The Spirit IssueVolume 10 Issue 7 March 2011

CONTENTSVOLUME 10 ISSUE 7 MARCH 2011

ESSAYS

EDITORIALS

Faith, Film, and FuneralsDEVON BUTLER

UntitledANTHONY DAMIAO

LITERATURE

PROSE

ART

Beholder XIIINUNO TEIXEIRA EMMANUEL XERX JAVIER

Front CoverNADINE BADRAN

Back CoverNADINE BADRAN

Inside Front NADINE BADRAN

Inside Back NADINE BADRAN

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QuestionsLOST NOWHERE

Alternate Religion and Culture Course TitlesJUDITH ELLEN BRUNTON

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UntitledLUIGI DIGENNARO

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22 Conspiracy of Love and HungerK. BANNERMAN

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Spirit of Why Not?MATTHEW MOUSSEAU

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20 The Failure of Richie MillerKEEGAN TREMBLAY

That Sugar In My TeaERIN MULLIN

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The Simple PleasuresEMILY ZAREVICH

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Faith by NumbersALANNA WALLACE

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Weathering HandsALEXA FORTIER

I Traded My SpiritFor PerspectiveJIM CAVILL

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My LoveEMILY KENNEDY

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EDITORIALEditor-in-Chief Morgan Alanmorgan.alan@blueprintmagazine.ca

Production Manager Lakyn Bartonlakyn.barton@blueprintmagazine.ca

Photography & Art Manager Emily Kennedyemily.kennedy@blueprintmagazine.ca

Editor at Large Devon Butlerdevon.butler@blueprintmagazine.ca

Promotional Director Sarah Georgessarah.georges@blueprintmagazine.ca

Community Outreach Director Erin Oldynskierin.oldynski@blueprintmagazine.ca

Advertising Director Jonathan Ant!ekjonathan.ant!ek@blueprintmagazine.ca

Brantford Outreach Director VacantApplication at wlusp.com/volunteer

Interns Brieanne Berry, Jim Cavill, Lydia Ogwang

CONTRIBUTORSK. Bannerman, Judith Ellen Brunton, Jim Cavill, Megan Cherniak, Anthony Damiao, Elli Garlin, Luigi Di Gennaro, Alexa Fortier, Matthew Mousseau, Erin Mullin, Lost Nowhere, Emmanuel Xerx Javier, Nuno Teixeira, Keegan Tremblay, Alanna Wallace, Emily Zarevich

ADMINISTRATIONPresident Bryn OssingtonGeneral Manager Angela FosterProduction/Advertising Angela TaylorChair of the Board Jordan HydeVice Chair Erin EppTreasurer Tarun GambhirDirector David GoldbergCorporate Secretary Morgan AlanDistribution Manager Kari Singer

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NEXT ISSUEIssue theme to be announcedOn stands June 2011

THE SPIRIT ISSUE

Tropes and notions of spirit and spirituality permeate our cultural practices and conceive contemporary notions of ritual community - the con!ict of religion and spirituality. "e quest for a non-institutional, personal form of faith is unavoidable. At a hyper-local level, the extreme school spirit that pervades this school could be seen as a form of idolatry.

Upon the development of a critical lens to hold against the prevailing beliefs and ideologies of parents and social institutions I, like many of my peers, turned from organized religion to-wards atheism. I endured a brief ‘religion sucks’ period that can be owed to my own personal immaturity and desire to rebel, but I now see the value of religious tolerance and the positive use of institutional religious faith.

"ough de#ned by these institutions, the process of spirituality is one that is deeply per-sonal. As the submissions included in this issue re!ect, attempts to rectify intangible concepts with one’s own value systems and practices can be a di$cult and trying process. Despite this di$culty, what is derived from this process becomes integral to our character.

Spirit can be a complex system of practices and theories, a personal notion of notions and attitudes, or entirely unde#nable. Whether unpretentious or assertive, to know spirit is to know one’s self.

Morgan AlanEditor-in-Chief

COVERArt by NADINE BADRAN

I pull my inspiration from the anti-industrial ideals of the arts and cra%s movement. For my own art, I began using contact paper as a means of creating sketches for natural wood pieces. I now use it as my primary material, as, much like my images, it is less permanent and more playful. My creative drive can be found within the bits of scattered natural landscapes in a city setting.

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Alternate Religion and Culture Course TitlesJUDITH ELLEN BRUNTON

100-Level Courses

Overstating Your Base KnowledgeBarely Understandable ConceptsEpiphany Over-SharingTiny Speeches Disguised as Questions

200-Level Courses

Islam: A Roller Coaster of AdventureChristianity: Abandoning Base Knowledge with an Existential CrisisJudaism: Unanswerable Questions about Kab-balah with an Existential CrisisBuddhism: Calm, then an Existential CrisisSt. Patrick Converted the Pagans in Ireland and other Anecdotes Ignored by Bar-GoersUsing the “Exegesis” Correctly: Trial and Error

300-Level Courses

Accepting Your Status as a Cultural StereotypeTolerating the Flood of RealizationsSomeone Please Tell Me What Truth IsDeveloping a Research Lens: “Guys, Religion is Everywhere!”Wallowing in Guilt: Articles You Can’t Get OverOverusing Jargon in Papers and Conversation

400-Level Courses

Managing Confused Family and Friends: “No, I’m Not Becoming a Priest”How to Stop Queering !ingsConversations on !omas Tweed: Stopping !em from Spiraling Out of ControlShedding Tears: Discussing Your Research in Some Well-Meaning Professor’s O"ce!ought Experiments and Rhetorical Questions: Lying to Your Brain

Photography DEVON BUTLER

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I haven’t decided what I believe. I’d like to thinkI have all the time I need to !gure out how spirituality and I can cohabitate; time to collect all the pros and cons of each religion through a Wikipedia and Google search, and weigh them meticulously until I discover a label that’s right for me. One day, I’ll sit down at my laptop and decipher what I believe – or rather, which religion my beliefs lead me to.

“Well, how do you know you have that time?” asked a friend from Virginia. She looked at me expectantly, like my life would expire then and there, and my soul would prob-ably go to Hell. Good thing she’s not wise to the fact I’m not baptized.

"e only word that I can !nd to describe my relationship with religion would be tumultuous – another reason why I have yet to embark on my Google search, which will un-doubtedly need the accompaniment of a few bottles of wine.

What is most ironic is that I have had a great number of run-ins with religion. It is those incidences, much like most

individuals, that make me question whether I have a higher purpose; it is also in these instances that my discontent for religion sometimes boils over. Predominantly they are mo-ments or situations that have given me little faith in the orga-nization of religion in general and pushed me towards a sort of pseudo-religion that I create for myself. And isn’t that the best kind?

As a child, church was synonymous with art class. "e large church scared the living bejesus out of me, and thank-fully the “serious” part of church was just for the grown-ups. My mom took me to the United Church down the street from our house; it would be the !rst of two separate instances where, for reasons unknown, she thought it necessary that we dress nicely and attend the Sunday ceremony. In the end, my likeness towards religion ended up mirroring my aptitude for art – abysmal.

Outside of the presumed sanctity of the church, I was be-ginning to realize what religion really meant to the majority of my family, no matter how much my mother protested. My family’s Irish Protestant roots – which weren’t so much about being Protestant as they were about not being Catholic – were hard to ignore as I aged.

My mother’s side of the family was !lled with former Irish

cops, politicians, and members of the bomb squad during the Troubles in Belfast. It soon became clear that religion was more about whose side you were on, whether you’d been shot at by the Irish Republican Army, and what #ag you #ew. "e polarization of religion only helped to solidify my belief in an inner spirituality that couldn’t be found in an institution.

And then I started to date a Catholic. “Are you a practicing Catholic?” my grandfather asked,

emphasizing the one word that might save my poor high school boyfriend some grief. "at I should be dating a Prot-estant (white, older, doctor, of Scottish descent) was only ever implied. Most aspects of religion seem simply to be forceful suggestions of what you should and shouldn’t do; a variable pick-your-own-adventure novel where in the end you’re likely destined for Hell.

Catholic boy would joke that I wasn’t baptized and would end up in purgatory with all the un-baptized babies. We had !ghts about abortion, capital punishment and the validity of repentance. I would bring up the millions of dollars the Pope had stolen from his people; how the Catholic !gurehead, the closest man to God, had signed o$ on the slave trade. I began to refer to him as the “Damn Pope”, the nickname my grand-mother was most partial to.

And so the Catholic boy didn’t last long. Or maybe he did, who remembers? If I had thought dating someone from the “other side” was a test, the best was yet to come. I had started to speak out against organized religion in earnest, and my big mouth was about to get me into trouble.

“Well, the Bible is all hearsay,” I said matter-of-factly. My statement was met with hardened stares from two American friends, one of whom had a father who used to be a pastor. In an ironic twist of fate that could only have been arranged by a higher power, he was about to become my boyfriend.

"e time I had to discover my spirituality and arrange it into a belief system was reaching the eleventh hour. Although ‘abject horror’ aptly describes my initial sentiments towards pulling a Dusty Spring!eld and being tamed by a ‘Son of a Preacher Man’, I began to !nd his spirituality frustratingly curious.

Fights about abortion and purgatory turned towards discussions about the meaning of life, followed by steaming debates on gay rights. Despite what I can only describe as ex-treme, unbending anger towards the religion that has taught my boyfriend to segregate others and rant about the “sanctity of marriage,” I !nd his unyielding belief in the greater good and higher power oddly refreshing – particularly since my grandfather asserts “this is it, there is nothing a%er life.”

I’ll take my time deciding where my life !ts into religion, but it will never be one that I can describe with a name. If I have a God, he loves everybody, and he’ll wait for me to de-cide.

Faith by NumbersALANNA WALLACE

Polarization of religion only helped to solidify my belief in an inner spirituality that couldn’t be found in an institution.

Istanbul ELLI GARLIN

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Wading into the terminal hustle, I step o! the route seven bus. A kid in a baseball cap asks me for a cigarette. "en a light.

“What time is it?”He studies his phone from somewhere behind fogged lenses. It’s just past eleven. Still time to take a leak.I pass through the glass doors. Faces tighten against the cold as it rushes in like a refugee. Nobody around but petty

troublemakers and tired old men sitting like cautionary signs. "ey remind me of my arts degree. "ey make me think of my mother.

"e restroom door is open, riddled with #ngerprints. I start through the doorway. A voice stops me. It asks me for help from around the corner. It’s loud enough, but louder still in my head.

My body sti!ens.“Help” calls the voice again, striking my ears like a rattlesnake among the weeds. I feel like an actor, in shock beneath

the stage light. But already my feet are moving, moving down the broken escalator. "e number eight bus is waiting, pumping smoke into the cold, sharp night.

ANTHONY DAMIAO

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Eyes shoot like stars, mouths smash, cheeks bout,tongues run along necks like deserts,up chins like mountains,in mouths like wellswherein secrets burst out.

Yours li!s words out of minelike a bucket.I’m drying as you drinkfrom the only oasis where my heart dares sink.

"e isolation is foreverif in this lonely badlandyou never let me loose.

Your thoughts li! me like wind,they carry me like sand,at least, until from a well of stoneI’m blown, worn down,and blown again into your hand.

If you’d only speak,your intelligence, like #re,would breathe lifeinto this small grain of sand.

And out of it, like some hatched, enlightened egg,would come a more enlightened man.

LUIGI DI GENNARO

In !e Colours MEGAN CHERNIAK

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No matter how many classic movies I watch in a weekend, reality !nds a way of catching up with me; an email reminding me of an appointment, a deadline that approaches without warning, or a sudden phone call that informs me that my grandfather has passed away. "at’s the unfortunate thing about reality – rarely is music played to foreshadow tragedy.

It’s another sleepless night that I’m le# without a grand epiphany, without a concrete !nale, and without last words to live by. I can’t fast forward through the grief, anxiety, or the intense need to bury my sorrow under lavish covers in the middle of the a#ernoon. I have to live out each numbing chapter, su$ocated by polystyrene ceilings, so# harmonies, and pungent %owers while pale relatives smile weakly in my direction.

"e spirit of my grandfather does not live in this poorly constructed space. I don’t see his smile folded into the bou-quets of carnations. I don’t hear his laugh through speeches of shepherds and the romanticized journey of life. I don’t feel his warmth in a dra#y reception hall overcrowded with egg salad sandwiches and small talk.

My motivation is lost in cemetery plots; the imminence of death cuts into my throat and steals my ability to breathe. A late night rendezvous with Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly cannot help me escape the sharp pain soaking into my veins as I !nally realize, this is real. "is is what happens a#er the credits roll. I will never see my grandfather again.

Struggling to put the world on pause, I !nd solace in old photographs capturing memories of the old me. "e girl who blindly assumed we’d all live forever; a kid who was ignorant to the reality that not everybody was fortunate enough to have a childhood like I did. Indulged in sel!shness, I couldn’t see that my own grandfather experienced neglect as a child. Yet despite this horrible reality, he made his escape and fell into a supportive family who o$ered opportunities his own never did.

I’m told grief is an ongoing process, that a day will not go by where I won’t think about him. "ough I can’t jump a time gap to see how I will make it through this – such overwhelm-ing thoughts are best drowned in whiskey – but the numbness of my body mixes with the numbness of my mind, and I’m back to the beginning. Back to staying awake until four in the morning and sleeping until noon, watching three movies

a day and neglecting deadlines that haunt me no matter how deeply I try to subside into non-existence.

As I lay wrapped in so# blankets knit by my grandmother and breathe in the comforts of home, I consider the experi-ence of my !rst, real funeral. I don’t remember feeling su$o-cated by people that are merely trying to !nd their own way through grief. Mostly, I remember the spirit and strength of my family. With all its secrets, scandals, and broken pieces, we remain connected through the presence of my grandfather.

We may cry and so#ly scream into our exhausted minds, but we can still laugh, we can still smile, and more than ever, we can love each other.

I was right to observe the spirit of my grandfather not existing in %owers, !nger food or tackily decorated funeral homes. He isn’t there anymore than I am. His passion exists in a much needed hug between two cousins, or a retelling of his favourite story; his spirit exists in mine.

I shi# from my cozy nest, and put something with Hum-phrey Bogart on my screen. Observing the growing stack of untouched school books eroding my room, I quietly sigh as I acknowledge where my present priorities lay. I can’t always predict what reality has in store for me or my family, nor navi-gate its haunting terrain, but I can trust that somehow we’ll !nd a happy ending.

Faith, Film, and FuneralsDEVON BUTLER

I have to live out each numbing chapter, su!ocated by polystyrene ceilings, so"

harmonies, and pungent #owers while pale relatives smile weakly in my direction.

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Pictogram MEGAN CHERNIAK

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Why is it spiritual to speak to a god, but superstitious to dance for one? What brings more luck, a rabbit’s foot or a blessing from a priest?

Has spirituality ever caused massive wars?Can we separate religion from spirituality? Would religion exist without spirituality?

Is a religion more spiritual than a cult? When is the last time a cult killed millions of people in the name of their faith?If a cult successfuly converts the masses, does it become a re-ligion?

Would the world be better without religion? Does religion create more good or evil in the world? Did Gandhi inspire more lives than Hitler destroyed? Did Jesus save more lives than the Crusades took?

What is the di!erence between religion and patriotism? Is it religious to salute a "ag or stand for a national anthem? Do most soldiers pray before they are about to kill each other? Did Hitler pray a lot?

What is the di!erence between worship and obsession? When does an obsession become worship? Do we worship sports stars and celebrities more than reli-gious #gures? Can obsession become a religion?

Do we worship thinness, and celebrities, or are we just ob-sessed with them?

What is idolatry? Why is it idolatry to worship a golden cow, but not a man hanging on a cross? Is the obsession over the Laurier Golden Hawk a form of idolatry? Who decided to put the symbol of the Golden Hawk in the middle of the "oor, anyway?

QuestionsLOST NOWHERE

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NADINE BADRAN

My LoveEMILY KENNEDY

My father walks the woodsAnd I was plucked from my nestAnd thrown into this cement, living advertisement.I grasped at what I couldTo stay above the masses,!e hollow moving city streets,Growing, spewing, bustling,With white canvas faces!at have yet to be painted on,Have yet to gain something to prove.

I found longing,My heart, longing for something more,But I could not "nd it.I had lost my placeAnd was handed something sparse to chew on,A mass produced, spewed out artifact!at told me what I should want andWhat I needed.Love or let go,Feel or want,!e monster is continuously pushing it down my throat,But I can’t, I can’t swallowFor I only crave what I have already eaten.

I was told who my father was!ough I knew his face!e day I came out of the womb.If he is mine and he will save me,!en why not my brother,!ey say they remember,When they are hopelessly forgottenBy men with so# handsAnd silver wrist watches.

!is is no controversyOnly a gracious need!at is severed by holy walls!at rise to the heavens,Covered in ink and bloodFrom the men who stood at its baseTrying to understand its principles,Trying to codify love,To enslave love,To set rules to love,My love,!e wild bird who $ew across,Who $ew to my brother,Whose father I have known since birth.

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On the days I picked peas, my hands had purpose.It wasn’t until I worked at the farm that I discovered hands could be an extension of your self. For years I thought I had been nice to my hands; I gave them rings, I painted their nails, I worked out the kinks, and restored mois-ture on winter days when knuckles bled and cracks spread to the palms. I never noticed them unless they held ciga-rettes or pens, or performed imitations and cast shad-ows on my bedroom walls, telling stories to my insomnia.

At !rst, it was asparagus and rhubarb. "e asparagus tend-ed to run away from me, so I had to cut their shorter broth-ers. My hands presented feebler and meeker versions of what people really wanted, and so I learned to hate asparagus and my diminishing capacities with them. "e rhubarb was fun to pluck from the earth, slimy at the bottom like an open sore. I rejoiced in running my hands down its red and wounded trunk to clean the ooze, in water so cold it made my !nger-nails bleed. My hands kept silent, and I did too.

Next came arugula. A tasty plant, but !lled with morn-ing dew that made dirt stick to the lines of my !ngers and knuckles for weeks, no matter how o#en they were washed. I didn’t mind the endless return to the dirt, but I hated the feel of it, wet and clinging to the hair on my arms. I lay bunches down and my hands made not a sound. "ey felt the same way about tatsoi, swiss chard, bok choy, and the lettuces, and I begrudged them. I did not know they were sleeping.

Strawberries, as delicious as they were, le# my hands un-moved, but they sympathized with my knees and back. Straw-berries live too close to the ground, and my knees would weep from moving up and down and sinking deep in the moisture-ridden hay. It is here where strawberries sleep and learn to separate, only to !nd fruit too moldy or small or unripe, de-spite the seasoned perfection to which organized nature maps its life. I didn’t hesitate in loving these things, in planting, wa-tering, and collecting, feeling my own labor and muscles grow and extend and reach towards something, for once.

But here comes the volta; my shi# and turn. Turnips. "ey started the awakenings of desire and the awareness that hands do not only hold; my hands became aware, and I aware of them.

Farming is an unnatural thing to get used to. To farm is to contort the body into strange positions and stances and not just get used to it, but get better at it; like yoga, but less preten-tious and without the weird clothing. To stand, legs straight but bent from the hips, hands touching the ground, feeling for shapes underneath the dirt, it became important to learn to associate these contortions with something more impor-tant than the taut ache and stretch of a back where imaginary lines, tendons, and spines snapped, only to glue themselves back together overnight.

It was a slow and tedious process where hands and feet were constantly parallel; shu$ing and sighing but, more im-portantly, searching among the stalks, feeling the dirt around them, and learning to gauge, by mere touch, the size and state and their ready-to-die pluckability. My hands began to weep with joy at the feel of a turnip, large and sleeping, and the crunch of its roots as it was pulled up and out to reveal its purple and white body.

It wasn’t until the end of July and the beginning of August, when the raspberries were dying down and feeding more crows than people, that my hands really knew what they were meant for.

All my life, I’ve hated one vegetable with a constant and re-lentless adamancy; the mere thought of it makes me remem-ber morose and lonely dinners where I, with stubborn feroc-ity my mother loved to attribute to my red hair, remained the sole occupant of the dinner table with pea a#er pea staring

Weathering Hands

ALEXA FORTIER

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back at me with shriveled eyes. I !nd it ironic that the source of so much happiness was the cause of so much childhood distress.

But picking peas became something else entirely. "ey grow in a vine-like state that emerge and curl in a thousand di#erent directions from about knee to mid-thigh height in a beautiful, green cluster. "ey became a mid-day reward, when in the mornings I pulled on my jeans, constantly covered in dirt and paint, slid into my rubber boots, tucked my garden-ing gloves into the back pockets, tucked my ponytail through the hole of my cap, and walked out the door with my hands already tingling in anticipation, already beginning to slide in-timately along the waxy stems.

I looked like shit almost all of the time but I wore it all with a strange pride. Every mosquito bite, every cut, every t-shirt I ruined with dirt and sweat were all exchanged for something better than mascara or boys or actually looking nice. I liked the cuts, the bites, the unrelenting ache of my ankles, because it was di#erent.

It took months a$erwards until I stopped associating hours of the day with certain harvests, when every hour before two in the a$ernoon became dominated by endless would-have-beens. While I no longer associate six in the morning with the slicing of Swiss chard and zucchini, certain things stay with me.

It was with hands that rejoiced and spoke that I swung the bucket at my side and walked to join the others who had

already begun. "ere was a certain rhythm, a certain sway to picking peas that encouraged %uid motion and not much else. It started with placing the bucket down and remaining stooped over the row of sugar, snap, or snow peas for about forty-!ve minutes until the bucket was !lled. Both hands would start sweeping and pulling and training your eyes to notice, through the monotony and camou%age of mint green, the crescent moon shapes dangling that, with one small tug, were yours. One hand swayed to the bucket, while the other resumed li$ing and shi$ing to !nd peas that hid so well they dropped to the dirt from their full, sedated pregnancy.

My back would ache periodically, but the sun never scorched whenever I picked peas; moving further and further down the line, my hands raced each other to !nd their re-lease. And when I !nally relented to stop and bring my bucket to some resting place, it was with hands that mourned and sighed.

It seems only fair now that my hands write this and get a !nal say as to what it really was about. It was about being good at something you love and the harmonious state of body and mind that only some are lucky enough to stumble upon. For most of us, talent and skill are o$en unrequited a#airs, and I can’t boast that I’ve ever been particularly gi$ed at anything. But even if it’s a hobby, or silly – like being good at picking peas – or being able to make someone laugh, it’s important to recognize that our strengths are not always what we want them to be. But when they are, it’s beautiful.

My back would ache periodically, but the sun never scorched whenever I picked peas...when I !nally

relented to stop and bring my bucket to some resting place, it was with hands that mourned and sighed.

Always Waiting MEGAN CHERNIAK

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In 2007, the University of Waterloo celebrated its !"ieth anniversary. Congratulations U of W! #at’s !"y years of taking advantage of gullible young idealists; !"y years of exploiting impoverished families, hoping for something bet-ter for their children, taking out student loans their child will be unable to repay for years – that’s years of growing debt, damaged credit rating, and abuse from debt collectors.

For the occasion, the University chose a slogan: “#e spirit of ‘why not?’” What bothered me more than the simplicity of the slogan was the additional quotations on the ‘why not.’

#e University sponsored an event, an unveiling of sorts, at which the President, David Johnston, explained:

“!e expression comes from one of my favourite aphorisms "rst expressed by the Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw. ‘You see things; and you say, Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say, Why not?’”

Additional quotations are needed still, but I have spared the reader the agony of enduring more.

I wonder if David Johnston saw the irony in quoting George Bernard Shaw, an active socialist, who argued that early education is more inclined toward “breaking a child’s will.” Perhaps Johnston would have done better to quote from Shaw’s essay What Is Wrong With Education, in which Shaw argued, in the event all secondary schools and universities are

destroyed by air raids, that “there would be an immediate and enormous increase in the number of really educated persons in England, and a quite blessed disappearance of a mass of corruptly inculcated error and obsolescence...” But that’s a bit long to !t on the posters.

A"er the event, I found David Johnston entertaining guests around a pyramid of champagne glasses - built with the same care as the Pharaohs, on the backs of hard working students.

“I have an answer to your question,” I said.“What question?” David Johnston said, perplexed.“#e question of ‘why not’… but I don’t want to say in

front of all these people.”“Here,” he passed me a napkin, “write it down.”I wrote this on the napkin:

For as long as a commercial barrier stands between the student and the essential knowledge to which they are en-titled, there will always be a reason why not.

Spirit of Why Not?MATTHEW MOUSSEAU

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I Traded My Spirit For PerspectiveJIM CAVILL

Sleeping angels frostbitten by memory. Gnarled roots of understanding lacing around and through and over all the nooks and holes and hideys.

Your treehouse is no longer the right size. We have evolved, moved on. Come down from the trees and look around.

Mankind is now humanity. Colonialism is now Globalization.We are, all of us, tucking death under the carpet. Or else

deep down in the consoles of our Mercedes. We do not want to look death in the eye for fear it may recognize us, and come calling. Why have we sheltered ourselves so? We should be-come reacquainted over corpses in the stinking a!ernoon heat.

Police penguins marching along poking the vagrants, hastling the kids with

dreadlocks, mohawks, fauxhawks. Taking skateboards and spray paint cans. Cracking one or

two in the head with a baton to let o" steam every now and then.

And then.And then. And then and then and then. Sunshine and humidity and political unrest. Some are

complacent, some afraid, but mostly, people are just angry. Angry with themselves for selling their spirits so cheap.

But to turn anger into violence, to turn handcu"ed #st against #st, pepper-sprayed eye for eye; this must be a last resort.

We must rid the central authority of its infection. We are one, despite your invisible demarkations.

Gently wa!ing sound in the air. Tra$c and sweat, drip-ping all over the city, splashing into dusty puddles, %ooding the streets. We have worked too hard, we are hot. We are boil-ing.

Elsewhere, in the cool calm pool of information, grammar nazi authoritarian fascist patrolling the interwebz looking for noobs to pwn.

He revels in the ridicule cast in anonymity. Anonymous; because no one of us is as cruel as all of us.

A whole language and culture of the repressed, the absurd, the aberrant, the intolerant. &ey/we are anonymous, and they/we are not amused.

Panoptic tagging system. I am being farmed for my spirit. &ere is no redemption for the worker. Contribute or die/Contribute then die.

You will never be satis#ed without money, and if you get money it’s really no good without fame, and if you’re famous and rich, it’s really no good unless you’re gorgeous.And if you buy yourself enough plastic surgery, you, too, can own beautiful. Snow slipping down the back of my hightop shoes. &is is

fashion. To be a derelict of the 90s. If you can look absurd, you are in. It’s every a!er school special. &e outcast resurrected as cool kid was absolutely true - I’ve felt the wound in his side.

Except, of course, that these people are only impersonat-ing.

We’re mining our spirits and we’re #xing our hair.

ELLI GARLIN

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You scientists of a crooked truth. Holding all your beakers tight.Talk of all your brewing thoughts,Has burned, but not shed any light.

Some like to look at them that way,Without another thought to think.!e poison of their ignorance,Is the only thing they have to drink.

I do not blame anyone but meFor all I have not known.I wish I could believe in thingsI simply can’t be shown.

So I hold on to inner strength,Morality and the human soul.!e power of the person,And the teamwork of the whole.

To "nd a peace inside ourselves,And clarity of mind,May live inside the chest of things,I can only hope to "nd.

That SugarIn My TeaERIN MULLIN

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Fire MEGAN CHERNIAK

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The Failure of Richie MillerKEEGAN TREMBLAY

Richie Miller is a Twitter based novel that I began writing on April 7th, 2009 while I was “studying for exams” during my second-last semester at the University of Waterloo. !e idea spawned from an article I read about a poet who released his most recent poem through Twitter updates. Neat, I thought. It’s great to see writers and artists experiment with social media. !en I thought; I’m going to write a book via Twitter updates, one tweet per day.

“R.M. went outside this morning, looked up at the sky and gave the wink and the gun to the satellites that he believes are monitoring him.” – A tweet from Richie Miller April 9th, 2009

Initially starting as a collection of notes about Richie Miller, my novel slowly began to take form with a plot and chapters and the whole bit. Soon some friends and friends-of-friends started to dig Richie Miller and then it began to pick-up steam. It was great! People liked Richie because he was a loner who imagined himself a champion. People related to Richie at times but mostly grew fond of him like a strange little nephew.

Yet, a"er about eight months, the novel began to fray at the seams because I started investing my e#ort in other plac-es. I began to miss a signi$cant number of posts for prolonged periods of time. Richie Miller then became something I didn’t want to think about, my bastard child. Nearly two years later, in February, 2011, I had to sit down and re-evaluate Richie Miller. I had to stop ignoring the project and face the facts: the project was a weak idea that had been poorly executed. Richie Miller had become a failure.

“!ere is tension.” – A tweet from Richie Miller Feb. 28th, 2011

Twitter is actually a fantastic tool. It’s a global forum used by celebrities, not-for-pro$t groups, angst-$lled teens, gim-mick marketers, governments, grass roots companies, global corporations, artists and the average Joe alike. !ey all open up, interact and share. I realise now that it would have been more appropriate to write Richie Miller in $rst person nar-rative and more e#ective to have the character interact with other people on twitter. It would have been more experimen-tal and cutting edge if I had of written current events into the story so that Richie could respond to them as if he were part of our World! But I didn’t.

Instead, Richie Miller is written in third person. He’s on the other side of the screen in his own world and he’s de-

tached. Originally when people asked, “How long are you going to be writing Richie Miller?” I would say, “At least 5 years.” But it’s clearly not working out and I don’t want Richie Miller to su#er any longer. !e kind hearted, timid character deserves a better story, so on April 7th, 2011 I’m announcing to Richie Miller’s very modest following that I’ll be $nishing my Twitter novel. But I don’t want to do it alone.

Community is a beautiful thing, and I’d like to introduce this principle of Twitter into my novel. !e experience of reading a book is innately private whereas Twitter works best as a chain of public interactions. I’m going to do my best to synthesize these two mediums, and to help me do so, I en-courage you to write a tweet for Richie Miller and publicly direct it to the account with an @reply! As long as I can work your tweet into the story, I will retweet it.

Aside from your tweets, I’d like the entire group to in%u-ence the outcome of my novel. Because the main character, Richie Miller, will be reaching out, his success in making friends will determine his happiness in the end. In other words, I’m setting benchmarks to determine the outcome of the story. In order for Richie to meet a happy ending, @RichieMiller has to receive 500 or more followers. In order for Richie to $nd true love, he must receive at least 1000 fol-lowers.

I’ll be running two contests to help promote the account. !e prize for each contest will be a $50 donation to a charity of the winner’s choice on globalgiving.org.

By supporting others, introducing your @replies into the narrative, and having the outcome of the story determined by the number of followers, I hope to use the weight of the com-munity to create a success. At the very least, I hope we can teach Richie that he doesn’t need to sit alone and hold staring contests with his cat forever.

Richie Miller’s "rst 421 Tweets can be viewed at www.keegantremblay.com.

Mothballs KEEGAN TREMBLAY

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The Simple Pleasures EMILY ZAREVICH

My faith is in that cold rush that!lls my lungs when I step outsidea"er a long day of inhaling stale airand collecting dust in my throat.My faith is in my mother’s warm palmpressed against my foreheadchecking to see ifI’m illeven though she knows I’m healthy.My faith is in my human #aws; back pain, eye crust, ca$eine withdrawal, reminding me that I’m not meantto be perfectdespite the demands of my era. My faith is in those sleepy hourswhen my headache disappearsand my pillow is warmand so"and I am blissfully alone.My faith is in my best friend’s knowing smilewhen I lightly tease herbecause she knows I neverreally mean it.I can make her laugh. My faith is in all beautiful words, and the smell of paper, and a plastic pen in my handdaring me.%at’s where my real joy is.Someone up there must have given all this to me.

Sacred Directions LAUREN MUNRO

Smoke Rising LAUREN MUNRO

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Borborygmus can lead a girl to lunacy. It’s true.When she began her journey, she was fairly levelheaded. When the journey was done, her eyes gleamed with a fever borne of heretical thoughts, and the smallest discrepancy be-tween guts and brain became a grand theological conspiracy.

But it wouldn’t be perfectly correct to say she was cynical or skeptical. A!er all, she was ranging through the Pyrenees, sweating in the almond-scented heat of the Langued’oc, crisp-ing under a merciless sun, all to research the Albigensian Crusade of medieval France, and one has to be a little swept away by magic and folklore to even come so far. Certainly she was intrigued by the ancient stories of the Cathars, a sect of vegetarian paci"sts who meandered from town to town, who believed in two Gods instead of one, and who preached peace and love for all the creatures of the Earth. #eir rejection of organized religion didn’t go well with the Vatican. Disgrun-tled by these "lthy, stinky, moon-eyed hippy troubadours, the church sent a force of soldiers against them, burning Cathars at the stake. Village courtyards ran red and sticky with blood. Finally, in 1243, the army drove the remaining Cathars and their families to the hilltop fortress of Montsegur, where they hid for almost a year, besieged and trapped, unwilling to re-scind their beliefs.

At last, the church sent a message to the starving, tired, injured Cathars. Admit your beliefs are wrong, say a few prayers, and we’ll let you go. A clear ticket out a!er a year of hell.

But, instead, all those within the fortress took the consola-mentum, the rites of Cathar priesthood, and threw open the gates to march down the mountainside. With their shaggy heads held high, they de"ed the monarchy and the papacy any joy of victory. #ey embraced the $ames.

But (so the legend goes), the night before all within took the consolamentum, three Cathars scaled the cli%s of Mont-segur with the sacred treasure, and vanished into the mists, never to be seen again. No one is quite sure what the treasure was, but the prevailing theory is that it was the Holy Grail, the true reason why the Church dogged the Cathars as far as Montsegur, and the reason why all the besieged families, even those who could have le! with an ecclesiastical slap on

the wrist, chose instead to forfeit their lives for their newly-discovered Truth.

But no matter what the stories say, she wasn’t the kind of girl to go chasing a!er shadows. She liked ghost stories and intrigue and spirituality, but she drew the line at anything garish, like the existence of the Holy Grail. As a friend once observed, she kept her $akiness well hidden. She was here, in France, to do scholarly research on the Crusade against the Cathars, not $ail about the countryside chasing sacred cups. A protocol needed to be kept.

Because of this reason, and this reason alone, she refused to visit Rennes-le-Chateau.

A little to the west of Montsegur sits the town of Rennes-le-Chateau, whose story is interwoven, tangled, and knotted with that of the Cathars. It is the epicentre of modern grail hunters, rampant with tales of Mary Magdalene, miracles, and mysterious 18th century scandals, and she knew that if she succumbed to its siren call, she would only be disappointed. Oh, she’d heard the gossip of Rennes: how Berenger Sauniere, an impoverished priest, discovered mysterious scrolls under the altar of Rennes’ tiny church, then suddenly grew fat o% the spoils of blackmail money. How the scrolls spoke of the descendants of Jesus, and blue apples, and tombs where the treasure lay. How the Cathars, $eeing from Montsegur, gave the Holy Grail to the Knights Templar for safekeeping, who then hid the Grail in the caves below the tiny town. Yes, she’d heard, but she didn’t believe a whit of it, nor did she want to support the rampant, cheap sort of tourism that feeds o% sensationalism.

Talking to people about Rennes is like trying to describe a soap opera: countless characters, numerous crazy plot twists, and so many mysteries that the palimpsest seems to implode upon itself into a big black hole of lunacy. And the Grail hunt-ers… well. Half-mad with their passions, moving from place to place like the Cathars, singing their stories, and telling their tales to anyone who’d spare them a moment to listen, spiraling ever closer to that hilltop town where all their speculations led them!

If she visited Rennes, she was only lending strength to these ridiculous, romantic claims. She was perpetuating a

Conspiracy of Love and HungerK. BANNERMAN

Borborygmus: n. (Pl. Borborygmi) an abdominal gurgle due to movement of !uid and gas through the intestine, o"en accompanying hunger.

Cathar: n. a member of a duo-theistic nomadic Christian sect in Languedoc and Provence in the 12th and 13th centuries who believed the material world was evil and only the spiritual was good.

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tourist trap. She was cheapening her own scholarly research.Hence, she pledged with hand over heart to avoid Rennes

like the plague.But she did so enthusiastically. “I will not go there,” she

proclaimed, pounding one !st against the dashboard of the Renault Twingo. Why was she so adamant? Perhaps she sensed its power, and was afraid?

She spent the morning snooping through tower ruins, perched precariously on the ridges of the Pyrenees. "e French have faith that their tourists know their limitations; there was not a handrail or cautionary sign to be seen. She lounged on the upper battlements of ancient castles, wonder-ing how architecturally sound they could be a#er so many years of sieges, storms, World Wars, and adolescent !eld trips.

"e July sun was too hot to permit lunch. She skipped it, opting instead to head for the cool depth of caves, where primitive artwork displayed what the residents had dined on, a scant 15, 000 years before.

But it was a long hike into the mountain’s core, and a lon-ger hike out.

She got back to the rental car, famished."e thing about Southern France is, there aren’t any places

to eat. Not like here, not like 24/7 North America, where the gastrointestinal comfort of lonely travelers is provided by fast food venues on every corner. You want a hamburger, or a slice of pizza, or a 7-11 in the shadow of the Pyrenees? Tough. "e Languedoc is not about convenience or comfort or easy meals.

She drove for miles, through quaint villages that had, only hours before, been bustling with markets. Now, they were Gallic ghost towns.

Her stomach roared its spoilt disapproval."e map said this road would take her right by the turno$

to Rennes-le-Chateau. She narrowed her eyes. It was a tourist trap, true, and rampant with grail hunters, but that also meant it would have the resources necessary to keep those hunters happy. And that meant food. Never mind the Knight’s Tem-plars, or the descendants of Jesus, or the Holy Grail. "is was a conspiracy orchestrated by her stomach, and borborygmus is not a force one can resist for long.

So she turned the Twingo onto the narrow dirt road, spit-ting up dust, and the path wound up the side of a pinnacle of rock, until the car jostled through narrow stone gates and into the tiny fortress on the crest of the hill. Houses of beige bricks crowded the street, but there were people here, foreigners like herself, wide-eyed and clutching books to their bosoms. Parking the car, she walked through the alleyways towards a central park, where %ags adorned with crimson crosses her-alded a restaurant. Desperate for nourishment and fumbling

francs from her pockets in her hurry, she bought sandwiches from a grad student who spoke English. “Rennes is normally home to 300 people,” he said as he made her supper, “But in the summer season, we have 100,000 visitors or more. Crazy, mais c’est vrai.” He said this in a voice that was tired, but he smiled when he brought her the food.

She sat by the fountain to devour her dinner.“You wanna leave?” said her stomach.“Enh,” said her head, and her shoulders shrugged. “We’re

here now. May as well look around.”

She couldn’t admit that she’d been seduced. She was still too proud to say that the skulls carved into the doorways had caught her eye. She couldn’t yet acknowledge the thrill in her blood as she strolled through the church and stood in the shadow of its sinister angels. Tiny alcoves with Blessed Vir-gins, swathed in o$erings, peeked from overgrown gardens, and at the end of one twisting alley, spray-painted in red, was a resistant proclamation: Vive les Cathars! "e tower of Mary Magdalene beckoned her, and she sat at its feet on the slope of the hill, overlooking a vista of !elds and distant purple mountains. "e Cathars had once stood here, she could feel it. "ey’d hiked through the landscape that unfurled at her feet, living simply, resisting quietly, under the same wide tur-quoise arc of sky. A burst of warm summer wind rolled up the hillside and broke over her like an ocean wave, and she sti%ed a little gasp of delight.

“We don’t need to go home anytime soon.” She said this o&andedly to her brain and her stomach, and a reverent hush in her voice belied her excitement. Her viscera quivered with delight and, shameless, she let Rennes embrace her soul. It tempted her with food, then ensnared her with gi#s, and every !ber of her body had fallen completely, utterly, madly in love.

Talking to people about Rennes is like trying to describe a soap opera: countless

characters, numerous crazy plot twists, and so many mysteries that the

palimpsest seems to implode upon itself into a big black hole of lunacy.

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