ISSUE 19 - sPRING 2025
Creative Nonfiction
Between Walls and Waves
Lisa Jean Moore
The classroom at Bedford Hills has its own pulse. Behind the institutional beige walls and beneath the ever-present hum of fluorescent lights, twenty women in dark green uniforms sit at desks arranged in a circle. Their notebooks are open, some decorated with careful drawings in the margins, others filled with dense notes. Outside, the November wind rattles the windows, carrying the last few leaves across the prison yard. Inside, the radiator clanks and hisses, creating a strange percussion to accompany our discussion of Critical Animal Studies.
My weathered copy of "Catch and Release" lies open on the desk. The margins are filled with my own scribbled notes about horseshoe crabs, those ancient creatures who've survived multiple mass extinctions only to find themselves classified as "vulnerable" in the age of humans. I'm watching my students' faces as they engage with the text, trying to quiet the voice in my head that won't stop questioning the audacity of asking incarcerated women to care about marine arthropods.
The footnote about Our Town sits there on page 143, a small bridge between worlds. It references Emily's famous monologue about the impossibility of being fully present while also understanding the profound interconnectedness of all moments, all beings. As I wrote it, I'd thought about my own time as Mrs. Webb's understudy at fifteen, thrust onto stage to deliver lines about breakfast coffee and birthday gifts—the sacred ordinary that Wilder wanted us to see.
The classroom feels charged today, like the air before a storm. These women know something about being present while distant, about seeing the ordinary and extraordinary simultaneously. Every day, they navigate the brutal immediacy of prison life while holding onto memories of children growing up without them, of streets they can't walk, of choices that led here.
Kiana's hand goes up, and something in her posture tells me she's been waiting, holding onto her words until they're perfectly formed. "You know," she begins, her voice carrying that mixture of strength and vulnerability I've come to know, "I really want to tell you something about this book." She pauses, and I notice several other students leaning forward slightly, recognizing the tone that signals a moment of revelation is coming.
"I played Emily," she says, and my breath catches. "Right here at Bedford. In Our Town." The coincidence feels electric. I see her then, not just as my student discussing critical theory, but as Emily Webb, asking if anyone truly understands the value of life while they're living it. "And this footnote about the play, about being present and aware at the same time—it's exactly what you're saying about the horseshoe crabs."
She leans forward, her eyes intense. "I really didn't want to have to care about these animals. I really didn't." A few women nod, understanding the resistance to adding one more thing to care about in a world that already demands so much. "But I see if I don't care about animals then I am just going to never really get it. The way we make these boxes to put living things into and then get to use them however we want. We take their blood and don't think about it."
The parallel hits like a physical force—the ways we categorize and exploit, the boxes we build, both concrete and conceptual. Tears start in my eyes before I can stop them. "Don't be starting that Lisa Jean," Kiana laughs, but her own eyes are wet.
"We don't care about them. And until we do, we can't really care about ourselves," she sighs, and in that moment, the classroom feels like its own universe. The fluorescent lights, the institutional beige, the guard walking past the door—it all fades against the power of this connection being forged across species, across walls, across time. From Grover's Corners to Bedford Hills, from the ancient horseshoe crabs to this circle of women, we are all caught in the same web of becoming and being.
I sit back on the desk, shaking my head at Kiana in wonder. She has done what I've been trying to do throughout my entire book—she has shown how the exploitation of one being enables the exploitation of all, how the boxes we build to contain others ultimately contain ourselves. She has taken Wilder's message about the profound beauty and tragedy of human connection and expanded it beyond our species, beyond our moment in time.
The radiator gives another clank, and someone shifts in their chair, breaking the spell. But something has changed in the room. We are all thinking about boxes now—the ones we live in, the ones we build, the ones we can break down if we try. And somewhere on a beach, horseshoe crabs are moving in their ancient patterns, their blue blood still flowing, their existence a testament to survival in a world that too often forgets to notice the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Lisa Jean Moore is a sociologist with a keen eye for the surprising ways humans and animals share their lives. From her home base in Brooklyn, she explores these connections. When not deep in research, Moore gravitates toward shorelines where unruly waves meet partly cloudy skies—her perfect backdrop for diving into a good book or into the ocean itself, finding clarity in both the written word and salt water.
Walking in the Dark
Jeehan Quijano
1.
I first met W.G. Sebald at a thrift store on Lincoln Boulevard in Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California. I had just moved to the area and went for a walk to explore the neighborhood. From the store window outside, I saw a wall of bookshelf, and without any hesitation, I stepped inside. I thought Sebald sounded familiar though I couldn’t exactly place where I had read his name. I grabbed his book and read the first few pages. I don’t know why the image that formed in my mind was that of a man on a solitary walk contemplating life along the way, but this appealed to me for I myself had taken longs walks, literally and figuratively. No further deliberation about buying the book took place after I had that image, so I purchased it and went on my way. That year when I discovered Sebald, grief over my father’s death had dominated my life. Walking was the only physical activity I was able to consistently do. I discovered every nook and cranny of my new neighborhood in no time. A hidden bush of fiery red roses. Colorful murals and street art. My seven-year-old neighbor who gave me lemons from their tree. I was reminded of the redemptive power of salty air. Every single step I took slowly led me to rediscover life’s small wonders. Walking seemed like some kind of therapy, a form of release, and it became an essential part of how I lived my life.
Sometimes when the anxiety sets in, I find myself in a dark place, like I’m trapped inside a small room with no light and no windows, and other times it feels like I’m sitting on the floor of a massive, abandoned warehouse on an isolated street where no one can see or hear me no matter how loud I scream. Ah, here it comes, I mumble to myself, and then I fade into a state of dread, panic and sadness. I feel the world crumbling and I am falling apart with it. I cannot see or do much in this dark place except to be still in that void until somehow, magically and eventually, the darkness dissolves. But from a distance, I can also see myself in that room, as though I am watching a movie scene, and so I am both spectator and actress. The spectator tells the actress to try to stay calm because the moment will pass, and then commands her to stand up and find the door. You can do it, the spectator adds in a chipper voice full of encouragement. But where’s the door and where am I going? It took me many years to find that door and how it was going to liberate me.
In 1903, the artist Gwen John (along with her friend, Dorelia McNeil) walked approximately 234 kilometers from Bordeaux to Tolouse. During that time, women walking on their own to travel was unconventional and ill-advised. Some would say foolish, bold, even dangerous. But it had seemed that Gwen and Dorelia’s walk was necessary and life-affirming because nothing stopped them from embarking on their journey. Before then, in Great Britain, she had been living under the shadow of her highly celebrated brother, the artist Augustus John. This walk demonstrated how she had decidedly forged a path that would give her freedom to live her life on her own terms, and indeed, her time in France was the making of her as an artist. She became a part of the artistic circles of Paris. In 1919, her works were exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, and in the following years, they were regularly shown in Paris salons. Two years ago, I saw one of her sketches (made during her time in France) exhibited at The Huntington in San Marino, CA. I couldn’t help but think of her epic walk, how she and Dorelia had brought whatever art materials they could carry to be able to sketch and sell portraits to make money along the way. I imagine they slept on the tall grass under the moonlight. I imagine that they had to ward off dishonorable and exploitative men. I imagine that their hands cupped the flowers as they smelled their scent. I imagine their mud-covered shoes as rain fell without let-up. I imagine them laughing and singing. I do not imagine them giving up. To walk is to be brave and leave behind a constricting and unsympathetic world. To walk is to say to yourself, ‘I honor my life and I shall live it fully.’
I am, among other things, a walker, uncommon in a city where driving is a necessary aspect of daily living. I only drove for a few years when I first lived in Los Angeles, and I did not derive much pleasure from it. I found it stressful having to deal with parking, freeways, traffic, road rage and other drivers. After I parted ways with my second-hand Toyota Corolla, walking became a necessity. I had driven only once since then (a favor for a cousin). This baffled many. Is it even possible to live here without a car, they asked. Yes, and once you get used to it, it’s delightful, I replied. By delightful I mean liberating. I can pause and witness bees buzz above lilacs or hear the clicking sound of hummingbirds. I can smell the scent of jasmines. I can change my mind and take a different street and not vex drivers for making a split-second turn. I can decide to rest on a bench and quietly watch people pass by. I have more freedom to wander, go and leave a place without considering rush-hour traffic. I grew up in Cebu City, an island located in the central part of the Philippines, where taking walks was not part of my everyday life. The first “long walk” I ever took occurred when I was fourteen in my father’s hometown in Medellin, a three-hour drive from the city. Every summer our family went there for the annual town fiesta, but I arrived a few days earlier than my folks to spend quality time with my cousin M and enjoy the nightly festivities leading up to the fiesta. These events took place in the town square and often ended close to or past midnight, and by then, public transportation was no longer available. My cousin and I walked about one kilometer to get home, walking past sugarcane plantations on both sides of the road and not much else. At first I was scared walking past gigantic trees standing tall as if guarding the old dusty path that we were treading. I remembered folktales told to me as a child about tree-dwelling ogres and spirits that had a habit of snatching misbehaved and stubborn children. But those fears were allayed by moonlight illuminating the vast fields, and I had never seen such brilliant stars. I had not encountered such peace. The fear I had initially felt shifted into awe and then delight. I didn’t know it then, but it marked the beginning of my appreciation for walking, how the memory of that evening was deeply embedded in my psyche, and that many years later, the delight of my experience that evening was something I would seek as an adult. I didn’t realize how it would save me. Save sounds rather dramatic, but it felt that way a lot of times.
I didn’t have a name for “it” then, but when I was young, it had always felt like I was entering some kind of darkness. I felt its imminent arrival. As far as I can remember, I was in fourth grade when it first happened to me. I was class president, and one of my responsibilities was to write a quarterly report about how our class had fared in areas like class attendance, tardiness, cleanliness, etc. That report was to be read in front of all the fourth graders, on stage in the school auditorium with the school principal in attendance. As I write this, I can still feel my cold sweaty hands and heart palpitations as I was backstage getting ready to be called to speak. The night prior, I remember lying on my bed imagining that I was walking on a path in the middle of the woods, and all I heard was the sound of birds and rustle of leaves. It seemed like I’d quieted my anxiety by forming the image of me taking that walk, and those images helped me fall asleep. There were also days when facing and interacting with anyone felt overwhelming, and I was beset with dread and panic so there were many times I’d wished I were ill so I’d have an excuse not to attend school. My anxiety worsened at the thought that there was something wrong with me and I didn’t know what to do about it and how to make it go away. When I was growing up in the Philippines, mental health was never brought up in the household or in schools, or anywhere for that matter. I attribute this mainly to our culture, combined with our lack of access to basic healthcare. Resilience is high on our list of esteemed Filipino qualities, and indeed it is a valuable trait to possess especially when faced with adversities. Yet it also dissuades one from asking for help because there is the assumption or expectation that you are more than capable of handling life’s difficulties. There is a feeling of trepidation and embarrassment to open up about your mental and emotional struggles for fear of being judged or misunderstood, of being perceived as weak or melodramatic. When the struggles become too onerous to face on your own, you end up overwhelmed, alone, and suffer quietly. When I became an adult, the ‘darkness’ didn’t abate, it became steady and intensified on days when I was struck with inexplicable sadness.
Before our ancestors learned to do anything, they first had to learn how to walk. Walking has always been central to our human development. Some of the greatest thinkers and artists in history were devoted walkers, and they walked for various reasons. For Charles Dickens, “My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on end to a definite goal at a round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely vagabond.” It has been said that Erik Satie’s musical beat was influenced by his daily walks on the same landscape. I read that Patti Smith roams the streets for hours to prepare herself for a show. Cheryl Strayed hiked the Pacific Crest Trail during a low point in her life after her mother had died. Simone de Beauvoir in her early 20s started taking walks after she’d arrived in Marseilles where she took up a teaching post. She covered about forty kilometers per day, and these walks provided her bliss and pleasure and a welcoming distraction from anxieties and distresses. Modern research shows that regular walking may help improve one’s mood. To walk is to engage with life and seize the moments of profound discoveries about yourself and the world around you. To walk is to witness your strength and sublime unfolding.
The year 2020 was difficult for everyone on a personal and universal level. Fear and distress were secondary to the grief that I chiefly felt. That year, my mother died, my partner’s father died, my friend G died, one of my best friend’s father died. I was far from everyone I love, and I felt very lonely. That year and the year after, I took plenty of walks. The alternative was to stay home and go mad. No, I needed to clear my head. I needed to hear birdsongs. I was astonished to find the streets devoid of cars particularly Wilshire Blvd., notorious for its noise and traffic. I touched the flowers on the sidewalk, desperate to hold something beautiful and alive in my hands. I came across a bookshop that led me to open the pages of May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude (a book that over the years I kept revising for comfort and inspiration). I was struck with these lines: “. . . how complex and demanding every deep human relationship is, how much real pain, anger, and despair are concealed by most people. And this is because many feel that their own suffering is unique. It is comforting to know we are all in the same boat.” It was my first time to walk all the way to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, about four miles. There I sat alone on one of the outdoor benches, and sometimes I sat with my grief. I remember the day I was meticulously inspecting the Urban Light installation, then I walked to the nearby park crying all sorts of tears, tears of loneliness, of fear, of wanting to find hope amidst all the despair, of how my relationship with my mother had become strained towards the end of her years and there was no more time and chance to repair it. I imagined her as a little girl standing barefoot on the green grass in San Remigio where she had first learned to walk, innocent and beautiful, her thick black hair blowing in the wild wind, in a time when the world was kind to her. I imagined both of us sitting on the beach having a conversation, thoughtful and loving words exchanged. The last thing she said to me before she disappeared from my mind was ‘It’s all going to be okay, I promise.’ It was a relief to just feel the range of my emotions surrounded by lush trees luminous under the magnificent sky, birds singing their songs of peace. Walking back home, I felt light and strangely uplifted. The inner tumult that I had previously felt dissolved into a state of calm. I no longer lived in my angst-ridden head. Somehow the world seemed so open and forgiving and divine. The more I walked, the braver I felt. I learned more deeply that life is fragile and sacred, that I must be kinder to myself and others. Around this time, I started writing again.
2.
How to live in the dark: Let the darkness come. Bellow or cry or be still. Then remember the words that gladden your heart. “Welcome home.” “We are all made of stars.” “I love you.” Think of beautiful things. Think of Grandma Gatewood solo-hiking the Appalachian Trail. And the paths that your eight great grandparents had walked in the land of your birth. That April evening of your childhood where you had first known peace. And that early summer you hiked the Escondido Trail to see the waterfalls. You are truly made of stardust. Take a deep breath. Wiggle your toes. Close your eyes and imagine the outside world. The welcoming sky. The majestic oak trees. The lavender bush lining up the sidewalk of Alexandria Street. Light falling on the stained-glass windows of St. Basil Church. Imagine what other enchantments you might find. The pages of a book that could save your life. The curious gaze of an innocent child. Mozart’s concerto wafting through a quiet alley. Go to that world that time and again fills your heart with elation. Find the door that will take you there. Then take that first step, and the next, and the next. Keep walking and do not turn back.
Jeehan Quijano was born and raised in Cebu, Philippines where she grew up speaking Cebuano, Tagalog and English. She is the author of the novel "The Unfolding." Her work has appeared in Vol.1 Brooklyn, Litbreak Magazine and Ang Diaryo. She is also a pianist. She lives in Los Angeles, CA. You can find her on Instagram @jeehan_quijano
What I Think About While Not Working at the Office
Eugénie Szwalek
I’ve been thinking a lot about the kid in the Omelas hole. I’ve been thinking a lot about working, and making money, and guilt, and how to make noodles from scratch, how to solder copper plumbing, and what my parents’ neighbourhood looks like from the peak of their roof. What my neighbourhood looks like from my twentieth-floor balcony. How it’s actually a nineteenth-floor balcony, the building old enough to be missing its thirteenth floor. I’ve been thinking a lot about the peculiarity of humans. A peculiarity that drives them to alter their architecture in the face of superstition.
I’ve been thinking a lot about where I buy my groceries. About how many things you can make with bananas. About instant matcha packets I drink in the afternoons at the office because a coworker once offered me a spare from her desk. I’ve been thinking a lot about small kindnesses, how they can alter the way we move through the world. How I found and bought those same instant matcha packets and continue to bring them to the office, though the office is different now. I’ve been thinking about all the things that have altered my architecture.
I’ve been thinking a lot about tattoos. How scared so many people still are of them. Not of the pain that comes from the needle and the ink and the healing, but the possible pain that comes from wearing the things you love on your skin, for everyone to see, always, including yourself. The possible pain of changing your mind one day. I’ve been thinking a lot about possible pain versus present pain. Whether it’s better to brace or endure.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the bus. How it moves through the city in a fixed pattern. How many people rely upon it, feel relief or annoyance or acceptance or nothing at all as it pulls up. I’ve been thinking a lot about how many people move through spaces that move people that move through places that move people. How many needs are met and lost. About how to love them all, the people around me, the strangers the neighbours the passersbys, my fellow bus companions, without being naïve enough to think I am indestructible. About how to balance self-preservation with benefit of the doubt. About the deeper implications of “benefit of the doubt.” About who benefits from my doubt.
I’ve been thinking a lot about love, about the loneliness that is sometimes inherent in loving peopleplacesthings but never really knowing if they love you back the same. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m okay with this. About how the ways in which I am loved back don’t always impact the intensity or shape of my care in the day-to-day. How I want to be water in their lives, steady and present, like waves washing across pebbles on a beach. But I’ve also been thinking a lot about the pit. The one I sometimes stand at the edge of when I’m convinced no one will ever try to love me any differently than I am loved now. The storm it holds, always raging, always ready for me to fall into and out of like a pendulum through an angry ocean.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I haven’t been thinking a lot about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. About how the intensity and urgency with which they capture my fascination bursts suddenly to the forefront of my mind every couple years, all-consuming, only to sink back into the soup of my subconscious to simmer with all the other things I love to love. About how though something may not be at the sharp tip of every thought, it doesn’t mean the love I have for it has dulled or died.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Canada’s deep geological repository. About the inefficiency of the corporate machine. About how, despite this, it has, and will continue to, mold the world for centuries. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be working on the small words, the emails, the keychain orders, the little managerial tasks that alone seem useless and trivial but that add up and add up and add up and add up and what they add up to.
I’ve been thinking a lot about time.
I’ve been thinking a lot about grapes. About bread. About meatballs bought frozen in a box and meatballs shaped by hand. About cost, but not money cost. The cost of forgoing assembling our lives by hand for the sake of convenience. I’ve been thinking a lot about who gets forced to bear that cost, who has the choice to buy fresh produce and the time to sit by the stove watching them become something to sustain them to make that choice again tomorrow.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the impermanent nature of relationships. About how we are all of us ourselves buses on a fixed route, moving through cities as people move through us and we move through people and cities. About the architecture of moving and being moved. About the consequences of valuing passengers solely by the length of time they spend on the bus.
I’ve been thinking a lot about galaxy Oreos, about their unnatural pink and blue icing and the delayed crackle of poprocks in the back of my throat. About the reason they were bought in the first place: to be eaten and experience for the first time with friends. About how silly and frivolous they are. About how they are the only important thing in the world.
I’ve been thinking a lot about responsibility and art. About the power of language. Not only out in the world, but within my own brain. That if the world around me has the ability to mold me with words alone, and I am part of the world, then I too possess that aweful power.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means that I am writing this at the office, on a computer that was given to me, on time that I am being paid to do something else entirely. I’m thinking about how I don’t feel as guilty about this as you want me to. I am thinking about your anger, and who you’ll choose to direct it at, and why. And why. And why.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I don’t want to exist in this world, but how I do very much want to exist. I’ve been thinking about what my life could be if I continued to value my responsibility to art over my responsibility to capital. I’ve been thinking about how I am still too much a coward to imagine a life for myself beyond capitalism. I’ve been thinking of ways to become a person who isn’t.
I’ve been thinking a lot about you. Who you are. Why you’re reading this. If you’ll carry any of these words away with you. If they’ll alter your architecture. If it matters. Why it’s the only thing that matters. The tiny ways we weave together, the pulls and the patterns. How to exist is to shift the very fabric of reality.
I’ve been thinking a lot about those who walked away from Omelas. About where they walked to. About where I would walk to, if I walked away. About if I could walk away without actually leaving. About the things I can let go of, should let go of, and the things I’d rather die with wrapped like ocean debris around my heart. About what I would let drown me. About how maybe we’re all drowning, but if I’m bound to go under in the end, I’m damn well going to make sure the things that do me in were worth bearing at all.
Eugénie Szwalek (they/them) is a writer of everything from weird speculative fiction to dreamlike non-fiction, but above all else, an enthusiast of beautiful sentences. A graduate of Sheridan’s Creative Writing & Publishing program, they are currently a first reader and copy editor with Augur Magazine by night and an Editorial Assistant at Harlequin by day. Their short story “Dirt Retreat” was published in issue #20 of Fusion Fragment. They live and work in Toronto/tkronto (but dream of escaping into the wild some day).