Letter from the Editor Hi all! Welcome to third eye! And our first issue: Life As A Teenager. Our platform was created as a space for people to share their art as a form of self expression. In the future, we’re hoping to migrate into print work and producing our own work! This particular issue is focused around the up and downs of teenage life. We’re known as moody and drama filled, but let’s be real, EVERYONE is moody. As teenagers we’re learning who we are, navigating the world and working through our own issues. Add on parents, siblings, schoolwork, friends, drama and countless other factors in this crazy world. It can be a lot! Some of us find solace in music, drawing, writing and thousands of other creative outlets. Others can find satisfaction in simply finding a common interest by viewing others work. Third Eye isn’t just a multimedia art mag, it’s a community and we hope to provide a safe place for everyone to freely express themselves. Thank you so much for joining us on this wild ride, and indulging my dreams <3 Have fun with this first issue and stay tuned for much much more! ––Mikayla Yurman (Founder, Creator and Co-director of Third Eye M3dia)
Perhaps Aldous Huxley said it best, “Words can be like XRays if you use them properly – they'll go through anything.” Writing is one of the most powerful forms of art, and can be empowering and cathartic for both a reader and a writer. Sonia C.W. 14 (Brooklyn NY) Sometimes there are moments in which there are poems in my head and I don’t want them there because sometimes poems feel much too cliché for moments of breakdown, but romance prevails, and to know beautiful language to is allow it to envelope you. To know beautiful people is to let them plague your mind.
free to express that through beautiful little words and faces and words that are my own. American teens are city teens and country teens and we are so out of touch with one another. We live lives filtered through 35mm and try to explain what we mean using other people’s words; we blur the lines between inspiration and conformity; we try so hard to be unique that to be unique is to conform… I hate to sit down and write a poem because the line breaks make me feel stupid and small, but whenever I sit down to write a journal entry it becomes a poem.
These years feel like everything that happens has been blown up five times its size with a balloon pump labelled overthought; teen. We are all just surviving on borrowed embellishments. Even when I feel I am expressing my deepest soul there is no way to do it all myself. We retch out our feelings in song lyrics and stanzas from milk and honey and so it’s invalid and even as I write this, I feel my feelings; while at once I am truly similar in thoughts and my language to other people, I am also NOT and I demand to be
Chloe K. 15 (Brooklyn, NY) 1
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Chloe K. 15 (Brooklyn, NY) to get me through a night. I find it implausible how this one thing is how I feel confident with myself and with others, because without it I am a quiet follower- or it at least feels like that. I despise walking around looking for the next conversation to butt in where I'm not wanted-the next victim who has to bask in my presence. That's how I view myself and I'm sure my friends, or anyone my age for that matter, feels the same way at timesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I hope. There always seems to be a failed hello, or an awkward goodbye that I wish I could erase, but instead I laugh it off and leave the situation like it never happened. Izzy K. 15 (Brooklyn, NY)
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I find it so interesting that everybody has a certain way they cope with things, or a small habit they rely on whenever they're stressed or anxious. There's this secret bubble inside of everyone's head, and for some people it's their whole world, like a safety net they can fall back on, but others are barely aware of it. For me, I usually walk away when things are too much so I can have a moment alone to breathe. Sometimes I run. Others do this; sometimes itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s smaller like listening to your own music in a group, or sitting on the couch alone to play videogames. I also rely on these 'habitsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;
So that's my escape as a teenager- trying so desperately to convince myself that I had a satisfactory night. I often get home and replay the conversations I had with my friends, the pictures I took, and deem my interactions as good or bad. But still, I don't know why I, or others, are so obsessed with how they are perceived. Of course I am guilty of ending a talk and beating myself up for how I sounded, or being afraid of how that person gauged who I might be; but it doesn't and shouldn't matter, because you are still you regardless of 1 social situation. 4
Darya F. 15 (Manhattan, NY) Emerson K. 17 (Manhattan, NY)
The Liberator Didn’t need me I didn’t know how much I would need you until the noose Like I need you So you flew away, shed your of jealousy wound armor Around my throat and pulled And left me grounded Me to you. Searching in vain for a You didn’t expect much replication of what you gifted I guess that’s why it worked me, How you awakened me Instant gratification to numb the You took me by the hand pain of your justified betrayal. And set me free but I had reached for too much and Little did you know I had now I had Chained myself to you Nothing at all, And was dragging you into Ready to be embraced by the darkness abyss that was the world As you lifted me into light. You were my knight in shining Without you. armor But I could see your facade begin to fade You didn’t want me
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Richard K.15 (Brooklyn, NY)
Nola B.E. 14 (Brooklyn, NY) 54 i can’t wait to go to sleep tonight without the raging fear that i’ll wake up in the morning with the devil sitting next to me. 7
Shreya S. 14 (Bronx, NY) Accusations of the Youth I’m lucky, A little taller than the day before, Dominating the world with my music, A dream that seems far out of reach. An honor to have known The builder of this great empire Where responsibilities are foreign to one’s knowledge. An education, Wonderful years, The finest I know, A tower of strength, On the face of this earth. A team, A gift, Something to remember: Dream more, Expect more. An awful lot to live for. I’m lucky.
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Emerson K. 17 (Manhattan, NY)
Nina C. 15 (New Rochelle, NY) Blackboard Haiku The chipped blackboard holds Erased words forgotten by Sleepy students, gone. 9
Irene H. 14 (Brooklyn, NY) Mirror, Mirror On My Wall I detest it To the moon and back For the crystal ball does not lie I shrink from it The mirage shrinks as well My spine tingles Perfect polished porcelain No indentations No scratches The sun reflects off its glass surface It glows I want to shatter it Nothing can escape its expecting eye It's almost invisible My eyes are blind To what it does to the others To me I shrink from it For this miasma morphs my mirage To a mesmeric monstrosity It glows And I detest it
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Greta Rose Solsaa, 17 (Rutland, Vermont) *trying times* These are trying times Static cuts the phrase into shards fallen to the carpet already gashed in the weight of the screen. Everything we are bleeds fire, everything we stand on breathes fury. These are jagged anachronisms, an archive of words cutting into every centimeter of each second passed because with every smoked blurred lie that has burned our skin we have yet to callous against the truth. These are trying times we are living in. We are trying to put out a fire while it is doused in gasoline, trying 11
to douse the fire on our tongues, smoke searing the edges of what we call reality, tasted by our fingertips tapping, tapping (bad reception), clouding between the closed windows of a structure we call our minds. Trying but stifled. Trying but scorched. Trying but barely surviving in this hell of a place while the almost (too human to be) devils are at the helm. These are trying times reverberating jutting in and out not from this moment of now but from
the cavern of history. These echoes are proof that we have survived, that our voices carry, that we never stop speaking even with the smoke static screen. These are trying Times These are Trying These Are We are living in These are trying times These are trying These are *trying times*
Mikayla Y. & Chloe K. Third Eye Staff 12
Audrey K. 15 (New York City, NY) Naomi’s room was too small, but there was no use fixing it now. She and her mother fought about it constantly — Naomi railed against the leftover dregs of her younger self, the Hello Kitty stickers and the dumb butterfly posters and the antique dolls on the shelf, a cause she found edgy and modern and her mother found hopelessly, genetically archaic. The mess didn’t help. The room seemed to accumulate filth: laundry and granola bar wrappers and old class notes rose in piles, a trash city for ants. There was so much shit on the floor you couldn’t even see the carpeting, but this was good — like the books and the dresser and the plastic soccer trophies, the rug had grown vestigial. Such was the cost of growing up so quickly: things were chucked away as she outgrew them. Teenagers, thought Naomi’s mother, shed everything that stuck. Like snakes. Naomi stomped into the kitchen. It was barely on purpose; she could scarcely remember how to stop stomping. There was so much anger stored, shoved down, inside her thighs and knees and shins and calves, taut with rage. The floorboards had suffered since her infancy. Her mother sighed, recalling the days when stomping felt perfectly reasonable, when she felt entitled to it. The floor gave a little more, when you were younger. 13
“I swear to God,” said Naomi, who in all honesty had not thought very hard about God in awhile, “my room is shrinking. The walls are closing in.” She lunged towards — pounced on — the empty chair at the counter, peeled and devoured an unripe banana. It was difficult not to describe your children using words you heard on “Animal Planet.” They were so inclined to bite. “I see,” said her mother, because it was her job. The room was in fact getting smaller. There were two reasons for this. The first reason, Naomi’s reason, was that the room was filled with the past and not the future. The future that felt so very close, so very fogged up, intangible. Her room was altogether too tangible. Everything there had been known to her for too long, connected to some part of herself she no longer cared for. Updating her room was a waste. It would be out of season soon enough. She was ready to shed everything. The room had grown too small. But that didn’t make sense — shrunk too large? She had become bigger, taller, greater. Everything else was suffocating. The second reason, the real reason, was that the room felt smaller because it actually was getting smaller. Just last week one of the walls had squirmed in half an inch. It was some sort of crusade on the mice’s part — a faction of younger mice, 14
discontent with the meager pantry access their fathers had fought for, championing for more space between walls, for better transport. The mice couldn’t squirm through wall cavities any longer. The world had not quite given them enough, so they nudged the wall, centimeter by centimeter. Affirmative action, said one of the mice, who did not know what it meant but had heard it from behind the dishwasher on NPR. That’s what they were doing. Affirmative action, wall by wall. The structural integrity of the house had seen better days. A crack appeared in the kitchen ceiling, as if it was struck by lighting. “Did you see that?” said Naomi’s mother. Naomi looked up from her banana. The mice pushed. And grumbled. You had to work for everything yourself in this life, they squeaked. Otherwise you weren’t gonna get it. They tried various methods of wall relocation. The tail thwacking made interesting sounds but was largely ineffective. Scrunching up their faces and pushing them into the wall hurt too much. They settled on ramming into the walls with their sides. And chewing. It was nice to know that no matter whatever roadblock they came across, chewing would always work. They went to work. The ceiling shifted again. Naomi’s mother was concerned. Naomi was not. There would be other roofs, soon. She was taking great care to make 15
sure there would always be other roofs. Mmm, said the mice. Power cords. Naomi was banished to her room in light of the danger of the kitchen. Her seedy, veering room. Every single dumb trinket she ever bought, every crop top, every photo of her friends was staring at her, daring her to leave. Nothing in this room liked her. Nothing in this room knew her. And it was getting smaller. She just knew it. The walls stared her down.
Izadora M. 14 (Brooklyn, NY)
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Satwik Y. 15 (Jabalpur, India)
Satwik’s photograph illustrates a scene from the festival of Navratri (Nine Days) in India. Navratri is a small secretive ceremony where villagers show devotion and love towards 9 goddesses. At the start of the festival people grow Jowar (wheat) in small pots and they are cared for everyday, from the worship of saplings (first day) to the complete submergence in water (ninth day). As a symbolic act of devotion the male adults and some children pierce their cheeks through with a long spear known as a “bana”. This act is believed to please the god of war because “In the name of God, nothing is painful.”
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Roman B. 15 (Brooklyn, NY)
This is the end of Third Eye’s Issue #1: “Life As A Teenager.” Thank you to everyone who submitted and thank you all for viewing such wonderful work!
Izadora M. 14 (Brooklyn, NY)
Submit to our next issue: “Activism” by emailing us at: thirdeyem3dia@gmail.com! Follow us on Instagram: thirdeyem3dia and visit our website: thirdeyem3dia.com! 19
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