Campus Flowers by Hanna Wilkens

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Campus Flowers

Hanna Wilkens

A few weeks ago I was studying late at the library and decided I needed a break. It was nearly 10pm, and the dense heat of early September had loosened and made way for a warm, comfortable 80 degrees. It’s my favorite time to walk around campus—the freshman skittering around in going out clothes, headed to University with fake IDs, feeling jittery with excitement and rebellion. Leisure bike rides and walks and a few students throwing a frisbee back and forth. I headed aimlessly back to my old dorm on Highland Ave, the walk still engraved in me although I haven’t lived there in two years. Walking through the pathway between dorm buildings, I looked up at my old window. I wondered who lived there now. If they were adjusting alright. I hope they’re adjusting alright. I turned to look at the Hibiscus plant growing in direct view of my old window. It’s bright purple petals folding inward on one another. I used to find such comfort in them. Those first months away from home, I’d look out at the flowers when I was feeling lonely and tell myself they were a sign. A sign that I was in the right place. 

That year I’d taken a liking to using flowers as indications that I was making the right choices. It started with a visit to Arizona my senior year of high school. My favorite flowers are poppies, although I rarely see them in real life. We used to have a big painting of them hanging outside my childhood bedroom and I suppose I’ve always associated them with home. Then, somewhere on the highway between Phoenix and Tucson, I spotted them, sprouting along the black tar in daring patches of gold. It felt like a message.

The hibiscus flowers, though, belong to a different memory. My grandfather used to grow them in his garden in Florida, and every time I visited he’d pick one of the flowers and place it behind my ear, and I’d wear it there for the rest of the trip. The last time I saw him he picked two: one for behind my ear, and one that he placed on the dash of our rental car before we left. It wasn’t until we were pulling out of the driveway that I noticed it, and I turned around to wave goodbye to him. That was the last time I ever saw him. Later, staring at the hibiscus outside my dorm window, I liked to think that the flowers were a gift from him. A symbol that I was doing the right thing—that I was moving forward and making a life of my own.

That night, walking around campus, I picked one of the hibiscus flowers and tucked it behind my ear. Then I proceeded to walk all around the south side of Old Main, pocketing flowers in my jeans. When I got home I pressed them in a book and later made them into cards I plan to give to my friends and family on their birthdays. Maybe for them, the flowers will mean something too.

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Untastables by Ander Monson

 Untastables (Fictional Chips) by Ander Monson

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Bags of chips in chronological order:

Let’s Potato Chips, Community (and so many other television shows), 2009

Potato Crisps, Fallout 4, 2015

Potato Chips, Control, 2019

Zalgitos, Omega Mart (Meow Wolf Las Vegas), 2021

Judy’s Potato Chips, Sea Monster Spice, Open Roads, 2024

MAI** (MAINE? MAIZE?) Potato Chips, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, 2025

WTF:

Since 2021 I have collected bags of new-to-me chips. I have hundreds of empty bags now, flattened in binders, each of which I have tasted. I only keep the first bag of each chip I try. But I’ve started seeing untastable (because fictional) chips in television shows I watch, in the video games I play, and in the Meow Wolf Las Vegas Omega Mart. Only occasionally (in the Fallout games) can they be eaten in-game. They cannot be eaten offscreen. I’ve gone to significant efforts to procure bags of two of these inedible, untastable chips, including the Let’s Chips that have appeared in at least dozens of television shows, most notably (because they made a bit of it) Community. Is a chip that cannot be eaten a chip at all? Is an object on a screen an object? Am I a sad person for wanting to taste these untastables? What does collecting these things accomplish? Do I win or have I already lost?

Ellen Tracy, Raffle Fundraiser

This week, TINY CABINET presents a one week raffle fundraiser.

Prizes include a cardboard Ford wheel hub, half of a highly sought after railroad marble, famous New Orleans exotic meats poster, mystery biscuit, and many more and may all be viewed at the CABINET. 

Please consider buying a 5 dollar ticket in person at the CABINET, or via venmo (@ehtthe)

Or just donate directly to @louisianahotsauc3 who is currently facing serious legal trouble in Alabama. 

More information about how to participate below.  

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raffle to help a young trans activist stay out of jail in alabama

all proceeds going towards legal fees

tickets $5 each

cash in envelopes or venmo ( @ehtthe )

specify which item(s), and your name/contact in your message, so we can get prizes to you

there will be more (and better!) items added throughout the week

prizes shown are an approximation

prize drawing to happen Tuesday 6th

direct aid venmo to @louisianahotsauc3

for more information email theeht@protonmail.com

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Cameron Carr, Penguins and Gifts

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My parents got me my first penguin because I had read Mr. Popper’s Penguins and decided that, like that fictional Minnesotan family, I too could raise a penguin in an American suburb. They were too gentle to tell me outright that this idea was stupid, that a penguin in Ohio in the care of an unprepared elementary schooler would quickly die, and maybe because of that gentleness my half serious pipe dream became a real attempt at persuasion. I knew that it was fiction and meant for children, but in my child mind I secretly wondered if the rudimentary logic might work. Out loud, I asked with the tone of a child knowing their request is absurd but pushing anyway. In my memory, before my mom said no, she hesitated for a moment after I explained the walk-out freezer in the basement, the strategic avoidance of the sun, the regular shipments of fish. She probably meant this as a small gift from parent to child so that I might keep believing in the great possibilities of the world, but I didn’t understand her hesitation that way. It was into the hesitation that I dove.

I did not succeed in convincing my parents to adopt penguins. But I put up a long and serious campaign that my mom still likes bringing up today, and come Christmas, I found my first penguin underneath the tree: a four-inch-tall, Santa-hatted Jingle Beanies named Zero, according to the tag.

I gave up my dream of housing a penguin, but the penguins came nonetheless. First there was little Beanie Zero, then I received socks, ornaments, a snow globe, a nutcracker, hand towels, more socks, a letter set, kitchenware, a two-foot-tall wire light-up penguin with arms tucked inside a fuzzy muff, and even more socks. The thing about gifts is that they beget more gifts. When I visit home for the holidays, I wear my penguin socks dutifully to show appreciation for the gifts, and then my family observes how much I love socks covered in penguins, so I receive more socks covered in penguins. Soon, my partner’s family notices that I’m always wearing penguin socks, and so they start getting me penguin socks too. At some point I had to place a moratorium on penguin socks, even as gifts (family members, if you’re reading this, I’m down to my last couple pairs and will accept penguin socks once more).

I have always liked gifts. Loved gifts. Giving and receiving. I love the element of surprise especially and have a temperamental distaste to giving preselected items from a list. For me, gifts, at their best, are things given as part of a relationship rather than as part of a negotiated exchange. When scholars define a gift economy, I often find they focus on the possibilities of giving without promise of return, some celebrating gift economies for offering ways of living in reciprocal community. I love that idea of gifts. But I am thinking now, as I look at a gathering of my gifted penguin collection, about how gifts allow for giving that may have nothing to do with the wants or needs of a recipient. Gifts, sometimes, are all about the imaginings of someone else. How we can press our desires onto another. How we long for someone to like the same things we do, to become the being we imagine they should be. 

I have never bought a penguin for myself, but the ones I have been given fill a plastic bin that uses up a not insignificant amount of closet space in the one-bedroom apartment I share with my partner. If it were up to me, all my socks would be plain white or black. But the gifts I receive mark me. They checker me from toes to calves in tuxedo-clad flightless birds. This is another thing that gifts can do: mark us. At their best, gifts might mark us with the remnants of the people who have cared for us. And to receive a gift then is at times not only to willingly take but to willingly be taken by the giver, to step into their imagined ways of being. To step into a pair of grey socks so that scarved and beanied penguins might ski down the slopes of your legs. I am willing to do this. I could live without the penguins, but I am willing to keep on living with them—happy even. In fact, I am wishing now that I had not gone through that penguin letter set. How nice it would be to write this on paper with penguins decorating the other side.

Astrid Liu, what was left

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what was left: 

hydrangea. orchid. camellia. 

trumpet flower. hibiscus. ylang ylang. 

i made a book of dried flowers that made me think of her each day i was in asia, wrote little notes, arranged each flower carefully on the page. we broke up before i could ever give it to them. i burned that book. this is the haphazard copy, the reject and the excess flowers, the second thoughts that were the only thing i left for myself. 

what was left:

creosote. maple leaves. plumeria. 

memories cradled in recycled pulp

pressed firm. 

use the ephemeral 

make something new. 

what was left: 

lilies. daisies. carnations. 

moth orchids. roses. 

alicia and kara and dure sent baskets and bouquets of white flowers in anticipation of the way your body slowly became more frail, more fragile. i never used to bring lilies home. it doesn't matter now. 

i can't bear to throw them out, though their blooms are wizened and dry. i can only sweep the litter left over. the soughing of broom bristles over the floor sound like the wheezing of your last breaths, your little head flopping over to my hand and away, unable to find comfort. 

this is all i have left of you. 

Ana Knudsen, Incomplete Notes on the Bach Chaconne in D Minor

Because not enough people think there is such a thing as good art and bad art, because to think so is elitist, because art is subjective, because art is about what it makes you feel, and because no one can tell you what to feel. Because you do not understand what it is about certain songs that make a lot of people feel one way or another but they do because perfect songs exist and because no one panics about this enough. Because yes, not everyone, because that would be impossible, because sometimes you do leave the theatre and have to pretend you liked the movie for what feels like forever until he thanks you for the ride home. Because there are a lot of movies that you feel to be subpar, because you feel this in the same way you feel there are movies that are better than others. Because everyone feels this deep down in their bones but as soon as you say so your dumb boyfriend(’s dad) jumps up like, “YOU CAN’T SAY THAT!!”, practically foaming at the mouth at the scent of blood. Because a long time ago, a bunch of men got together to decide that everything is relative and nothing matters and made everyone else believe this too, about art and first and foremost, so that they could kill people for money/sport. Because no one can explain how a song could sound so much like grief, because when someone suggested Bach wrote it for his wife when she died, everyone just ran with it. Because the song sounds so much like a song Bach would have written for his wife when she died that it could be about nothing else. Because when Schumann tried to transcribe it for the piano he found he only could if he wrote it for the left hand alone, because otherwise the feeling of the piece was lost, because the feeling of the piece was its soul, one that was desolate and alone, having found the limit between life and death. The violin can only sound three notes at once; Bach forces four or even five. The violinist is only able to sound them in time.

Rose Paulson, My Rock Collection (Incomplete)

1. Kronborg Castle, Denmark, March 2022. 

This is one of the only rocks that I remember finding. I was living in Latvia, and I traveled to Copenhagen with my friend and colleague, Sarah, who had family there. That morning, her uncle, aunt, and cousin picked us up from our Airbnb in the city. They knew that Sarah was a writer, and maybe they knew they that I was a writer, too, and they got the idea that she would like to see castle that Shakespeare used as inspiration for the castle in Hamlet. My most vivid memory of this day is that drive up along the coast. When they picked us up, they rearranged themselves so that Sarah could take the passenger seat and I could take the right back seat, so that we could both see the water. All I remember is focusing on my breathing, trying not to focus on the eighteen-year-old boy crammed in the middle seat next to me, trying to gather the strength to take my coat off, and trying as hard as I could to not throw up. My second most vivid memory is standing with Sarah in the bathroom of the castle, her saying, there’s almost nothing here about Hamlet. My third most vivid memory is standing on the beach next to the castle, the water a deep contemplative blue, the five of us silently looking combing through the rocks. Sarah’s father pointed out a few stones made from eroded brick and then pointed to the castle, also made of brick. “You could take one of these,” he said. “That’s a souvenir you can’t buy in the gift shop.” 

2. Nerja, Spain, March 2022.

I’m almost certain I’m right about this one. I’d spent a week visiting M. in Madrid and then we rented a car to drive south and spend a weekend at the beach. When I visited Madrid the month before, I’d felt revived by the sun after living through a long, gloomy, northern winter. But this week, wind storms from the Sahara desert had blown dust (sand?) all the way to Spain, and the streets and skies of Madrid were brown with dust. M. had called in sick one day at work, citing her asthma, so we could go to the Royal Palace. South in Nerja, the skies were cloudy and thunderstorms were forming. I think these pieces of sea glass come from this trip because I remember M. telling me that her mom collected it. 

I had to look through old photos to remind myself of what happen on this trip. In every photo I am smiling, or I’ve pushed my cheek against M.’s, her red hair curling on my face. In one video I try to take a sip of red wine without making a face, and when I can’t I laugh, and I can hear M.’s laughter too, off camera. My hair is long and it parts on the side. For the whole week I wear M.’s clothes. In several of these photos, M. is sorting through rocks on the beach, wearing my backpack, and no matter how much I zoom in, I can’t see what rock she is holding. Now, I look through my collection and find a red stone that looks like it could have come from this beach, but I’m not sure. In one photo, which my phone tells me was sent from M., I am holding a smooth gray stone in my palm, an enormous, almost devilish grin on my face, triumphant at my find. I don’t recognize this rock. It isn’t in my collection. 

3. Riga, Latvia, 2021-2022

These are the stones and shells that I imagine I picked up while I lived in Riga, but I’m not sure. Something about Riga that took me a long time to understand is that it is close to the sea, but it is not on the sea. Of course I understood this in a literal sense; I had taken the train out to the beach; my colleague often talked about her commute from her beachside suburb; I’d gone down to the river and saw the distant pier and knew we were connected to something larger. But the closeness was a gradual realization. I looked down and saw that the sidewalk was filled with waddling seagulls. I swept the floor of my apartment and realized that my boots had been tracking in sand. I think these ones are from the beach, but I’m not sure. 

4. Tucson, Arizona, USA, March 2024. 

A gift from G., several weeks after we started seeing each other. They said it was called a “TV rock” because if you place it on an image you can see the image clearly, as if it’s on TV. They explained the optical sciences behind it because I don’t remember the details. They had presented this gift with a note written on the back of a movie ticket from the first time we hung out. At some point right before we parted I was turning the rock over in my fingers and it broke. I still think it’s pretty cool. 

5. Amsterdam, Netherlands, January 2025

I’m lying about the date and the location, but I’ll tell the story anyway. I was at a conference on international diplomacy, paid for the US government, at least indirectly. This part is somehow true. I was surrounded by well-dressed, high-achieving young people—half Americans, half Europeans—and although I was mostly quiet in the seminars I came alive at night. Large groups of us wandered the streets in the evenings, and the Europeans who had visited previously told us which bars to go to. N. was wearing a red velvet corduroy jacket. I remember saying it was nice that there was another queer woman here, and she linked her arm around mine, and we walked like that for a while. She was taller than me. She told me the story of how she grew up in Brazil but moved abroad thanks to her Portuguese passport. She encouraged me—also raised across the ocean, almost holding a European passport—to do the same. She showed me a photo of what she looked like back in Brazil, how different she had been, and explained how her life was so much better now. I thought she looked pretty even then. We went into a bodega and N. told me to buy Delirium Tremens, a blue and purple bottle with an elephant on it. She said it would have me seeing elephants. Perhaps this is where you realize that this story takes place in Belgium. All of this so far has otherwise been true. I can’t say the things I wish had been true. 

6. Tucson, Arizona, USA, February 2025

My gem show haul, minus the bismuth because it is special to me, and also breakable. Self explanatory.