We didn’t set out to give this issue, our late Winter addition, a theme. In thinking about the season and putting it into perspective with the current state of affairs and our identification as young adults or college students, a theme naturally emerged. Spring is a time of new beginnings, hope, and revival. Even when Upstate New York is bombarded with unexpected snowstorms, the electricity of this rebirth is in the air and we cannot help but anticipate the summer. Autumn speaks of nostalgia, whether or not we understand for what exactly we are nostalgic. College students settle down for another semester, still bearing the marks and experiences of summer, and greet each day that isn’t winter with gratitude. Summer is a time of exploration, of adventure, of breaking away from routine and risking exposure in the hopes of self-discovery. Every sensation is heightened, each action magnified, every thought or plan expedited. There is a reason people remorse the summer’s passing – it all happens too quickly.
Winter seems innately different. With all of the changes and growth of the other seasons, Winter feels like a freeze. In Winter, we retreat from our travels, we bundle up and hunker down and try to make it to Spring. Experience has taught us that all of our plans and ideals for the following months are never actually what pans out. So on top of this need for survival, mental and physical, is uncertainty. All we can do is wait. Time slows to a halt. Our wandering hearts seek asylum and comfort. They seek home.
This has been a particularly demanding Winter. Our group of Editors, the Peacemakers, now represents the spectrum of the college experience – freshmen to recent alum. Some of us are waiting to hear back from graduate schools, and some from potential employers. It is a rough time for our generation – jobs are harder and harder to come by, which has provoked more people to return to school, which hurts one’s chance of being accepted into a rigorous and prestigious program. Those of us in the workforce face the threat of layoffs and pay-cuts. Those of us in school feel the surmounting pressure to pursue a degree in a fortified field, to pick a career that isn’t at risk. We make plans, we try to imagine where our lives will take us in the upcoming year, but we really have no way to know where we will be in six months. If in February of 2008, someone had explained to me the dissonance between where I thought I’d be in August and what I actually ended up doing, I would not have believed them. Once Spring’s revival kicked in and the Summer’s speed took over, every game plan I had went out the window. And it’s no different now.
Soon-to-be and recent graduates struggle with the frustration at hand – there is only so much we can do. Winter is a time of riding out the storm, of waiting. Once we’ve finished our resumes and applications, the result is out of our hands. We wait for direction, we wait for change. I can’t say that Winter is a time of stagnation, because that implies some sort of free will. What it really is could be described as Suspended Animation. It takes courage to admit that sometimes we are stuck and have no choice other than to follow Napoleon’s Battle Plan: first show up, then see what happens. And so we wait, and we ask ourselves Quo Vadimus? “Where are we going?” Or, “Where do we go from here?”
If it is homeward, if that’s where our hearts are determined to wait out this suspended animation, where is home? What is home? A place? A person? Maybe it is just a frame of consciousness or frame of time (for me, Autumn feels most like home). What is home to young adults and students? Is it the house we were raised in? Is it the community in which we spent the first four years of our independence? I’ve found that my current cathexis of home is off kilter. During my freshman year, my heart would swell as I reached the eastern end of interstate 90 and could see the Boston skyline rise in the distance. Four years later, that same rush and relief takes over as I merge from 481 to 690 and look for exit 14. But there is no physical structure for me here that I can call my own anymore. So where is home?
Since this is our sophomore issue, the stories selected for this publication were not chosen for their content. We enjoyed these stories and hoped that our readers would, as well. It was only after we sat down to discuss logistics did we realize how all of these stories embody this notion of suspended animation and the quest to find home. Whether stuck in the early stages of adolescence or on the brink of “mid-life,” there are characters unable to control their environment or predict what follows. There are characters trying to understand, define, or come to terms with their concepts of home. They are trying to determine if it is a physical place or just an emotional investment in someone or something. There are characters whose homes face threat, and they struggle to restore that feeling of mental solace and physical safety that we all, to some degree, seek to maintain.
Kurt Vonnegut, the inspiration behind the name of this magazine, often quotes his son, Mark the Pediatrician, as saying that “We’re here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is.” I’m such a sucker for Vonnegut life-isms and this one ranks close to the top. But for now, for this issue, let’s just say that the Peacemakers are here to get each other and our readers through the Winter.
Lauren Picard
Editor–in–Chief
No comments:
Post a Comment