Collide Issue 30: The Middle

ON THE COVER
Courtesy of Pam Steenwijk
Pam lives in The Netherlands and graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in 2015.
She states that she will never stop drawing.
To view more of her work, please visit www.pamsteenwijk.com
LETTER
FROM THE
EDITOR
"BETWEENS" IN A SEA OF
STORIES
The familiar fairy tale rhythms of “once upon a time”
and “happily ever after” have conditioned us to crave
beginnings and endings. But as March settles in, everyone’s
finally started writing down the correct year, the “fresh
start” feeling of 2016 has faded and we’re faced with the
dullness of the mid-semester weeks stretching ahead. Quick
to equate the middle ground with monotony, we miss the
importance of Act II of the narrative.
Being a student can feed a visceral fear of mediocrity—a feeling of invisibility within a sea of
multi-faceted students, all stuck in a phase of life that has partially dismissed childhood while
making a half-hearted attempt to enter the adult world. With this in mind, our staff chose to
dedicate Collide 30 to “The Middle,” engaging with the challenging expanse between genesis
and resolution. We want to celebrate the process of being en route (“In the Making”), finding
sparks of creativity and reconciliation amidst transition.
The middle of the story is often the part that requires the most courage (“Amid a Transformation”).
It can rob us of a sense of safe space or belonging (“Transitioning Out of Homelessness,”
“Third Culture Kids”) or leave us in need of a temporary escape from the cacophony of a
plugged-in life (“The Middle of Nowhere”, “Finding Your Center”).
Without the energy of a beginning or the incentive of a conclusion in sight, momentum can
waver. Compromise can seem daunting, especially on controversial issues such as modesty
when everyone seems to have a unique opinion (“The Midriff”). Many of our country’s ills,
from racism to polarized politics, don’t have a quick remedy or clear end in sight. It would be
easy enough to become callous with cynicism, but what would it look like to acknowledge the
scariness of uncertain victories and still move forward to pursue them? The middle—the area
of debate and undetermined endings—is no place for cowardice.
Though juggling many middle spaces can be overwhelming, I hope that as students we will
continue to reinvent and reconsider the plot points we inherit. As one character in Salman
Rushdie’s “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” explains, “no story comes from nowhere; new
stories are born from old—it is the new combinations that make them new.”
With the momentous occasion of our 30th issue, I want to appreciate the evolution of our
magazine, celebrating the writers and staff that have come before and the ones that will come
after. As we tackle critical and controversial topics surrounding culture, sexuality and identity
in this issue, I hope our content will catalyze bold conversations that will make the “middles”
of the world a little more interesting.
Editor-in-Chief, Maureen Wolff
www.theclause.org/collide • 5