Category: Reflections

Giving Up on Pretty: Capitalism, Feminism, and the Illusion of Control

“I’d like to think that through educating myself on the topic of the beauty myth, I’ve naturally come closer to adopting a body neutrality mentality; after all, it’s hard to want to play a game that you know is rigged.”

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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.”

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On Fanning Flames and Drowning: A Reflection of Grief and Fury

“I cannot unlearn that my fury is not just something that sparked and never died. It is born out of mourning. “

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We Added 200 Strangers on BeReal, and We’re Never Opening the App Again

“Hypothesis: people our age around the world are alone during a significant portion of their waking hours. And hypothetically, BeReal is the perfect observational device.”

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A Trip to the Orangerie

“In many ways my trip thus far had been haunted by Benjamin; every glimpse of the underground Metro lights, the carefully planned streets, the dimly lit bookstores brought some passage, some fragment of prose from his works to mind.”

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All My Dreams Wrapped Up in a Little Ball

Chaos reigns alongside Homer Simpson in this writer’s Notes app dream journal.

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Tongue Tied

In-between three languages, a writer reflects on how study abroad has opened her eyes to the creative opportunities in language.

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Flightlessness and Being Mine: On Black-Jewish Non-Belonging At Princeton

“I have to sift the hate out of Judaism where I can, the hate I have for myself, the hate other people have for us, and the hate I identify in certain Jewish communities directed toward women or Palestinians or Black people.”

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Remembrance, not Recollection

A writer reflects on history as a collective pursuit in his Jewish tradition.

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Burning

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

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Remember-Reels

“dark purple figs outside four window panes in the paws of a raccoon, beneath a velvet navy sky”

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Perfect Places

“What is it about Eastern Europe that makes underage, emotionally vulnerable people think those harmful, dangerous thoughts? What is it about Eastern Europe that I still, despite all of this, miss so very much?”

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