Fluidity: The Strand Magazine | Vol. 65, Issue 5

the

STRAND

VOLUME 65 | FALL MAGAZINE

u l f idity Dear reader, When we sat down to brainstorm themes for this magazine, fluidity came to us naturally. Maybe it’s because the past two years have been a tumultuous time, and we’ve felt a stagnation—a drought, if you will. Or maybe it’s because we’re university students and are familiar with the ebbs and flows of navigating our lives, both on and off campus.

We are in a period of our lives where we’re constantly reflecting—whether we want to or not—on our past choices, how they’ve shaped our present, and more importantly, how we want to move forward. Where are we going? What difference do we want to make, if any? How do we fit into the world around us, which is changing so constantly? Our sense of self and collective identities are fluid; it can be hard to recognise ourselves from one moment to the next, let alone recognise those we surround ourselves with.

Our Fall magazine reflects our contributors' attempts to ask and answer these complex questions. We have multiple considerations on family: those found and those we’re born with, how they shape our lives, and how we shape theirs. You’ll hear reflections on societal and personal struggles, including literacy, neurodivergence, deconstructing the (academic) narrative we may have created for ourselves, and how sometimes we might feel like we’re drowning.

Creating this magazine would not have been possible without the help of our Features Editor, Sam Rosati Martin, our Co-Poetry Editors, Ishika Rishi and Emma MacKenzie, our Photo Editor, Kelsey Phung, and our Co-Art Editors, Shelley Yao and Seavey van Walsum. Thank you for making this process supportive and collaborative, for being adaptable in moments when we hit rough waters, and for allowing us to pour our ideas into a shared pond.

We hope the pages of the magazine leave you paused, speechless, and hovering in moments of fluid introspection and emotion. Don’t forget to take a deep breath before you dive in.

With ever-flowing love, Janna and Rion Editors-in-Chief 4

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CONTENTS

features associate Eugene Kim

copy associate Maeve Ellis

design associate Wendy Wan

associate photo editor Nicholas Tam

illustration team

Yoon-Ji Kweon, Jennifer Fong Li, Callie Silverton, Arthur Hamdani, July Hu, Faith Dong

editorial assistants

Romina Emtyazi, Sakura Armstrong, Riya Uxa

airflow

fluidity and change collage

design team

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Zoe Crepp

don't flail

visual team

13

Eugene Kim

Nicholas Tam, Kelsey Phung, Nicolette Kemerer

fish goddess

copy team

Janna Abbas, Rion Levy

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Faith Wershba

Chloe Loung, Wendy Wan, Janna Abbas, Rion Levy

editors-in-chief

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Max Lees

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Anya Shen

Sofija Stankovic, Kieran Guimond, Faith Wershba

production manager

the death of a quiznos

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features editor

Shelley Yao

this bus stop was a coral reef once

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haikus

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brain so bonkers, willy wonkers

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the blue to come home to

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making peace with the ocean

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Ben Murphy

Janus Kwong

Sam Rosati Martin

Amanda Solomon

poetry editors

Ishika Rishi, Emma Mackenzie

Geetanjali Kapre

senior copyeditor

Angel Bella

Roensa Salija

art editors

Subhi Jha

Shelley Yao, Seavey van Walsum

the fluidity of literacy and why it matters in canada

Samir Mechel

photo editor

pan de fiesta

Kelsey Ngan Phung

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Gabriel Sanchez-Ortega

design editor

static pressure

Chloe Loung

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Max Lees

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Paused, speechless swallowed by a tea mug gentle whispers rise up: cinnamon, cardamom, ginger Footsteps fall leaves dance with the absurdity of Wednesday blown out of bounds

airflow

words by max lees photos by max lees

by the eternal breath of October Soft on the sidewalk sunbeams tiptoe across the earth and stream into a corner of the mind, projecting children shouting smalltown shuffles candy apple poison lips suspended over open air

to the fruit peeling the pit facing out The wind speaks a language that fingernails dragging through flesh cannot hear nutmeg, allspice, going, gone Arm outstretched like a lover, palm open willow tree lowers itself to the ground

every flavour of now drips down

take my hand yesterdays last yea rs tomorrows breathed in tossed out swirl over pavement

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A branch reaches out to me – 7

I take it.

Fluidity and Change

, th

e

e on t tha I think

my curiosit

lf t I set out for myse tha

I should?

Do I follow

e pat h

u ,p s ie

lo fol

w th

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at I truly lov rsuing wh e ? Or do I

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hen I was two, I had a green fleece onesie that I wore non-stop. It practically became part of my body, blurring the boundary between where I ended and where the harsh, outer world began. My mom tells me that she had to wait until I was asleep to take it off of me so that she could put it in the laundry. So, it seems I never was particularly good with change.

For the past 20 years, home has been the brick-red house tucked inside a sleepy suburb outside New York City. My bedroom is the bedroom I slept in when I was three years old; I still have hazy memories of how the shadows danced across the walls as my mom told me bedtime stories. My life has been marked by familiarity, and I’ve grown to find comfort in predictability.

Sure, I find exhilaration in surprises every now and then. But change—especially looming, anticipated change—creates a subsuming smog of anxiety. It fills my mind with nightmarish ‘what if ’ scenarios and winds my heart up like a metronome. The greater the change, the greater the fear: joining a new club? Perhaps a smidge of social anxiety, but nothing I can’t handle. Graduating university and entering into the vast, unknown, chaotic adult world? Heart-shakingly terrifying.

I used to think I knew what I wanted in life. I was a science kid, someone who was on track to pursue a career in research. I repeated this narrative to myself over and over, committing to a version of myself that I was convinced was the ‘right’ one. Never mind that I had questions about the scientific process beyond biochemical mechanisms. Never mind that I found working in the lab kind of miserable most days. Never mind that I loved my philosophy of science courses much more than I did organic chemistry. I would not allow myself to stray from the path I had envisioned: I am someone who follows through, I told myself.

I am now in my fourth and final year of university. I am still studying life science, and I’m on track to receive degrees in Human Biology and Immunology. To be clear, I don’t regret my choice of study; I have genuinely loved my

courses, and they have expanded my thinking in ways I could not have predicted.

Yet I now face a set of questions. What next? Where do I see myself? What is the ‘right’ decision? In pondering such questions, I realised that each one is actually broken down into a set of choices: Do I follow my curiosities, pursuing what I truly love? Or do I follow the path that I set out for myself, the one that I think I should?’

I know that my interests have changed over the past four years; I can’t deny that. My brain lights up by talking about epistemology and research structure, not epistasis and cellular structure. Yet I feel a sense of shame in admitting such changes, as though my dispassion for scientific details demonstrates something fundamentally wrong with me. Why don’t I feel passionate about this? Where has my intellectual drive gone? Am I just lazy?

And then comes the dreaded ‘what if ’ spiral: What if you can’t find a job? What if you can’t make it in the adult world?

What if you can’t handle change? ~ Oftentimes, change still feels like someone is trying to peel me out of my onesie, stripping me of its comfort and familiarity. Change feels like being exposed to a blizzard completely naked, the wind chiselling me into sharp, fragmented pieces until I’m nothing but a shrivelled core. It feels like a bar of soap slipping through my fingers in the shower, tangible yet elusive, tumbling downward towards the drain.

Change feels hard.

I’ve been brushing up against these feelings lately: a sense of tension as I try to cling to the ever-shifting present, while change looms large in the periphery. I am all too aware of the temporality of my current situation, cognisant that I’m on the precipice of another stage of life. It feels like I’m on the edge of a canyon, trying to muster up the courage to leap across the chasm and reach the other side.

Point A to point B, with only darkness in between.

Perhaps this conception of change is what’s holding me back. Change happens in the small moments; it is made up of infinitesimal, fluid, continuous transitions. It is not some binary between ‘then’ and ‘now.’ There is no ‘four years ago self ’ versus ‘present self.’ There is just me. Learning, growing, changing, evolving.

Change is part of life. Life exists in dynamic equilibrium, a constant flux of actions and reactions that maintain universal balance. We are adaptive, resilient beings, responding to the vagaries of our unpredictable existences. The earth is always spinning, and things are ever-shifting. At the microcosmic level, such shifts may feel like disturbances, disruptions. But if I can zoom out and consider the greater picture, I might just find an intricately balanced sea of experiences, ebbing and flowing as they gently guide me toward where I’m meant to go.

words by faith wershba illustration by yoon-ji kweon 9

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artist

The process for this piece started with a base image of my grandparents, Clomin and Bill Smith, getting married. In a sense, this photo is a representation of the beginning of our mixed-race family, as they were the first interracial couple on either side of my lineage. It highlights how with mixedrace children, people often declare that a family only starts at the point where they ‘officially’ become ‘mixed.’

The people in this collage are my cousins and me as children.

The static I layered over these images represents how society chooses to ignore the ‘mix’ in us—people often see me as fully white and my cousins as fully Black. I believe race is a fluid spectrum, and with my work I hope to highlight how many people can exist within this range, all with their own unique experiences and appearances.

sta tem ent

The poems behind the collage’s imagery are excerpts: one that I wrote called “People Always Tell Me” that expresses annoyance with white people’s perception of my racial identity and another by Maya Angelou called “Still I Rise” that famously engages with ideas of Black resilience.

This assemblage of media expresses my opinions on how people perceive my family and also the common experiences related to perception and confusion of mixed-race youth.

words by zoe crepp art by zoe crepp

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Don't Flail

words by eugene kim illustration by callie silverton

A

myriad of mechanical parts work in tandem, each performing a unique duty in order to produce a singular, unified movement, the summation of the synchronicity between appendages and limbs and trunk. In this manner, the human body, quite peculiarly, resembles a machine whose function is to produce a constant flow of movement, ceaselessly pushing forth. The flow of the body is unique in that it is incredibly malleable, contorting into many forms at the behest of its person—it is no wonder this flow has been immortalized in countless works of art.

Similarly, a body of water exhibits a continuous flow that can take an infinite number of forms. Yet, while the flow of the body seeks to traverse, the flow of water seeks to immerse. What arises is a fascinating intersection between the two flows.

There is no better way to understand the essence of something than to go through it oneself. I sat down with Varsity Blues swimmer and four time national champion Michael Sava to learn about his experiences.

The butterfly is known as the most difficult and tiring stroke. What made you decide to compete in that event?

Sava: “The fly has a lot of notoriety for being difficult and challenging, so people didn't really want to swim [fly] at practice.

I was the only one who wanted to, and my coach was like, ‘okay, then you're swimming in these events at competitions.’ In Canada, there's not too many people who are into the 200 fly specifically, because it takes a lot of work and a lot of focus.”

How familiar do you need to be with whitewater? Do you need a good understanding of the flow?

Van Walsum: “Yeah, of course. No matter how good you are as a paddler, you always have to scout every rapid that you do. You have to scout from the top and the bottom, which is partially why on whitewater trips—even though you might be going where [the river] is carrying you—you won’t go as far as a flatwater trip, because you have to get out and scout each rapid.

“What defines whitewater is elevation, constriction, and volume. “[The difficulty of a rapid] depends on the rapid. You can have a rapid that’s very big, and it can look very scary. But the maneuvers are very simple and so it's easy to navigate. You can also have something that's much smaller, but it's a lot bonier, meaning more rocks and very low levels of water.”

That’s the beauty of a craft, acting as an intermediary between the oppressive flow of the river and the responsive flow of the body. For a swimmer, there is no such grace. The window of observation is replaced by the imperative need to move.

Sava: “With all strokes, there's a sort of a catch, a pull, and a recovery phase—I How would you would say you could break [a stroke] up into three. Catch is when your hands first describe the butterfly stroke to someone enter the water. They should be around shoulder width apart. You should try to unfamiliar with it? feel your body on top of the water and press on it. Everything has to be smooth in the water. One phase leads into the other. If it’s too robotic, it doesn't work; you have to build momentum and a rhythm and keep it going.

“Then you get into the pull, which is the ‘power’ part of the stroke, where you pull back on the water. And you're supposed to breathe—I like to breathe every stroke, but that's mostly because it’s the 200m.

“When you breathe, you have to sort of extend your chin above the water and be completely flat. Can't go too high up, can’t go too low, because otherwise you would hit the water. It has to be just always going forward.

“Then you get to the recovery—that's when all the photos are taken, Michael Phelps or Ryan Lochte or whatnot. You bring your arms over the water and your fingers, like, your thumb should be facing down. It should be nice, smooth, that's where you're supposed to be resting. But it's also, like, you’re whipping your arms forward.

The butterfly is not necessarily a technique intuitive to even the most natural of swimmers, with a phenomenal amount of skill and effort required in order to succeed. Perhaps this is a signifier of its ability to push the fluidity of the body to its limit.

A competitive swimmer responds to the flow of still water. What, then, can the body do in response to a moving body of water? What happens to the flow of the body when it is redirected into the flow of a boat or another craft?

In search of this answer I also conversed with Seavey van Walsum, who runs whitewater kayaking, to learn about their experiences.

To go forward is for the flow of the body to overpower the opposing flow of the water. In doing so, one exists not in that nebulous, quivering hesitancy characteristic of our mortal state of being, but in an inseparable flow of thought, movement, and habit. With the assistance of a craft, however, a different understanding becomes possible.

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Van Walsum: “You pull the boats aside, you scout the rapids—so you There are a lot of factors look at it from the top, and you look in determining the flow of at it from the bottom and you make the river and navigating the landmarks, so that when you're gorapids. Can you summarize ing down the rapids you can respond the general experience? to how the river flows. I get a very strong rush of adrenaline. As soon as the water hits, it's entirely calm. It's hitting calm and like the eye of the storm. I seem very stressed from the outside, but everything is apparent in what I have to do next.”

It seems like a fairly dangerous activity. What motivates you to continue doing it?

Van Walsum: “I like how I feel when I complete something that I wasn’t confident I was able to complete. And then I just perceive myself as a different person who can problem-solve. That's why I return to it.

“Also another thing is that it’s an individual sport that can very easily not be competitive because it's so creative. Oftentimes with sports that are route-based, you get people who are willing to help each other problem-solve.

“I’m really happy to have entered into that sort of space in terms of working out. I was raised in a very conservative environment—I skied, ran cross country, and played various different team sports. In those it was all about winning or finishing before someone else, but if you're on a trip, like an expedition where you have to complete whitewater, it's about getting everyone through. You have to uplift your weakest members rather than cut them from the team.”

Van Walsum: “It's definitely a collaboration—you can’t really defy the way that the river wants to go. You can get sucked into one spot, you can flip, you can get pinned. I think you need to be more respectful, but also a little bit cheekier with the water.”

What would you say the biggest difference of your relationship with the water as a paddler is compared to a swimmer who swims in open waters?

Whitewater in all its magnitude renders the need for a harmony in the flow of the body and flow of the water. One cannot overestimate the machinations of their body, for the titanic flow of the river will swallow them whole.

Still water has been defanged, so rather than a symbiosis, it is a severance, necessitating a reconciliation between the fluid capability of the body and its ability to execute precise minutiae.

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Sava: “You could be physically strong, but that only gets you so far. And then you could also just be naturally talented in the water, but if you don't go to the gym or go to practice, you won't get to where you want to be. You need a balance between good technique, and lots of physical conditioning to maintain that technique for whatever distance you're swimming.

“You can't just go to practice and go through the motions, you have to constantly be thinking.”

How do you reconcile making sure that you're performing the stroke correctly, but also, like you said, ensuring your movement isn’t robotic and has a consistent flow in the water?

Michael Sava and Seavey van Walsum’s words express the bilateral nature of the relation between the body and water, not dissimilar from any other relation. After all, we do not exist in a vacuum. Every flow, every movement can be connected to another, no matter how faint or palpable.

What advice would you give from your experiences?

Van Walsum: “If you want to get yourself out of a hole, it’s a good metaphor. If you think about the flowing river, there's going to be the same features. So there's going to be at ease where it's something just like swirls. There are also going to be holes. So how do you dig yourself out of a hole?

“With whitewater, what you do is you curl up into a ball and try to sink down and swim underneath the water until you're out of that spot. So you could read that a couple different ways. If it’s facing downstream, you could try to swim towards where it's weak, like in the middle, and then swim down and then it'll flush you out. If it’s facing upstream that's impossible because there's no weaker spots. If you want to get to the weaker spots you would have to swim upstream and that just kind of puts you back into where it's strongest. I guess you could mix and match that however you’d like, especially if you're going through the flow of life like the flow of a river.

“My whitewater advice on it is curl up into a ball, sink, and swim the hardest you’ve ever swam. Don’t flail.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Water is the most beautiful thing in the world, and this world is a place worth fighting for.

Fish Goddess illustration by jennifer fong li

words by anya shen

A major source of suffering for salmon and other farmed fish is the abundant presence of sea lice, which thrive in the filthy water. These lice create open lesions and sometimes eat down to the bones on a fish’s face—a phenomenon common enough that it is known as the “death crown” in the industry.

— Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals 16

M

onster or lover. Predator or prey.

Friend or food. Offend not the species who wears the crown of death. Shouldn’t your mother have taught you better, kid?

Come closer. Don’t mind the gore, it will all be gone at the command of the next bidder with the highest price. Look into my eyes. I want you to remember them. My silver-green dark and mysterious eyes that once told stories. Crusted with vermin and deflating in my shredded cheeks, unblinking. They will not close even after the end of the meal.

Come closer; I want to tell one last story. You can touch my body if you want, if you don’t mind the slime and grease from the fingers of other children. The body of the dynasty’s last daughter of the sea, drying out on a bed of crushed ice smelling of lemon and guts.

The bodies of humans have always been entwined with bodies of fish.

I can understand it. Love, lust, fear, and violence bind us together. It is only human instinct to revel in the thrill of conquering round, smooth, wet, confoundingly wonderful bodies with bare hands.

They like

to kiss flesh with tongue when it’s still warm off the knife’s edge. They like the danger of spending too long, getting too close, going too far on their flimsy pieces of architecture, discovering our land which is not land. They never discovered much. They never figured out how to breathe in water without cheating.

What they did discover was science, history, poetry. It’s all stories. There are beautiful, frightening stories that they tell.

There are stories about the Tiktaalik, the fish that grew a spine and limbs and became man. Before you know it, your bones too, will end up in a museum for another species’ children to gawk at. In the anthropocene wing, no one’s going to remember what a dinosaur was. There are stories about creation and home, about shell creatures that hold up the world for the people who came from the stars. There are stories about old men and the sea and young men chasing whales with strange names; the men always come home with nothing at the end of the day, but they like to tell me about how that makes the stories important. Most of all, there are stories about pretty girls, dangerous girls, dead girls.

Tell a sister to keep an eye on her sealskin, take good care of her wild green hair, send my best regards to Odysseus coming home late, and sink Columbus’ goddamn ship when she has a chance.

Then there are beautiful, frightening stories they do not tell.

I would tell you that it comes in the night, because that is how the story starts when humans want their children to be afraid, but that would not be true. There is no night when you cannot decipher the direction of the light under the writhing, bleeding, sinking bodies of your neighbours.

Neighbours, not siblings. We are not so close. We lose our

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siblings at birth, naturally.

It is always coming. It is always night.

In swarms, in hives, in chaotic splatters of wriggling legs, teeth, antennae. Order and violence are both natural evolutionary instincts. This is not natural anymore. There is no order amidst the pulsing, frantic gore of violence like this.

What comes to mind when you think of salmon? Every harvest season, the salmon follow the stars home, so their children may begin their voyage from the same place as their ancestors. When I close my eyes, I think of the old faithful shimmer of travelling fish, silver under moonshine. When I open my eyes, I see fish shipwrecked with children unborn, and apologies too-late strewn across riverbanks, dry for the first time in history.

The dynasty of fish decays under the crown of death. The fish goddess of once upon a time lies dehydrating on the rocks like a common whore waiting for a cab that isn’t coming.

Still, if humans insist on being descendants of fish, I’d believe it. Sharp bones and vicious teeth and majestic monstrosity run in the bloodline. Silver hooks on mysterious lines bind us, one species with another.

They shouldn’t have toyed with chemicals they couldn’t control, and they’ve gotten too good at finding things that didn’t want to be found. But you all are my children still.

It’s coming for you too, you know.

None of this is anyone’s fault, I know.

Water is the most beautiful thing in the world, and this world is a place worth fighting for. Truth and love and everything all boils down to that.

Where there is life, there is w a t e r, and

where there is water, there is life. Water is the origin of existing in tandem—taking care of the others that keep us alive. That means

holding your

Water is the origin of existing in tandem—taking care of the others that keep us alive.

baby cousin’s hand as they taste their first snow like it’s chocolate ice cream. That means call-

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The Death of a The posters on his window Are rendered inconsequential.

Every sale couldn’t Keep the doors open, Couldn’t keep the children smiling.

s

There’s a hole in the wall, His battle wound, A stinging reminder that he lost To the one across the street.

o izn Qu

Derelict but dancing, He stands somewhere in between A grimace and a grin.

What is he thinking?

Rats and cockroaches Are his only customers now.

For the three of them are alike; They are unwanted, unloved, unsung.

They bind together, To trudge through life.

And that is why his glass windows still twinkle Even though wooden boards Keep the sun from ever reaching the tiled floor.

Asbestos pipes Drip dingy water Onto unwiped countertops.

A plastic bag is caught On a loose nail that protrudes from the crumbling ceiling.

It, like him, cannot move towards prosperity.

Because before they can be reborn, Rebranded, They must decompose.

Succumb to their faults And watch their rivals succeed.

Paper bags in the arms of happy customers Walk by his doors.

And though the wrecking ball will come, He’s satisfied, At least those people still got a sandwich.

words and photo by ben murphy

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Haiku

words by amanda solomon

waves crash on the shore the stone skips, bouncing three times reverberating

flu·id·i·ty /flo o id dē/

time drags on; fluid summer stumbles into fall as we drift along

glides fluidly outside of used car dealership

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Haikus

wiggling body

illustrations by faith dong

Creative: Kelsey Ngan Phung Photo: Nicholas Tam Model: Joyce Khanh Linh Nguyen MUA: Karsen Patterson Support: Zach Dang

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Brain so bonkers, Willy Wonkers

Maybe she was born with it, maybe it’s her ADHD prescription

When I did take them, it was for my mum. She was sitting cross-legged on my bed, with a bowl of fruit. Apples. Peeled and sliced. With a little fork. For me.

That’s the thing with ADHD. It hurts the people around you. It isn’t selfcontained. What the media portrays as a fun, distracted, TikTok-length, attention span isn’t that at all. It’s the toddler who just can’t sleep. The little girl who spends half of kindergarten in time-outs. The fourth-grader who wins an essay competition for high-schoolers. The 12-year-old who gets so sad she throws up.

The freshman who gets straight A’s without studying. And now, the teenager who lashes out at her only friend—her mum. And Mum has a list, too. She paid for the piano lessons, the tennis lessons, the baking lessons, the painting lessons, the paintbrushes, the paint. She saw the paint princess, the baker’s knife, the suicidal anguish.

Those slights, that quicksilver fluidity.

How nothing ever holds.

She wants her daughter to write that philosophy essay for school.

Her daughter also wants to write that philosophy essay for school. You’ll do such a good job, you just have to do it, the mother says. I know, the daughter agrees.

words by geetanjali kapre illustration by arthur hamdani

I know.

I didn't believe I had ADHD ‘till I got on the meds.

36mg of Concerta, take after meals.

The bottle of pills sat unopened on my desk for two weeks.

This was my Pandora’s box. Opening it meant acknowledging something. And I refused to do that, to let whatever was inside that box spill out.

Pills.

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But she doesn’t write the essay. Can’t.

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Two hours later, two women sit in the room, two pairs of reddened eyes. The mother is hugging the daughter. Both are wondering where they failed. How everything goes so wrong all the time. How there’s never a dull moment. How there’s never a bright moment.

How the apple is now browning.

Take after meals, the prescription said.

I ate the apple.

I took the Concerta.

One minute passed. I felt normal.

Two minutes. I needed to go drink water—crying makes you thirsty.

Three minutes—I peeled my new FKA Twigs stickers off the sheet and stuck them to my laptop. Epicurus and FKA Twigs would make a good couple, I think.

Five minutes—I didn’t think it was going to work. I should just start my essay anyway.

Seven hours later—complete essay, complete math homework, clean room.

Um. People want to know what having ADHD is really like. “What isn’t it like?” is my witty response, because I don’t really have an answer, because this is life, how it has been, how it will be in whatever time there is to come. When I’m on Concerta, I have linear, chronological thoughts. That’s what the ‘normal’ brain should do, I guess. Not operate on jump ropes. But that feels like I’m somebody else, like that one Wizards of Waverly Place episode where Alex got Harper’s brain.

I don’t like Concerta. It gets stuff done, but it makes the brain rigid.

Less creative.

That’s the ADHD paradox: forced fluidity.You can go anywhere, think of anything, be anything; you just don’t get to decide what happens when. You’re nebulous, narcissistic, narcotic. You’re the nicest girl he’s ever met.

But he doesn’t quite get you, and you don’t know how to tell him that you don’t quite get yourself, because there’s nothing to get.

Are you sure you aren’t bipolar, he says.

Yes. Then I don’t know what to do with you.

And I don’t know either. I don’t have autonomy. Even on my best days, I don’t have autonomy. I will never get to pick what my brain decides to do.

It’s like roulette.

And roulette can be exciting, too.

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I can sit alone for hours on end with a funny electricity churning out psychedelic poetry.

I have a riveting graveyard of eight-day hobbies I can unleash at any point.

Roulette is exciting, funny, thrilling, darling, even.

Until it isn’t.

Until the assignments and dishes and unanswered calls and unwished birthdays start piling up.

I wish I had never taken Concerta because it showed me what ‘normal’ was. A mirror, telling me what life should be like. Smooth and cool and calm.

Pandora’s box was never hers to open.

Living in India, it was a monolith of a privilege to get diagnosed. Very few do. In school, I was ‘too smart’ to have ADHD. In friend groups, there was the "hahaha even I probably have ADHD lol, I can never get off Instagram." In my dad’s car, "Doctors diagnose you with all kinds of shit so they make more money."

It’s always interesting to me, to see what society chooses to accept. Percy Jackson can have ADHD. John Mulaney can have ADHD. Emma Watson ‘doesn’t seem like’ she has ADHD. Geetanjali Kapre ‘doesn’t seem like’ she has ADHD. The question of gender is inevitable when you talk about neurological diversity.

Most psychological studies are based on monkeys and men. Very little psychiatric research about women exists. Autism and ADHD are brutally underdiagnosed in women because we don’t experience what society expects to see.

Not all of us are loud, boisterous jocks who fail algebra and don’t care that they failed algebra. We don’t think it’s funny, being late to a cousin’s wedding.

We don’t think it’s funny, making your mother cry.

But people don’t see that.

Society wants to control disorder. Put palmistry on paper. Snap and tinker and plate and play ‘till everyone is the same. It’s quite funny if you think about it.

It always happens like this with fluidity. Society wants to be progressive, wants people to be themselves, but only some people, and only when it's chic and cool.

Harry Styles can wear a dress. Fluidity is en vogue. But Montero is ‘too gay and sexual.’ Spot the difference. Booyah.

You aren’t the wild horse, you’re the rider.

The question of controlling water.

And you don’t have the reins.

How is that fluidity?

After finally accepting my ADHD diagnosis, I sunk into a long philosophical journey of narcissistic self-evaluation. I worshipped that methylphenidate mirror.

Not smart.

I had to take a month off school. My days roughly looked like this: wake up, Diet Coke, Jim Morrison fan fiction, bowl of cherries, more fan fiction, perhaps some chicken nuggets, then a movie, end chapter.

Critics (my psychiatrist) will tell you that this depressive episode ended when I started taking depression medication, but intellectuals (me) can pinpoint the exact moment I decided to embrace my brain: when my little brother came and told me I looked like Willy Wonka.

Um. Not flattered.

I think I told my brother something along the lines of “and you look like Augustus Gloop.”

Not my best work.

But then I thought about it for a bit. Willy Wonka, I mean. And not him being reclusive, or psychologically abusing children to find an ‘heir’—but his weird haircut, terminal entrenchment in that mauve trench coat, and, despite all, his OK-ness being himself.

Race, gender, money.

Having ADHD means having to be okay with tidal waves. Okay with uncertainty. Okay with the fact that I probably would never get my driver’s licence because I’m highly distractible and should never be behind the wheel. Okay with the fact that friendships and relationships will never be easy.

Okay with fluidity.

All because of one failing neurotransmitter.

The ADHD diagnosis is life-changing, but it doesn’t really change your life, not in the beginning, anyway. Having a lustrous label for liability changes the way people perceive and respond to your life. It changes how your family plans their future. It changes how Mum has to defend your intelligence at parent-teacher conferences. Eventually, it changes how you see your future, your past, everything in between. It changes your thoughts on your career: you can’t work a nine-to-five desk job now, can you? It changes your thoughts on love: you can’t keep a husband now, can you?

The question of controlling water.

Never a bright moment. Never a dull one.

That quicksilver fluidity.

Let it pass, let it go, let it flow.

You’re still the little girl from the time-out chair. The winner of the essay competition, the honour-roll student. The little girl Mum fights so hard to protect.

It's a neurotransmitter babel up there, but the world is still your oyster.

And even flimsy fluid floundering floating oysters have pearls. (don’t fact-check the science on that)

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Making Peace with the Ocean

O

words and photo by subhi jha

ver hot cups of tea, my friends and I sit in a quiet circle late into the night. The clock reads ten past three, and at 21 years of age I am still fearful it is past my bedtime. It is a swift realisation and often buried quickly under the loud reminder of my independence. But still there.

I am still my mother’s daughter.

It is a reminder that strikes at the oddest hours, like when I am squeezing tomatoes or slapping watermelons in a grocery store in Chinatown. Truth be told, I am never sure how to distinguish a good fruit from a bad one, but I hold and bounce them just like she does. A series of actions I have observed

keenly and mastered skillfully over the years.

I replicate it—I am just like my mother.

On this side of Lake Ontario, the realisation is comforting. But tucked across the Naini Lake when I sat on the floor next to my mother while she got dressed for the day, it unnerved me. Cream, Powder, Sindoor, Lip Liner, Lipstick, Kajal. We would stare into the same mirror, but my eyes would be glued on her. I could never imagine myself being a woman. Girls are allowed to scream and run and cling to their papa’s legs. Girls are allowed to be their mother’s daughters all the time. Protected by Naini Lake, I was a girl.

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I found the waves too loud, the tides too high, the continuous motion intrusive It was near the Eastern Gulf of Thailand where those allowances started slowly being taken from me. It was a feeling before it was an implementation. With ‘well-meaning’ nods to ‘talk softly,’ everyone kept forcing

womanhood on me. ‘Your body is changing,’ ‘you’re becoming a woman,’ ‘you need to be more aware of how you move, Subhi,’ they whispered to me, like it was meant to be a secret. So, in my overworn PE shorts and my boxy volunteer T-shirts, I rejected their offers. They could keep their womanly secrets and I would keep my girlhood.

In my teenage bedroom, my study table faced the Pattaya Beach. My mother thought it would be a peaceful scene for me while studying; the rhythm of the waves would keep me calm. I pulled the curtains shut. I found the waves too loud, the tides too high, the continuous motion intrusive. The ocean knew how resentful I was about every change and kept taunting me on a cycle. I am a shit swimmer because of this grudge.

My mother loves the ocean. She took long walks on Pattaya Beach and took a photo of the sunset everyday. I found her ridiculous.

She threw themed parties for her friends, cooking, and eating together almost every weekend. They would stay on phone calls planning outfits before every party for hours on end. It made me nauseous. I hated wearing lipstick and my kajal would smear each time. My attempts to look like my mother were met with crushing failures each time, so I stopped trying. How is someone supposed to be a woman if they cannot look like one?

On this side of Lake Ontario, I am only afforded time with my grandmother in 12inch frames on WhatsApp calls. Maybe it is the pixelated video fighting against poor internet connection, or just a memory covered in nostalgia, but she concludes almost every call in soft Maithili, “just like her mother.” It is whispered like it is sacred. I am a woman because I feel like my ma. I share her features physically now—same smile, same soft jaw and sharp eyebrows. But the thing that assures me in my womanhood the most is not that I can finally face myself in the mirror when we are getting ready; it is that we are both just girls. I relish the fact that I have her temper and how the same sharp eyebrows screw together in anger. We both tear up everytime we laugh. I am a woman because I, like my ma, am desperately holding onto my girlhood.

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The fluidity of literacy, and why it matters in Canada

L

words by samir mechel illustration by july hu

iteracy is typically taken for granted in most countries in the twenty-first century, and, at first glance, the data seem to support this.

There are only 13 countries where a majority of the adult population remains illiterate [1], and 87 percent of adults aged 15 and over are literate worldwide, including 90 percent of men and 83 percent of women. There are also indicators that the situation is continuing to improve. Literacy is clearly fluid between generations. In Haiti, for example, only 15 percent of the elderly population is literate, compared to 83 percent of young adults [3]. However—especially for countries with near-universal adult literacy rates—it would be an oversimplification to assume that basic literacy represents the functional literary: to write or understand any texts an average person might encounter or need to create without significant difficulty.

For example, with a vocabulary of a few hundred words, one may be able to write their name and age, but lack the skills to read or write on more complex topics. These skills are not just academic concerns but have practical effects as well, such as the ability to understand leases, contracts, and laws. Lacking these skills can lead to massive barriers in all facets of life.

Therefore, the question of literacy may be better answered not with a simple "yes" or "no" but with a scale of understanding, ranging from no

knowledge of characters or letters to the ability of a literary scholar. Similarly, one would not simply say they understand a topic such as science or history in an abstract sense, but instead that they

have a degree of knowledge ranging from minimal to highly advanced. Not only is literacy fluid in generations and countries, but it is fluid in its very definition.

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There is a generally accepted way of measuring this fluid degree of knowledge. Between 1994 and 1998, 20 countries collaborated on the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) to determine a general literacy scale. While the survey is imperfect in its methodology - it mostly consists of wealthier Indo-European language speaking countries and includes no African or Asian countries - it is still the broadest source available on measuring the ability to effectively understand information in texts, numbers, and basic charts. The IALS defines five categories of literary knowledge.

Level one defines those with rudimentary skills, who may be “unable to determine the correct amount of medicine to give a child from information printed on the package.” Level two consists of those with more knowledge than level one but would find it “difficult to face novel demands, such as new job skills.” Level three is where full literacy begins, with skills “suitable for coping with the demands of everyday life and work.”

Levels four and five, not relevant here, include those with “higher-order information processing skills” [4]. This more nuanced understanding is useful in evaluating the fluid distribution and range of literary skills among a population.

Despite boasting an official literacy rate of about 99 percent, 49 percent of Canadian adults cannot read or write above level two [5], while a minimum of level three is required to live and participate to a full degree in the modern world.

In other words, nearly half of Canadian adults are at least partially illiterate, with 15 percent scoring at level one, functionally illiterate [6]. Instinctively, one may blame younger people for this trend, perhaps due to a lack of reading, or overuse of the internet. However, it is older Canadians who are less likely to be literate. This is due to declining cognitive abilities, lower use of phones and computers (which create regular exposure to written language), and, most importantly, lack of tasks involving literacy such as school and work.

Literacy, like any other skill, erodes over time with lack of use. According to statistics from the Centre for Literacy of Quebec, 53 percent of Canadians over age 65 fall into level one of the IALS measurement [7], making it difficult, for example, to understand prescription and safety information on

pill bottles. 27 percent fall into level two, making four out of five of older Canadians not fully literate, and over half functionally illiterate [7].

Between the ages of 56 and 65, the numbers fall to the still high percentages of 38 and 26 in levels one and two, respectively [7]. Literacy is not something to be taken for granted, and as Canadian and world populations continue to age due to various medical advancements, these older and less literate groups will continue to form a larger proportion of the population, further raising the overall percentage of individuals lacking basic literacy skills.

Literacy skills are not only fluid among different age groups: they are closely connected with wealth, race, and poverty. For example, a 2005 Statistics Canada survey found that “a low skilled

Low literacy is an issue of social justice. adult is two times more likely to be unemployed compared to a medium to high skilled adult” [8], low skilled meaning IALS level two or lower. The text also states, “[l]ow skilled adults are more likely than medium to high skilled adults to experience … labour force inactivity for six or more months” [8], due to the difficulty in finding new jobs. Low literacy is an issue of social justice.

Illiteracy means not being able to complete services like online banking. It means not being able to further one’s education, even if one does have the time and resources. It means being unable to complete applications or navigate websites for employment and services, further perpetuating the cycles of poverty that contribute to illiteracy in the first place.

With this information, it is unsurprising that the situation is also worse for Indigenous peoples.

While Indigenous and non-Indigenous people with similar levels of education score similarly on the IALS, a disproportionate amount of Indigenous people live in poverty and/or have a low level of education due to the history of colonialism, ongoing discrimination, and systemic racism in Canada. This has caused a higher proportion of Indigenous peoples to have lower literacy scores, ranging from 70 percent in Saskatchewan to 52 percent in Ontario (compared to 47 percent of non-Indigenous people in Ontario) [9]. While

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there are issues with the methodology of these surveys, such as including only those who live off-reserve, and not acknowledging whether a respondent's first language may be neither French nor English, this does show the impact of underfunded services and racialized poverty on affected groups’ education and skills. Even First Nations individuals with a level three or above score are still significantly less likely to be employed than equally skilled non-First Nations individuals, at 75 percent and 91 percent, respectively [10]. The

contains nearly four-fifths of Ontario's and over a third of Canada’s immigrant population. Still, less than 5 percent of Ontarians, immigrant or otherwise, participate in adult literacy programs [13]. Because illiteracy is often shamed or used as a punchline, many are reluctant to seek out the help they need, not to mention accessibility issues, and the declining public access to sources of aid, as shown by Laurentian’s situation and the declining share of public funding of non-compulsory education in Canada.

The impact of racism is also evident in the situation for immigrants in Canada, as “both low and medium to high skilled immigrants are disadvantaged in terms of employment, even compared to low skilled native-born adults.” federal government admits that “Non-Aboriginal adults aged 25 to 54 with lower literacy skills (level 2 or lower) were more likely to be employed than off-reserve First Nations adults with higher skills (level 3 or higher), even after accounting for other factors related to the probability of employment.”

[10] This shows the power of the systemic racism and marginalisation that even more well-educated Indigenous individuals face, and it is especially relevant as Canada sees inadequate, reduced funding and opportunities for Indigenous education, such as at Laurentian University [11], whose program was shuttered after the institution’s financial insolvency. Any conversation about literacy in Canada must centre these realities. Fluidity in literacy is rarely a passive phenomenon, but one that is actively enforced through social inequality.

The impact of racism is also evident in the situation for immigrants in Canada, as “both low and medium to high skilled immigrants are disadvantaged in terms of employment, even compared to low skilled native-born adults.” [12] This is particularly relevant to the GTA, which

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in the 2012 case Moore v. British Columbia (Education) that all Canadians, regardless of learning disabilities, have the right to learn to read, this standard is far from realised. All this does not mean that basic literacy statistics are useless or intentionally deceptive. They record what they intend to: the simple ability to understand letters and basic sentences. However, they do lack a degree of nuance in isolation, nuance which is especially important when examining the situations of, for example: the elderly; Indigenous peoples; and immigrants.

Literacy is a liquid phenomenon, not a binary one, and it is only through such an understanding that this problem can be properly identified and acted upon.

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bibliography

Felluga, Dino. Guide to Literary and Critical Theory. Purdue U, 28 Nov. 2003, www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/. Accessed 10 May 2006.

[1] World Bank. “Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above),” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.ZS. [2] UNESCO Institute for Statistics. “Chad,” http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/td.

[3] UNESCO Institute for Statistics. “Haiti,” http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/ht [4] National Centre for Educational Statistics. “Frequently Asked Questions,” https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ials/faq. asp?FAQType=5

[5] Statistics Canada. “University graduates with lower levels of literacy and numeracy skills,” 2015 November 27, www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2014001/article/14094-eng.htm [6] Conference Board of Canada. “All Signs Point to Yes: Literacy’s Impact on Workplace Health and Safety,” 2008, page 4, www.brantskillscentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/All-Signs-Point-to-Yes-Literacys-Impacton-Workplace-Health-Safety.pdf [7] The Centre for Literacy. “Seniors and literacy: Revisiting the issue,” 2004, www.centreforliteracy.qc.ca/sites/ default/files/Seniors_and_literacy.pdf [8] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and Statistics Canada “Learning a Living: First Results of the Adult Literacy Survey,” 2005, page 214, www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-603-x/89-603x2005001-eng.htm [9] The Conference Board of Canada. “Adults With Inadequate Literacy Skills,” 2022, https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/provincial/education/adlt-lowlit.aspx [10] Statistics Canada. “Literacy and numeracy among off-reserve First Nations people and Métis: Do higher skill levels improve labour market outcomes?” 18 May 2016, www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2016001/ article/14630-eng.htm [11] CBC News. “Loss of Indigenous studies program would reflect poorly on Laurentian, prof says,” May 4 2022, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/indigenous-studies-program-cuts-laurentian-university-1.6013039 [12] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and Statistics Canada. “Learning a Living: First Results of the Adult Literacy Survey,” 2005, page 206, www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-603-x/89-603-x2005001eng.htm [34] Community Literacy of Ontario. “Literacy in Ontario,” 2005, www.communityliteracyofontario.ca/literacy-in-ontario-2/literacy-in-ontario/

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Pan de Fiesta

words by gabriel sanchez-ortega

“Se dice pan de fiesta,” My father says to me.

Pan de fiesta, Bread for the feast.

I held the image in my hands, But never knew its taste.

In the playground of the school They pull me by the arms.

They accuse me of things I haven’t done.

They do not speak my language.

They do not understand.

Away from my home, I bury myself in another language, Hoping to be understood.

When my grandfather falls ill, In my broken tongue I tell him that I love him— He does not understand.

And with the years that pass Like haze over the hills With the glow of ever-present longing, A memory returns: My mother singing songs In my mother tongue.

A family gathering, Where the children dance And sing.

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s

t

a

p Behind the wheel I weave threads of silk between transports and caravans, dodge bullets that glide under the dash into a sea of stars.

You have a heavy foot like my mother You’re going too fast The underground lurches, squeals to keep up with the churning above, tensions and intentions slip out of alignment.

You’re going to be late

r

e

t

i

c

s s

u r e

Rushing into the station, passenger train devours tracks – Welcome to Tuesday papers, please We’ve arrived early I left my head in the clouds, I can’t go back Listen carefully, jump with both hands: Hit the target catch the second – I jump I knock on the door the minute hand misses,

words by max lees photos by max lees

I land On the floor, trapeze artists swim through the air above I am getting up, on the floor, getting up, Hurry up Get a grip Tidal waves slip through my fingertips Get it together The moon and the earth I grasp with each hand They pull me apart as I draw them in.

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