Chapter Introduction

“Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions seem still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery and be overwhelmed by disappointments, yet when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.”
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

The final section of this volume, “Contain and Confront,” tackles the boundaries that infringe on daily life with the implication that we can either build beyond these borders or learn to reckon with the edges. The grammatical tense of this section title is meant to suggest action and progress, as the pieces in this segment not only delineate barriers, but actively press against them or push through them. In this way, these works offer degrees of movement and agency against the bindings they invoke by moving from instability to firm ground, extremity to balance, and resistance to acceptance.

Beginning this section, Aurora Ryder’s “Heavy is the Blade” explores the temptation in seeking comfort and familiarity in the lines we know, but ultimately reconciles the duplicity these forced edges serve when danger is coated in comfort. Moving beyond the clouded sense of familiarity is understood as a struggle but the perseverance of will in this piece helps alleviate the lulling haze by condensing dispersions of ease and hurt into saturated resolve.

Jake MacCallum’s song “Ambiance” similarly presses against certain barriers, not by pushing through them, but by making space within them. His musical project started without purpose as a simple rhyming exercise, but through this he was able to create the song included in this review. In this way, the song demonstrates a test on the bounds of imagination and ways of pushing them further. The lyrics in this song also offer a mediation between extremes like dark and light, and good and evil. Rather than pushing too far in either direction, this piece negotiates a settlement between contradictory elements, while capturing aspects of both. The title of this song, Ambiance, at its essence, channels the mood and feeling that brings a space to life, rather than the barriers that enclose it. Appropriately then, this song demonstrates the creativity that thrives in close quarters and balanced energy.

Camellia Nguyen’s “Building Resilience through Art” accompanies this volume’s cover art and tells the story of the Hustler and the Dreamer, quintessentially capturing the nature of containment and confrontation. The two characters complement each other in that the Hustler is a worker within boundaries, sensing the looming hand above, where the Dreamer longs to be free from confinement and chase the beyond. In a sense, both roles are trapped in a cycle without balance, yet they are able to achieve a sense of peace and enjoyment in their confinement, offering glimpses of confronting their initial cycle but recognizing the space in which they exist and can prosper. The theme of resilience traces through this fable, but also through the rest of Nguyen’s writing as they describe key qualities ofresilience and the importance of keeping a balance between the Dreaming and Hustling portions of the self. This piece places equivalent emphasis on progressive resilience with the need to push forward and conquer, but also enduring resilience that centers on achieving satisfaction with where you are in the now.

The piece “To Truly Live Before You Die,” also written by Jake MacCallum, gives the reader a sense of movement, agency, and responsibility as they navigate the natural world. The poem asks the reader to indulge in a series of interactions with the environment with an implied progression towards a greater way of life. As the title suggests, when readers move through the lines they begin to reach the understanding of what it means to “truly live” with the temporal urgency of “Before You Die.” The piece ultimately confronts the living from before with the living moving forward, and in doing so, serves as a catalyst for change.

The final work in this volume, “Sisyphus,” written by Jennifer Alexander, demonstrates the compromise that often situates itself between feelings of containment and the acting decision to confront that unpleasant feeling of being stuck. The speaker in her poem struggles with the constant cycle of chasing meaning, seeking value, and the cruel disappointment in never achieving a certain purpose. We might expect this poem to capture the insistence with which we try to escape feelings of confinement and to confront these feelings through stubborn willpower, however Alexander gives us a different perspective. Rather than fight against the bindings that trap the self in a repetitive cycle of chase, Alexander’s speaker refocuses the narrative, morphing from one that focuses on escaping the neverending hill to finding solace and fulfillment in the experience. Rather than confronting the sensation of being trapped by offering means of escape, this piece confronts the notion of confinement itself, identifying it as a force that only defines our situation if we allow it to.

The works in this chapter each demonstrate the ability to move past personal barriers. Where these barriers look drastically different depending on individual context, so too do the ways in which we confront them and move forward. For many, it is moving past a wall and for others cutting off a chain, but for some, it is etching progress in the space you are in now. For all of these pieces, the unique qualifier for confrontation is finding an ending without tether.