Category: Reflections

It Looks Like Paris, If You Squint

“She told me she was a writer, and when I left she gave me three books in French, on Proust, Vienna, and magic. It was a sweet thing to do, because our conversations had been mostly in English, and we tried French together like friends failing to be lovers.”

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Hunter

“The truth is that in every annoying, badly done Facebook meme, there is a grain of truth hidden somewhere. Because even the hunter puts down the rifle when the rabbit is served to him on a silver platter by strangers he’s never going to see again.”

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A History of Silence: Elision and Destruction in the New Mexican Landscape

“There’s power in not having to care. As Inez Guzmán remarks, the film Oppenheimer can leave New Mexico just as its subject did: apparently without a second thought. But there’s also power—more ambivalent, yes, but also more lasting—that comes with needing to pick up the pieces.”

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Phoebe Bridgers Killed My Dog

Summer, set to a somber soundtrack.

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A Case for Disgust

“And yet, God introduces Adam and Eve. Around them, creatures dance and indulge and huddle and purge. Birds shit humans. Dying men fart birds. He treats euphoria and terror with the same technical perfection, blurring the line between a familiar Earth and an alien world”.

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The Children’s Book That Hurt Me Most: Three Experts Discuss

A Nass writer seeks closure for Each Kindness, a children’s book without a resolution.

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On the Aesthetic Life

The ugly process of forcing beauty.

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The Meaning of Life According to My Inbox

Recently, my email account has doubled as my journal. I can’t stop writing emails. Not the usual, 10-liner, meeting set-up emails, but lengthy, rambling, floods of words in which I entirely reveal my personal vulnerabilities to recipients I have never … Read More

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The Construction of Concealment: Princeton’s Geo-Exchange System and Why We Can’t See It

What do we miss when we complain about construction?

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Take a Leave of Absence: It’s Easier Than You Think

A Nass writer investigates why and how students take leaves—and what it’s like to be gone.

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Orange Juice 1989

“Orange-wet fingers and the acid is on her eyes, on her cheeks, running down with the tears and cheap makeup. My father reaches toward her—she is wearing a black silk headband, and he tries to pull it from her hair to wipe her eyes. She yells at him in Greek and he retracts.”

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Imperfect Spaces: The Function of Closeness in Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love and on Princeton’s Campus

How space cultivates affection, or quells it.

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