Essay

Three Quotes to Live By – Alex Esterline

Springtime, for me, is a time of renewal and self-improvement. I get this newfound motivation from watching the snow melt. Much like the flowers that will begin budding on the trees, I find myself attempting to plant seeds in myself. One way I’ve been doing that is by picking out some important quotes to keep in my mind. The three I’ve picked are the three I try and live by at all times. I’ll be sharing them with you and I hope they’ll help you sort some things out or reach for something higher:

 

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

-A.A. Milne

Written by the author of a childhood classic, this Winnie-The-Pooh author writes a beautiful quote. I have a tendency to look back too much and wish for things that won’t ever come back. I regularly fall in love with places and feelings that I might not get to re-visit. At first glance, this quote reminds me to be grateful for having experienced these moments and feelings at all. But it’s become such a big part of my life that it actually reminds me to take in every moment from now on in great detail- so that I can one day look back and marvel at how hard it was to say goodbye. I hope it does the same for you, Reader.

 

“Cause a little trouble. It’s good for you.”

-Angelina Jolie

I’d first like to take a moment to thank Angelina Jolie for existing. I’d also like to thank her for her recent quote at the Kids’ Choice Awards. Her quote focuses on something that I have yet to accomplish- living far outside my comfort zone. You see, my idea of “trouble” is staying on Tumblr for 4+ hours. I’m going to try and use this quote to remind myself to not overthink every single decision I make. The best part about this quote is how much everyone could use it. We’re constantly being confined and sheltered to the point where our lives are sometimes so unexciting. Maybe next time, I won’t stay up until three in the morning doing homework, only to get no sleep. Beyond just worrying about good grades (which do not define a person), I am generally compliant with things that I do not necessarily agree with. This quote will serve as inspiration to speak up and act for things that I believe in.

 

“Don’t count the days, make the days count”

-Muhammad Ali

A professional boxer, Ali shines light on one of the hardest obstacles to deal with in life- Time. This quote seems to remind me of my fleeting youth and the oftentimes overwhelming desire for something to happen. I tend to lack patience (something I’m working on), and regularly “count the days”. I realize now, that I should be focusing that same energy on cherishing those days that I’m counting. I firmly believe, now, that if you count the days- you’ll miss each and every one of them. I urge you to take every opportunity that comes your way, and start making the rest of your life count.

 

I hope you take these words of wisdom and apply them to yourself. Happy spring!

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Prosetry

Nevadian Botaty (The Ego) – Matt Grydzuk

The other day I started a small garden chiefly of plants I could use
Built from those one-dollar Target herb thingies and anyways
I thought to myself how interesting to have such a straight-forward existence
To be consumed, to only have purpose
Never filling in the blank spots never
Playing with narrative structure just
Existing in ground, as part of the earth, in part of something more amazing,
synthetically.

How interesting not to be multipurpose
And to consume chiefly; the product of progress amalgamated
To the point where it’s taboo
I think about these matters while doing simple things like watering basil
Like constructing culinary masterpieces
Perhaps wanting to exist and existing are two halves of the same maybe there is no purpose
But to be consumed by something we’d
Never see coming
And when a friend of a friend reminds me that we are all mortal
I start to think that maybe stagnating is congruent with plant life
Or plant food
I think about these things while watering basil.

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Poetry

Observatory – Haley Ingram

I love it here.
the view reminds me of life. 
The sky the way it paints over our hands and onto our skin,
The way the color doesn’t mix together as much as an artist would like it to.
The lead in our paints is heavier than we were ever capable of lifting, but it’s all we had.
It’s all we are fed. 
We closed our coffins with the nails we’re chewing on in hopes that
You need to be undead in order to make a move-
But I don’t want to kiss death anymore 
He leaves my body to rot 
My teeth hurt from grinding against him
He has violated
All of us. 
We are all iron cast replicas forged in the fires of our own hell. 
We paint our bodies with colors of the sky and call it identity. 
Nobody likes the night 
Everyone is afraid of the dark
Why am I afraid of the dark but find so much comfort in the makeup of hell?
We call ourselves artists, 
There is no artist.
There is only nature and our mimicry,
We feed on the idea of existing originality. 
Why don’t we open our coffins?
Let’s swallow our nails and puncture our throats
To allow the nervous words to spew into one another. 
Till death do us part-
He’s not getting between us. 
We are survivors in a world imprisoned by 
The impressionable weight of shackles
And strength to carry them. 
We are convicts in that we are happy together
So that cannot be. 
But in this moment. 
I love it here. 
The view reminds me of you. 
The way the sky paints itself and the willingness to relinquish power. 
The way I don’t want it to be easy to touch you 
The way no one can touch you.
Painting doesn’t make me an artist
But it makes you a masterpiece. 
I can lift you over my head 
And in this moment. 
Life is worth living.

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Poetry

Capgras Delusions and You (The Body) – Matt Grydzuk

Degauss the stars like cathode ray tubes using only your hands

The body first thinks explicitly in omens, or foretelling the end of things

Sleep less than intended; corporeality was tailor-made for you.


The body is just a suggestion, though, like the outline of existing

Akin to the stars lacking crystal clear imagery yet making shapes

Yet causing images in the night

And I sat and watched them unfold, shaking mildly, how beautiful.


How beautiful, the suggestion of form;

The existence of existence

Like wisps of stardust off the tips of your fingers and the rest of your outline

You are a degaussed constellation.


How beautiful the burning sensation; the smell

How beautiful destroying the innards

Like dying stars or a comet moving faster and then it’s gone

Creating outlines creating memories making

Sentences with your movements but no words.


How beautiful linguistics; complete sentences with two independent clauses

Intertwined to make the sun rise.

Watch it leave you like blood from the mouth, like stardust from the nose and eyes.

All other things beautiful like the suggestion of an outline; like actually falling asleep.


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Poetry

The Positivity in Glass Jars – Brooke Safferman

Four jars made of glass, lined up on my window sill

The mint green, 

the pale rose, 

the totally clear, 

the almost-purple.

The way the light shines through them makes me giggle

Sort of like the way your smile shines through my emotional walls of glass

Once so strong, now I’m so fragile

Your delicate touch could crush me with too much force(accidentally)

“Stay positive”, they say

So I draw on a smile with my lipstick tube but

Before I leave my room to enter the world

I pause to look at the positivity in glass jars.

 

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Poetry

Meta-cognition explained in Lithuanian (The Head) – Matt Grydzuk

The head

Chiefly, where pre-calculus goes to die.

And truthfully I don’t know much else about it, but I do know,

Or remember, that my mother told me always to be grateful

For what you have.

And I can’t say I was

Because so many self-inflicted head traumas starts to pile up when nothing

You do is perfect and you have to blame SOMEONE and

Knowledge of chlorophyll is always dying and you’ve never had a green thumb

Next thing I know my head is a graveyard and sometimes I kick over eternal lights to watch

The information flowing out like candle wax like

This is grey matter flowing through eye sockets like this

Is the way they wanted you to be when they called you stupid

Like you can live up to one thing if you just try hard enough

And when it hardens; becomes crystalline

If you hurled it at a man how far would he go

I still haven’t forgotten Newton’s second law or anything about Schroedinger

But what does that even matter

The Head

Chiefly, a device to move the body.

To tell it what to do.

But for every move this way and that there’s an eyelid twitch or a muscle spasm

Bartering, the product of battery indentured to the head my body is never my own but

I wouldn’t know

I’m sorry.


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Poetry

Maple Key – Harika Kottakota 

My magnum opus was a maple key, 
Imprinted pond ripples in amber  

A hundred journals worth of sins 
Rimmed it with azure  

My maple key rode majestically 
Upon the southern breeze

Tornado in the Church bell and 
Flames around the riverbend 

Devout insomniac, I stalked
My maple key barefoot into 

Jasper mornings–too ethereal, 
too intricate for untrained eyes   

I watched its azure streak lotus 
By lotus, but never land 

Without a star’s conception
In sync, that’s right–never in jest  
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Poetry

I Reside Explicitly on Jackson Square – Matt Grydzuk

In the seventh grade I didn’t know I could like boys yet.

So when everyone else started dating

I spent my time idly liking this girl.

I asked her to dance once.

She was much taller than me and this altercation

dangled the notion of beauty overhead in every way like shitty dime store streamers scotch taped around the sistine chapel.

I stared into her eyes as the night fell apart and I was petrified to marble

Because there was pity in their dark recesses and in contrast

I was like

A monumental statue

Designed to fill

the negative space

in the worst possible way.

For the first time I felt ugly.


You never get called fat to your face anymore

it’s just particles of pollution

like acid rain eroding a statue.

So I am less afraid of being fat and more paranoid

because you cannot dodge glances and you cannot dodge concrete floors and statues don’t float

Thus I am not afraid of swimming, but I am afraid of the social implications of swimming pools.


What happened

To the era where “skinny” and “beautiful” were not synonyms

Where people like me were dashing and handsome and

Were depicted as

Grand marble statues that

reached up toward the sky in an air of grandeur

People have always implied

That I should take up less space but there is nothing authentic about me that

is not large and loud and in your face.

My body is no temple

It is a cathedral

Much too large for its initial purpose but it occupies the space it is given and it

extends infinitely toward the sky and

when people gaze upon it they are in awe of its beauty within and without

it occupies

the space

it

is

given.

I am constructed from stained glass and concrete and the bottoms of empty cartons of ice cream.

I don’t know what it’s like to not be fat.

But I do know what it’s like to be beautiful.


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Poetry, Prosetry

It Comes and Goes in Waves – Alexandra Mayer

I was quiet that night

mesmerized by the fire– 

I guess. 

And I saw 

Embers float to the heavens 

where they became stars. 

The moon greeted them 

with a cheshire-cat smile

and they all laughed at the mortals below. 

There was music in the crackle of the fire

and in the way accents melted together

stealing meaning from words. 

And your lover told me that we should be friends. 

“Because we both like to drink a lot.”
Whatever that means. 

I tried my best to be kind

because you showed me the painting she created-

two hands of daisies, bursting from the clouds.

It’s hard to explain,

But I like it. 

And I like her knobby knees 

and her red hair

and the way she bites her lower lip.

So we shared a bottle of fourteen dollar vodka–

And together we swallowed fire 

and we smiled when the heat slid into our stomachs 

and when the world started to blur into a haze of browns, oranges, and blues.

Then a bright light trickled through the trees. 

And a shout: 

“Cops… Run!”

So I did

I fled 

deeper 

and deeper 

into the forest 

before diving into a prickle bush

where thorns clawed my skin,

drawing blood here and there. 

But I didn’t really notice, or feel any pain.

I didn’t notice you either

until you knelt down next to me and whispered in my ear,

“this doesn’t leave these trees.”

A kiss. 

You kissed me. 

A moment. 

Nothing more. 

And when the sun rose,

I wasn’t dizzy. 

I could see the trees clearly.

I could feel the gashes in my skin. 

And I laughed

because you were nowhere to be found

And I was okay with being alone.

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