The Uses of Enchantment
This course
-- Reading Myth, Writing Ourselves –
has two components, which seem at first glance to be entirely separate
pursuits: reading fairy tales, legends,
and myths and doing creative writing. But
it’s a natural combination. These old, old stories connect us to the deepest
wells of human imagination, to the source of all stories, and they open a
portal to our own individual creativity.
We spent the
fall reading fairy tales (though not the Disney versions) and we finished with
Robert Bly’s provocative study of the tale Iron
John, which he interprets as an allegory for initiation into manhood. Some of the pieces were inspired by specific
tales, some were inspired by general themes or motifs that across many tales,
and some were inspired by our work on Iron
John.
This is very
much a group project. The students chose
the pieces, edited each other’s work, chose the photographs, and designed the
magazine. We hope you enjoy it. Merry Christmas!
--BCH
The Beast Within
Spencer Bibb
I looked at
the scoreboard in disgust: 29-17. The first day after she had ditched me, the
first game of the season had become the first loss. Even though I was glad to be going home and
getting away from school, I was pissed.
I could feel the wolf inside me growl, and I knew he was going home with
me that night. The wolf is my impulsive side, the archetype of my most brutal selfish
desires. When I feel angry, he takes
over, and he doesn’t stop for other people’s feelings. That night he wanted to
punish Caroline, and he was willing to take anyone else down in the process. He loves revenge and always takes what he
wants and hurts whoever gets in his way.
Driving back
to my house I texted every single girl I had in my contacts, and that satisfied
him for about an hour. Finally I got a response from Corley Simons, who is
about 5’11 with shiny brown hair and a body like an hourglass. Thinking about
her, my vision and the wolf’s began to blur. Was she my good friend Corley, or
was she just a convenient way to satisfy his hunger for revenge? I couldn’t
tell, and he wouldn’t let me worry about it.
“Spencer,
can you meet me at the Valley game tonight?! I haven’t seen you in forever :)”
“Sure thing. Can’t wait to see you too!”
As I walked
towards the bright lights of Loudoun Valley High, I began picking through the
crowd to find Corley, my eyes narrowed and focused like a hunter’s. As I approached her, the wolf hid behind a
charming smile and said, “Hey, Corley” with a wink for added camouflage. He
knew exactly what he was doing. As we talked during the game, I watched her
lips glisten under the stadium lights and felt the wolf stir. He didn’t see one of my best childhood friends.
He saw a gorgeous girl who was going to be useful in his plot to get back at
Caroline. We took a picture together in
the stands with my arm around her and my lips planted on her cheek. The first
step to his revenge was finished.
I followed
her to her house after the game, and when we saw her parents, the wolf lied
through his teeth again with a charming “hello” and a “nice to see you.” He was
completely undetected.
Down in her basement we were watching some movie when we started talking about how we never can see each other and how she misses me when I’m at boarding school, and I spat out every witty, flattering word the wolf fed to me. By that time, he had taken over, and my body was simply a tool for him to use as he pleased. My heart beat faster as I felt his jaws clinch. I put my arm around her, pulled her closer, and he pounced. I whispered something in her ear, and the next thing I knew my lips were on hers and he was biting.
After a
quick goodbye, I got into my truck and started the engine and whipped out my
phone. I posted the picture from the
game on every social media page I have, and I sent a group message to all of my
friends telling them that I just hooked up with Corley. The wolf had gotten what he needed: Caroline would be seeing that picture and
hearing that story in a few hours.
But driving
home, I became more and more ashamed as I imagined Corey seeing the same
picture and hearing the same story.
Revenge feels good until you realize that you’re just feeding your own
bloodthirsty wolf.
Enchanted
Walk
Jinuk Oh
On a cold, rainy night a couple of days before Christmas, I
was walking with my dad in a park. The sky was jet black and densely packed
with dark, heavy clouds, and we could barely see what was ahead of us in the
fog. The tree branches whistled as the winter wind blew through them. Each
streetlight formed a thin cylinder of light underneath it, barely lighting the
road. The moist air filled my nose. No
one else was there.
When I arrived home for winter break my sophomore year, I
was in no way feeling restful. I had done terribly at school. All I could think about was my below-average
grades, which had utterly shocked my parents. They kept asking why I’d done so
poorly and whether I even wanted to study at all. Finally we had a huge argument, which filled
the air in my home with tension for days, tightly gripping my throat and
choking me. An invisible wall arose
between my room and my parents’ room, and no one dared to pass through it.
One night a few days after the fight, my father gently
knocked on my door.
“Jinuk, do you want to take a short walk?”
I didn’t respond at first, and he sighed and walked back to
the living room. Was I ready to talk to him? I didn’t know the answer, but if I didn’t go
after him now, I would never know, so I quietly changed and creaked open the
door to see him sitting on the couch with his eyes closed. As much as I feared
the idea of talking to him, I wanted to overcome it. I tapped his shoulder to
tell him I was ready, and he opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and got up.
“Okay. Thank you, son.”
I was glad he had taken his umbrella because just as we
started walking into the park across the street, a drop of rain hit my head,
soon followed by a good shower. Until then, I was trying to keep a distance
between us, but now we had to walk closely together under the tiny umbrella.
The fog seemed to suck up most of the light, so we had to move slowly. Rain splashed onto the pavement and the
leaves and seemed to wash out all other noise of the city except our footsteps on
the empty road. All the while my mouth wouldn’t let a single word escape. We
took turns holding the umbrella, each of us trying to cover the other more than
himself. In the end we both held the
handle, our hands on top of one another.
My dad and I walked through the fog and rain under the dark
sky. When we came to the windmill by
the lake and stopped to see our reflections in the water, I saw a tired man and
a boy of similar height, holding just one little umbrella in a downpour. My tongue
was still frozen, though apologies and confessions echoed in my head.
“I’m sorry,” my dad whispered, barely audibly. He was trying
to hold back tears, awkwardly brushing his eyes, his voice breaking.
“No, dad. I’m so sorry.
I’m such a bad son.”
Once I
opened my mouth, I couldn’t close it. Everything spilled out. He hugged me
really hard, but I felt no pain, just rain soaking my shoulders.
As we began to walk home, the downpour turned into a
drizzle, and the fog lifted. We weren’t using the
umbrella anymore, but we
still walked very close as the bugs and birds came out of their hiding places
and began making their music. I wondered out loud how I would ever share all my
thoughts with my mother, and Dad quietly listened with a small smile on his
face, offering short pieces of advice when I asked for it. The walk back felt
way too short for me to convey all of my worries, but I knew I would never feel
alone again.
When I turned around to take one last look at the silent
park behind us as we exited, I saw the most beautiful park I had ever seen in
my life. The sky was the clearest it had ever been, and was covered with stars
twinkling brilliantly. Golden fairies on streetlights smiled and waved. I smiled and waved back.
Handshake
Andrew Hope
But soon it
seemed that besides the memory of the cloud of ashes, I had only a few things
to remember my father by, some of his fly-fishing gear and a couple of his
shirts but nothing that nothing that seemed to contain him fully until my
mother game me a small glass pendant which held a portion of his ashes, which I
carry in my pocket.
The
cookie-shaped capsule is the same color of his deep blue eyes. Bubbles of air
and miniature yellow cylinders dance around one-another in the glass, rotating
like a little tornado toward his ashy remains at the center. The exterior of
the glass is scarred from its travels inside my pocket with pencils, coins, and
tubes of insulin, but this has enhanced rather than obscured the beauty because
each scratch reminds me that I have had my dad by my side.
People who
don’t know the story probably see the little blue coffin as a frilly good-luck
charm. They can’t see the comfort and peace that it bestows. They can’t see my
dad smiling at me whenever I look at it. In times of anxiety, I place my hand
in my pocket, rub my thumb across the surface, and feel the callouses I felt
the last time I shook his hand. I take a deep breath and smile.
The Cub
Luke Merrick
When I was five years old, my mom bought me a pair of
stuffed lions. I touched them, petted them, turned them, smelled them, and
watched them. I liked the big one, a male with a great fuzzy mane, but the
smaller mane-less counterpart was something special. The cub had a soul behind
her eyes. She was alive. Where all my other stuffed animals, had cold, lifeless
beads for eyes, the cub had a pair of warm shiny disks with rings of blue,
green, yellow, and black. And when my sweaty fingertips first touched where I
saw them sparkle, I felt a tiny hum of life.
The cub was shy and quiet, of course, as all juvenile toy
lions are around large animals like children. But when I would spend weekend
hours with my stuffed animals staging imaginary battles and stories on my
bedroom carpet, the cub was always the most important player, because unlike the
other characters, mere placeholders for my story, she acted. One time when I
laid out my battle lines and began the charge, I heard a tiny voice call out. I
saw the cub, her stitch-work mouth curled slightly downward, staring at me with
those colorful eyes, seeming to say, “This conflict could be resolved by
talking things out, you know.”
The old lion I could pick up and throw or use as a seat.
When I needed a villain for my games, I would turn to him. But the cub, with
her soft white underbelly and innocent smile, was sacred. She demanded to be
placed upon a pedestal, to be the voice from on high guiding the games. I
prized her above even my blanket with my soft trim and my action figures. The
cub was imbued with the strongest enchantment my five-year-old imagination
could create, after all.
But like all enchantments, good or evil, the spirit of the
cub faded as time passed. As I grew older and moved on to books and movies, the
magic that kept her alive began to ebb. More and more often when I placed her
on the bed overlooking my games, which happened less and less often, she would
sit petrified, stony, and lifeless. Some rare times she would have something to
say, a quiet murmur, but I could no longer understand her. The plastic of her
eyes accrued hairline cracks, which seemed to have let her vitality escape. Her
fur, which I had always taken special care to keep as pristine as any
self-respecting lioness cub would, lost its sheen and color. While I grew into
a more mature seven and eight-year-old, the cub finally became a lifeless toy.
My Pencil Case, My Partner
By Keita
Yagi
After two tiresome, exhausting classes, I
enter my room, hoping to get some sleep. I stare at my bed, thinking how
wonderful it would be to have a nap, but when I put down my backpack on the
floor, he calls my name. There he is, standing right in front of me. Silence fills the room, and I know what he is
going say. He points at my books and says, “A free period is the best time to
work ahead.” I quietly sit down and open
one of my textbooks. He looks at me and forces one of his pencils into my hand.
This pencil case has served me for almost three
years and we share a lot of memories. At first it was just an
accessory, simply
a small case to hold my pencils and pens, but it became something more, came
alive. Every time I look at the case, it
reminds me of the pile of the homework I have left to do, and I feel guilty. Perhaps ego (or my superego) inhabits it.
Whenever I feel like goofing off or playing a video game, my pencil case pulls
me back on task. Sometimes I think he is ruling my life.
“Do your homework,” he tells me. He never
shows mercy even when I’m exhausted. Homework and tests are his two favorite
words, and I know that because he says them over and over again every day. Every
time he saw me over the summer he said, “Keita, are you sure you do not need to
study? Are you going to be okay when school starts?” Sometimes he is annoying. I wish I could just ignore him, but hiding him
does no good because I hear his voice in my head even when he is in the bottom
of my bag.
Once I took him out of the bag and said,
“Can you wait for just one hour? I need
to take a break.” I knew my proposal was not going be accepted, but it seemed
worth a try. He said, “If you want to
get a good grade, you need to push yourself more,” and he was right. He always says the same thing, and I always respond
in the same way. I raise both of my
hands in surrender and say, “I guess I need to study a little bit more.“
I have no power to fight against his wisdom. Sometimes I despise him for what he does to me, but there comes a time when he deserves credit. When I am taking a test and get stuck on one question, he says, “Keita, you did that same kind of question on last night’s homework. I know you can do it.” Normally taking a test is a lonely fight, like standing on the battlefield alone, but with him I am never alone. My pencil case never gives me an answer to the question, but having somebody I can trust in the battle is comforting. When I am so tired that I want to give up on a question, he always picks me up. And after a long fight, he tells me I did a fine job. In those times I could believe that he was sent from heaven.
My pencil case is a loyal servant. He
whips me, tears my heart and even tries to beat me, but he never abandons me.
He is always beside me when I need to remind myself to study. He looks at me
and says, “Keita, after that essay, you still have some math homework to do.”
He makes me truly depressed sometimes, but I like him. I am sure I will keep
him by my side forever.
A Deal
Alex Cummings
Have you
ever been so far into a jam that you would do anything to get yourself out? It
was a normal Thursday night except this night I had a research paper, an art
project, a take-home math test, and a number of worksheets for my other
classes. One of these worksheets was nothing more than busy work for English
class, but it was the worksheet that started the deal.
After much frustration
and confusion I finally finished the research paper. The art project took taken
an hour to blend the paints and another to splash it onto the canvas. And it
took me another hour to make sure the numbers were right on the math test. I was halfway through all of the regular homework
when I looked at the clock to see that it was already 11:30. Where did the last
five hours go? For the next couple of minutes, I just looked at how many things
I had left to do. Every blank page I looked was another slice of gloom. There
was no way I was going to complete all of this work and get any sleep that
night. That’s when, as if by magic, the dealmaker showed up.
In the midst
of my freak out, a classmate I don’t know very well appeared out of thin air and
seemed pretty amused by my stress. I was just about to explode on him, but at
the last moment, I realized that he was in my English class and that he had
probably finished his worksheet already. He must have read my mind because he
volunteered to lend me his notes on the condition that I would give him my
sacred package of Double Stuffed Oreos. Naturally I volunteered. The notes
shaved off a good chunk of the remaining work and gave me the boost I needed.
Finally at 1:00 AM, I hopped in bed.
The next
morning, I woke up with a solid six hours of sleep and a sense of
accomplishment. The morning felt so glorious that I even went to breakfast.
After a heaping pile of sausage, eggs, and bacon, I was feeling better than
after Thanksgiving dinner. The first class went by with no problem, but not English.
When the teacher asked for all of us to take out the worksheet, I unsheathed my
homework like it was Excalibur. But then
we began going over it. Hmmm. The first answer’s wrong… That’s kind of funny. Oh well…. After the next three missed answers, I knew
that something was wrong. I looked over at Roger, my seemingly magical friend,
who was snickering with a satisfied look on his face. That’s when I realized I had
been duped, tricked, and cheated.
I came out
of that English class with a zero on the assignment, but more importantly, a
sense of disappointment in myself. But I
learned something too: the dangerous
dealmaker was not actually the fellow who gave me the bad notes. The dangerous dealmaker was within, that
part of me who wanted to take a shady shortcut.
Not everything that’s easy is right. I had met my own Rumpelstiltskin, and he turned
out to be almost identical to the original: very creative, very sly, and very dangerous.
