SUR_ISSUE_5

Life is a series of moments,
touchstones, and memories.
We record these in our mind,
in photographs, stories, music
and artwork. Everything
creative that we put out into
the world is a celebration of
life, its dynamics, and growth.
SUR is platform to share these
experiences and creations.
+ California based and inspired
Contributors:
+ Issue 5 >> wish you could’ve been there
Wil Deas
Sierra Evans
Christian Moses
Samuel Barker
Evan Burkin
Editor:
Daniella Islas

Christian Moses

Jan 30, ‘18
L.A.
the day is almost over and this trip comes to
an end. I am going to miss L.A.. The city has
been nice to me. It has been a learning
experience.
Tripping on my state of independence, I see a
man pushing a Dollie with approximately 10
large crates up an incline. The stack taller
than her. I just walked out of a Starbucks, $20
in my bank account, wondering how I am
going to get home.
Did you know there are new volcanic islands
that are 10 years old. Lizards fight for their
right to see the next day there. Everyday they
run across a pit of snakes who work together
to fuck them up.
My first morning in L.A. I walked around
Chinatown in search of a market. I found one
but before I did I saw a man with his
shopping cart on the corner. The heat dried up
his sweat, and dirt hung onto his face. He
gave me a nod as to say hello, and without
hesitation, bottoms up. A decently sized bottle
of gin slid down his throat.
Bad egg alert. Chino hills. Peaceful parking
lot. I was slappy-ing a red curb, we don’t
have those shits back home. Bored and
somewhat sketched out by these two young
aimless men, I returned to where my people
were sitting. They were all standing now and
one filled me in on some drama.
So a kid ran out of a shell gas station with a
12 pack of modelo — I saw that blue box two
meters from where the kid lay, back to an
officer’s knee, face in the dirt. He didn’t pay
for it, and some hometown hero saw it as his
duty to hop out of his car and throw the teen
into a headlock, till backup arrived.

Santa Barbara
Samuel Barker
I remember eating burgers
And I remember eating tacos
And I remember eating scallops
And I remember some random place in the street that was
Just too far
Away from you and
Away from where we were
Away from it all and
I couldnt go that far
Or be that far
Without a promise of some sort
So I waited until my parents were ready and we went and
ate bad food and I drank bad beer but it
Wasn't too far
Away from you.

A Garage Sale
Sierra Evans
I resented the fact that my parents wanted me to go through all of
their junk. I had told them time and time again that I had contained all of
my belongings to two boxes in the garage. But, when I walked down the
cement path to my driveway, I realized that wasn’t true. Plenty of my stuff
was muddled in with theirs and I was going to need to go through it before
the garage sale.
It was mid-January and in a very New Year’s resolutionary kind of
tone, my parents had told me that they were finally getting a divorce. This
came three years after an initial announcement of this nature and, though
the sunny California winter seemed optimistic, I had somewhat of a cynical
“I’ll believe it when I see it” attitude. And what a bizarre thing – being so
hopeful that your parents’ relationship would finally end.
I’m insanely sentimental, which is kind of ironic I guess, and Jesus,
did I love to hold on to things. I had middle school movie stubs and every
stuffed animal that I’d ever owned, dried out corsages, mixed cds, and
handwritten notes from my grandmother. We rifled through Playbills and
Dodgers memorabilia and sorted most things into the sale or trash piles,
with an occasional memento being saved. My high school best friend and I
were on the lookout for affordable apartments and, while this harsh sort of
purge was pretty inevitable, it was probably for the best.
I kept milling around the driveway with car keys in hand and
sunglasses on. My plan was to look at the boxes that they had set aside for

me and leave to run some errands, but Kodak envelopes and photo negatives
seemed to come out of every folder and binder that I picked up. Bits of my
childhood were strewn across the concrete and all of the neighbors and their
dogs were staring as they walked past. Leaving it up to my parents to decide
what was important just seemed wrong.
When I got to my elementary school photos, I knew exactly which
picture I would find. I knew which grocery store he worked at, which bar he
walked to with our friends, and it was only a matter of time before I ran into
Tommy. After over twenty years of platonic friendship, we had decided to
date and it had been two months since he decided that we should stop. I only
had to flip through a few in the stack before I was holding on to an image of
our preschool class. He was sitting in a tiny chair and I was standing right
behind him. There was no trace of the beard that he’d grow after college, but
I couldn’t help thinking that his hands looked almost exactly the same. We
were four, maybe three, and I thought that it would be a lot harder to see him.
I smiled as I glanced at the picture. I even sort of laughed, “God, what a
mess.” The front yard came back in to focus and I saw all the pieces that my
parents had collected - bicycles and kitchen appliances, Christmas
decorations and hallway prints. I thought about how there was so much of it
that I didn’t recognize. There were art pieces that had never hung in my
house and furniture I had never seen - indicative of some earlier life or the
townhouse we lived in ‘till I was two. I didn’t get why they had hung on to
all of it. I guess, sometimes, you just sort of end up with stuff.
I handed my mom some ceramic piggy banks and vacation key chains
and she tossed them into a couple different piles. She walked toward a big
moving box near the back of the garage and opened it up. “I know it might be
brutal...these are your dolls….” She kept talking, but it was sort of this
mumbling- as if she was thinking and processing quicker than she could
speak. We looked into the box and though it contained six mismatched,
unremarkable dolls, I knew we both really saw my grandmother. Her mother,
Betty Jean, had sewn all of their clothes, fixed all of their hair, and sat with
me as I gave them their names. As soon as she arrived for each visit to our
house, I would take Gram’s hand and lead her to my bedroom, where I
quickly shut the door and we picked up where we’d left off. Baby II, Amelia,

Sophie, Ashley, Caitlin, and Molly were a mismatched family. They went
on vacations and sang in talent shows and their world was bigger than any
that existed outside of my head. Gram gave them each voices, as she taught
them to sing and sat with me for hours, only stopping to peek out at the
news on the television. Thoughts started darting through my brain, like my
conscience was on fast forward - Why are they making me do this? How do
they expect me to get rid of this stuff? Why did I think that this would be
easy? Before either of us took our eyes away from the content of the box,
my mother’s mumbling turned firm. “We can’t. I don’t know what I’m
thinking--,” I hadn’t even realized that I was crying, until she looked at me
and put the box down. “--I’m not even going to entertain the idea. I’ll just
tell your dad ‘no.” The pit at the bottom of my stomach seemed to fill and
she took hold of the side of my arm. “We’re not going to.” The conversation
couldn’t have lasted more than ten seconds, but I could have stayed there
with her for hours. She walked back upstairs, without saying anything else,
and went inside.
I sat down on the cracked pavement of the dusty driveway and
looked at all of our junk. In a week, there would be a garage sale. We’d have
to see what we could get for everything, and the rest we would throw away.
When my mom came back downstairs, I had just found this cheesy portrait
of the three of us from a vacation in Las Vegas. She put down a long plastic
container and grabbed the stack of preschool photos and other knick-knacks
that I’d saved. She put the three tiny piles into the transparent box. “This
will be yours,” she didn’t mumble this time, “--wherever you end up, you’ll
take it with you.” I looked up at her, as her eyes landed on the portrait in my
hand. “So for now, it’s just deciding what you’re going to take.”

Awake, Spaceman
William Deas

A Light Picnic
Evan Burkin
Seeds of sunflower light—the road
a flutter—dandelion winds
hold promissory notes
a sandwich shared
over a blanket of moss
between open lips
full on the crisp air
Her lover’s mouth
holds feelings
that bridge from the eyes.
They spot the sponge of mulch
holding the blue of her vein.
In the dandelion winds
feet can’t carry
the pace of growth
Eternities are spent
under a young child’s foot.
Its light crash
carried away.

+ surcreate.com