Editor’s Note
PETER LABERGE
FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Welcome to summer, dear reader. Welcome to Adroit 12.
Perhaps because I’ve found myself—as a rising junior in college—knee-deep in seemingly important questions (What are you majoring/minoring in? Where do you want to live after graduation? Do you want to get your MFA right out of school? What do you want your general life direction to be like?), I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and saying a lot of I don’t know.
Yet—while I may just be young and naïve—I like to think these decisions aren’t real decisions. Rather, I like to think that we choose the extent to which we accept or contradict who we happen to be. I like to think that the tough part is integrating that self-identity, whether badly mangled or perfectly intact, into the lives and bodies we’re given. I like to think that choice comes into play only once we question the extent to which we allow something other than ourselves to govern the choices we make, the people we love, and the people we (were soon to) become.
However, it is rarely (if ever) that simple. The writing and art in this issue is a testament to that. Joseph Fasano instructs us on why one must “empty your life of astonishing things.” Laura Romeyn brings into question directionality, while Dalton Day emphasizes perspective. Meanwhile, Antonio Estevez looks for warm places in cold people. Brynne Rebele-Henry paints an inward portrait of disconnect, while Matt Morton’s pulses with movement. Gary Garrison reminds us exactly why “skin and bones have never been enough to hold all families up.” All the while, Ocean Vuong defines persevere, while Meghan Privitello embodies the beauty of abandonment, that to abandon is to trust wholly in the self.
There is one thing I know for sure, and it only seems to lead us even further into the spiral: other people, events, tragedies, family members, friends, objectives, plans, and verdicts get to us. They stain, sand down, build up, and knead us until who we are (whatever that means) is not only difficult to sort out, but also ever-changing.
Let these poems, this prose, this art inspire and guide that process. Let them teach you something about the self, about how to occasionally (when you don’t know) slow down that target and see it for what it really is. I know they will if you listen.
Questionably,
Peter LaBerge
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
The Adroit Journal
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