introduction

Letter from the Editors

Think back to your first high school biology class. The saying “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” might be the first thing that comes to mind. But perhaps it is also among the sayings “opposites attract” when learning about magnetism, or “like dissolves like” apropos polar compounds in chemistry, or “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” in Newtonian physics. These few universal mementos from the ‘good ol days’ of our childhoods are the foundation from which we build our specialized understanding. But even as the very basic constituent parts of our knowledge of science — the subatomic particles of our scientific enterprise  — they contain profound truths, truths that we make it our mission to explore in this issue.

There are sayings from our early humanities courses that enjoy the same prominence. “Show, don’t tell” is perhaps one of them, alongside “history repeats itself.” These tidbits of universal truths — such common utterances that they’re veritable cliches — need not be relegated to the exclusively ironic spheres. If we take a moment to revisit our first experiences in the sciences and the humanities alike, we’ll see that they are equally factual as they are figurative. The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell in the sense that it is the locus of metabolic aerobic respiration and ATP synthesis, but it is also not the powerhouse of the cell in the sense that it is not an entirely self-contained system. Where did this power come from to enter said ‘house?’ 

All the molecules and compounds – like ADP or FMNH2 or FADH2 – must have come from somewhere in order to be processed by the mitochondria — the ‘house’ — and be ultimately productive for the cell. Now that we’re examining these statements more closely, doesn’t “opposites attract” seem to blatantly contradict “like dissolves like?” If “every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” then how can history “repeat itself;” wouldn’t history react to itself in some opposite way that would cancel things out in the long-run? And anyway, how can we “show, don’t tell;” are we not writing words — telling you something — after all?

We aim to do both, to show and tell, because things are rarely so simple, so black-and-white, as they seem. In a multidimensional enterprise across the undistilled sciences to the pure humanities and arts, we attempt to elude genre, elude definition. Much of our work spans all genres equally as it seems to stand outside of any genre, seems to hide the truth of everything in a statement that may at first present as nothing extraordinary. But that’s precisely it; we blur the distinction between ‘show’ and ‘tell’ as with ‘powerhouse’ and ‘not-powerhouse,’ opposites ‘attracting’ and ‘dissolving,’ between positive, or progressive feedback loops and negative, self-canceling cycles. Most importantly, we blur the distinction between the sciences and arts not in an attempt to negate either but to instead profusely affirm the necessity of both. It is only in their relation to another that they may exist themselves. 

We are not the first to do this. Mark C. Baker’s The Atoms of Language (2001) uses the field of chemistry, from Greek khēmeia ‘transmutation’, to explain the linguistic paradox of translation. Substances built from atoms can transmute into other substances with radically different compositions; languages built from parameters can translate into other languages with radically different grammars. Likewise, we are transmuting and translating the vastness of scale into its minutia, and vice versa. 

The sayings we learned are fact as much as they are figurative. They are scientifically empirical as much as they are literary, anthropomorphized, empathetic. They are essential qua philosophy as much as they are evangelical vis-à-vis theology. Or, at least, they can be, and are to us. But perhaps the best word for them, these glowworm tendrils of bioluminescent, seemingly miraculous, magical mementos is “ecstatic.” They are ecstatic; from the Greek ekstasis, “to stand outside of oneself,” the statements ‘stand outside of’ any single definition, any single application, any single discipline or genre.

Maybe these statements are our carbon, to which everything else is bound — organized, structured, made meaningful and functional — but maybe these statements are halogens — highly reactive and potentive. Maybe they are radioactive, transformative in identity — in essence — and bearing great power in warfare and in the construction of crucial technologies alike. With great power comes great responsibility. 

Here’s another truth: the pen is mightier than the sword, so we write — or draw, or compose — because there is power in synthesizing the dialectic of sciences and humanities, in reaching across space, time, application, discipline, and genre, to construct, in this issue, a world of scale. And it’s weighty. With this vast potential,   we reconsider what it means to construct relationships, stories, to elucidate truths — the task to make rather than break in this new territory. We think responsibly, powerfully, so that we, as adults, permit ourselves to return back to our former, child-like states, not of ignorance, of something grasping toward a tabula rasa of potential. Of course, the word power is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *poti-, sharing the same root with words like “potential,” words like “possess,” like “omnipotent.” Maybe we’re all of these at CORTEX. If matter is metaphor and the environment is ecstatic, then our product shares in poti, possesses potential, power, omnipotence, even. And so, “scale” finds one of its many roots in the Latin scandere, “to climb,” and we invite you to climb alongside us in this issue, in our mission to erase the border and reveal liminal truths. In our world that is surreal, avant-garde tender, return to a child-like state of wonder, from poetry to protein to subterranean to sea, material ecstasy of indelible poti. 

Our Process

In the earliest days of working on this issue, we were astounded by the possibilities of what we could write about. We filled up the walls of a basement room in Harkness Hall with scrawled possibilities. Blue ink tally marks consumed the corners of each Post-it note. Underwater worlds, was one possibility that sparked support. Another was mind city. Another, shared adventure. There was an early morning in Bass Café where we huddled around circular tables that we had pulled together, staring at our shortlist of themes that had made it past rounds of heated discussions. What-ifs murmured and rippled through the air. There was a sense of exhaustion and eagerness that filled this meeting – similar to most others we have. 

There was one theme we hadn’t given much thought to. It was only a few words – teeny tiny things and big, big things. It was much more colloquial than the others. It wasn’t surrounded by supporting bullet points of subsequent ideas. And yet – as we came to it, it seemed that there was a sudden pause. It seemed to sink in. Everyone’s eyes were fixated upon it. 

There was something about the phrase and its innocence that generated a tide of inspiration. Ideas began to pop up – not grand, ambitious ones for the skeleton of a large creative project, but simple, little ones that took root, like the seeds of plants that had drifted down into the soil. Look at this New York Times article on the greatest sea animal ever to exist. Without the constraints of gravity, it kept growing. A researcher’s reconstructed GIF of it passed around the table, awe-filled chuckles at its colossal spine snaking through the water. What if we did something with whales in a fishbowl? Nods, smiles. There was a simple wonder to imagining the most sublime, vast scenes shrunk down to clay models we could hold in our hands. What about something silly – like an enormous cat the size of a house? People loved it. It brought us back to our childhoods. And there was room for detail, for learning. What if we did research on what happens to a bird’s internal body as it grows larger and larger – the kinds of adaptations necessary to scale up an organism? 

The only responses we had were more questions. Rather than considerations of logistics, wonders about feasibility, and arguments about trajectories, the theme of teeny, tiny things and big, big things seemed to spark a child-like curiosity. When we were young, we loved both dollhouses and mountains. We were given the opportunity to consider what it would mean to construct these. The stakes were low, but our hearts were big. Thus began a semester-long project that spanned from early January to mid-May of 2023: every weekend, we chose randomized rooms across Yale’s campus and workshopped every piece in the issue. Illustrators considered how to best represent the works of the writers, and musicians composed soundtracks. Every room was filled with a kind of subtle simplicity, the knowledge that even if we never made it to the end, at least the process was teaching us more about the architecture of a poem. 

Reflecting on the issue, we are beginning to consider what message, exactly, it is, that we want a reader to walk away with. We’ve spent quite some time asking ourselves questions about scale this semester, and – we hope – discovering answers. Each question, and each answer, are unique to the individual stories they inhabit, that they roam. 

Will Archacki’s “Monumental,” for example, brings us to a weather station which has disappeared underneath the presence of an inexplicably colossal hole in the ground. His story asks us questions about which relationships in our lives are more meaningful than they appear, braided into our memories forever by odd memories so inexplicable they are burned into our hearts. Nathan Apfel’s “The Rise and Fall of the Naked Mole-rats” makes us wonder about the incremental increases of scale that lead to something beyond human control – makes us ask ourselves why we fear the collective of mole-rats that are beginning to learn to speak, to read, and to purchase stocks. We venture from a crew of cosmic whalers who hunt the tzitzis, enormous creatures prowling through space who feed on the remains of dying stars, in Mela Johnson’s “All the Way Up,” to the simple orange unpeeling in two hands in Leander He’s “four little poems for things bigger than themselves.” Adam Tufts, in “Where’s Waldo?,” asks us to examine the painful reality of entropy through a jaunt in the Waldoian universe, begging us to pay attention to the transient beauty of order within human lives and within the cosmos – and Michael Gancz brings us through their 14-minute long composition, “scale sequence,” where each note toils and trembles, limitless.

We are grounded in the soil of these wondrous stories and their wondrous little – and vast – worlds. Every sense heightened and magnified; the sorrow and curiosities felt by the characters are written across their wide-eyed faces. The fiction and nonfiction in this issue intends to explore the exquisite pointillism in our lives – to convey how much is held inside one individual, and how tender each of their breaths are. There’s nothing quite expansive enough that can’t be captured by poetry – no held breath, no deluge of time, no sensation of hope, or hopelessness, which cannot be wrested down to the page. We’re overwhelmed by emotion even moving through periods of blankness. They are as soft as walls of clay; you can feel the powder sifting beneath your fingers.  

What can scale capture? (Chaos. Entropy. Stars.) (Can it really?) What can’t scale capture? (Grief. Curiosity. Regrets. Longing.) (Or can it?) 

We have spent quite some time thinking about and constructing these works. They form something like a connected fabric, each building off of the world of the last. During one of our first meetings of the semester, we gathered in a room where the walls of wood were watery with the light of winter. We split into groups to simultaneously workshop and provide feedback to one poem, which was that day’s focus. We all decided, separately, to read the poems out loud – to consider the architecture of the poem, to feel it moving through our mouths. There was something like a rough and imperfect chorus for less than ten seconds before we all fell out of harmony, some readers faster than others. Still, there was the precious moment when we could all hear each other repeating the same words, but the pauses swelling at different moments, how there is a careful chemistry between each reader and each poem. Poetry salves the ache when everything within us fragments and spills over the borders that we draw for ourselves. It holds scales that nothing else can. 

Scale is built out of the notes of individuals becoming a chorus. Art examines this process of extracting the brokenness of the individual into a pattern of the collective. Scale is intrinsic to our lives. It’s in how much we sleep, how much we laugh, how much we cry. It’s in how much caffeine we consume when we crunch out our problem sets. It’s in how many years we live. In making an issue about scale, we’ve made an issue that connects us all.

With love, curiosity, and light,

the CORTEX editorial team

Who We Are

The team of editors who worked on this issue is here. Every editor wrote, illustrated, composed, edited, and workshopped.

Say Hello

p.s. We want to hear your reactions, your conclusions, and your curiosities. Email us at cortexmagazine@gmail.com with your questions, suggestions, arguments, and responses to pieces – or if you’re interested in getting involved with future issues.

Thank You

Great thanks to Cleo Guerrero, Elisabetta Formenton, Maya Thompson, Jordan Hershman, and Laura Zeng for helping brainstorm, providing assistance with layout and design, and being subjects for photography for this issue.

Without further ado –

Welcome to the spring 2023 issue, SCALE – made with love.