Ephemera Spring 2010 by Ephemera Arts Journal

Ephemera The Honors College Creative Arts Journal Spring 2010

Editors Ella Anderson Rachelle DiGregorio Emily Ebel

Staff Jessie Erikson Katie Jentzsch Jenny Klein Elisabeth Kramer Caleb Kowarsky Quinne Larson Alaric W. LĂ&#x201C;pez McKenna Marsden Roxanne McKee Theresa Peoples Abigail Pfeiffer

Ephemera

pl. n. printed records of passing interest that later become memorabilia. Dear Reader, Like amber preserving an insect, this journal aims to preserve works of art that recall and represent moments in the collective history of the Honors College. This year, the Honors College celebrates its 50th anniversary. We saw this as an opportunity to look back at past editions of the Arts Journal and synthesize the old with the new. Our journal includes one previouslypublished selection from each decade since the journalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inception in 1976, when the journal was just a few sheets of paper stapled together. We chose the title Ephemera because the journal preserves art that was seemingly fleeting. The concept of art that originally seemed transitory, but soon became an important part of a tradition, struck our fancy. So, happy reading. As you peruse one issue of many in a long tradition, may it strike your fancy as well. Sincerely, The Staff.

iii

Contents Empty Pockets

Snippets

Laurel Way

Morning in Winter Jessie Erikson 4 Little World Micaela Russo 5 Dollhouse Series Laura Barton 6,7 H.D. Caitlyn Moe 7 Priorities Jessie Erikson 8 Terrarium Rachelle DiGregorio 9 Posed McKenna Marsden 10-14 Telegraph Road Nikos Aragon 11 Baño Micaela Russo 12 SoCal Stunts A Nikos Aragon 15 Chinese Dragonfly Contemplating a Dive Ella Anderson 16 Magnet Poetry 17 Up Amman, Jordan Cliffs Clothes and All Petra, Jordan Magnet Poetry Cell Phone Poems The Hair Thing Magnet Poetry Visions of Justice

Expanse

Love

Photo Ode to the Epic Hero Photo This Small Request Requires a Verb Love Creature Familiar Expression Affectionate Bow Art Poétique: Eye Metaphors and Extra Garlic

Abigail Pfeiffer Grant Snitker Caleb Kowarsky Katie Dwyer Grant Snitker

20 21 22 23 24 24 Jessie Erikson 25 Jeff Whitty 26 27 Hugh Bitzer 28-29

Micaela Russo 32 Ella Anderson 33 Melody Young 34 Taylor Wilson 35 Ted Sweeney 36-37 Caleb Kowarsky 37 Malia Autio 38 Matt Silbernagel 39

An Old Woman and The Dog Her Elisabeth Kramer Husband Gave Her Photo Sarah Austin Midnight Mirage Kelsey Stratton Not Quite a Sonnet: Professor Cogan's Ella Anderson Thoughts on Love Ceramic Faces Katie Lee Love: a sermon for our age McKenna Marsden Tens Don't Exist Caleb Kowarsky A New Brain for Nefertiti Katherine Degenhardt Traditional Drumming, Burundi, East Africa Spokane Story Photo Magnet Poetry The Wailing of the Rails Most Days Photo Three Letters Photo

Fringe

Fluidity

Tongue Beneath Borneo Poem Geography Meets Philosophy Coffee Healing Hobbit Beach Lullaby Photo Powerman vs. The Pacific Ocean Jellyfish A Pinecone Story Entropic Love

40-42 43 43 44 45 46-47 48 49

Alex Goodell

McKenna Marsden Melody Young Paul Clay Forrest Wells Reed McCue Molly Moore Alex Whitebirch

53-58 55 58 59 60-61 61 62-63 63

Jessie Erikson Maddy Gribbon Nikos Aragon Ella Anderson Kaya Aragon-Herbert Maddy Gribbon Michelle Leis Reed McCue Andre Klest Emily Ebel Madison Cuneo Alaric LĂ&#x201C;pez

66 67 67 68 69-70 71 72-73 74 74-78 77 79 81

Empty Pockets Laurel Way

Forgive, and let the loss of grudges fill you. Though you may miss those familiar burdened shoulders, the weightlessness becomes you as it fades to old from new. O friend, o foe how our actions misconstrue. Intentions can be swept away as currents grow bolder. Forgive and let the loss of grudges fill you. O mother father brother, if you only knew how warm a heart becomes when it empties angry folders. The weightlessness becomes you as it fades to old from new O lover turned to fighter turned a bitter, coiled blue, passions flame and ofter sear, a heart's burns left to smolder. Forgive and let the loss of grudges fill you. O child bathed in sun and gentle winds that blew, may your pockets hold no malice beside those small toy soldiers. May weightlessness stay with you as you fade to old from new Old woman with your stories tucked inside those weathered shoes. Hugs and colors lift against your heart's heavy boulders. Forgive and let the loss of grudges fill you. The weightlessness becomes you as life fades to old from new.

First Chapter: Snippets "A good snapshot stops a moment from running away." -Eudora Welty

Morning in Winter Jessie Erikson

the sugar that seeps into our sleep like the light caught in her hair which is thin and tangled and moves soft thoughts beneath my fingers and everything beautiful is a golden glowing thing, a god in miniature and everything pure takes a slow slight curve

Little World Micaela Russo

Dollhouse Series Laura Barton

We have seen her in photographs, Our Lady of the Still Life, Our Lady of the Optic Nerve;

H. D.

response to poems [29] & [30] in where figures stood like statues TRIBUTE TO and endured their lasting names; THE ANGELS, we have seen her in black and white, by H.D. we have seen her looking past, eyes beached on a gray distance

bearing their weight to the new world to hold down its detail, color and light; We have seen her overwhelmed,

Caitlyn Moe

and we have seen her images through a pinhole, as she saw them, for she could bear to experience sight only in abbreviations: a table here, a green cloth, a single petal on the lagoon.

Priorities

Jessie Erikson i. slanted sandy rays of light, long and lean the hours unresolved ii. christmas lights flashing on the tree to beat a pulse thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a pulse my mother breathing in her sleep iii. dark mexican tile sleek silent puddles of light bright lake hanging low iv. my sister singing in the shower the weightless sudden sighing her voice wind on the night v. death shrinks all things so that we are small standing next to space vi. the trees make needles in the snow if the earth is a pincushion so am i

Terrarium

Rachelle DiGregorio

Posed

McKenna Marsden

The café’s acoustics were a bitch. It was basically one big cement parkinggarage-ish kind of room, with a few skimpy little acoustic tiles on the walls that were more for decoration than anything else, and so everything was loud and ringy in a way that made one conversation starkly audible from any point in the room and three a wordless gabble. Because of the latter property Opal knew her two favorite customers couldn’t hear her talking about them. “Why do you call them Gimpy and Miss Cataracts?” Ringo said, turning his head toward her without taking it off the espresso machine it was resting on. His name wasn’t really Ringo. She called him that because he was English and her favorite movie was Pulp Fiction. “Him with the limp and her with the sunglasses on her head like a fucking censor bar from nineties TV.” She made a little humped claw with her hand for the limp and a little slashed out band for the sunglasses. Opal made a careful study of people who interested her and basically ignored everyone else; Ringo interested her and so she knew all his mannerisms. He often leaned his forehead against the espresso machine and closed his eyes but wasn’t asleep. When the featureless voice-noise took over he always looked a little bit in pain. He followed rules without making any visible effort to. He didn’t laugh or smile much but not so little it was conspicuous. His glasses were held together with packing tape on one side and had been for several months. He only looked a little bit cold and haggard and disgusted but looked that way all the time. When he was required to say something it was usually clever but in an unobtrusive way, like, here I’m being clever but you are in no way expected to acknowledge this. He rubbed the back of his neck when he was sick of talking. He was slightly blue in his extremities. Sometimes she called him Little Boy Blue, a term she’d learned from a cartoon from the thirties or forties in which Little Boy Blue was a swing bugler, which had kind of scared her when she first saw it as a small child but she had since exerted considerable effort trying to find again. “But does everybody have to have a nickname?” “Yes. Shut up. Real names are boring; mine are better.” Ringo was already on the short list just by being English, but had qualified as a Person She Was Interested In when, during his first day working there when she was supposed to be training him but actually just made him take inventory while she sat on a pile of coffee sacks talking at him, she had asked how he ended up in America, and he said in a sort of irritated but more just disillusioned-with-reality-in-general way that he’d turned left at Greenland. “Why are you so obsessed with those two, anyway?” he said.

Telegraph Road

Nikos Aragon

“I don’t know. They seem clever. Witty. Debonair, I’d even say.” A little debonair curlicue of the wrist. Opal was proudest of her hands. She used them constantly when she talked and when she didn’t, but mostly when she talked, like punctuation and italics and illustrations and pictograms. As a blueprint to what she said that modified and enhanced it, and gave it a kind of poise and a slick elegant irony. Her hands, she thought, were a crucial part of her overall persona, which she referred to as her shtick, which both that moniker and the acknowledgement that there was an element of design to it were themselves parts of the shtick. Her voice, which was low for a girl and smooth and capable of a mean Barry White impression, was another key component of the shtick. Her voice swung with careless sonority through her sentences, with the offhand slovenly cynical grace of a consummately skilled hipster. Her voice made what she said sound right, and her hands made it look right, and with the whole shtick together she got this perfect blend of assurance and disarray; she looked and sounded and came across just precisely the way she wanted to without seeming to try. “Yeah but so like here’s the sicheeation,” she said. “Izzy and Alley, you know, my roommates who are awful who I’ve probably told you about before?” “At some length.”

“You wisenheimer you. The yucks just never stop when you’re around. Anyway they’re having a party, which is like an epic drag because all their friends are awful like them and are either openly stupid or are stupid and pretend to be smart and I don’t know which is fucking worse, and the whole everything would be way less horrible in every way if you’d grace us with your presence.” “You’re inviting me to your party?” “No, I’m giving you herpes. Yes I’m inviting you to my party.” “Why?” “Shit, why not? Because who wouldn’t want your little Limey wise-ass at any like social gathering. And like,” she’d prepared this speech earlier, “you know those people you can just stand back to back with and fight off the rest of the world with your mockery? And have a good time doing it? I suspect that you sir are one of those elect few, is what I’m saying, and I want you to come help me fight off this party for awful people.” He dug his palms into his eye sockets so his glasses pushed up onto his head and said, “You do realize I’m just going to get drunk off my ass as soon as I possibly can. I’m a bit of a one trick pony when it comes to parties. Not even a very good trick, at that.” “Whatever. Same difference.”

B a ñ o Micaela Russo

Opal’s apartment was not really big enough for three people to live in, and was pretty decidedly not big enough for fifty people to mill around in, which those people noticed, and remarked on repeatedly without ever getting past “This place is really crowded.” All the furniture was inflatable, and there was some ambient discussion about deflating some of it to make more room, but no action was taken, and it remained a floating suggestion that everyone said someone should do something about for quite some time. Opal shouted to Ringo over the music, which was probably techno but it was hard to tell because of all the people shouting over it, that she was not trying to be cute or anything with the inflatable furniture, which came in a variety of candy-ish neon colors, but that it was fucking convenient for someone who moved as much as she did, and wasn’t uncomfortable as long as you didn’t wear shorts or a short skirt but then it would stick to your legs. First thing she took him around the apartment and showed him her things: This was her glass ashtray shaped like a heart. She didn’t smoke but it was pretty. This was her sack of grapefruits. She really liked grapefruits. This was her stuffed prairie dog carcass. It was named Oscar. This was her collection of VHS tapes of seedy cartoons and sci-fi movies. This was the bead curtain her crazy uncle Steve gave her. This was her high school diploma, in a tacky silver-plastic frame. Berkeley High School, class of 2006. She showed him some people: There was her ex Cal, who was awful and cried after coming. There was Izzy’s bitchy friend Mia, who wanted to be a model but wasn’t pretty enough and just ended up sleeping with people and not getting modeling gigs from them. There was Greg, who nobody was quite sure who he was or what he was doing but just showed up to these kinds of things all the time anyway, probably to lust after her sweet young body. Somebody whose name might have been Angela snagged Opal as she wended through and around the jungle of people, and Opal said to her, this is my friend and co-worker, he is a good employee and a decent man, and Ringo said hello, and Opal said he talks funny because he’s English. Maybe-Angela squealed with delight and mock-ironically fluttered her hands together. She asked Opal if she’d heard about the situation with Eli and Liv, and Opal said no doubt they were fucking each other’s cousins and cutting each other’s fingers off, and Maybe-Angela said we’ll talk and mimed a telephone, and Opal said, totals, seeya later Freckles as she receded into the crowd, and then said to Ringo, I once persuaded her that Russia is spelled with an SH.

Between the carpet and the wallpaper and the small rooms packed with bodies animate and inanimate the atmosphere became a tangle of voices and music and breathing disintegrating together like rotting things, and thick like rotting things, and Opal drew Ringo through and around the vagaries of it in her top form, moving like a ghost through the coagulate and swinging easily through, unflappable and untouchable and ironically apart within it, and perfect to her persona. The next morning she prodded Ringo awake where he was sprawled on the inflatable couch and his eyes snapped open instantly and he jerked upright. “Calm down, Frankenstein,” she said. He wilted and held his head like it was something fragile that was crumbling in his hands. “You were plowed as tits last night,” she said. “If I hadn’t dragged you to the couch you might have been trampled to death in the crush of humanity.” “Mm I’m sure. What’s become of my glasses?” “Right here.” She twirled them around her wrist and handed them to him. He put them on, winced dully, and took them off again. She said, “That was fun though. You should come next time we have a party, literally it was made ninety percent less idiotic by your presence.” “Thanks?” “I imagine you just want to find a cave to die in right now, so I’ll let you get to that.” “Considerate.” Ringo staggered off with the same rickety no-terrible-thing-can-surpriseme-at-this-point dignity he always had even when he’d just been passed out on an inflatable couch, and showed up the next morning at work looking not-quite-recovered, although when did he ever. Gimpy came in and had some brief conversation with him but Opal wasn’t paying attention because she was thinking of the next thing she was going to say and watching her hands glide through the motions of working the espresso machine. She liked Ringo, she thought, she liked having him at the party to witness her. He was a good person to have around because he was pretty quiet and didn’t have to push a personality every minute of every day, which she approved of as a shtick; more original and less obnoxious than a lot of others he could have chosen. She liked that he let himself be part of the background and didn’t feel like anybody had to know anything about his life or his opinions or anything like that. Ringo could just follow along watching and confirming that she was what she was, and that was all she really wanted from him or anyone.

SoCal Stunts A Nikos Aragon

Chinese Dragonfly Contemplating a Dive Ella Anderson

All snapshots of magnet poetry were taken in the Honors College Lounge during fall and winter terms. Each poem was composed by anonymous Honors College students.

Second Chapter: Expanse â&#x20AC;&#x153;Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us." -George Eliot

Up Abigail Pfeiffer Your hands pulling mine along, stretching wrists like taffy. I stumble and laugh, feet scuffling with the ground -but you're not bound by gravity. Then my soles bob away, flying up-up-up when we start to run. Clasping your wrist thisclose in a palm icy with liquid nerves as we race birds, even the starlings. You glance back at me, your smile releasing me into spiraling free-fall, hitting the sidewalk with a thwap! I realize that if I wasn't holding the string of your kite, you'd probably fly away, so I grip even tighter.

Amman, Jordan Grant Snitker

Cliffs Please fall back, The edge doesn't want you anymore. Do it quick before you forget How to soar. Caleb Flight first Over-thought second. Fear not the world, It’s not as full of free-falling anvils Targeted to our heads As the silent shouts hail. The sun is still allowed to live Even when occulted, Do the same and join him. It’s okay, We know it hurts to be hidden, No need to hide that too.

Kowarsky

Little accordion coyote, Don't fear what isn't yours to fret, Just climb and jump again. Try to plaster a smile this time, The grimace is heavy, It’s no help to the quest, More help if the cacti needed company. Navigation of the sky Can't utilize eyes, Ever stop to think Maybe sight lives On the other side of blinks? Reverse the polarity On your contrary countenance And fall or fly. It mostly depends on where it’s right to be.

Clothes and All Katie Dwyer

Petra, Jordan Grant Snitker

Cell Phone Poems Jessie Erikson i. The sky is a cap in Oregon A floating blue shell To make an egg of the earth While at home The sky comes down to the ground To touch our skin and kiss our heads And bless us with celestial bodies As after all we rise at least five or six feet above Whatever we stand upon ii. Ground that grows black Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been homesick for this Cigarette smoke on the wind

iii. The bench at state beach Which is London bridge beach now And even was then, not that I noticed Bigger a difference even than the daylight The lights do not make candles on the water now iv. The saddest thing of all To be looking at books And pick one out for my father Called the natures of maps And just as before He still matters the most The natures of daughters With dead fathers To find a filler Or at least try To be loved

"The Hair Thing" (excerpted on the opposite page) was originally published in the 1991 edition of the Honors College Arts Journal. Jeff Whitty is best known for writing the Tony Awardwinning musical Avenue Q. After graduating from the Honors College, he received a Master's degree from the Graduated Acting Program at New York University. He now lives in New York City. Below is his autobiography in the 1991 journal.

Visions of Justice Hugh Bitzer

"Visions of Justice rises up as a transparent beacon of government, a vibrant courthouse that engages the community while serving the needs of the law. It is inspired by the desire to expose and thereby better understand the many facets of the judicial system."

This design won 2nd place in a national competition called the 2009 AIAS/Kawneer Design Competition: Municipal Courthouse. These images were part of a larger presentation.

Third Chapter: Love â&#x20AC;&#x153;We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.â&#x20AC;? -Andre Maurois

Micaela Russo

Ode to the Epic Hero Ella Anderson

O, he of brute strength above us all He who answers a pitiful call Of manly stature with shoulders so broad Many a broad hath swooned at thy bod. O, he who battles monsters with sweat on thy brow, He who breaks not the paltriest vow, I yearn to learn of thy exalted ways, To do as you do and say as you say, For ye put mere mortals to shame, And I want my fifteen minutes of fame. Please make me thine apprentice; I swear ye won’t regret this. Together as one, we’ll be a beacon of hope, Holier than the Beatles, and bigger than the pope. O, he who saves so many lives: The kingdom, the orphans, the beaten-on wives, Go save this young lass, and take me too -She cries on a hill: “yodelay-he-who.”

Melody Young

This Small Request Requires a Verb Taylor Wilson Just—with me. Doesn’t matter what. With me sunrise. With me for lunch. With me an afternoon hour where you don’t sleep and I don’t work and neither of us has to take care of something real quick right now or worry later before we can with each other love. With me, would you dear?

Love Creature Ted Sweeney

missed connections: Love creature - m4w Date: 2010-01-02, 3:18PM PST through 2010-01-10, 9:29PM PST http://eugene.craigslist.org/mis/

1. I know you are out there skittering, love creature. I can hear your raspy breathing, love creature. I can see your beastly eyes shining in the night, love creature. What will you drag to your smelly den tonight, love creature? What fellow beast will worm its way inside of you, and you inside of it, love creature? Let us gurgle and screech together.

2. Love creature, I want to cage you. I want to exult your coarse, oily fir and your spines. Love creature, I desire your scritching and your gasping. I know you have exceptional hearing, love creature; it protects you from the other beasts of the night. So I know you have heard my strained howling, each evening, for you.

3. Love creature, in my mind you amble swiftly toward me through bog pools and thickets. The cascade of your clawed digits on the land's sweet humus brings forth geysers of spattering dirt, flecking your hide and your taut ears. You shudder, a blur, and the mud radiates from you. You pause, statuesque, and turn your stately snout towards the winds. What unworthy smells reveal the olfactory world to you? The far off smoldering of decaying viscera, the spicy spores of undergrowth, and, somewhere, my own reek. Seek me. You are my love creature.

4. Love creature, the basest

part of my consciousness is consumed with you. I hear you rustling in closets, underneath day beds. I see your silhouette in the windows at dusk. Your musk assails my nostrils in the laundry room, on the bus, by the compost pile. I close my eyes, love creature, and we are one. We dive together, clutching, into frozen pools. We emerge gasping, dripping, grasping. Our scent is earth, is gunpowder, is boysenberry. With our claws, love creature, with our claws, our claws, our claws, we slash each other. We leave our marks. None will mistake them.

5. Love creature, let me run with you. We will weave between one another as our feet, fleet, beat the prairie. We will hurl our bodies over the creeks and rivers, the veins of the land. We will take prey in our jaws, snapping spines with elegant twists of our heads. We will feast love creature, of ourselves. I can feel 7. Love creature, the wet heaving of you as we wrestle in the dimness. Do not you are singular. forsake me, love creature. My time on this earth is short, but I can discern you amongst yours is interminable. multitudes. There 6. Love creature, I cannot cease in my search for you. I have are so many factors; burrowed through the earth; I have drained the seas. I have your stench. Your inhaled and exhaled each cloud in turn. Still, your prowling coloration. Others appear; I fondle escapes my reaching pale digits. Your haunts elude me, yet you are ever in the corner of my eyes, flickering, vanishing. I them and inhale cannot effervesce as you do; my foreparents traded the skill their essence. No. for their dear meaninglessness. Teach me, love creature. You They are animals, they are beautiful, are ancient. but they are apart from you. They are not my everything. Love creature, everything about you is your own. Your screech, your prowling are deeply characteristic. I accept no substitutes, love creature. When I root about in you, I know the truth of you. Let all pretenders take note.

Familiar Expression Caleb Kowarsky

8. Love creature, my quest is everyman's. To co-opt the passion distilled in wildness, to breath it in and swish it about in the mouth; such is the goal of our aliveness. When I call to you, I am joined by the stentorian timbres of collective sub-awareness, a Jungian chorus. Listen to human us. Our wretchedness is borne by us all, cast about, flung and slathered on, bog mud. Though we are pinned beneath it, love creature, we stretch out a longing hand. We grasp for you. This is my call. Heed we.

Affectionate Bow Malia Autio

Art Poétique: Eye Metaphors and Extra Garlic Matt Silbernagel She told me to always use colons The tool of all ‘A’ winning papers And titles for late-night assignments So I began to use the colon When writing beneath the Moon’s Rabbit Full ::::: and big :::::: and white, but with shadows Then her two eyes, so full ::: big ::: and white With their shadowy-circled-centers Wide ::::: and shining ::::: and black, a colon Turned on its side just to view the Moon And the Rabbit’s figure :::::::: I wonder Does she care about garlicky poems? Too much makes them bad :::::: but add colons! That’s ::: automatic ::: poetic ::: art! Not only art, but an ‘A’ as well!

An Old Woman and The Dog Her Husband Gave Her Elisabeth Kramer "Shut up, you mangy mutt. I never wanted you in the first place and I certainly don't want you now, waking me up at four in the fucking morning with your goddamn barks. As if anyone would break in here." She was not a happy woman; this much even the dog knew. Eighty last January, Phyllis Vang Evans Harris was prone to outbursts like the one she had earlier this morning when Joe, her eight-year-old Bichon Frise, had, once again, mistaken the creaking of the back porch for an intruder. Harsh she may have been, but Phyllis was right. No one had nor ever would break into her home, situated as it was twenty miles from anything even resembling a town. Nothing about it revealed that the woman within had been left a small fortune by, as Phyllis liked to put it, her thankfully departed husband. The old woman lived comfortably with enough to hire a housekeeper who spent a large portion of her meager paycheck buying enough gas to drive out to clean once a week. Beyond her (Phyllis never bothered to learn her name), visitors included the post man and, occasionally, a desperate door-to-door salesman or overly zealous Mormon. Phyllis had no relatives willing to visit. She was living the life she'd always dreamt of during her marriage. Except for the unwelcome addition of Joe, the small, squat dog who often scratched to be let outside but was rarely obliged. If Phyllis had kept up his coat, it would have shone with highlights of apricot. As it was, the snarls and various rubbish picked up from occasional attempts at indoor exercise made Joe look like a misbegotten marshmallow. The dog had been a gift from the husband, dead now almost five years. Elliot had sometimes attempted to be thoughtful and had specifically purchased a Bichon Frise to compensate for Phyllis's mild allergy. Like she had for the majority of their forty-five years together, Phyllis had thanked her husband with what Elliot had long ago tricked himself into taking as sincerity. The puppy had been loveable and, initially, Phyllis had liked him. But the same had been true of Elliot when they were young.

Phyllis didn't care for animals, even less this morning after only a few hours of sleep. Often, as she did today over coffee, the woman wondered why Elliot, dear selectively thoughtful Elliot, had taken special note of her allergy but not of her much more prominent dislike of dogs. It was a question she often pondered now that she had time and space to consider it. Another was how a man like Elliot, dear milksop Elliot, could so desire children and yet conceive none of his own. Phyllis had often used that particular piece of information in the heated arguments that linked their last decades together. "Impotent" so accurately described her departed and, she resignedly mused over the toaster, most of her own life. Today's muggy weather soaked into even Phyllis's dark corner of the kitchen and made Joe uneasy. Although six years together had convinced Joe that his owner thought rarely of him or his needs, he still sometimes whimpered and pawed to be let outside. On the few occasions this had worked - normally on days too damp to be counted - Joe had relished his minutes darting through the overgrown backyard, running along the dusty front drive, and, best of all, breathing air untainted by his owner's weighty perfume, his home's neglected rot, and his own hidden waste. But always, just in the midst of his bliss, a cry shrieked from the back door (heard even more shrilly by Joe’s sensitive ears) and back the dog would go. It wasn't that Phyllis wished to make him miserable. She had never, despite the reputation that had cornered her in the country, purposefully meant to make anyone miserable. At times she had almost believed what Elliot had often claimed: that being unhappy was just a regrettable consequence of being with her. This morning, however, Phyllis refused such thoughts. The old woman had spent hours upon hours sitting in her chair in the corner of the kitchen, summoning memories to pay homage to the years of her life. Finally, today, after a thorough airing out, she concluded it had been life, and not her, that had been the disagreeable one. "How was I suppose to act when all I got was crap?" Joe obviously didn't know; he continued drowsing. "Did you hear me, dog? How was I suppose to act? My mother hated me, my sisters resented me, and my husbands all left me.” She paused to wheeze. A few seconds passed. The distant sound of thunder reached the dozing dog. “Don't you prick up your ears at me, mutt!” Phyllis cried upon seeing Joe’s reaction. “Do you know who I named you after? Not even Elliot knows who I named you after. My first husband. That's right, Joe the only one who gave me anything I cared about losing.”

The room dissolved into silence and the thunder reached the old woman’s ears. The fury of her speech, one she often made these days, only inspired Joe to roll over. Phyllis snorted and, to comfort herself, called forth one of her few treasured memories. After years of use, it unfurled to reveal the softened details of an oddly light winter day, a younger self, and a baby who rolled around like Joe just did. Cooing and gurgling, knowing eyes though unable to speak. It can never be said that Phyllis knew happiness how many of us honestly do? - but she had known something like it that day and the too few before it. The light had changed by the time Phyllis woke up to, once again, the barking of Joe. This time, though, he had a reason as the housekeeper sped into the driveway during the middle of the thunderstorm that had finally arrived. Phyllis eased herself up, brushed toast crumbs from her dress, and, still half asleep, opened the kitchen door. It was something she would never have done if the dappled dreariness of her dream didn't still linger before her eyes. Joe, so excited by the prospect of an un-begged for excursion outside, barged through the door, into the rain, and promptly came head-to-head with the speeding front tire of the housekeeper's car. A week later the new housekeeper arrived. Sarah knew little of Mrs. Harris except that the previous worker had been fired for running over the woman's dog, a dog, the recently unemployed and enraged housekeeper had raved in town, the old lady had never even liked. Still, she would have done the same thing, Sarah considered while gathering her supplies from the trunk. Sarah loved animals and to run one over was, in her tidy mind, more than enough reason to lose a job. Weighed down with a mop, bucket, and several bottles of gemcolored cleaning solution, Sarah unlocked the front door using the key the agency had received with the letter requesting a new housekeeper. At first sniff, the house caused a rare morbid shiver to dart down the woman’s back. Her shouts of "Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Harris" echoed disturbingly down the stuffy hallway, and, awed by the solitude, Sarah gently placed her supplies on the floor and moved toward the back of the house. The sight that met her was one that in the days to come she, fellow townspeople, and even a few local reporters would embellish with all the ghastly details it didn't actually have. Yes, she sat in her corner chair, eyes open. Yes, she had been dead a few days. And, yes, the back door stood open, waiting for someone to come back.

Sarah Austen "Midnight Mirage" was originally published in the 2000 edition of the Honors College Arts Journal. Kelcey Stratton graduated from the Honors College in 2004. She is currently in her last year of a graduate program for clinical psychology at The New School in New York.

Not Quite a Sonnet: Professor Cogan's Thoughts on Love Ella Anderson When you meet him, you’ll swoon for his diction You might scorn him for his rank, and yet Your dream of love will come to fruition. His intelligence and ruggedness will beget An infatuation that makes you play the fool. You’ll become an idiot, even though you said You’d never miss a midterm or skip school. Believing you’re Ginger, you’ll leap for your Fred. But it’s rare that it’s true; more often he’s sly And greasy too, like the pizza he offers with a grin on his face To make you come to his apartment after you said goodnight Like you can’t get pizza from any other place. Beware the Don Juan, any man too vain. “Remember, to be in love is to be insane.”

Ceramic Faces

Katie Lee

Love: a sermon for our age McKenna Marsden

Love Love will save the world Because hatred poisons our souls Hatred and war and noxious pollutants But love will prevail If we all throw our love at the great spherical communal love-ball that hovers near the Earth and within each of our souls It will grow, with each personal love-glob each of us throws Like a great spherical communal wad of chewed gum (But not as squishy Because love is not squishy, nor is it covered in cold saliva) And the great spherical communal love ball will push the hatred out of the Earth and out of our souls Into space And who gives a crap about space Love will heal the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wounds And heal the wounds of those who hurt others , so they stop doing that With its warm loving loveliness of love

Love And love alone Cast aside the bomb! Bombs are bad and hurt people and destroy ancient landmarks, and that’s why love doesn’t like them They make the great spherical communal love-ball sad, which causes the quality of its work to suffer Dismantle the bomb, make it harmless Use the old shells to build schools Schools made out of bombs Which is symbolic Do it now, hate-filled swine Do it with your love And children will come to the symbolic bomb schools and our love will teach them to love Because only then will love be in our future Because children are the future And the future is love And children are love too but we still need to teach them love That’s just how it works When we stop corrupting our children with out hatred and war and noxious pollutants We can make a new world A better world A world of love

Tens Don't Exist Caleb Kowarsky Facing the cosmos— I don't fear those. They're just the color of German chocolate cake, I will eat them up before they drown me out. I plan to play word games, And wrestle with the augmenting of argument. But, When I see potential love, I show a smile Her eyes are broken glass, It’s felt as a punch. Her countenance just shreds. Her eyes break my brain, Her mind is a 7:30 headache It’s a burden to think. Inflamed beyond awakened repair. My word weapons are stolen, Her gaze is the tearing of my toes, Disarmed by her charm. Yet, Each moment without her? My lungs will evaporate eventually Frigid woe. And my flesh will melt away. Because that is the day I will know her My lungs may now reside above That is the day she stays. But I can breathe her love. What is there to live for if I'm farther Oh she personifies a wink. From her? Her name is shorthand For beautiful, My lungs will evaporate eventually, And oh she leads me to sin, And my flesh will melt away. The way she moves, it burns, Because that is the day I will know her She's a carcinogen. That is the day she stays. I can feel my lungs evaporate, My bones begin to show. It couldn't possibly be too late… When I see her I will know.

A New Brain for Nefertiti Katherine Degenhardt

Forth Chapter: Fringe “Try to work at the margins of your ignorance - that's how you grow.” -Harvey Golub

Traditional Drumming, Burundi, East Africa

Alex Goodell

Spokane Story McKenna Marsden Somewhere between Boise and Seattle I was standing on the side of the road wet and with some shotgun pellets in my shoulder--this is what happens when you climb in the back of somebody’s truck when he wasn’t looking. People in Idaho often have shotguns, if ever you find yourself there keep this in your mind like a mantra. People in Idaho often have shotguns. I was standing on the side of the road among the putrefying raccoon corpses with the blackened pink innards squishing out, in the rain, with little pieces of metal inside my shoulder and trucks kicking gravel and brown water at my shins as they went by, and me thinking, wonderful, what I really need right now is more particulate matter under my skin. It was a couple hours before somebody stopped for me--Ford Taurus could have been older than me. One of the doors was a different color than the rest of the car and the paint looked like it had leprosy. It hissed to a stop in the gritty sludge on the side of the road and rolled down the window--unevenly, with a manual crank, and I could tell without looking that it would be missing the knob at the end. I trotted over like a good bum, and the guy driving said, “You look like a drowned rat.” I said, yeah, I’ve been standing on the side of the road in the rain for two hours. He said, “Get in,” and I did and the water coming off me didn’t permeate the layer of brown-black grime over the upholstery. The seatbelt was frayed apart into a tangled rope which I didn’t bother clicking in because I had to lean forward anyway because of the little pieces of metal in my shoulder. The guy driving the car flung it back onto the highway so the momentum pushed me back and made my shoulder collide with the seat. He went about eighty. He said, “My name’s Tony, yourself?” John. “What the hell happened to your shoulder?” I fell off a hill. When the guy shot me I was pretty far away, and he was a bad shot, and I think the pellets were for killing birds--still bad enough for Tony to notice. “Where you heading?” Somewhere dry. “I’m toward Spokane,” he said. “You can find someplace dry there. And get that shoulder checked out, it‘s pretty nasty looking.”

I said, yeah, it got pretty messed up. The heat coming out of the vents and drying my knees smelled like dust and head-colds. “So how’d you end up stuck on the side of the road in a rainstorm?” Got dumped by an Idahoan. The bastards. “Dumped you on the side of the road during a rainstorm with your shoulder fucked up?” Ya-huh. What are you going to Spokane for? Tony gripping the steering wheel so the tendons in his hands pulled taut stared straight ahead and said, “Got family there. I was born and raised in Spokane; I got out of there minute I graduated high school and never came back since. But I’m finally paying a visit.” Tony had graduated high school maybe ten years ago--looked like it, anyway. He said, “I don’t customarily pick up hitchhikers.” Good thing too, I said, it’s dangerous. Me, I’m just a harmless loser, but you can’t say that about a lot of other people out there. “I know it,” Tony said, “I saw you standing on the side of the road there like some kinda drowned rat and I thought, how many times has life done that to me, standing on the side of the road in the rain and all those warm dry cars swooshing past and me standing there getting wetter and colder. While those people in their fucking cars swoosh right by because you can never trust a person who gets dumped on the side of the road, they must of brought it on themselves somehow, must be crazy or dangerous, because these people in these cars think everybody always gets what they deserve. They think, look at me, I’m well-off so I must be a good person and that poor fuck on the side of the road, he must be some kind of psycho. You try to tell yourself everybody’s got some goodness in them, but that isn‘t true, any fucker with half a brain can tell you that and I‘m not just talking about Hitler, I mean ordinary people. I’m not like those people, you know, I know sometimes life hands you a rough break and you just need somebody to stop and give you a lift. I know that--uh, shit, what did you say your name was again?” Dirk. “Well, Dirk, you should know I sympathize.” World needs more people like you, buddy. “Now the flip side of that,” Tony said, peeling one of his hands off the steering wheel to make an ‘on-the-other-hand’ gesture, “the flip side of that is those fucks who have it easy their whole lives and didn’t do jack shit for it. Or those ones who punish the people around them for their own mistakes. Take my mother.” I thought, you’re going to be crazy, aren’t you. They always are. Friendly, well-adjusted people who are socially adept enough to have friends and family to talk to, they aren’t the people who pick up hitchhikers.

Melody Young

“My mother--her name’s Tara--my mother was dumb enough to get knocked up in high school and she‘s been punishing everyone else for her own stupidity ever since. Just because she couldn‘t figure out how a condom works,” Tony said, and he had both hands strangling the wheel again. I thought, you’re going to visit her? He said, “My mother, well--first off, I’ll just say it bluntly: my mother was a slut. She was picking up men--really awful ones--picking them up left and right, right, and then she would complain and yell at me all the time how she couldn’t find a good steady boyfriend because I had to be there, and not maybe thinking she couldn’t because she’d been dumb enough to get knocked up and was an easy drunk on top of that. Anyway--picking up men every day it seemed like, maybe even twice a day, who the fuck knows what she was doing while I was in school. Anyway, we had this little tiny apartment, right, because she was working at this IHOP because she never finished high school. Blamed that on her parents, the not finishing high school bit. If it hadn’t of been for me and hadn’t of been for her parents and hadn’t of been for who the hell even knows who else, Tara, sounds like she would’ve married a millionaire and been a famous actress. Anyway. We lived in this two-room apartment, so when she’d be bringing people there, she always made sure I was out of the house, right? She told me when I heard the car pull up to slip out and wait around the parking lot for a while. Well this one night, I was watching TV, I didn’t hear her drive up. I only heard when they were coming in the door. So--I was maybe ten years old then, right--so I hid in the closet, it was one of those ones with the little slats in the door. I hid in there, and Tara walks in and says, ‘look how stupid I am, I left the TV on,’ and she looks at the closet door and she fucking sees me in there. She looks me straight in the eye and I see her see me. And she went ahead and slept with the guy anyway. With me sitting there in the closet and her knowing it. What kind of a way is that to treat a little ten-year-old kid, huh?” I thought, why are you telling me this? Somebody you picked up off the side of the road? I pictured a drunken blond thing, twenty years old in a shack-pile apartment building shooting obscenity and vitriol to a four-year-old already learning to hate her, quiet evenings spent silent and zombie-like in front of the television. I pictured her picking up truckers at her minimum wage job wearing wedge-soled shoes and short denim shorts, smiling and batting her eyelashes at the customers. I may have been off--it’s just the picture I was getting. I said, shit, that’s rough, you don’t want to have to see your mother… and trailed off. “When she did get a steady boyfriend,” Tony said, “he was a fucking freak.” He resettled his hands on the steering wheel and left it at that. I said, a freak like how? And I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have.

“Not a good guy,” Tony said, and I thought, that’s not a hell of a lot more specific, but I didn’t push it any further anyway. He rolled his shoulders and said, “I’ve never told anybody this part before.” I had a feeling where this was going. “This guy--his name was Bob--Bob was just a guy around town, he worked in a gas station.” Tony laughed at that. “He worked in a fucking gas station. I always thought there was something a little off about him, you know? I thought he probably sold meth out of his basement or something. He might’ve, I don’t know, but that wasn’t what was wrong with that fucker. He starts dating my mom, right, and he starts being really friendly to me. I figured at first he was just trying to impress her and was going about it the wrong way, because women don’t care if you’re nice to their kids if they don’t give a shit about their kids. But turns out he never gave a shit about my mom in the first place.” I said, you don’t have to spell this out for me. I thought if he spelled it out he might burst a blood vessel in his brain, he looked like he was getting pretty close to it already his face already past red and turning purple now and his hands shaking on the steering wheel. He glanced at me, and said, “When she found out--doesn’t matter how-when she found out she started yelling at me. Like it was something I did. She starts yelling at me about any time she wants anything she can’t have it because of me, and crying and screaming about how awful her life is and how she wishes it would all disappear and she could wipe her slate clean and be a baby again, and how every time something seemed like it was going to work out it was always me who ruined it. Like it was my fault.” Tony said, “So that’s why I’m going to kill her.” Wait, what? “The bitch deserves it.” I thought, maybe he’s just shitting me. People like to do that to hitchhikers, but the way he said it he couldn’t have been joking. I thought about jumping out of the car but I didn‘t think I‘d survive that. I said, OK, slow down Tony, why are you killing your mother? “I don’t have to fucking explain it to you. I only fucking told you because what the hell are you going to do about it? She’s a bitch. She deserves to die.” This won’t make up for your shitty childhood, Tony, it’ll only make things worse. Please, don’t do this. “You don’t even fucking know her.” I said, Christ. There’s not really a hell of a lot I can say, is there? “There isn’t.” Let me off. “What?” Please. Let me out of the car, right now. I was kind of afraid I’d start freaking out and clawing the windows and shit.

“Fine.” Tony swerved onto the shoulder without slowing down much. He said, “I fucking knew you wouldn’t get it. Nobody ever gets it. You don’t fucking understand, if anybody ever deserved it it’s her. The world doesn’t fucking need her for anything. She won’t give a shit, she’ll be dead. She deserves it before she fucks up anyone else’s life.” I thought, I need to think of a way to stop him, but all I could think about was that maybe Tara really does deserve it, what’s the objective harm? Tony’s right, no one will miss her and she’ll be too dead to care. Why the revulsion? Why the guilt? Putting aside all legal, societal, moral quibbles, when you stepped back and looked at it, what was Tony doing wrong? I thought, I can’t believe I’m thinking this, but I couldn’t get myself that worked up about it. I thought, at least I’m not as bad as old Tony, and then, I never know why the hell I do anything I do. At least Tony knows why he’s doing what he’s doing. I thought, why am I even thinking about this, Tony is really clearly a hell of a lot worse than I am, and then I wondered how much I meant that. I sat still for a second, and Tony moved a little and I got out fast and said, don’t do it. Please, don’t do it, don’t you realize you’re making this my fault? and he reached across the seat and slammed the door. He flung the car out and swerved a little into the farther lane and then swerved back. He went around a mountain and I couldn’t see him anymore.

"The Wailing of the Rails" was originally published in the 1977 edition of the Honors College Arts Journal. Paul Clay is currently the Reverend of First Congregational Church in Oroville, CA. After graduating from the Honors College, he studied at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. He has served churches in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Most Days Forrest Wells

Most days I’m like a boarded-up hospital with so much to say that I can’t find a way to tell anyone anything at all, and most days I feel like a salmon struggling upstream so I can spill my seed and watch it wash out to the sea as I slowly sicken and die— but most days, you just ask me how I feel and most days I just answer “fine.” So most days when I wake I want to ask someone right away if they realize that one day, we’re all going to die—

but most days, I decide that’s a subject best set aside until after some coffee at least. And speaking of conversation killers, I have noticed that you keep me an arm’s length from understanding you, but I know that looking at an ocean doesn’t make a ship, so most days, I decide to just strip naked and swim that sea— I’ll never meet you on the far shore but most days I get a little bit closer. So most days I drive out to the onramp at the freeway

Reed McCue with a cardboard sign and a look that tells the drivers, “I saw you and you saw me don’t you ever deny that we shared that link.” Most days your lips light me up like a funeral pyre— burning my battered body into beautiful— and most days I’d love to let you know, but words like those only come when I see a naked page before me,

not just your undressed body, when I nibble on a pen baby, not upon your ear. And hey, funerals don’t really make for good pillow talk anyway, so most days, I’m like a nursing home dining room with so much to say that I just can’t tell you anything— but that is just most days.

Alex Whitebirch

"Three Letters" (excerpted on the opposite page) was originally published in the 1982 edition of the Honors College Arts Journal. Molly Moore--now Molly Emmons--is now a tenured English professor at Butte College in northern California, where she teaches creative writing and composition. After graduating from the Honors College, she earned her MA in creative writing from UC-Davis. She has written four novels, one of which is currently being shopped around by an agent. She is very excited that one of her first short stories is still being read.

Fifth Chapter: Fluidity â&#x20AC;&#x153;Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful.â&#x20AC;? -Lao Tzu

Tongue Jessie Erikson the portuguese, they know the word for me. they have taken â&#x20AC;&#x153;longingâ&#x20AC;? and elongated it, deepened it in sound and semantics. i look out the window to imagine the sea, sailors slipping away, sinking to the bottom: clumsy, heavy, gray, saudade.

Beneath Borneo

Maddy Gribbon

With dusk the waves turn Dragging their lace capillaries across the sand Like the nets of fishermen at the dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s end. Long strings of pearls buck and twist Starlings swoop in flight Chasing after the last ebb. The sea carries her dowry with her always. Cresting horses shake their sea-glass manes Soaring golden orbs in the dying sun Roll under to dream the dawn in her deep pastures. Softly, like so many layers of silk The waves slide back into the belly of the sea. The sun sinks. Over the horizon a deep red chord sounds And the stars turn out like goldfish at midnight.

Nikos Aragon 67

Geography Meets Philosophy Ella Anderson

Coffee

Kaya Aragon-Herbert

The kitchen was pitch black. Jake groped for the light switch and flicked it on. The darkness still pushed in through the cracks in the blinds. He turned on the coffee maker and yawned as he opened the refrigerator. “Oh…um…hey.” Jake whirled around. His roommate’s girlfriend, Lara, stood in the doorway. Yesterday’s mascara created two dark smudges around her bright blue eyes. Slightly hypnotized, he watched as her eyes slid past him and rested on the gallon of milk and last night’s chicken in the fridge behind him. Lara frowned. “Good morning. Yeah, I kind of forgot to go shopping yesterday. But I’m making some coffee.” That’s right. When everything is going wrong, point out the one thing you’ve got under control. That’s my motto, he thought, and grinned at her. She nodded, opened the cupboard, and took down a red mug that matched the color of her nail polish exactly. She leaned against the counter, her hair creating a curtain over her face. Jake closed the refrigerator and sat down at the kitchen table. “So, how are things going?” he asked. “Fine. How about you? Sean told me you were taking a film class.” “Yeah, I am. In fact, we could still use a few extras in our movie, if you’re interested. I mean, you would be perfect. But if you’re not interested it’s no big deal. I mean, don’t worry about it…” “That would be cool, but actually, I’m really busy.” Lara glanced at her watch. “Of course, no problem.” The coffee dripped into the pot. A bird whistled in the bush outside. Jake got up, and poured two bowls of Cheerios. He placed them on the table, sat down again, and gestured towards the other seat.

Lara shook her head. “I never eat breakfast.” “Oh.” “But thanks anyways.” “Well, if you don’t want breakfast, perhaps I could tempt you with some cold chicken? Or some ramen? I’m sure we have some ramen noodles here somewhere. That’s not breakfast. And, anyways, no one would have to know.” She laughed. Jake realized she had dimples. He choked on his Cheerios and hoped she wouldn’t notice. “Are you okay?” she asked. “What do you mean? Of course I’m okay.” “Well, it looked like you were about to choke.” “Umm…no, I’m fine.” Jake walked over to the window and opened the blinds. Early morning light softly illuminated the world, casting its hazy cloak over the hills and houses. The fog rose with the sun, unveiling the golden leaves of maple and oak trees. A man ran by, his breath visible in the crisp air. The coffee maker beeped. “Are you ready for a cup of joe?” Jake poured the coffee. “Thanks.” Lara got out the milk. She opened the carton. “Are you sure this is still good?” She poured. Thick clumps oozed into her mug. The coffee curdled. Together, Jake and Lara stared at the destruction. “You said the milk was good.” “No I didn’t. I didn’t say anything.” “Well then you should have.” Jake nodded. He looked at his socks. One had a hole. His left pinky toe peeked out. “Just drink mine.” “No. I’m going to Starbucks. See you later.” Jake watched her button her coat and head out the door. He heard the car door open and the engine start. It revved twice and then she was gone. He drank his coffee black.

Healing Maddy Gribbon

Hobbit Beach Lullaby Michelle Leis

Guitar Tab, Basic Plucking Pattern To accompany regular lyrics: E____________________________________________________ |B____0_____0_____0_____0_________________0_____0_____ |G______0_____0_____0_____0___5_____5_______0_____0___ |D______________________________4_____0_______________ |A__________________________0_____0___________________ |E__3_____3_____3_____3_________________3_____3_______ To accompany italicized lyrics: E_____0_____0________________________________________ |B_____________________________0_____0________________ |G_______0_____0___7_____7_______0_____0___0_____0____ |D___2_____2_________0_____0_________________2_____2__ |A_______________5_____5_________________3_____3______ |E___________________________3_____3__________________

You want to come with me Down to the white, grey sea Dance in the ice cold tide Burn all our wasted pride Day in my palm to keep Rest on my freckled cheek Gone like a hand carved throne Breaks when I throw a stone Gone for my eyes to see Spring tries to remedy Years on my face and hands Ruin our golden plans Come back to Hobbit Beach Stretch and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll meet your reach Pray at the end of the day That you see my quiet way From your throat stuck and dry Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find the words to fly

Reed McCue

Powerman vs. The Pacific Ocean Andre Klest

I eye every kitchen blade, roof top, and pill bottle in a different light. Today in one of my deepest lows, I feel the pull back into my hole. Where I can only see the world as if through primitive cave drawings. Earthy reds and disgusting yellows spread over and into jagged etchings of stick people. Running together and hopeless, without emotion or reason. The notion hits me suddenly, and I can feel the chemical reactions in my brain speed up, like my sudden inspiration is acting as a long overdue catalyst.

I make the decision immediately without doubt or concern the way all great decisions are made. I decide to take off, driving west, just for the fuck of it, to see the six foot waves towering and powerful, built out of nothing, and just as quickly crumble, into the sand. I need to remember what that's like. I gather a selection of tea, a miniature propane run gas burner, a pot, a bag of pot, and a sleeping bag, moving silently and cautiously, to escape unnoticed. Also, I pack a hand-blown glass pipe, a Hershey's Chocolate Bar, and 79 compact discs. I carry it all in a big maroon backpack, and walk out into the perfect spring day; it has cleared and the sun is suddenly shining strong in the last quarter of the sky. It really was. The roar of the engine is powerful but smooth and beautiful. Like a beast. I pull quickly into the road. No one is following me, and no one is driving in front of me. There is only the constant flow of weekend beachgoers coming in the opposite lane, S.U.V.s and minivans trying to get home and squeeze in a few hours of sleep before 8 a.m. Monday Morning. The highway is gentle and open. The car stereo is letting out a stream of songs, the sort at the end of motion picture soundtracks, those songs that peak right as the main character walks out into the desert, alone, with no one behind him. I pull off to buy gas. The attendant greets me with a shaking, brilliant, “Hello Buddy!” His many freckles blend seamlessly into his brilliant fiery hair. This causes his features to stew about in the pool of orangey red that is his body. He tells me I have to take a tiny slip inside if I want to pay with cash, the pumps only work normally if swiped by a credit card. The tiny store is bursting with thousands of brilliantly wrapped snacks and drinks, fuel for those people who stop by without anything, but miles of road behind, or in front of them. I hand the woman my paper, and a twenty, she hands back the bit of paper marked with a glowing green smiling face. “Show it to the attendant,” she tells me. “So he knows you're Good.” I step back out into the pleasant spring evening scene, and the attendant says “Only for you buddy.” He is washing my window. “On a day like today, you can really see.” Then “Global Warming” he says, still bright and smiling. “It's on its way This crazy weather And It's gonna bite us in the ass when it gets here,” he tells me, as I pay him to pump my tank with 6 gallons regular unleaded. Then still with a grin he says that he doesn't need to see the little piece of paper, “Keep it! And show it to your grandkids.”

“Powerman” comes spilling out the speakers. I turn it up, and unroll the windows. I press the accelerator as I come into the 55 mph zone. A tuft of smoke puffs up, through my rear-view mirror. “Pow-er-man, we're not gonna be his Slave.” Right then as the music is building, I pull through the trees coming up on the city of Veneta, and I see nothing but the massive American flag, rising above a slight up-slope in the road. It encompasses all I can see ahead of me, fully extended in the warm breeze. I can see that the weight of the cloth is so great that the flag pole had to be several times cut down, to a fraction of its original height, putting the flag right at ground level, right in everyone's path, and on it. Giving an incredible sight, of stars and candy cane stripes, forever. I roll into Florence just as the last few bits of light are falling from the sky, it is clouding over, my axle makes a clunking sound as I slow before the first stop light. I am driving between high rock walls that hold the narrow highway. The walls are covered with brilliant yellow scotch broom flowers, they cover every space, each flower is bright and intense and the thousands of them make the roadside burn in on either side. I pull up and around a bend, and catch a fleeting glance of the Pacific Ocean. The campsites are set spread out deep into the forest, and you have to walk in to get to them. I pay for site 74, using a ten and three ones that I find by chance in my pack. There is only one other car. It has plain white California plates. I wonder about this other car's identity. From my campsite I hear the rustle of footsteps and the crackling of a fire, but no voices; this person is alone. Perhaps traveling cheap to visit family. Maybe just traveling for no reason at all. I turn. Or maybe they're running away, a fugitive, a murderer even. But this doesn't frighten me. A murderer on the run here is only looking to be hidden by the trees, and coddled, by the night. My tent gives off its distinct odor of waterproof synthetic cloth. It is a smell that reminds me of camping in other removed places, on mountain tops. It is peaceful and calming. I turn on my cell phone only to check the time. It makes me Nervous to hold. There is overwhelming relief when my phone tells me it's out of the service range. I am completely free of that responsibility.

Jellyfish

Emily Ebel

I make tea, and light my pipe several times. The smell of marijuana smoke is mixing seamlessly with the strong but welcomed scent of the skunk cabbage, whose giant flowers are now in full bloom. I am thankful for the Easy-Start Log I used to light my fire; it is already big and warm and I feel its heat move all the way through my skin, through my muscle and bone, and then out again. As I read by candle a moth flies around the light, it lands on me. Its purple blue and diamond spotted wings crawl up and down my body, I do not shoo it off, I can see millions of tiny silver hairs glisten and glow in the candle light. I decide to take a walk to the beach. My first candle has burned to a stump. The few stars that can be viewed through the low foggy clouds look huge and hairy. The shadows made by my flashlight are filled with terrifying visions. A tuft of moss becomes a smoky figure closing in on me. Gaps in the tree limbs grow into mocking, sneering faces , with wide gaping mouths of jagged teeth.

Crunch a-bunch. Crunch a-bunch. Echoes from my footsteps sound like other creatures, tailing, just behind my shoulder. My fear is almost paralyzing. I turn off my lamp. I let the darkness flood, my eyes slowly grow, a little more adjusted. I let the deep blackness capture and comfort me. Through the trees there is a flash of brightest neon blue. It is the crest of a beautiful wave channeling and radiating the star light. Onward around a corner I can see a distant electrical shine. This frightens me... As I continue with my lamp darkened, I begin to see the path illuminated impossibly clear before me. It shines on, no matter which direction I turn. A string lifts up through my spine, up through the crown of my head, I feel my vertebrae restacking, and my body growing taller, as the trees shrink smaller. We are both at equal height now. I can see clearly the canopy of the forest, thick and smooth, like grass over many small hills. I realize that I've always been this tall. The sweet smell of skunk cabbage flower fills up my perception. Everything I see has no color but thousands of different shades. I walk through a low and narrow hall of salal berry bushes, on my path to the beach. Branches and leaves touching and rubbing against my body as I move, my footsteps grow soft as my feet slide into the flowing sand. My senses suddenly explode. My heart pounding with the constant vibrating sound of the waves, the huge expanse of open shades, the damp air, is Too Much. Paralyzed I collapse down to the sand, light my lighter to help show the ground, light scars burn my eyes violet and white each time it blows out, like two luminous beasts groping at my face. But my body melts, into the sand. Sounds of syncopated wave breaks is all I hear. A constant roar that moves louder and softer. My eyes see the rise, and fall, of crests, upon the sometimes glimmering water, clouds move into the water, seamless and silent, as does the sand. Each deconstructing of a wave washes over me and pulls me out towards the ocean. I am being pulled between the sky and the sand, but I can still feel the sand and see all around the glowing night clouds. I rise and fall and shift with the ocean. And then there is no ocean or sand or sky, it is all pulled apart and glued to each other, and I am all Around. I can hear from billions of points and see and feel them, and part of me is constantly rising and falling and pulling out and stretching out and lifting high and powerful, then falling again.

A Pinecone Story Madison Cuneo

Entropic Love Alaric W. LĂ&#x201C;pez Sometimes it is a strange coincidence, how similar to ice can be a man. To entropy will fall the greatest prince, melting like a cube in someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand. And time will take its toll on solid form, with every ticking moment of the clock. All things affected, none resist the storm, not even I, though it I try to block. For a lady circulates through my veins, infecting me and my affected brain, and slowly but so surely I will melt just like the cube one might have felt. Entropic love deconstructs men to water, which we will become again.

Staff Biographies: Ella Anderson used to be tall for her age. Now she's tall for her gender. One day, she hopes to simply be tall.

Rachelle DiGregorio is an Italian from Colorado. Her life is nothing

but a series of snack food infatuations. From cheese sticks to dill pickle spears to those frozen goo-pockets that are supposed to taste like pizza, life's been good to her so far. Currently, she is deeply passionate about chocolate graham crackers. Also, she did the layout for this journal.

Emily Ebel is a biology major who uses the Arts Journal as an excuse

for not studying organic chemistry. Her interests include fishkeeping and eating cookies. Someday she hopes to become a mad scientist and/ or billionaire.

Jessie Erikson is a sophomore linguistics major, which basically

means all she really wants to do is sit around in the jungle and make dictionaries for languages that none of her friends have ever heard of. So, she really likes to go places and look forward to hanging out in jungles, but the desert is her home and her one true love. She's also a fan of cats, dresses, and pizza.

Katie Jentzsch enjoys finding hidden gems of great work, especially

by her peers, and bringing it to a wider audience, which is why she was drawn to working on the Arts Journal and her career inclination of editing and publishing. On the staff, she reviewed submissions to publish and helped with the layout, specifically for chapter 4. She is a junior pursuing an English major and a business minor. Her other interests include dancing, travel, listening to music, watching television, reading, and exploring new places.

Jenny Klein is a journalism major and is thinking about a career in

advertising. Having grown up in Bend, Oregon, she loves everything related to the outdoors and spends the winters skiing and the summers camping, backpacking, hiking, and kayaking.

Caleb Kowarsky enjoys the revelries of any ordinary warm-blooded youth--basking in the moonlight, embracing the sultry summer air, indulging in a well-timed ginger ale. He is currently majoring in the

study of the psyche in addition to minoring in the chemical arts. He hopes to, in classic deranged scientific fashion, synthesize the two. If not, he may simply continue researching why people do the things they do, and are the way they are. Truly, these questions shake our daily lives. Caleb hopes for the best and lets go of the rest.

Alaric W. LĂ&#x201C;pez: Leader of the orcs of Garathron, summoned by

Hrothendorf and Zagareth to vanquish the lives of all gnomes, halflings, and elvenkind, he praises the god Innoruk, who aids his sustenance of mana pools for spellcasting and necromancing. He wields the Axe of Narfonia, which increases his life force (+15 hp) and gives him an immediate mana burn (+12 dmg). Alaric, being an orc leader, typically hangs around other orcs, ogres, trolls, and nazgul. He instills fear in human souls, for he devours them quickly after crushing them with his Axe of Narfonia, which he occasionally substitutes for his sacred Trollhammer.

McKenna Marsden is an English major and a sophomore in the fine fine Robert D. Clark Honors College. She is from Ashland, Oregon. She is interested in a career in fiction writing, but realizes this is not a responsible life choice. Maybe publishing? Who knows. Life is an adventure. Some of her favorite people are Jack Kerouac and William Faulkner.

Roxanne McKee was synthesized in 1938 by Swiss chemist Albert

Hoffman. To date she has had eleven children, all named George, and enrolled in the University of Oregon last fall to provide a better future for them. Her decision to major in art, however, renders this gesture rather futile. Roxanne enjoys drawing, origami, writing, translating random text into Elvish, reading, sewing, sobbing without provocation, dancing, and creeping people out. Every full moon she wears her skivvies over her clothes and pretends to be a superhero. Not to worry, her therapist says this is a perfectly normal coping mechanism.

Abigail Pfeiffer is an English major and a David Bowie fan.