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Volume I | Issue iii

the inconspicuous staff

We began this project each with a different goal in mind; some of us were here for the writing, others for the idea, but all of us came with one thing in common: passion. We all shared a simple love for words that is ironically hard to express with the written language. It is this passion, this love, that has become our main focus, and our hope for the future, our legacy, if you will. South Eugene has a wonderful program for those students involved in a journalistic setting, for those writers who enjoy reporting and researching. However, this approach is only half of writing, and for the Creative Writers at South, there is no outlet. So it was that we created Inconspicuous, a venue for the creativity in our student population. And that is what our legacy should be, not the controversy, not the trouble, but the opportunity we offer the future. It’s been a strange year, and here’s to many more.

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Acknowledgement There is something about writing that can both infuriate and satisfy people; this quality is the beauty and power of literature, and yet also the danger. Naturally, we realized this when we began Inconspicuous, but we dwelled more on the excitement and adventure of the project, reveling in the opportunity to write what we wanted to. We were Prometheus, and the word was our fire. There are two forces here, neither is “good” nor “bad.” Both contain an ambiguous mixture of both: there are the members of the administration and school board, who need to represent the unspoken wishes of all South students and their parents; and there are the students of Inconspicuous, who have endeavored to push the limits of these rules with their own creativity. Creativity, of course, is a force that is always necessary in any structured community, as long as certain limits are observed. As we understand, the problem with our publication lay in its anonymity. We pushed our limits too far in that direction. Admittedly, we entered the project knowing that it infringed upon the rules set down by the students rights and responsibilities handbook, but only because we felt that it was nevertheless our constitutional right to be anonymous, just like Hamilton, Madison, and Jay were, with the Federalist Papers. However, we did not foresee that this would infringe upon the task set forth for the administration of South Eugene High school, or for any high school administration: not only abide by the rules written in the handbook, but to maintain an encouraging atmosphere for the students. An atmosphere that is conducive to the learning environment. Anonymity, although useful for us, created many ethical problems: it is a reader’s right to know the source of the literature they are reading, just as it is the responsibility of a politician running a campaign ad to identify the sponsor of the ad spot. People have a right to know who is addressing them. As such, with much consideration on our parts, we have come to realize the necessity for rules. While those mentioned before – Hamilton, Madison and Jay – were revolutionaries who used the same tool of anonymity, it was only for the betterment of the rules at hand. We have come to realize that though anonymity may be a powerful tool, it can get out of hand unless it is used wisely. To use such a tool to strike at those who implement the rules, which they did not create, was irresponsible and negligent, not to mention uncouth and unnecessary. It is with this in mind that we have chosen, as a group, to rescind the cloak and dagger lifestyle in favor of a more symbiotic relationship with the administration of South Eugene High School. Any attempts to change school policy will be made in a courteous and legitimate manner, not an under the table manipulation. We hope fervently for reconciliation, and that the error of our ways may be forgiven.

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Table of Contents

Features Sylas Gayle Fletcher IX

Letter .................................................5 The Journal ......................................6 Monolith .........................................11

Artur Redding

Letter................................................29 Paint Me Blue..................................31 2010..................................................33

Regulars Fairy Tales........................................50 Emo Poetry.......................................51 Hey Gertrude...................................72

Lillian Kennedy

Letter................................................41 Is There Life After Death?...........42 An Anti-Glacier Novel..................44 Rethinking Our Drug Policy.........48 To the Class of 2010.....................49

Jonathan T. Ferguson

Letter................................................55 A Prediction Came True...............57 Dream Story....................................59 The Beginning of the Rest of your Life............................................61

Emarie Carl

Letter................................................63 What was the Question?...............64

Gertrude Kalinowsky

Letter................................................67 I was Young Once. And Foolish Too...........................................68 Behind South’s Rose-tinted Glasses 70 Slushy Much with 4J.....................71

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Sylas Galye Fletcher IV better known as Wyatt Kirby

T

he writer’s dilemma is the presence of words. Were there to be only one word for each meaning, the writer’s task would be simple and clean, more akin to that of a surgeon than that of an artist. But the prevalence of words makes the task worth the struggle. Instead of facts, an author transcribes emotion, instead of the mundane, the author composes reality.

it doesn’t come today, doesn’t mean it won’t make you burst at the seams tomorrow.

And most of all, you have to understand when to write wrong. You have to understand the difference between an error and a miracle. The misplaced comma, the fractured sentence or the paragraph that goes on too long. All these are part of great writing. Anyone can memorize the difference between polysyndetoni and tmesisii , but The mark of a brilliant writer is not popularity, nor is it only a writer, only someone who loves the words, will critical acclaim. It comes from writing the razor’s edge, let the beauty of it all override the grammar, will let the between simplicity and brilliance, between meaning and sentence go farther than allowed. mystery. It comes from writer’s block, and it comes from And when it’s done, you have to know it’s done. You love. have to accept that that you’ve just lost part of yourself, and it’s ugly, it’s crude, but it has beauty, it has potenIt comes from loving the words. tial. You’ll shine, and you’ll polish, and you’ll work your It comes from loving the feel of them, how they taste hands till they bleed, and you’ll love every moment of it. And in the end, when it’s done, you won’t accept it. when they hit the page. It’s hard to let go of a story, let someone else read it. Not because you’re afraid of being judged, or because it’s not good enough, but because you’ll miss the creation of it It comes from the tug at the nape of the neck, the one so much it hurts. that makes you say it, even if it’s wrong. And then you have to do it over again. It comes from the way you feel when you sit down, how your fingers don’t care what your mind has to say, how they write the story because it’s in you, it’s part of you. It comes from loving the feeling of inexplicable joy as the last word screams it way onto the paper.

It comes from love. If you don’t love it, it won’t look right. You have to love the pen, and the paper, and understand that this pen and this paper are meant to be there, that together they are going to achieve what no other pen and no other paper could have. Together they are going to make something beautiful, and you are only a witness. And you have to know. You have to know that if it doesn’t come, if it doesn’t feel right, that you can let it go. You can’t force love, and you can’t force words. Just because

Polysyndeton: the use of several conjunctions in close succession. ii Tmesis: insertion of a word into another word. i

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The Journal

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The darkness was fascinating. I didn’t know quite what to make of it. It was there, all around me. A presence that could be felt and weighed, measured even. There was just enough light on the street corner to tell that I didn’t know where I was, and there was just enough darkness to figure I had probably been there before. But there was no way to take this darkness with me. I was fascinated by the sheer necessity of it and at the same time the impenetrable uselessness. It was, all in all, quite a pathetic thing. Simply the lack of light. But it was, in turn, a creature unto itself. I wonder if the shadow ever remembers it was the light that created it. I took to my senses and peered through the darkness. I was on a simple street corner. It was nothing special, there was a curb, a sign post and a flickering street lamp some hundred meters away. There was, as well, a feral looking cat cleansing itself on the side of a dumpster in an alley. There was no noise except those distant sounds of a forsaken city, and no smell but that of concrete minutes after an unexpected spring rain. There was nothing out of the ordinary with where I was, except myself. Taking the time to examine myself I was disappointed with what I had found. Having had only some mere moments to come to terms with the body that I found myself located in, I was hoping perhaps it would be a strong and supple body of a youth. Perhaps with some flowing blond hair and blue eyes that caught the light just so. But I realized, examining myself, that I was old. I estimated from the creaking feeling in my skeleton that I would be somewhere in my mid sixties, and my hair, alas, would be a sheer white. i still had hope for my eyes, however. I made then an attempt to stand, but to no avail. I decided for something less magnanimous, and instead raised simply my arm. This I managed, and I looked at my hand. It was withering, with somewhat yellowish fingernails. Around my wrist was a well made watch with silver hands and a black, expensive leather strap. The arm itself was clad in a suit, perhaps silk. Using this arm that I managed to control to prop myself up I found that with difficulty I was able to sit. I was indeed dressed in a suit. Quite a nice one. I searched the pockets perhaps to find some clue as to my identity, but I had none. I searched my mind for some memory of who I might be, but there was none. I must admit confusion at finding myself so abandoned on a standard street corner during a dark night. There seemed to be nothing odd about where I was, or who I was, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember a single detail. But there was one detail. There was something poking at the back of my mind, lingering on the tip of my tongue. It was a name... someone... important. Charles... Charles someone. I didn’t think it was me, but at the same time it seemed to fit myself. So I kept it. Being the only thing I had, especially since it suited so well, I decided I would be Charles. Charles who I did not know.

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But I was Charles. Once again I attempted to stand, and found it much more possible from a sitting position. Now fully erect I wondered how I might move about. Something about one foot in front of another. I got a sense that it involved a woman’s face very high above me cooing gently that I was a good boy, that I was to come to something called “mama”. All in all it was a useless bit of information that helped in no way with what I desired to do. It irked me that I remembered so many things that were so useless. That i should know of things that didn’t matter, and this one thing I needed now was gone. Forward. I need to go forward. Something clicked. It was a simple thing really. Left, right. I almost laughed to realize how easy it was to move. Left, right, left, right. Foot forward, toe down, knee bent, I moved more rapidly now than I had expected. Forward down the sidewalk. I moved towards some almost far off light. Another street, this one busy with moving vehicles. I wondered in that instance how I might stop before my hurrying form collided with these moving things that whirred, before I might cause one damage and be liable some amount of money I did not have. But stopping was not an option, and so I stepped right in the front of one of the fast moving things and worried to myself that it would break. To my surprise it did not break, it was in fact, myself that experienced harm. I marveled at this new direction I could go, as I was lifted up and over. Despite the intense pain in my leg and hip, I was joyous, this surely was how birds felt. But then the ground was there as though to catch me, but it did not. Instead I landed and skidded. There was screaming and honking then as I became once again cognizant of my surroundings. I attempted to emulate the way in which I had stood earlier, but found it quite impossible. My leg being in the wrong direction had made my situation that much worse. I wondered slowly why the world was turning a dull shade of black.

I woke up to glaring white all around me. A steady beep drove me silently insane. I looked around myself, and marveled at my surroundings. It was like being in a museum. A very poorly designed museum. The memories were coming back to me now.

A bed, a woman next to it was crying. There were children singing, and a tree indoors. There were dead bodies everywhere. Everywhere. Tens high and thousands wide. Bulldozers piling more in by the second. The laughter of work crews as they manipulated corpses into shared graves. Mass graves. A priest. “Forgive me father for I have sinned.” “The Lord knows of your sins, my child. They are too many for my benediction. Only an act of

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desperation can save you now.” And then there was the street. “Oh good, you’re awake.” A blonde man entered. “At your age, we thought you might never wake up. You’ve got yourself a second degree fracture in your left leg.” He puttered around for a moment. “Not the talkative type, are you. That’s okay. We should have you on your feet and out of here by tomorrow afternoon. We couldn’t find any contact info on you, is there anyone you’d like to call?” His name tag said Michael. He was right, I was out of there the next day. Michael told me they had found me at the corner of fiftieth and horn. I wandered through the city, marveling at all the antiquities people were treating with abuse. I remembered such things as drinking fountains and telephones now, they were childhood memories. But they were all gone, all save the very richest of the world had lost them. I remembered more every minute. The Great War. The explosions that had rocked the cities. The invasions and the eventual conglomeration of the globe. It was getting easier to sift through the memories. My name is Charles Sterne.

I found the alley where I first awoke. On the ground was a black smudge, a sooty stain on the blanket of the world. In the middle of it was a journal. A brown, leather-bound thing. I picked it up and read. I read the story of Charles Sterne. Newspaper clippings, headlining massacre after massacre. Sterne the Dictator, Sterne Kills Billions, Sterne Invades Again. On and on the list spiraled, I had killed, I had ordered the deaths of billions. Leveled cities, destroyed seas, forests and lives. At my command there had been rape and pillage worse than anything committed in Nanking. At the very back were two clippings different from the others. Charles Sterne for Congress. It was dated 2006. Michael Brasher Jailed For Claim of Time Travel. Next to it was a scribbled note. Two addresses and a simple sentence. “Kill self, fix world.” The first address was an apartment. After an arduous journey up the stairs I knocked on the door. It was answered moments later by the nurse from the hospital. “How did you get my address?” he stuttered. I handed him the journal. He flipped through it, his brows knitting. “This isn’t right, I know Charles. He would never do anything like this. This doesn’t make sense. These are the future--” I interrupted him.

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“Me, Charles.” “What?” Speech was still foreign to me. “Me, Charles.” “You’re Charles?” I nodded. “Michael Brasher?” I asked. “Yes...” “You invent time travel. Me, Charles. Kill self, fix world.” Michael was at his desk. He was looking over schematics and textbooks thicker than illuminated Bibles. “Time travel isn’t possible.” “You invent time travel. Me, Charles. Kill self, fix world.” Michael took me to the other address in the back of the journal. It was a gun store. I pointed out the one I wanted, a hunting rifle. Michael paid for it, and we left. There was a rally. Charles Sterne was giving a speech on public education, ending poverty, fighting against drugs. I lined up the perfect shot. The darkness was fascinating.

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Monolith 11

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Chapter One Glimür one Monolith rose across eons. Sculpting the land around it into a flat hell of sand. Caressing the world into its desires. The tower lived and breathed, holding in it the origins of the Weave. Monolith was the loom on which the lives of eternity were strung. Gibbs’ legs pumped, he ran like he’d never run before. Behind him he heard the slow prowl of Jambaks. He was more than dead, he was Unthreaded. Gone from the memory of Monolith. The world sped up. His body no longer ran with blood, his veins were ice cold, his senses dulled. The Chimes of Glimür rang clearly through his mind. He felt the Weave course between his fingers. This state of calm was difficult for him. Only the Jambaks were capable of achieving true Glimür, but even now he felt the taint of his blood. It came through clearly now, the failures of his genetic structure reminding him incessently with that eternal song. He turned slowly, the world sped around him, he felt trapped in tar, slowly shifting through the weave. He felt the air coarsen around him till the silk smooth strings of reality became as coarse and brittle as burlap. He could reach out and snap anything from reality, take from the Weave whatever he desired. Behind him the Jambaks moved in the same eternal slowness of Glimür as he found himself in. Their bodies retained the lines of reality. They raised their weapons and reached for the threads of Gibbs’ existence. Ghel ra nir ghel. Live only for life. Sure of his demise, Gibbs wished suddenly he wouldn’t have to die with the Chimes in his head. two Sylas saw the figure charging towards him in the distance. Behind him were the telltale ripples of Jambaks as they stalked through the Glimür. Sylas watched in interest as the first figure slowed and began to disengage from reality. The Glimür was a fascinating thing to watch. Ghel ra nir mür. Live only for death. Sylas stood and unfocussed his eyes. three Dyanae sat bolt upright. There was someone in the Weave. Someone in her thread. She let out a high pitched scream. The walls around her reverberated, a white sphere held her chained in mid air. Her existence was absolutely devoid of color. Everything was white. At the pinnacle of Monolith she anchored the White Thread. Ghel ra nir gli. Live only for the Weave Monolith had nicknamed her the Scorceress.

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Chapter Two Resurrection one Sylas came across the body of the young man he had seen in the distance. Sylas was no stranger to death, he knew the signs well, had inflicted them on a fair few himself. This one was dead. Sylas knelt next to the boy and listened calmly to his heart. It was not beating. But as Sylas slowed, he reached deeper, leaving behind the vibrations of the weave he stretched his mind out towards the anchors. They were so close. He felt certain that the shadow of Monolith would fall accross his face at any second, blacking out the sky and all the world with its might. Then he heard it. The resounding chime down this boy’s thread. It had been severed. But that was not the will of the Glimür. He was needed. He was called for. And even now the Scorceress (for surely this was a man of the White Thread, just as surely Sylas was a man without) gave some of her own life to preserve this man’s. Poor Dyanae, so harsh. Sylas looked up at Monolith. “You bastard. You stone bastard. You hurt her and I swear I will tumble you to the ground.” His threat was useless though, he already knew she was being hurt, he already knew he couldn’t bring Monolith to its knees. So many years traveling here for nothing. He began his journey knowing that to approach the Obsidian Throne would be useless. That seat had been empty since the fall of Artur. The mile steps were worthless as well, the Jambaks no longer stood guard. There was no way to tumble Monolith. But here he had found something special. As the Glimür fell in his chest, a new scream resounded. Such utter pain it was for her to stretch herself. Sylas almost wept at the thought that she went through this pain again and again just so that he may keep breathing. And so would this man keep breathing. two Her thread stretched. There was a severe void in the weave. One that wasn’t supposed to be there. She resisted. Death was not manageable. Death was the end. There was no fate. But Monolith echoed in her bones. HE WILL SURVIVE. She released another scream. Existence was torture. three Gibbs thought it felt like being Glumür. It wasn’t painful. It was calming. He felt as though everything in life slipped slightly away, as though the tension of reality lessened. He felt free. Then he heard it. It was the chimes. Those hopeless chimes, would they chase him forever? Then a scream. It reached into his body and siezed him. Anchored him. The power of that scream frightened him. What could possibly hurt so much? What could possibly cause such pain as was conveyed in that frightful scream? The pain took hold of him. Pulled him incessantly back towards reality. He found himself eye to eye with a face he thought his own. Only, it was old. Aged far beyond his own 16 years. It echoed his features. Only the eyes were creased in pain, the smile seemed burned there, but there was no joy in it. This was the face of pain. This was the face of one who had seen too many days on earth. This was the face of Sylas.

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Chapter Three Prophecy one “Stop it, for the love of god, please, go away...” HE WILL SURVIVE. “But I might not...” THEN YOUR TIME WILL BE OVER. HIS IS NOT. “What does he have left to do?” HE MUST DIE. two Sylas looked into his eyes. They were the hazy violet of one descended from Jambak. Just as his own were. He felt like he was looking into a mirror. He grabbed the young man by the front of his shirt and lifted him to his feet. There was a smudge of blood under his left eye. Sylas watched unsurprised as it flowed back into the gash down his temple and sealed. The boy clutched his head as though in pain. He wept a little. His voice seeping out like blood. “Stop the screaming. It hurts. It hurts me. Oh... what pain...” Sylas took the boys hands from his ears. “It’s in your heart. You’ll get used to it, it will dim in time. You’ll forget about the noises in you. In time you may come to love them. There are those of us who can’t sleep without the chimes anymore.” He looked up at Sylas. Sylas could see already where the creases of pain would fall. Where the torment of reality would mark this poor child’s face. “Why are they there?” As a response, Sylas raised a single hand to point at the dark obelisk. His mouth formed silently one word. “Monolith.” three Gibbs felt awkward in his body. He felt trapped, as though his freedom was encroached upon by reality. The chimes were deafening. The man, Sylas, had lit a fire, they were seated under the slight shelter of a dune. The overcrop of sand offered little protection from the coursing winds. “You’re here for a purpose. Monolith has decreed that you survive.” I don’t want to. “Why?” “Only Monolith knows. I don’t question it. I’m simply here to destroy it.” “How?” I can’t.” “But...” “It doesn’t matter. Prophecy says it will fall. Just not by my hands.” Prophecy? “Prophecy?” “And from the west shall walk a man “Blade and sorrow hand in hand “And from the east shall come a father “And from the tower comes a mother “And in blood the son they call “At their hands so Monolith falls”

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Chapter Four Weave one “Reality is a cloth. Woven from the strands of people’s lives. As time stretches backwards, so does the cloth. Each thread affects in no small way the threads of everyone near it. Imagine the power one could wield if they were to harness the Weave. “This is Glimür.” Gibbs gave him a sullen look. “Old man, do you think me stupid?” “Far from it. You are prophecy.” two The pain was less now. Dyanae wept silently. Her pale body crucified in the white sphere. Everything, so white. Her cold body shivered. She wished that Monolith would give her something to keep away the cold. It never would. She was as naked as the day she was born. As naked as the day her son was born. As naked as the night he was concieved. The same night Monolith summoned her. She still felt Sylas’ touch. Now he was dead. She had seen him Unthreaded by the Jambaks. Terrible beasts. Horrible creatures. Failures. To think her Sylas was descended from one. That her own son was. All she had were memories now. Memories and pain. She remembered much. Sylas’ descent from Jambak wasn’t bad. No. He traced his line back to the Jambak’s of Artur. The last true Jambaks. Those changed as free will, rather than those made by force. But Dyanae was glad that his lineage was so far back. All that remained of the Jambak in him were the eyes and the Glimür. And even she had the Glimür. Cursed White Thread. three Gibbs looked on with a blank stare. Sylas continued to speak. “The Weave is all grays. Everyone is a gray thread. But there are a few. Rarely more than two at one time, but sometimes several in one era. There are a few who are pure. White, or Black. “It is these two that hold the Weave in check. Monolith takes them and places them. One far underground, for Monolith stretches equally below the earth as it does into the sky, and one at the pinnacle. Between them are strung every thread.” Gibbs, who had been playing with his knife, knicked his thumb. Instinctively he reached to put it in his mouth. With lightening speed, Sylas, whom Gibbs thought lost in a reverie, shot out his hand and grabbed his wrist. “Your blood is poison. Remember that. If you ingest so much as a drop of immortal blood. You will die. Monolith cannot stop it. Nothing can stop it. Your blood is poison.” Gibbs looked startled at the seriousness in Sylas’ eyes. The cut on his thumb already healed. “The prophecy you spoke speaks of four people. You’re one. I’m one. Where are the other two?” Sylas pointed east. “There.” Then he stretched his hand to the pinnacle of Monolith. “And there.”

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Chapter Five Demon one He was touching her. Dyanae could feel the cold fingers trace her body. She couldn’t fight back. All she could do was scream. But that was what he wanted. That was why he did it. This is why Auberon tortured her. To hear her scream. “Please leave me alone...” she wimpered as his icy touch bit into her left breast. His voice came from everywhere. “Oh, but won’t you scream, my darling?” Dyanae gasped as he took her. So cold. Auberon, King of Monolith, descendent of Artur. Vile descendant. Not true blooded. Her Sylas was true. Artur’s blood ran in his veins as well. But this creature... a product of trickery and incest. Now his spirit was entwined with Monolith. Now he tortured her. So cold. She bit her lip, but it was no good. She screamed. Auberon laughed. DON’T WORRY, SCORCERESS. HIS TIME WILL COME. ALL WILL BE WELL. “Thank you...” she whispered meekly. two It had been four days. Sylas didn’t seem to count a difference between the periods of light and periods of dark. He only seemed to care about the eastern sky. Occasionally he would turn to Gibbs and lecture him on some subject or another, but for the most part it was a boring life. Gibbs had taken to playing with Glimür. He found the transition effortless now. Finding the chimes was not a chore, they were always there. “Tell me,” Gibbs said to Sylas, who stared intently at the horizon. “Is this what it’s like to be Jambak?” Sylas turned his slow sad eyes on Gibbs. “To be eternal Glimür is to be Jambak. We’ve left the Weave. Haven’t you been listening? Glimür is seperating yourself from the Weave. You are no longer attatched to it by anything but the White Thread. “Were the White Thread to snap, you would cease to be, as surely as though you were unthreaded,” he turned his steady gaze back towards the east. “Silent now, the father’s time approaches.” three The young one, Gibbs, was growing impatient. Sylas knew it wouldn’t be long now. “Surely there is more prophecy than that verse.” “Of course there is. Tome upon tome. Scroll upon scroll. The cave at Anabatswa alone holds more prophecy than you could read in one life time. The entire future of the universe is written out someplace or another. Monolith has it ingrained in every stone in its structure. You will read much of it. But later. “Our companion third companion comes close. Once we have him we will walk north. The prophecies aren’t so vague as to leave us wondering what to do next. We will sit here a day, a week at the very most. Then we will leave. And we will fulfill prophecy. Without it, we would be as useless as this sand.” They waited two more days. Then on the horizon grew a shadow that stretched what seemed for miles. It was a slow built man, trudging along as though under some unfathomable burden. “It is time,” said Sylas.

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Chapter Six Father one Sylas took long steps across the sand. The shadow on the horizon had colapsed long ago, but he grew closer with every step. Gibbs hurried behind Sylas, and as they drew near they saw that the slumped over figure was hurt. His clothes were ripped and bloody, his face a destroyed mess of flesh. “Who is he?” Gibbs asked. Sylas responded in a monotone. “He is the father.” Gibbs looked hesitantly at him, “my father?” Sylas turned a reproachful gaze to him. “What does your heart tell you? Look at his weave if you must.” Gibbs took a moment to slip Glimür. Sylas never left this state, he always trailed a faint distortion. Gibbs saw clearly that the man’s Thread was still intact, though hardly. He also noticed that it was not gray, nor black, nor white. This man’s string was a crystalline blue. “Who is he that shines so bright in my mind’s eye?” Sylas looked at him again. “He is the father.” two Sometimes Dyanae dreamt of her father. The stolid gray faced man who stood prominently throughout her childhood. She was sure he was dead now. His dead brown eyes always so reassuring. He was gone to her. So was everyone. Their threads had slipped away beyond her control. She didn’t know how long she’d been here. How many years, or perhaps eons, had it been long enough to be an eon yet? It certainly felt like it, how many years Auberon had tortured her with his cold touch. As though these thoughts summoned him, she felt the ice trace down her spine. Help me, please... FEAR NOT. NOT LONG NOW. ALL WILL BE OVER. Auberon’s voice chimed in her head. “Boo.” She already felt the scream rise in the back of her throat. three Sylas looked deep into the eyes of the father. The mud black eyes. They were unresponsive. Slow, stupid eyes. That the fate of the world ended in this mans eyes was a mockery. “He looks dead, Sylas.” “He’s not.” The parched throat drew in a shudder of air. “Who are you who haunt me so? Let me rest in peace. My thread is broken.” Sylas pressed his fingers into the man’s temple. The mud black eyes rolled backwards into his skull till all that was left were the bloodshot whites. “Sleep, father. Tomorrow we walk.” Gibbs kindled a fire under the sultry moon. “How far do we walk tomorrow?” he asked as Sylas sharpened the short bladed sword he carried at his side. “How far can you walk?” Gibbs turned away from him and closed his eyes.

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Chapter Seven North one Dyanae shuddered. He came so often to her now. He took so much of her strength. How could she be expected to support the Weave with him always there? Always making her scream? It was no longer his touch that hurt her so. It was his voice. It rasped with the ages but held such dominion over her. She no longer felt that rape was the crime being committed. Her body was not hers. It hadn’t been hers since she had given it to Sylas. Sylas had been caring. He hadn’t taken of her like Auberon did. Auberon came at her again. “Who do I remind you of ?” he mused in her ear. She clamped her mouth shut, determined not to scream. This time she would not scream. “Is it your father?” his invisible hands moved slowly down her shoulders. He was never there, only his touch, only his voice. Everything was white. “Is it your brother?” they caressed her. She shuddered, but could not shy away. “Is it your dear,” his hands were cold. “Sweet,” everything was white. “Sylas?” everything was cold. She broke her promise and screamed. A resounding, pain-filled no. He cackled in her mind. OVER SO SOON. WE WILL ALL BE DEAD SO SOON. NO MORE PAIN. two Sylas woke with a start. Night sweat covered his face. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. That vile thing was in her again, he could feel her scream reverberate in his chest. That cursed tower. “My Dyanae... I will save you.” Barely four feet away, Gibbs lay silently, tears streaming from his eyes. “Get out you monster... Sorceress... I will save you.” three They had walked for weeks. The wounds on the father had healed. His blue thread again pulsed strong. When Gibbs had asked Sylas why it was blue, he had turned the eyes, which in the time Gibbs had been with him had changed from those of a lost soul to those of a man harrowed by demons which he could not describe. Gibbs’ eyes too were colder, darker. Creases lined his face. When Gibbs had asked, Sylas had responded simply “He’s not woven from Monolith.” They had walked for weeks. Passing no true signs of life. Sylas promised the desert only lasted another three hundred miles. To Gibbs’ eyes he never seemed to tire. He felt that Sylas could march from one end of infinity to the other without stopping once. While Gibbs and the Father, who’s name they could not understand, his tongue having been cut out, stopped many times daily for water and rest, Sylas stood as though impatient with their weaknesses. He would look at the sky, then focus his lavender eyes on Gibbs. He never spoke much anymore, but Gibbs always knew exactly what he wanted to say. Gibbs guessed the father did too. So when Sylas walked, they followed.

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Chapter Eight Town one There had never been so many people. Gibbs was taken aback by the sheer number of lives stretching around me. The gray strings of varying shades were woven together here to create a beautiful picture. At the center of town was a well, which the women would gather around to pull water back to their homes. It must have been happy here. There was no pain, no anguish. There was laughter. The people’s faces all smiling around, wandering over the grass, children playing, their life new and taught. There was one out of place. An old blind man. two When the first child fell sick and died, no one thought anything of it. When the second child fell sick and died, no one thought anything of it. Sylas sat with Dyanae, watching as the red man filled the well with poison. Why did he do it? Why did he end those lives around him? The blind beggar, knotted up inside himself. Soon his time would come. three The Father sat cross legged on the lawn. Watching the blind man fill the town with death. His eyes were not obscured by the weave, the lives around him were the lives of people. There was no prophecy guiding his hand. But this man was red, and it fascinated him. The Father watched Gibbs come behind him, watched as the blind man struck with his cane, as Gibbs’ hands took the blind life. Was this justice? Was this what had to be done? YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I DO, FATHER. Auberon, my brother, you are far gone. Gibbs eyes were red. four Dyanae felt something stir. It was warmth. There was something growing in her womb. YOUR SON GROWS STRONGER. HE WILL BE THE DEATH OF ME. do you not deserve it? WE SHALL SEE. Dyanae smiled for the first time.

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Chapter Nine Coliseum one The boy’s eyes were red. Sylas led his two followers east. The boys eyes were red, they had been since the death of the blind man. Only Gibbs did not notice the change in his own body. Sylas could feel the end of the prophecy nearing. He could feel everything coming into place. When the city of tents appeared on the horizon, he felt glad. They walked among the tents, drawing stares from fighters. This was a dry land. There was little water, and one pure source. These were the contenders for control over that water. They came to fight for their thirst, to fight for their hunger. To fight for their lives. Their leader, the best fighter, was wrong. He had no ears. two The bald man couldn’t hear anything. Gibbs was sure of this. He had an orange chord drawn through him. In his hands were two sickles, cruel steel blades that stained the ground with blood. Gibbs stepped into the ring to fight. Sylas had told him this was prophecy. But was it just? three The boy was brave when he fought the orange beast. Massive with scars running down his whole body, an orange chest impenetrable by any blade. The boy was lucky when the blade only cut off one finger. The boy was lucky when his life was saved by a small stone, which the large man tripped over. The boy was lucky when he disarmed the deaf man. The boy was lucky when he slit his throat. A strange orange light grew around his chest. The Father smiled. His boy was growing, protected by prophecy, by Sylas. HE WILL DIE SOON, YOU CAN’T STOP IT. YOU CAN’T PROTECT HIM. and you can’t kill him. The boy grew distant. four HOW MANY MORE? “Not many...” HE STILL MUST DIE. “He may live...” WILL YOU? “I don’t know yet.”

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Chapter Ten Cathedral one The stone cathedral was lopsided. Sinking on its eastern edge into the marshy ground, the peat bog which surrounded it. There was nothing more than a lonely priest living in the drafty stone temple. He gave the travelers lodging for the night, and took confession. He told the story of the city which was razed to the ground by Jambaks decades ago, how the ground of the Cathedral had burned their feet. They had taken the lives of everyone, taken the homes of everyone, leaving a charred ruin, but the Cathedral had defended itself. There was still a power in the word of God. He blessed Gibbs in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The irony was not lost on Sylas. two Gibbs found the preacher in the bell tower. He was watching his land, which had once been a city. He had a tear in his eye, and a cross in his hands. “My time has come?” Gibbs felt the chimes. “I want you to have this,” the priest said, handing Gibbs the cross. “Strike true, so it is not long. I have no need for this world any more.” Gibbs could see the yellow which bound the man to this piece of wood. “How can your faith be so strong, father? Is it not clear that your God has abandoned this place? Abandoned these walls and this land? Abandoned you? How can you go on with your benedictions and rituals, sustain yourself, knowing that he has turned a blind eye on you?” The priest smiled slowly. “The Lord may have abandoned me, but I will not abandon him.” three The grave which Sylas dug for the Priest was deep. He laid the cross with him, and placed a stone at his head. It had been a quick death, a death of commiseration more than pain, a consensual end to life. The gravestone was unmarred. No name had been known, and no name had been needed. The Father wondered after his own grave. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME PUT ON YOUR GRAVE, BROTHER? you will have no say in my death. SHALL IT SAY FATHER? OR ARCHIMEDES? WHICH ARE YOU NOW? i’m the same as i’ve always been, Auberon. four The child kicked. She could feel its heart beat counterpoint her own. Little Archimedes. Such a strong child.

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Chapter Eleven Canvas one There was a small fire under a tree. There was no food. No sustenance for their tired bodies, nothing to rest their tired feet. They were nothing more than husks who had walked for miles. Sylas was taken aback by the calm which had risen over Gibbs since they left the Cathedral weeks before. They had walked simply through the barren landscape for miles. Always east by north east. The calm had come almost suddenly the morning of their departure, and with it had come the halo. A golden aura around Gibbs’ head that shone brightly in certain light, but was almost invisible at other times. He would sit for long times staring intently in the direction of Monolith. “What are you looking at?” “I don’t know.” “What are you looking for?” “I don’t know.” two It was a cold day when they found the hovel in the woods. There wasn’t much to it except a thatch roof and a tired young man on the porch. He had no hands. He was, however, painting with vigor, using only his mouth to hold his brush. His thread was a brilliant shade of green. “Good afternoon!” he said. Gibbs replied “What are you painting?” “Only what I see, only what I see.” three The Father sat for a portrait that night. He sat, and he watched Gibbs melancholy look, he sat and he watched the knowledge creep over his face. He liked the exuberant young artist, he liked him quite a lot. He had bright green hands. That night there was a brief cry of pain, and then a whimper and a laugh. four “Dyanae...” “Auberon.” “The child is mine.” “It is mine.” “We shall see.” NOT LONG NOW. “How long is not long?” Dyanae asked. NOTHING IS VERY LONG WHEN YOU LAST FOREVER. “But you won’t last forever...” WE SHALL SEE.

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Chapter Twelve Orphan one Her hair was silver in the moonlight. Sylas laughed as they laid in the grass, her hands were warm. Dyanae was so happy, the world was color. There was a resounding thunderclap. The world was upside down. Creatures, almost human, almost animal stalked the night. A gnarled hand halfway between paw and fingers clasped at Dyanae’s wrist. She was pulled away. Sylas stood, the creatures shivered in and out of existence. “Tar rasha ingor nir gli. Ghil, ghil ra nir gli,” rhasped one of the creatures. “You can’t have her,” Sylas yelled, throwing himself into the creature. There was nothing of his past. He was unthreaded. But then he was alive. Tied to her, tied to his Dyanae. Ghel ra nir gli, qer maktil, qur maktil. Live only for the weave, it is prophecy, you are prophecy. two Gibbs watched the Father. three The Father sang as he sat. The words were not important, they were simply sounds to be sounds. What more could one ask for? What more could one need? They were sounds, and they were happy sounds. Gibbs watched him. The Father knew his time would come. is it time? HAVE YOU DONE YOUR PART? it is time. MAKTIL ET DYANAE, SIL TAMBA GHÜL NIR. GLI MAKTIL. i don’t know what you’re saying. four Dyanae could hear her child’s voice. It was a lovely shade of blue, and she knew it would be an orphan child. MAKTIL ET ARCHEMEDES, SIL TAMBA GHÜL NIR. GLI MAKTIL. “Archimedes was prophecy, mourn not his life. The Weave is prophecy.” SARGROTH TIL.

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Chapter Thirteen Wheels one The death of the Father came as no surprise to Sylas. He had expected it. Gibbs now bore his blue voice, he was gradually filling his life with the colors of others. But he was still prophecy. The two had walked on, in silence, for two months now without company. On the horizon there was a new city. Towers of gray steel scraped the sky. The terrain had remained markedly the same for miles now, a low grass that swayed in the wind. There was seldom a tree. A week before the two had found a gray strip of rock bearing towards the south east which they had followed. It now led them to the city. It was an empty city. “Where was this place?” “Somewhere in the past. There were many threads here.” “Aye.” On a corner there was a chair. A chair with wheels. There was the ghostly indigo figure of a man. A man with no legs. He held a sign. Mehr kalta nit bürr. Will work for food. two She could feel the child growing larger. Its presence seemed to have frightened Auberon from her end of the tower, no longer did he frequent her nightmares. She spent the days cooing to her son and listening to the voice of Monolith. It filled the chamber with stories of pasts long past and people long dead. The cities of Catilon and Myrmoth. Vast empires each, whose borders clashed at Monolith. But the tower had stood long before their time. A war came between Catilon and Myrmoth, and neither could best the other. The Obsidian Throne was placed at the base of Monolith. There sat the King, protected by his Jambaks. Only he could enter the Tower. Only a King of Monolith could rule the land. It had been long since a King sat on the throne. It had been long since a King visited the spheres of the weave. It had been long. three There was no telling what to do with the chair. Gibbs sat in silence, not knowing how to proceed. He had no body to take, only the soul. Was there anything to free it from? How? He sat as Sylas wandered the city. It was the city of Myrmoth, far to the east of Monolith. Gibbs took bread from his pocket and handed it to the shade. Its ghostly hand reached forth and could not grasp the food. Gibbs slept. He woke to find the Chair empty. Not knowing if he should, Gibbs took the chair and sat. He felt a numbness in his legs. The sign sat in his lap. On the back was a map.

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Chapter Fourteen Sparrow one Gibbs stood from the chair and walked. The footsteps on the map were clearly his own. He walked and walked, leaving the sleaping Sylas behind. He felt new strength in his legs and he strode faster than any time before. Cross rivers. Cross plains. Mountains. Monolith lay before him, and he passed it, walking straight a path only he knew. Cross mountains. Cross plains. Cross rivers. There was another city, one which he did not know. It was grand, all towers of green. All the streets straight and true. There was no life here, either. Gibbs walked mercilessly onward, to a building higher than the rest. This green tower could rival the height of Monolith. He began to ascend the stairs. On the walls were scenes of heroic battles. A man in armor with wings wielded a spear against a dragon. His helmet was red and blue. His cuirass was orange. His gauntlets were green His greaves were indigo. Around his head was a halo of yellow. Still Gibbs climbed. The same armor appeared again and again, the same winged hero. He fought armies and men. He fought angels and demons. He fought onward and upward. Then the man fell. His wings were shorn off. His halo was taken from him. His greaves were stripped from his legs. His gauntlets were taken from his hands. His cuirass was removed from his torso. His helm was smashed in half and each piece was separated. All by the violet eyed Jambaks. And in the end, the man was unthreaded. His deeds were undone. And the white spear, the white spear was taken finally, and given to a man. A man in black steel. Before Monolith he took the spear and with it cracked the Obsidian Throne. He entered Monolith. Auberon had conquered the Tower. Gibbs found the top of this building and he stood, watching the sunrise against Monolith’s silhouette. At dawn, a sparrow landed on his shoulder, with the violet eyes of the Jambak. two Dyanae was ready. IT IS TIME.

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Chapter Fifteen Prophecy one Sylas woke. two Dyanae screamed. three Gibbs was warm. four The Blind Man’s eyes were steel. five The Strong Man’s chest was steel. six The Priest’s prayer’s were answered seven The Artist’s hands were whole. eight The Father’s voice was heard. nine The Cripple’s legs were strong. ten The Sparrow’s wings took flight. one The Sorceress’s heart was pure.

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Chapter Sixteen Glimür one Dyanae gave birth to the Son. Gibbs emerged into the room of white. Dyanae, who had been held aloft, came crashing to the ground. She was the Mother now. Gibbs stood over her, clad in the armor of the hero. In his chest beat the white heart of the Sorceress. I WILL SEE TO HER. YOUR TIME IS NOW. GO. So Gibbs went. The Glimür took him down. He sailed over the weave, watching the lives of many strung into one world. He watched as every life was strung back and forth between good and evil, pulling together a tapestry that was more beautiful than life itself. As each and every thread was joined together to create one never ending clothe. He soared over artists and warriors, paired forever through time. He sailed over the rich and the poor, the hungry and the privileged. Here, none were different, all were threads in a tapestry. Where on the soil one might work and break one’s back for nothing, but in the weave that same thread may complete the most perfect image. Gibbs slipped down. And life grew dark. The other end of the weave was held deep below the earth in the white tower of Monolith. There, in a black room, sat Auberon. “I have been waiting, Son.” He held in his hand the white spear. “I have been waiting for a long time.” Auberon lunged. The spear pierced the armor. Gibbs’ blood ran white down the shaft, over Auberon’s hand. Auberon lifted his hand and tasted the blood. “Pity it had to end so soon.” Auberon laughed. Auberon died. Gibbs died. two The Jambak’s came for Sylas. They took him and placed him far under ground. The Glimür bells chimed a wedding tune. RIT HAVRA KOMDAT MONOLITH. you are monolith now. end

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Volume I | Issue iii

Artur Redding better known as Yuxi Lin

I

have been having problems writing lately. Sometimes I would

try to force myself to yank out the words, scribbling on used envelopes, corners of homework worksheets, and half-recycled notebook paper - quite like the one I’m using right now. Other days, I would play a game of pretend, sitting in Espresso Roma with a pen in one hand and a cappuccino in the other, just like a writer should. Yet, it is not that I have run out of things to say, but rather, I have so much to say that I can’t quite put into coherent speech just the way I want to. I wanted to write about Inconspicuous, our adventures, our discoveries, high school, graduation, college, politics, and even the more painful subjects like saying goodbye and finding ourselves through this tumbling game of life. I wanted to write about everything. That’s why when I first was called up and assigned to this I nearly cried in frustration. So, it is Saturday night - sixteen minutes from midnight and deadline - I’m sitting in front of my unstained laptop with filled note cards and doodles surrounding my workspace, hoping that some stroke of brilliance will hit me. Don’t read this if you hate midnight ramblings from caffeine-high teenagers. I’ve tried my best. This is it. It was Thursday morning in January, when all of us were still praying for the first snowflakes of the season to fall, and there it was, not too pretty, but perfect in our eyes. After a month of hard work, we had finally managed to get all our creativity together and spew out the very first issue. If we had any idea what our innocent project was going cause, the avalanche it was going to create, I wonder if any of us would go back and change it; perhaps not. But as far as we could tell, everything was fine. And before

we knew it, we were on our cycle again, staying up late, editing, ripping apart pieces, and occasionally, even stabbing some to death. One day, (you might have seen us in fact) we decided that it would be awfully funny if every single one of us, all dressed in black (except for one bright red) marched into the offices of the principals and the primary conference room. It was indeed, rather humorous, especially since we lined ourselves two by two, in rows of three, grave and austere, while the underclassmen gave us weird looks as if we were crazy men pretending to be sane. “We should’ve brought paper bags,” someone said, when we made it to the dull conference room. A box of tissues laid in the center, and nothing else was noticeable, insipid and bland, like the rest of school. By then, we had already been told that we were facing possible suspension for the direct violation of the school rules. We tried, during our meeting, to explain the injustice of our treatment, our punishment, as well as the problems within the school policy itself. Anonymity, it seemed, should be allowed on campus, whether or not it looked like a mask for our supposed cowardice. There was something about the power of anonymity that gave us a sort of exhilaration that otherwise may not have been present; it took away the biases towards our work, gave us freedom of the written word, along with a sense of “coolness.” It is true that in someone else’s hands, such power could have been easily abused, just as any other concept and object would. Yet, we continued to push our case, that is, so long as we have the responsibility, anonymity should be given to us as a right, not as a privilege. After all, we reasoned, the Federalist Papers were anonymous too. The negotiations can be best described as ending in a sort of a stalemate. On one hand, we only had to deal

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with ten community service hours and an apology letter, but on the other hand, we couldn’t continue the anonymity, and eve faced possible censorship. Of course, by no means this was the end: we weren’t going to allow such a simple ruling that violated the very essence of our creation to stop the angry and frustrated minds within ourselves. During the course of the past few months, our rash decisions had brought us far more than we could have imagined. Soon we found that even the city lawyer and the ACLU was on our side, and all we had to do was give the tiny order to change perhaps school policy forever. Yet, we knew that a lawsuit would not necessarily give us the right satisfaction; pursuing a more “intelligent” and mature course was smarter for the time being and, perhaps, far more fulfilling. Surprisingly, if anything, our encounter with the administration had only made us a stronger and closer group. Obviously even we weren’t crazy nor geeky enough to write every single moment of our lives; there were breaks, where all we did was sat around the television screen and popped the chips in our mouths one by one while our bottoms melted into goo, and there were even times where we just laid on the soft mellow grass, staring at the dragon-like clouds that went over our heads, forgetting everything and anything that had to do with us. We counted the days until graduation, the minutes, tick tock, as we slowly drifted towards the end of the year, the summer, and college. 39... 38... 37... Despite all our adventures, from staying up all night to watch a geek show to pretending to violate the law, despite all the fun, it still felt sickening. Sickening and depressing and ephemeral. It was no secret that all of us had to leave, that all of this would end eventually, that we will go on, past the summer, past college, and forever, as if nothing had ever happened. But – we realized, or at least, most of us did, that it didn’t

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matter. Saying goodbye is rarely the end. All wonderful moments must end sometime, whether for good or for bad; it is simply how you use that moment to create it into the very best you can, and turn it into a masterpiece, a perfection. And even more importantly, pursue the person that you are during that moment. For instance, with Inconspicuous, I don’t think we ever quite won our battle, in fact, if anything, we lost. Nevertheless, in some ways victory is still in our hands because we kept going, writing, fighting, and best of all, laughing. Immediate success is not necessarily the greatest gift, we figured, and rather it is our continuing and unfaltering belief that we stay who we are, and along with it, our values. The tragedies and obstacles this year, to put it quite simply, were just another bruise in our stubborn little minds; our intoxication with our hobbies created who we were. Perhaps that is why despite all the agonizing debates and stalemates we still managed to stand (a bit crippled) at the same place we began, only a little wiser, and a little sadder. It’s late. The tiny pixilated digits on my computer screen are barely readable, and my eyeballs feel like as if they’ve been plucked out and re-glued to my skull. I’m not sure if I quite explained everything I needed to, but it’s the closest to the truth and fiction that I can get it. Staring at the screen, I reach for what’s still left of my coffee, now ice cold from the last couple of hours of fading heat. Writing has a funny way of getting at you: every time when you do write something worthwhile and very much the truth, you’re never exactly the same when you finish it as when you began. Sometime along the process, the brain reorganizes those neurons and wham! it comes to you, like pot, only better. I remember trying to explain some of the themes about winning and losing the other day to my younger sister. She didn’t really understand. But it’s alright, I figured, there’s still time for her to learn. A. Redding

Volume I | Issue iii

Paint Me Blue

I

f you were to ask me when I first realized the meaning of race – realized that I was Asian and therefore “different,” I would not be able to give you an answer. It was a journey, a series of uncomfortable discoveries and acknowledgments that left all parties embarrassed. My parents left China when I was nearly four – and they never let me forget it. In fact, in many ways they were the epitome of Asian culture: reserved, stringent, and conservative. I found their constant guard and exhortation of Chinese values made me even aware of my ethnicity, creating an invisible barrier between me and the rest of the world. They stood, too proud, too aloof from the rest of the world while I had to struggle to understand what they meant by “Chinese.” A year and a half after we moved to the states, a dully dressed mailman dropped an ominous-looking package on our doorstep. My dad took it gravely, without a word, while I treaded behind, curious to see what was inside. He shushed me and opened the package. Out came a pink card with a picture of me on one side and a tiny fingerprint on the other – my fingerprint. RESIDENT ALIEN, it said, across the top. Confused, I asked my dad what my face was doing on a card like that. (In Chinese)”That’s because you’re an alien. Everyone in the family except your sister are aliens.” “But we don’t look any different, Papa!” My dad chuckled and shook his head. “We need it to live in America.” He pointed to the number written underneath the title. “That’s your alien registration number.”

And with that, he left, with me more confused than I ever had been. In time, I forgot about the silly alien registration card and nearly anything that reminded me of the differences society created. But when I was six, I wrote my first story, The Adventure of Bob the Caterpillar, and drew some pretty pictures to go with it. I knew right then, after rubbing some graphite on paper about a green caterpillar with a yellow nose, that I wanted to be a writer. Naturally, I went to my parents and announced my discovery; to my astonishment, however, their lips pursed, eyes furrowed, and mouths chided, giving me a typical “Asian” answer I should have predicted: “No. That is not a suitable job.” I was left abashed and wondering: what is so scandalous about being a writer? Perhaps I would have continued writing if it were just my parents who disapproved; but quickly I found that even the my friends were hesitant to support me. “Why do you want to be a writer when you can be someone else?” they asked. I would sit silently, nodding every now and then to their lecture on why I shouldn’t be a writer. I thought I was only being considerate of their feelings and smart for listening. The truth is, I was a coward. It wasn’t until middle school, during a brief interview with my counselor about future career options, sitting in a musty office that stank of body odor, that I really understood their reasons. Nevertheless, I never would have expected that under that cobweb-infested ceiling, my counselor would tell me, in tight thin lips, that being a writer was a dream – a foolish dream – that one, would bring me no money, two, would make me insignificant, three, would be difficult because I was a girl, and finally,

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four, would leave me in destitution because I was Asian.

I was thinking about entering an essay contest the other day and had to fill out some ugly tedious forms.

I decided then, glued to the sunken seat in disbelief, that it was about time to ignore people like this counselor who thought only of money, practicality, and stereotypes, but never the passion of the human mind. Like my parents, success, prestige, and education made up these people’s life codes; but I wanted to voice a different type of success. I wanted to yell, “Amy Tan! Amy Tan! Amy Tan!” to them as a proof that Asian women were capable of becoming successful writers. But this was not just an argument against my parents; I thought of Amy Tan because there is something in her writing that reveals painful truths about the Asian culture. In her novels, she shows the typical lifestyles of the Chinese – how determined they are to prove that they can succeed in the world, and yet, by doing so, they are not only too proud of their identity, but too ashamed of it as well. The truth in her writing scared me, but also helped me uncover the weaknesses in all cultures, and the way my parents were incapable of respecting and integrating two different belief systems and lifestyles. They made the mistake of turning the need for cultural preservation into an obsession with proving themselves as Asians with money. What use is there to stay so apart from the world, and cause the world to stay so apart from us?

“Are you a US citizen?” it asked. I checked no. “If not, what country are you a citizen of ?” Peoples’ Republic of China. “Are you a permanent resident?” Yes. “What is your Alien Registration Number?”

That said, I began to write. At first, I wrote for the mere sake of writing, of being, of defining; pages and pages (and files after files) stacked, clustered, and littered my room and computer. But the act was not rebellion – far from it. As I scratched those words, they began to tell me, just as Bob the Caterpillar did, that this was what I was meant to do, regardless of my race. I found that it doesn’t matter to me what others’ objections are or what obstacles there may be, or the color of my skin. Dreams, I now know, become dreams only when I allowed them. It is when I let someone else make the decision for me – whether or not I should follow my dreams – when my dreams fall from reality.

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I paused, then shrugged, and wrote down the number. After printing the last number on the paper, I mused, I’m both American and Chinese at heart, but what would they call me if I was blue? Smiling, I decided it didn’t matter. Paint me blue, white, puce, or any other color of the rainbow and I will still be me, a writer.

Volume I | Issue iii

2010

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Chicago, Illinois Sunday, January 10, 2010 7:12 pm

M B needs to stop adding more locks on the door; he’s paranoid, that boy, thinking that they’re going to come after us again. Last time didn’t really even count. We haven’t gotten more than a couple of issues out and all of a sudden the entire place is like an airport under unnecessary security. I can’t even change my underwear without feeling that I’m being watched. Then again, that could just be the underwear. So the locks have all opened, and H finally can get through the door. She looks completely exhausted, with the golf-ball sized snowflakes that piled over head like some lumpy hat that covers almost all of her short hair. I wonder if she ever gets sick of working as an intern at the hospital -- the constant exposure to disease seem to show through, making her look like a blotchy monster ready to explode and release those demons inside so we can all happily breathe them in. “Inconspicuous.” Knowing the possible volatile argument that might incur, I quickly dashed into the kitchen for refuge. (We need to buy new kitchen knives; some of us are too disturbed in the mind to go and get new ones, which is ridiculous, because I hate trying to cook with blunt knives.) My hand wandered to find a cutting board, and instead it hits a stack of Shakespeare’s plays. Much Ado About Nothing laid there happily with ink spots sputtered all over it and notes about possible allusions. I took the stack and walked out of the kitchen, the halfgreen wood boards beneath me creaked in pain as an additional fifty pounds of paper dropped onto it. “ -- but you said that it would be completely safe --” They’re already discussing the final drafts of the publication, those insane people, especially H. No doubt I will have to endure some painful lectures from them as I haven’t even planned out the next article. I went back to the kitchen, passing E as the crowd in the living room continued to argue about something ridiculous (as usual). So far, our meetings have become almost completely fruitless as the only thing we would accomplish was hostility. Lately I’ve tried to ignore them by going to the kitchen and cooking (hippy, as B calls it) food. “I didn’t! I said it would be almost safe --” Huh. “-- there’s nothing in there that they can persecute us about!” “There’s also nothing wrong with being cautious.” “What’s wrong with a little risk?” “Yes!” “I agree.”

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Exasperated, I dragged my legs back through the door and into the mess inside. Half-melted black pans stuck to the stacks of notebook paper, crumpled and yellow from aging and orange peel spills; a fork lay with its teeth sunken into the rusty floor, handle sticking straight up in the air, almost as if it was flicking all bystanders off, while spoons sprinkled across and around, splattering the already patchy orange and green and red and yellow and puce spots with metal. In fact, if you look closely enough at the mess (or whatever you may call it), it vaguely resembled some the drivel wannabe modern artists produce, only filtered through a twoyear-old’s ability (or lack thereof). Such is a man’s kitchen.

Three months ago, B called the old coterie back. I was sitting in my room then, doodling on some scraps of paper in my pentagon room, trying to wonder why I was still living with my parents, including that crazy b--- who gave birth to me. (She may be getting fifty times older by the day, but those darned lungs of hers don’t seem to give up. And she never stops asking me to do the dishes, and cook, and more dishes.) Ring......? “Hey. This is B.” “B? Oh wow – wow.” “Yeah. Whatup?” “I don’t know, I was going to ask you that. I haven’t heard from you in awhile, except some photoshop requests from you online.” “You saw me last summer.” “Haha, yeah. I ... forgot about that ... but it doesn’t count anyway because I still haven’t seen you in a year.” “But anyway, I want to talk to you about something.” “Such as...” “Inconspicuous.” I stopped doodling. “What?” “Inconspicuous.” My brain’s on fire. “... you know, the thing we used to work –“ “I know what you’re talking about, but what?” There was a short unsteady silence in the background that matched his end of the conversation; I could taste the sly mischief and excitement in his head, swirling around as it always did. “Can you read the rough draft of my novel?” “B, get to your point.” “Well ...” (I can see him spinning his pencil around, feet crossed elegantly on the desk, while he leaned back on some old chair, grinning in coy elation.) “I just thought that now that we’re all college graduates, with nothing better to do, that we should

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get the old group back together. Think about it. We all know how to write now ... well at least, some of us.” “Oh my god...” “Exactly. And we can actually be all fancy now, since we’re more financially independent. But I’m a writer, so I guess I don’t count because I’m as hell poor as a brick. But jesus, can you imagine how awesome it would be?” “Yes!” “We can go public now, not confined in some school with the administration glaring over our shoulders.” “And it would be so much fun, our readers, wow...” “And ...” “And it shouldn’t just be some lit ‘zine.” I picked up my pencil again, scratching mindlessly on the scrap paper with the fairy doodles, thinking and thinking. “What do you mean?” “Remember in the 1900s with the muckrackers?” I didn’t answer, because I frankly couldn’t remember. “I want us to be actual writers for once. Do something good, something right.” There was a slight pause, where he searched for words and I searched for a reply – “And something dangerous.”

Chicago, Illinois Sunday, January 10, 2010 7:21 pm

Y They’re at it again. Are they ever going to shut up? They’re ruining my node stack. I hope they aren’t going to make me write some lame article for the next one. I think they are. Yep.

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Chicago, Illinois Monday January 11th, 2010 1:12 am

H ... but it wasn’t anything terrible either. Sometimes I wonder what it means to have to go through all this trouble and pain like aborting your mentality and squeezing it into the nastiness of abysmal meaningless. But I know I know I know that it can’t be this otiose, trying to say to me and the other me that only some people know; I know I know I know that it can’t be this non sequitur, seeing all the world around me and all the colors in between ... The ink halted. I massaged the crick in my wrist as the fancy pen dropped from my hand. As I stared at the ink in my notebook, the words just stood there, only fancy simple lines and squiggles decorating the baby blue lines and cheap paper. I don’t remember when I started writing. There’s some sort of comfort that comes from recording all of this; I think it’s because I’m afraid of something almost – I’m not quite sure what exactly it is – but something, an ambivalent presence that is forever stalking me, and maybe tracing all these events will keep me from forgetting them. Maybe it’ll even keep me from forgetting myself. But part of it must be out of egoism and my intense arrogance in hopes that my story – our story – will be immortalized in these pages for eternity; it’s to keep others from forgetting us, forgetting me, even if they never believe anything that I say. Again, I paused, without really knowing why. Should I continue? My hand reached for an apple, and I almost bite into it, but I looked down just in time to see a greasy squirming worm burrowing its body around its crippled flesh. It made me sick in the inside seeing all of this, strangely reminding me of all that has happened. I’ve stopped trying to be more normal, at least, that’s what I’m trying to tell myself: no doubt that I can’t go back, and I’m not sure that if I’m ever given the opportunity that I will. It’s almost a disease now, writing for me, for us, for whomever – the world. If it weren’t for this notebook my mind would have exploded from over saturation of words, words, and words, making me wonder whether or not it’s even worth antagonizing all this trouble, and pretending that we are all heroes of some sort. What are we doing exactly? I want to say it’s for something noble, pretty, and wise, swimming around under the masks of anonymity in the cosmopolitan undersides. But notebook, it’s like what I said earlier, I don’t have the ability not to, just like the way I have to document all of this: I don’t want to lose myself or the others, I don’t want to forget all of this even if I never read all of this, even if no one ever reads any of this. The curse of being a writer lies in these truths and so much more; our mad obsession with seeking out the meaning of the world, of life, of entertainment, and of ourselves topples any other greed, to the point where our thirst for knowledge is almost futile. A silent breeze seemed to embellish itself, lying in the clumsy, homeless room of mine. Like the invisible hand of a divine being passing through, the thin bible-page-like leaflets stirred relentlessly, with all the alacrity in the world to fly out my window to the cigar evoking placidity of monotonous lamp posts and stick figures. twirl spin twirl twirl My pen fell precariously from my clammy fingers, mockingly to the floor, and I imagined it in slow motion ... twirl spin twirl twirl

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Splat. I started a new paragraph. I’ve noticed lately that whenever I sigh it always feels like I’m trying to breathe out all my troubles so I can happily watch them dissipate into the thickness of the air; it surprises me, though, that I haven’t died from all this sighing and breathing and panting and attempting to fake purge my sins, as a Catholic (no hard feelings, by the way) priest would to a six-year-old child. As I looked at my slatternly lined sheets and saw them look back at me with those invisible but conspicuous giant eyes, everything turned into my swirling pen, so elusive, alone, and alien. Desiccation depreciation dissention deletion dissection d. i. a. b. e. t. e. s. w. h. a.t. i. don’.t k .n o.w! !nor do I care The millions of impulses swimming in my head feel like they had just been force-fed steroids, transforming into superman-neurons with lots of myelin sheaths to shoot shooting shoot around bouncing around (go away) in my mind, laughing in endless mirth but I don’t know what’s happening because everything seems so psychedelic (colors, lots of them, in black and white, I think) so bizarre, and so existentialist. What I need is a puff of nicotine, but I don’t smoke. At this point, I stood up, stumbled aimlessly for a bit, out of my chair, fingers pressed vainly on my temples, eyes stuttering closed and unclosed in likewise grief or anxiety – it was hard to tell – and I threw myself into the leather flesh of a white armchair next to my niche of a library. Eyes following up and down each word, letter, pixel of spines, they read, ... Austen, Flaubert, Frost, Orwell ... Frost? A tiny page had flowered from the top; I lifted my hand to reach out for it, perhaps for comfort from the car-honking cacophony from outside. It seemed to flutter into my hand: “...For all/That struck the earth,/No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,/Went surely to the ciderapple heap/As of no worth.” Yes yes. “One can see what will trouble/This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is” ”Were he not gone,/The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his /Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,” “Or just some human sleep.” That’s it – I slammed the book close, stuffed it rather hastily back to it’s proper place in the shelf, with the loose leaf crumpled inside the depths of my pocket and I scooted back to my work place. Holding up my pen to my lips precariously, I then jabbed it down, furiously, fanatically, crossed out the last few rambles, and continued: Anyway, to the beginning, the reason why I started this entry in the first place: I wish our meetings could become more productive, but rarely is anything ever decided; funny, though, because it’s how it used to be: arguments, arguments, and more arguments. I remember, even now, how we would

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simply sit around and either argue, or eat, instead of actually dealing with the issues we needed to discuss. Nevertheless, we had fun. The same atmosphere and mundane procedural formula has again been applied to our meetings now, even though we are older, though not any smarter. Last evening we stood around and went over the problems that occurred in the last couple of months, without actually agreeing to any possible solution. Some of us has become too paranoid, though with reason, while others continue to go about the world in the same carefree way. It’s a good thing that D and A aren’t here yet: the meeting would have proceeded to an incomprehensible stalemate if so. But my problem is, if it’s even true, that what if they are truly watching us as closely as we suspect? If so, why? We have barely begun anything terrible or harmful; the only thing we have done is dance around, a few leagues away from the truth, whatever the truth is. Nevertheless, I cannot help but wonder, how terrible must this be if they already watch us, if we must be cautious, when we are so far away from it? Only Y himself can get into the outer layers of their system, and we’ve found perhaps, one, or two clues. The only problem, as of now, that I can imagine being possibly dangerous is the threat of our existence. If that is the case, then I’m afraid that I have stopped believing in the goodness of our country, for if our place is based on the experiments of the very ideals that our country’s institutions was built upon is a threat to the fake classical building in Washington D. C., then the founding fathers have failed. Yet perhaps it had ended long before, and this now is simply a continuation of the patterns created in the past.

to be continued.

More installments can be found on: http://latestinstallment.blogspot.com

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Lillian Kennedy better known as Leah Newcomb

M

y dearest readers,

a look at our letters to the editor. Anonymity, rather, allowed us to push the boundaries, challenge the status I suppose I should impart some final wisdom. Think quo, and speak up without creating a social stigma within of it as a parting kick. First of all, a very good word our group of friends. If anything, it sparked harsher to know is “defenestrate.” Example: I will defenestrate1 criticism because our readers felt no need to cushion you promptly for your facetious insult. Also, pot destroys their blows to a friend or a classmate. The criticism was, your brain. So do a lot of other drugs, come to think of for the most part, quite useful. it. So, don’t do drugs. I’ll spare you the lecture. In that same vein, making out leads to babies. Use birth control. My catchphrase lately has been “there is no spoon.” UnAnd don’t wear the seventy-five cent condoms from the original, yes, but truly, when you pause during one of bowling alley, either. I can promise you, those won’t do those perfect moments in life – and there are very few much besides make your... well, you know... glow in the – you find that it is nothing physical that matters, but dark. You’ve heard it all before; don’t be stupid. But, that there is only a metaphysical sense that lingers, where do you know what else destroys your brain? The media. we begin to transcend the boundaries between self and It’s a solid brainwashing, a metaphorical lobotomy, a tool soul and society. There is a beauty in this sort of belongof propaganda. Then again, we can always just blame ing, during these moments. There is more to life than The Man. Or go back to the sixties when everybody still love. There are other things, like finding a community, believed in free love and changing the world. Oh, and... dreaming, aspiring, living. the creepy little girl from “the Ring” – she’s real. She lives in my closet. I’m renting her out for $4.50 a night, I hope that my words may make some small difference if you have any friends you’d like to dispatch. Email me on your life. We leave the rest of the journey up to you. at [email protected] and we can work it out. Most sincerely, Leah Newcomb

So. That should take care of it. Now I suppose I ought to tell you a bit about us, what we’ve been doing, etcetera. At the beginning of the year, our group of six seniors came together as writers, but, at the end of this summer, we will be departing as friends and kindred spirits. Somewhere in the mess of academics and social life, someone planted the seed of an idea, and, now, this struggling vine has possibly reached the end. Or has it? I do not need to tell you about our trials and tribulations, our endless arguments, or our caffeine-fueled all-night “meetings.” I do not need to tell you what Stephanie Cannon, Eric Anderson, Randy Bernstein, the ACLU, and many others, thought of our publication. We have chosen to come forward, of our own will. Anonymity has been a mixed blessing; some have called us cowards, but I feel that such a label indicates a gross misunderstanding. There was never any “mask” of anonymity; we never hid from our readers. If you need proof, take

1

To throw out of a window. Artur Redding’s favorite word.

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Inconspicuous

Is There Life After Death?

University of Chicago alumna and renowned author/critic Susan Sontag said, “The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.” We all have heard serious questions, absurd questions, and seriously absurd questions, some of which cannot be answered without obliterating the very question. Destroy a question with your answer.

Usually, I find that questions are more important than answers, and that showers are the best places to do my serious thinking. The other day I battered my way through a sea of worthless questions until the water ran cold and I was scowling at the drain. Suddenly, in that moment of pure Zen wisdom, the question arrived: Is there a conscious life after physical death? I live in a barn, but I often find that living in a barn is far from ideal. I live upstairs and by myself. My family lives in a house. My constant fear is that the undead will attack in the middle of the night: Yes, my name is Leah, and I am afraid of zombies. It is not a matter of whether or not they exist, but rather that deep within the human psyche, everyone knows that zombies exist and they are just biding time: somewhere out there, there is a hidden horde of the undead that will destroy us all. A zombie is what remains physically after the psychological mind has departed; that is why they are so terrifying. (I suppose the reanimation-of-a-corpse part is a bit creepy too.) However, the fact that I am sitting on my bed in my barn and awaiting certain doom poses a few questions. What will happen when I die? Is there a conscious life after physical death? Or worse, if a zombie bites me, what will happen to my soul, assuming I have one? According to the concise Oxford English Dictionary, the primary definition of soul is “the spiritual or immaterial part of a human, regarded as immortal.” I suppose the real question lies in whether or not the soul exists, because souls are in theory immortal, then if we have souls it follows that our souls must live on after death. Thus, we can now narrow the life-after-death question: Do I have a soul?

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I cannot assume that if there is life after death it must mean that I have a soul: Zombies are an obvious example of “life after death,” and I doubt that anyone would dare to disagree with me over their soullessness. This is not the sort of life after death that I am here to debate. I keep a golf club under my bed for a reason. I hear that the zombie virus resides in the brain... but wait: this poses another interesting point. Say I don’t get to my golf club in time: When I fall asleep tonight and that zombie charges upstairs and begins to gnaw my arm off before I can move a muscle, we already know, because of the nature of the virus, that I myself will turn into a zombie within twenty-four hours. Since I will have no remnant of my former psychology when I turn into a zombie, something, obviously, will have been lost. What exactly is lost, though? Where does it go? It is certainly not a physical characteristic, but rather the essence of my psychology: my ego. There is obviously an immaterial, conscious self that exists separately from my physical body. Yes. It fits the definition. A soul. Zombies are soul-stealers, and the ego and the soul must either be hopelessly intertwined or one and the same. Hence, we have solved the dilemma. Since something immaterial will change when I become a zombie, I must have a soul. Therefore, since souls are immortal, there must be a conscious life after physical death. Of course, this is all merely theoretical. There is, however, a glitch. Immaterial things, while cannot be bought, can be given away, lost, or even stolen. It is a well-known fact. Take love, for example. Love is

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quite immaterial, and as a famous Brit from Liverpool once said, “money can’t buy me love.” The same, presumably, goes for souls. While I have never tried to sell my soul, around five years ago it was stolen from me by a girl at summer camp named Alison. She has since refused to give it back.

bite is death, reanimation, and a desire for human flesh to ensure the spread of the zombie plague. It would be fairly easy to fail to notice the first two effects, and cannibalism is no new thing. Just wait: one night it’ll happen to you, too. You’ll wake up and a cute little kid zombie will be eating your ear. It happened to Van Gogh.

I suppose I’ve learned to cope with not having a soul. However, this destroys the theory, because I am still quite a normal person. Obviously the dictionary was wrong. The soul is not the immaterial part of a person, because obviously there must be more than one immaterial part of a person for me to have a fully intact psychology after the loss of my soul. So, what of zombies? Are they soul-stealers or ego-stealers?

So, I suppose that the life-after-death question isn’t important after all. We have souls, but they don’t stick around too well because they get stolen by zombies or girls from summer camp who know demonic soul-stealing chants. There’s life after death for our souls, but not for us. The ego and the soul aren’t the same after all. That’s how you destroy a question. You let the zombies win.

I have a theory that zombies are not really zombies in the conventional “undead” sense at all, but merely soulstealers that wander the world at will and feast on human flesh, with their psychology fully intact. If I am correct, then I really have nothing much to lose by becoming a zombie because I have no soul. In fact, I’m fairly certain that last night a zombie snuck upstairs here and started chewing on my toes. That was around twenty-four hours ago, so by now I should be a zombie. As I expected, nothing has changed psychologically, besides a sudden new penchant for cannibalism. I’ve started to smell a bit like a corpse, though. Maybe I just need a shower. One of the implications of my theory is that we’re all slowly becoming zombies without quite realizing the unfortunate state of things. The only effect of a zombie

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Inconspicuous

An Anti-Glacier Novel

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T

he moment before the brush meets the canvas, the artist purses her lips and wonders what shape this reflecand in the little spaces tion will take. The brush begins to move, and her thoughts take this shape: between my words she sells her soul for a minute glimpse of beauty. Do you think we have souls? Some days she taps into a larger reality and understands things we were never meant to, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before

and for a brief moment, another’s dark dream makes sense. The smoke curls around her mind and she begins to draw the shape of her own destiny. In the next room, Yi Lei idly strums the acoustic guitar, now stopping to put out her cigarette on the stained coffee table in front of her. She writes songs. She says she wears black all the time because that’s how she feels. Her wrists prove it - angry scars, almost all the way up her forearms. There are other characters in this story, too, besides the artist and the singer. I am the writer. I am their muse as much as they are mine. When Adriana finishes her painting, she will hang it above the archway between the kitchen and living room, and we will all hate her secretly for the way it stares down at us all. That is talent. Her little brother, Jorge - he is only 18 - is gay and clinically depressed. He’s crying in my bathroom right now. Adriana doesn’t know about his homosexuality yet; I’m the only one. But meanwhile, we take care of him. His mom died last year. He had nowhere to stay, though he’s only her half-brother. We’ve all seen a lot of broken families. They’re everywhere these days. So Adriana continues painting and Yi Lei starts drinking her second glass of wine and Jorge finishes blowing his nose and now he’s crying over some new teenage tragedy... and I sit here on my mattress on the floor among piles of brightly colored blankets and craft my own story. These people are real. I know them. Yi Lei goes back to strumming her guitar and writing some tragic song, enjoying her buzz. Next week she’ll find some new distraction from reality, some new temporary addiction: acid, Jesus, or caffeine. It is summer. Next fall, we will all go back to our respective corners of the globe. Yi Lei will go to China for auditions, I’ll go on to do my graduate work, and Adriana will probably move back home and get a job.

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Jorge will go with his sister. Later, Yi Lei has finished writing her song. Adriana has stopped painting. Jorge wipes his eyes and I listen as he blows his nose again. He comes out of the bathroom and sits at the edge of my bed, lies down, curls up into a ball and starts sniffling again. I rub his back and frown, concerned, brows furrowed. “You want to talk?” I probe gently. He shakes his head. I tuck one of my comforters around him, pink and goose down, and leave quietly. Yi Lei is standing in the living room, unsticking two cough-drops. If she has any true addiction, it is an addiction to cough-drops. She says she needs them; she sings. She is a musician. She will sacrifice anything for the sake of her voice. Her eyes tell me that her buzz is wearing off, mostly gone. She slips the cough drop between her lips, trying to smile at the same time; I think she wears too much eyeliner to ever smile. Adriana is spreading cream cheese on a bagel, she is cutting a tomato and an avocado, and a little plastic bag of sprouts is sitting on the counter. I can see her easel in the adjoining room, her room, her studio. The painting is mesmerizing, even in these early stages. The kettle boils and sings and rocks back and forth on the electric stove. The cups are all hanging on hooks. Jorge likes chamomile with lots of honey. “You want tea?” I ask Adriana. “No, I’m fine,” she sighs, adding the final touches to her bagel sandwich. It looks exquisite. She takes it and retreats to her studio. Today has been one of those awful, gray, rainy days. The sky has been this tone of moody purple-gray since sometime yesterday afternoon. I woke up last night when it started to rain, listening to the rain on my skylights before drifting off again. This sort of weather always makes me feel beautiful, somehow... In all this depression that surrounds me, the rain is a fortress for my quiet hopes and dreams. I took a walk this morning. There is something wonderful about this city in the rain - perhaps it stems from the repressed searching look I can see in the numb faces of those who walk quickly by, umbrellas up and uncertain eyes glancing around warily... The rain here is gentle, washing away the dust of life. This rain and the hum of tires on wet pavement and trees swaying slowly with the wind at the park across the street... they are all part of some sort of invisible harmony. Yi Lei hates the rain. Adriana just stares out the window a lot when it rains, as if she were remembering things she’d rather not. But I like the rain. After returning to my room with the tea, I find Jorge sitting up on my bed, still wrapped in my pink goose down comforter. He takes the tea from me with his gentle hands. I envy his hands: they are smooth, small, silky, tan. His fingernails are perfect. His fingers are short, a bit stubby, and his hands have a soft square shape to them. He looks at me gratefully as he sips his tea. I talked to a doctor yesterday about him. He hates going to see shrinks. He’s too young to deal with this. We are all too young. We sit, cross-legged, facing each other. We drink tea in silence. I blow gently across the rim of the cup, watching tendrils of steam curling upward, soft and white and calm. I imagine dreams must look something like that steam in real life. When Yi Lei is around, I tend to drink a lot of mandarin orange black tea; she brings

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back boxes and boxes of expensive tea from China after every time she visits her father. But this is our last summer together. It’s funny how we all live together so separately. We are individuals, after all. The evening draws on. Yi Lei has invited her drummer over for dinner. She always orders Chinese when her musicians come to eat. Soon enough, Yi Lei and the drummer begin practice. Sam arrives later with his guitar and an entourage of friends. Ana, his sister, discovers a pint of ice cream in the freezer. Sam plays his guitar and sings to Ana and I as we sit at the table. He looks over as Yi Lei joins in, softly... the others dancing, singing along, sitting, smiling... and for once I accept the comfort, the oneness, and let myself meld into this dimly-lit scene, smiling to myself, smiling at Ana licking her spoon. In moments like these, beauty sweeps down across us and everything is perfect. We are connected like strangers in a storm, huddled together beneath the trees, with great big boughs bending over us so beautifully... Later, I lie down, curled up in my blankets. This corner of the world is not all darkness and depression, I think, idly. We will find our answer. Jorge has taken my pink goose down comforter. As I fall asleep I dream of rain, of steam rising from a teacup, of Jorge crying and the kettle rocking back and forth, back and forth, on the stovetop.

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Rethinking Our Drug Policy The Netherlands has taken a unique approach to drug consumption and addiction. While laws regarding drug use are essentially the same as those in many other countries, the enforcement of these laws is fairly relaxed, at least with regard to “soft” drugs, that is, drugs that are not physically addictive like marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms. The possession of a small amount of “soft” drugs for personal use is tolerated, as is the small-scale unadvertised sale of it in coffee shops. A significant portion of the national budget is allotted to drug rehabilitation programs. The Dutch approach is based off of several simple ideas, the most important of which is the Dutch principle of the freedom of the individual. Using this approach, the Dutch government places an emphasis on the social and health concerns that drugs create rather than the legal concerns of drug consumption. Statistics show that drug use in the Netherlands is comparable to that in other European countries. However, while “hard” drugs are prohibited, this drug culture nevertheless allows the Netherlands to serve as an important drug trafficking site. One of the obvious failures of the Dutch drug policy is the failure to adequately prevent drug trafficking. The Dutch drug policy, while far from perfect, still has high potential for drastically lowering drug concerns. The Dutch model could be used in the United States, albeit with some important revisions. In the United States, drugs pose important concerns that have not been dealt with effectively. This is especially true in Oregon and the Eugene/Springfield area, with the current methamphetamine problems. Like the Dutch, we need to treat the drug culture as a social and health concern instead of a legal one. With a comprehensive drug education in public schools, citizens would be able to make educated decisions about drug use, with full knowledge of the risks involved. If, as in the Netherlands, we were to tolerate the unadvertised, small-scale

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possession and sale of soft drugs, then we would be able to remove the soft drug concern from the legal and criminal sphere. The involvement of drugs with other crime could be dramatically reduced by effectively taking the soft drug market out of the criminal sphere, and thus out of the hands of criminals. If all soft drugs were treated with the same regard to individual privacy that the Dutch culture upholds, then perhaps we could turn our eyes to eliminating the sources of drug supply and championing drug rehabilitation instead of battling the legal concerns of the small-scale possession of soft drugs. As far as physically addictive drugs, conventionally referred to as “hard” drugs, including heroin and amphetamines, the reduction of soft drug concerns would free more attention for minimizing drug trafficking and creating recovery programs. Of course, new concerns would be raised with this system. How do we prevent drug trafficking but still allow small-scale possession and sale of soft drugs? What of the criminal concerns inevitably involved with hard drugs – how is it possible to treat hard drugs as a health concern when other criminal issues are involved? The idea is that the government would essentially turn a blind eye to the small-scale production of soft drugs but work to eradicate trafficking. As far as hard drugs, the aim would be essentially the same as that of soft drugs as far as eradicating trafficking, only the small-scale use and sale would be much more heavily penalized. For criminal charges involved with drug use, like so many of the methamphetamine cases in Eugene, greater efforts would be made to help the offender with the drug problem, but obviously she or he would still face the expected legal consequences for the crime. The argument that drugs are illegal because of health concerns is flawed because nicotine and alcohol, which are both legal, cause significantly more deaths than mari-

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juana does each year. The fact is that all drugs need to be treated as a social and health problem. Drug users need to overcome their addictions, and cannot do so easily with the current legal red tape. Often, drug users are forced to turn to crime to fund addictions. The Dutch system could alleviate this problem. George Bush claimed that “if you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America.” His rationale was that many terrorist cells are funded by the money from drug trafficking. Ironically, however, the reason that drug trafficking is so profitable is mainly because of government prohibitions on drugs. By adopting a policy similar be tolerated on a small-scale level, and hard drugs would not be tolerated but users would be given greater opportunity for help with drug addiction. This would

also reduce the risk of soft drug users involving them to the Dutch one, America would eliminate or minimize some of those government prohibitions and simultaneously crack down on drug trafficking, making a definite step forward in a war on both drugs and terrorism. In conclusion, the idea is that soft drugs would be tolerated on a small-scale level, and hard drugs would not be tolerated but users would be given greater opportunity for help with drug addiction. This would also reduce the risk of soft drug users involving themselves with hard drugs by isolating the two spheres. By treating drug involvement as a social and health concern, we could reduce the legal problems that drugs often propose. The idea is to get those involved with drugs the help they need and avoid extensive legal complications.

To the Class of 2010: In these past twelve years, I’d like to think that we, as the class of 2006, have learned something. I’d like to say that we now have the necessary skills to survive in the outside world, and that we are ready to become adults. Are we? Have we really learned anything at all? We have learned facts and algorithms. We have learned about the bombing of Dresden, the difference between a Ruck and a Maul, and how to find the integral of the cosine of x. ...What do these things mean? To most people, perhaps not much at all. And to the students of South? Quite a lot. Truly, we have learned more than simply facts and algorithms: we have discovered our passions. We have learned how to love, how to let go, and how to speak up. During the past few years, as this day has drawn closer and closer, I think that we can all say that South Eugene High School has been a place of acute individuality. We are talented; we are opinionated. Our teachers, friends and families can take immense pride in who we are. Thank you all for helping us to get here today. So, finally, society is releasing us into the wild. I think that many of us are more than glad to finally leave our purple zoo and take on the world. Some of us, though, may not be glad. Some of you are probably sitting here on this stage and wondering what the hay you’re going to do with your life now, worrying about your imperfections and wishing you’d had another year or so to get things right.

Think of it this way: today is sort of like your birthday. You woke up and things went more or less as expected. You’re probably thinking you ought to suddenly feel older or at least different somehow. But you’re the same person you were yesterday. And chances are, you’ll be that same person tomorrow. Your families and friends are here to watch you cross the stage for your ten seconds of glory. Here’s the secret: you still have quite a few years ahead of you to “get things right.” Some of us are going to Harvard, and some of us are staying here in Eugene and looking for a job. Regardless, we will all meet new people and expand our perceptions of the world. Like so many books that say “the end” on the last page, our diplomas are lying to us. It is not the end of the journey; today is not the end of our education or of our childhood. Today is simply a marker. Tomorrow we’ll pick up the book and keep reading. Like Plato’s allegory of the cave, there are moments in life when we can tear our eyes away and realize who we are. Today, hopefully, is monumental because of this realization. Tomorrow will be only what we choose to make of it. And so too, with life. It’s all in what you make of it. From what I’ve seen, the members of the class of 2006 are more than capable of handling themselves in life. So, to the class of 2006: live long and prosper. Congratulations on making it this far.

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Fairy Tales Sylas’: The Winged Boy Once upon a time there was a city. A great city built out of the silvery white clouds. In the city, everyone had wings, and flew to and fro across the sky. Everyone was joyful and free, they loved to touch the sky with their wings, to dive through the clouds. Every building was open to them. But one day, a young boy was born who had no wings. The people in the city didn’t know what to do with him. They couldn’t keep him with them, because he had no wings. He couldn’t fly across the sky as they did. He would have to go somewhere else. So the people in the city took the boy down to the ground, far beneath the city and left him. In time the boy grew up, but always had a longing to fly and touch the sky. And sometimes, he swore he could feel the shadow of wings on his back. And when he dreamed, he would return to a city in the sky, where he had a mother and father who greeted him. Then one day, while the boy was walking, he came accross a small figure hurt in the road. He picked her up, and saw she had broken her wing. It did not seem strange to him that she had wings, because he knew in his heart of hearts that he too had wings. So he took the girl with wings home, and they grew old together. Her wing never healed, and she never flew again. And when they died, they were burried next to eachother. And their spirits drifted up to the sky, and found their old home in the city in the clouds. --The Peanut Would anyone like a peanut?

Gertrude’s: There was a man and a woman. They married. They had a baby. The baby was a girl. She grew into the woman. The woman met a man. The woman married the man. The woman had many many kids. Then the kids died. Then the husband died. Then the woman lost her house. Then the woman starved. Then the woman died. Therefore, nothing matters.

Emarie’s: There was once a little pond with three fish. The fish were named Ani, Abi, and Bot, but nobody cared because they were fish, and nobody cares what fish are named. Ani was Red Abi was Blue and Bot was nothing special. As the drab one, they shunned him to the muddy side of the pond, where all the brush and briars grew, obscuring almost all the sunlight that tired to filter through. One day, A boy came and caught Ani and Abi, and Bot rejoiced. He decided that fate had finally turned to his side and joyfully swam around the entire pond. The next day the pond was drained and Bot died in the brush and briar and was never heard from again, because he was dead and it is very rare to hear form dead things. Ani and Abi lived happily ever after in the boy’s aquarium (until they died) and never thought about poor Bot again. The moral of this story is that the bad people are not always punished, and nothing is a sign. Life is hopeless unless you define it as otherwise yourself.

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Emo Poetry The seed you were

Are my lips no longer mine? Are my lips no longer mine, because they met with yours, For that moment out of time That I’ve hidden in my drawers? Is my soul supposed to cry That my heart told me a lie? When in loneliness ‘s house I would ever sit and sigh? And if freedom’s what I need Why then do I crave your love, like a wayward growing weed In a garden I’m not part of ? I love the garden, love the weed I think I love you too And if my lips can still be mine, We need no more ado. But if I tell you all my love is taken, And cannot be for you Will you let me still yet be your friend And never ask me who?

Emarie’s 52

I caught a wayward dandelion Seed upon my hand It quickly made it known to me It wasn’t free to stand I couldn’t help it on it’s way, Too new to life to help it fly, But didn’t’ want to give it To a world where it would die. To hold if for too long I knew would hurt both me and it I placed it on my shelf and in a jar I let it sit. Confined in it’s existence, I wanted it to cry, And proclaim the jar to be As much a prison in it’s eye But content it sits there still And I know not what to do For the love that kept it happy fades, A memory I knew. I can’t abide it as I did when first to me it flew. I cont’ give it my heart when that affection isn’t true. I watched you in the mirror I think I thought you loved me I might’ve thought you lied I dreamt I thought you kissed me Imagined that you tried I wanted you to love me I think I thought you cried I watched you in the mirror As you pushed the world aside I wanted you to tell me But you seemed to want to hide I thought I saw you smiling And my heart became untied I think I thought you kissed me When you thought I was asleep I hope you also miss me When a silent heart I keep.

Volume I | Issue iii

Just Off Route 66

Getrude’s

Just off Route 66 Some tears never dry Lacking that touch -an air of eloquence Begging for a miracle In its wondrous simplicity Not quite there -short and sweet and almost perfect Three-for-a-dollar candy bars lost in translation If only I could see Any of the constellations -of the end of the earth Washed upon this shore Change with the wind Work -up to par Crumble to sand and wash away To catch you -and not wake up again

I Turned Down My Bed I turned down my bed...and slept on a date... after loving and leaving you Leaned on my tears...and cried my fridge...in the evening after loving and leaving you I swallowed your footsteps...and gazed into emptiness...taunted by squandered bliss... being there and being here... after loving and leaving you I erased your hope...and ignored your messages...slightly equivocal but...I kept my pledges... Sewed my heart...and bandaged the pieces...then I stopped...and moved on... to life... after loving and leaving you

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Jonathan T. Ferguson better known as Sarah Hill

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’m sitting, surrounded by music. Humming music from earlier.

Hearing people sing music for later today. I’m on the Choir trip to San Francisco, and I’m completely immersed: Carmina Burana, T.a.T.u., Oldies, 90’s, Dæmon, Rent. Everything is being sung. I’m sitting here writing, with friends milling around and getting ready for the day. Pulling words out of my mind and listening at the same time. This is my world. Music is amazing. People say it can make you feel anything. It makes you feel calm, enraged, sad. It takes you away from things, and blocks out the world. Literature does many of the same things. It spreads emotions out in front of you like a map, transporting you away from your own world. People are also amazing. They’re as important as food and water to me. Friends specifically, strangers don’t do much for anyone.

I exist. I am a part of this country, school, and most importantly—though my parents would disagree— “Inconspicuous”. “Inconspicuous”: A mix of the three-things-that-I-likemost-in-some-form-or-another; writing while listening to music and discussing our writings and hanging-out with friends: the Inconspicuous staff. If words give one the best high, it is no wonder that I am addicted to this newspaper. Too bad that when it is over, it will have lasted only one year for me. Lovingly, With feeling and remembrances, Johnathan Thompson Ferguson aka Sarah E. H. Hill

To me, the only things better than music, literature, and people is creating such, as your own. But... as of now, I’ve never created a person. Singing and writing. Putting yourself in the middle of the song or story. You become part of it and it affects you in a much stronger way than simply observing it. It feels like you are floating through the notes and words. Let yourself go into the words. Pull them into yourself and give in to them completely. They will become part of you forever. Whether they are spectacular when they come back out or just ok, they are yours and only yours. Immerse yourself in other words, notes, and stories. It’s the best high that I know.

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A Prediction Came True

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E

vert, Eamon, and Aidan all bought food, which was immediately mooched off of by Louie and Liv, and then the group headed back. 3rd period was almost over, they had to hurry. On their normal path there and back, they had to cross a street with no crosswalk and impossible visibility. It curved 90 degrees around a large and very solid building, and cars normally didn’t slow down as they came around the corner. Everybody at school said it was only a matter of time before some kid died crossing this street.

When the six of them got to the street, they paused, looked for cars, didn’t see or hear any, so they started across the two lanes like normal. Half way across, two cars came silently bowling around the corner. They must have been going 35 miles per hour. All they could do was stare. Van and pickup collided with high school students. Solid machines smashing through. Thumps, crashes, screams. Brakes hurting the ears. All heard from blocks away. Then, it was all over. The navy blue van was stopped 10 feet up the road practically untouched, the white pickup truck had gone over the curb and bumped into a telephone pole. Both drivers were perfectly healthy and they practically flew out of their respective vehicles in panic. Louis was standing on the side of the road staring wide-eyed at his friends sprawled in the street. He couldn’t move, but very slowly, almost achingly, his eyes began to take it all in. He could see them now, he could see Eamon sitting as though he’d collapsed right on the center line. Miraculously, Eamon had gotten himself situated exactly in between the two cars and was only in extreme shock. The other teenagers hadn’t fared quite as nicely. Louis’ eyes were roving somewhat faster now and he saw Liv lying on her side quite close to him, she was holding her ankle and moaning in pain, but she too was alive, Evert too seemed in relatively good condition. He had gotten clipped in the side and seemed to only be slightly bruised. Funny though how he was having trouble standing up, Louis could see him wincing every time he made any movement. Three safe, two to go. Louis thought as he continued his check. Their new friend Kyra looked to be in worse shape than the others, she was still lying on the ground. She was on her stomach and she looked to be pulling all her energy together to try and get up, but she wasn’t moving, other than sharp breaths that rocked her entire body. Louis was starting to get worried. Worried was nothing compared to what he thought when he saw his last friend. Holy fricking crap was the first thought that popped into his head when he finally looked at Aidan. Aidan wasn’t moving. He was face down, sprawled on the asphalt, and he wasn’t fricking moving. Louis didn’t know what to think, but suddenly the world came back into focus, everything sped back to the correct, dizzying speed, and he almost fell to the ground. Halfway there, he caught himself and started running to Aidan. He suddenly became aware that the drivers of those two pieces of s*** were also running towards his friend, and he almost shouted at them, Stop right the f*** where you are, he’s my friend and you a**holes aren’t getting anywhere near him. They seemed to catch the drift of his thoughts as he glared at them and they slowed down, letting him reach Aidan first. He slid the last foot on his knees and flipped Aidan over so fast he was a blur, but Louie made sure not to hurt him more, even in his panic. There has to be a pulse, he has to be breathing, please let him be breathing. Louis was most definitely not a God fearing man, but as always in a time of extreme crisis, he felt himself calling out to some higher power, even though he knew there was no one there, he still wanted, he still needed, someone to come and make everything better, he needed the ultimate mommy. Aidan’s wrist was already in his hand and Louis felt himself press hard into it. There had to be something there, a faint beat, a slight heave of his chest. The bruises stood out brightly on Aidan’s face already, mingled with blood, his eyes closed and lips parted slightly. His t-shirt was ripped and blood was soaking into that too. Louis ran his eyes over his friend, taking in all the apparent damage, and his stomach dropped another level. Even if he did feel a pulse, something had to be done fast. He broke his gaze with Aidan’s silent one and looked again at the men who had caused this whole mess. Male college students, I should have guessed, probably racing each other down the street. God Damn it! Hold it, calm, they can be useful and then they can go on their way and get out of our lives.

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“You- you two,” he choked, coughed, then went on louder, “Hey! One of you got a cell phone?” Not waiting for an answer, he flipped his out if his pocket and threw it at one of them, “Here use mine. Call 911! Now!” There it was! Aidan’s pulse! He’d found it! Finally, Louie let out a sigh he had been holding since those cars first came whizzing past him. Aidan was there, his pulse was faint, but it was there. Louie stared even closer at his chest and saw a very shallow, very prolonged breath. A pause, then another of the same. They were all going to be okay. Now they just had to wait for the ambulance to get there. Louis checked his watch just as he heard a faint bell ring from the high school a few blocks away. He’d just have to skip fourth for today. He hoped his parents would understand. No way was he leaving his friends now. Apparently Eamon had recovered slightly from his shock. He was standing next to Louis staring down at the two of them. “Is he- is he all ri-ight?” “Yeah, I think so. He has a pulse so we just have to wait till the paramedics come. That guy is calling them right now.” Louis spoke quietly. He was bizarrely calm. There was no need for any more loud noises. Unfortunately, another car immediately came around the corner, Liv and Evert screamed, the third driver slammed on her brakes and swerved onto a small side street. She acted quickly, jumping out of her car and running back into the street where she’d come from, waving her arms and shouting at other cars apparently gaining fast on the accident scene. There were quite a few more screeching brakes, some audible swears and many more shouts from this new woman, then everything seemed to settle down. The people in front could see the group in the street and were perfectly happy staying right where they were. In no time, again, ambulance sirens could be heard coming closer. They had been alerted to the traffic jam by police now patrolling the far end of the street and they came down a second street and through an alley, but they got there, and fast. Louis and Eamon stood off to the side as EMTs swarmed over their friends. They were grateful someone else was taking care of them all and they finally noticed that a very large crowd had gathered. The accident had taken place in between a small office complex and an apartment complex. About 10 people from each building had come out and were watching the proceedings with a curious eye. All of the drivers whose cars were stuck in the traffic jam had come to the front and were watching too. There was also a fair number of students who had come from school to get food when fourth period started and were now fascinated that their daily predictions about this street had finally come true. Word was slowly filtering back to school that some students had finally been hit on the evil street and more and more students were running across the soccer field toward where Louis and Eamon stood trying to take this all in. They were spared the thinking when an EMT came up to them to update on their friends’ conditions. First he did the paramedic thing and made sure they were actually ok. Then he started explaining, “Everyone will survive, the boy is still unconscious, and he might have a concussion and a few broken bones, but he’ll be fine after a few weeks in the hospital. The two girls have broken bones, the brown-haired one just has a shattered foot,” that was Liv, “she may have trouble walking on it in the future, but it’ll heal. The other one has more serious problems, broken ribs, along with one of her legs being broken. She’ll survive those, but it’ll take longer to heal, a month for the ribs, she should be up and about, but she won’t be able to do much. The other boy has some major bruising, but nothing that serious. Just a couple days in the hospital, maybe a week or two, and he’ll be up and running. So, I think you two will be able to catch a ride with one of these wonderful police officers to the hospital and we’ll contact all your parents from there.” The EMT waved a hand at one of the police officers nearby and asked him to give these boys a ride to the hospital. The police officer said, “of course”, and led Louis and Eamon out of the now massive crowd of people. They were walking down the street and both boys noticed kids from their classes staring wide-eyed at them. Stuff like this was all fun and games until it happened in your own backyard, to people you saw every day at the same time, in the same desk. That’s when you can’t think, you can’t say, “oh well, time goes on, s*** happens,” that is the time when all you can think is holy crap. Holy fricking crap.

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Dream Story...

Sleep: the wonderful charger of our human bodies; a relaxing way of spending our nights--sometimes. Dreams are what come with sleep--dreams of all kinds: happy, angry, confused, nostalgic, fearful. We’d die without them. Anything and everything happens in dreams. February 27 I found myself dreaming--for me a somewhat strange occurrence--but I let it follow its path. I was at a house; it belonged to someone, maybe I knew them, but that wasn’t important. There was a party. All my friends were there, even some people I hadn’t seen in years. Parents were also there, mostly parents of friends I’d known forever. The place was packed. I noticed people were there. I noticed it felt weird. I noticed people were talking and having fun. I noticed people were talking to me like normal, but there was something in the way. I noticed there was something different with me. I noticed I was dead. The color of the carpet was not an important discovery at that point. It still didn’t feel right though--why was I interacting with everyone if I were dead? I was, essentially, a ghost, but everyone could still see and talk to me; I was confused but, at the same time, not. A little later into the evening, as I began to feel separated from people and a little lonely, I noticed that someone else there that night was dead: my friend Fred. We stuck near each other from then on because people were slowly beginning to realize we were dead too. My dad came over to me and told me it was going to be ok. I may be dead and he may not be able to see me, but everything was going to be alright. It was supposed to be kind of confusing, I guess...it’s part of the reason I felt awful. I didn’t know what was going on, and nobody could really see me, but I realized that people still knew I was there, and they still loved me and still wanted to help. But I couldn’t do anything about it, and I had to leave. I couldn’t believe I was dead at 17 years old, and my old fears of death were beginning to come back. I started thinking about everything I wanted to do: the business I’d wanted to start, the places I’d wanted to see, the books I’d wanted to read--everything was gone. I had no idea it could be that easy to take these dreams from me. I confided these things in Fred, and he thought maybe it would be better if we simply left and went on our way. I agreed, so we went around to say goodbye to everyone. Nobody seemed that sad, as if we were just saying “see ya later,” but we never would see them later. Then, at some point, I was downstairs and discovered how Fred and I had died: a wall had collapsed and crushed us. Fun. I woke up. March 5 The next week, I had another dream, a sequel almost. We were in “heaven,” it was a nice place...like the world we’d come from, except much larger, but at the same time, it seemed smaller. All people who had ever lived

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were there, and nobody aged; everyone was the same age they died at, which actually gave a feel of a normal society with babies and families and adults and old people. It was amazing: we checked in at the desk--it was like a hotel lobby--and they gave us two rooms that we could stay in until we really settled in, found a house, etc. We were settling in and exploring for a few hours; it felt like we’d only been dead a day or two, but someone mentioned in passing that time moves slower in heaven. On one of my explorations, I found myself back in the lobby watching the people checking in and looking around. Suddenly I noticed one of my best friends, Joe. I saw him and thought, “$#*&, why’d he have to die?” I wanted him to live...and be happy. Why was he here? Our eyes met, Hollywood style, across the room, and I gave him a smile--he seemed glad to see a familiar place but still had a very sad look on his face. That look, even remembering it, always makes my stomach clench up. I went over there and gave him the biggest hug I could; he returned it; and we stood there for the longest time, till we both felt more at home. Then I took him upstairs to his room and helped him settle in. We talked about heaven and things that happened back home since I died. Apparently, Fred and I had been dead two months already. Joe told me about news back home, and eventually I asked him how he’d died and when. He paused, seemed cautious. He finally told me, practically whispering, that he’d committed suicide--on his birthday, his 18th birthday. I could hardly believe it, but I did...and simply told him everything would be alright. He was with friends, and we would make the most of it. I woke up in tears and told myself I would hang out with Joe and Fred and all my friends more, if that were possible.

“When I find myself fading, I close my eyes and realize my friends are my energy.” -Anonymous

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The Beginning of the Rest of your Life. It is the last year of high school. You imagine yourself ignoring homework, staying out

late, and doing whatever you want, because, guess what, you’re almost 18 and you’re graduating this year. But that also means you must continue with life, and for most of us it means...dun, dun, dun...College Applications! There are many prompts for a college essay, the one I found most classic and most conducive to BSing and sucking up, is the “letter to your college roommate”. I thought I would share this option with you, complete with director’s commentary.

Dearest Roommate, You don’t know me, at least not yet. (A classic entry, if you have never met the person you are writing to, this is a good one to use.) I’ve been told to write you a letter about me. I’ll try not to make it too lengthy. Please bear with me. I am a somewhat quiet person, though I have many friends and I’m not shy. I just don’t talk that much and I need time to myself sometimes. You may say that everyone needs time to themselves, but I’ve met people that never rest unless they are forced to. However, back to me telling you about me. I’d like to say that my friends are the single most important thing in my life right now. I have a close group of friends and I hang out with them at every possible opportunity. We have great fun doing everything from taking large group walks through the woods behind one of our houses to making up a Gargantuan Scavenger Hunt. I’m even writing a novel in which every single character is based on one of my friends. Maybe you can come in during the next chapter. (Just so they don’t feel left out.) Now I believe I’m supposed to tell you about my values, beliefs, and hopes.(The colleges do give you some sort of guidelines on these essays, I believe this one was something about “tell us about you values, beliefs, and hopes”.) Education is definitely high on my list of priorities. I also hope to learn through personal experience. Someday I plan to take a year and work and travel through Europe. (Major sucking up going on.) As for my values and beliefs, I value laughter above everything else. People who live without laughter die horrible, depressing deaths by the age of 19 (This is true). On the other hand, laughter makes the roses bloom and young cheeks blossom. Now I’m becoming poetic, so let’s move on to my belief in doing what you and only you want. People should never be forced, by physical or psychological means, to do what they don’t want to do. Of course, if it’s just your friends pushing you to try a carnival ride they know you will actually like, then that doesn’t count. But when someone is actually guilt-tripping you into doing something, or taking away something you love to get you to do something you hate, that is wrong. It’s completely and utterly wrong. Every person should do what they want to do. This extends to picking your job, too. You shouldn’t have to decide on your profession because it’s easy, or because your parents told you to do it, or because it will make you rich. You should pick your profession because it makes you happy and fulfilled. Well, I could keep going with that all day, but I should probably wrap this up. So that’s me. I should probably also warn you, dear roommate, that when I appear, that wondrous day in September, I will be laden with many boxes of books. I may not have a TV, or an i-Pod, but I will bring as many books as you could possibly wish for. Also CDs, I’ll bring many boxes of CDs, too. And so I will greet you in September, Your new friend and (probable(very probably)) partner-in-crime, Johnathan Ferguson

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Emarie Carl better known as Isha Rainbowlight

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ost people don’t believe me, when I tell them that, until my junior year, I hated writing. It seems inconceivable that I could have become so wrapped up in, so passionate about, something that I didn’t even like until less than 18 months ago. Yet, if there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s how quickly a person can change. If you had asked me what I would be doing, who I would be friends with, how I would see the world today, nine months ago, I would have predicted a very different person than the girl who sits writing this today. She would have a clean room for one thing. And she would probably care about the fact that she’s getting a B in two of her classes. She would be listening to Karen Casey, not Tom Petty, and her hair would always and forever be three feet long. This girl would be mature and refined, tired of high school, and ready to move into the world of adults. She would not spend her days running around outside with pigtails and pretty dresses, playing on swings, climbing trees, and singling along with bad 80’s music. This is the girl I could choose to be any moment, but she is no more me than Jean Luc Picard is Patrick Stewart, or Maria is Julie Andrews. She is a part I could play, and nothing more, because I have changed this year more than any other time in my life. I turn eighteen in less than a week. That thought was scary, inconceivable even, only a month ago, but now it makes perfect sense. On that same day, I will be graduating high school. It may well be the last time I see many of my classmates, some of whom I have been attending school with since first grade. But life, contrary to my belief for most of this year, will go on. I have a deep rooted fear of never seeing my friends again, everyone from people who I love dearly and cannot conceive of life without, to people who are simply some of many in my life that stick out in some way, that somehow mean something to me, whose presence will be missed.

I have been having trouble writing recently. For months actually, I have been unable to work outside the confines of an assignment, unable to create a solid piece of creative writing. Yet somehow, when I am with my friends, I can create. When I work with these people, these brilliant writer that I have been so lucky to know, I can write. So now I sit here, as many times before trying to say something meaningful with inconspicuous all around me, Sylas with his guitar, and Lillian her incessant choreography, and Ferguson and I in the kitchen, and Gertrude at her laptop and Artur in our thoughts because she’s never there, and Dr. Pepper everywhere, and I see, as cliché as it is, that Inconspicuous has become more than a creative outlet for me, it has become a family. My fellow writers are my teachers, who I admire and love, they are my siblings who argue incessantly and drive me to throw little bits of wood at them, my allies in arms when we face adversity, and, most importantly, my friends, the people who understand me, who will forgive me for being annoying, and love me even when I throw wood at them or my cheerfulness fails or I can’t meet any deadlines. So you play those three chords, and it makes that a song. And if I write three more lines does it make this letter too long? Because your songs will always be with me, and everyone’s beautiful words, and the times we had. Our stories will always be part of me, and all of those nights of headaches and laptops, and mornings of pancakes and evenings of dance. And we will always share strange words on cards – pretentious pope and obliterated coffee beans – and we will always see that word, that one word that we said first for it’s meaning, the day we began, when we said, we need a name, a name that will be “inconspicuous.” That word, we will always share. Emarie Carl

It is the people, more than anything else, who have changed me.

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What was the Question?

I

knew who he was the minute I walked in the door. Lounging there, as if he owned the whole room, the whole school perhaps, yet at the same time, as if he were utterly out of place there, like he was intruding on a domain that did not belong to him in any way. The innocent yet guilty look I always imagined on the faces of Fred or George Weasly was set comfortably into his features – Sitting in Mrs. Babbs’ wooden chair, his legs straight out in front of him and his hands clasped across his middle, waiting for the motley group of high school seniors to take their seats.

I couldn’t help smiling as I walked in the door. I was having a particularly dull day, and I was far form being in a good mood, but there was something about his demeanor, something about being, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the presence of a man who was so unconventionally charismatic. Someone who had shaped so much of the culture I was born into. Even at first sight there was something about him literally forced a grin onto my face. This was Ken Babbs. This was the intrepid traveler. At the bell’s signal, he swung into motion, like a cowboy into his saddle. Though not physically present, there was almost a swagger in his manner that made one feel as if he had just stepped out of a hippie western – if there ever were such a genre –ready to take on any challenge. Mrs. Babbs had told us to think of questions beforehand – something that might do at least a little to focus him, she had said. We asked him about milling. We were told about a king who ordered all his subjects to eat ergot like the peasants had. “But we will go crazy!” The lords exclaimed. “’We will all paint a black X on our foreheads’, the king proclaimed ‘and then we will know that we chose to go crazy’” “Did Kesey actually know much about logging?” someone asks. We are reading Sometimes A Great Notion in class, the excuse for Babbs to come talk to us. It’s a brilliantly written book about a seemingly random

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topic: Loggers in the coniferous rainforests of Oregon’s coastal range. Why, the class wonders, would a man made famous by a book like “the Electric kool-aid acid test,” and by his adventures on the infamous bus “Further,” Have written a book about loggers? Babbs is remarkably on topic with this one. “This one time, Kesey comes over, and we’re all going to cut down this Eucalyptus tree...” He begins. And relates how they all worked together to fell this one troublesome tree on the land. “My son decides to roll one of these logs down to the street. He thought, you know, this ought to be fun, and this one log happens to roll down at the perfect time to hit a car.” At the retelling of what was probably an exceptionally unfortunate and costly accident, Ken Babbs is inclined to uncontrollably laugh. “So yeah,” He says, upon regaining his composure, “We knew about logging.” “He named the bus further, because he thought it would be a good luck name, get us further down the road.” It was the most straightforward answer we had gotten from him all period, thought I wasn’t exactly sure what the question had been. “Of course,” He continues, “he could have named it farther. You know the difference between further and farther. You see, farther is the way John F. Kennedy talks about his father.” He gives us just a second to start laughing – stops speaking for a moment, only just enough for it to register as a moment that existed – and then chuckles at himself along with the class. “No really,” He continues, as if he has just won something, been handed the prize of our laughter, “it’s because farther is a physical distance, further is a philosophical distance.” It was hard to tell exactly when he stopped talking about Neil Cassedy or Taverns in Springfield and started in on huge planted pot busts and Axis of evil submarines, they flowed together so nicely, but at some point I was struck by the phrase “Artichoke fields” “So the Axis of Evil submarines would come in and shell the artichoke fields,” He was saying. The most normal thing anyone could ever be saying of course. He puts on a voice. “Those Americans are not going to eat Artichokes!” He says. “Little did they know we’d switched to Avocados. Of course, we were still stuck on the A words.”

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Mrs. Babbs said once, “Nobody amuses Babbs more than Babbs himself.” This time he didn’t even pause for that polite little moment to let us laugh first. “How did you become known as the Merry Pranksters?” Someone asks. By this time, we are prepared for the Epic tale of the journey through no less than a full fledged tsunami, that caused a few of them to return to their comrade’s fire as heroes to an army camp. “Halt who goes there?” He steps to the center, positioning himself to exemplify that he is now a defender of the camp. “It is I, the intrepid traveler, here to lead his merry band of pranksters backwards across the country – west to east.” He stands now to the side, one arm flung out in front of him, introducing his wayward band. And his voice draws us in, further into the worlds, the tales, the histories of the Pranksters. “The problem was, the tape recorder in the back ran at a different speed...so when we tried to edit it together....And some people were talking in a real high pitched voice like this... so we find this huge bag of pot under the boards back here and we’re wondering ‘who the hell would’ve left it here’, and Kesey’s like, ‘who cares, it’s ours!’ He spins the tales to a surprisingly riveted audience, somehow overcoming the rampant senioritus that plagues the class, describing the bus talking off into the sky he turns to us, a school boy grin on his somehow young face “In’t that cute?” he says. “What was the question?” He asks suddenly when nobody remembers, and when it was certain that at least three questions had been lost a ways back on the road. He begins to talk about the cuckoo’s nest movie fiasco. “So to conclude...to make pie out of lemons...or whatever it is” to make lemonade. The correction comes from the class. “Yeah...lemonade...I’d rather have a lemon meringue pie than lemonade any day. And the one who knows him too well to be serious asks her class, “Do you guys have any more questions before he gets off track?” Before? I wonder. Has he ever been on track? But nobody minds. This is Ken Babbs. The intrepid explorer who “sheds his disguise...every once and a while... and [comes] out as psychedelic man.” This is Ken Babbs, Who traveled backward across the country in a bus called Further, and is here now telling us the story. “We were Roaming in places where mortals are afraid to go.” He tells us, as the inevitable and unfortunate bell rings. “Kinda like Star Trek!”

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Volume I | Issue iii

Gertrude Kalinowsky better known as Zoe Samer

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibitgion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” --First Amendment Last year, free speech (I thought) was free speech--that simple--already fought for, already defended, already defined. I could write whatever I wanted, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and no one could do anything about it. After all, what was more basic than the First Amendment of our constitution? In Inconspicuous, I tried that route, to find my former view naive and only correct in theory, in abstraction. So I did some research, only to find that censorship was everywhere, not just that I lived in some backwards hick town. High schools and universities across the nation were limiting the writers of independent papers. Even newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times were being taken to court for publications.

Big Brother. To win, each of us must fight. Change the small instances, correct the unconstitutional limitations placed upon us as we face them. Go to board meetings. Change school rules. Change city laws. Change state laws. Change national laws. With graduation, South seniors spread throughout the nation, taking a piece of these thoughts, if each individual dares, out to Chicago, Boston, New York City, Ohio, Wisconsin, et cetera. And we can fight for our rights. We may not win. We may not save the world in a single day. But we can begin a grassroots change that will grow, like a snowball dance, until our mass exceeds any of our dreams, until the force of wills cannot be ignored, until our case is argued before the Supreme Court and decided in our favor--because we are in the right. And even if we only receive punishments and fines and jail times, we will have fought for what is right, which is the most we can expect of ourselves, Gertrude Kalinowsky

What happened to my free country? What caused the land of the free to slip closer to 1984? And who was fighting the change? Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, said, “Almost all human beings have an infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” And we have. And while we may wish to caricature administrators as Hussein-esque regimes, they have only been upholding rules they have not written, leaving us with a nameless enemy. But the issue is not about me, it is not about any single administrator or any individual school--the problem spreads beyond...to our entire country, to our entire government. The limitations have slowly come, leaving only individual newspapers and writers to face the monstrous censorship and slavery seeping through the system. And one man, on issues as horrendously extended as ours, cannot bring down the machine--the nameless

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Inconspicuous

I was young once. And foolish too.

E

verything I am about to tell you is true. Except what is false. But I don’t lie that often. I was young once. And foolish too. Dreamt I could change the world. Dreamt we all could. And those were the days, the days every old geezer combing his thin balding hair thinks about, dreams about, tells stories about—lives in. The old wrinkled women clutching gigantic handbags full of God-knows-what (and the rest of us don’t want to know)—old mementos and love notes and letters written in aging wrinkled paper, memories of ages gone by amidst the lip stick and eye shadow and mascara and antiaging cream and anti-aging lotion and anti-aging this and anti-aging that. As if somehow a few molecules of anything can prevent wrinkles—those unwanted laughing lines—to disappear, to die, into time and leave a younger face—to bring those women back to their sultry fishnet stockings and short skirted days. As if any man would want to see their jiggly thighs when he could easily pay to see the whores of today and pretend he’s still the stud of yesterday. Yesterday is dead. Dead as the old geezers will be one day, one day soon—buried next to their anti-aged, wrinkled wives still clutching their handbags. And I’ll be there soon right next to them in a cold wooden box. When I go, make mine of ebony, dark and elegant. Or don’t. I won’t care. I’ll be dead. In my cold wooden box, surrounded by moist dirt—dirt of the ground I came from, to which I go. With a cold slab of marble, or some cheaper stone, above me labeling me as being born in month A on day B in year C and dying in month X on day Y and in year Z. And maybe my friends—those not buried yet, the ones not already getting short-lived bouquets on their headstones—will come and give me flowers, maybe even fire lilies, my favorite. And a pencil. So that in my wooden box I can carve words, a story, a novel, a series, so that when the ground is so saturated with the dead that the old dead must be unburied for the new, when my partly decomposed wooden box is opened, my partly decomposed story will be found and wondered on in interest. But I am not dead yet. I am staring out my window at the bright sunlight and blue sky and young fresh faces laughing on the pavement below. She, a blonde, glances over at the brunette whipping those beautiful locks—not far from graying...until she stains it with lemon juice and more foreign chemicals—and laughs her youthful laugh that will grow raspy and stale from the staining tar she inhales from her right hand. Her firm arms and legs and breasts will sag and wrinkle and become me. She is me, will be me. I was her. I am looking down on polluted sunlight from an orange purple sky pumped full of chemicals.

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The Earth got sick and forgot she was supposed to care for us ignorant fools that poked and cut and stabbed and the deserted trashed sidewalks with only shadows and ghosts lingering outside in the unsafe anymore in the un-world. Everyone is sick and dying now. Even the young. Especially the foolish. I am dying. My papers are all that accompany me now. My father died decades ago, my mother five years after. My sister died in her early forties of asthma developed in her thirties. I am old. Too old. My bones are old. But more...my heart is old. I lost my lover two years ago. I lost my acquaintances when I fell to alcohol to hold him in memories—visiting the past through vodka and whiskey and other temporary heart warmers. I no longer need the alcohol. I lost my friends, my coworkers, last month—except one. But she is dying—will die tonight. She asked me to end it. She cannot breath. She cannot live in this place. She asked me to (with a pillow), and I will. Then I will be alone with my papers and our papers. Our volumes and volumes of magazines. Pages and paragraphs and sentences and words and letters. Little scratches that we gave our lives to. We were young once. And foolish too. We thought we could change the world. Well here I am, and the world has changed us, and we have not changed the world. But I will not give up. I have one last issue left. She has not written anything for it. It is all mine. I am writer and editor and copy editor and artist. I am everything, everyone. Everyone has, is, and will go before me. But I will go to. I will die. I will leave behind my papers and our volumes. The volumes will hopefully be found one day. I’ve chronologically ordered them, from the first to the last. The sun is down, and the night is cold. She is calling me. It is time. It is time. And the pillow will come. And I will print the last volume. And I will go. I was young once and foolish too—I am old now...and gone.

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Inconspicuous

Beyond South’s Rose-tinted Glasses

Every new venture brings growth and new understanding; with that, hopefully, comes a maturity to make better, fuller thought out actions in future similar activities and undertakings. Such is the case with Inconspicuous. We have, of our own volition and decision, decided not to publish potentially offensive material anymore. (If you were one of those who enjoyed such pieces, do not be discouraged; new writings of similar humor are a mouseclick away.) If you were not so amused with such wit, no need to put down this issue, for it is not to be found bound in these pages. After all, we are attendees of South, whose themesong-if she had one--calls out for us to remember tolerance. And like audiences of the classic films, all of South cheers, calling themselves champions of this precious virtue. But pause a moment and consider--how tolerant is South? Abortion, atheism, peace protests hurrah! But what about tolerating what we do not agree with? Like Republicans, Christians, or war hawks. Five years ago, a class of forty yelled at the only Republican student who stood up for her beliefs. Three years ago, a typical South student would not respect oppposing views until the student who never spoke shut him up with his simple words--”you don’t understand.” One year ago, no Republican student was found willing to speak at the political assembly held all day in the auditorium. These are but a taste of the intolerance felt if you do not fit into South’s accepted degree of diversity. Imagine surviving that rude treatment every schoolday for all of high school. Suddenly, somehow now, South is intolerant of your views--and why? Because you are “wrong,” “politically incorrect,” “intolerant.” How hypocritical can the “tolerant” get--intolerant of the intolerate because they are intolerant? That makes us worse than the openly intolerant!

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Alas, that is not the last of of South’s problems. We, by which--should you not have caught on--I mean South, are racist, to put it simply. Walk these halls and listen with care. You will hear, amid the ebb and flow of conversations: you will hear, amid the ebb and flow of conversations, the ‘n’ word--and not just in English classrooms teaching Faulkner or Twain where it is introduced with care and worry, Jew jokes where Auschwitz is taken no more seriously than a pink elephant, and naive assumptions of Asian friends to be sisters behind which is the simple logic--two Asian girls who know each other...they must be sisters. These attitudes are not of enlightened, equality-loving, hippy children, but they are our own. Yet that is our deliverance--the reason we are not destined for some tragic Hamlet-esque ending for hypocritical and racist students. We don’t have to be this way; we can change, grow, and develop new understanding, and with that, hopefully, a maturity to make better, fuller thought out actions in the future. We can pull South out of the rut of intolerance and prejudice she has been in longer than our days here. It will take hard labor more difficult than many good sweats, for this task demands changing our minds and opening our hearts, yet I have faith that we can do it, and I implore you to begin that schoolwide change. Take a hard and honest look at yourself; find your individual intolerances and prejudices. Start with day one: open your mind, do not judge others but instead listen to their ideas with truly open ears, try to actually understand them before rejecting them, and lay aside any racial bias (we all have some--be honest); then repeat for day two, day three, and so on. Again, after a while, bare your soul to yourself, the good and bad, and evaluate; and the process continues--every day for the rest of our lives. We will not be perfect, but we will be better.

Slushy Muck With 4J

Volume I | Issue iii

South will be having an abnormally large senior class next year. Approximately half of what was supposed to be the class of 2006 will not be graduating because they can not get enough credits to do so. If students miss more than seven days of a class, they receive partial credit. However, unlikely circumstances have caused most of the students to miss many days of school recently. Two months ago, snow hit Eugene. Everyone cheered, pranced, twirled, and more in the flurry of flakes that stuck to the ground in all parts of Eugene. Yet, since the snowfall started around 4:30 in the morning, piles had grown up all around, and the roads became slick. Students living at higher elevations were snowed in, forced to forgo spending the day at school. Many other parents, worried about the ice, did not allow their students drive to school. Seeing as there were five accidents by noon alone, that concern was warranted. LTD was forced to close most routes, and many businesses took the day off. But not 4J. Those dedicated teachers and educators found their way into the appropriate buildings along with the few students able to attend. We have been told classes “proceeded as usual.” However a number of students testify that classes were mostly held outside with students running around building snowmen--although all snowball fights were stopped immediately. The next night, more snowfall came; it seemed the weather thought this was Boston, Massachusetts instead of Eugene, Oregon. In fact, the two cities completely exchanged weather, for the entire time it snowed here, the poor Bostonians got pouring rain almost to the point of flood. Fewer and fewer students were able to make it to school as weather and/or parents continued prevented them. Still 4J would not accept defeat because it did not want to add more days of school at the end of the year, which might force the graduation ceremony back a weekend. No, it would be too much trouble to add a few days at the end of the year to make up for harsh weather preventing most travel. Instead, almost every student found that partial credit became inevitable. Most students found the fact an annoyance because it meant they would have to take more classes in the following years; for the seniors, who have

no time to change their schedules and make up credits, the business was serious. Few of them had enough credit to graduate the term before, and only some would gain enough through partial credit to graduate. The entire senior class performed a walk-out in protest to the decision 4J made, and none worried about missing class because, after all, they already had partial credit. However, other than a single newscaster speaking down at them, no one reacted. Without any actual political power, there is nothing more they can do, which will cause the unlucky half of them to be held back a year. However, the other half did not get off cleanly. Most colleges were not impressed with the fiasco and rejected them. Luckily, good ol’ UO took half of those able to graduate while the rest of the rejected shall be attending LCC. Although the parents of the 4.0 students protested the results of this administrative call, their concern came too late because the intent to register forms had all been mailed in. So while snow is white and fluffy, keep in mind the horrors it can bring the next time you make a snowman.

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Hey Gertrude Hey Gertrude, I like this guy, and he’s so sweet and amazing...and I just can’t stop smiling when I think about him. And we’re... I’m not sure what we are. We IM every day, when we cannot talk on the phone. I swear I’d be in debt if my cell did not get free minutes (long distance too) after nine. We’ve liked each other for ages, but we aren’t, at least in name, dating. We talk like it, act like it, but we’re a thousand miles apart, and there’s another year in high school for each of us. I really like him, but it’s really far away. What should I do? --Distance Dazed Dear “Dazed,” Do you need to be able to see the men (or women) of your life on a day-to-day basis? Do you like this one enough that you are willing to wait until vacations or next year to see him? Or do you want to date him, but have the possibility of dating other people? On the one hand, you could choose to date him exclusively. You could stake up a big “He’s Mine” sign in front of his house, and attach a similarly-labeled collar to his neck. Your relationship can grow beyond the cute, cuddly, and comfortable openly liking each other. You would fight, resolve issues, and grow closer – or perhaps further apart. However, those are the chances in every relationship. But, if you date him, you will ache for him even more than before – like a caffeine fix that you cannot fulfill. In that vein, beware energy drinks...though relationship addictions can be worse. If the relationship lasts, though, each time you see each other be that much sweeter because of the anticipation. Or, if you choose not to date him, you can continue in this semi-blissful state, and also have the opportunity to

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date any eligible stud you start flirting with. However...so can he. And if he does, or you do, you may not ever have a chance to date him. Essentially, you are at a dessert banquet, and you have to choose between taking the chocolate mousse now, when it is available, or looking around at other desserts. You may find something better, but in the meantime, someone else might take that mousse. Do you love chocolate mousse enough to stop looking at others, or would you rather wait and see what else the chef brings out? So make up your mind – but remember, he has to make the same choice as you. Once you choose your dessert (because I will not make up your mind for you), go talk to him openly and find a solution that works for both of you. Choose well, Gertrude.

You may submit your own Hey Gertrude question to or online at . Submissions are anonymous by default