Editor’s note

Behind closed doors, behind disposable or cloth masks, behind computer screens and video conferencing apps, we watch the world crack beneath our feet though we cannot shift. 2020 has undoubtedly been a heavy year, swollen with uncertainty, anxiety, and lassitude. While we can often become immersed in a fog of detachment, passively observing the fugacious present as it happens to us, this issue shows that there are always peculiar opportunities to explore, reflect, create, to tunnel into the home we call our body, and to carve out a rugged refuge through our art.

Immerse yourself into the hilariously frightening gaslighting of Gregory Duke’s “Why Are You Spitting At Me?” or gaze into the sublime autumnal foliage in America Grafton’s “Majesty Above.” Perhaps you too will succumb to a bilious fever when viewing Eva Nolan’s “Bursting,” spit out the claustrophobic anxiety that takes the form of an army of beetles. Raise your face to the empty expanse above like the protagonist in Ruth Coolidge’s “Athletics are suspended indefinitely, all contact banned.” Wander around the snowy landscape of Taicheng Jin’s “《醉雪》” (“Drunken Snow”) and toast the listless evening.

So we invite you into these makeshift havens, the myopic bubble of loneliness, and these jagged edges of absurdity. In these liminal spaces, there is healing. What you are holding is a montage of our surreal reality, and we hope that you can grasp onto something solid in our otherwise intangible routines. And continue, of course, to read, to write, and to create. Your voice, more than ever, yearns to be heard.

— Rachel Lu ‘22 & Eva Glassman ‘23