As of last year, I have lost my status as a permanent resident of New York City. I have in many ways become a stranger to the concrete jungle that taught me that the world contained more than my five-person family and two-bedroom apartment located in the scenic neighborhood of Parkchester, centered in the middle of the Bronx, a borough known for little more than its poverty and baseball team.
Big Star are sacred to me – a summer devotional, everything that John Cusack and Emilio Estevez could never be for me, a holy confessor and mentor. I would be surprised if that other late auteur of American adolescence, John … Read More
William Shakespeare once wrote, “A fart by any other name would smell as stanky.” And it does: See toot, or passed gas, or broken wind, or cut cheese. Each euphemism refers to the same thing, and that thing is the … Read More
Pacifism may sound nice, but it is a hard doctrine to maintain: I struggled for years to reconcile my peaceful intuitions with the idea that we live in a violent world, and sometimes aiding those who are suffering might involve lethal force against those inflicting suffering.
“I know myself,” he cried, “but that is all.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise Oh, Francis. If only I could say the same. This last line from a book I recently pulled from the towering stack on my desk … Read More
This summer, I lived at the very northern end of the 1 train, in Riverdale, Bronx, New York, place names I’d unpack one by one like parts of matroyshka doll whenever anyone asked. Obviously, getting anywhere and back was a little bit of a pain but it was really fine, very feasible, and especially once my roommate and I figured out the quick changes, the express trains, and the fastest bus routes, the commute became a challenge, an adventure, a training in swiftness and staying cool.
I think that we’re all familiar with the Princeton Class of 2017 Facebook group, which heralds an exciting smattering of questions, ranging from “Who likes science?” to “Do you know the dimensions of Whitman dorm trashcans?” A few weeks before I got to campus, someone posted that he would be arriving at Newark Airport early in the morning. I was half-surprised to find that the thread grew into a web of people admonishing the author to keep his bags close and his eyes wide open.
“I miss the bonding that can only result from that mutual suffering, the singing in the shower, the conversations in the ballroom while we stretched our exhausted limbs, the sprint up the hill to dinner before our hair froze into icicles.”
