ScholarWorks @ SeattleU (Seattle University)

Selthun, Elena

Fragments Volume 63 Pivot Article 4 2021 Superstitions Elena Selthun Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments Recommended Citation Selthun, Elena (2021) "Superstitions," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 4. Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/4 This Prose is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 1  Superstitions Elena Selthun   When I first heard the word “Sinagua” as a kid, around seven or eight years old, it sounded made-up, the kind of word you might find in a fantasy book as the name of a far-off city or a mysterious wizard. The context didn’t help: I was standing in a quiet, wooded canyon with my parents, sleepy little sister, and a small group of other tourists, all of us staring, agape, at the cliff dwellings surrounding us on all sides. “The Sinagua Indians built these pueblos over seven hundred years ago,” the guide told us, gesturing to the walls of reddish stone and adobe bricks tucked neatly beneath the canyon’s limestone ledges, just out of reach.  I had no concept of how long seven hundred years might be, but I remember looking at the Sinagua pueblos and thinking it couldn’t really be that long. They looked old, but not that old. You could have told me that people lived in them fifty years ago – as old as my family’s little ranch house in Phoenix – and I would have 1Selthun: SuperstitionsPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 20212  believed it. Some of the walls were crumbling; many were not. They had doorways, windows, even alcoves that could be beds or tables with a little imagination, and I wasn’t short on imagination when I saw Walnut Canyon National Monument for the first time.  Some pueblos were enshrouded from our prying eyes, and unless the sun touched them at just the right angle, the doorways led to small pockets of total darkness, hidden in the safety of the canyon walls themselves. The longer I looked at these homes, the longer I walked down the meandering canyon trail and caught glimpses of more doors, more bricks, more worlds tucked just out of reach through the trees, the more I began to believe two things: seven hundred years was a very long time, and this was the most unreal place I had ever stepped foot in. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I felt like a voyeur in Walnut Canyon, peering into empty houses, breathing in the scent of dusty Ponderosa pine and wondering what happened here. The guide kept telling us they didn’t know where the Sinagua went or why they left, like it was some big mystery to be solved. I wasn’t so sure they had left at all. I kept looking at those black doorways, only to walk quickly past when I got close, cold sweat sliding down the back of my neck, 2Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 4https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/43  half-convinced that if I looked too hard, I might see someone looking back. I kept looking, anyway.  Sinagua,” I whispered to myself in the backseat on the drive home. Saying it beyond that entombed canyon felt like a curse, or maybe a promise, although I suppose that’s what curses are. I had a fondness for words as a kid, but I didn’t know what to do with this one. I didn’t write it with the others, but I didn’t forget it, either. Maybe it didn’t let me forget it.  It was only in my first Spanish class in seventh grade that the actual meaning struck me: Sin agua. Without water. I laughed as I put the pieces together: not a name of intrigue and magic after all, but a gross inaccuracy. The Spaniards, baffled by mountains without rivers, named them the Sierra Sin Agua, now the San Francisco Peaks. But their first name is from the Navajo (the Spanish thrust names upon people and places alike – their self-given name is Diné, the People): Dookʼoʼoosłííd, or “the summit which never melts,” the highest point in Arizona. These mountains, like all of the mountains encircling the Verde Valley (Yavapai name: Matkʼamvaha), are volcanic. They are quiet; just sleeping, not dead. Beneath their perpetual snowcaps lies ancient fire, but the Spanish were wrong – they hold water, too. 3Selthun: SuperstitionsPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 20214  Without the water in the aquifer beneath Dookʼoʼoosłííd’s caldera, the neighboring city of Flagstaff would be just another of many ghost towns, lost to boom and bust. Unlike the Sinagua, the people who built those doomed towns didn’t understand the vital rule of the Southwest: water is life.  I learned this early on. Heat stroke sets upon the human body with deceptive slowness; you don’t realize what’s been taken from you until your vision blurs and your skin grows clammy with the precious water wicking off of you. Even then, our brains don’t easily grasp dehydration. We live on the Blue Planet, our bodies are sixty percent water, the damn stuff falls from the sky – how can it ever run out? This is what I would have thought if my brain had any water left to think when I almost died in the Superstition Mountains. It wasn’t dramatic, the way it happened. I just sat down on a rock next to a saguaro old enough to remember the prospectors, tucking myself into its lone strip of shade, and told my family to go on without me with all the urgency of needing to tie my shoe. I only remember this vaguely, like the echoes of a dream right after you wake up. What I remember most is that big blue sky, cloudless and even like an ironed sheet strung between the 4Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 4https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/45  clotheslines of the horizons. In my desiccated haze, I wanted to sit there and stare into that blue sky until I joined it. Maybe it looked like water to my parched brain. Then my mom shoved her water bottle into my hands and made me drink.  If they had left me, I think I’d still be there, staring. Under the Sonoran sky, it’s hard to tell if you are mortal or eternal, but the sun will always remind you in the end. Water is life. Water is also death. Walnut Canyon’s neighbor is another National Monument, the Spanish misnomer Montezuma Castle. It is neither a castle (more like an apartment complex), nor built by Montezuma (most likely the work of Sinagua women). The Castle was grand to me in the way I expected monuments to be, not tucked a mile down a canyon, but proudly on display ninety feet up on the side of a sheer cliff. As incredible as this was, I was a curious child who liked to wander off and read signs, hungry for new knowledge, new pictures to draw, and always more words to write. So I found a sinkhole.  To be precise, I found directions to the sinkhole and convinced my disgruntled parents to drive there. Located eleven miles northeast of Montezuma Castle, 5Selthun: SuperstitionsPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 20216  Montezuma Well (also unrelated to Montezuma, also not a well) can only be described as bizarre. It is a four-hundred-foot wide pool of deep green-blue water formed by an underwater spring, bounded by cacti and creosote on bare limestone, and so prone to overflowing that it has to be regularly maintained. A charming collection of species call the Well home, including a leech found nowhere else, but there is a marked absence of fish. This is probably because the water is carbonated, with a generous dash of arsenic. Yet there are familiar homes around it, those stacked stone bricks and perfect doorways that say, The Sinagua were here. It was a conundrum. If I had a better grasp on arsenic poisoning then, I might have theorized that this was where the Sinagua met their doom, making their name all the more ironic. The signs didn’t answer my questions, but when I visited the Well years later, now with my iPhone at the ready, some deep-dive Google searches did: the Sinagua didn’t drink the water, but used the Well’s overflow to irrigate their crops.  So the saying holds: water is life, even when it’s death. You can’t afford to be picky in the desert. That bubbly arsenic water’s not gonna drink itself.  6Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 4https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/47  The lack of fish would have been a red flag. But maybe they were too desperate to notice, or care. Or maybe they just had faith that this water could, in its own way, be life too. The Sinagua had water, until they didn’t. Maybe they did run out one day and had to leave all of their hidden homes behind, their poisonous, life-giving sinkhole and their not-a-castle, seeking a kinder oasis. Even if that’s true, their name is of their end. It’s like naming you after the worst thing that ever happened to you. Because that is the worst thing that could ever happen to you, here. It’s already happening to us. Sometimes I wonder how long we have until we start looking at wells of death with new eyes, abandoning our drought-stricken canyons of suburban streets and skyscraper castles, and leaving them to the sun’s mercy. Maybe that’s the pessimist in me talking. Or maybe it’s just the child in me, running past doors too full of the past to stand and face them.  Sinagua. This is the first time I’ve ever written it down. I still wonder what they called themselves. I wonder what they’ll call us. 7Selthun: SuperstitionsPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021

English

Superstitions

Dickinson, Deborah

Fragments Volume 63 Pivot Article 15 2021 [ under construction ] Deborah Dickinson Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments Recommended Citation Dickinson, Deborah (2021) "[ under construction ]," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 15. Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/15 This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU.  [ under construction ] Deborah Dickinson    Don’t you see [question mark] Of course [comma] I am aware that I ponder too deeply [comma] that I look too closely [comma] that I add and extract meaning altogether too freely [period] I know [comma] I dissect myself and others [comma] our thoughts [comma] our experiences [comma] our emotions [em dash] drilling everything down to rubble [em dash] until I am surrounded by indistinguishable [comma] unrecognizable [comma] pieces of a whole that I cannot [open parenthesis] and [comma] frankly [comma] do not know how to [close parenthesis] put back together again [period] Often [comma] I wonder [comma] what my affinity for destruction and [forward slash] or dismantling [comma] as well as my inability to [open parenthesis] re [hyphen] [close parenthesis] build [comma] says about me [em dash] my character [comma] my relationships [comma] my destiny [period] But I know no other way [period] I cannot sit back and let things [quote] be [comma] [unquote] because I am too concerned with what [quote] being [unquote] means [period] 1Dickinson: [ under construction ]Published by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2021

[ under construction ]

Hyman, Emma

Fragments Volume 64 Emergence Article 8 2022 Wake of the Flood Emma Hyman Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments Recommended Citation Hyman, Emma (2022) "Wake of the Flood," Fragments: Vol. 64, Article 8. Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol64/iss1/8 This Prose is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. Wake of the Flood “Golden hills, now veiled in gray Summer leaves have blown away   Now what remains? The Wind and Rain,”  - Weather Report Suite, Grateful Dead.   The summers of my childhood were spent outside, in the park that bordered my small, suburban neighborhood. The “barn park,” as the neighborhood children colloquially termed it, was the beacon of all neighborhood activities, equipped with a full playset, basketball courts, a street hockey rink, and a big, crimson barn meant for community events but mostly just there for decoration. Eventually, when we all outgrew the slides and baby swings, we moved on to the park’s primary attraction: the creek—a skinny, shallow, meandering waterway fed year-round by snow runoff from the Rocky Mountains. The creek gave us very little as children but a chance to act as adventurers, unbound by the set rules of the playground. In the creek, we were free; free to jump from rope swings crudely hung upon low-hanging branches and build dams amidst the creek’s slowly flowing waters. Most of all, we were free to sit all day on the creek’s banks, fishing for crawfish using slimy, chopped up hot dogs.   I don’t know where the crawfish came from—they’re hardly native to Colorado—but they lived within the walls of the muddy creek beds of my childhood park. At every possible chance we got, my brother, our friends, and myself would head down to a nook in the creek that we claimed as our own and spend hours using makeshift fishing gear to reel in as many crawfish as we could before our parents called us home for the night. It wasn’t much, and we hardly ever caught enough to cover the bottom of our bright 1Hyman: Wake of the FloodPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2022orange Home Depot bucket, but it got us out of the house for a few hours a day. At the end of the day, we would return our bounty to the muddy creek and go home to join our families for dinner.   September 11th, 2013, was a Wednesday, meant to be like any other. I was a month into 7th grade and on that Wednesday, I woke up in a panic, terrified of missing school. I saw the clock and ran out of my room, yelling to my parents that I was late to school.  My father laughed, informing me that school had been canceled due to torrential rains that turned the roads to rivers and turned an otherwise dry state into a wetland. Growing up in Colorado, weather usually never posed a barrier to our education. I remember once in 1st grade, when school had been canceled due to a blizzard that nearly trapped my mother and I in a Costco parking lot, but due to our Alaskan superintendent, our snow day prayers weren’t met again until my senior year of high school. And so, when school was canceled for rain on a random September Wednesday, I suppose I could have thought more about the potential significance of this missed school day. But I was 12 years old, and, in that moment, the pros of the impromptu rain day far outweighed its cons.  But then our solo rain day turned to four and suddenly the weight of the situation was firmly pushed to the front of my preoccupied 12-year-old mind. Suddenly, there were calls for evacuation, roads were buckling under the enormous weight of the waters, and homes and people were lost as our creeks swelled past their banks and flooded any earth they could get a hold of. Homes, lives, and memories were all lost in the torrential rainfall that ravaged Northern Colorado.   At some point during the four-day endeavor, one of my best childhood friends—a girl named Remy who lived down the street—and I went to assess the damage in our 2Fragments, Vol. 64 [2022], Art. 8https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol64/iss1/8beloved barn park. Our once narrow creek now covered nearly half the park. No longer could we jump from bank to bank with ease; now, the dainty creek of our childhood was a behemoth, eating away at our park inch by inch. While I wouldn’t fully come to terms with the impact of this once in a lifetime storm until I was in my late teens, my childhood was forever altered by these four days of rain. Shortly after the flood had receded and left millions of dollars in damage in its wake, Remy moved to her dad’s house full time and was no longer right across the street from me. All my childhood afternoons spent with her suddenly drifted away with the receding flood waters as we grew from best friends to acquaintances.   I don’t know where the crawfish came from, and I don’t know where they went. But after the flood, they were no longer burrowed into the mud walls of Dry Creek. Summers from then on were no longer spent squatting in the mud with a hot dog jammed on a paper clip at the end of a twine rope, hoping that we would catch as many crawfish as we could find. The nook that we had spent countless days at was no longer level with the creek. Rather, the perfect creek bed was replaced with a six-foot drop as the flood had sledged away any traces of our childhood exploration.   When the crawfish left, they took our childhood naivete with them. We could no longer separate the water from the destruction that its floods caused and so we separated ourselves from the creek all together. One day, we went fishing down at the creek, packed up our gear to leave, and never went back. I returned to the barn park many times in the years following but I never went fishing again. What was once a quintessential part of my life shrunk to a distant memory and what strikes me most about this whole experience was how little the missing crawfish seemed to mean after they disappeared in the flood’s wake. I believe that sometimes when you’re enveloped in 3Hyman: Wake of the FloodPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2022these situations, especially when you’re not quite old enough to understand them, they begin to seem almost trivial. Nothing about the flood was trivial, but my 12-year-old understanding of the world had yet to grasp the gravity of it all, and so, like the crawfish in their muddy dwellings, I began to retreat inside myself.   It has been almost ten years since the flood and my hometown is still reeling from our 100-year flood. In the last nine years, I hadn’t taken the opportunity to reflect upon the flood until December 30th of this past year, when half my county was on fire and I desperately wished for the flood waters to return and quench the thirst of our dry, burning grasslands. In the fire and the floods, I watched as pieces of my childhood were slowly stripped away by an angry Mother Earth, but only in the fire did I fully feel the weight of my childhood slipping away. I suppose you could say that the nine-year gap between the two natural disasters changed me into a more reflective, if not nostalgic, person, but I don’t know if my processing of the Marshall fire was as reflective as it was cathartic. I’ve realized that I don’t want to have to reflect upon growing older or becoming more of myself, or whatever. I don’t want to think about the greater implications of these events. I don’t want to think about where the crawfish went or if kids still fish for them on hot, slow summer afternoons. I just want to be that kid on the creek again. I want to be the one throwing grimy hot dogs into the muddy water hoping to catch crustaceans who weren’t even supposed to be there in the first place. I want to walk the streets of Louisville without seeing the charred remains of businesses my friends and I used to frequent in high school. I want to be able to look back at my childhood without seeing the broken pieces of what once was. I suppose that, ultimately, my 12-year-old and 20-year-old selves just want nothing more than to let out one big, cathartic shriek, finally allowing me to release the last nine years of pent-up stress that 4Fragments, Vol. 64 [2022], Art. 8https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol64/iss1/8come with watching your hometown burn or simply wash away with the rain and Rocky Mountain runoff.  I don’t know where the crawfish came from, but I know that when their rusty, dirt-splattered shells were swept away from their muddy dwellings, they took a part of me with them and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully grasp what was lost in those floods. I don’t know where the crawfish went but I hope that they live on elsewhere, encouraging a new generation to explore and find their own nook in the world, at a creek or otherwise.   5Hyman: Wake of the FloodPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2022

Wake of the Flood

MAGIS, Editors of

MAGIS Volume 17 Issue 1 Article 3 2023 Mission of MAGIS Editors of MAGIS Seattle University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/magis Recommended Citation MAGIS, Editors of (2023) "Mission of MAGIS," MAGIS: Vol. 17: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/magis/vol17/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Seattle University Journals at ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in MAGIS by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. MAGIS: A STUDENT DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION, VOLUME 17  3  MISSION  MAGIS: A Student Development Journal is the peer-reviewed academic journal for the Student Development Administration (SDA) program at Seattle University. Published annually and entirely student run, the journal showcases scholarly, reflective, and creative work by SDA students, alumnx, faculty, and student affairs professionals. Following the Jesuit tradition of academic inquiry, MAGIS: A Student Development Journal is committed to creating the premier forum within Jesuit higher education for dialogue on the theory and practice of student affairs.  VISION  The vision of MAGIS: A Student Development Journal is to represent the Seattle University  College of Education and Student Development Administration program as a scholarly and reflective resource for student affairs graduate students and professionals in Jesuit higher education.                          1MAGIS: Mission of MAGISPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2023

Mission of MAGIS

Skinner, Luke

Fragments Volume 62 Interlude Article 25 2020 Lines Luke Skinner Seattle University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments Recommended Citation Skinner, Luke (2020) "Lines," Fragments: Vol. 62, Article 25. Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/25 This Visual Art is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 1Skinner: LinesPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2020

Lines

Bhattacharya, Oishi

Calypsos Café :An Open Mic

Fragments Volume 62 Interlude Article 21 2020 Quiet Sunrise Luke Skinner Seattle University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments Recommended Citation Skinner, Luke (2020) "Quiet Sunrise," Fragments: Vol. 62, Article 21. Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/21 This Visual Art is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 1Skinner: Quiet SunrisePublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2020

Quiet Sunrise

Abassi, Jenna

Fragments Volume 62 Interlude Article 13 2020 The Captain Jenna Abassi Seattle University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments Recommended Citation Abassi, Jenna (2020) "The Captain," Fragments: Vol. 62, Article 13. Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/13 This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 1  The Captain Jenna Abassi   Dementia’s favorite outfit is no pants Dementia looks me in the eyes before it decides to buy a new car Dementia makes people think it is just a mid-life crisis, sneaking up on the brain until it is too late Sitting on the floor of the hospital room in a black polka dotted dress while Dementia feasts on my father’s brain Captain Phillips plays on the TV and all I hear is Dementia saying, “I am the captain now.” Hands on the controls, sitting comfortably in a seat Dementia makes you forget you have a daughter even though she has not left your side for sixteen years Dementia will take those years away from you, chew them up and spit them out because Dementia does not give a fuck. Dementia delivers suffering before death making you forget everything but Dementia knows it is memorable and tornadoes through poking holes in a brain I used to admire walk into the house one day and realize I can’t remember what my father used to be like Dementia makes everyone forget. Plaguing brains and lives until all you remember 1Abassi: The CaptainPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 20202  is the day you heard about the diagnosis and then Google tells you there isn’t much research and there is no cure and in the background I hear an echo “I am the captain now.” 2Fragments, Vol. 62 [2020], Art. 13https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/13

The Captain

Nelson, Jack

Fragments Volume 62 Interlude Article 29 2020 Samson Jack Nelson Seattle University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments Recommended Citation Nelson, Jack (2020) "Samson," Fragments: Vol. 62, Article 29. Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/29 This Visual Art is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 1Nelson: SamsonPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2020

Samson

MAGIS Volume 14 Issue 1 Article 3 2020 Editorial Board Editors of MAGIS Seattle University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/magis Recommended Citation MAGIS, Editors of (2020) "Editorial Board," MAGIS: Vol. 14: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/magis/vol14/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Seattle University Journals at ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in MAGIS by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. Editorial Board & ackNowlEdgMENtsEditors-in-ChiefJoseph BrunerTy BeanAdviserDr. Thai-huy NguyenProgram Director & Associate Professor, Student Development Administration (SDA)Editorial BoardZachary Galván, 2021Annie M. Dyer Gordon, 2020Steffi N Huynh, 2020Sayuri King-Barron, 2023Sophia Man, 2020Alyssa Severson, 2021Patricia Snow, 2021L. Elise Whisler, 2021Photos Courtesy ofZachary Galván, 2021AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank our faculty adviser, Dr. Thai-huy Nguyen, and the Seattle University Student Development Association (SUSDA) Executive Board for their contributions to the formation and publication of this year’s issue.OwnershipMAGIS: A Student Development Journal is published annually by the Seattle University Student Development Association, 901 12th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122.PermissionsCopyright © by the Seattle University Student Development Association (SUSDA). All materials contained in this publication are the property of SUSDA.To contact the Editorial Board, please email magis.susda@gmail.comMAGIS: A Student Development Journal can be found online at https://www.susda-sda.com/magis-a-student-development-journalMAGIS: A STUDENT DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL, VOLUME 14 2Contributing WritersJoseph C. Bruner, 2020Annie M. Dyer Gordon, 2020Hector A. Guzman, 2021Steffi N Huynh, 2020Alyssa Severson, 2021Kenton Westerfield, 20201MAGIS: Editorial BoardPublished by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU, 2020

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