Category: Reflections

A Day, and a Shura, in Zaywalat hawza

If you haven’t seen _The Hurt Locker_ yet, don’t. Watch _Groundhog Day_ instead; it’s much better, and it will also give you a far better sense of what the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are like. That’s not an original … Read More

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Absurdistan

Last night, the carrier rocket sent a special container with the sacred symbols of Turkmenistan: the flag and the unique philosophical work by Saparmurat Niyazov, Ruhnama, to the near-earth orbit from the Baikonur space center. Ruhnama is a messenger of … Read More

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The Loaves and the Pitches

The Church of Scientology New York stands right in the center of New York’s Theatre District on West 46th Street. The building blends into the glitzy fare, as loud in its own right as its neighbors—such mainstays of the famously … Read More

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PG Teen Rebellion

“We have a report of three men running out of the forest and chasing a vehicle, one of whom was wearing a trench coat and a hat.”

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Imagery and Anxiety

Casually, if cautiously, a throng of men encircles the scarred metal of an American fighter jet, the US F-15. A few, more daring men climb the torched cockpit, and children observe with rapt interest. This first American lapse in the … Read More

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Last Summer

One time in Costa Rica my friends Laura and Tiffany and I trespassed through a farm to a nice little waterfall in the middle of the rainforest. It was fun to be in the rainforest without supervision. We walked through … Read More

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Premature Celebration

While sitting in my common room Sunday night, I checked my phone to see a missed call from a buddy of mine at the Naval Academy. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Deciding that I would call him back the next day, I opened my laptop and saw the same friend had just posted a status. It was simple, but shocking: “Osama is DEAD!!!!!”

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Beach Baby

Rarely is one so revised by experience, which like a river washes away the calcified sand of the soul to describe itself there anew. Rare, too, is the ability to recognize this revision. School had just ended, its shoulder-weight just … Read More

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Girl Meets Pig

One of my primary goals on my family trip to China just before school started this year was to get some cool art for my room. Walking down the aisles of the antique market in Beijing, I had a feeling … Read More

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Cerebral Flatulence

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

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Levinski Park: Abroad, Alone, and Adrift

My friend James is soft-spoken; he talks instead of screaming and whispers instead of talking.

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An Apple a Day

It’s far more common and less noteworthy for the young to obsess. We see it often, a girlish (or boyish) obsession with pink, followed by a girlish (or boyish) obsession with Edward Cullen. So I admit myself guilty of a … Read More

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