Halcyon Digest

Responses are primarily meant to be viewed as grouped by year, as seen below, but you can also click any one of the respondents' names to be taken to their particular chronology.

●

A very selective timeline of what
exactly is going on on planet earth:

2024

Art Klaudt: Attending the aftermath of a riot and watching people pour water over an incinerated bus

Anonymous 1: failing to graduate college

ava: going back to school for the first time in 5 years, the first thing i’ve done in public besides doctor’s appointments since covid began

kate: In May I finally bought a car. I've lived in Boston for the last 7 years without one. It was a horrendous ordeal where we had a simple plan to go to a local dealer and buy a shitty 2007 Toyota but at the last minute my partner's uncle stepped in and told us to go to his guy in another state. We went there, met the mechanics, and ended up buying a salvaged car 10 years newer for the same price. Because it was out of state though, we had to pay and do the bill of sale and title and everything by mail, then figure out how to get it registered in Massachusetts, get car insurance, get the RMV form signed by an insurance agent, pick up the plates, pay taxes, etc etc. About a month after buying the darn thing we finally ubered down to the place and picked up the car. I took a picture and sent it to my family with the caption "MY CARRRRRRRR". I found out later that at that moment, my mom and dad had been in an accident while driving my old car back home in Texas. When they saw my text, they turned to each other and said "how did she know???"

Anonymous 2: coming back to my car to see that id been robbed, noticing a bag that belonged to me a few feet away on the ground and sprinting the rest of the distance to make sure the car was still there, seeing the broken glass all over the back seat. it was incredibly hot that day

Lucas: Getting out of prison, doing college

Anonymous 3:

2023

Art Klaudt: Getting married

Anonymous 1: stressed and excited about travel outside the country

ava: getting into the band the mars volta

kate: In 2023 my partner moved to a town further from the city for work. In September of that year I decided to move in with him. My apartment for the past couple years before that was my favorite one. It had been only a couple blocks from his mom's house (where he had lived), it was a cheap (for the location) little one bedroom with a fire escape we could sit outside on and nice sunny windows for growing plants. I loved it, it was "my" place. The fact that I had to leave was devastating, and especially because I was leaving it for a shitty little town with no gym or movie theater or good restaurants where nothing was happening and the apartment was bare and ugly with gross green carpet and a nasty bathroom, and not even a tub to soak in. To top it all off, for months I had been looking for a different apartment near the train station that we would both move into so he could move out of the shitty one and I could still get to work downtown. I was doing this essentially alone because he was too focused on work to help. He was too focused on work to help me pack or organize the move, and I had almost signed a lease for a place twice the price when he told me to back out of it because of the smoking/vaping clauses in the lease. It sounds terrible, I know. I'm not making him sound very good, and I was extremely angry at the time, but looking back it was the right thing. We would've been able to afford it but only just barely, and it would've been less space honestly.

Anonymous 2: walking back to the train after a concert. in a lot of pain in my joints but very pleased. meeting someone while waiting for the train back across the river who had also just come from the concert and realizing that we had spoken a few months prior on a dating app

Lucas: Meeting my friend collin prison

Anonymous 3:

2022

Art Klaudt: Awful evil experience with US customs at Dublin airport

Anonymous 1: riding the bus

ava: having a phase where i went a little crazy for a few months and stopped talking to everyone i know and got really into the band manic street preachers and spent all my time researching them and writing thinkpieces about them to the point where i went to the emergency room for not eating or drinking enough and working too hard

kate: This was the second year I lived in that perfect apartment by myself. At work I had a lot of friends (who have since been laid off unfortunately) and a lot of them lived in the same area as me. We organized a couple "house crawls" between a few of our houses, one of which was mine and another of which was my neighbor who shared a fire escape. So everyone arrived at their house and then at a certain point stepped out of their bathroom window to walk across the fire escape to my kitchen, where I had made nachos for everyone. It felt amazing to have friends and be throwing a party. A similar crawl happened around Halloween and I get them mixed up in my head, but at one of these everyone ended up trying to solve the codes in this wooden puzzle book on my living room floor for hours. It was like my ideal social experience, I miss and crave it.

Anonymous 2: moving from my first apartment into my second apartment. had to heft a bunch of my shit up 2 flights of stairs alone & had to move most of it on my bike, & then i had to go to work shortly after and i felt very bad physically after that

Lucas: I remember a specific situation where my ex gf sent guys to my house, all the stress and the court case it caused

Anonymous 3:

2021

Art Klaudt: Job interview at a telemarketing firm on Halloween with a man wearing Joker facepaint

Anonymous 1: complete nervous breakdown upon acknowledgement of death

ava: ran away from home under the influence of an ill-willed ex-friend

kate: I was prescribed an anti-anxiety medication for the first time in my life this year. I also finally worked up the courage to ask for a testosterone prescription. The endocrinologist was really uncomfortable to talk to. It was a televisit and she demanded my video be on. I was outside because it had been scheduled during work and I didn't want to be overheard, but it was also chilly out and I had my hood up, so it felt very illicit. She was asking me questions like she wanted to confirm I knew what T did and that it would be what I wanted. And I'll be honest, I didn't know if it would be (it wasn't), but that's why I was trying it out. All my answers felt deeply embarrassing. Anyways I got it prescribed and then the next soul crushing thing I had to do was go to the pharmacy and pick it up, and the thing is that it cost fucking $326 so I got a goodrx coupon to bring it down a little. Well obviously when you show up picking up a prescription with a girl name but the scrip is for testosterone their first thought is that it must be some kind of mistake. And then I'm there at the front of the line with everyone waiting behind me and they're like uhh are you sure?? and then I also have my little goodrx coupon for them to plug in so that's a whole deal they need to call over another pharmacist for help with, and that caused problems the next time I went to go pick up a different prescription and I had to tell them to switch it back to my regular insurance. But I got Androgel. And wrote the date I started it in the fog on my bathroom mirror. After a couple weeks I got scared that my voice was changing and my eyebrows were darker. I was also getting bad cramps. So I stopped taking it as regularly and heavily as prescribed, but I kept it around past its expiration date to use at times when the dysphoria started to hit hard again.

Anonymous 2: waking up to a message conversation telling me a friend had taken her own life. from fear at the first message to anguish & powerlessness. precipitated my first relapse into self harming

Lucas: Weirdly not many memories of this year, I remember I was smoking a lot of weed around this time though, no specific memories pop out of 2021 though

Anonymous 3:

2020

Art Klaudt: Walking around the cliffs near my parents house listening to Clube Da Esquina

Anonymous 1: on stimulants and obsessed with staying in my room reading and categorizing

ava: covid lockdown

kate: I finally graduated with my Master's in engineering and got a job, at a company I still work at, though things have evolved. I had actually applied to the company pre-pandemic for a different role, but they were hiring people for a team formed specifically in response to the pandemic, so in a way I have covid to thank for the last 4 years of my employment. I don't remember my first day as much as the interview and little I knew about how to interact with the recruiter vs the hiring manager or how many stages there would be, and how awkward it felt when they revealed it was actually for a "more junior" role for a contractor instead of being a full time employee. Like I hadn't qualified to be a "real" engineer but I did qualify to be a meat shield between them and covid. But the joke was on them because the contracting company actually miscalculated how much they wanted us to be paid and the hourly rate came out to about $104k/yr. It was wild to get out of college and immediately be making 6 figures doing a job that did not feel like it should be 6 figures, in the middle of a pandemic to boot. Anyways now I'm a real employee and making essentially the same lol.

Anonymous 2: i have a lot of trouble remembering things from this year. the only thing i can really think of is walking my dog around the suburban development my family lived in

Lucas: COVID lockdowns

Anonymous 3:

2019

Art Klaudt: Visiting my girlfriend (now wife) for the first time

Anonymous 1: choosing name

ava: every weekend in the spring taking the train downtown by myself and going to the record store and eating at the local pizza place and feeling very happy enjoying the independence

kate: I did acid for the second time in my life on the 4th of July as part of my partner's friend's tradition. It started off nice, out in a park by a lake, but then everyone decided to go to Wegman's for some reason RIGHT as we were all peaking. Let me tell you, do NOT go into a Wegman's on acid. It was so overstimulating. I remember needing to go to the bathroom and passing a rack of magazines and the repeating faces freaking me out. And just telling myself "I'm not gonna freak out, I'm not gonna freak out" while I did my business and got out. Then everyone wanted to ORDER FOOD for SOME FUCKING REASON which required TALKING TO PEOPLE and REMEMBERING WHAT TO SAY and I was like man I cannot do this. I tried to calm down outside and my partner ended up walking me back to the friend's house to chill out. (I learned later that the other two guys were also freaking out at this time but trying not to show it. lmao) When I closed my eyes I was seeing like a hyperrealistic hyperbolic burger bulging towards me and folding back in on itself. At a certain point though I looked at my partner's eyes glowing in the light coming through a dingy window and realized how gorgeous he would look in a brown suit. I told him this repeatedly and I stan by it. He needs a brown suit. He would totally rock a brown suit.

Anonymous 2: my final for one of the few classes i hadnt dropped out of yet in college consisted of going to a bar in the north end and playing the songs we had practiced together in front of a bunch of uninterested drunk people. it was cold and wet out but the most fun i had had in years

Lucas: I remember being in debate club, going to practices, and my debate partner

Anonymous 3:

2018

Art Klaudt: Walking around Glasgow during a snowstorm listening to the Units

Anonymous 1: became vegan

ava: in the summer, joining a network of music-related discord servers for the first time and meeting a bunch of people, many of whom are now my best friends. feeling like i had truly found “my people” for the first time in my entire life, feeling like the music world had opened up to me as i was exposed to so much more stuff than i ever had been before. me and my friends listened to a different album together every night, sharing our favorites and bonding in a way i had never experienced. a lot of complicated stuff would end up happening down the road but this summer was just pure unadulterated joy and wonder

kate: My phone reminds me of this often because for some reason it's the only thing I ever put into iCloud and it got copied onto my new phone while everything else I ever took pictures of I've manually moved onto my computer. But anyways my partner and I went to Cape Verde to visit an old couple he's friends with who are kind of like his surrogate parents. I tried learning Portuguese, and some of the Portuguese creole they speak there but didn't get very far and ended up never using it. We stayed on Mindelo, and in my mind the whole time I was fantasizing that I was in the Abarat, a book series I liked as a kid that centers on an archipelago where each island represents an hour of the day. I remember being most struck by the buildings there, which are old and colorful and gorgeous. Stray dogs roam everywhere, and there was a gas station down the road where you could get a coffee (espresso) and a ham toasty for a dollar each. Truly ideal. Also everyone drinks grog. We visited the top of a mountain, and there was a grog stand up there. And we had shots of grog. At 10am. On top of a mountain.

Anonymous 2: the directionlessness that comes with graduating high school and suddenly being told you are an adult. i have a particular recollection of standing in a wawa and looking at the cigarettes behind the counter. i couldnt buy them because the prior year my state had raised the age from 18 to 21 but it made me think about what it means to be an adult

Lucas: I remember my route home from school on bike

Anonymous 3:

2017

Art Klaudt: Taking acid for the first time

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: getting into the bands genesis, yes, and rush; joining the prog rock fandom on tumblr and making music friends for the first time

kate: This is when I moved to Boston, and I have a lot of memories from this year, a lot of goodbyes and a lot of hellos. But I think the one I mainly associate with it is walking in my old neighborhood one night after a rain, and listening to Darkest Dreaming by David Sylvian, and wondering what was next for me. I had orchestrated this massive life change entirely by myself and had absolutely no clue where it would lead. I was kind of mourning what I was leaving behind, which wasn't much, but I had worked very hard to make myself comfortable living at my parents' house, finding old friends who still lived nearby, finding hobbies and making art to keep myself sane.

Anonymous 2: in the stands at a football game because i had joined " pep band" & having a cheerleader that i sort of knew invite me to a party that halloween. i still remember exactly how she worded it at first

Lucas: I remember getting in a fight after school one day

Anonymous 3:

2016

Art Klaudt: The Facebook group "Big Gucci Gang"

Anonymous 1: autism diagnosis

ava: got sent to a PHP for a few months due to undiagnosed-autism-fueled school avoidance. the bus ride was long and scenic, the other kids were cool and interesting, and crucially, i had no homework, so the place became a bit of a safe haven for me. but the best part about it was getting into david bowie. he had died very recently so i thought it about time. i spent every bus ride there and back sitting alone staring out the window and listening to his discography in order, one album at a time, until i’d made it through all 26 or whatever the number is. those bus rides are some of the happiest and most fulfilling and inspiring memories i have. it changed my whole understanding of the world and myself.

kate: The day after Trump was elected I went to the gym even though I was a little scared to. And yeah there was a guy in a MAGA shirt there. Probably more people as well who were Trump supporters, considering it was Texas. But nothing really happened. I had started working out during a summer internship where everyone I was rooming with would go to the gym together after work, and kept up the habit after I finished it. I was thinking, my body is the only thing I really have any control over. And I bet it's capable of things I've never really even tried. So I would work out just to feel in control of something when it seemed like the whole world had gone insane.

Anonymous 2: the girl i had spent most of my time in high school in a difficult / tumultuous friendship with pulling me behind a pillar in the hallway to show me the scars on her thighs under her dress. probably the most sincere intimacy i had been shown at that point in my life & it made my heart race

Lucas: I remember watching political yt content, extra anti she type, and it was more prevalent because the election

Anonymous 3:

2015

Art Klaudt: Visiting the island of Barra and listening to Destroyer/Hex Enduction Hour/The Del Byzanteens/Twin Fantasy on the way there/back

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: getting obsessed with the a cappella group pentatonix. joining a twitter fandom for the first time to talk about pentatonix. staying in bed all throughout the end of that summer just watching every music video, vlog, live performance, etc they ever put out. starting high school and getting so excited when pentatonix (or their offshoot superfruit) would release new youtube videos because they would always go online right as my final study hall period of the day was coming to an end. pentatonix were my first contemporary obsession; it was a whole new feeling. it was an enormous event in my life when they put out their first fully original album that fall. the excitement i felt was unparalleled. plus their existence in the internet era (compared to my usual preference for 20th century rock bands) meant there was just heaps and heaps of stuff for me to watch and listen to and analyze and absorb into my being. i can’t even describe how much pentatonix meant to me that year.

kate: I graduated from college and was still clinging to this lab job I had on campus while I tried to figure things out. My boyfriend at the time's parents had offered to let me live at his house (with them) since I could no longer live on campus, until I could find an apartment or a job back in my hometown. But uh... I didn't really. His mom was really judgemental and controlling, even though she would be outwardly nice to me, and I could tell my presence was annoying her but my ex kept insisting it was ok. There were a couple times when she cracked and threw a big tantrum. Once was on his dad's birthday. She would say the most targeted yet indirect things to get under his and my skin, and it would escalate over the course of the evening to full on screaming at him later. I didn't know what to do except to walk out to the curb and cry and think about throwing myself in front of a car. It was traumatizing. But she had her own trauma going on, and abusive exes and even crazier sisters, and there was this whole drama while I lived there and his grandfather was dying that was just awful for everyone involved. Anyways in November everything came to a head and she threw a massive fit that culminated in kicking him and me (his "liberal-ass girlfriend") out. I remember packing and feeling weirdly calm, like the fear had pushed past some limit and saturated and become nothing. I stayed at a labmate's apartment that night and for the next couple days, quit my job and moved home. I tried to pay his mom $600 for letting me stay as long as she did but she didn't accept it. I accidentally left a box of my dad's records there in my hurry to get out. And he broke up with me a week after my birthday in 2016. So it goes.

Anonymous 2: school picture day i had a really fucked up dye job because i tried to make my hair pink without any help and i did not bleach it nearly enough to go a color that light. i was wearing a grey shirt with flowers on the arms

Lucas: I remember watching some political content on YouTube

Anonymous 3:

2014

Art Klaudt: Attending my uncle's funeral and listening to Of Montreal/Battles/The Flaming Lips/LCD Soundsystem on the way there/back

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: it took me a while to think of one for this year but i did. this was the summer i had my first proper crush on a girl and thus confirmed my suspicions i was bisexual. i had been aware of her for years because we attended the same theatre camp but this summer was the first time i really interacted with her. she was a few years older than me but shorter than me and she was cool and funny and pretty and talented and outgoing and shared certain “nerdy” interests with me and people said she was stuck-up but i just thought that made her even cooler. it was her last summer before she’d age out of the camp so on the last day i told her i really looked up to her and i was gonna miss her and she gave me a big hug. at home i doodled her name on my summer math packet and that’s when i thought to myself yeah, this is a real crush.

kate: My mid-college years are kind of a blur. I was on tumblr a lot during this time so most of my memories are online ones. I have to go through my blog archive... oh! here's one: around Christmas I decided to dye my hair powder blue, something I'd wanted to try since I was 14. I have pictures from Christmas 2014 of my hair when it was bleached blonde, so it might have actually been in the new year that I dyed it. But it was a whole affair where my friend Alyssa, who I have known since we met in Sunday school as children, and reconnected with post-highschool, volunteered to help me bleach, tone and dye it since she'd been dyeing hers teal for a couple years I think. She came over and we started with a little strip by my ear and went to Whataburger late at night while it was developing. It felt like such an adventure.

Anonymous 2: going to see a concert in a now-defunct venue in the middle of nowhere. the first time i had been to a general admission show in a smaller place without seats. i spent the whole night directly in front of the speakers & at the end of it my ears had been thoroughly fucked to the point that everything sounded high pitched

Lucas: I remember YouTube, but nothing specific

Anonymous 3:

2013

Art Klaudt: Meeting my 2nd cousins, having a long conversation with one of them who was into Panic at the Disco, listening to Animal Collective and Prefuse 73 on that trip

Anonymous 1: dropped out

ava: posting regularly on the “fab forum” on thebeatlesbible.com

kate: In my head this is the "best year of my life" though I don't know if it has been surpassed. In these years I had a habit of writing to myself every new year with an accounting of what had passed--which classes I took, friends I made online, things I did with my ex--and I remember looking back at 2013 and thinking it was particularly good. In the winter there was a freak ice storm and we took lots of pictures and slid around on the iced-over street at night. I emailed a professor asking about meeting to discuss something and then he didn't respond and I figured it was my fault so I sent another a month later like "Hi, did you get my email? or did it not warrant a response?" not meaning any disrespect but he got really offended and said he didn't like my tone, which was incredibly embarrassing

Anonymous 2: walking home on a very snowy day while playing panic at the disco on my ipod

Lucas: I have a memory of watching the YouTuber SSundee

Anonymous 3:

2012

Art Klaudt: Sheltering from the wind at the Gathering, Ewan telling all the lads that Tara(?) is "his" despite the fact that they only dated for a couple of months and had split up

Anonymous 1: becoming trans

ava: starting middle school

kate: I moved into an apartment with new roommates and I guess I had put that I was really introverted in the roommate matching survey, because they were all kind of... strange. One was a chess master who didn't speak much English, stayed in her room, and had a sleep schedule more aligned with her home country. One was literally never there. I would only hear her shower in our shared bathroom but I don't think I ever saw her face. I just know she had a couch in her room which was funny because we had NO furniture in the main room, just a camp chair and a TV on the fucking floor. And the third roommate was a real character. I liked her, and I think she was autistic. She definitely was. While we were moving in she spent the whole time telling me about her drawings of pokemon and creatures of her own creation, to the point that my parents ended up doing most of the furniture assembly while I just listened. She was very Christian and wrote Naruto/Harry Potter fanfiction and read gay transformers smut (even though she disapproved of being gay). She couldn't cook at all but also didn't seem to care how things tasted, and would eat things like beans on a plate or chicken breaded with wheat germ. One time the police came to our apartment because her dad hadn't heard from her in weeks and wanted to check she was ok. She was very sweet, but I think on some level deeply sad. One time she found a praying mantis and we both got really excited about it. I think about her sometimes and hope she's ok, and that she got over the Christian homophobia thing.

Anonymous 2: thinking to myself distinctly while i was in the hallways at school "i wish i was a girl, but im not trans because i just want to have been born a girl, not transition"

Lucas: I remember Obama getting elected and mixing up left wing and right wing, and not really understanding the difference

Anonymous 3:

2011

Art Klaudt: Enrolling at high school

Anonymous 1: closeted surveillance mind reading delusions

ava: going to the pool in the summer with my mom and sister. the kids yelling in the castle park next door, the smell of hot dogs from the snack shack, the black trash bags we put on the car seats to keep them from getting wet. the shiny silver seatbelt you had to be careful not to burn yourself with. blasting selena gomez & the scene’s album “when the sun goes down” front to back and singing along with my sister in the back seat.

kate: I graduated from high school. I also made my tumblr account. A few of my friends had them, but I think the deciding factor was my friend Chris. I don't even remember how we started being friends or why he shared his tumblr with me but we're still bros to this day. It was full of personal writing, and he was (and still is) very depressed and thoughtful. I would tease him about his sad posts about his crush, who I had deduced was the first chair violinist in our high school orchestra (and valedictorian). This is jumping ahead a bit but I feel like I can't talk about her without mentioning that she was brilliant, incredibly kind, and died suddenly and somewhat mysteriously in 2017, and it shocked everyone but I think hit him particularly hard. Anyways. That's how it all started. 13 years of a website becoming an indelible part of my brain.

Anonymous 2: my first guitar lessons with my middle school science teacher. i can still play a little song he taught me that was meant to help me memorize the pentatonic scale

Lucas: Can't think of any

Anonymous 3:

2010

Art Klaudt: Driving across the Cairngorms due to a car crash on the A9, listening to Wish You Were Here

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: the thing that comes to mind is just my 5th grade teacher’s face and voice, and the knowledge that this was the year my dad left (he came back a few years later) but that moment feels separate from the timeline of my life

kate: Pokemon Black and White were released and all of my friends were going to buy it and play together since there was a feature where you could visit a town in someone else's game. It was the first Pokemon game I had bought since Crystal. We played it in the orchestra room before school and I have a picture somewhere of everyone lined up on their gameboys on the band bleachers.

Anonymous 2: in an old church while on vacation, seeing tombs made me suddenly realize that i was going to die one day and i broke down crying

Lucas: I remember my best friend DeAndre from kindergarten, I also remember the layout of the classroom

Anonymous 3:

2009

Art Klaudt: Going to Dundee for dental surgery and buying the September 2009 edition of Top Gear Magazine

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: my childhood best friend and everything that we did together. playing wii games. making silly powerpoints. writing our “novels” thinking we were gonna be the world’s youngest published authors. going down to the creek in his backyard and inventing secret schemes where we intended to harness the power of lucid dreaming to make scientific breakthroughs that would save humanity from itself. playing “truth or truth” in the dark of his bedroom as i laid on the air mattress on the glowstick-scattered floor and he laid up in his bed. i think all of this happened over the course of many more years than just 2009 but 2009 feels like the nexus

kate: In 2009 I was 16 and caved to the pressure to make a Facebook account. I remember being at a friend's house and her showing me everyone's posts and that you could poke people and make a status and "become a fan" of things. I didn't like pictures of myself, so I think my profile pic was just a random abstract picture or a character or something for a while until one of my friends took a random picture of me on the bus from a high enough angle with lighting that made my skin look bone white that I deemed artistic enough to be acceptable.

Anonymous 2: sitting with my childhood dog while waiting for my mom to get ready to take her to get put down. older sister came up with a camera and took a picture of both of us. i do not know why

Lucas: Don't have any

Anonymous 3:

2008

Art Klaudt: Playing in the dirt/gravel behind my neighbours' house

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: the things i did with the few friends i had — a lot of inside jokes about pie and llamas and our attempts to write a play featuring our webkinz

kate: Either seeing The Dark Knight in theaters and the ensuing cultural obsession, or the Romney/Obama election. I was unfortunately a Republican-by-virtue-of-my-parents at that time and distinctly remember sitting with my friend (same one who took the Facebook picture actually) on the bus home and her trying to convince me Obama was a better choice. And she started chanting "O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!" and I chanted "Mitt Rom-ney! Mitt Rom-ney!" back. Extreme cringe. That entire year was cringe for me tbh.

Anonymous 2: going to my dad's friends house to use their pool, i remember them having a frankly ridiculous amount of pets. i was told it was upwards of 20 cats. they had 3 dogs, some lizards, birds, chinchillas, & probably some other shit i cant remember. it smelled absolutely awful inside their house

Lucas: I remember a specific time going to the movies with my mom as a kid, pretty sure it was 2008

Anonymous 3:

2007

Art Klaudt: Hearing the 12" mix of Blondie - Call Me at my parents' housewarming party

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: the general vibe of elementary school, my teacher playing us jonathan sprout songs, the ramps and the courtyard, laminated cartoon pencils and apples on the corkboards on the walls, checking out every children’s novel involving ghosts that the library had to offer . and piano lessons

kate: I had a really close friend group at this time, and my internal life revolved around Kingdom Hearts, Eragon, and the Neopets RP boards. My best friend was a girl named Lori. Between me, her, and our friend Nicole, we had all these silly schemes and plans and inside jokes and fictions. My mom worked in the front office, and one day when I had been home sick she brought me back a big piece of sketchbook paper in a ziploc bag, and it was a get well soon card they had drawn for me and had everyone we usually sat with at lunch sign, with things like my favorite characters telling me to eat soup but not with a fork. She said they had really missed me that day. I still have it. Between 8th and 9th grade Lori's dad kicked her mom and siblings out. They came and picked her up from a sleepover we were having at Nicole's house and I never saw her again.

Anonymous 2: my sister and i had friends that were a pair of siblings the same age apart as us and i remember going over to their house a lot. i remember distinctly thinking that it was strange/novel that their mom worked and their dad stayed at home. we spent a lot of time on their computer looking over each others shoulders doing a whole lot of nothing

Lucas: None

Anonymous 3:

2006

Art Klaudt: Visiting North Connell and listening to Massive Attack's "Collected"

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: my certainty of time is getting fuzzy but maybe reading nancy drew books on the balcony of the hotel room overlooking the beach, eating chocolate chip pancakes and fighting the breeze to turn pages. or was that the next summer

kate: This year sucked. Being 13 sucks the most, of all ages. I was a star student and my grades were dipping and I could tell my dad was disappointed. He was also embarrassing me by doing things like emailing my science teacher to say I found the classes understimulating, something I had never said, and certainly didn't want my science teacher to think I had said. I got an 81 on a report card and was crying in the car about it and my mom told me, I forget what spurred it, that my dad had said (about me) "maybe she's not as smart as I thought she was." I was really mad at him for years for that and kind of still am. But I'm also mad at her for telling me.

Anonymous 2: being brought by a friend's parents to see a concert they had box seats to. i dont remember much of the concert itself because when it started up a bunch of his dad's adult friends showed up and being surrounded by unfamiliar adults while loud music played overwhelmed me quite a bit and i hid behind the couch for most of it. i do remember there being free food though

Lucas: None

Anonymous 3:

2005

Art Klaudt: Massive storm that destroyed many houses

Anonymous 1: moved house

ava: my sister being born, and maybe my love for the show kim possible

kate: This would've been 6th grade so probably sitting in the computer labs waiting for my mom to get off work (secretary for the science department) and drive me home. This is where I would absorb internet culture. I learned of weebls-stuff via the popularity of badgerbadgerbadger.com and would watch a lot of those videos, I watched the Numa Numa kid for the first time here, the Emo song, the Llama song, and there was this geography game everyone in my social studies class had become obsessed with that also had a chatroom feature. I would go on there and pretend to be a girl from Ireland for some reason. The same usernames would be there often and I would be different people each time and collect information about them for fun. It turned out one person went to a nearby highschool and one day I DM'd her with everything I'd collected and she said "what the hell" to which I responded by telling her I had pretended to be all these people and finished by saying "be careful what you say on the internet" or something and then never logged onto that site again. I felt edgy and hackery at the time but in retrospect it was all really silly superficial info so maybe her response was less one of shock and horror and more like "wtf yeah and? why are you telling me this"

Anonymous 2: getting mad at a kid for shutting me down when i tried to play pretend & going to tell the teacher

Lucas: None

Anonymous 3:

2004

Art Klaudt: Bragging to my aunt about attending school for 8 hours per week

Anonymous 1: dog died

ava: being obsessed with the movie “the emperor’s new groove” and receiving a copy of it on VHS and being so ecstatically happy

kate: Bush/Gore. Again I was like compulsory Republican as an 11 year old so I was all for Bush getting re-elected and couldn't have articulated why. It was everywhere, I remember seeing the news reporting on stupid internet animations people had made making fun of the candidates. I had one friend whose parents were Democrats who would disagree with me and made me think even just the slightest bit about why I believed what I believed. She was also an atheist, and I remember thinking "that's craaaazy I didn't even know that was an option" and thinking she was wrong but also incredibly brave for having the guts to go against the grain.

Anonymous 2: having to share a bedroom in the finished garage with my baby sister because we didnt have enough bedrooms for all the kids

Lucas: Don't remember anything, this was the year I was born

Anonymous 3:

2003

Art Klaudt: 4th birthday party, receiving a flipbook about maths, learning the concepts of addition and subtraction for the first time

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: now that i think about it the emperor’s new groove thing might’ve been this year. or was this year my elvis year

kate: In 4th grade they got rid of the GT program at my school and the GT teacher became one of the regular 4th grade teachers. I had been in GT and loved her but I wasn't in her class, and I was jealous of the people that were. I felt like I "hadn't made the cut" somehow. Anyways my actual singular strongest memory from this time is a day when we had swapped classrooms so I was finally in her class and I was trying to see how far I could lean back in my chair without falling. I managed to get my entire legs cross-legged up on the desk before I started to fall. I do not remember what we were learning, I think it was grammar stuff I already knew.

Anonymous 2: walking down the street towards our house after we moved back from overseas

Lucas: Na

Anonymous 3:

2002

Art Klaudt: The most vague shapes and visions and synaesthesia; the song that provoked the vision of the woman in the yellow kitchen (probably by Moby or Lemon Jelly or Groove Armada)

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: fridge magnets of elvis and my fixation on his greatest hits CD and the home video of me “breakdancing” to “crazy little thing called love” by queen in my blue’s clues footie pajamas

kate: This would've been 3rd grade. I was old enough to enter the spelling bee alongside the 4th and 5th graders and managed to win 2nd place. The word I lost on was "barracks", which I had never encountered before, and the announcer's accent made it sound like "berx" to me. I still have the trophy, it's shaped like a bee holding a banner that says "spelling". When anyone asks me what achievement I'm most proud of I'm always tempted to say this.

Anonymous 2: playing with toy cars in a public park

Lucas: Na

Anonymous 3:

2001

Art Klaudt: Confusing a toy phone with a real phone in the playroom of a hospital while my brother was being born

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: i don’t remember

kate: I mean, 9/11 I guess. We were at recess and they brought us in and sent us home, and the rumor was that someone had robbed the bank across the street again since that was the reason we got pulled in from recess once before. But also, I think this was the year my dad made us a family website. He put some artistic flair into it and had it so the main page was a picture of our front door that you clicked to go inside. One page was a picture of him with his head turned upside down so his beard was his hair and his bald head was his chin. One was a picture of the bricks on the side of our house and he wanted to make it so you could click each one and they'd fly away. I found it on the wayback machine once and only one picture still survives, of my mom and sister and I standing in the kitchen all wearing the same old navy shirt with an American flag on it. I think that's why I think it must have been 2001.

Anonymous 2: too young

Lucas: Na

Anonymous 3:

2000

Art Klaudt: n/a

Anonymous 1: unknown

ava: i was born (i don’t actually remember that)

kate: The first thing that comes to mind is getting the new Backstreet Boys album, Black and Blue, in my Christmas stocking. I don't know why I loved them so much, my music taste has changed drastically since then but I was obsessed to the point of arguing with my cousin over whether Backstreet Boys or NSYNC was the better boy band. I don't remember if I was mildly disappointed with Black and Blue as compared to Millenium, or if it was just the name/cover that disappointed me. I think the latter, because I recall thinking the actual songs were slightly better.

Anonymous 2: too young

Lucas: Na

Anonymous 3:

1999

Art Klaudt: n/a

Anonymous 1: not alive

ava: i wasn’t alive yet

kate: Obligatorily, I want to say staying up to watch the y2k fireworks on New Year's Eve. But honestly it's probably everyone I knew at school getting hyped up about the new Backstreet Boys album Millenium. They would sing Larger Than Life at lunch and I'd be like WHAT ARE Y'ALL SINGING and they'd tell me I wasn't allowed to know or sing it unless I had the album. Ok now the brief Backstreet Boys obsession is starting to make sense to me, maybe it was a social status thing. But also Larger Than Life was a good song, I think it holds up but maybe that's just nostalgia speaking. They played it a lot at the roller rink I remember.

Anonymous 2: N/A

Lucas: Na

Anonymous 3:

1998

Art Klaudt: n/a

Anonymous 1: not alive

ava: i wasn’t alive yet

kate: It's a pity this doesn't go back a year earlier or I'd say the birth of my sister. I was 5 years old in 1998 and if I can summon up a single memory from that time, I think it's that I either started Tae Kwon Do or quit it after having done it for a year. I remember being a year too young, so probably the former, 4 seems way too young to be starting Tae Kwon Do. So yes, this is the year I started. I was so excited for it but I think I remember there had been a fire on the same street as the studio (maybe in the studio itself?) the day I was supposed to start, so it was delayed. I remember having a dream about it, that was like an aerial view of the streets we'd take to drive there, and the smoke billowing up from an unseen fire. Either on the day I started, or some other day when my mom was dropping me off, we found a little figurine on the ground in the parking spaces out front: a dog made of straw wound around sticks and colored with little black polka dots. I still have it and it's one of my most prized possessions. I always wonder who made it.

Anonymous 2: N/A

Lucas: Na

Anonymous 3:

1997

Lucas: Na

Anonymous 3:

Additional comments

ava: my memory got a little fuzzy at times but i hope this will suffice

kate: thank you, this felt good to get out

Anonymous 2: hi

Lucas: Send me a message on discord to lmk what you do with it, discord [...], we're in [...] discord together

Anonymous 3: Thanks!

About Me

I was born on August 15th, 1998 at the southern extreme of the American Midwest. If I could
further summarize the way my existence feels to me, in a manner that was to my satisfaction,
Lord knows I'd do it here. I am probably not unlike many others in this respect.

I can be reached at valleanenowe@gmail.com