https://tele-artmag.com Tele- Fri, 03 Jun 2022 22:28:19 +0000 https://tele-artmag.com en https://tele-artmag.com/Contributor-Index Fri, 03 Jun 2022 22:28:19 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/Contributor-Index Index of Contributors Aria Aber Brittany Ackerman Joey Agresta Benjamin Aleshire Dana Ambrose Matthew Anderson Diannely Antigua Faith Arazi Devin Alejandro-Wilder Shelly Badal Miriam Blaylock Celeste Byers Shawn Corey Lauren Costello E.G. Cunningham C.J.A. Ashley Dailey Misha Davidoff Colin Dekeersgieter Lorna Dielentheis Kate Doyle Vanessa Ehecatl Santos Haley Fenn Wylie Garcia Elisa Garcia de la Huerta Kylie Gellatly Renee Greenlee M Harnam Kaisth Sage Horsey Ashlin Hunter Rachel Elizabeth Jones Lydia Kern Kinlaw Wren Kitz Eli Kleinsmith Adriana Kong Caitlin La Dolce Hannah Lipton Erin Marie Lynch Nadra Mabrouk Rachel Mannheimer Michelle Marion Francisco Márquez Clayton McCracken David Mitchael Kate Mohanty Madeleine Mori Sara Munjack Sasha Olin Leia Penina Wilson CC Perry Greer Pester Sam Pettibon Mia Pinheiro Estefania Puerta Brian Raymond Paddy Reagan Thomas Renjilian Thomas Rose Nicolás RuizLuca Salas Bassani Antivari Sara Selevitch Erika Senft Miller Ginevra Shay Ian Sherman Lindsey Skillen Austin Sley Julian Edythe Smith Benjamin Stein J. Turk Rachael Uhlir Josh Urban Davis B. Wijshijer Mercedes Williams Yanyi Corrine Yonce https://tele-artmag.com/Archive-1 Wed, 01 Jun 2022 00:24:32 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/Archive-1 Six: Divination Five: Cement Four: Collect Call Three: The Root Issue Two: Chiaroscuro One: Tele- Index of past contributors https://tele-artmag.com/About Sat, 05 Mar 2022 19:59:38 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/About <img width="2800" height="1864" width_o="2800" height_o="1864" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cba07f20c6cd7e87d6ad3ebef88b29a3368462f51e63ab56d1b291944b33a8e4/Shell-Monstera.png" data-mid="135406605" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cba07f20c6cd7e87d6ad3ebef88b29a3368462f51e63ab56d1b291944b33a8e4/Shell-Monstera.png" /> Acerca de nosotros Tele- is an unusual online art and literary magazine, focusing on communication, collaboration, and continuation across distance, language, and medium. Communication “In the end, works of art are the only media of complete and unhindered communication between man and man that can occur in a world full of gulfs and walls that limit the community of experience.” — John Dewey, Art as Experience Each issue of tele- is an experiment set up to test the capacities of art. A family of questions guides the investigation: How can a work of art function as a form of communication, and on what level of consciousness does this transaction take place? In the liminal space between speaker and listener, writer and reader, artist and observer, what forces are at work in filtering, transforming, and translating* the message? How much of the self is involved in the transmission of the message? To what extent can one pass it on? What parts of the self intervene in, or interfere with, what was said? What is the role of game-playing, or play in general, in mediating our ability to understand each other, but also to lead our perhaps more separate creative lives? Collaboration “If… the adult can manage to enjoy the personal intermediate area without making claims, then we can acknowledge our own corresponding intermediate areas, and are pleased to find a degree of overlapping, that is to say common experience between members of a group in art or religion or philosophy.” — D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality Tele- issues are formed from a semi-collaborative process, in which each contributor creates a work individually in response to the work of another tele- contributor, attempting to carry the piece over* through a different medium. By power of the game’s iterative nature, each artist, in trying to say the whole thing, creates a piece of the whole, a phrase within the paragraph that the issue turns out to be. Artists are invited into this particular mode of collaboration as a playful and mysterious “meeting grounds” that “[brings] out into the open a strange possibility of thought, which is that of its pooling” (Andre Breton, 1930). Tele- begins as a whisper from one artist to the next, stirring the different notes of the wind chime, rustling the leaves, humming at the tops of empty bottles, resulting in a strange chord of these things touched by the wind. Continuation This type of collaboration, this carrying over or passing on, is essentially an act of continuation of a thought, impulse, image, or gesture as it passes through hands, minds, languages, and media, and over distance. Tele- is made up of this process of perceiving, understanding, engaging and negotiating with the work of others, the working through, or analysis, of the movement between contributors, and the final product, the published issue, in which readers/viewers and contributors can see each element as it makes up the whole, experiencing that movement themselves as they click through the ordered pages. The audience is invited to engage with the work as a whole by following its development, observing not just the pieces themselves, but their emergent relationship. The Machine Tele- is similar to the game known as telephone, teléfono descompuesto, or the game of variants, in which one person whispers a word or phrase to the next player and the whisper is passed on, changing as it goes around the circle. The goal is not to purposefully alter the whisper passed around the telephone game, but to continue the line of communication in its inevitable changing. The game is a machine that allows gaps to emerge by themselves—between what you said and what I took you to say, between what I said and what I thought I meant, etc.—, and it is in those gaps that Tele- comes alive and each issue acquires a destiny of its own. Each activation of Tele-’s mechanism is an experiment in the trans-individual dimension of speaking and listening, a summoning of the unconscious, that strange, always slanted harmony of our individual voices. Each issue begins with a theme. A jumping off point for the first contributor to begin from and a sort of soft compass for proceeding contributors to turn to, if they need some grounding or context. The first contributor creates a piece embodying or responding to this theme and sends it to the editors, who pass it on to the following contributor, someone working in a different medium and/or language. Along with the submission of their piece, each contributor includes a brief statement (see below) on their contribution. This statement, however, plays no direct role in the transmission, as subsequent artists work exclusively off of the incarnation of the message passed on to them. In this way, the finished issue results from two processes, one transitive, the other self-reflective. The Work &amp; Working Through The completed issue of Tele- includes each contributor’s piece, presented in order of generation, so that viewers can click through and watch the evolution of the message. This showcases the work at the heart of Tele-: how each individual piece in fact engages with the one that came before; what survives (and in what form) from one piece to the next;&nbsp;what a piece ends up doing through (or despite?) its attempt to translate its predecessor. The work, in short, is just the living thing itself—plainly visible in its stages yet mum as to what it is and by dint of what forces. In addition, each piece links to a written statement, where the artist reflects on, works through, their contribution. If the work is the unfolding dream, the working through is the no-less pregnant attempt to formulate its meaning. Far from providing an immediate, or unfiltered, glimpse into the invisible process of Tele-’s transmission, they are, once again, results of this process, only turned inward. —The Editors *translate (v.) early 14c., "to remove from one place to another,"also "to turn from one language to another," from Old French&nbsp;translater and directly from Latin translatus "carried over," serving as past participle of transferre "to bring over, carry over" (see transfer), from trans "across, beyond" (see trans-) + lātus "borne, carried." — From Online Etymology Dictionary At the heart of Tele- is this process of translation, which, rather than merely converting one thing to another, is a process of moving, carrying, and exchanging a single transmission as it changes naturally in each artist's hand. +How it Works Masthead Tele- is edited by: Alexandria Hall Alexandria Hall is a writer and artist. Her first book FIELD MUSIC (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020) was selected by Rosanna Warren as a winner of the National Poetry Series. She lives in Los Angeles. Poetry Sad Acid Misha Davidoff Misha is an editor and translator at Tele-. Born and raised in Mexico City, he currently lives in Los Angeles. Rachel Elizabeth Jones Rachel Elizabeth Jones is an artist and writer raised in Vermont and based in Los Angeles. As an artist, she works to create experience and exchange through objects, with an inclination towards gleaning and ideas of reclamation, paradise, and apocalypse. As a writer, she has contributed to publications including The New Inquiry and the Los Angeles Review of Book. She runs the art space Flower Head out of her garage. Website https://tele-artmag.com/Acerca-de Thu, 02 Jun 2022 23:27:58 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/Acerca-de <img width="2800" height="1864" width_o="2800" height_o="1864" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cba07f20c6cd7e87d6ad3ebef88b29a3368462f51e63ab56d1b291944b33a8e4/Shell-Monstera.png" data-mid="144402865" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cba07f20c6cd7e87d6ad3ebef88b29a3368462f51e63ab56d1b291944b33a8e4/Shell-Monstera.png" /> About tele- tele- es una inusual revista en línea de arte y literatura dedicada a la comunicación, la colaboración y la continuación a través de la distancia, del lenguaje y del medio. Comunicación “A fin de cuentas, es solamente por medio de la obra de arte que puede darse una comunicación completa y sin obstáculos entre el hombre y el hombre en un mundo lleno de abismos y muros que limitan la comunidad de la experiencia.” — John Dewey, Art as Experience Cada número de tele- es un experimento con las capacidades del arte. La investigación se guía por una multitud de preguntas emparentadas: ¿Cómo puede fungir una obra de arte como modo de comunicación, y en qué nivel de consciencia ocurre tal transacción? En el espacio liminal entre orador y oyente, escritor y lector, artista y espectador, ¿qué fuerzas operan en la filtración, transformación, y traducción de el mensaje? ¿Cuánto de uno mismo se involucra en la transmisión del mensaje? ¿En qué medida puede uno transmitir semejante cosa? ¿Qué partes de uno intervienen en, o interfieren con, lo dicho? ¿Qué parte tienen los juegos, o el juego en general, en actualizar nuestra capacidad de entendernos mutuamente, pero también de crear en soledad? Colaboración “Si...el adulto es capaz de gozar del área intermedia personal sin reivindicarse de nada, entonces nosotros podemos reconocer nuestras propias áreas intermedias, y nos regocijamos de encontrar, en el arte, la religión, o la filosofía, cierto grado de experiencia traslapada, es decir común, entre los miembros de un grupo." — D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality Las publicaciones de tele- se forman por un proceso semi-colaborativo, en que cada &nbsp;contribuidor produce una obra individual en respuesta a la obra de otro contribuidor, intentando así de hacer pasar la obra de un lado a otro* a través de un medio diferente. Por poder de la naturaleza iterativa del juego, cada artista, intentando decirlo todo, produce sino una pieza del todo, una frase dentro del párrafo que cada número termina siendo. &nbsp;Invitamos a artistas a acceder a este modo peculiar de colaboración como a un “lugar de encuentro” misterioso y lúdico que “hace surgir una curiosa posibilidad del pensamiento, que sería aquella de su puesta en común” (Breton, 1930). tele- comienza como un susurro que, de un artista al siguiente, va alborotando los carillones de viento, zumbando en la boca de botellas vacías, y culmina en el extraño acorde de tantas cosas tocadas por el viento. Continuación Este tipo de colaboración, este hacer pasar de un lado a otro, es esencialmente un acto de continuación de un pensamiento (o de un impulso, una imagen o un gesto) en su pasaje por diversidad de manos, mentes, idiomas, y medios, y a través de la distancia. &nbsp;tele- se conforma de tres momentos: la labor de percibir e interpretar, de ocuparse de la obra ajena y negociar con ella; el análisis, o el intento de procesar el movimiento que surge entre obras; y el producto final, el número publicado, donde el todo se hace presente en la intuición unificada, casi sincrónica, de su devenir gradual. Las partes simultáneas del engendro a su vez son fósiles de su evolución, cada una un vestigio de un entonces prematuro y ahora atávico esbozo de la madurez que hubiese, en algún futuro sepultado, podido alcanzar. Invitamos al lector/vidente a apreciar, más allá de una colección de obras yuxtapuestas, la relación emergente entre aquellas. La máquina tele- se asemeja al juego de teléfono descompuesto, o juego de las variantes, en que una persona susurra una palabra o una frase al siguiente jugador y el rumor se va transmitiendo y transformando en su tránsito circular. El objetivo no consiste en alterar intencionalmente el rumor pasajero, sino sencillamente en continuar la línea de comunicación y así exponerla a su cambio inevitable. El juego es una máquina que permite que los desfases emerjan por sí mismos —entre lo que dijiste y lo que entendí, entre lo que dije y lo que pensé haber querido decir, etc.— y es en aquellos desfases donde tele- cobra vida y donde cada número se marca de su propio destino. Cada activación del mecanismo de tele- es un experimento de la dimensión transindividual del hablar y escuchar, una invocación del inconsciente, aquella extraña y siempre sesgada armonía de nuestras voces individuales. Todo número comienza con un tema. Un punto de partida para el primer contribuidor y una suerte de brújula ‘débil’ para orientar a los que siguen, en caso de que necesitaran contexto o ayuda. El primer contribuidor produce una obra que materializa o responde al tema y lo envía a los editores, quienes lo pasan al que sigue, alguien que trabaja en otro medio o lenguaje. Junto con la postulación de su obra, cada artista incluye una exposición breve (ver abajo) de su trabajo. Este texto, sin embargo, no influye directamente en la transmisión, ya que los artistas posteriores trabajan exclusivamente a partir de la materialización más reciente del mensaje, aquella que les ha sido transmitida. De este modo, el número acabado resulta de dos procesos: uno transitivo, el otro autorreflexivo. El trabajo y el proceso El número acabado de tele- incluye la obra de cada contribuidor, presentada según el orden de su generación, de modo que los visitantes pueden navegar sus contenidos y observar la evolución del mensaje. Ésto exhibe la obra que forma el eje central de tele-: la manera en que cada aportación se yuxtapone a la que vino antes; lo que sobrevive (y en qué forma) entre una pieza y la próxima; lo que cada artista termina por hacer por medio (¿o a pesar?) de su intento de traducir a su antepasado. El trabajo, en resumen, no es sino la cosa viva misma—claramente a la vista en la sucesión de sus etapas, mas callado en cuanto a qué es y en virtud de qué fuerzas. Además, a cada pieza se enlaza una exposición escrita, en la que el artista procesa su obra, o reflexiona sobre el sentido de su aportación. Si ‘la obra’ es el sueño que se desenvuelve, ‘el proceso’ es el intento consciente, aunque de modo alguno menos fértil, de formular su sentido. Lejos de ofrecer la quimera de vislumbrar sin mediación ni filtro la dinámicas invisibles de transmisión de tele-, estas exposiciones también resultan de las mismas fuerzas, nada más que vueltas hacia adentro. —La Edición *traducir (v.) Del lat. “traducere” – “pasar de un lado a otro”, compuesto por el prefijo “trans-” que significa “de un lado a otro” (véase “traición“) y “ducere” – “guiar, dirigir”. Ésta proviene del indoeuropeo *deuk- “guiar” y se puede encontrar en la palabra latina “dux” (gen. “ducis”, originariamente significaba “comandante” de tropas militares y más tarde por el medioevo llegó al español como cargo nobiliario en “duque”). En el protogermano se encuentra el derivado *teuh-a – “tirar”, de donde proviene la palabra alemana moderna “ziehen” con el mismo significado (en gótico “tiuhan” y anglosajón “teon”) además de los derivados como “Zug” – “tren, procesión” o “Herzog” – “duque”. El eje central de tele- es este proceso de traducción que no consiste en la mera conversión de una cosa en otra, sino en el trasladar, cargar, e intercambiar de una transmisión única a través de su cambio natural de mano en mano. https://tele-artmag.com/Contact Sat, 05 Mar 2022 20:13:57 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/Contact newsletter: sign up. questions: get in touch. submissions: check back soon for our next submission period. ︎ &nbsp;︎ https://tele-artmag.com/Shop Thu, 02 Jun 2022 23:43:47 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/Shop The shop is under construction. Check back soon.&nbsp;︎ https://tele-artmag.com/Tele-Seven Sat, 05 Mar 2022 18:59:22 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/Tele-Seven https://tele-artmag.com/7-TOC Sat, 05 Mar 2022 19:00:32 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/7-TOC SEVEN: CREAM + Editor’s Note 7.00 Thomas Renjilian 7.01 Shelly Badal 7.02 Nadra Mabrouk 7.03 Haley Fenn 7.04 Kylie Gellatly 7.05 David Mitchael 7.06 Ashley Dailey 7.07 Vanessa Ehecatl Santos 7.08 Edythe Smith 7.09 Ashlin Hunter 7.10 Thomas Renjilian + Cover https://tele-artmag.com/7-Editor-s-Note Sat, 05 Mar 2022 19:02:12 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/7-Editor-s-Note Editor’s Note Sustenance secreted by a body for another, cultivated and reduced by craft to the perfection of elementary things, it has an odor as blandly sweet as its flavor, as blank as its color, as soft and rich as the touch of it. Cream is like itself across its several attributes, similarly to how water relates to its transparency, stones to their stillness, etc. It seems false that something so thoroughly spherical should also be so thoroughly the product of the convolutions of a few middling layers of organic life. Cream has the dignity of air, death, and the sun, yet is marked by the corruption proper to flesh. The artists and writers in this issue bring such distinct takes on the theme to their translations of each other’s work, and yet certain patterns form like milk skin on the issue’s surface. The Editors Tele- Magazine June 2022 Begin https://tele-artmag.com/700 Sat, 05 Mar 2022 19:12:48 +0000 Tele- https://tele-artmag.com/700 7.00 DermatologicalThomas Renjilian Garth floats to the communal pool’s milky surface and frisbees his pink diving ring back to me. Every afternoon Garth sits me on the diving board and calls me coach while he does exercise his physical therapist prescribed. I wear the rings over my sleeves and pretend they’re my mom’s jangly bracelets. They must’ve been rainbow-colored before I knew Garth, but now the rings are faded to powdery Easter pastels. Everything here is fading away. Calcium streaks the tiled pool sides, blurring the feet markers so bad I can make out only one and five (my age) on the right side and three and five (Garth’s) on the left. That’s only been true since Garth’s birthday last month, and after my birthday tomorrow, it won’t be true anymore. When I pointed this out to Garth, he said it was a sign we met at the right time. “You’re my little gift from God,” he said. “You’re his apology for everything else.” What was Garth’s everything else? A crash, I know, but before that he won’t say. Garth only answers questions if he asks them himself. “Party time?” Garth shouts, breathy and gurgly from the water. He planned a birthday for me to feel good about himself, which is why we’ve worked as long as we have: I only have to be what makes Garth feel good, which is easier than worrying about how I feel. I shake my head and throw another ring. He sucks in air and dives back down. I want the diving game to end, but I don’t want him to see when I reach into my jeans to scratch where moisture makes me tickle. I love when he’s down there, love imagining myself invisible to his goggled eyes: a little darkness blocking the light, not a boy, not a me at all. “Nice butt print,” Garth says five rings later. I’m standing by the gate while he towels off. He goes over to the board and traces my damp imprints with his finger. The sun can’t evaporate me fast enough. No neighbors use the pool but Garth, maybe because Garth uses it, or because of the sign on the gate that says UNSWIMMABLE. All the neighbors are pale but Garth. All the neighbors protect their skin. They stay in their duplexes and watch through shaded windows when we walk home from the pool. Once, I said the neighborhood was sad, and Garth corrected me. “It’s modern,” he said. “Brutalist, to be specific.” But inside Garth’s apartment is sad in a different way. What light gets in through his potato-sack curtains stains the room. Oils from the backs of his legs and neck darken his white couch cushions. The TV doesn’t work, and above it, Garth has a shelf of flea market trash: shirtless G.I. Joe dolls with missing arms, a framed drawing of a muscular man nude except his police hat, and three gross old milk cartons Garth calls vintage, the kind with pictures of missing kids on the side. I thought Garth was a creep at first, but he’s just like all the gay guys I’ve seen on TV: obsessed with himself, always talking, not that smart. “I love the sun on my skin,” he says in the living room. “I even like a burn. A burn is the body reminding you of parts you forgot you had. Check me.” I get close to his skin to look for redness while he squirts balm onto his hand. When I saw Garth’s ad on the library bulletin board—YOUNG MAN CRASH SURVIVOR NEED LIVE IN HELP—no one had torn any of the strips he slit and scribbled his phone number on, so I took them all. My first night, I hid them in my pockets and under my shoe soles, so if Garth killed me and hid my body, there’d be evidence. Sometimes I forget they’re there, and when I find one in my pocket, I’ll mistake it for an old Chinese food fortune. I’ll pull it out, read Garth’s number, and for a second think it’s lucky. Maybe it is. Sunscreen and sweat streak down Garth’s back. I look but don’t touch— Garth’s rule. He doesn’t like the feel of skin on his skin. He’s not a bad guy. I point and he balms himself. “A little red under your armpit,” I tell him. “And at the top of your suit.” It’s awful to see him slathering up, like a carrot cake frosting itself, but it’s true the creams have kept his body nice. No scaley splotchy parts, just a smooth, deep orange. His skin looks younger than mine. The way I’m going, I don’t have much longer until I look like my mom, with every day I’ve ever lived visible somewhere on me—a mole, a scar, a sunspot from my Garth month. “What would I do without you?” he asks. “I’d be cancerous and wrinkled. I’d look, God forbid, my age. Speaking of—makeover time? Sixteen is the age I wish I started my creams. I didn’t know about wrinkles then. I didn’t know about sun. I’ll get my tubes.” Garth has never shared his peels and creams, but my birthday has him on edge. He’s worried about losing me, which isn’t ridiculous. When I turn sixteen, I’ll have my pick of fast-food jobs. I’ll get my own place in another town, forget him. Garth disappears into the bathroom and I’m alone. The apartment is small, and Garth sleeps with his door open, so I’m only ever by myself in the sound of his liquidy slosh coming from the bathroom when he bathes or shits. Garth is addicted to laxatives. “I do not like there to be anything inside myself,” Garth has said. “Think of it. The body wasn’t meant for it. If you swim full—sick. If you run full—sick. We have holes because evolution wants us empty.” When Garth is in the bathroom, I touch his things because I don’t have things of my own. Today I take his vintage milk cartons down from the shelf, and I read about the unfound children. I thought there might be little stories, but there’s just a name, some numbers. I subtract the date of birth from the date missing listed on the first carton, and when I take down the second, I try to imagine if that kid would be friends with the first. It’s hard to imagine them. Four foot three, four foot four. Even I’m not that small, and to quote my mom, who didn’t mean it meanly, I “hit puberty like a pussy.” It’s hard to imagine when I would’ve been so small, when I was ten, eleven maybe? Those years are a blur to think about. I might not have minded being kidnapped then, taken away from myself, strained out. I put those two back and look at the third carton. The kid looks like any kid, but I recognize the birthday, March 17th, as Garth’s. I do the math fast, 2014 minus… but it adds up to thirty-seven, not thirty-five, and the name above the boy isn’t Garth, it’s Glenn. I put the carton back when I hear the toilet flush. “You should take your shirt off,” Garth says to me, cradling his tubes in his arms like a baby. “The creams stain fabric. It’s how you know they work.” “It’s an old shirt. I don’t care if it stains.” “Suit yourself. Take a seat.” I realize I left the kid on the milk carton facing outward, so when Garth sits on the stool across from me on the couch, Glenn is hovering behind him, looking down at us both. “Are you excited for your birthday?” he asks. “I used to hate them,” he answers. “I’d think another year closer to death, but then I read that parts of us die every day. Here, look at this tube. Rejuvenating. Do you like science? I used to hate it. I love it now. Science plus God. That’s the secret. Every certain number of years, you know, the cells they die and get reborn. Rejuvenated. You know that? Well, with this cream it’s overnight. Death and birth, death and birth. Science plus God. Hold out your hand.” He squirts some cream into my palm. I can’t tell if I’m imagining the burn. “As you age the skin holds toxins in it. And the toxins have a psychical effect. We only talk about wrinkles. It’s beyond wrinkles. You’ve heard of memory. Toxins in the skin is the physical manifestation of memory. You know when a memory makes your body hurt? That pain is the toxin in the skin. Memory is not incorporeal.” Glenn on the shelf is making better eye contact with me than Garth, who stares at his tubes or his fingernails while he talks. I’ve only ever seen Garth talk to kids and dogs. I can’t imagine what an adult would make of him. He’s said that before the crash he was a schoolteacher in another state, I don’t remember which. I can tell it’s true because he talks like he’s teaching a class. “So you don’t have memories?” “I didn’t say that.” He squeezes the cream into his palm, more than he gave me. “I have memories. My body doesn’t. The skin you see today won’t be my skin tomorrow. Neither will yours. Come on, spread it. I’ll do it too.” As he spreads the cream onto his face, I try to see the resemblance between Glenn on the shelf and the Garth in front of me. It must be there, and I try to see it, but I don’t. I spread the cream the way Garth did—on my cheeks, my forehead, then under my eyes—and I try not to wince as the tingle becomes a burn, but I can’t not. “You’re crying.” Garth reaches toward my eyes, like he’s going to wipe my tears, but he stops himself. “I think I want to go to bed.” “Good idea,” Garth says. “The turnover happens faster in the dark. Out of sight.” That night Garth shuts his door. Enough light comes through the curtains that I can’t stop seeing Glenn, his milky good skin, his dumb smile not knowing he’s here on a shelf while I, burning, stare at him. When I climb into Garth’s bed, I lie completely still beside him. I feel like a mummy. I feel the cream pulling my skin tight, feel my bones trying to poke through. It hurts to close my eyes, like if I do my skin will rip, so I look up. There’s a green glow from the ceiling—not a whole star but the prong of one, part of a set probably, like the one I had at home. When my eyes adjust to the dark, I can see spots still darkened by dried glue, and all night I imagine how the solar system must’ve fallen, planet by planet, onto Garth’s sheets, onto his ageless skin, without him noticing until here we are tonight, my face burning up in some sun’s last ray. In the morning I touch my face. It’s smooth and dry and dying. Beside me, Garth’s is too. He’s flaking away, and I reach over and rub him. He jolts awake, and I straddle him. He twists his head but still I knead my fingers into him, watch his dead skin snow down onto the black sheets. Cold stars far away. There’s a boy somewhere under here. I can feel him. “Glenn,” I say to the flakes on my fingers. “Glenn, do you want to go home now?” +Process Process: I’m very lactose intolerant, so when I think about cream, I think about the abject. In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva writes, “When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of milk—harmless, thin as a sheet of cigarette paper, pitiful as a nail paring—I experience a gagging sensation…. Along with sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it.” With Kristeva’s association between cream and skin as inspiration, I began thinking about my own love of harsh dermatological creams and the uncanniness of skins chemically abraded into a smooth agelessness. I considered how the physical paring away of skin might manifest the abject’s incomplete sieving of self from other, or self from past-self, and tried to write a story that conveyed in theme and imagery that sticky, cloudy, gaggy feeling. —Thomas Renjilian +Bio Thomas Renjilian is a PhD candidate in Literature &amp; Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. He received his MFA from Oregon State University. His fiction and poetry appear in Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, Catapult, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. He currently serves as fiction editor for Gold Line Press and Joyland Magazine and is the former managing editor of Ricochet Editions. He lives in Los Angeles.Website