Category: montreal

On Travel, Identity: “Try being your own friend”

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“Try being your own friend”

word by Annie Rubin

colour by Kosisochukwu Nnebe

“Try being your own friend.”

It was an exhausting job; he shook his head and hung up the phone.

The plane ride had felt long and treacherous, with each dip of the wing he was certain they would nose dive through the sky, be compelled to grab for their yellow life vests stored either directly beneath the seat or above you in the overhead compartment.

He would search frantically for the flight attendants out of the corner of his eye, secure. If they were still passing through the aisles with a variety of drinks and Skymall paraphernalia, he’d have no reason to panic.

The streets were shimmering with a blue-black slickness as he marched with conviction in the direction of the hotel.

The streetlights were flickering in and out of view. There was an unsettling echo of footsteps that he couldn’t swear were his own. Perhaps this was part of the adventure. Perhaps he was en route to be mugged. In either scenario, he found it best to focus his gaze on the road ahead, calculating the distance between fear and safety. Two hundred meters, now one-ninety…

In the lobby, he smoothed the lapel of his suit. It was one action in a whirlwind of unfamiliarity that brought him a moment closer to home. He couldn’t understand the startling sense of discomfort he experienced, surrounded in the idiosyncrasies of this place. The country felt oddly reminiscent of something he’d seen once in a dream, or maybe it was just that things felt so cartoonishly similar to images he’d stared at for months in preparation for the journey.

This recognition was stained by the fact that everything was just vaguely different than what he was used to. The water faucets, the scent of the stagnant air, the accents, of course a language he had never learned as his own.

Should this culture have been a piece of him, imparted by nature, somehow inherent in his blood? He wandered into a pizza joint out of habit or homesickness.

This was not his home. This did not remind him of the meals cooked by his grandmother; this was nothing reminiscent of his college chants or practiced habits or the inside jokes, memories collected into phrases and images that composed his true identity.

Maybe he was searching for something profound; maybe he wanted inspiration—confirmation that he had a home, a country, a culture that reflected his unique self. Instead, he was left in a state of flux: what was truly his? The room had fresh floral wallpaper and he felt nostalgic for a place that had until now, never truly understood him.

 

 

From the author: “I was inspired by the juxtaposition of the poised human look and the fragility of nature reflected in the vibrancy of the flowers. This led me to question identity, especially how to maintain a sense of self against a backdrop of an ever-fluid environment. The concept of identity raises questions about the significance of cultural background, and exposure, where the protagonist explores his familial history by visiting the country where his family comes from, realizing that he has little to no connection with a place he has never been, himself.”

Waterlogged Love

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Waterlogged Love

word by Keah Hansen

colour by Tomasz Kartasinksi

16 minutes left of class. The seconds drift onto the floor, clustering like fallen leaves or crumpled love notes around her converse shoes.  Laughter seeps sideways from her mouth – I inhale her sounds. Filling the blank spaces on the corners of my notebook with cryptic doodles.  Inside jokes nestled on the pages, shading in the loopy curves with tenderness.  She slips me a mint, like any other day, under the roaming eyes of the teacher and spinning discussion, which floats to the florescent lights in a hazy, vapid way. I follow the din upwards, over her curly hair and alight on the fire alarm, with vague notions of apprehension and pensive yearning.

Today, the mint is imbued with significations, defining our comfy closeness on her worn yellow couch and clandestine ice cream escapades (alternating spoons of chocolate ripple and gossip) with flaming gravity. We snicker together over something trivial, then with giddiness I alone levitate equidistant to her forehead. The bell sounds and the class streams out. We tumble to the water fountain together and pause. She splashes over me with her usual locutions while I take a long sip of water.

The water is icy and clarifies my thoughts.  6 months of uncertainty.  6 weeks of contemplation. I’m bobbing here, staring at the grandeur of the stars from this makeshift raft. Her crocked elbow is my mooring.  The water ebbs unceasingly. I feel seasick (or is it butterflies?).  She’s never had a boyfriend.  We’ve held hands in the hallways. Oh to hell with it, I dive in.

My statement, a small confession of love, comes to her in small timid waves. We are the last ones in the building. I’m fixated on those worn converses again; her feet dance nervously while I’m a shipwrecked mess, letting the waves pass through my lips. The rocks hold me steadfast on the hopes for our relationship; they are sharp and make my voice waver more than I’d like.

Her features are catatonic. She contorts her face into a sympathetic smile. I surface into the glaring sunlight. Her face is burnt; she doesn’t understand my watery, viscous existence. These mermaid musings mean nothing to her. My ears are clogged. I feel the palpable pressure of her discomfort; my skin is cracking as impressions of my declaration sink into her body.

Another bell sounds. I slink back into the water, my element. Half coherent and murky, I don’t need to define myself or reveal my pinings to anyone.  I’ll cry tonight, alone, but gather my tears as jewels. Later, I’ll string them together and wear them on my neck, something beautiful and brave.

For now, I drift away.  A current pulls her brisk minty existence away from my waterlogged love.

 

 

From the author: “I was inspired by this artwork to write a story about an experience of revealing your romantic affection to a friend of the same gender.  The blue material at the bottom of the piece expressed to me both bed sheets and water.  I interpreted the water as a symbol of renewal and rebirth, which I related to coming out with your sexual orientation. 

The positioning of the legs also gave me the impression of figuratively “diving in” to a relationship or a new experience.  The opaqueness of the blue inspired me to think of the colour as a form of protection, which I developed later in the story.  Furthermore, the vertical tiered nature of the piece affected the progression of my story, while the Facebook friendship sign symbolized the ambiguities of relationships, especially during adolescence as we have a tendency to question our sexuality.”  

 

Are Students Too Sensitive?

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I sat down to write a short story on this painting by Montréal’s Sylvie Adams. A sickness followed me as I sat down and I knew that the words would come through forced. The sickness started with a reading of The Atlantic, and spread wings with a speech by a politician about how uncomfortable he felt when he did not understand something. It was embarrassing to watch – like the magic of Parks and Recreation – and yet it was a sickness because the politician was not kidding: he tried to cover the confession by saying the things he did not understand were wrong – with pauses, for emphasis – because that was not the way things had worked before.

I realize now that Adams’ painting and this discomfort are connected: how many people walk into a gallery expecting cartoons, are faced with art that requires interpretation, and say, my kid could do that. North Americans do not like to feel out of touch. We do not like to feel vulnerable. We need to understand everything, or at least know enough scrapes to put together something to say that might deflect our vulnerability. The leaders of our political parties are particularly vocal about their discomfort.

I just wrote, it’s okay not to know what’s going on with something, and yet I know that I hate tennis because I do not understand how it works. I am sure I’ve ripped on science because I did not understand how it worked, and I was lucky to not have had a world audience which may have given me the confidence to deliver a speech on how science should be scrapped from schools because I wasn’t good at it and how tennis wasn’t a real sport because it was so dumb. It’s a bit scary to think that this whole opinion on science is shared by the current Prime Minister of Canada.

The funny thing about stoicism is that it is something that has never worked and yet the past hundred years of Europeans arriving to North America have continued to fetishize it. Our cars that rattle before death do not inspire the same admiration. We pay someone to fix the car. We do not pull over to admire the dedication of the rust.

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I am alluding to a fetish for the ‘good old days’ when people used classrooms as the glue to bind the violence going on outside the doors: you need hearts and minds to be complicit, or at least oblivious, in order for violence to continue in their country. Just ask Chomsky. 

Two social psychologists penned an article emphasizing that moving the classroom away from this place of support for violence was something to be feared. They allude that mental health problems with students is in part due to new accountability processes for classrooms to question instead of support violence. They fear that students ‘seem fragile’ which suggests that students in the past felt comfortable; that pressing wounds of students in the past was a good way of teaching, and that the classroom is in fact a place students attend in order to be reminded of the daily violence against them, as though an incredibly expensive substitute for therapy.

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Here’s a middle-class white example from a white guy for my fellow white guys masturbating to their rights for ‘freedom of speech:’ let’s say every now and then your professor reminded you of your dog who just died. When you tell the professor it seems a bit unnecessary, the answer is that change takes too much time, so stop being so sensitive – not everyone here has seen a dog die. That talking about your dead dog is in fact justified because it adds dramatic value to the conversation.

This is what must be going through the heads of writers who insert a rape scene instead of doing the hard work of learning how to write. This is what must be going through the heads of the psychologists – and, unfortunately, a President – when they attempt to outline a fear of changes that are occurring in order to preserve a type of violence that they understand.

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Part of me wants to blame Hemingway and his beautiful and walking characterizations of stoicism. Part of me wants to remind these uncomfortable leaders that Hemingway shot himself in the face.

Part of me wants to remind all our ‘second amendment’ fighters that the constitution was not found on the ocean floor. Part of me wants to tell these ‘freedom of speech’ advocates that laws are, in fact, created by human beings, for specific human beings.

Freedom of speech is not the freedom to silence people who are telling you that you are hurting them. Freedom of speech is not the freedom to justify daily acts of violence because it is what you fetishize. Thomas Jefferson, a slave-owner, once said, “All men are created equal.” In Canada, a Charter of Rights and Freedoms was created in a meeting while a genocide continued outdoors.

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The Editors at The Atlantic confuse me. I can understand, for example, that a liberal president would try to rally some of the more conservative voters, who have been indoctrinated with this fetish for old violence, in order to help the next democratic nominee. For a magazine to align itself with a furious discomfort in new accountability while at the same time supporting the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates is baffling. If the same person, perhaps the Editor publishes Coates to lighten their own guilt, in being one of the fetishists for old violence themselves. I hope their publishing of these yearnings for old violence is instead to gut the backlash by giving it too much space to speak, and yet I still fear of the consequences these articles have on socializing the reader, when associating the words with the authority of the magazine.

I do not completely understand everything that is happening in the abstract art I look at. I am not always able to deliver the most insightful comment about a painting. A lot of the time, I say, I like the lines. Small words. And that is fine. The worst thing I could do would be to stand in front of the exhibit and say, this is not art because I don’t understand it – burn it! The worst thing I could do would be to insert myself in a conversation where I felt uncomfortable for the sole purpose of lightening my own feelings of being out of touch, imperfect. 

word by Liam Lachance

colour by Sylvie Adams

On Love: “Teach Me to Speak”

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My apartment has the music of love in it.  There is a row on my left and soupy breathing on my right.  I hear “fuck you” and I hear “fuck me.”  In love, someone is always getting fucked.  The rain outside patters the windows like a bowl of milk being filled with Rice Krispies and these slow and then moderate and then fast percussive bangs mimic the action unfolding here and there.  Snap crackle pop snap crackle pop snap crackle pop.

Behind the closed door to my right it sounds like my roommate and his girlfriend are hiccupping in harmony and it dawns on me there, wrapped in nothing but a towel, that this marked speechlessness seems more conversational and comprehensive and wholesome than the stuff going on to my left; but both still sound like love.  These are but two of love’s many iterations.

When I was younger, I would tip toe from my room to the stairwell that led to the kitchen to sit there and listen to my parents disagree loudly, hurtfully.  And I’d fear that the two people no longer loved each other.  I might enter the kitchen, crying, and ask if everything was all right, if they weren’t going to get a divorce.  It was in my kitchen that I learned that two people in love are allowed to fight.  Love necessarily yields war but war does not necessarily yield love.  And so back in my apartment, I feel like I’m seated again at the top of my staircase, all teary-eyed, only now I see that love can not only be scary, but that it is a choice.

Each of my roommates feels something in his heart if it is possible to feel there at all.  Right now I feel something there too.  Right now the Yankees are playing the Blue Jays and Lord knows a W for the Yanks here is huge.  Right now I have an unwritten story that my publisher needs by Wednesday.  Right now my English professor wants 500 words from me on the tension that Hemingway generates between language and experience.  I like that writing prompt.  It is worded beautifully.  My publisher also wants 500 words from me.  Twitter wants 40 characters.  That last sentence was 36.  Forty characters, 500 words: who cares?  It’s as if I’m talking to you through a damn keyhole.  Right now I have all this inside me but to you it’s only words and words and words.  Right now I wish my heart could talk because it has so much it would say to you.

Love and conversation, though, aren’t characterized by words; it is me and it is you, bundled up for minus 50 degree cold, undressing one another without letting either of us freeze.  My roommate engaged in the stuff at the end of the hall, you see, though, is freezing.  He moved too fast.  He inhabited himself without inhabiting his girlfriend.  So that makes true love going up to someone and saying, “Let me thaw you out.”

Can I?

 

word by Jacob Goldberg: “The image has a heart in it.  This all happened in my house the other night, and I thought it was fitting to write about love.”

colour by Sylvie Adams

“A native New-Brunswicker, Sylvie Adams has lived mostly in Montreal since the 1980s. She has travelled intensively throughout her life, residing for brief periods in Germany, England and France.

She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University and a Master’s Degree in Applied Sciences (Architecture) from Université de Montréal. She worked in the design field for close to fifteen years in Canada, the United States and Europe. Her love of visual arts brought her back to painting and she now has her own studio in Montreal, where she paints. 

Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, in Quebec, Ontario and at the Affordable Art Fair in Seoul, South Korea (2015).

Her work can also be found in private and corporate collections, including the Permanent Art Collection of Rio Tinto Alcan.”

How To Dress Like An Activist

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It was the yellowness of the room. Lead-paint-coated plaster. The way the sunlight streaked through the one window and splayed shadows on the yellow wall—flashing beige and grey.

He sat by her side, smoothing her hair and humming a song she recognized but couldn’t name. He had created her. He had brought her into the world and had shown her right from wrong. As far as she knew, his word was law, and she followed his advice as such.

The rulebook was constructed through mere preferential suggestion. He had always told her that women look better in heels, that “sensible” shoes were actually just self-indulgent. He told her that short dresses were sexy, that long hair was feminine and that women’s legs, when standing with feet parallel and together, should curve into three separate gaps: one at the ankle, one at the calf, and one at the thigh.

Of course, to her, it became implicit that all men would examine her as a specimen, analyzing her aesthetic relentlessly, adjudicating her body’s rights-from-wrongs. This overwhelming notion made her particularly conscious of any clear defiance of the rules.

When she left home for the first time, she discovered that hers wasn’t the only rulebook. There, in the depths of “Outer Comfort Zone” dwelled a population whose inhabitants challenged every norm she had grown to embrace.

She met The Photographer, whose unshaven legs protruded from scuffed Doc Martens, whose ripped jean shorts extended well past mid-thigh, whose hair was chopped short and who bore a spidery tattoo that trailed from her shoulder down to her wrist, circling her olive skin in place of jewelry. The offense struck severely. The Photographer did not have complete disregard for Law—she would often wear bright lipstick lips and dangling earrings, the kind that pulled at her earlobes, weighing heavily as she walked—it was that she chose her battles, maintain that this was what made her feel free.

It was a simple defiance, the regaining of autonomy over her body. Her legs, which in a month grew a shaded a chestnut brown with hair, itched when they rubbed together—but at least she was fighting the patriarchy? She felt less at home in her body, which, she convinced herself, was a stage closer to “figuring it out.”

One evening, sitting across from him at a booth, yellow-brown menus folded in their laps, she tried to find herself in the pale green. A woman approached. She was all bright-reds as he eyed the way her calves arced gracefully into suede stilettos, tight red dress wrapped around long torso. Maybe this was the kind of woman who without fail could obey The Law, who never thought to question whether they’d suited her, looking so thoroughly comfortable. She sneered, angrily—can’t you see that you’re putting our gender to shame?

She thought of the stinging red blisters, oppressive yellow rays of sun, and the blatant confidence that radiated from the woman’s blue-green eyes. She felt the warmth of his gaze, the hollowness of his affection, and the eternity that appeared within those who looked at her and see more than a “pretty woman.”

But what if she had simply appropriated The Photographer’s stark defiance of the mainstream—was it truly her own autonomous self-expression? In fact, she wondered, pressing down into the heels of her beaten Converse, whether she had become the same kind of analyst towards others that she’d despised, herself?

Yes, she was fighting objectification, but in doing so, had the movement taken on on a rulebook of its own?

It occurred to her, gazing at the woman, bathed in orange sunlight, what if this dress is just a dress? And what if, she thought, I prefer my legs to be bare?

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words by Annie Rubin: “I was inspired by the merging of colours, the unsettling streaks, the abstract quality of, muted tones, and by the soft brushstrokes. This piece targets the objectification of femme beauty standards. As the protagonist is exposed to a counter-culture movement, she explores the dilemma of how or whether actively adhering to gender norms can be decisive and empowered. The stark difference between yellow and green represented the struggle against over-sexualization through counter-culture self-expression. I hoped to expose a systemic entitlement to harsh judgment, and to beg the question of how such assumptions work to keep the system alive.”

colour by Alexis Rourke

On Spousal Abuse: “I Thought You Were Dead”

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Trigger warning: spousal abuse

When she got really angry, she’d throw anything in sight. Once she took a painting right off the wall and threw it and it hit me in the side of the head. I blacked out and when I woke up she was on top of me, covering me with her body, and crying. “I thought you were dead,” she said. “I thought you were dead and I was so lonely.”

She moved into my apartment a week after we met. We threw out all of my furniture and she filled the apartment with her couch and table and chairs and bed. The first month, we would sit on the porch sharing cigarettes and discuss what pieces of my furniture had been picked out of the pile, which pieces we thought were the saddest. The coffee table went quickly, but it seemed like no one wanted my old mattress. One night, we drank too much and she punched me in the jaw. It snowed that night and the leftover furniture disappeared.

Sometimes when she threw things, I would grab her wrists until they were raw and swollen. And then she’d kiss me and I would put my arms around her thin waist, hold her so tight she would ask me to stop. We’d sit in front of the television, her face covered in blue from the screen, and I’d bandage her wrists, burned from my skin on hers. We’d laugh that our love was so hot we could burn one another just with a touch.

When you fall in love, the end is never important. The end is another day.

word by Leah Mol

“I found it very intriguing that the woman in this piece seems so strong, and is also seemingly being targeted. She is perfectly in place to be ruined. Because this piece brought forth the theme of contradiction for me, I wanted to write about people who love one another and want to hurt each other all at the same time. People house so many contradictions.”

colour by Rebecca Proppe

“I’ve been making art my whole life, drawing story books and cartoons since I was a little kid. Now I’m an adult, and I still love to draw.

I’m currently studying art history mixed with some painting and drawing classes. Like most people I don’t know where my life will take me after graduation, all I know is I love art in all its forms and will be making it for the rest of my life 🙂

I hope some of you can enjoy my art as much as I did making it.”

“Two Faced: On the Consequences of Beauty Standards”

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“Two Faced”

The secrets of a woman’s mind are written in the details of her face.

Look closely.

Every expression, every line, and every crease has a tale to tell. They grow and change and multiply, just as the years do. Then, why is it that when I look in the mirror, I am consistently dissatisfied with what I see?

The root of my dissatisfaction lies in a variety of pubescent acne scars that have yet to fade; in the darkened circles under already dark, deep set eyes; in the thin but unmistakeable wisps of hair, around the corners of my lips and at the base of my nose, that bridge my eyebrows together.

I look in the mirror and I see an amalgamation of imperfections arbitrarily plastered together.

But there is a rawness in the way I choose to present myself. This amalgamation of imperfections is unassuming, unforgiving, and unafraid.
This is how I present myself to the world—this is how my story takes shape.

Why, then, is this what I am taught to dislike about myself? Why is this what I am taught to find fault with?

Every expression, every line, and every crease has its own tale to tell:

These acne scars are battle scars. My skin is my armor; tattered and trampled on, it shields my inner vulnerabilities and insecurities. These scars represent the years I spent hiding, covered in layers of foundation and concealer, failing to realize that beauty is more than skin deep.  These scars represent my development and growth, on both a physical and psychological level. While it is still imperfect, I’ve grown comfortable with my skin, in my skin.

It is often said that one’s eyes are the windows of the soul. Well, my soul shines out through them—they open wide, and bright, with excitement. Other times, these eyes are tired, showing exhaustion from late nights and sleep deprivation.
They crinkle when I laugh, just as tears pour out of them when I cry.

Hair grows relentlessly and freely all over my body—and, why wouldn’t it? Am I not human? Am I not alive and healthy?
Hair is the not-so-subtle reminder of my humanity, of my autonomy and my ability to choose. It can be both liberating and restricting, depending on how I choose to tame it.

My mouth is the vessel through which I articulate my thoughts; it is the vessel through which I express my emotions. The corners of my mouth curl up when I smile, and turn downwards when I am unhappy. It is with this mouth that I say, I love you, and with these lips that I let you feel and believe it.

The secrets of a woman’s mind are written in the details of her face.

Look closer.

Look deeper.

word by Fiona Williams

“The rawness of the artwork by Proppe caused me to reflect on how I view myself, particularly in light of the beauty standards perpetuated in the mainstream media. Whereas the female figure in Proppe’s art is depicted without inhibitions, I reflected on what I constantly find unsatisfactory, and then why I am unsatisfied with what I see: the immense amount of pressure we feel to be beautiful.” 

colour by Rebecca Proppe

“I’ve been making art my whole life, drawing story books and cartoons since I was a little kid. Now I’m an adult, and I still love to draw.

I’m currently studying art history mixed with some painting and drawing classes. Like most people I don’t know where my life will take me after graduation, all I know is I love art in all its forms and will be making it for the rest of my life 🙂

I hope some of you can enjoy my art as much as I did making it.”

 

25th edition of the First Peoples Festival

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Présence autochtone, the 25th edition of the First Peoples Festival, is currently taking place at Place des Arts in Montréal, and is definitely worth checking out.

The festival features movies, concerts, readings, art, and more, celebrating aboriginal culture and its importance for Canadian identity.  Moreover, the festival highlights the evolution and adaptation of aboriginal music and art in a changing world.
Drumming circles and other forms of aboriginal traditional music, as well as new forms of aboriginal musical expression, such as DJ Psychogrid, Madekimo, Moe Clark, and Katia Makdissi Warren are featured every day on the big stage.
Additionally, many important aboriginal organizations like the APTN, the Makivik Corporation, Land Insights, and the AVATAQ Cultural Institute are using the festival to bring attention to the challenges that still remain within the aboriginal community, like the societal integration of First Nations and Inuit People who adapt to life in urban centres.
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In response to this issue and others,  the First Peoples Festival promotes the use of art as a means of societal mobilization, identity building and cultural understanding.
Inuit cultural expression using modern and non-traditional materials, including tepees and sacred animals like deer, turtles and moose, can be seen all over Place des Arts. In addition, the festival features First Nations artists like Jeffrey Veregge  of Port Gamble S’Klallam. Veregge’s art will be of particular interest to comic book fans, as it integrates traditional aboriginal artistic designs with popular culture icons like Iron Man and Buzz Lightyear.
Lastly, Parks Canada is giving out free airbrush tattoos of modern and traditional designs of aboriginal spiritual animals, each created by an aboriginal artist. With each tattoo comes a short explanation of the spiritual importance of each animal, and a description of the artist’s vision for the design.
The First Peoples Festival is not to be missed – check it out this week, until August 5, at Place des Arts!

High School Visionaries

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Rebecca Platt is and continues to be a member of an unrecognized but nonetheless elite club: Senior Superlative Actualization.  Rebecca Platt’s Willstown High School Class of ‘12 voted her Most Likely to Find The Meaning of Life.  As senior superlatives go, Ms. Platt’s was considered one of the more unachievable ones, along with Most Likely to Steal the Statue of Liberty, which Damon Quinn has still had no luck with.

The Class of ’12 had no good reason to believe that Rebecca was going to Find The Meaning of Life.  This is because Ms. Platt is as dumb as a doornail.  For example, she is known around Willstown High as the girl who infamously commented, ‘Is this Pennsylvania?’ on Hank Wiley’s photo in front of the Eiffel Tower.  She has regrettable tattoos.  E.g., a trail of generic lips runs down her oblique and beneath them reads, “Christ Was Here.”  Her fridge is empty because she spent her $300 monthly allowance on a Sun Conure, which she named JFK.  And with no additional money for a cage, JFK has been shitting everywhere.

It’s a boring story of how Rebecca Platt came upon The Meaning of Life.  She didn’t have a vision; there was no beam of light.  What it was was a series of mundane events that gave her some insight into the way the world is.  It happened on her 22nd birthday.

Rebbeca Platt was on the subway to work.  She sat across from a woman whose triceps were loose flaps of fat.  The man next her said, ‘Happy Birthday, Beth.’  ‘What?’ Beth said, leaning closer; she couldn’t hear him.  Beth was a mirror for Ms. Platt that day.  Fifty or some odd years separated them.  Beth’s arms were in some metaphorical sense a signpost of what Rebecca had to look forward to.   Ms. Platt imagined herself with her own flaps of fat, her own hearing aids, and sensed that she was deteriorating, nearing the end of her visit here.  Everyone has a Beth, and Rebecca observed that she could either neglect her eventual decay or accept it.  So she decided to bow to her mortality instead of avoiding it.

The subway stopped.  ‘Someone on the train needs medical attention.  We appreciate your patience.’  Work started in ten minutes and if Ms. Platt were late again she’d be fired.  Surprisingly, she didn’t get irritated.  Other people on the train are probably in similar or worse conditions than I am, she thought.  Rebecca didn’t know what to call it, but what she understood there on the stalled train was the importance of compassion.

Ms. Platt then learned about forgiveness.  ‘I’m sorry I always said that your brother was the smarter one,’ Rebecca Platt’s mom said through a teary happy-birthday call.  For most of her childhood, Rebecca was blue.  But daughter forgives mother, and by waiving her inner rage toward her mom, Rebecca relieved herself of a lot of psychic pain, and grew steady.

When Rebecca Platt got home from work later that day, though, she was unemployed and hungry, and still had to clean up all of JFK’s shit.

word by Jacob Goldberg

“If there is a meaning to life, I think it has to do with the stuff in the story.  And if you were to come across it, I imagine that a palette of colors might merge as they do in the artwork, and people would realize that deep down we can blend, too.  It’s important to always keep in mind that even if you think someone is stupid, they might in fact be worlds smarter and more capable than you think they are.  People are mirrors, and we shouldn’t miss out on opportunities to see ourselves in them.”

On Racism: “Choosing your ethnicity”

Shalak

This planet is comprised of a collective of starving artists painting prejudiced portraits that hang hidden in family homes. Cheap but sturdy frames are forced around those to whom difference is a prison, painting them with preconceptions and adding them to crowded collections. These brushstrokes soothe worn out eyes but suffocate those trapped behind the chipped glass piling up in petty portfolios.

Mouths do not have slots for double A batteries so why the hell do tongues mimic low-grade labelmakers spitting out insignificant identifiers based on the prominence of pigmentations and the foreignness of fatherlands?

We are all just souls upon bleeding soles traversing the tough terrain only some of us are allowed to call home.

She is exhausted because her ancestors planted their aching feet near the equator rather than the North Pacific. The ink from the classifieds dyes her fingertips a deeper shade of dark because the last name on her resume reads “Latin” rather than “qualified”.

He cries at night because his classmates pick at his afro but never pick him to be on their teams at recess when they run across the field at the school where the confederate flag flies half-mast because its just another Wednesday.

Those sons are dead because he saw them walking down the street and their melanin levels matched that of his entitlement so he pulled his regulation firearm because apparently blackness is still synonymous with corruption despite the alleged 150 year anniversary of the Civil War.

Don’t you get it?

The ability to pronounce and be proud of one’s diversity is a privilege reserved for those who have the ability to choose when to show it.

We live in a world where “dare to be different” is a slogan splashed on the t-shirts and timelines of pre-teens everywhere yet we fail to admit that unless you are lucky enough to fall into the majority, you will be damned if you do.

You will be harassed if you do.

You will be killed if you do.

We are all just souls upon bleeding soles traversing the tough terrain only some of us are allowed to call home. We take one step at a time but walk in circles because the ones who hold the keys are the same ones who refuse to hang contemporary art because their frames cling to the same vintage pieces their parents displayed in their own living rooms.

We are blinded to sameness and seized by difference, never fully allowing the interweaving web of pure humanity to unite us all in the sweet solace of symbiosis.

So she stays sleepless, and he never stops hanging his head. Fox News mornings lead to daylong mourning by faraway strangers thanking God it’s not their own kin suffocating under soil and sun-shriveled forget-me-nots. But from within their palisades of privilege, they never stop to think about who brandishes the brush and who keeps the key.

We are all just souls upon bleeding soles traversing the tough terrain only some of us are allowed to call home.

Don’t you get it? Turn the key. Welcome home.

word by Hannah Chubb

“This piece is designed to be a wake-up call in the face of the racially-driven Charleston massacre, in addition to countless other hate crimes. It is a stripped down reminder that while difference is often glorified, it is a ball-and-chain for those who do not have the ability to hide their minority status.”

colour by Shalak Attack

“Shalak Attack is a Canadian-Chilean visual artist dedicated to painting, muralism, graffiti urban art, and canvases. Shalak  has manifested her artistic expression on urban walls across the world.  Shalak is a co-founder and member of the international art collectives “Essencia”, the “Bruxas”, and the “Clandestinos”. 

“Shalak also works with several other mixed media approaches such as tattoo art, jewelery, illustration, installation, sound, and video making. In the past ten years, she has participated in numerous artistic projects and exhibitions in Canada, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Palestine, Jordan, Isreal, France, Belgium, Spain, Argentina, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Senegal and recently in Sweden for the Artscape Mural Festival. 

Shalak shares her passion for freedom of expression, and has facilitated visual art workshops to youth of under-privileged communities and prisoners in various countries across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and in Africa.  Her artistic work and community art-reach is rooted in the social and cultural values she received from her family growing up across Canada.  Since then, her most impacting education has been learning from different communities around the world. Public walls has become her favourite place to paint, she uses graffiti as an art form to create accessibility to culture for diverse communities.”