-october 2012-

-Stong College & York U News-

AGYU :: Out There

imaginary homelands on display from september 12 to december 2, 2012. The Art Gallery of York University is a university-affiliated public non-profit contemporary art gallery supported by York University, The Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council and our membership. The AGYU is located in the Accolade East Building, of the Keele Campus. Gallery hours are: Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm; Wednesday, 10am to 8pm; Sunday from 12pm to 5pm; closed Saturday. Admission to everything is free. http://www.theAGYUisOutThere.org If you have any questions about AGYU or the current exhibit, please contact Emelie Chhangur, Assistant Director/ Curator, AGYU, at emelie@yorku.ca. sahmpi who we are michael chau & zabeda oumer-haji directors of communication, sahmpi The Student Association of Health Management, Policy and Informatics (SAHMPI) is a student organization that represents the students of health studies, health management, policy and informatics at York University. We promote and represent students in these fields to bring greater awareness and involvement between students and the community. SAHMPI helps students connect with other students and to network with faculty and health related professionals in our fields. We work to provide opportunities for students to interact, and explore issues regarding successful job and volunteer opportunities in health-care. In addition, we help students to develop management skills through knowledge and experience-sharing to build a strong network of current and future health-care leaders. To contact us simply email sahmpi@yorku.ca or check us out on facebook! alumni mentorship program hazel hunter vice-President, sahmpi After a successful pilot launch in January of this year, SAHMPIs Alumni Mentorship Program has taken its second flight this September. The Alumni Mentorship Program is an email based mentoring program that allows undergraduate students enrolled in The School of Health Policy and Management to connect with graduates in their relative fields. This school year, the program will run for the entire 8 month study period and will enable alumni to serve as positive reinforcements to their assigned undergraduates. The main purpose of the program is to serve as a medium in which the mentors are to aid the mentees. Possible ways alumni are able to support current undergraduates is reflected in the mentees academic success. Furthermore, this program has enhanced the York student experience by providing students the ability to gain valuable skills to further both personal and professional development. Ultimately, SAHMPIs Alumni Mentorship Program allows alumni to serve as a valuable source of information in educating undergraduate students about graduate schools and the respective student life a critical skill that may not be stressed enough in academia alone. sweaters & swag sales mustafa sayedi The Student Association of Health Management, Policy, and Informatics is proud to announce that, for the first time, students in the Health Studies program can purchase their own hoodie sweater representing their major! Options include Health Studies, Health Management, Health Policy, or Health Informatics which will be embroidered beneath YORK stitching. Just in time for the cold winter season, the hoodies are being offered at a promotional price of $50.00 each and are available in XS-3XL unisex sizing. For the die-hard SHPM students, a SAHMPI frosh kit is also available, which includes a hoodie sweater and all the SAHMPI swag: lanyard, clipboard, T-shirt, pin, pen, water bottle, coffee mug, notebook, and tote bag all for just $80.00. Students interested in purchasing a hoodie sweater or frosh kit are asked to send an email to sahmpi@yorku.ca. Dont miss out on this great deal and get your orders in!

Rhymes & Reasons Spoken Word Poetry

connect with us: the poets@yorku.ca facebook.com/spokenpoet yuconnect: Rhymes and Reasons

-Stong College & York U News-

Stong Welcomes The New Year: Were off and running.

Stongs year began with two first-year transition programs called YU START and Welcome Days. We were thrilled with the turnouts for both events, and happy to help set the sails for so many new students. YU START is helping new Kinesiology students find their way in the busy world of York. We provided an online enrollment appointment, integration into an on-line learning community, and an on campus experience. For all those who participated, we thank you and we are looking forward to providing you the tools youll need in order to achieve academic success. Welcome Days was also a hit for students and staff at Stong. English, Creative Writing, and Professional Writing students came together for Welcome Days to experience our very own academic orientation. We introduced students to various tools and resources at Stong that can help students reach their goals. We had a really great turnout and we are excited to work with all of you in the future. We are prepared for a busy year, and we hope that all your needs as a student are met. We encourage you to get involved, whether it be through the Stong Student Government, the Zacks Art Gallery, or just through our events and services. Were here for you. Wed like to welcome all of you to a new school year, and were looking forward to having all of you as a part of the Stong community. were connected. & this is our official invitation to you to get connected with us. We invite you to follow us on Twitter at Twitter.com/YorkUStong. Our Twitter feed will be keeping students and staff informed on all the events and services provided this year. For those who dont have a Twitter account, this would be a great opportunity to start one, and follow us. We promise we dont bite. As for the rest of you on Facebook, you can now like Stong online at Facebook.com/YorkUStongCollege. From here were going to post photos and updates, along with several events that will be key to your success here at York. We are also revamping our online experience with a brand new website that will feature contact information for everyone at Stong, as well as job and volunteer opportunities available to students affiliated with Stong. You will be able to find our new website at www.stong.yorku.ca, and if you have any questions you can always reach us at stonghlp@yorku.ca This year were also proud to provide students with Write To Succeed and Peer Assisted Study Session programs. Please take advantage of these Stong services that are designed to help you succeed with your academics. Other programs in which we urge you to take advantage of are the Create Your Future program, Agents of Change, The HealthAid Network and our various Themed Floor Living Communities. With all of these programs, the team at Stong aims to support student success, and ensure that your experience here at Stong will be the best that it can be. Were happy to have these new initiatives at Stong, and we re looking forward to your feedback. Get connected, and let us know what you want from Stong. Student success is a long road, and we are happy to help pave the way.

Hello from Stong Residence

Hello Stong College, My name is Matt and I am the Residence Life Coordinator for Stong Residence. I, in conjunction with seven student leaders called Dons and a team of ten student staff leaders called Porters, work to make Stong Residence an enriching place where residents gain learning outside of the classroom and make positive lasting friendships and memories. We pride ourselves on working to make transformative experiences that bring out the leader in every resident. If being a leader and bringing out the best in your peers is something that you are interested in please keep your eyes open for our hiring opportunities by going to reslife.yorku.ca. If you have any questions please feel free to email me at maharris@yorku.ca. We hope you take the opportunity to start making positive change in our community.

-Masthead-

-Editorial-

Azealia Takes Us Back

aaron morris

editor in chief: Sara Flemington contributing editors: Jessica Bebenek Christopher Stager Dylan Wagman layout & design: Ansel Schmidt schmidt.ansel@gmail.com webmaster: Joshua Moore special thanks: Stong College Fellows, Masters Office, & Student Government Webnews Printing

ver the past few years, female musicians have been taking listeners back in time. This musical teleportation to another era began back in 2006 with Amy Winehouses Grammy award winning album Back To Black. Jumping forward just a smidge, Adeles 21 went on to make walls fall, Beyonces 4 conjured up old-school flavour, and Lana Del Reys Born To Die revived the femme fatale. While these ladies helped steer music in a new, yet totally borrowed direction, there soon came a halt to their ascension. We unfortunately lost Amy Winehouse just last year. Both Adele and Beyonce turned their attention to starting families, and while her music videos shimmer with vintage perfection, Del Rey has taken to courting controversy after controversy. So, whos left? Sure, there are female-fronted bands such as No Doubt and Garbage, who have made their grand return to music in the past few months, as well as Dragonette, Florence and the Machine, and Karmin, but they have all taken to propelling their sound forward instead of back, much like Rihanna, Kylie Minogue, and Rye Rye. Its all about survival, folks or is it? Out of the same city that unleashed Lil Kim, embraced Santigold, and nurtured Nicki Minaj, comes a force of nature that nobody saw coming. After finding success with her ode to Harlem on her track 212, 21 year old Azealia Banks is picking up where the greats left off. Whether shes gracing the covers of Vibe and SPIN, fighting with T.I. and Jim Jones, or scoring deals with the likes of MAC and Alexander Wang, Azealia Banks is dedicated to making her name

known. While all these feuds and accomplishments have helped to make her star shine, whats really giving Banks her firepower is her music. Back in May, Banks released her EP 1991, and just a couple of months later, she released her Fantasea mix-tape. Both demonstrated Bankss impressive skills as a rapper and singer and showcased her love of the past, specifically the 90s. While Winehouse, Del Rey, and Adele draw from the 1960s, Banks draws her power from a time thats a little closer to home. From the moment she strutted her stuff in an old Mickey Mouse sweater for the 212 video, Banks has continued to invoke imagery from a time past. In her video for Liquorice, Banks portrays both a traditional cowgirl and a 1970s darling, and her video for 1991, she rouses memories of old-school greats such as Janet Jackson, En Vogue, and even Madonna. While she may be working with contemporary producers such as Diplo, Machinedrum, Drums of Death, and Lazy Jay, Banks has no problem sampling from artists of the past. While many of todays artists sample on a whim, Banks is very selective with who she samples from, and her blending of eras comes off as sounding more organic than most of todays chart toppers. During a short set at MACs SoHo location for Fashions Night Out, Banks declared that her next single would be Esta Noche, off of her Fantasea mix-tape. The track samples Montell Jordans 1999 hit Get It On Tonite, and its here that Banks demonstrates that shes the girl whos going to help keep the past alive, as she chants drink in my hand / hand on my chip / a real bitch / do it like this.

Writing: Its Not Just For Dropouts Anymore

jessica bebenek

Call For Submissions

The Flying Walrus is looking for submissions for our winter issue. Send any Stong and York-related news, events, articles, as well as poetry, art, and creative fiction & non-fiction to: walrus@yorku.ca. deadline: january 11, 2013.

Dont Forget to Enter Our Flash Fiction Fontest

The winner of this contest will be featured in the next issue. The challenge for this contest is "My Summer Vacation," and entries must be 150 words or less. deadline: november 30, 2012.

Enter Our Next Contest: The Apocolyptic Poem

Using only found text, create a poem no longer than thirty lines about the end of the world, and hopefully well all still be around to read the winning entry in our Spring issue. the deadline for this contest is february 22, 2013 Send all entries to: walrus@yorku.ca Visit us online: www.yorku.ca/walrus www.facebook.com/walrusescanfly www.twitter.com/FlyWalrusFly

eing a writer is pretty much the worst life decision you could make, as Im sure your parents have told you many times. Low pay, little respect, an acute sense of self-loathing and yet, here we are. When so many young people decide to pursue being a writer as a career, their eyes a-shine with hope and dreams like full, ripe grapes on the vine of life, we really need to have a sit down and ask ourselves what in the hell is happening to our youth. Have we really given up on any remote hope of a favorable economic situation to the point that were willingly throwing ourselves into the depths of poverty headfirst? I know it can be scary to stumble blinking out of the university womb and into this fabled real world, but forever clutching a notebook while donning skinny jeans and prayer beads is not an adequate excuse for hitting the snooze button on life. So many of us have this idea of what it means to be a writer or live the writers life as we gaze over our shoulders into the eyes of Hemingway, Capote, Wallace, Palahniuk. But those are the heavy-hitters, folks! Your Atwoods, your Ondaatjes, your Munros all false idols, I tell you! Or at least distant stars, which, lets face it, very very few of us will ever reach the heights of. In my past couple of years on the Toronto poetry scene, the vast majority of writers whom Ive gotten to know work two or three jobs (the majority of which are short-term and/or tenuous) as well as doing volunteer or interning work on the side. Not to mention the fact that theyre all drowning in student debts. One of the best pieces of advice Ive gotten came from my Intro. to Creative Writing teacher: Hang around Schulich. Marry. Rich.

Now that Ive (hopefully) broken your collective spirits hey, less competition for me let me add that the infinitesimal number of people who actually have enough drive to pursue this goal seriously means that most people who wind up in the scene are the ones who actually give a shit. Like, a lot of a shit. There are many people out in the world who are struggling just as hard as you are (or soon will be) and who care about the same things that you care about. And because they spend their days getting stepped on in the face of their passion, theyre pretty friendly towards other people who spend their days getting stepped on in the face of their passion. Try to ignore the fact that they are your competition and try to think of them as your comrades. Or at the very least, someone to drink with. So here we are, left with this rancid mixture of cynicism, shitty odds, hard work, failure, hope, and alcoholism. A poet friend once told me that writers are the least talented artists. If writers could paint, sculpt, draw, make music, cook, sew, anything! then they would. Writing is too hard. Not to say that the other arts arent challenging and requiring talent, but slapping stuff on a canvas can sound much more appealing when youve spent an entire evening staring through watery eyes at a white screen. And even if you do manage to place words on a page in a coherent order, it most certainly doesnt mean that the effect will be pleasurable. So basically, keep writing. Keep writing as long as it is the most important thing in your life and then keep doing it until you die. Just do it well and I wont be mad at you.

-Editorial-

-Featured Arts-

Into the Mystic

dylan wagman

matthew walsh

Sunset

fter driving through a portion of Toronto I never knew existed, filled with cluttered porches and stray cats, I arrived at sixty-seven Acton Street and parked my car along the curb in front by the suspiciously quiet homes. I was there because I was exhausted of my chronic bronchitis, which had plagued me for almost a decade now and constantly kept me in a state somewhere between nervousness and manic hypochondria. I had had enough, and with conventional medicine failing me thus far, I had to cross some borders and try something unconventional (most people would call it crazy). I was there for my first appointment with a naturopath, whom I had heard of through a friend of mine who was bugging me to try out her healing powers. As somewhat of a close-minded person when it comes to these things, I can honestly say that I delayed this meeting for over four years, and it is only now, at my wits and bodys end, that I conceded and made the drive into the unknown. I walked into her hallway, expecting a small Asian woman wrapped in colourful shawls with some kind of a strange cap. Not only were there no shawls or caps, there was no Asian woman. The woman who greeted me was paler than I was and I wondered where she could have possibly been adopted by mysticism, because it definitely wasnt in the rundown suburbs of Toronto. When I walked into the room where she would perform her tests the walls were covered in old, brown bottles, lined up like a bookshelf. There must have been a thousand of these things with worn labels veiling the walls behind them. There were two machines on the table. One was all metal, with circles on the top that went into the machine. On the front, it had a gauge behind a cracked piece of glass. The second machine looked even more rundown than the first and had a diamond shaped crystal on the top. It wasnt cutting edge technology to say the least. My skepticism was becoming even more fuelled by my surroundings, but then she started the tests. In one hand she directed me to hold a metal rod and the other she told me to lay flat and relax. She had in front of her hundreds of small vials with a word or acronym written on each. One at a time, she would pick them up, place them into the ma-

chine, touch my middle finger on both sides of my nail with a metal pen, and watch to see if the gauge went above or under forty, which she claimed to be my natural level. I did not understand at first, until she explained to me that the liquid in each vile did not have to actually make contact with the machine. Instead, its energy would transfer through the glass once it was in the machine. I felt like I was in some kind of cult ritual where blind faith is simply the expected mind-frame. I still did not understand. However, to my disbelief, only the vials that were related to immune system and the lungs spiked to under forty, which meant that I was susceptible in these areas. The magic machines were spot on and I was dumbfounded. There was nothing logical about what had just happened, but with every vial she placed into that machine, I became more and more hypnotized by its obvious powers. When the tests were finished, it was time for her to make her diagnoses of me and prescribe to me her wisdom and whatever came with it. She explained that I would have to take four pills in the morning and the same four at night every day for three months. When I asked her if these were safe and doctors would approve of their use, she replied that doctors didnt know about this stuff. At that moment, it felt like a massive pill had gotten stuck down my throat when I tried to swallow and I wondered if I was going to end up in the emergency room with my skin purple in the coming days. She was not done. The naturopath then proceeded to tip toe about the rows of bottles and began to grab these brown containers (it seemed at random) and pour them into another brown bottle that I feared was going to be some sort of potion for me. She ordered me to take fifteen drops of this under my tongue in the morning and at night. When I asked her if there would be side effects, she told me not to worry about silly things like that. This did not alleviate my concerns, to say the least. If I was paying for nonsense, then the price was hefty. However, in the slim chance that her potions do cure me, then the two hundred dollars will have been a small fee to pay for improved health and maybe a future without my excessive worrying.

he salt water had eaten away at the cement stairs leading down to the beach so they walked carefully. A few scattered people traced the lip where the ocean met the sand, looking out over the water. The stairs were like decaying teeth, opening up to the mouth of the shoreline. What remained of the stairs. I make my way down to the water. At this time of night, the water is at low tide. People and seabirds are digging for clams. A middle-aged couple collect some, putting the mollusks in a bucket between them. Empty shells are discarded all over the beach. Oysters, ridged with green algae are disguised in suits inspired by the rocks around them. In the shallow waters, a blue heron is on her stilt legs, barely moving. Her feathers are the colour of spiralling cigarette smoke. The moon hangs pale, see-through, in the sky, and looking at everyone with a narrowed eye, unsure of us. The heron is using what remains of the sun to spear the soft bellies of the white fish that swim around her patient legs. They swim and swirl, peeling through the water like knives. From the shore I see them glittering. The water changes, blue to gray-green like a chameleon. Clouds collect, tightening in the sky like snagged fabric in a sewing machine. White-clawed crabs scuttle along the sand like intricate players in a police hold up. Across the boardwalk, in the park blackbirds gather in the trees, their shrill cries a greeting for the moon. I walk along the shore, brown shoes sinking into the mud. Horseflies swarm rotting bodies of jellyfish, purple and black. Tumours removed from a lung or throat. The metallic horseflies swarm over them in thick clouds of blackness. Starfish, the color of bruises, creep in silence along the shallows. One star-shape propels itself under a rock, as the moon comes into focus. The sky shows off her darker blue. The air becomes wet and crisp, and some people, the couple collecting clams, a girl in a long skirt , are getting ready to leave now that the sun is almost gone, only the crescent of red-golden light is left. A withered man, in crumpled clothing and a blue truckers hat sits staring at the blue and rolling, cloud-choked sky. His plaid shirt is missing a few buttons. His milk-brown slacks have a red stain down the leg. Earlier he and his wife were selling artwork in the park, under the cool of the trees, and she is packing things up now. Beside him there is a jar with dirty paint water, dark pink liquid circling inside of it. He smokes wine dipped cigarettes. Absent-minded, feeding little birds breadcrumbs and corn. Old hands holding the paper bag, covered in liver spots that feel the rain. There is a woman further along down the shore. A camera hangs from her neck. She pulls on a simple blue sweater, buttoning it. Her skirt is long with tiny buttercup flowers with brick red middles. Green vines tangle around them, snaring themselves around purple diamonds. Her eyes look out over the water. They pause on something I cant see on the horizon, the sun is gulped up, gone. The moon stands out, brilliant, and the crows are calmed. The rain starts its slow fall, a mist. I`m sitting, bare feet buried in the cool sand. The woman is turning over rocks, watching insects and small creatures disperse, sand fleas, jumping, disturbed. She snaps a picture of her findings, her camera hanging like a crucifix. The rock makes a sluggish sound when she slides it into place. She wipes her hands on the back of her skirt. All the creatures interest her. She strides along the shore past me, behind me. Her long hair is dark and wavy like the water. She stops by the crumbled stairs where the old man sits, smoking a cigarette, his second one. His wife calls, about collapsing the table. As the woman with the camera climbs the stairs, she slips stones in her pocket. Her heavy boots left impressions on the wet sand.

-Arts-

june midnight on amherst island benjamin jenkins The fire burns hot, Tangerine embers spit. A heated conversation. Two tall candles Flicker upon the corpse of a tree. A dancing, phantom flame, On wet wax. Mirrors of Charons shores. We cremate the remains In a ceremonial burial. Toasting marshmallows and dark rum. What will you do On this moonlit night? While we tramp around This campfire light? Gothic shadows dancing, Projected by a stoic tree. A tree that lived Its 148 rings On a shore of Lake Ontario. The fire glows, Crackling high, And the green midnight grass cut low. How sweet green Floats on the moonshine! The willows, Dangling their long tendrils Of eucalyptus like leaves Into the lapping tides. The roots clinging to the bank Like floss. Brady holds a Nikon Backwards. The lens pointed blank in his face. A cigarette pinched between The fuck you finger And the shutter finger. Smoke signalling its pearl tendrils Into a tension free, star-studded sky. amina enkhbold Above a flat, shimmering lake The sun tucks its rays, Crawling dreamily Under the horizon Like a comfortable cottage quilt. I stand and skip rocks. On the tensionless star-studded water. The smooth flat rocks chirrup. My thoughts carried with them Into this setting sun.

amina enkhbold

-Arts-

pandora matthew walsh Words and letters arranged from Lorna Croziers The Magician. i. So then I`ll join the sawed woman asleep in her box. Its too late now she woke but did not see you go and now I am her eyes. The cape weve torn to bits. We buried the rabbits (covered their grave with stones). Its as if your house disappeared, the woman pulled from the laundry basket. The wind learned to sing songs out in the yard. He remembered back when the woman had eyes in her head. I ate her love bone (it was most delicate). My most magic moment came when her legs kicked. Even stones couldnt hold her down. Half of her screamed that she had taken a rat for a lover. I swallowed her tongue too, til the head was empty as a magic box. ii. The magician travelled on smoke to the home that had been his. He left his hat on the daybed and opened the box to the rats eyes hiding in his wifes head.

elegy for a scottish lass matthew walsh And its hard seeing your grandmother gain four feet or to think that a doctor has become more musical than her. He listens to the lung fields for a certain note. A stony dull sound on the percussion while she sings Blue Balloons on repeat. She sang til she fell flat. A whispered pectroliloquy plucked her searching for that soliloquy. A black and white butterfly made the grass yellow under her feet going back to the purple Plymouth. A sister hovered over the bed as you wrote birthday cards with a swirling hand. One night, you said the deer were sniffing your windows a sign from God, you swore praying for Sister Morphine, murmuring with lightning in your eyes. In that tongue you forgot. Priest ridden you confessed yourself a maid of sin through your medicines asking how much for a yellow life? On the ledge a transistor radio asks if weve seen the meteors as we laid our hands on you, the last choir you were part of, your wet eyes looking past our heads. And you were new born, frog-eyed frail. The first cradle you knew was a dying fire in your mothers woodstove, her moth eyes peeking in when you cried. My god, shed say, why did you come so early?

legacy matthew walsh You see her perpetually spinning in her mothers house, with a look so luminous she had to hang. When you see her walk the long halls in long black capes, a figure as cutting as Nosferatu no. Up close, shes small and dark. A period. You never seen her pissing on a streetlamp, but I heard shes licked some gangster in an elevator. Ive seen her getting licked. Ive read her journal, shes written my, how the trees in Valmasque stand Stein-tall, under their stare I turn a color that would inspire a mango shes feverish. See, shes pausing before lines of women in poor, weeping green. Her hairs blowing like crows in a fit wandering home from kissing the water. I saw her kissing the water. She sits in the dark drunk on ghosts. Come on, I heard shes kept the dresser with the swing mirror. Now its her breath on the glass. I saw her on the payphone. She said in the chest are old photographs of many played out people, spiders have claimed them all. I heard she had to borrow coins for the payphone. Well, this is not going to elevate her. Oh come on, you cant see her laid out on purple velour, adored or marred. Shes put that pretty silver thing in her mouth.

cliffs matthew walsh I woke before dawn still stoned hearing the door click and voices, dreams still sifting before my eyes open plum sky peeling away & my mother rolling dough No. I felt the tear, and hospital colours whirr were not her. My mother still stiff on a mountains tongue, adding fish to the sea.

an iron pot sara flemington They tell me the night I was born they could instantly see a person whom I could never meet in me, with my kindled ruadh an infant head they instantly feared for its temper. There is a photograph of her on the vanity mirror, so tawny with time and thick as skin, that I cant see the resemblance through it; the woman I am supposed to be, affixed to by a name her hands rest on the waist of an apron, smirking through the lens, an iaraan poit air a stbh. I would later watch the same pot stirred by my grandmother, cooking dinner all through morning the last of us who knew how to cook the neeps and tatties. But mthair, piuthar, we cook okay from the box. And brthair, we can really hold down our scotch. And though the accents have been packed and buried deep along with the itch of the kilts, the Kirk, and the jams, and marked by a stone we lean flowers against, we are left with these pictures to map out our features, and this giant iron pot we will never seem to use.

Y L F Y L F LY F Y L F LY F Y L F