Category: Reflections

Telescoping Place

places you have lived, places you know better than anyone else, places in your mind, places you could inhabit, what it means to exist within a place

by , , , , , , , on

On Imperfect Apples, Mosquito Bites, and the Consciousness of Worms

“I like to believe our small acts make a difference, or maybe I just want to be a savior.”

by , on

Friendship, Inside-Out

“I was never the kid to get tangled up in chatroom relationships and online communities like many of my friends in middle and high school. I repent now, for the way I invalidated, even in my own head, the authenticity of their attachments. Laughter over Zoom is still laughter.”

by on

The Sunset Art: Thoughts on Photography and Travel

“For Sontag, photography gives the amateur tourist photographer a sense of control— but superficial control. Knowledge— but superficial knowledge. In an unfamiliar, foreign environment the camera offers the illusive feeling of possession and command, in a very real sense empowering the photographer to take something of the place with them as their own.”

by on

Through the Haze of My Mind

One writer searches for clarity and finds mindfulness.

by on

I Got a Peanut Allergy for My 19th Birthday

Two nights before my nineteenth birthday, I was studying for my last final exam, which was supposed to take place the following evening, spooning peanut butter into my mouth. Suddenly my tongue started to tingle and swell, my chest and neck began to itch, and my throat started to close. I soon found myself at the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro (PMC) with an epi-pen in my arm.

by on

John Wheeler

“Black hole.” “Wormhole.” These are terms familiar to any English speaker if not from science fiction literature and films, then at least from pinball machines and arcade games. For a generation raised on Star Wars they have become all too familiar, yet they have not been around for very long. Both the two terms and the theory behind them were coined by one man – the late Princeton Professor Emeritus John Wheeler – in the late 1950s and 60s.

by on

Lights, Camera…Checkmate

A Nass writer considers Netflix’s miniseries The Queen’s Gambit.

by on

Your Aunt Did Not Intend This

Confronting the tragedy of child labor.

by on

Burning

“The need to keep on reading was an unyielding wildfire.”

by on

The New Jersey Dream

In Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel _American Pastoral_, his protagonist, a Jew named Seymour Levov who goes by the nickname “the Swede,” sees his life turned upside down when his daughter turns terrorist and blows up a post office. … Read More

by on

Mango Mind-Body Problem

“Aam belongs in the homeland, the body says.”

by on