Category: Reflections

Akua Banful

I have always thought that knowing how old you are is an important part of who you are. Your age lets you know what kinds of things you should be doing, and what is expected of you by wider society. My birthday has always been an unshakeable fact, as it is for most people I know.

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Sendak Send-Off

An appreciation in parting.

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Mercury in Retrograde

“If I fit so perfectly into astrology’s puzzle, why wouldn’t everyone else?”

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Empty Spaces

“Even though I said that I wanted to fill in all this empty space around me, I’ve also come to realize that I need some space to be empty.”

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Reading Salinger on the Train

The link above the rest of the page was fresh and in red. It was urgent, it seemed. “J.D. Salinger, reclusive author of _The Catcher in the Rye_, dies at 91.” A few weeks ago, coming back from winter break, … Read More

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Pardon My Deutsch

There’s a particular brand of shame that comes with being a tourist, particularly as an American. Especially in Europe, American tourists are almost universally received with a mixture of annoyance and exasperation, the kind usually reserved for flies buzzing around the ear or children crying on airplanes.

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On the Shore of the Amygdala

“It’s not the calm before the storm, but the cohabitation of serenity and calamity. It captures the future’s grasp on the present; anxiety is in the very air.”

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Only Curling, After All

“There are three types of curlers: the competitive, the prepubescent, and the beer-drinking. I have played with all three types in roughly equal measures.”

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Disney, Belated

It was difficult to pay attention to anything but the mass of people that seemed to constantly surround me. Throughout the day, I found fears of terrorist attacks—or disbelief at how a terrorist attack had not yet occurred at the park—infiltrating my mind. I remember being packed into a bus on the way from our hotel to the park, standing with my pale tourist arms and legs rubbing against child limbs and moms’ Bermuda shorts, and thinking how perfect of a target we would be.

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Boston

Probably wearing an oversized baseball cap and a big, sloppy grin, at three years old I stepped onto a characteristically purple and yellow car on the Old Colony Line Railroad with my father. The line extends from Boston down to Kingston, my hometown, and Plymouth, where the rock is, both about an hour away from the city. After decades out of service, the line had just been rebuilt, thanks in part to the concrete my dad poured.

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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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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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