Issue Six

Paramnesia

By Noelle Hendrickson

To create the photo, I first took the picture, asking a friend to model. Then I took the raw file into Photoshop CS6, and added shapes, textures, and ultimately editing the photo to convey the title I gave it. Paramnesia is a delusion where fact and fantasy are jumbled, such as deja vu. In the artwork I attempted to show the gap between fact and fantasy, whilst the equal sign bridges the two.

Noelle Hendrickson is an American photographer currently studying abroad in Melbourne, Australia. She combines her photography with her Photoshop Certification to create story-telling visual art. Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as The Claremont Review and The Eclectic.

Silenced; Holes

By Joy Xie

These pieces were inspired by my desire to discover more about people and wondering what we all have in common. I wanted to express the words that we don’t say out loud but can be conveyed in our facial expressions. The painting titled Holes depicts a worn, old man but parts of his face are cut out to represent how life at times can tear holes through people and create scars. However, beyond the pain, there still exists happiness as shown by serene scenery past the canvas. For Silenced, I wanted to express how at times I felt like no words could express the emotions I was feeling, bound by inexplicable ropes, as some other girls may also feel. Thus, I wanted people to know that even if our words can be silenced, our art will not be.

Joy Xie is a junior at Mountain Lakes High School and lives in a small town in northern New Jersey. She enjoys painting and reading in her free time, developing a passion for these hobbies as a young girl. She has been published in Celebrating Arts, Aerie International, and AIPF and has received awards in Scholastic Arts and Writing.

From the Editor

By Molly Hill

It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.

Jack Kerouac

To our readers and contributors:

By the time one of our issues goes up online we’ve corresponded with a lot of writers and artists, and it’s exciting to see the variety of creative work out there. Because we’re grant supported and have a fixed per-issue budget, we end up (reluctantly) turning down a lot of great work that fits our guidelines. We hope reading through an issue of Blue Marble is a catalyst for writers and artists to create and continue sending their work out into the world.

Many thanks to our grant givers, benefactors and cheerleaders whose unflagging support continues to allow us to pay all of our contributors.

Our Issue Six creatives write about a range of topics: travel, love, loss, grief, race, identity, Facebook, and more—but it’s the way they write that makes their work stand out. There’s a good mix of humor, insight and poignancy in this issue and we hope you’ll return frequently to our site to sample the prose, poetry and art on these virtual pages. The contributors in this issue range from 13-21 years old and live in the U.S. as well as England, Ireland, South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines. So glad all of you found us!

Molly Hill

Editor

Coloring Books

By Sanya Bery

In 2^nd grade, I fiddled, cross-legged, as I listened to my teacher mumble about the beauty of books.

“Reading is like giving vague instructions to your mind,” she whispered, “like a coloring book: you give your brain an outline and allow it to figure the rest out by itself.”

I couldn’t help but let her enthusiasm enter me- it was wonderful, what our brain would think, what it was taught to think, with no instruction.

Soon, the bookshelves in my room overflowed with stories I could never forget. At night, I would pray to be those characters, trapped in the confines of pages, fighting evil. I could almost envision my blue eyes twinkling in the sunlight as my blonde hair flew behind me. My long, pale legs would pump faster and faster, leaving the villain in the dust. Maybe this vision of myself was my first mistake.

My second mistake was quite similar: I always imagined myself as princess Ariel, caring and good-natured but just a tad rebellious. In elementary school, at the lunch table, my friends and I were talking about what princess we would be, and I, quite confidently, said that I was Ariel. The reaction, nervous laughter, was not what I expected.

Lyla, a girl with fair skin and dark hair, who we knew was Snow White, responded.

“No, you’re not Ariel. That doesn’t make any sense. She is.”

Lyla pointed a slim finger at a shy girl sitting on the corner of our table. She had fire for hair, light eyes and even lighter skin.

“Who am I then?”

Lyla paused for a little, and looked around at everyone else. “I don’t know, no one, I think. Not everyone has to be a princess. It’s okay.”

After lunch, I immediately approached the girl who was said to be Ariel. I let my mind wander about all the insane adventures we would go on together. I found out soon enough that she was timid, and deathly afraid of the sea and breaking rules. I was confused.

That night I took a good look at myself in the mirror, the conversation still echoing in my head. No one. Not everyone has to be a princess. I was upset, but mainly confused. I looked up to these fictional girls because I saw bits of what I was in them, and pieces of what I wanted to be. I thought that our personalities were very similar. But, everyone else seemed to be drawing comparisons on the basis of something as empty as appearance. It was then that I understood I would never be called Ariel because she was white, and I was not. There was something cynical in reading now; each marvelous heroine was just a character, a figment of my imagination, something I’d never be.

The more books I read, the more I see that authors often stick to simplicity when it comes to detail. For example, everyone has a nose and authors often do not include this detail in a character’s profile because they know that the reader will be able to imagine it. My teacher was right- we, as readers, are able to fill in aspects even when there is no specific instruction. The author only mentions a nose in extreme cases: when he or she believes that without a proper description the character cannot be complete or fully understood (think: Voldemort). Oddly enough, I have noticed that ethnicity in literature works the same way. The standard of race has become so embedded in our head that like an ordinary nose, explaining that a character is white is a waste of words that can instead be spent on painting a better picture of the character. If there are two characters, Sasha who is white, and William who is not, the character development for Sasha is always much more in depth. The reader learns small quirks about Sasha, like how she takes her coffee. William, however, is treated like a character with an extremely unique nose, and suddenly the reader knows nothing about his personality, but rather knows too much about the exact shade of his skin.

When we read about Sasha we allow our mind to think. We know Sasha likes coffee in the morning with no sugar because she is trying to lose weight for her brother’s wedding that’s in two weeks. This detail sparks a flame that allows readers to relate to her. We like her, because she’s like us. But when we read about William we think, “oh that’s the kid who is black,” because that’s the only description we have received. We don’t see William away from his race as we do Sasha. We have confined him.

Don’t get me wrong I believe that race is important in development of characters: fictional or realistic. However, race should help us grow, not stop us. When I was young, what I struggled with most about that lunch table conversation was realizing not that I wouldn’t be seen as Ariel, but that I wouldn’t be seen as anyone. My young mind failed to see me painted as a hero. For the longest time I thought that I was the problem. If no one wanted to write about someone who looked like me, or had parents that looked like me- isn’t that an issue?

Whether we want to believe it or not, there’s something in all of our brains forcing us to perceive some people differently than others due to small, and in hindsight meaningless, characteristics. These unfair stereotypes, which begin as whispers and progress into screams, build a wall that not only divides us but sometimes, in the worst cases, buries us alive.

I wonder how long it will take until we realize that maybe our instinct is not correct. Maybe, corrupt from the generations before us, our brain is begging for a change-to not only have coloring books but also to celebrate any color that appears. Maybe we need a rainbow of Ariels, and to equally accept those with tails and those with legs.

Sanya Bery lives in New Jersey and spends most of her time in the city, or the tree house she and her brother found in the woods behind a golf course (very cliché, she knows, but seriously: people underestimate the power of tree houses).
Her writing has won both a Silver and Gold key, and has been published in Creative Communication, Prisms Magazine, Teen Ink, and Canvas Literary Magazine.
Her creative writing teacher is the wonderful Ms. Tess James.

The Event Horizon

By Selena Spier

It was a sun-strained, shallow-breathing day in the ides of August – that treacherous month, with its cornflowers and ice-cream trucks – that my sister Barbara got sucked back into the sun. I’m not just saying that. I’m not crackers or anything. I’m just telling you what she told me, because it’s been bringing me comfort these past few weeks, and the time will come when it’ll bring you comfort too.

As I said before, it was August, the August of the overgrown roads, that time of year the air starts to get cool but still feels dry and sandpapery on the back of your throat. Barbara had cut Sunday school and gone out into the cornfield. The other kids had been teasing her. She was seven and I was five, which is probably why I didn’t notice her leaving at the time. But she left all the same. She waded through the blackberry bushes – where the gremlins live, as everybody knows – and climbed over the stone wall to the field. She went right to the middle and stood in the grass in her purple Sunday dress, motionless except for her enormous stuck-out ears. These were flapping softly in the breeze, skin so thin you could see the sun through it. Barbara stood out there for a while, blinking, and then began to run. She ran faster than any human being had ever run before, so fast that she could feel her heartbeat in her tongue, and then, all of a sudden, the wind caught her ears like a sail and she was lifted clear off the ground. She flailed around for a moment, half-surprised, before getting her bearings. Then she started flying around above the field in loops and dives and figure-eights, and all the while her ears were flapping up and down, up and down.

She circled around like that for a while, laughing in glee, until her ears got to feeling sore. She hovered in midair, then began to fall upwards into the sun. At first she was frightened, but her fear quickly subsided when she discovered that she could still somehow breathe. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she was in a large room, with high ceilings and marble floors. All around her was a throng of people – not real people, though; as soon as you looked at one straight on it would disintegrate, the way a bubble does under its own weight. There was no god. Just the last Dalai Lama at the front desk, checking everybody in. Barbara went to him. He gave her a key and told her she could leave her skin in the blue hamper, and that she could look out the window one last time before going into the waiting room. He told her she could wait there as long as she liked.

She peeled her face off first. It didn’t hurt. Then she shimmied out of her arms and torso and stepped carefully out of her legs. For a few minutes she held on to the sound of her name, listening as it was repeated to her in many voices, over and over, last of all her mother’s. Then she smiled and nodded and set it aside.

The window was hardly a window at all, just a little porthole of turquoise glass carved into the far wall. She went and pressed her nose to it. Far below was the great blue expanse of the world she’d left behind, roiling with dust and storms and people milling around the cities like ants. At first she was watching a civil war – then she got distracted by a baby being born, cute little thing, with a harelip and astigmatism. She stood, and she watched, and she thought about the day she caught mama smoking menthols in the guest-room shower. She was desperately happy; she was indescribably sad.

The waiting room wasn’t a room – it was the soccer field by our elementary school, the one with the faded lines and the old bleachers that screamed when you sat on them. She stumbled down the little hill and went to lie down on the center line. She felt fine, just fine, a little overwhelmed but nothing that wouldn’t dissipate with time. Everything was warm and sunny; there was nobody else around. And as far as I know she’s still there, lying face-to-the-sky in the scratchy August grass, thinking about things.

Selena is a college sophomore originally hailing from Block Island, Rhode Island, where she spent the better part of her childhood catching hermit crabs and messing around in boats. She reads everything she can get her hands on, but her favorites in particular are Isabel Allende, Milan Kundera, and Louise Glück. She also spends a lot of time painting, going for runs, and thinking about aliens.

Flying

By Austin Conner

When my grandpa had a seizure, he left the assisted care facility as a bird. Not one of those eagles or falcons, since his house is too small. Not a dove, either, since that’s only for priests. No, he became a blue jay, the same kind that would sit in the tree outside my room and screech in the morning.

I go to watch him for the afternoon. He’s tweeting to the tune of Sweet Clementine while he’s perched on his rocking chair’s armrest. The room is stuffy even though it’s winter. The heater is running and its subtle brrrrr runs throughout the house. His Chihuahua is curled up in a ball on the couch, and he stares at the dog. Whenever he tried to flap over to her to pet her, she barked at him and ran away. He doesn’t try to get near the dog anymore. He just stays in his chair.

I sit down and pull out my laptop. He’s staring at me whole the time, chirping along to a commercial’s jingle. He tells me that he grew up in Virginia, had to walk twenty miles to school. He tells me that again after sitting there silently for twenty minutes. I nod along, since I’m just here to give my grandma some time to go shopping.

He falls asleep. I’ve been here three times in the last two weeks, and he always sleeps. He squirms and shakes in his chair sometimes, his blue feathers pooling on the hardwood floor. I pick them up and toss them in the garbage can, since the vacuum cleaner will get clogged with them.

He wakes up, lifting his head up real fast. He opens his beak to take a yawn, and then he tries to get up. His wings flap, but he’s not moving anywhere. I tell him to stop, but he can’t hear me over the beating of his feathers. Eventually, he gets up, and he’s flapping all over the house. He’s on top of the TV, chirping along with a pre-recorded Jimmy Fallon. He opens the refrigerator door and comes out with cheddar cheese hooked onto his talons. I think he’s smiling, but I’m not quite sure since I don’t know how birds smile.

Then he perches up on the windowsill, scratches his claws against the glass, and stares up at the sun. He tells me that when he was six years old that he was a bird. A seagull, he says. That’s why he went into the navy. That’s why he asks for glasses of water even though he doesn’t drink it. He tells me that he’s going to fly to San Francisco. He’s going to Fisherman’s Wharf, sit on top of the old submarine exhibit there and listen to the sea lions.

I tell him that I can take him there one day when he gets better. When he’s not a bird. He’s quiet and says that he doesn’t want to stop being a bird. He likes to fly. I nod, since even though I’ve never had wings, I always wondered how it must feel to be perched up on top of a power line. To be just a little bit closer to the sun.

He says he wishes he was always a bird. He likes the way wind flows into his beak. He tells me he does miss petting his dog though.

I ask him why and he says he wishes he was always a bird. He keeps chirping, repeating that wish over and over again, his voice frail and tired.

I open the window up for him. He looks at me and I tell him that a bird isn’t supposed to live in a house. He nods, asks me to tell Grandma he’s sorry for him, and flies off. He leaves a feather behind and I pocket it.

Each morning, I hear a blue jay outside, chirping. I know it’s not my grandpa because we live too far away from the ocean. But, I still grab the feather on my nightstand and hold it close to my chest. I try to listen to the bird, try to understand what it’s trying to say, but I can’t. There’s something about the way wings work, about how the wind gets in their eyes and brain, that I just won’t ever understand until I’m flying with them.

Austin Conner grew up in the East Bay Area near San Francisco. He started writing deep in the bowels of the Internet in a weekly flash fiction contest called ‘Thunderdome’ where he receives (and gives) critiques to other writers. Currently, he’s studying Biology at UC Merced while also pursuing a Creative Writing Minor. He has been published previously at Vestal Review, Dualcoast Magazine, Five on the Fifth, Manawaker Studios, and Flash Frontier.