Features • Spring 2026 - Fear
Gezi
Once again, a newborn cried for the first time. The bald scream carried her voice through crowds in a chestnut-smelling street, rousing the cats from their curbside sleep. The sound stretched farther on to the trees of Taksim as they shuddered with an intensity foreign to them. The cats knew of what was coming before us. They found Spirit in a corner of İstiklal, licked and nursed her. They were the ones who would tell her about the name of the street, about how long before it meant independence, it meant dismissal and rebellion. They told her, as she cried, that she was rebelling even now when she did not know the word for it. They were the ones who decided that the time was right and carried the newborn to a nearby park. The cats, from atop the branches of Gezi, all silent in their knowing, wanted to show Spirit the trees.
Poetry • Spring 2026 - Fear
There’s something to be said about those little birds inside the eggs, with the sticky baby down and bones melted tender. This morning, you call me soup-for-brains and I imagine a boy’s guts cupped inside the feathered belly on my plate—another boy pressed open like a drum, a membrane. I drink the brine from a jar of Koon Chun plums for breakfast. Practice, I say, and you call me Pussy for the first time all week. They say it doesn’t taste like anything. Just the salt of the duck and the blood-tang of marrow. But I forgot you’re tutoring Leah Wong at her place today, so I turn and face your black-feathered buzzcut. No time for a game behind the school with the Chus’ half-popped basketball, which yesterday I poked till it dimpled and likened it to one of her mom’s big fake ones, and you hit me. For a split-second I thought I saw your eyes turn milky and your spine go baby-bent, but I pulled up your T-shirt and you were still hairless as a girl, your skin opaque. So it’s dinnertime and Mom isn’t home yet and all I have is the chick in my egg. He’s just boiled awake, beak parting to call me Dumbass. Soft. My fingers turn to yellow protein in calcium dust, prying you into this wet, scalding kitchen. Walls gum-pink and beating; I take you where heat reigns.
Features • Spring 2026 - Fear
By no means is this a famous story. It takes place in Huntsville, Utah, a small town of under six-hundred residents, located in Ogden Valley on Pineview Reservoir. Surrounded by three ski resorts (Snowbasin, Powder Mountain, and Nordic Valley) there is no shortage of idyllic views, nor a shortage of seasoned skiers wishing to park amongst these idyllic views. This is observed by the abundance of Parking by Permit Only signs that prohibit parking west of 7300 E Street, made possible by the Huntsville Town Ordinance on April 19th, 2018.
Fiction • Spring 2026 - Fear
Big John stood near me with the electric blue above us, screaming out with its shine for everyone to drink it. Lines of neon stretched and twisted into a beauty of advertising brilliance. We were drinking it and the bottles were sweating and it made me feel good for the first time all day.
The fresh online pieces we experiment with outside of our print cycle. Formerly known as Blog.
From the Archives
Features • Fall 2008
I was eighteen the time I wore an ISSEY MIYAKE dress, and it immediately struck me: there was too much fabric. The sleeves were three times the length of my arms—the neck, intended for a giraffe. It fit me like a glove, but it flowed past the floor, pooling around my feet. But procuring some scissors, the shop girls explained: “Make of it what you want.” They pointed to some lines deftly hidden in the fabric. “There are many options.” And just like that, the consumer becomes the creator and the boutique becomes a personal workshop.
An inversion of the consumer-creator relationship and a reconsideration of the place of technology and engineering in fashion design, the dress was a product of the now famous collaboration between Issey Miyake and Dai Fujiwara.
Viewed today as the Godfather of Japanese fashion, Miyake already had world renowned for his groundbreaking designs. Miyake created the ISSEY MIYAKE design studio in 1970, and spent the following decades challenging the conventional shapes and European traditions of high fashion. Miyake demonstrated particular interest in the intersection of fashion and technology, most notably with his launch of his Pleats Please line in 1993. A production technique that uses a special heat press technique to infuse simple, colorful fabrics with shape and texture, the results are light yet defined, free-flowing yet highly constructed. Further, the polyester clothing requires minimal sewing and corresponds with Miyake’s mission for beauty and function in innovative form.A-POC, which stands for “a piece of clothing,” and rhymes with “epoch,” is the latest technologically-driven line from the Mikaye-Fujiwara collaboration. , Fujiwara and Miyahi’’s collaboration, and their technologically inspired designs and production lines, respond to timeless a question for the fashion world: the delicate balance between high art and a commercial success.
Fashion has always toed a fine line between its dual identitiest’;it is pulled towards the two poles of ready-to-wear street clothes and haute couture. For many designers, the answer comes through the creation of two lines. Designers will show their hand-made high fashion on the runways of Paris and Milan, and spread their names with special, factory-produced collections for lower-end merchandisers. Yohji Yamamoto partnered with Addidas, John Varvatos with Converse, Isaac Mizrahi with Target. These partnerships allow a designer to meet the demands of a more consumer-minded business as well as maintain the freedom of high fashion expression.
The answer for Miyake and Fujiwara, however, came not from the production of two lines, but from use of a new means of production. Merging computer technology with the creativity of the consumer, the design duo founded A-POC—“A Piece of Cloth,” and rhyming with ““epoch.”” A revolutionary design technique, A-POC transforms a single thread into clothing sans coudre. The designer develops a pattern program, funnels a single thread into the knitting machine and presto—out comes a tubular piece of cloth, size and shape dependent on its intended use. Sewing is superfluous. Reliance on sweatshops disappears, as do long hours of hand sewing in Parisian ateliers. In a way, then, A-POC piggy-backed on the work of Miyake’s earlier work, using technology to bring new vigor and innovation to the fashion industry.
Yet despite the use of machine production, A-POC defies the tedium of the mass, factory-produced clothes. It is the consumer who adds the final artistic element, who becomes the final designer. Cutting along faint lines embedded in the production of the cloth, the customer chooses sleeve length, garment length, neck style and more—transforming a long tubular creation into a functional piece of clothing. With a pair of scissors, then, mass produced clothing becomes a custom-made dream.
The power of this form-function solution brought the duo much acclaim, and shifted Fujiwara’s career notably from the textile engineer to the fashion designer. In 2006, Fujiwara became the Creative Director for ISSEY MIYAKE, Miyake himself moving on to new pursuits, and in this role, he has continued the MIYAKE tradition of fusing technology and fashion. Preferring to focus on the new, the original, Fujiwara rarely takes inspiration from the past. His shows are never send-backs to the 1920s flappers nor an homage to Versailles circa Louis XIV. He emphasizes what is new, different, and possible in the modern age. His philosophy is simple: “I do not believe that any discussion of art is possible without bringing technology onboard.”
And even in his most recent work focused on nature, Fujiwara has maintained this dependence on the mechanical and the industrial. Exploring the ways in which technology mimics, preserves, even enables the natural, he illuminates the connection he sees between the typically opposing forces. Last month in Paris he showed “Color Hunting.” In preparation for this show—the Spring 2009 collection—Fujiwara took over 3,000 color swatches to the Amazon Rainforest, aiming to capture the exact, quintessential shades of the jungle. For Summer 2008, Fujiwara was captivated by all things Wind. “To observe the wind is to be aware of nature, to think about the flow of air that envelopes us and the environment in which we exist,” the ISSEY MIYAKE Team explained. The collection thus included clothes unconventionally intended not to protect a person from the elements, but to enhance a person’s interaction with their surroundings.
For both collections, technology was the bridge to the successful partnership between fashion and nature. For “Color Hunting,” Fujiwara identified the natural hues he desired—creating some clothes to achieve the natural element—but he also experimented with the transformation of these colors in the urban landscape, capturing the effect a glass prism or metallic reflection create. To truly create the effect of Wind, Fujiwara partnered with Dyson—the high-tech British vacuum producers. Together the duo built an enormous cyclone to simulate the many forms of wind—mechanically engineering the very natural environment he hopes his clothes will enhance.
For some designers, their fashion shows seem an opportunity to shock and stun. Twice a year, the runway creates an opportunity to smile smugly and say, “Oh yes, I dared.” We love them for it. We love John Galiano for filling Parisian Vogue with models garbed as pirates. We love Marc Jacobs for throwing Grunge-wear in the face of New York’s most fashionable elite. Their dedication to the fabulous—even the absurd—is captivating. It frees us from the daily convention of what one wears.
But what’s interesting about ISSEY MIYAKE is that despite the utter originality of his work, Fujiwara is far from smug. He intends neither to shock, nor stun. Instead, he is eerily nonchalant about his originality, matter of fact, even. Whether by recreating the natural through the mechanical or by creating an entire evening gown from a single thread, Fujiwara will defy every fashion convention in existence all while suggesting that the convention never existed. He makes his innovation seem apparent—obvious creations the circumstance. His models add to this effect. Awash in perfectly engineered color-hues and surrounded by yards of free-flowing, crafted cloth, they seem entitled to the ingenuities enabled by modern engineering.
In conjunction with his participation with Harvard’s Project East fashion show, Fujiwara spoke with The Advocate, and he spent considerable time discussing the place for innovation. His design philosophy helps explain the aura of nonchalance: “Nothing, whether it is new media or emerging circumstances or matters, ever springs into existence suddenly or from nothing,” Fujiwara explains. New thinking and new designs come from precise situations that demand solutions. In a complex society of evolving desires and circumstances, innovative design is but a necessary reaction—a simple, inescapable reality.
***
Harvard Advocate: Issey Miyake is famous for his integration of design, technology, engineering and fashion, and you clearly greatly influenced this practice. Can you describe the relationship you see between fashion, technology, and directed research? Why is this important in fashion, and how do you imagine it will influence the future of design? How or does the relationship with technology morph fashion from the world of art into the world of science?
Dai Fujiwara: During the latter half of my research aimed at creating the A-POC brand, I came to embrace a vague image in my mind. Using the flow of a river as a metaphor, apparel is located in the downstream sector of the textile industry infrastructure. Apparel designers must wait for the items produced upstream and there is no great need to worry about how materials used in fashion are made. This approach and thinking had become fixed in the industry, and I was beginning to grow fed up with it.
Computers offer the convenience of guaranteed information operation, with costs remaining low [as well as] the ability to turn out highly adaptable items despite being created through automated mass production. I did not see much evolution in production lines controlled by machines, or in the production methods that required human hands.
Thus, just as I came to the conclusion that production lines not controlled by machines and production methods not requiring human hands were in fact necessary for fashion, I felt that the conventional image of the river had become hackneyed. Much like fish swim from habitats in vast ocean realms to congregate in plankton generated at the boundary line between warm and cold currents, new visions are being drafted and implemented in the midst of capitalist society – the scene of complex interactions between money, people, commodities and now the Net society.
Naturally, it is impossible to discuss fashion outside the realm of clothing, it is also true that it is no longer feasible to ponder fashion solely in terms of clothing. When, at crucial turning points, new information, new commodities, new images and new characters emerge, people will demand those new elements, along with other information, things and images. I believe that creating methods to initiate these new flows is extremely important. I also feel that proposing such changes from the viewpoint of fashion is an effective means of corroborating the performance of potential catalysts. Within my work at present, I strive to fully embrace these concepts.
It is difficult for individuals to generate turning points. However, it may be possible to bring about new movements by joining with different partners or consolidating different categories. If the time can be found to unravel circumstances or situations already in existence, and then find compatible partners to mutually discuss the world around us, our actions and discussions will lead to new ideas and movements.
In the same right, it is also necessary to forge the future of design. A vast array of accountability derived from the structure of society has spread to the design domain, prompting the need for capable designers to respond to this need. Based on the belief that easily manageable solutions are necessary, the A-POC design concept was launched Though it is my impression that there is little change in the scope demanded of fashion design, I can only conclude that the design clout of organizations unable to create items from the stance of environmental engineering will inevitably weaken. Design, by definition, is the work of formulating certain balances, coordinations and other elements. There is thus a need, I feel, to clarify what specific balances need to be struck. For the very reason that diversity is expanding within the sphere of fashion, the demands of design are much greater. Because the social responsibility in this area is in another increasing trend, it is clear that the sphere of design (referred to as balancing abilities here) is expanding and it will be vital to mount effective responses to social demands.
HA: With the continued collaboration of fashion designers and various technicians—from within and outside the world of design—how do you envision fashion’s place within society evolving? How do the technologies now available to fashion designers change the identity of high art and more consumer fashion?
DF: It is impossible to truly discuss the diversity demanded in fashion in terms of a system that looks to Paris or Milan as the pinnacles. Each new logistical revolution in today’s Web society raises momentum explosive to fashion, threatening the status of the conventional collections (twice yearly fashion markets).
Within the Web society, the demand is for “graspable clothing.” This refers to so-called “real clothes” – that is, apparel which easily appeals to consumers and is readily understood by purchasers. In a world that now expands across borders of time and distance, such fashions are beginning to take on the power to change values and thinking. I believe that this impact is also being felt at the “fashion week” events in New York, Milan and Paris – forums for showcasing new creations.
There is also the concern, however, that on the flip side of excessive demands for easily understood results, the overall scene will become tedious. When proceeding with a focus on creation in an era in which both information and commodities have begun to take on their own values, it will likely become difficult to continue to hold up both sides of diverse and “graspable” clothing.
Basically speaking, I believe that fashion must be allotted a major degree of freedom within the world we live in. In the quest for freedom, failure to resolve new issues characterized by strong demands for social qualities will render it impossible to nurture the freedom that everyone recognizes and wants. In that sense, fashion designers who continue to exist in environments of freedom while fulfilling their social responsibilities may very well represent the “new cool.”
With regard to high art and consumer fashion, while the ability of designers to make ready use of technology may place major restrictions on their work, it will also become easier to successfully benefit from cost balance and quality guarantees. Likewise, while the use of technology by designers signifies the transition into work with a high degree of social impact from a management standpoint, it also means that designers are taking on heavy social responsibilities at the same time. If this foundation can be mobilized to render new proposals for consumers through the act of supplying the world with clothing, it will also come to wield great clout in society.
HA: Last year you teamed up with Dyson to create “Wind” as an element of the Spring show and this year the colors of the Amazon influenced your show. Please comment on the relationship between nature and fashion. What is the role of nature in your work? How has your relationship with and your vision of nature changed over the years? How do the natural elements of the show connect with your more technological leanings?
DF: Any worthwhile discussion of nature is incomplete without the inclusion of technology. It is patently clear, therefore, that technology has become indispensable in sustaining the Earth, as we know it. These influences have already been internalized in the realm of fashion as well.
HA: Conventionally, nature and technology seem as opposing forces, and yet both greatly influence your designs. How do they come together in for you in design? How do they complement one another, oppose one another, etc.?
DF: Please conceive that nature is you, yourself. Technology, furthermore, is also encapsulated within your being. While as you say, nature and technology appear to act as opposing forces, in reality they exist in a mutually complementary, give-and-take relationship.
HA: Academy has routinely placed fashion on the sidelines of scholarship, and yet museums and design forums are increasingly acknowledging the place of fashion as a historical artifact and commentary. How do you see fashion and design as a social commentary? Do you have advice for scholars on ways to study and analyze these artifacts?
DF: In recent years, the reality that fashion differs from its conventional image as an extravagant and festive celebration, and is in fact one component of the overall social fabric, has come to be understood through the lens of economic angles. Someday, perhaps, an economist specializing in fashion may be honored with the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences!
HA: Would you like to share anything more on your design philosophy?
DF: Nothing, whether it is new media or emerging circumstances or matters, ever springs into existence suddenly or from nothing. Rather, I believe it is people who sense that the old ideas and thinking no longer do the trick are the forces behind such evolution. Toward that end, to enter new realms through the medium of design, I believe in the need to create, through your own effort and volition, specific opportunities for encounters which demand decisive situations and events. Once you take part in something that needs change, you have put yourself on the path
Poetry • Winter 2017 - Cell
Wasn’t that 12th street
wasn’t it May
6:29 pm I was late
I’d just bought
Rob’s bildungsroman
you mean memoir
the bookseller
working the cash
register told me
you’re on the wrong
floor follow me
Told him I also needed to taste
what I was up against
signing myself
over to X agency
who’ll take 15%
of the rights
of the royalties
if they successfully
peddle my memoir
(whose takeaway
is messing up love
via capitalism)
& hawk it to some
Big Five publisher
who’ll nary give
a shit not until
it officially bombs
& who’ll change
the French title
to a phrase more
marketable & also cut
the photograph
overlooking my third
apartment before
Sandy hit Brooklyn
wasn’t that 2012
6:31 pm I was skittering
across Broadway
my shoes killing me
& read Rob’s first sentence
(I needed also to *hear*
what I was up against)
“this must be the place”
it both pleased
& nonplussed me
thought unwittingly
of David Byrne
in Hollywood
c. 1984 onstage
singing “sing
into my mouth”
& “never for money,
always for love”
his white suit
& sweat stains
wasn’t that
*Stop Making Sense*
(Emily loves this song
I thought that’s
what I’m up against?)
Whacked the book
shut & muttered
*intéressant, intéressant*
stretching the *a’s*
& tittering at myself
a tiny gag my horrid
French accent
an abandoned toast
& thinking of X now
you Francophile
haven’t seen you
since that winter
3.5 years ago no
that was Scholes St.
when you wheezed
& said I’m uncertain
I’m that person
who waking loves
you anymore
yes, *you*
you said
& headed eastbound
when I looked up
& also marching
across 12th street
there was another X
I half-loved
that following spring
3.5 years ago she
gave me this
two-fingered salute
touching her brow
was she leaving
her seminar maybe
dinner with dad
I wouldn’t decide
thought unwittingly
instead of her
rheumy & I guess
also pellucid
eyes those nights
on Powers St.
on my stoop
when the stars
I said stunk of
beef tallow
My slack mouth
making a shy noise
when I saw her
it was like *oh*
but a century longer
“Out of all those
kinds of people,”
my shoes sang
& killing me
“we drift in and out”
& you could call
her name but no
you *live* here now
*ain’t that America*
on the radio
when the taxi
swerved around me
& the drug dog
licking anxiously
the other bigger
drug dog’s paws
that was Broadway
words like *jornada*,
*chaparral*, *beldam*,
*snow* *blindness*,
*malanders*, *ilex*,
*rebozo*, *chivaree*,
*death* *camas*
I bed down here now
new whorls
of blonde hair
& fur in my mouth
but when I wake up
4:01 am unsleeping
& the apartment’s
glum-smelling
like blue milk
& mustard seed
inside the amphora
there’s a third smell
a pair of ox-eyes
with their bruised
& drooped heads
isn’t it those flowers
some mornings
who aren’t always
already dead
when I wake up
& smell what
I’m up against
Poetry • Winter 2011 - Blueprint
*translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Forrest Gander*
a sea beyond this world (what if
there was (just a (fuzz
of thought I had (imagination dead
imagine (we’re told for untold ages to imagine
the meaning of the world as folds
and the beyond as folds
over the elastic roll (of fold on fold (sss… sea
(like that (still
we imagine out of habit (yes-yes
perhaps
somewhere in the dark universe floating (floating?
a sea? (yes (fuzzy
distant source, a watery uterus (no
babbling (like abrasions
profuse grooves (a speck of green
in the sea of tranquility (floating like soft rock (as
if you consider it too much
the subject (which is your head (so to speak
would crash down (like that (sss…sea
just (a thought but
it’s the spray at least (yes-yes
in which I would be soaked
the sea beyond this world (and (for a long time
the ordinary sea (again, again (having swum in the encephaloid
quietude (fuzz (in what way
in what way are they different
in that quietude (just the (ordinary sea
swells (like a medusa
the sea beyond this world (palpitating (adrift
promenading (this one as (a glossal mire
the ordinary sea (so (moon-inclined
tonguing and tongued (this (tongue
beyond all world (sinister red (the sea (sinister red
itself like (a moon (a mire
and you see
the sea beyond this world (so to speak (already and always
took place (people there
tugged their boats where they pleased (and I’ll breach
kiss (address (tomorrow embrace
the winsome distillate of your flesh
so to speak (when everything is breached
there’s nothing left to do (boats move (as a thousand grooves
dazzling diagrams
and only on those grooves
can I survive (imagine (that
the stinging surface (of my skin and
beaded tears of (semen that never (poured into you
are (grooves
as well (as the sounds at our death
Poetry • Spring 2011
I stiffen: again a shift,
a shuffle somewhere
in the darkness,
impenetrable
as the guillotine.
The scaffold collapses
into a bulging jaw
sputtering against
the shut. The heart
is a muscle. Alone,
against the drawbridge,
my hand, wet with fog,
slicks over the steel,
and the big bolts
resisting rust. Lift,
and the rain
folds like hands retiring
into applause, and
your silhouette disappears
like a question
into a question mark.
As if anyone could be
lost, and permanently.
A candle spills through
its wax, as the buildings,
slowly, fall into a cloud
which appeared as if
to catch them, but, in
truth, held nothing.
Features • Fall 2013
*For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty; like a butterfly it seeks colour and basks in warmth. On a winter’s night like this, when nature has been at pains to polish and preen herself, it brings back the prettiest trophies, breaks off little lumps of emerald and coral as if the whole earth were made of precious stone.* –Virginia Woolf, “Street Hauntings ”
The bike ride from Harvard to the East Campus of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center takes approximately half an hour from the Square. To ride a bike is to be in perpetual motion. The moment we hop on, the ground beneath us evens out, and the world transforms into an infinite landscape, no longer sectioned off into red lights, pedestrian crossways, or emergency stops. Rather, it is a continuous flux of scenery that flows together as images do in daydreams.
The bike ride to lab takes us from one world to another. One has to navigate past the chaos of the Square, past the hordes of pedestrians standing on the brink of the curb, past the taxi stands in front of the Harvard Coop, away from the traffic jams caused by construction, over the steep incline of JFK Bridge, across the intersection, onto the main bike path, and then finally along the Charles River for the next three miles.
On some days, when the journey starts at rush hour, this first part becomes particularly difficult, as there are twice as many pedestrians, twice as many cars, and twice as many ambulances rushing forward to overload one’s senses. The bike path, which stays mostly empty, is suddenly full of joggers and bikers also making their evening travels. With the onslaught of winter, the evenings are now shrouded in darkness, and the headlights of the cars travelling in the opposite direction are so blinding that they conceal the shadows of people in the distance.
On a good day, though, the ride there is utter beauty. On a good day, the weather is about sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and the trees are all shades of warm, popping out against the azure light of the sky. There are joggers, but they all smile slightly as they huff by, and the smiles somehow enter our expressions too. Or perhaps the smile we see in others is just a reflection of our own. The path twists and turns, widens and shrinks. On one part it becomes so narrow that we’re constantly afraid of hitting the pedals of other bikes when we cross, but it never happens—the disaster is averted, and we utter a small prayer of gratitude.
Every time we go, in the fall, the trees change color, first from a deep green to yellow, then to a brighter and brighter orange, until becoming a vivid tunnel that engulfs us. The next time we enter this part of the bike path, the leaves have started to fall off, and their crimson-blood color spots the black pavement. The wind feels inviting and crisp on our skin. We bring a jacket but don’t wear it. The weather reminds us of Halloween all those years ago, when the weather was just as brisk and reached through the thin costume fabric of our disguise.
Remember that time we went apple picking, and you were wearing that blue navy blazer with the gold buttons along with that worn black corset, and you were pleased because it was the second time you’d been in an orchard since you picked strawberries and peaches when you were ten years old?
Yes, yes, I do remember. And that year I was a ninja for Halloween.
To the left, on the side facing the river, couples, families, and those dreamy walkers, wrapped in their silence, admire the river. We can’t help but look on too, at the skyline, at the bell towers in the distance, at the occasional solitary rower. We once tried to scull, remember? And you got that swim card but never ended up going?
Yes, yes I do remember. And when I took that swim test I remembered how I love to swim.
The turn is coming soon, but right before it is the bridge. It is made entirely of wooden planks. Often people will stop here to lean over the railings and look at the view of Boston, to the right, and of Harvard, to the left. It is always quiet here—the water beneath the bridge is calm. This wooden bridge passes under a larger, square bridge, perhaps part of the railroad; above it is an even larger bridge that carries cars over the river. But at ours, below these crossing paths, the planks make gentle clucking noises under the wheels, and our motion is indicated, not just by the wind, or the change in landscape and shadow, but also by the shift in noise. We are moving—forward.
We have almost reached the end. Head straight off the bridge, and be sure to look both ways for cars before crossing. Turn left onto Common-wealth Avenue, and right onto Brookline: the East Campus of Beth Israel will be on the left. Enter the main entrance, up the elevators to the eighth floor, make a left, and go inside room 864. The sleep subject has finished the third session and is waiting in the Solarium.
This is a sleep lab. The head of the lab prefers to be called Bob. He is an ancient man with bright eyes, white hair, and a gentle voice. In his office is a plant that is almost bigger than a small child. It is an exotic plant, a spider lily, with two-inch stems that rise three feet and then end in a firework-shape of white flowers. There are three of these stems, and the base is adorned in thick, wavy leaves. In 1991, when he went to Mexico on a lab convention, Bob stood on the beach and found a seed washed up on the shore. He snuck it back to America and planted the thing, curious to see what it would become.
Spider lilies only bloom at night. This ability is called nyctinasty, and it occurs because nature has matched a specific set of flowers to nighttime pollinators: bats, moths, and rodents. Color is of minimal importance at night, so these flowers tend to be light colored. To attract their pollinators, the flowers wear strong fragrances. Their petals stay closed during the day to prevent the perfume from evaporating, but when the sun has set and the pollinators have awoken, they bloom.
It takes less than two seconds for a spider lily to bloom. The petals are held together by a little locking leaf, and when that leaf releases the whole flower springs open. In the entire time that Bob has had the lily, he has only seen it bloom twice.
It’s amazing what can happen in a day. We wake up every morning new, the trouble and anxieties of the night before having dissipated along with the dreams. Something happens during sleep that renders them less important, as belonging to a different world; something that refreshes the mind, restores the brain. Since this is a sleep lab, people come here to dream, to be deprived of sleep, to nap. Some will stay here for several days, sometimes an entire week, to participate in a particular study. Ours is less costly—the subjects don’t have to stay overnight and instead stay at lab from morning till night. Sometimes, when they take naps, we record the activity of their brains.
There are four stages of sleep, and each one has its own special pattern. At a waking state, the brain waves are tiny and dense, jittery and sporadic. When people close their eyes, however, the pattern immediately sooths out, and a wave-like image starts to form. When the brain waves even out enough, they have officially entered the first stage of sleep. If they were to be woken up now, they would not recall ever being asleep.
After roughly ten minutes, though, something strange starts to happen. The spacing of the waves becomes a bit wider, loosening up, becoming slower, until suddenly, they spike up into an enormous tsunami and then sinks into a trough. This is a K-complex, and it is a major indicator of Stage Two sleep. Occasionally, the smaller waves will seem to condense, as if a hand is squeezing them together. This is a sleep spindle, and it is another defining landmark of Stage Two.
The rise and fall of the K-complex will grow more frequent until the reading screen becomes filled with only these large waves. They come much more slowly, like gentle, rolling giants, and once the brain activity is composed entirely of these, we know the person is in slow wave sleep.
The final and most fascinating part of sleep is Rapid-Eye-Movement. All at once, the canyons and peaks shrink to tiny, fast, schizophrenic waves that resemble those of the waking state. Yet the subjects are asleep, and at this point their eyes are rolling in synch, and their bodies have absolutely no muscle tone. They are dead yet alive at the same time. This is the point at which dreams occur.
Every person, no matter how old, how sleep deprived, or how intelligent, will go through these exact sleep stages in the same order. A full night’s rest will exhibit multiple cycles of these sleep stages, each with its own unique chemical make-up and function.
At ten at night, the subjects have finished the last session for the day and can be checked out of the clinical research center. We’ve forgotten to do this a few times, to the consequent scorn of the night nurses, but today we remember.
The ride back at night is quiet. Back down Brookline, only now we turn left onto Commonwealth Avenue, right onto Silber Way.
This bridge crosses the main highway. At the top of the crossing, one can stand and look at the six-lane highway from either end, wondering where all these cars are coming from and where they are headed next. We are at the point between two worlds, the space between night and day, but instead of choosing one over the other, we simply continue heading home.
We leave Silber Way behind, biking ahead of a slow couple walking down the same bridge, and join the bike path once more.
By now the Hyatt hotel has its lights turned on, and the red zigzag of its outlines ripples along the river to the right. We are alone on this path. The trees line up on either side of the road, and their branches reach across and hug each other under the sky. Cars drive past along the left, and we feel pity for the drivers stuck inside their metal containers, unable to feel the night against their skin. We pass through the tunnel of trees and ride past the sailing house, now with its doors closed and boats harbored to the shore. We slow down to make the sharp right turn onto the wooden bridge under the bridge under the bridge. Again, the wheels of the bike make clanking noises across the wooden panels. Halfway across, we pause to look at the water. It is especially calm tonight and shines like obsidian under the moonlight. With eyes closed and hands cupped and resting on the balcony, we close our eyes, our brain waves soothing out.
After an entire day of seeing and looking, of observing, distinguishing, choosing, our perception has become twisted and unfocused. Our brain is like an offset scale, and to restore it to normal, we will have to sleep. Dreams will first flood our brain with exaggerated simulations of reality, testing the springs of our scale. After dreaming will come slow wave sleep that realigns the spring bit by bit. These two stages of sleep will work together to test and adjust, test and adjust. After several cycles, the brain will be fully recalibrated, and we will wake up again, reset.
When we open our eyes—the world is still there. Up above, the moon glistens. The water shines with globes of blue, green and red from the land lights. Somewhere, a night flower is blooming.
Poetry • Winter 2015 - Possession
Once the leaves had drained of chlorophyll,
sculpted themselves with rouge
and commissioned a warm light to gild them,
a few threw themselves down
to wash once more in this pooling
of a water most unlike rain. And you
cast yourself flat along the bodies
of the leaves, made yourself expansive
and did a wormy sort of work. Laying weight
on the film tension of water over concrete
and gathering the leafscape to its boundaries.
Where else might you bathe except numb
in a place of your own making? The day, it went
in serial: finding a torpor so passive
as to ricochet: passion rises and falls on cue: crash
and recovery pass in quickstep: then and done.
So you’re in a new place, an unscripted space, here
neither around nor along plotline, you’re loose
and you’ve lost it. Far away someone
is patting you, this hand lets its weight
guide you gentle: far away
there is a place where dreams grow
where they go round and quiet
and come down from the trees you’d left
them in to find you and let you stroke
their new teeth. You will maybe never go there.
It is not a place where eyes go.
2026