Category: Reflections

Arkansas is hip

Finding home in Bentonville, Arkansas

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The Life and Times of Anthony Veasna So

A look at the late writer and his posthumous debut story collection.

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Partial Recall

What I’ve realized is that I shouldn’t get complacent – the best years of my life won’t necessarily come to me; I have to pursue them.

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The Movement Towards Endings

“This isn’t to say that an ending has no value, for where the author leaves us at the end is always strategic and therefore important to
think about. However, we have grown too attached to endings.”

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The Lady and McQueen

The emergence of Lady Gaga’s alien-like back-up dancers—bedecked in all-white outfits of synthetic leotard, tall spiked crown, and go-go boots—from their perfect row of white coffins in an entirely white room announces from the outset that “Bad Romance” is going … Read More

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Barry

Barry (whose name has been changed for this article) is a gangly kid who looks to be somewhere in that stretch of late adolescence characterized by patchy moustaches. In another world, Barry, gregarious and talkative, would be captain of his school’s debate team, or maybe a theater major. He is funny and he knows it.

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Visualizing God

There is a debate among medieval Jewish philosophers about the permissibility of conceiving of God in physical form. Maimonides, heavily influenced by Aristotelian philosophy, lists the non-corporeality of God as one of the thirteen core principles of faith, and writes in his legal code that anyone who says that God has a body is a heretic with no position in the World to Come.

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Privileged Little Gay Boy

In the second installment of Mitchell Hammer’s column, he makes some nude friends.

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Butterflies

I was eight, on the farm in India, catching butterflies. The pastel powder of their wings crumbled onto our fingers as we held them shut. We’d lift them up for examination, watch them wriggle, realize they were nothing but glorified ants, lose interest, forget we had lost interest and try to catch another one.

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Sold on the Nass

Beginning the business team of the “nascent” Nass.

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Your Aunt Did Not Intend This

Confronting the tragedy of child labor.

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The Night Bus

As the Umatter bus passes Tower, it is stopped by a man standing in the middle of the street.  His arms are spread out above him and he’s staring into the sky as if deep in prayer.

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