stone-cutters 2014
DESCRIPTION
Stone-cutters is a literary and visual art publication of Harvard-Westlake School, Studio City, California. The writing, artwork, design and layout were all created by high school students. This issue was awarded a First Class designation by the National Student Press Association. For more information, email [email protected].TRANSCRIPT
harvard-westlake school
2014
stone-cutters
ston
e-cu
tter
s 2014Harvard Westlake School
3700 Coldwater Canyon Studio City, CA 91604Phone: (818) 980-6692
www.hw.com
Editor-in-Chief Julia Aizuss ’14Literary Editors
Kacey Bae ’15Louly Maya ’14
srotidEtrArrlausiViEmma Lesher-Liao ’14
Danielle Stolz ’15Alisa Tsenter ’14
Selection CommitteeAlisha Bansal ’14, Kaleigh
Bergmann ’15, Emma Graham ’15,Jonathan Heckerman ’15, Emma
Kofman ’16, Hannah Kofman ’14,Melanie Krassel ’15,
Robert Lee ’14, Eric Lin ’14, SachaLin ’16, Chelsea Pan ’14, Rachel Porter ’16, Sam Schlesinger ’15
noitcudorPJensen Davis ’16, Alex Gordon ’16,Marissa Karo ’16, David Ozen ’16,
Dora Schoenberg ’16, Lauren Song’16, Francesca Walker ’16
Faculty AdvisersAmber Caron, Cheri Gaulke, Sasha
Watson, Jen Bladen
stone-cuc ttuu ers is printed by SouthernCala ifornia Ga raphics in Culvl er Cr ity,
Cala if. on 70# dull enamel paperstockc , and uses Georgia typefa aff ce. ThT e
production staff uses sevee en of the school’s Dell PCs. 750 copies were
distributed fi rff ee on campus.
Front cover: Emma Lesher-Liao ’1’ 4Ode to Orthodontia:
Walnuts and wirw eBack cover: Luke Soon-Shiong ’14
Yart of the Recluse (Solos):Acrylic on canvas
stone-cutters is an art and literary magazine written by and for students atHarvard-Westlake School. The editorial staff meets as a student-run, after-
school club. Submissions were solicited by an all-school e-mail, and juried by the student staff.
Contents
2 Self Portrait with Mountains Eric Lin ’14
3 Inside the Galle Fort Xenia Viragh ’15
4 I can’t write Rebecca Katz’15
5 Sock Sarah McAllister ’15
6 I Will Fade Out Kayla Dillard ’15
7 What’s out there? (El Salvador) Alberto Rivera ’14
8 Patient 307 Sydney Foreman ’14
9 Shell Jordan Ellison ’15, Sophia Gonzalez ’15,
Anne Kim ’15, Xenia Viragh ’15, Katie Zipkin-Leed ’15
10 Steffany Hannah Kofman ’14
11 I’ll Take It To Go Danielle Stolz ’15
12 Mottled Jade Cups Koji Everard ’15
14 Rise and Grind Audrey Wilson ’15
15 Glass Bottle Robert Lee ’14
16 PM Louly Maya ’14
17 Untitled Scott Nussbaum ’15
18 (waterbed) Ethan Weinstein ’15
19 Now What Luke Soon-Shiong ’14
20 This Is Not a RISD Bike Christopher Yang ’14
21 Untitled Mazelle Etessami ’14
22 Portrait of a Young Woman and her Father
Matt Leichenger ’14
23 Daphne, A Bildungsroman Julia Aizuss ’14
26 Samson and Delilah Aidan Yetman-Michaelson ’14
28 Perseverance Josh Shapiro ’14
29 Untitled Melanie Krassel ’15
30 Faible Jacob Goodman ’15
32 Untitled Eli Caplan ’14
34 Untitled Lauren Lee ’14
35 A New Perspective Alisa Tsenter ’14
36 Faithful Hannah Kofman ’14
37 Packrat Sammi Ho ’16
38 Tube Sock Emma Lesher-Liao ’14
39 Go On Clare Chou ’15
40 something to say Levi Craske-Curtin ’14
41 Mathis Darby Caso ’14
Big IdeasWood, tin can, silicone,
graphite, paper and a pencilLiza Woythaler ’14
2
Inside the Galle FortwPhotography
Xenia Viragh ’15
L01_HW_stonecutters_FINAL2014_PAGE2.indd 1L01_HW_stonecutters_FINAL2014_PAGE2.indd 1 5/16/14 9:29 PM5/16/14 9:29 PM
3
Self Portrait with MountainsAcrylic and ink on board
Eric Lin ’14
4
I can’t write.
I can’t write
Because I’m nervous to read this.
I can’t write.
I can’t write
water from a burst pipe.
Since the thoughts remain in the real estate between my ears, listening to stories, my ear a safe haven for others as I struggle to get out my own words.
I can’t write since all I want to do is write.
I can’t write.
I can’t write
When I have to wait to be asked the question
When the answer is always the same –
“I’m good, thanks, and you?”
I can’t write.
I can’t write
5
SockCarved Styrofoam
Sarah McAllister ’15
I can’t write because I sit and wait.
Because I don’t know what the outcome will be and I don’t know why I’m so afraid of that.
Because I’m caught in the white space between knowing too much and knowing too little.
I can’t write.
I can’t write because I’m nervous to read this.
Rebecca Katz ’15
6
I Will Fade Out
(inspired by I Will Wade Out by E.E. Cummings)
we will fade out,
then, our biggest
dreams and aspirations
will be as distant as the
swirling cosmos
as untouchable as
your
beating
heart
we will not settle
until then, we will
discover, learn and love
until the sun beams
from within our sincere
and tired eyes
our story
will be recorded in the
steps we took
we will not fade
we will go out
as quickly
and as beautifully
as lightning
Kayla Dillard ’15
7
What’s Out There? (El Salvador)Photography
Alberto Rivera ’14
8
Patient 307Oil on canvas
Sydney Foreman ’14
(Opposite) Shell
PhotographyJordan Ellison ’15, Sophia Gonzalez ’15, Anne Kim ’15, Xenia Viragh ’15, Katie Zipkin-Leed ’15
10
I’ll Take It To GoWater color pencil and gouache on cold press boardDanielle Stolz ’15
11
Steffany
You hated her so I agreed. When she laughed through walls.
And wore Mickey Mouse
But I liked her
Hair yesterday
And her earrings
And she’s nice
I think it was the braids stuck on her head
And that she didn’t wait for the shuttle and walked instead
But made the decision so quickly that it was worth it.
We waited
For the shuttle and our hands stung and our skin drained
And we grew angry and annoyed and older
Meanwhile she was walking
With a girl with a nose ring
A coat over her knees
And her knitted hair made a hat
But her ears were out and cold
And on the shuttle we wondered if we would see her outside
Young and walking
And our knuckles stung in the slowly warming air
And we immediately forgot to look
Hannah Kofman ’14
12
13
Mottled Jade CupsGlazed stoneware
Koji Everard ’15
15
(Opposite)Rise and Grind PhotographyAudrey Wilson ’15
Glass Bottle
Once,
There I trembled with an empty glass.
Believing the conviviality could inebriate my spirits,
I only became overly sentimental and in need for sobering up.
But coffee didn’t work so well.
The glass was too cold
And I got tired of smiling at people I passed by.
Brooding, I stumbled across a water fountain.
Though it became so clear,
Nobody would ever know what I was drinking.
Sometimes I felt like heaving that bottle up in the sky,
And probably more in a different state.
Oh, what should I imbibe?
Robert Lee ’14
16
PM
Carla waits on the edge of the tub as the water runs. Dave isn’t home
yet. Dave hasn’t been home before nine o’clock for the past three months.
A lot of work, Carla, I have a lot of work. Carla believes him and believes
no mark on the calendar for dinner reservations or show tickets like there
has been for the past four years. Carla can’t tell if Dave really did forget,
humor.
the knob off. Before she can get in, the phone rings.
“Hello?” she answers.
“Carla, it’s me,” the voice sighs.
Dave won’t be home till midnight. A lot of work, Carla, I have a lot of
work. Carla laughs. Dave tells her not to wait up, not to make food for
is sorry. A lot of work, Carla, I have a lot of work. Carla says it’s okay, she
understands. Carla is a very understanding person.
She returns to the tub and sinks slowly into the water. It’s almost hot
enough to burn her bare skin. It’s electric, but she likes it. Carla sits in the
bath as the water slowly loses heat and her skin slowly prunes until she is
left shivering, wondering why she has stayed in it for so long.
Louly Maya ’14
(Opposite)Untitled
Scott Nussbaum ’15
17
18
(waterbed)
we were awake while everyone else slept
and your eyes didn’t close for three minutes at a time
i listened
as our kaleidoscopic conversation
drifted in
out
and our eyelids fell
with the push and pull of the moon
we fell asleep —
reading out loud
as what we thought was the sun
started to rise
we couldn’t turn it off
so the lamp stayed on all night
i woke up with corduroy lines pressed into my arms
and while the notsun rose
we didn’t know if we should too
and i am sure the tide was going out —
even from so far away
i could hear the waves breaking
softer and softer
as i drove homeward
pushing the speed limit to its limit
Ethan Weinstein ’15
19
Now WhatAcrylic and sand on canvas
Luke Soon-Shiong ’14
20
This Is Not a RISD BikeGraphite
Christopher Yang ’14
21
UntitledPhotography
Mazelle Etessami ’14
22
Portrait of a Young Woman and Her FatherAcrylic on wood
Matt Leichenger ’14
23
Daphne, A Bildungsroman
An IntroductionHer Critical Reading score had stagnated at 690, and Tate returned
to her childhood. She descended to the basement of the Odd, toting in
one arm what used to require two. Books she dog-eared at seven, ten,
sometimes as late as thirteen: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Phantom
Tollbooth, The BFG. Her taste for fantasy when she was younger had
not translated into a taste for what she sometimes called high literature,
delicate pages encased in ivory towers she could not reach. No Rapunzel in
this world to let down her hair. Thus, the Critical Reading score.
A SceneAfter school, the latest practice SAT results in her hand, January. Her
school college counselor encounters the stagnation with penciled-in raised
eyebrows, lowers the papers to her lap. She says, “Didn’t you use the word
‘welkin’ in an email to me once?”
Tate sits on her hands, although she solved her nail-biting problem in
because a couple strands of hair have slipped in front of her face, dark
streaks cordoning off her vision, like: you shall not pass. Hadn’t she sent
the guilty email back in ninth grade, or tenth? Wryly: “Well—once.”
tableau, which has repeated itself ever since Tate’s PSAT sophomore year.
True, Tate could ably employ the word “welkin.” Tate was fond of words
certain majestic heft to them, a dash of antique rust. But she had no use for
She used “threnody” in her history term paper, and it came back to her
circled in blue ink, with a hint of a chortle in the comment written in the
margin: “A bit much, don’t you think?”
24
An EkphrasisThe basement of the Odd housed books whose decades-long presence
had at last deemed them, maybe doomed them, unsellable. Unsellable,
sometimes, by choice—here rested the books Tate’s dad hoarded in the
dusty corners, unwilling to showcase to the purses of the public. He wasn’t
as discreet as he pretended, but Tate didn’t begrudge him his hold on the
Books than a tweedy antiquarian bookseller.
Books rose around the room in stacks falling just short of towers,
granting them the divine power to remain sturdy. Not that they would have
matted green felt, that Tate had often clambered when she was small to
read whichever yellow-paged paperback she’d pulled with patient wiggles
out of the overstuffed children’s shelf, lying on her belly between two
leaning stacks of Pisa; and it was onto here that Tate now pulled herself,
as a stack some inches away on the pool table quavered ominously. Her
hair shook into her face with the force of her thump onto the felt, and she
pursed her lips (between which a strand of hair was caught).
A DigressionShe’d cut it, the hair, short over the summer, with the half-formed,
garbled thought of Reinventing Herself. But she’d cut it only three inches,
and she felt just about the same. Somehow, though, the loss had impelled
a change of temperament, if not in herself, in her hair. It frizzed thickly
about her head now, obscuring her vision. More than anything (she
realized one day, after an unwise head-turn thrust a thatch of hair in her
face and nearly, in turn, caused a freeway accident) she felt as if she walked
all day with her head in the clouds. Or stuck in the dirt, like an ostrich.
Last Sunday, when business behind the register had slowed to a yawn,
Tate ventured this second comparison to Miles, who she thought might
basement.”
“Shut up,” Tate said.
25
“I won’t let you leave the register if that girl comes again. I’ll trap you.”
At the time, Tate hadn’t deigned to respond. As she opened The Last
(between which a couple strands of her hair were caught).
A RegressionShe knew how less-than-romantic a throatful of basement air redolent of
yellow-paged books was, so she heaved an indulgent sigh—appropriate, she
She thought about what Miles would call a “missed opportunity,” and what
she would with histrionic lament call, maybe, a lost dalliance. Tate wasn’t
sure how she felt about dalliances. That was something she had liked about
would feel about dalliances like hers, the ones she usually lost. The answer
was Susan Pevensie, the sister left behind for her interests in frivolities—
nylons, lipstick, parties—for her interest in what Narnia did not have.
Tate had always been most interested in what Narnia had. Or in where
the car of The Phantom Tollbooth would drive her, in the frobscottle the
BFG drank, in how the Odd could replicate any of it. And when she realized
at about twelve or so—in a moment of threnody, if you want to go there—
that it couldn’t, she put down the books. Thus, the Critical Reading score.
When she closed the books, she left the basement and moved on to the
dalliances. Only this past spring, when her parents divorced, and her mom
moved over the hill to the Valley—the Valley!—had Tate returned to the
basement, where her thoughts began descending as she drifted off during
SAT tutoring in Woodland Hills, staring at the head of that girl in front of
her. Before that, she’d forgotten what happened to Susan.
A Sign, & A CodaFor years, in her end-of-year evaluations, Tate’s English teachers wrote
that she had “promise.” Tate wondered how long they could keep writing
Julia Aizuss ’14
26Samson and Delilah
Ink on paper
27Aidan Yetman-Michaelson ’14
28
PerseverancePhotography
Josh Shapiro ’14
29
Untitled
Smog hazes out the Clear blue sky-
Killing the Birds that pass –
Weights falling to the ground – they crash
On Girls amid the Grass
Burgundy paint now covers Green
High pitched shrieks shake the earth
Yet not a soul can hear the cries --
For the Ground hates the Earth
The Grass – it wilts – The eyes grow wide
When did the clouds turn Dark? Alas—
A storm lurks, waiting to Attack
When Suffocation takes its Toll
What then be of our world?
When the Firmament faints at last
Our Ground will merely Fold
Melanie Krassel ’15
30
31
FaibleAcrylic and pastel on cold press board
Jacob Goodman ’15
32
33
UntitledPhotography
Eli Caplan ’14
34
A New PerspectiveInk and black paper on cold press board
Alisa Tsenter ’14
35
UntitledOil on canvas
Lauren Lee ’14
36
Faithful
Please don’t question
It’s not hard—
Just move your family
To my land
And I will bring you legacy
A dream for a promise
2 for 1
Please don’t question
Just search for animals
A pair of each kind
And board them on an ark
Hand built with no assistance
Because you are righteous
Please don’t question
Just kill your son
That’s all
Throw in the charred ram,
And I’ll double it
Please don’t question
The customer is always right
Hannah Kofman ’14
37
PackratCamera Obscura Photography
Sammi Ho ’16
38
39
Go On
Quietly, your footsteps fall
on the stone pathway that
we paved together;
the winding coils
required long hours, where we
paused our work to
wipe our sweat away
in the glorious rays,
satin stars winked at us
to signal our rest,
but we didn’t go inside;
we lay on our work,
held our hands together
as the playful winds
calmed, and caressed
our cheeks and hair
as we drifted off
into the morning,
when we open our eyes
to see the birds
the sun carefully
hanging in the sky;
it shines on us,
only to realize
our work is done,
and we are back
where we started
(Opposite)Tube SockPorcelain Emma Lesher-Liao ’14
It’s your turn, now,
to go on and
build your own road
while I stay here
and work on it some more.
Clare Chou ’15
40
something to say
there’s something to be said
about the way
you electrocute yourself
these pretty thin wires seething through
blood never meant to touch air,
breaking out,
and I’m not sure what the words are
‘cause I’m bad with my tongue
but you tell me there is no ugly, that
our organs care too much about us,
that every cell in our body
is devoted to maintaining the
light in this vessel
but you –
compress your thighs with
squeezing until the cellulose yellows.
you’re always saying
‘not my bruises,
please just look at my eyes’
these – the same.
I see a blood sweet with glucose,
sick with so much heavier
I see a humor brittling and a bee hive in your
chest humming ‘cause you
keep taking parts of yourself out
into the trash
out the backdoor
down the sink
depositing these perfect pieces
trying to pardon the rotting,
but with your makeup smearing
and your lips slipping into your gums
I know that this not a metamorphosis
every laugh rippling in your throat
crippling before sticking to the roof
this decay is wholly shattering.
this decay makes me want to practice the words
tell you you are more than your mistakes,
more than your failures,
more than that whittled soil in your garden
because bodies are hard to live in
bodies are almost impossible to live in
but there must be something said
about the way you’re electric
why are the words still stuck on my tongue
Levi Craske-Curtin ’14
41
Mathis Acrylic on skinDarby Caso ’14
2014