybe he tried to hire a contrac tor, but they did some thing wrong, messed something up. He came back to it alone. Every week it seemed there was another wall, anoth er block of cement, an other beam in the roof.

I know it meant a lot to him. He grew up in an apartment block, in a country where there isn’t space like this. Sometimes we sit out side, and he puts his arm around my shoul der, says, isn’t it incred ible, that we have... He’s looking out to the hills.

Then one day, all construction stopped.

The Little House wasn’t meant to last for more than a couple

years. A few at most.

Life found mani festation in clutter: a wood-carved penny tray, ceramic salad bowls, dogs, strays from the woods, books, many books, a shining gray lamp. At night I would sneak from my bed in the corner of the second room to peer through to the kitchen, yellow light through the French doors. I could see my parents’ shadows mov ing back and forth, wait ing, I suppose, until I was asleep.

And so the New House too accrued sed iment. Dust, screws and nails, two cats, four un usable Volkswagens. We got used to the half-built house. We joke about it. Weekends were spent dusting, putting down new paper to protect the stained concrete floors.

As a kid, I was scared to enter at night: wouldn’t I get lost, I wor ried, in the dark space under the stairs?

Now that I’ve left I think about what home meant. I’ve closer to my parents than I would have been. And how

much time have I spent walking back and forth along the same trails, seeing the same stumps and flowers and valleys and rusting scrap metal. Easy to get stuck in your head. My thoughts brushing up against walls, ob jects, these past nine teen years. Sometimes I tried writing but it ended up in pieces.

They told us in school that we lived in the “Tijeras Fault.” Between two tectonic plates. It was a wonder, we all thought, that there ar en’t earthquakes; there are, they said. Subtle enough we can’t feel them.

the old, leatherbound notebook, which he bought on the flea mar ket in January but pre tends to have inherited from his grandfather. His real inheritance, however, he’s less proud of, as he’s sharing it with everyone else left on this dying planet. You only need to look around to see it.

Awasteland of green plastic straws and bags is all the Cowboy sees before hopping on the last Airtrain to New Marseilles. Old Arizona is lost to the wrath of the planet now: that’s all he has in his monthly report, written down in

The Airtrain an chors in the President’s station at 4:50 pm, drop ping the Cowboy off downtown, in the city whose veins are puls ing with the last drops of life. He treks his way up to the office, where the secretary in the green dress is waiting for him patiently, just so she could let him in the door to the meeting room, where the Usurer, the Executioner, the Philosopher and the Whore are all standing with their arms crossed, looking down on him, judging him for the two days long delay. There is really no explanation for

DANIEL VIORICA

OTTO EIBEN

Giving Up on Pretty: Capitalism,

By EVA VESELY

During my first semester on campus, I was always late. No doubt apprehen sive about making new friends, I would dally in front of the mir ror for what felt like an eternity, scrambling to arrange the frizz on my head just right or apply yet another layer of mascara.

Very often the mirror in my room felt like a deceptive trap, a false sense of comfort, con trol, and empowerment that would draw me in and latch on, refusing to free me from its grasp. Almost a year later, I dis covered the song “Brand New City” by indie singer-songwrit er Mitski, and heard the lyrics that simultaneously punched me in the gut and rewired my brain (as Mitski lyrics tend to do): “If I gave up on being pret ty I wouldn’t know how to be alive.”

Since hearing those words, and realizing how deeply they resonated with me, I’ve tried to be more actively critical of my relationship with beauty. It didn’t take long for me to come

across the term body neutrali ty: the idea that we should feel neutral, rather than positive, about the ways our bodies look, and emphasize their function and utility instead of their ap pearance. Immediately upon learning the term, body neu trality seemed like a radical, almost impossible mentality; I knew deep down that it would be much easier for me to con vince myself that I love the way my body and face look, with all their “imperfections,” than completely abandon the warm glow of the beauty ideal. It was then that I realized how deeply the beauty ideal was ingrained within me, and became deter mined to, if not escape it, at least closely examine the role it played in my life.

In her essay titled “Always Be Optimizing,” Jia Tolentino discusses the ways that beauty operates under capitalism and the patriarchy as a modern-day mechanism of control, espe cially for women. Tolentino builds upon the concept of the beauty myth, developed by Naomi Wolf in her 1991 book of the same name. According to Wolf, stringent beauty stan dards developed as a patri archal form of control in re sponse to women’s liberation; grueling domestic work, a form of unpaid labor that kept wom en’s time occupied for most of history, was merely traded in for beauty work. The beau ty myth operates by remain ing elusive, so, just like house chores never end, neither does the chase for the beauty ideal. It convinces women that dedi cated hard work grants beauty, beauty grants access to power, and with great power comes

an even greater standard for beauty. Tolentino applies this framework to its modern-day equivalent: the lifestyle myth, “a paradigm where a woman can muster all the technology, money, and politics available to her to actually try to become that idealized self, and where she can understand relentless self-improvement as natural, mandatory, and feminist—or just, without question, the best way to live.” Looking back, it’s hard to imagine what was going through my head before I be came exposed to this idea. Was I conscious of the ideal image of myself that I was continu ously chasing, or did I consider every instance of lifestyle work as isolated and independent? Did I wholeheartedly believe that I would one day achieve this image, or did I understand that as soon as I got close the image would shift, remaining always out of reach?

Mainstream feminism gives us the illusion of control. It rebrands lifestyle work (from splurging on skincare to drink ing green juice) as self-care and convinces us that we’re doing it for ourselves, that the end less time we spend fixating on how to improve our self-image is our own enthusiastic choice. Oftentimes, it even insidious ly equates self-improvement with moral goodness, sham ing us for refusing to engage. I feel this illusion of control every time I catch myself turn ing to my mirror when I feel overwhelmed in other aspects of my life, telling myself that now is the perfect time to ex cavate my skin with tweezers or try that new eyeshadow look I saw online. Capitalism

“I’d like to think that through educating myself on the topic of the beauty myth, I’ve naturally come closer to adopting a body neutrality mentality; after all, it’s hard to want to play a game that you know is rigged.”

Feminism, and the Illusion of Control

and mainstream feminism combine to make the lifestyle myth invincible to critique by putting “such a premium on individual success, so much emphasis on individual choice, that it is seen as unfeminist to criticize anything that a woman chooses to make herself more successful.” Many attempts to wards progress have only made the myth stronger, like the ex posure of Photoshop usage in media which only placed great er value on “natural” beauty, or the influx of body positivity for all body types, which again only emphasized the importance of beauty in our society.

When quarantine first start ed I was exposed to yet another mutation of the beauty myth: the idea that in order to be beautiful, one must feel beauti ful as well. Like most iterations of the myth, the intentions of this one were good, starting out as an attempt to inform others about the power of confidence and not caring what other peo ple think. “If you simply believe that you’re hot, you will be. Just be confident and the rest will follow,” I heard as I scrolled through TikTok after TikTok of people showing their before and after photos. It didn’t take long before I was playing men tal games with myself, pushing away any negative thoughts when they came up, staring at myself in the mirror when I felt confident so I could capture the feeling and use it to manifest a new reality for myself. The men tal beauty work became just as taxing as any physical beauty work could’ve been. Though I eventually found that this type of practice was not sustainable, I still see evidence of this myth

in the media around me: well ness campaigns commanding me to feel my best rather than look my best and lists of beauty affirmations that I have to write down in my journal five times every morning.

One of the reasons that the beauty and lifestyle myths run so deep is because they do, in fact, feel really good. There’s a common sentiment that peo ple look forward to getting ready for an event more than the event itself, and for valid reason. There’s something re warding and pleasurable about carving out a chunk of your day to focus intently on yourself, about iteratively developing a self-care ritual. It feels produc tive. Of course, the payoff is ap pealing as well. It’s hard not to notice when people treat you differently after you’ve put in the work; it’s hard to pretend like you don’t enjoy it, even if that enjoyment is tinged with a bit of guilt. These are the primary ways that the beauty myth operates. But most don’t realize how it can be a dou ble-edged sword, how for every time you get a powerful emo tional reward from engaging in the myth, you can also crash just as hard (like those night marish nights out when none of your outfits look the way you envisioned and your makeup isn’t sitting right on your face).

As Tolentino states: “I like try ing to look good, but it’s hard to say how much you can genu inely, independently like what amounts to a mandate.”

But other than the toxic ben efits which are inherent to the myth itself, there are some as pects of beauty that seem gen uinely good and important. For

instance, fashion and makeup serve as vital forms of self-ex pression, a way of communi cating one’s identity to the world, as well as a source of art and culture. On a similar note, I value beauty purely in the aesthetic sense as well. I take pleasure in admiring beauty, whether that be in a painting, sunset, artfully made sweater, or person. Historically, beau ty and aestheticism have been portrayed as frivolous notions attributed to femininity, with masculinity favoring “logic” and “reason” instead, which makes vilifying beauty feel like a betrayal (even if this asso ciation developed because of the use of beauty standards to subjugate women in the first place). It’s also true that beauty work is a big part of my female friendships; there’s something special about getting hair care tips passed down to you from your mom, or frantically rum maging through your room mate’s collection of tops be fore a night out – something that I don’t necessarily want to miss out on.

So the question then be comes if it’s possible to sep arate the bad from the good when it comes to beauty (and if so, how). When I think about the ideal version of myself now, she can play the drums really well, gets around via roller blades, and has a cool collec tion of vintage clothing. This image has more to do with skills and hobbies than the way that I look, but I still have goals for my appearance as well. For instance, while I’ve finally moved away from the idea of working out to lose weight, do ing it to feel good physically and

mentally instead, I would still prefer to look more muscular. I’d like to think that through educating myself on the topic of the beauty myth, I’ve natu rally come closer to adopting a body neutrality mentality; after all, it’s hard to want to play a game that you know is rigged. But it’s also hard to tell wheth er my loss of interest in beauty is genuine or simply due to my avoidance of the issue. Do I look in the mirror less because I’m finally letting go, or be cause I know my reflection will only upset me? One approach that I’ve tried is overcoming traditional beauty standards for women one small challenge at a time, like finally becoming comfortable with not shaving my armpits, experimenting with looking more masculine, and exploring what the word

“handsome,” rather than “pret ty,” means to me. But there are still some days when I want to look conventionally pret ty, and it’s hard to find fault in this feeling. Should I not take pleasure in looking good, whatever that means to me in the moment? Should my goal be to not care what I look like at all? Or maybe it’s possible to find a middle ground, to sim ply care “less” and learn how to separate beauty from my personal morality. Maybe there is no definitive answer, maybe I’ll be old and wrinkly and on the brink of shriveling up, still wondering when I’ll finally give up on being pretty.

gives the Nassau Weekly the illusion of control.

Eva

Vesely

My Sweet Galatea

by Otto Eiben

CW: The following contains sexual violence.

“Almighty Gods, if all we mortals want, If all we can require, be yours to grant; Make this fair statue mine, he wou’d have said, But chang’d his words for shame; and only pray’d, Give me the likeness of my iv’ry maid.”

The first time I saw Helena Gray, she was slitting her husband’s throat with her kitchen knife, leaving him to bleed out on the bed which they had shared for so many years. The last time I saw her, she was doing the exact same thing, in the exact same set ting. Only this time it was real.

Other than that, there was really no difference between the two incidences. I always imagined the moment when Helena, that gorgeous blonde woman, would triumph over her criminal husband in a physical duel over the kitch en counter. My sweet Helena, with her Bambi eyes, and as innocent a soul as only Mother Theresa could ever claim to have, forced to commit the most horrific act of murder in her own purple-pink kitchen, with her own hand-sharpened kitchen knife, an everyday ob ject never meant to cut ties between past and present. My sweet Helena was never sup posed to be anything other than a respectful, beautiful wife. But that was only until her husband had tried to rape her in her own home.

I’ve pictured this moment a million times, always adding one extra detail, until the pic ture became so real I could not tell reality and fiction apart.

Helena Gray, the picture-per fect woman, made it onto a film production studio in New York City, where she slit the throat of her rapist husband for the last time, with a swift and stable movement of her hand, defying thirty years of obedience and chastity. And she did it with elegance.

On the first day of film ing, anarchy rules the set. Production assistants and cameramen are still desper ately trying to find their places (or mostly, where they could stay out of the way) and even the director himself seems very uncertain about the tricks of capturing key moments in the story. He can use my presence on the set as creative insight, even though he must have been very reluctant the first time the producer suggested contacting me for finer details.

“Arthur,” he calls, finding me in the back of the studio where I’ve been observing the filming. “I need your take on this one. You’re the author of the book, you know better than fucking anybody else here. How do I make this murder credible?” He looks burnt-out already, like a dog that has been blunderingly trying to catch a butterfly for the last two hours straight.

I answer with confidence. “Easy. You keep what you got the first time. It was perfect.”

From his drooping eyelids I can tell that he does not be lieve a word, but I couldn’t care less. I am taken aback by the presence in the room that out shines anybody and anything else that stands in the way. Her.

The perfect Helena Gray. Her teeth which she never shows when she smiles, and her tiny hands which she never pulls into fists. She who han dles this goddess of a character with such grace and such re spect that no one else could im prove upon, let alone replicate. She who single-handedly con quered any doubt I have ever had about my novel’s film ad aptation, because I knew that as long as she was playing the lead, everything would be fine. She who ends up a murderer due to circumstance would be brought to life by Aphrodite herself, like Pygmalion’s sculpture of the perfect wom an, Galatea. She was my own, sweet, little Galatea.

There was nothing in the world that would stop me from getting her.

***

“So, how did you come up with this story?” she asks,

sipping on a small cup of car damom coffee in a narrow, New York City alleyway. If only she knew how long I have been waiting for this day to happen. From the first complimentary emails I sent her, praising her performance, to the follow-up emails in which she would ask for insight on how to do bet ter (to which I only said to be herself), this day has been in the making for several excru ciating months. Emails turned into iMessages, iMessages turned into phone calls and casual conversations on set, until I was certain there was no way she would say no to a date. With women like her, wooing takes careful planning and ut most patience.

“You know… life?” I am usually not one to share inspi ration behind my novels. The ways of the mind are some times better off hidden from outside observers.

“Surely life is not so atro cious. Is it?”

“I suppose.”

“So, what is really behind the whole idea of an innocent girl-next-door going rogue and murdering her husband?” The gorgeous actress flashes her deep brown eyes at me in a manner so mischievous I near ly fall out of my chair.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t expect

our first date to be this pro found,” I say, reprimanding her lightly. Everything about her is the way I imagined Helena to be. Everything except for the black leather boots she’s wear ing, which I find quite unfash ionable. I wish she were wear ing beige moccasins instead. They’d be humbler. And neater. Exactly like her.

“Alright, mister. Keep your secrets, then.” She giggles, clearly aware of how attractive she is in this moment.

“You know what? Fine.” I give her a withering look, so she knows how far she’s pushed me. “It was my ex-wife.”

I can tell the answer is not what she expected. We know little about each other’s his tory, to be fair. Maybe it’s just time to reveal another layer of myself.

“She left me for my best friend,” I add, blushing slightly.

“Oh, shit.”

We sit silently for a couple of awkward seconds, but then she sits up straight, grabs her cup of coffee, and continues the questioning.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but if Helena really is in spired by your ex-wife, she must’ve been one hell of an old-fashioned woman. I have not seen a good housewife like that since my grandmother,

Pygmalion and the Statue – Ovid’s Metamorphoses

and even she would have beat en the ass of her husband a lot sooner, had he been so disrespectful toward women, or people in general. I honest ly didn’t want to take this role until I read the book again and realized that everything she did, she did out of love. Dangerous, toxic, self-absorb ing, blind love. Even the mur der. That crowned the entire character arc for me, ‘cause what else yells self-love more loudly than the sacrifice of the thing you get all your self-worth from. So, what I’m trying to say, is that if your ex-wife really was like her, I feel sorry for her and I hope I’m doing justice to her character. Am I, by the way? Am I acting on set like your ex-wife would have acted in life?”

“Yes. No. Wait, no you’re not.” This suggestion troubles me. “I think there has been a little confusion there. You’re definitely not playing my exwife. In many ways, Helena Gray is exactly the opposite of what she was like.”

“You wrote my character to be the opposite of her?” she asks, stirring the remnants of her cardamom coffee with that thin piece of wood they give you nowadays at coffee shops. “Why?”

“Because I wanted her to

be likable.” She smiles at that. “No, really. I wanted Helena to be perfect. Someone who would never leave a guy for his best friend. Someone who cares about others in the most genuine of ways.”

She puts the cup down and gives me one of those reassur ing looks that stay with you like a warm blanket in winter. The same look I saw countless times on Helena Gray’s face as she came to life in my imagina tion. Now she is sitting in front of me.

“Well, I’m really not sure if Helena is perfect. But there definitely is a lot of depth to her, despite my first impres sion. And who is the husband in the story? The rapist? Is that your old best friend?”

“Oh yes, a hundred percent. I’m a little embarrassed to ad mit how much fun I had writing his death, and also, just mak ing him as unlikable a charac ter as they come.” She smirks again. Then she reaches into her coat’s pockets and takes out a pack of Red Marlboros, the strong kind. Something is wrong.

“You want one?” she offers generously, but I’m thrown off by the absurdity of the sit uation. Helena would never smoke, and never in a million

years would she offer me a chance for voluntary self-harm. She would make sure I was healthy and smelled good, like her.

“No, I don’t,” I say. “And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to smoke that either.”

“Jesus, okay.” She puts the cigarette back in the pack and lets out an annoyed sigh. “I’ll smoke it later.”

“It’s not about that, Helena. I just never took you for a smoker.”

She looks at me, quickly, eyes squinted in suspicion, but I pretend not to notice and let the moment pass. This is the first time I accidentally call her by the wrong name. Or at least, that’s what she believes.

***

When you stay in an imag inary land for as long as I did, things in the real world become blurred. That is one of the rea sons why I had a hard time be lieving that the picture-perfect woman was interested in me. Even after several dreadful dates.

This is the first time I go up to her apartment. Her film (our film) will premiere tomorrow in cinemas countrywide. Should people see what I see, this

woman will be famous in no time. But right now, we are al right. It’s safe for me to walk up to her apartment on Elizabeth Street: no one will care.

She meets me on the side walk, coming straight out of the Starbucks in front of her house. It’s weird how I never see her without coffee in her hand. I laugh to myself at the fact that her minor caffeine addiction fits her image per fectly. As she walks up to me, I anticipate a kiss on the cheeks but she only smirks devilish ly. Instead, I envision Helena with her Starbucks latte in her hands, possibly bringing me some too. I am fairly disap pointed with how things are turning out.

But it isn’t only the cof fee that’s throwing me off. Something about this wom an is not right. Something is different.

We walk up the stairs, which look cheaper than what I’d imagine an actress in New York would have in her apartment building. Helena would feel so uncomfortable if she had to walk these stairs at night. She stops and turns to the door on the second floor, and I happen to glimpse the code she types into her door lock. 6491.

Unlike the staircase, the

apartment itself is exactly what I imagined it to be. No. It’s ex actly like Helena would have wanted it to look like. This thought comforts me a little, but my uneasiness remains.

I see what it is as soon as she takes off the maroon beret hat she’s wearing, revealing the bob cut I’ve seen many times, but which I now have trouble recognizing.

“Did you change your hair?” I ask calmly, even though I am appalled by the ginger color. How did I not notice it immediately?

“You bet I did. Do you like it?”

“Sure,” I lie, but I can tell from her frown that I’m not convincing. “Why did you dye it?”

“Well, for one, I missed it. And also, I think it’s hot.” She flips her hair, clearly expecting some positive reinforcement from me. She’ll soon be very disappointed.

“What do you mean, you missed it?” I’ve only ever known her as a beautiful, blonde wom an, her hair as bright as the light in her eyes.

“I was born a redhead, silly!” she says, smiling, then grabs

A Merienda with Sappho A Merienda with Sappho

corrupt

[my childhood!].

Look, [I don’t think it’s] impossible. [But it’s] rare. [I thought] Jorge and I [would last forever, I did. I mean] we’ve known [each oth er our whole] lives. [We grew up] together. But that’s the [thing, maybe you’ve just spent] too much time together.

How old were you?

Too young. 22. Tell [them about] la gitana [in your] class.

younger than me who looked much older than me. She was wearing a red dress and heels and stood next to her groom-tobe, dapper in his suit.

Es jovencica, wow.

OH SÍ. She’s getting married.

[And she’s in] your grade? She’s fourteen!

[They’re just] like that. [They] marry [them off so] young!

[She’s having] flashbacks.

Jajaja.

[ We did get] married so young. [I mean, he was in my same friend group] growing up.

“The dialogue below [..] is one of those instances in which my participation was peripheral, but the conversation was still exhilarating, confusing, and verging on scandalous.”

By CECE MCWILLIAMS

Learning a foreign language is, in many ways, like how I imagine piecing together an cient scraps of papyrus might be. Living with a host family in Zaragoza, Spain, I initially un derstood people, especially in a group setting, only in fragments. Key words and recurring phras es would illuminate the topic of conversation, giving me enough to work with to formulate a re sponse. Sometimes, a sense of

the taboo or privacy of a topic prevented my full participation in a conversation. The dialogue below—which I have pieced to gether from memory, journal entries, and some creative li cense—is one of those instances in which my participation was peripheral, but the conversation was still exhilarating, confus ing, and verging on scandalous.

Mentira. It’s all a lie. [I know love] never lasts. Jajaja. De tal palo, tal astilla.

[And you went out] partying [together in] Leciñena! Jajaja, calla, marrana. I remember [we would come] home from El Baile [and we’d all] jump [in the] pool together. [We would just strip] down, [and they’d be in their] calzoncillos, [and we’d all go] swimming at five in the morning.

Look, here’s a picture.

Instagram story of a girl much

Jajajajajaja.

Nunca.

Tía, [of course it] does. Don’t

Jajajajaja.

Qué asco. Gross!

Jajaja.

I never thought [I would be in this situation, but] here we are.

It’s just, you don’t think about [these things when you’re] young. You have this [ideal image of] love and marriage. I thought Diego [was the] one. [He used to peel my] fruit [for me. I didn’t have] to lift a finger!

People change. Men [are just] like that.

to be] married and cohabitate.

Well Leo’s so little. [We’re together for the] kids, [and we’re] fine in the house. [We don’t] fight, we talk. It’s working right now, [but it’s a] temporary [solution. I just know we’re not] in love right now.

on you.

The natural rhythm of the conversation had worked like Rosetta Stone. My host moth er’s friend repeated a story with more context, this time comman deering the table, giving me the impression that my comprehen sion had improved in the span of three minutes.

fotos.

Mira.

Ohhh

Ohh

que guapo.

[Do you think you’re] in love but just bored?

[She’s just] horny.

[My dad’s] awful. I look at him now and I don’t under stand how [you ever married him.]

My host mother is guilty of something. But what?

But I just don’t get [why you’re doing] this lim bo situation. Why not just get divorced? It’s so complicated. [We’re doing this] so that we can stay together. It’s for you guys, think of your her manito. [And seriously, it’s] not impossible. We might be in love again someday but this is what we need to do now.

Mira, Ceci.

Anyway, it’s true. Two people [can have a] great, long marriage, and love [might not be] there.

[And it can be the] other way around, too. Exactly. Two people [can be] totally in love with each other and have a terrible marriage. You and Jorge?

Listen, right now, hon estly, [we’re not in] love.

[Right, but you] don’t have to be [love

¡Mira que hija más mala que tengo! You have to understand, [there was something] there before that just isn’t anymore. And who knows, maybe it’ll come back. [But un less it’s possible to be in love with] multiple people at once, I’m not in love with Jorge. [Sometimes] men [are so] unpredictable. Listen, when Diego and I were first together, he would peel my fruit! I’d try to get up, do the dishes, and he’d say no, sit down. He’d make me sit down and bring an orange and a knife and peel the damn orange for me. I really didn’t have to lift a finger. But that’s life. You never know when people are gonna change

He treated me like a queen! [The man I married is] not the man you know now. Ya, ya.

Another Instagram post. The man had taken a mirror selfie of his back. I could see the top of his butt crack.

Oh, que guapo.

I know it doesn’t make sense now, cariño, but you have to think about your mom’s situation.

[Marriage

is] a lot more complicated than anyone tells you.

“Ya” is a simple word, but it could be an objection, an agree ment, an expression of under standing, an adverb, or a way to shut someone up. Victoria had responded to her mother with a smirk and a wave of her hand. The conversation changed subjects. Bueno, y este ligazón? [Tell us about] this guy.

Was I supposed to indulge her? I didn’t think this man in his forties was very guapo.

Pero, claro. I’m going to Madrid once a month, and Leo doesn’t really know where I’m going. But I need this right now. I really need this. [If things were] different with me and Jorge, I wouldn’t be making time for him. I wouldn’t dream [of being with someone else.].

Jorge and I have an [open] relationship. We don’t have a typical marriage.

Abierta.

But you see us in the house. We talk to each other, we don’t fight, we kiss, we’re fine.”

[We could get fired.]

What’s he like?

A ver. [He’s] rich, [he’s] hot, [he’s a] great guy. [We’re having] fun.

I think my host mother is just human.

I think when you’re in love you don’t [check out] other people, you wouldn’t even think of it.

“Sí, sí, claro. No, that all makes sense! That makes sense.”

Quiero

his actions, other than the desperate insistence on the one last tiny flick er of hope. Now even that is gone.

When the Cowboy makes his monthly pre sentation about Old Arizona in front of the council, they all remain perched in their fake leather chairs, silently honoring the memory of the first meeting ex actly five years (plus two days) ago on this day, when they hatched up an emergency plan to gether to salvage what still remains to be sal vaged for posterity. Five years of hard work, dis appointment, more hard work, and more disappointment. The room temperature final ly drops below zero, and the Whore sighs in res ignation. It’s Babylon all over again.

I grew up as an only child. So many beautiful things can come from being the only light your parents’ eyes are drawn to see. But for every mo ment of joy, there is a meal spent alone with insatiable hunger in a bedroom big enough for two, pondering what could have been. I’ve craved brotherly affec tion as long as I can re member, for the terrors at night take the form of old furniture at day, and

the only one who could keep me safe is my own blood.

I talk to you on rainy days, dear brother. It re minds me of the time we spent together, in that room that was warmer than anywhere else I’ve lived ever since. But I know mum is not to blame for me sleeping alone. I curse myself, for the only regret I have in life is that I devoured you in the womb.

“And now please join me in one minute of silence for the victims of the shootings” mur murs the preacher piously. Believers from town pray silently for the de ceased, cursing the murderer’s name. A month ago, this same preach er, these same believ ers, were reciting the passage from the book: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with wom ankind.” And the mur derer was one amongst them too, nodding in unison. So, who’s the one pulling the trigger?

Blocks of rock next to each other, so close that the most minimal of movements would cause friction, tearing down all villages along the fracture. How they wished they were al lowed to make love with out causing an earthqu-

My boyfriend and I went to an art exhibition in New York. They served champagne and I wore my uncomfortable black shoes, the ones that remind me what pain feels like, the ones that he always asks me to wear. But I smiled because his art was on display, so I wore my shoes and sipped my champagne and tried to not think too hard about how I didn’t fit in here, about how he did. I spotted him in a group of strangers, and he was wearing a smile I hadn’t seen before with a laugh I didn’t rec ognize. My throat constricted and I begged it not to but I’m not very convincing, so the tears blurred the scene around me until I was surrounded in night mare. I turned around to leave but I wasn’t used to those shoes and I woke up next to a bro ken flute, stained with champagne and covered with stares. He helped me up, smile gone, and my guilt cut deeper than glass.

When we got back to his apartment, he asked me why I had to go and do that, and I could only respond with an open mouth. He changed out of his suit in silence, but I kept my shoes on. He noticed,

telling me to take them off and that he didn’t mean any of it he was just stressed about the exhibition, you know? I wanted to leave but my body ignored me, and I stripped off my shoes before making popcorn while he found a movie to watch.

“People really seemed to like your art,” I offered. He shrugged and I gave up. I wasn’t strong enough to force us to fit together and my arms had grown tired, so we watched the mov ie in silence. He didn’t laugh.

I am going home, and so is my brother. He’s everywhere I am because we’ve gone to the same school since we were two, but I like it that way because he is a piece of home that I get to drag with me. He’s smarter than me but I don’t mind because I get to brag about him since half of his blood is my own. He is kind when I am not, he listens when I do not, and he is pa tient when I do not de serve it. He is my twin, but he is my antithesis, and sometimes I think he got all the good and I was left with the bad.

He drove us back and I fell asleep in the passenger seat, forget ting to play the songs he asked me to. I woke up in the grocery store parking lot. He was

inside, getting dinner. Sometimes my brother and I give up on talking and go play ten nis. After two decades, the concrete courts are fractured and weeds fill the cracks. The sum mertime heat soaks us through and he wants to leave. I serve one last time, all shoulder, arm, racquet, and anger, but the net catches the ball, rolling it back towards my feet. I don’t bother to re-serve. He’s already left the court and is starting the car.

I wrote you a letter, smattered with stamps. Part of me hoping the layer of postage will carry it over the ocean, part of me wanting it to drown in the Pacific. In this uncertainty, I am clean.

CONTINUED

JANE CASTLEMAN

It would not be wrong to call the bags nur turing, if only because they held objects to which we were all de voted. There must’ve been at least eight boxes, each with rows and rows of lit tle Ziplocs, where all our tiny portals into the world could breathe easy while we for got about them. Some things, a quarter-thou sand people had agreed, were best left outside the col lective memory: hidden from our fu ture selves.

And in what I want to remember as faint, goldish light (but of course wasn’t), we walked out and scoured the boxes. I had waited an hour—always making sure I was sharp enough to remember the flow of time—for the pleasure of checking each miser ly bag. My job then was to wait awkwardly as she plucked her line to earth and sent a message back saying that, yes, she was fine, and that no, nobody had both ered her, and yes, she remembered she had to leave by one at most and call again within the hour. My hope was to do—to be—more than just help.

Perhaps I should have left then. I would have walked into the

arms of people I had spent the past ten years trying to meet and will spend the next ten try ing to forget. A beam of stage light might have brightened up my mood; the base could have taught my muscles how to move the way my culture had always de manded. But I stayed. We overlapped in the way two off-key waves cancel each other out, in the way I had grown ac customed to expecting whenever I got ahead of myself. Even here, where authority could be trapped in a polymer cage, it was never go ing to be a good time. I made the choice to get hurt.

Laps and laps and laps. The pool was prob ably not designed to serve as a walking trail, but aren’t we all thrust into uncomfortable positions from time to time? In my long hours by its side, I do believe it came to forgive my neglect; the occasional leaf I picked up from the shallow side hopefully offset each time I stared at the water to lose my self rather than appreci ate the structured beau ty of its waves.

Each dozen laps I began a call, sent an SOS across what admit tedly could’ve been a more dramatic distance. But it was only a single sea, had only been a couple weeks, and it was still easy to believe small distanc es could be breached.

Continents—I had yet to learn—drift further apart, not closer to gether. I tried to be the Colossus of Rhodes, only for fault lines to push me against the water.

No ceiling could have been suitable. I wanted to stare farther than eyes are meant to see, faster than light would allow me to. A mirror halfway across the galaxy would have been ideal, one where the images of a recent past could be framed by constellations and lightened up by twin kling stars. Instead, I had a concrete slab a meter from my face, a reminder that not all questions are meant to be answered.

I’m done with writ ing letters punctured by reflexive apologies. Ink will flow and I’ll fight towards its viscous embrace, and I’ll drown in the substance of my choosing. Some tragedies are meant to be embraced, not revised.

Our ridges were one before you drew the fault line. As days folded into months and years, the stately bluebonnets en veloping your soil tan gled themselves with the golden poppies hug ging mine. Smooth rock seamlessly coupled. The birds craved continuity in the earth’s crust; the clouds depended on it. You and I sustained an ecosystem. Until win ter blurred and sum mer seeped in, humid air burrowing into our united ground. You stood by and watched the heat make breaks in the rocky surface. Faint enough to escape the sun’s detection, but not mine. You painted the distance between us, and our fault line grew. I tried to erase it, to keep rock and sand tethered. Millennia of fusion, I told you—or tried to. Don’t shatter our earth. Don’t tear apart the purple and yellow pet als blooming atop our shared soil. Don’t rip apart the ground. Don’t let down the birds and the clouds. But you leaned into the break and away from me. You untangled yourself, your boulders turning my body into fragments of stone. As you slipped away, you told me the world is round. That you’d come back to me one day, your rock fus ing with mine again. You told the birds and

clouds to wait. You told the ecosystem to remain frozen in time until you returned. But if you really believed in our unified line, you wouldn’t fracture us now; you wouldn’t tear apart the soil and petals and let me crumble into sand. The truth is that the earth, while round, spans eternity. Your rocks will move along its surface until they clasp a ridge on another hemisphere. Or perhaps they’ll keep on going in perpetuity. One thing is for certain: my gran ules of sand and shat tered rocks will remain sinuous miles and dark oceans away.

Our ridges were one before the fault, your stately bluebonnets en tangled with my golden poppies. Smooth rock seamlessly coupled. The birds and clouds accus tomed to our continuity. You and I sustained an ecosystem until sum mer seeped in, humid air burrowing into our united ground. I tried to keep rock and sand tethered. I told you not to shatter our earth, not to tear apart the pet als blooming atop our shared soil, not to let down the birds and the clouds. But you leaned into the break, turning my body into fragments of stone. As you slipped away, you told me you’d come back. You told the birds and clouds to

ALEXANDRA ORBUCH

DANIEL VERGARA

my collar and pulls me in for a kiss. It’s alright for her to do it, we’re alone. Normally I’d enjoy this.

“What’s wrong? Did I do something?” She pulls away a little, sensing my lack of passion.

“I just don’t understand why you would dye your hair back to red, that’s all,” I explain.

“Oh my fucking God, Arthur.” She pulls away coldly, picking up her phone from the coffee table and typing rapidly. She’s mad, but she will calm down in a few minutes. Helena is a forgiving person too—I mean, when she’s not murder ing her husband—she never stays angry longer than nec essary. What sense is there in fighting when you are stronger together than apart? Helena knows that.

“I’m gonna go take a show er,” she huffs, and practical ly throws her phone onto the couch on the other side of the room. I’m unsure if this is a sign for me to leave. I don’t want to. So I sit down on the couch and go through her phone instead. 6491. It works on the first try. She is exactly the type of

woman who would only want to remember one random combi nation of numbers. Dangerous, but convenient.

Her texts confuse me to the extent that it makes my stom ach lurch. It is both exciting and saddening. “I can’t fuck ing deal with this right now. He thinks I’m his perfect little girl Helena and it is actually sick. It’s schizophrenic, fucking scary.” She’s texting someone named Esther Kim, whom I suppose is a friend of hers. I’ve never heard of Esther, but she’s only a side character; she doesn’t matter in the story of us.

She comes bolting out of the bathroom much sooner than I thought she would—having not, in fact, taken a shower— and she sees me checking out her messages. She doesn’t say anything, just crosses her arms and raises her eyebrow in that typical elementary school teacher way, which reminds me a little of my mother, a thought that I do not welcome warmly. In this moment, I am acutely aware that shit is about to go down.

fucking privacy in my own fuck ing apartment and dare to look me in the eye and say that I’m the problem? My stupid hair dye is the problem? We’ve literally only been on a couple dates and you’re going through my damn messages. So forgive me for not giving a shit about your inability to get it up for redheads.

She was furious about the phone, but all these emotions do not come out at once unless they’ve been buried there all along. The wound is open, and the blood is flooding over our relationship.

You don’t desire me. You de sire what you perceive me to be, not who I truly am, and that, Arthur, is purely hurtful. I ran off with him because he saw me for what you never saw me for. A real woman, not just your obedient wife.

The thing about love that I most atrociously dread is that it never works out on its own, un less one of the parties is mak ing a conscious effort to keep the fire alive. It does not come easily, and it may also happen that a true love never comes.

Helena Gray. The epitome of the narrative that was inspired by love that never worked out. Love that never assured me of my own importance, that nev er engaged with my most pro found desires. Helena, the per fect woman, the remedy for the exact pain which created her. She never picks fights, never gets in the way of anybody, ex cept when she feels threatened. Except when it really matters.

You’re living a lie, a delu sion. I actually feel sorry for you. I am sorry I could not be your perfect little Helena whom you wrote to be your damn girlfriend. I am sorry you’re incapable of moving on from the trauma that was your ex-wife. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the antidote for her. But I will never, ever be your perfect lit tle girl, and you’d better accept that too.

carved my own Galatea out of words, and I saw her come alive through Deus ex machina. She is of my making, and she will know it too. I’m going to prove her wrong.

*** I hatched a plan.

The idea of Helena was born out of revenge. Her puri ty replaced the memory of my wife with something real. But it wasn’t the obedient, caring girl-next-door image that made her real. It was the eventual de scent into crime. To protect her life. To protect her virtue. But now all of it was under threat.

***

You’re sick in the head, Arthur. You’re engaging in invasion of my

Do you actually believe that I’m like her? That I’m like that stupid bitch Helena? Let me let you in on a little secret. She. Is. Not. Real. And I am definitely nothing like her.

All those grievances, all the insults she shouted at me, they were merely the byprod ucts of an overly emotional happenstance. She did not mean them. Or if she did, she got it wrong. Out of the two of us, she’s the one possessed by delusions. Pygmalion carved the perfect woman out of ivo ry, then prayed to Aphrodite to bring her to life. If I did any thing wrong, I did it for love. I

The midnight air in her apartment building’s stair case is chilling. I’m almost dizzy thinking about what I’m about to do. It’s peaceful for an October night, but still, it is dreadful to imagine an attrac tive woman having to walk dirty stairs like this.

Helena knew her husband was a bad person. When he lost thousands of dollars on a bet to a loan shark from LA, she turned a blind eye. When he got accused of rape by his secretary of three years, she pretended not to hear. When the police department came knocking on the door with a

warrant to search the house for the heroin he was suspected of possessing, Helena stood her ground, and remained loyal to her dickhead of a husband until the very end. It was only when he came home drunk as a skunk and tried to force him self upon her as she was trying to retreat into the bedroom and close the door on herself that she could not stand it anymore. Her own safety and purity is where she drew the line. It was only by accident that the kitch en knife was lying on the count er where her husband held her in a chokehold.

She is not yet at home. I press my ear to the door, but I don’t hear a thing. She’s not supposed to get home from the gala until after one. I take my time with the preparations. 6491.

Kitchen knife on the count er. Curtains drawn—no need for anyone to watch me prove her wrong. Now I just need to sit down on the tall velvet couch facing the television in the dark and wait for my living sculpture to walk right into my trap.

She doesn’t return until two. When she turns on the lights,

I’m motionless, not a single molecule of air leaving or en tering my lungs. She doesn’t notice me until I grab her neck from behind.

I push the woman of my dreams, the work of my life, my imagination’s magnum opus, onto the counter, and force the entirety of my body weight on hers. She tries to scream but I have her trachea in a grip so tight that no voice exits her mouth. She’s struggling, but she’s not fighting back. So I un zip my pants, and lift the skirt of her dress up with my other hand, while she’s desperately trying to tear the hand on her neck away. When she sees what I’m about to do, her entire body shivers and panic fills her Bambi eyes. She lies silently for a moment.

The next thing I know is that the roles are reversed. There’s a strange, metallic taste in my mouth, but I’m unable to make a sound. I stumble back, falling to my knees, grabbing the han dle of the kitchen knife that sticks out the side of my neck. I’ve seen this happen a million times.

My sweet Helena is holding

her palms in front of her mouth. I know damn well she never ex pected she’d be caught up in a deed like this. She never imag ined she’d be involved in mur der. But I did. I will bleed out in a few seconds, and I’ll nev er see her gorgeous, innocent face again, and as much as that hurts, I remain unfazed, for I know I’ve won.

There is no greater plea sure in life than the assurance of having created art that has, owing to some fateful dispo sition of circumstance, come to life. I feel the unbearable cold creeping up my spine as I stumble to the ground facedown, but one thought settles on me like a warm blanket, bringing a pleased smile to my face otherwise consumed by agony. The woman in front of me, the bane of my existence, the instrument of my death, is my very own Frankenstein. She is the perfect sculpture made of words, manifested in flesh, most incomparable to any other woman. She is in fact my sweet Helena. My very own Galatea.

“There is no greater pleasure in life than the assurance of having created art that has, owing to some fateful disposition of circumstance, come to life.”

Behind the VHS, Betacam, and GoPro

Ivar Murd and his Production of Cult Music

Documentary u.Q.

A writer visits the New York Baltic Film Festival and delves into the world of the late Estonian music star Uku Kuut, as captured on film.

By LUCIA BROWN

Ivar Murd was clicking around SoundCloud after a long night of partying when he found an artist he had never heard of before: Uku Kuut. Uku’s sound entranced him. “I was fascinat ed by just how unique it was and strange it was. It sounded like it was from another world,” Murd says. He wanted to use his skills as a filmmaker to make a music video for Uku’s song “Hollywood,” a song about the Estonian artist’s arrival in Los Angeles. But something kept him researching Uku, and he quickly uncovered more. “It felt like there was a real story there, with extreme ups and extreme downs,” he said.

Within six months of finding Uku’s music, Murd had started producing a documentary on Uku’s life—what would become u.Q. (a play on the Estonian pronunciation of the name Uku), which premiered at the 2021 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia. It has since won the award for Best Music Film from Days of European Film, the contemporary film festival held annually in the Czech Republic.

At the time of this article’s publication, Uku Kuut has 7,818 monthly listeners on Spotify and 1,348 followers on SoundCloud. His small, cult following never exploded into something bigger—a huge contrast to his mother, Marju Kuut, an Estonian megastar of the 1960s. But what makes u.Q. special is not just the niche status of the artist, but the production of the film and how Murd constructed the narrative.

On November 6, 2022, u.Q. had its North American debut at the New York Baltic Film Festival. Held annually for the past five years at the Scandinavia House in New York City, the Baltic Film Festival features in-person film screenings of selected, new films from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania followed by Q&A sessions with the features’ directors (films can also be streamed online for the duration of the festival). I am sitting in an audience of about twenty, and before the lights go down, Murd, the director, producer, and editor of u.Q., introduces the film. “You’re getting the real experience, here in the theater on the big screen,” he says.

Through vivid analog footage, square against a black background, u.Q. explores, at first, the intense relationship between the Kuut mother-son duo. Marju is a single mother

to Uku, and she describes him as her südamesõber, her best friend and soulmate. The documentary traces their relationship as they move across the world writing and producing music together: to Sweden, to Hollywood, and back to the Soviet Union. The audience learns the arc of Marju’s fame; a beloved Estonian singer, not only was Marju prolific (with over thirty albums), but in 1965, the jazz magazine Down Beat deemed her “the best singer in the Soviet Union.” Part of what exacerbated Marju’s fame in Estonia and made her unique as an Estonian celebrity was that she was rarely back in the country. In April 2022, Murd wrote a piece on Marju published by the national news network Eesti Rahvusringhääling (ERR), in which he describes that Estonia is such a small country that one often sees celebrities. Marju, though, had always been away. “Ta ilmus ja kadus siis, kui ta soovis,” he writes (trans. “She appeared and disappeared as she wished.” She was a “Staar, ta oli Diiva” (trans. “star, she was a diva”), and the fact that she was never around only increased the intensity of her fame upon return to Estonia.

As I watch the film, one scene from their life in Sweden especially catches my eye. Marju and Uku move to

Sweden in 1981 (with Murd’s choice of an Estonian cover of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” as the soundtrack). Marju brags that Uku learns Swedish in three weeks; he quickly makes Swedish friends and starts his first band, We Are (some of We Are’s songs have now been uploaded onto SoundCloud and BandCamp). As Marju explains that hanging out with the band makes her feel young again, the film moves into footage from We Are’s first gig. There is Uku onstage, there are his friends, and there is Marju in the front row, swinging her hair back and forth, dancing. “Amazing that they have this footage,” I note.

“Who recorded it?”

There are a few other moments that I jot down as being phenomenal finds captured on film—in one scene, Uku takes over for Marju for a day at the lingerie store in L.A. where she works, and in another, the two of them move into their Sochi apartment. How did Marju and Uku have so much of their early life together on film? Who recorded these scenes? Where did this film come from? It is not until the end of the film that the answer is revealed: u.Q. is “a playful recreated documentary in three acts.”

“Like half of the film is recreated,” Murd explains during the Q&A session after the film. He has close-cut hair,

black-framed glasses, and is seated in an armchair holding a microphone. He cites the We Are gig in Sweden as an example of one of the recreated scenes. The lighting was bad; they had actors wearing bad wigs. “But you can’t really tell, because you’re shooting through such a bad camera that it’s going to work with the older footage.

Some of the more experienced actors were on set like, ‘Are you sure this isn’t a mockumentary, man? This wig looks really bad.’ I’d be like, ‘Trust me, please trust me.’ And they did, and afterwards they were like, ‘Alright, it worked, you were right.’”

When Murd started the project, Uku’s wife, Kertu, gave him a huge box of tapes. Some tapes, for example, were of Uku’s own edited videos; Murd describes that Uku had edited all of his original music videos himself. “It was Ampex, Beta, S-VHS, VHS, DVD—just this big box that we took from there.

And there’s just hours and hours and hours; I think there must have been 100 hours of footage,” he tells me. “We had enough material that we felt we could make something that was close to all archives.”

The recreations that fill in the gaps in the archive are done so expertly that, at first glance, it is difficult to tell what is real and what is not. The u.Q. team decided to craft these

recreations “lo-fi”—they did not have a big budget, Murd laughs, and this helped them make that decision. They spent a few weeks filming in L.A. (without permits), a time he reflects on fondly as allowing the actors and the team behind the cameras to experiment in a “great creative space.” “Even all the KGB stuff, all of it is recreated because we shot that with a GoPro. And then what we did is we dumped that through the VHS,” he explains.

“VHS is good because it loses quality. And Beta has like this other completely different, very rich look. So, we were using a bunch of these kinds of cameras.” u.Q. becomes as much a unique creation as it is Murd’s channel for Uku’s unique world and style.

Murd has experience using older cameras from his previous film work. Hailing from KohtlaJärve, Estonia, Murd graduated with a degree in film from Farleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. He has produced multiple documentaries and music videos, most of which are based in Estonia, with Estonian artists. Notably, Murd’s first feature-length piece was Ash Mountains (orig. Tuhamäed), which explores Kohtla-Järve— what ERR deems was once the “proletariat’s El Dorado”— and its relationships with its surrounding, infamous artificial mountains (the result of oil shale mining in the region). Murd is also an organizer for the annual Mägede Hääl (trans. Voice of the Mountains), a music festival in the north-eastern Estonian region where the ash mountains and his hometown are located. His music videos

are also for Estonian artists: for example, he has produced multiple videos for the Tallinnbased dream-pop duo Vera Vice. These videos cleverly play with color, angles, and the relationship between sound and scene, often juxtaposing the pair’s clothing with their surroundings (in “Down the River,” they wear bright red raincoats and row a rusty boat, and they are shot from the side, from above, and from behind). With the grain, coloring, and mode of the shots, Murd’s characteristic style takes the viewer back in time—back to the era of analog video.

The film itself is split into sections that delineate different eras of Uku’s life—at first his life with Marju, and then on his own. There’s “1981 –Rootsi” (Sweden), when the pair move to Stockholm, and then sections for their Hollywood and Sochi moves, but the film also turns to his personal life: “1995 – Isa” (father), “2001 –Rahu” (peace), and “2007 – Õnn saab otsa” (luck runs out). In 2007, we see real footage of Uku playing the drums. Uku is purposefully filming himself to see his coordination errors; this footage marks the beginning of his long decline into ALS, which he is soon diagnosed with. In the following section, “2009 –Minek” (most closely translates to “going”), the film switches to modern-day footage of Uku in his home. “Visions of Estonia,” one of his most popular tracks, begins to play.

After years without music being central in his life— moving into fatherhood, other jobs, controversy, and relationships—Uku says, “This disease was given to me so I

could make music.” Kertu says that music gets him out of bed and gives meaning to his life, and that during this period, he reaches a certain level of “earthly asceticism.” In a haunting, beautiful transition, we leave the voiceovers and the house, the music quieting until the only sound is birdsong. The shot widens from the square of the analog to a full-screen, modern color shot of Uku in a scarf and his wheelchair, with Kertu sitting in a chair next to him. Kertu’s mouth is moving, but we do not hear any dialogue. The only sound is birds, and the effect is both melancholy and mesmerizing.

Murd says that this shot is of the last time Uku ever went outside. Uku passed away at the age of 51 in September 2017, during the first years of the documentary’s production. From there, navigating the emotions of creating the documentary were difficult; people close to Uku had strong emotions and grief. “Whenever someone passes, people have a lot of guilt. They have a lot of uncomfortable emotions. It’s your job to help them sort of navigate that. And not in a way where you’re trying to get something out of it,” Murd explains. Murd made one of the most important stylistic choices of the movie: to rely solely on voiceovers. Knowing that interviewing individuals in general is intimidating— the bright lights, the camera set-ups, the crew—Murd went into interviews alone, with just a tape recorder. He then filled in the rest of the narrative with image.

Murd continued editing the documentary for three and a

half years. “It was just me on my laptop, in my kitchen, during the pandemic,” Murd describes.

“I would render something, and then I would go on a four-hour walk.” When the film was finally released, the pandemic was still in full effect, and u.Q. brought less than a thousand people to theaters. “That’s really low numbers, super low, even for Estonia,” Murd says. “For the Estonian audience, I think I overestimated how interested people would be in the film; I figured they’d be curious just because it’s Estonian. But the music is so niche that most people don’t get it. And that’s completely fine.”

However, in April 2022, Marju Kuut passed away. ERR, also the Estonian public broadcasting channel and the largest channel in the country, immediately started playing u.Q. to honor her memory.

Around 50,000 people watched u.Q. live, a huge number for Estonia, and Murd estimates that about 10,000 streamed it. “Sadly, for musicians like this, their passing will create more interest in them,” Murd says.

Though Uku did not ever reach that super-stardom of his mother in Estonia, Murd has become familiar with the fact that Uku did have a larger global audience than an Estonian one. “Someone in Peru wrote to me: ‘Hey, I love his music. I didn’t know there was a documentary. We’re gonna see the film,’” Murd says. “And I was like, ‘You know, you can’t really see the film. But here’s the Vimeo link. Do you guys want to do a screening or something?’”

The film was not accessible for streaming online, and Murd sent the fan in Peru both

the Vimeo link to u.Q. and its password.

“And honestly, if someone like steals it, I don’t care. As long as it gets to more people, that’s all it is,” Murd says. The passion around small artists—like Uku Kuut, the artists that Murd would discover during late nights on SoundCloud—is what he really values. Watching the documentary, the artistry and creativity of u.Q. only underline the deep care of the followings around these artists. “Because that’s the way these niche artists build up a following. It’s completely word of mouth, and it’s completely people being really into someone’s music and giving it to someone and giving it to someone else. We had that audience in mind. We wanted to make something for that audience.”

Even beyond Estonia, Hollywood, and their sounds, Uku’s instrumentals are atmospheric; not an Estonian atmosphere, but rather one reminiscent of the Los Angeles of his youth. Murd’s film is a brilliant drop into this colorful and fascinating life, constructing a hero’s journey, as he describes it, out of the Kuuts’ “extreme ups and extreme downs.” The story is full of challenge and scandal, but also love and creative exploration. Murd says, “Even if you don’t like the music, the story itself should be strong enough to take you on this journey.”

Even if you don’t like Lucia Brown, the Nassau Weekly itself should be strong enough to take you on this journey.

wait for you, the ecosys tem to remain frozen in time. But if you really believed in our unified line, you wouldn’t frac ture us now and let me crumble into sand. You wouldn’t leave my stone miles and dark oceans away.

Our ridges were one before the fault, your bluebonnets entangled with my poppies. You and I sustained an eco system. The birds and clouds accustomed to our continuity. I tried to keep us tethered, but you leaned into the break in our earth, turning me into fragments. You told me you’d come back one day. But if you really believed that, you wouldn’t fracture us now. You wouldn’t leave my stones miles and dark oceans away.

Our ridges were one before the fault. I tried to keep us tethered, but you leaned into the break. You told me you’d come back one day. But if you believed that, you wouldn’t leave me fragmented.

Please Turn Your Devices To Airplane Mode

Earthquake sea son always left me lonely. While the electric grid grinned up at us, fifty pairs of lightup sneakers were flying across the concrete. All the pilots did was prom ise turbulence.

Evan was watching A.N.T. Farm. A sailor knot cleaved his scarf into two silk apple slices.

“Your nails are chip ping,” said Evan.

“Shut up, Evan,” I said. My nails were fine. They were curling at the edges like vines.

But not enough to open the bag of pretzels. I went for the Coke in stead. It cracked open with a satisfying hiss.

As a child I believed that Coca-Cola tasted best three days after opening. Once the seal was undone, you had to wait seventy-two hours for the flavor to settle. Not too sharp, not too flat. A perfect C natural.

Other middling Cs kept falling through the cracks in my desk, my windowsill. Crumbs gathered in my coat pockets, in the liminal space between couch cushions. It was upset ting. It brought the ants in. Told them that this could be a home, too. Or at least a good place to build an interstate, and maybe a Five Guys.

There was nothing to be done, of course. Things fall apart all the

time. Not always all at once.

Sometimes it’s a slow necrosis. Bits and pieces flaking off like dandruff, like dandeli on fluff.

The finest snowfall. The smallest faults.

When dreaming, dust and plot bunnies look about the same. Any one could be a trick of the light.

Or a Newbery Medal in the making. If ants could read, maybe they would write those elabo rate lies too.

The bag burst open. Evan cracked a smile.

“Finally,” I said, popping a pretzel in my mouth. The salt was a balm. But not a salve.

An Open Letter From A Divergent Fault Hey, Veronica.

That’s right, it’s me. Remember? You made a franchise with my name, grossed 700 million dollars, and ruined my Google searchabil ity. (I didn’t copyright, but still.) I mean, what do personality traits have to do with tectonic plates anyway?

There’s a gap be tween us I can’t fill, no matter what I try. It collects instead. Newspaper reprints, diner napkins, Hello Kitty hair clips, honeysuckle stems, tick et stubs from Ant Man and the Wasp, a used copy of Catching Fire. Things loved and then discarded.

Maybe when enough of it collects, it will

form into something more than this basalt breakage.

Maybe when the rift grows wide enough, there will be room for something new. Still—not cool, Veronica Roth. This separation is nothing to write novels of. And it was my name first. So where’s my New York Times Bestseller sticker?

Chrome Reflections

There was a room of mirrors in the old house. Wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor, six-foottall mirrors.

The key was somewhere. Probably. (Other pocket, Marjorie.)

With eyes closed it was more bearable. You could pretend you were daydreaming. You’re a tree in a chrome forest, a cloud suspended in hazy skies.

But all blinks have to end eventually. No time to apolo gize. When she put her fingernail to the glass, it splintered and cracked in two.

Matters of the Heart Peer closer. Through the hairline crack, a faint outline of light.

This air holds you like a taut rope. Your name a spool of thread, drooling.

The crowbar. Slip beneath the fault, and— — sh.

EMILY YANG

Sestina: Fault idol worship, temporary religious floor. The summer we moved away from the fault and to the river, I knocked over and broke an idol in our new kitchen, but not one we worship, because we don’t do that with temporary things — objects aren’t religious, even when they shatter on the floor.

When Ganesh is in pieces on your floor, the natural inclination is to accept fault, to leak from your eyes rare religious tears, to feel sorry for the idol, to forget that mess is temporary and your parents’ love is endless worship.

Ganesh excelled at the opposite worship, circling his parents sitting on the floor when they asked him to take a temporary leave and go around the world thrice, leaving at fault his brother, Kartikeya, who became the lesser idol, which is to simplify so many things religious.

My parents don’t seem very religious, especially when they worship the hook that held the idol their daughter fated to the floor, for finally absolving them both of fault in not keeping track of the temporary.

The hook holds monthly calendars now, temporary but lasting more than a month, because we’re religious about dwelling on the past and finding fault in paper, which I otherwise worship, printing and stapling, arranging on the floor, trying to become a weapon, an academic idol.

That’s right, I’m supposed to be an idol, too, even if as a temporary title, just until he’s five feet off the floor, so, when I fumble this religious item, I expect a breach in worship from my brother, but he never finds me at fault.

It turns out idols, even broken, even religious ones, are temporary, and there’s always more to worship, like the floor your family walks, like those who never find you at fault.

Validation Villanelle

Until he shows you words of affirmation, you don’t discover you understand tongues so good, good, good, good.

You hold the belief that you are a loving bilingual, that your only two love languages are quality time and physical touch until he shows you words of affirmation,

and you remember you’ve been fluent your whole life. Your can blame Ms. Trudy, who said your poetry was so good, good, good, good and your dad who finds your ninety-nines and asks you to explain the forfeit of the one percent until he shows you words of affirmation,

and says he and mama are proud of you no matter what. All you ever wanted to be and all you understand, you find, is good, good, good, good.

You forgot it’s possible to fault so much warmth for your shivering until he shows you words of affirmation: good, good, good, good.

My curves and faults golden shovel after Sara Teasdale’s “Faults”

John’s a hack. They say he came from heaven to Chrissy to tell her: I love your imperfections. But what about her faults? To love “imperfections” is to accept outside standards for me, to know they have named me, for them, inadequate. Love my faults over all else. Say I am the one exception to rules by which you live. Say I am the one.

Lusty Limerick

If you take me out for a malt, grab me fries with some salt, call that a meal while I scowl, and later in bed my stomach growls, then you know that it isn’t my —

MOLLIKA JAI SINGH

In Small World Coffee this morning, I ordered decaf because regular coffee makes me terribly anxious and I must avoid it at all costs; But then I felt embarrassed when the barista shouted “decaf Americano” because who comes to Small World and drinks decaf because this place is a celebration of caffeine addiction because it’s too obvious that I’m only here to consume the vibes; Anyway one man is wearing a crimson cap with an R on it and another man is wearing a maroon cap with a P on it and a third man just asked me to keep an eye on his things so I asked to borrow his laptop charger and this is the café barter system; A woman in shiny white boots is spinning on her heels as she scans for a table to eat her bagel to no avail; I must confess I have been sitting at this corner table for two whole hours writing my Senior Thesis™ but I was just pretending so naturally nothing was written so I have disappointed myself so I am writing this instead; I bet if I hadn’t opted wimpishly for decaf coffee and had imbibed instead a potent dose of caffeine then it would have ignited some manic ingenuity and right now magic words would be streaming from my neurons to my google drive

THE SCOURGE OF THE DECAF FIEND: THOU SHALT BE UNPRODUCTIVE

By JUJU LANE

and a glorious Senior Thesis™ would materialize and nevermind the inevitable side effects of that caffeine nevermind the gripping I would feel in my chest nevermind that familiar sense of impending doom nevermind the dread that would swallow me in the afternoon because at least with caffeine

I would have made some progress on my Senior Thesis™ and aren’t I supposed to think that is exceedingly important; Anyway some of these people look happy and well-adjusted and isn’t that nice; The woman across the room is demolishing a glazed pastry and the lenses of her glasses glow lilac in the glare of her laptop screen and now she is typing in a hurry and she is being very productive and she is not the kind of person who would order decaf in Small World when there is work to be done is she.