someone is playing a game

in the house that i grew up in

Sep 17, 2022

this week’s Thought (singular)

it is perfectly possible to get so excited to sleep that you can’t fall asleep

this issue, like the previous one, is inspired by two pieces of, in the loosest sense of the term, media. the bridge of this song (Smile Like You Mean It by The Killers) and this tumblr post.

exhibit a:

exhibit b:

i talk about growing pains a lot, i know. but i’ve got something else to offer this time, something less heavy, i swear.

the phrase that comes to mind is ‘separated by time, connected by space’. there’s a new group of kids playing badminton in my old apartment every evening, 5 - 6:30 PM, after coming back from school. a different ten-year-old scribbling on the walls in the balcony of my old house. different high-schooler sitting in my seat on the school bus. generations of people making memories everyday, all of them inextricably linked. oh, that’s where you keep your water bottle in basketball class? that’s where i used to keep mine too, seven years ago!

i’ve got no big, pretentious words to say about this. it’s nice, is all. however much you try to isolate yourself, however enclosed you keep your person, and to whatever extent you despise being around people, it is the very nature of humanity to be connected. there’s no other way to be. you are always securely bridged to the world, to people you might have never met before, just by existing. now, isn’t that comforting?

blackcat — Photo by Brandon Griggs on Unsplash

English Recitation Competition

Camera Eulogia, Michelle Mitchell-Foust

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I want, at the moment, the number to indicate
a ratio, part of a proportion, because the measurement
of the earth depends on this, the balance among things,
the snow at the bottom of the hill, the gold garage light
caged in a tree, my love for my friend and the distance
between us, which I can’t bear.

Dunbar, Anne Spencer

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Ah, how poets sing and die! 
Make one song and Heaven takes it; 
Have one heart and Beauty breaks it; 
Chatterton, Shelley, Keats, and I—
Ah, how poets sing and die!

Do not trust the eraser, Rosamond S. King

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Do not trust the eraser. Prefer
crossed out, scribbled over monuments
to something once thought correct. 
Instead: colors, transparencies
track changes, versions, iterations. 
How else might you return
after discards, attempts
and mistakes, to your 
original genius?

A Poll!

Middle School Book Review

Violet Made of Thorns by Gina Chen

such an intriguing premise of an anti-heroine protagonist, magic powers, and supremely well set up for a sequel. fun plot, just the right amount of grimness, and a complicated friends-to-enemies-to-lovers romance side-plot. has some of my favourite themes like sinister court machinations and moral greyness.

A Picture!

*decor in an incredibly fine establishment in indiranagar*

The Good Side of the Internet

What keeping secrets does to you
I have secrets. So do you. So does everyone else. This is one of the many things human beings do — we hide stuff from other people.
But why do we do this? Are we afraid of intimacy? Are we ashamed of our past? And perhaps more importantly, what does all that secrecy cost us?
Glen McCurley Strangled Carla Walker in 1974. Was She His Only Victim? (investigative journalism, true crime, tw: some graphic descriptions of murder)
McCurley was living a quiet life in Fort Worth when new DNA evidence linked him to the notorious crime. Police suspect it wasn’t his first murder—or his last.
The Secret History Of The Internet’s Funniest Buzzer-Beater
Do you know that video of the kid who gets nailed with a full-court basketball shot? That might sound vague, but I suspect that anyone who remembers the pre-YouTube internet, when there were like five videos in total, probably does.
From Kabul and beyond, a year of Taliban rule in Afghanistan
An airfield, which one year ago was the scene of a panicked tide of people desperate to escape, is now much quieter and cleaner. Rows of white Taliban flags flutter in a summer's breeze - billboards of the old famous faces have been painted over.
What lies beyond this gateway to a country which was turned upside down by a swift Taliban takeover?
Exilium Vita Est: The Island Home of Victor Hugo
Emma Jacobs takes us on an illustrated journey of Hugo’s writing life in exile on Guernsey, where he completed Les Misérables.