post- 03/24/24

Cover

on on photography encounters with cameras, memory, and Susan Sontag

by Alissa Simon Illustrated by Emily Saxl

I forget exactly when I first became uneasy with my photograph.

All I know is that at some point I stopped smiling with my teeth in pictures, having realized that it revealed the gums I believed were too prominent. This small act of control was little comfort: My smile still burst out, too easily, in the infinite moments outside the camera. But I couldn’t help but feel deeply troubled by the records of myself frozen in candids and staged family photos—a self I was finding increasingly unwieldy at eleven, twelve, and thirteen.

You can read the change in my face like a book. My closed-mouth smile begins to appear in sixth or seventh grade and lingers nearly ten years later. It’s there, thin and anxious, in the photos from the early days of my freshman year, around the time that I started my first seminar at Brown. It was a gender studies course in a stuffy Page Robinson classroom where we read bell hooks and Alison Bechdel. It was there that I was formally introduced to Susan Sontag, an essayist who wrote on contemporary culture and is famous for, among other things, popularizing the idea of camp. In class, we pored over excerpts from her 1977 collection On Photography and debated her searing claims about the role of the camera, the photographer, and the photo in American life.

Sontag’s attitude towards photography is mercurial, marked by fascination and distrust in equal measure. In her essay “In Plato’s Cave,” she writes: “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.” She refuses

Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers,

Spring is here! Or rather, the marker of spring for those of us too deep in the academic trenches to enjoy the past few sunny days on the Main Green: spring break! Finally we can all take a moment to relax, travel, or just get caught back up on work. I personally will be traveling to Chicago to visit my younger sister, who is currently a college sophomore. While I’m crashing on her apartment couch, I expect to be transported back to a simpler time. What was I even doing sophomore year? I honestly couldn’t tell you. Definitely not worrying about networking and career opportunities, like I am now. Perhaps back then I had an enthusiastic joy and a bright outlook on the world. Ah, the innocence of youth! Hopefully I will emerge from this week

to downplay the power of the photo, arguing that it is all too easy for the camera to deform the image it captures. “Photographs,” she further posits, “alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.” Unlike other forms of representation like the painting or the novel, the camera makes a claim to authenticity that we should regard with suspicion. Like the Greeks in Plato’s cave, we may find that we have abandoned the real and surrounded ourselves with shadow images in its wake. ***

I was electrified. I came home from my first semester of college armed with Sontag’s words as a defense against unwanted cameras. “Photography is a violent art,” I needled my mother during a charged stand-off at Thanksgiving when I caught her sneaking pictures of me. Exasperated, she circled the counter brandishing her phone while I hid for cover behind the mashed potatoes.

“Why can’t you just be normal about this?”

I snapped something back about the language of “shooting” and “taking.” It was more than worthy of an eye roll, my appropriation of a landmark text for my own teenage concerns. But I was all bared teeth, looking to annoy my mother into submission. I could feel my wrinkled blouse, my puffy cheeks, my hair sticking to my forehead all wrong, and I was itchy with panic. It worked; she leveled me with a long look of disappointment, then turned to the stuffing and let me be. Immediately, the victory was hollowed, made foolish.

I wanted to believe my hatred of my picture was

with a fresh perspective on both the past and the ever-looming future. I would also settle for just a decently normal sleep schedule.

In post- this week, our writers are also looking at things with fresh perspectives. Our Feature writer explores her relationship with photography through the lens of a Susan Sontag essay. In Narrative, one writer takes a closer look at fourleaf clovers and the manic-pixie-dream-girl trope and the other reflects on her familiarity with her native language, Korean. This week for A&C, one writer reviews the La Solar music festival and our other writer shares lessons she has learned from her older sister. In Lifestyle, one writer shares his new love for Everett-Poland and the other gives us a guide to suits. The crossword this week will have you reconsidering acronyms you thought you knew.

more than just a reflection of my own shallow insecurity. I wanted Sontag’s righteousness, her intelligence, her cynicism. But maybe that’s part of the problem—we are constantly running up against our own reflections.

***

Even the most avid photographer must acknowledge that the presence of the camera is jarring. Its appearance charges the air and interrupts conversation. Sontag is at her most urgent when writing about this “aggression implicit in every use of the camera,” and our hunger to claim, to shoot, and to document. Our consumption of images mirrors our consumption of just about everything else.

It is almost involuntary, this feeding, and we learn it young. In middle school, when hangouts revolved around planning photo shoots for our newly formed Instagram accounts, I would pose miserably with my friends in various configurations. Afterwards, we all crowded around the offending phone to judge whether our arms or eyes or hair looked strange, and which pictures were satisfactory and might be posted later with the saturation amped up. It was addictive, gazing at those little pink and yellow apps and waiting for my name or face to appear. Time turned to syrup. How many hours have I spent looking at photos of myself, of friends, of skin, of blue oceans, of silk and neon? I had no language for it then, but who could blame me for my inarticulate distress over how my moving body was caught up in a single instant?

Sontag spoke about the camera as something akin to a pistol in the 1970s. Even with her prescience, I can

In the next few days, we will all embark on separate adventures for the upcoming break (or settle down for a relaxing break in Providence). If you find yourself with some extra time—in between flights, maybe, or on a rainy day—pick up a copy of post-. Maybe it will inspire you to view things in your life from a new angle. If nothing else, our writers’ lovely words will help time fly by.

Metamorphosing,

Eleanor Peters Copy Chief

hardly imagine what she would have to say about the legions of children, all wanting to be pretty, who now carry one constantly in their backpack pockets.

***

There have also been times when the pull of the photograph is quieter, made stranger by circumstance. During the pandemic, my older siblings held our family together with a steady stream of photos of my fastgrowing baby nieces and nephews, fueling dinnertime conversation when it seemed there was nothing else easy to discuss. But my own camera roll churned to a halt. What was there to record?

Of course, there was plenty going on beyond my bedroom. Looking back, I am both horrified by and grateful for the pictures that were taken of the world in those early weeks. A New York Times photo retrospective of 2020 remembers the grand city avenues stripped to their pavement, the billowing medical tents, and the medical professionals wrapped in layers and layers of plastic. Without these photos, I am not sure what my mind would misremember.

But things started to thaw. When I moved to Providence, I surprised myself with how quickly my camera roll again filled with a thousand nothing pictures—each one a tether to my strange, new city. Even as I was absorbing Sontag, it seemed that I could not stop taking photographs. There’s the first blurry photo from when I discovered the Dickensian lamps on Benefit Street, a snapshot of my freshly made bed (proof to my parents of my survival), a magnificent orange maple. These photos are all poorly lit and off-center, never meant to be seen by anyone else. They are taken practically; they leave it to my imagination to make the thing beautiful again. ***

Over time, I learned about other photographers, too. I examined Diane Arbus’s challenges to subjectivity and Sally Mann’s images of wild children with mussed hair and sideways glances. I read works by thinkers who understood the enormity of the medium: more Sontag, but also writers like André Bazin, who has softer things to say about the photo. “It embalms time,” he claims, “rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.” There’s plenty to critique about Bazin who wrote in the 1940s and romanticizes photography’s objective virtues. But there is also something in his words that, despite everything, I believe.

Closer to home, I studied how one friend minded her BeReal religiously and found a strange comfort in scrolling through her feed full of snapshots of library sessions and VDub dinners—the rituals of campus life. Another carried a small digital camera that made the act of taking pictures feel sacred, something to treasure instead of tolerate. I posed in their photos, and even began marking certain pictures in my camera

roll as “favorites.” These were images that I wanted to return to that conjured the nostalgia befitting of Bazin’s embalmed time or Sontag’s “twilight art”—a medium that is able to turn anything it touches into a talisman.

There was that snapshot of a yellow stray cat, nosing at my glove somewhere during those quiet days of the pandemic.

Or a video, taken secretly and sent to me later. It’s my voice, deeper than I imagined it to be, carrying a story over the Potomac River.

Or that one film photo. Four torsos, floating like seeds over the shimmering Narragansett Bay. They are far, far away but you can make out smeared impressions of height and hair color. It’s impossible to see, but you can tell that we’re smiling. That the photographer is smiling back.

I’ve even started saving FaceTime screenshots of people I miss desperately. Their faces are pixelated from the layers of distortion that are required for me to carry them in my pocket—what On Photography would cite as both a “pseudo-presence and a token of absence.”

The collection grows: photos taken, not only of my friends and stray sunbeams in my dorm room and crocus flowers on Power Street, but of myself, too. The further I get from twelve, the more I have found myself willing to record. I’ve started wearing silver jewelry instead of gold. I cut my hair short and plan to keep it that way. I eat olives and blueberries now, both of which I used to despise. I’ve started to linger on things, to press feather-light against feelings that once twisted my stomach apart and sent me running from myself. I still pull at hangnails, spend too much time idle on my phone and hate myself for it. But something has mellowed.

It lingers—Sontag’s description of alienation, her distrust of even the most casual photo. It stays with me. But I don’t think it is violent, at least not all the time. I don’t think I have it in me to be angry at the camera anymore.

***

A memory. It is spring and the photo-taking time of the evening where we swap outfits a dozen times, gathering the courage to leave the warmth of the dorm room and spill into the night. Our makeup brushes are splayed on the table; the music we choose is in the speaker.

The digital appears, flashing. My shoulders press back, chin thrust forward. I am conscious that I am not exactly me. I am offering my image up, Sontag would chide, as a record of myself instead. But this is one moment I know I will be grateful to hold in my hand.

My friend points the camera high above us and shoots down. Our eyes are closed as if bracing for impact and my cheeks are burst wide with a grin, gums pink and open. I look so, so happy. I am.

places to go for Spring Break

four-leaf (c)lover the luck of good eyes-ish

by Ellie Jurmann

Illustrated by Stella Tsogtjargal

If you cannot find me, look for me in the grass. In the rich green patches of earth, where the clovers grow, I am seated as I search for lucky four-leafs of my own. I sometimes feel guilty for uprooting the magic for the sake of my own collection. But then I stumble upon a little boy crying, and as I hand him one of my lucky charms—a four-leaf clover, scotch-taped to a post-it for safekeeping—I watch his tears dry and a smile take their place.

In all honesty, I have no idea how rare fourleaf clovers actually are. I have found far too many to count, even a six-leaf clover. Perhaps my quest for these auspicious little weeds takes away their alleged luck, the same as if I were to scan the floor of every supermarket checkout aisle to try and find a heads-up penny on the ground. Maybe my luck is manufactured—trying hard or long enough suffices to yield the so-called lucky outcome I desire. Or, maybe the fact that I have found so many four-leaf clovers, even considering my great efforts, is reflective of my magnetic ability to attract all that is lucky. Regardless, I don’t really care. When I lay down at the park and comb my fingers through the countless sprouting clovers, I feel the promise of good fortune. I find magic in the sheer fact that my world can stand still for even a moment of my search. This magic is perhaps even self-created through the meditative practice that this ritual of mine has become.

I often find myself beaming with excitement upon encountering what I believe to be a four-leaf clover—only to discover that its fourth leaf actually belongs to a different clover. Nevertheless, I am always in awe of the beauty I am able to find in the what-could-have-beens. There is something so poetic about the realization that a four-leaf clover is no less powerful in its conception than in tangible form. I recognize that a clover’s perceived “luck” relies on an arbitrary metric, so I choose to consider myself lucky regardless of the number of leaves my clovers boast. Plus, the luck I desire already exists in my mind and in the clover patches to which I will soon make my way. It is only a matter of time and patience before I meet the physical embodiment of the luck I already possess.

As I lay in the grass, careful to avoid crushing the clovers with my body weight, I have the occasional moment of realization: doing *this* rather than school work or some typical student extracurricular

“My morning skinny was so good today I thought about taking nudes.”

“I don’t care I can hang out with my grandkids on acid”

1. Providence, RI

2. The North Pole

3. My bedroom ;)

4. SciLi 11th floor

5. Miami, Ohio

6. Bottom of the Mariana Trench

7. Arrakis

8. Saturn by SZA

9. North Dakota

10. The pool on the roof of the Ratty

like a club sport or watching Netflix is a little odd. I feel like a character straight out of a story book—like I can’t possibly be a real person. Similar to a fairy or a woodland creature or an eccentric and whimsical dreamer, I am enchanted by nature. I love to notice its every detail—so much so that I spend hours at a time looking in the grass.

When I am in this state of being, my self-portrait, as I imagine it to be, takes the form of the “manic pixie dream girl” trope. To those who are unfamiliar, the manic pixie dream girl is the archetypal supporting role of an exuberant, zany, yet charming young woman who typically exists for the purpose of helping the male protagonist find himself. The manic pixie dream girl, when appreciated independent of the protagonist, does not let social norms and people’s opinions dictate her personal and life choices. As much as I love my silly little clover girl adventures, I do realize how passersby may raise an eyebrow when I appear to be watching grass grow. Like the manic pixie dream girl, however, I have learned, through my various idiosyncratic pleasures, to give little thought to what people think when they see me. In my perception of myself and my personhood, I have thus identified myself within this trope. Perhaps I not only fill the manic pixie dream girl role, but also the (traditionally male) protagonist’s role in this story. As my version of the archetypal tale goes, I (the protagonist) find myself, as my inner manic pixie dream girl helps me (the protagonist) understand patience and gratitude through the hours-long search for a four-leaf clover. The unfettered dreamer inside me tells the overachiever in me that it is more than okay to let time stop for a moment, lay in the grass, and appreciate the gift of this moment on this earth.

In my life, the manic pixie dream girl in me is the main character. She gets to be enamored with the world and independent and curious without those qualities largely existing for a man’s benefit. First and foremost, she uses her sense of self and refreshingly positive outlook to live out her most fulfilling and empowered life. She believes she can find four-leaf clovers anywhere, and so she does. But, even if she couldn’t, she still feels lucky enough that she finds the four-leaf clovers within herself, and thus harnesses their magic and good fortune—as do I.

I have fallen in love with the process of searching for luck I believe I already possess. Having that extra little charm, though, is how I, as the manic pixie dream girl, convince those less rose-sighted than I that this luck belongs to them, too. I look down, around, and within.I see pastures of four-leaf clovers everywhere I turn.

making words out of nothing

bilingualism revisited

by Jeanine Kim

Illustrated by Emilie Guan

As the theater shook with the shouts and crashes of the brutal action sequences, my parents and I sat in taut silence, broken only by the occasional crunch of popcorn and slurping of an extra-large Coca-Cola. The audience was entranced, eyes glued to the screen, even when the protagonist broke his leg with an all-toosickening crunch. But unlike the twenty other people in the room, I wasn’t lost in this fantasy world of war and violence. I wasn’t listening to tense whispers shared between allied soldiers or the ripping shouts and curses of the tortured prisoner. I was reading the subtitles, the little white English words, popping up as the staccato of Korean rushed right by my ears.

Words, once familiar friends but now complete strangers, taunted me as they swam in a whirlpool of lines and characters, confusing sound for sound until they all lost meaning. My native language, the first words I ever spoke—omma—my mother tongue, now a foreign entity, an unwelcome invader. My childhood ignorance, my youthful naivete, and most importantly, my effortless ability to learn were all gone, leaving me with nothing but the bitter awareness of past folly.

I used to be immersed in Korean—from the hospital on the other side of the Pacific where I was born to the lessons I took at my church every Sunday after service. The words surrounded me, offering themselves at no cost. Sitting at my desk every week, folding my legs into a pretzel as I waited on my tiny red plastic chair, counting down the seconds until the teacher dismissed us for the day, I hated every moment of Korean school— the teacher that never called on me, everyone else who seemed to care so much more than me, that I was being forced to learn this stupid, useless language.

Now, the language I shunned with childish impudence comes back to slight me. When I sit down at a restaurant with my parents, the menu reads as if written in hieroglyphics, an ancient language destined to be decoded only by those with a secret key, a key that I once saw but never mastered. Daunted by the challenge of translating everything, I hand back the menu, resigned to let my father order for me once more.

As I slurp down my dish of vermicelli noodles, coated in a rich bone broth, I don't taste the love and experience of the skilled hands in the kitchen, nor the

hours of labor that went into creating that luxurious soup, nor the multitude of foreign—yet familiar— spices and flavors; no, I only taste failure. Everything I see, from the plethora of dishes on cheap, plastic tablecloth, to my distorted reflection in the curved surface of the spoon, is visibly Korean. The flavors and smells of the dishes in front of me can be mistaken for nothing but. My neighborhood, containing the largest concentration of ethnic Koreans outside of the motherland, could be mistaken for Seoul itself with its neon signs emblazoned with Hangul characters. Every noise, from the relentless chatter of schoolaged children to the strident voices of ahjummas, is distinctively Korean. Korea does not just surround—it overwhelms.

Despite its unrelenting presence, Korean remains unreachable, an intangible entity that continues to tease me. Within it is the promise of the past, the connection to a family and cultural history that threatens to fade every day. The aging of my grandparents and my parents looms over me, transforming the promise of Korean into a threat. Every day that passes seems another day lost to monolingualism, and with it, an entire history.

The prospect of never speaking to my parents in their native tongue tortures me, creating the haunting idea that I’ll never truly connect to my past. My grandmother calls from Korea every weekend, and I used to run upstairs, terrified that she would ask for me. Now, I volunteer to answer the phone, excited to have the opportunity to practice with someone even if the conversation remains stilted and uncomfortable. The words, still unfamiliar to my ears and unnatural on my tongue, flow out more easily than I expected, coming out from the secret reserves where my mind has been hiding them for years.

The battle wages as dueling forces, cultures, and lives square up within me. My tongue, once a traitor, yields to the soft-spoken syllables of Korean. Battlefields become learning zones as effort unlocks the once-impenetrable secrets. I rediscover this unattainable key, finding it to be much closer to home than I thought.

After a week of living our separate lives, my family always joins together on Sundays for movie night, a chance for us to reconnect and forget about the worries of the week. This time, it is my turn to choose, so I pick the movie that was my favorite as a child: Snow White, but on a Korean DVD. I am transported to my childhood land of witches and dwarves, of magic and music, but when the singing of the birds and princess gets too fast to understand, I turn to the subtitles for clarity—for character, for language.

basking in la solar

utopian performances and performatives at a Medellín music festival

by Dorrit Corwin Illustrated by Stella Tsogtjargal

Driving into Medellín feels like skating across a blanket of stars. The city is nestled between two mountains, each of which is scattered with lit-up homes that make them glisten like a galaxy. When my cousin and I arrive at the park where La Solar Festival is held, the mountains glimmer in the distance. From the vantage point of the main stage, phone flashlights light up the audience and the mountains reflect their light back to create one cohesive glow.

This is my first foreign music festival. It’s tamer and much less crowded than Coachella or Lollapalooza. All of the core elements are the same, but rather than being a who’s-who influencer fashion show where one cocktail costs $25, the ambiance is much more low-key. The lineup contains a mix of international house DJs and Latin pop. The food tent embraces a similar dichotomy: I can go from eating an arepa to downing chili cheese fries.

La Solar attendees dress in everything from normal street clothes to more eccentric rave getups of neon nylon and face gems. Contrasting styles and identities mix and mingle on the dance floor, and I am reminded of an article I recently read for madison moore’s Queer Nightlife class called “Party Politics.” In this piece, Simon Wu shares a key observation that “partying, I think, performs a dual, somewhat self-contradictory social function: it can let you perform an identity, and it can let you forget you have one at all.” I look out into a sea of people embracing both realities— sometimes simultaneously––all thanks to a shared love of music that transcends language barriers via a universal embrace of a collective energy and identity.

We meet up with an Italian kid from my cousin’s exchange program in Bogotá who has five

lovely Colombian boys in tow. The shy, adorable, tall one begins talking to me; our conversations are a delicate dance of Spanglish, switching back and forth between the two every few sentences for the sake of comfort and clarity.

He challenges me to a game of Dance Dance Revolution, the music video game from the early 2000s that I didn’t even realize still existed. From the ages of 10 to 13, I spent every arcade and laser tag birthday party I was invited to wishing a boy would ask me to play this game with him. A decade later this feels like an unexpected bucket list item I forgot I wanted to cross off. I revel in the randomness of the delightfully unpredictable identity of this festival. Seemingly impossible realities become possible in this utopia that collectively elevates its inhabitants. Dancing in the pattern outlined by the arrows on the screen gives way to getting down and jamming out to Disclosure.

I’ve seen the English electronic duo live three or four times, but only one of the two brothers is here tonight. He opens with “When a Fire Starts to Burn” and my cousin and I go crazy, but the audience remains remarkably still. It quickly becomes clear that the local crowd is not very familiar with their music.

Disclosure’s sound has escalated into a deeper house vibe over time, mirroring house music’s climb in popularity over the past five to 10 years. He integrates most of their lyrical hits into the mix, but a lot of the set is made up of straight dance beats that he mixes live.

I love Disclosure, but he is not connecting much with his audience. This may be due to the fact that he is missing the other half of his duo and that the audience doesn’t know their music very well. The production is solid, and Disclosure’s signature graphics of outlined faces dance around

the big screens playfully, but the performer himself is locked into his switchboard and barely engages with the people in front of him.

Up next is Peggy Gou. I’ve been obsessed with the 32-year-old South Korean, Berlin-based DJ/ singer/songwriter/producer for about as long as most other people have: since her June 2023 single “(It Goes Like) Nanana” became popular. She notably became the first Korean DJ to play at Berghain in Berlin and was the first female DJ to headline Ushuaïa Ibiza’s closing set. Needless to say, my expectations are high.

She gracefully takes the stage with a cigarette in one hand and a flute of champagne in the other. I am used to DJs spinning bangers from afar but interacting far less with their audience than a band or a singer would, but Peggy performs. She maintains her cool girl façade and pulses back and forth with her lips pursed, but she dances like we’re all up onstage right next to her.

Her team’s cinematography via the cameras that float through the crowd is also impeccable and elevates the connection. The large circular image on the screen toggles back and forth between Peggy and random people in the crowd to create a narrative between them. One guy who gets a moment of screen stardom acts like he’s been put on a kiss cam and shows his overflowing love for Peggy by dancing like crazy and raising his hands above his head, his fingers clasped together in a heart shape. The next girl whose face is broadcasted is on her phone and oblivious that she’s being filmed, which gets laughs from the crowd.

Unlike Disclosure, Peggy caters her set to this specific audience. She mixes everything from “Murder on the Dancefloor” and “Body” by Megan Thee Stallion to reggaeton songs I don’t recognize. She teases us with snippets of her original songs but only ever plays one in its entirety.

In the middle of her “Body” remix I find myself surrounded by a posse of gay American men dancing and doing poppers. I realize that this set is fully for the girls and the gays. The Colombian boys we’ve dragged along are just humoring us; they’re patiently waiting to see Tiesto later, but dancing with us for now in a way only shy straight men can.

Being a current Queer Nightlife student has changed the way I analyze the party settings in which I find myself. I am constantly pondering party-goers’ reasons for being there and the goals they hope to take away from their experiences. Peggy’s set is the perfect example of the utopian performatives Jill Dolan writes about in “Feeling the Potential of Elsewhere”—“small but profound moments in which performance calls the attention of the audience in a way that lifts everyone slightly above the present, into a hopeful feeling of what the world might be like if every moment of our lives were as emotionally voluminous, generous, aesthetically striking, and intersubjectively intense.” You can tell which members of this crowd have attended real raves and which people embody Dolan’s message of “small but profound moments.”

There is an undeniable power in collective experiences such as this one—losing oneself in the music and in a sea of strangers. Peggy’s effervescent energy reciprocates and radiates throughout the crowd, opening a dialogue like the one Dolan speaks of, that elevates us above the present. Whether speaking or playing tracks in English, Spanish, or Korean (her native language), there is a universal dialect carried by the beat. The transcendent power of La Solar brings a utopian togetherness to Medellín, in which a diverse set of strangers quickly become lovers and friends.

lessons from an older sister

mourning a past self with repetition

by Isadora Marquez

Illustrated by kendra eastep

A microbial mat is a multilayered, thin sheet composed of aquatic microorganisms—most predominantly bacteria and archaea. Although nearly microscopic to the naked human eye, this small coating of microbes can proliferate within a conglomeration of chemical environments, independent of temperature and predators. When you are a child rinsing your hair with the clear saltwater of the summer’s ocean, and a sliver of it becomes coated in a green, mildew consistency, that’s our fellow microbial mats, coating your hair follicles in archaic bacteria.

At just shy of twenty-three, my sister, Madelina Marquez, began her PhD in ecology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. When she graduates, she will be the first of our entire family genealogy to finish with a PhD. If—Madelina would clarify—if I graduate. This is a disagreement we often have. I find it ironic, frankly, that Madelina—headstrong Madelina, unrelenting Madelina, the Madelina that would rule our playtime operations with an iron fist—has any doubts regarding her intellectual capability.

Madelina chose microbial mats for her research topic. Because, of course, Madelina would choose the most overlooked, environmentally-neglected area of study offered at her university. A forgotten species festering in a forgotten environment. When was the last time you thought, meaningfully, about the importance of cyanobacteria and nutrient cycling?

“But they’re so important, Isa. They’re responsible for nearly every aquatic organism’s survivability,” Madelina reasons as we drive along I-95, her seat pushed almost comically forward, small hands gripping the fluffy steering wheel cover.

I’m reminded of Madelina at thirteen, pushing away Dad’s can of ravioli with the assertion that she was “vegetarian now” and didn’t want to condone the suffering of any animals. The cheap tomato sauce and meat paste sat tasteless on my tongue as I recalled our earlier visit to the dairy farm. I had been afraid to pet the cattle initially, gripping onto Madelina’s coat as she fed them dried corn from her cupped hand. When the calf’s tongue met her open palm, she held steady against it, unafraid.

“Look at their eyes, Isa. It’s so, so sad how people treat them,” Madelina confided in the space between us and the calf’s cage.

“It is a cow,” I answer, as if that justifies the act of imprisoning a living being inside a 3 by 2 feet pen. I am surprised by the expression of disappointment on her face.

“It’s a person, Isa. It has thoughts and feelings and a family. It should be out there—in nature. Not stuck here, behind metal bars.” As if to emphasize her point, Madelina lifts the calf’s chin, and it follows without restraint.

I had not considered a cow to be anything beyond an animal with four feet, a long pink tongue, and lowhanging udders for milk. I had not considered the fact that I could and should care for something that isn’t decidedly human. But Madelina already had, at the tender age of thirteen.

At her encouragement, I lightly scratch a patch of dark fur behind the calf’s ear. I feel warm and raw when it pushes its head into my outstretched palm. Maddy tells me I still have a lot to learn. I don’t disagree.

During the fall of Madelina’s sophomore year of college, she brings home a kitten—barely two weeks old. It’s still blind and practically immobile. I love her. My

mom rolls her eyes at the kitten before taking it into her hands anyway. “Not another one of your strays, Maddy,” she scolds.

This had become a habit of hers. At 15, Madelina brought home an old, forgotten rat named Waffle. He was impressively ugly and his long tail reminded me of cheap rubber. Yet, five weeks after his arrival, he slept in bed alongside me. I follow in Madelina’s shadow and find myself falling in love with animals I never thought I could. She constantly guides me forward with patient hands.

At 20 years old, Madelina does the last thing I ever expected her to do.

She breaks up with her long-term boyfriend, Brandon. She tells me this casually while driving to Santander Bank.

“Why?” I ask. Madelina’s eyes remain steady on the road, fingers tapping along to Rainbow Kitten Surprise’s tenor singer.

“He loved me. I liked him,” she answers, voice unenthused. It feels like my world has gone slightly off-kilter. Madelina, my Madelina. The same Madelina that chose the ugliest betta fish at Petsmart because “no one else would” and housed two friends within her 200 square-foot dorm when they were homeless—that Madelina found something she could not love.

Two days after that conversation, she leaves for a summer-long internship on a secluded island off the coast of Lake Michigan. Beaver Island—with a population of 551. Madelina spends her days collecting water samples and investigating human and gull fecal matter within the island’s water supply. The work is grueling, the pay unimpressive, and Madelina spends her mornings in a green wetsuit wading through the murky algae.

The nights, however, are when she has the most fun. During her first few days, interactions are stilted amongst the other student interns, conversations reduced to polite small talk and quiet meal times. By the third day on the island, though, a brave intern suggests a game of Uno, which Madelina and her closest confidant, Isabelle, join.

By the fourth night, the students build a campfire along the shore, with a bottle of communal wine passed around like gossip. Under the clear night, Madelina traces the stars in the sky with her pointer finger, shoulders swaying to the beat of the Bluetooth speaker buried in the sand. After, Madelina swears she can feel the breath of the island, taste the salt of the ocean waves, and smell the sap of the nearby maple trees.

It’s almost religious, she writes in her journal during her second week. The trees and the water and the people. You can’t run away from yourself on the island. You’re stuck with you, whether you like it or not.

The same routine continues for the entirety of her summer: sleep, eat, work, hike, repeat. Time moves slowly on the island, hours dripping like syrup from a glass bottle. She loves it.

When she eventually returns home, nearly 60 days later, I waste no time rushing to greet her at the airport. Madelina is all tan skin and bright eyes and she smells vaguely of the Virginia beach we used to vacation to. Later, in the quiet of her bedroom, she relays to me the secrets of her trip. I listen, fascinated. I’m half tempted to pull out my journal and take notes.

“It was, like, life-changing, Isa. Seriously, I didn’t want to leave it,” Madelina explains. I nod but am unable to empathize. I cannot imagine wanting to live in any place other than home—with Nigel one floor below me and Mom and Dad down the hall.

“We missed you a lot. It was really boring here,” I confess, because it’s true. Never in my fifteen years of life had I ever experienced a summer without Madelina. The season felt unnatural.

Madelina softens at this. “I missed you guys a lot too. I wrote about you in my journal, like, every day.” I perk up at this. I hadn’t anticipated that Madelina thought about me as often as I had her—I assumed she was too busy finding the cure to cancer or solving mortality.

“Really?” I ask, voice hopeful. Madelina scoffs.

“Uh, yeah. Trust me, Isa, no one on that island is better than you.”

why i love everett-poland how to make Keeney your niche!

by Ben Herdeg Illustrated by Junyue Ma

When I first saw my housing assignment in August, I had no idea what I was in for: I only knew I'd live in Everett-Poland. But what is it? One dorm?

Two? And what is Keeney? I vaguely remembered Keeney from ADOCH (my tour group got lost in its halls), but…Everett-Poland?

Six months later, I've grown more attached to a building than I had ever thought possible. It loves me, and I choose to love it back. Keeney, Ev-Pol especially, is absolutely lousy with red flags, though I have not only found ways to see past them—I have learned to embrace them. For any reader, this article can serve as a guide to enjoying your suboptimal living situation; for Keeney veterans, a spin on your traumatic first-year experience; or, for the class of 2028, a reminder to set reasonable expectations. You can make Keeney your home! And you can take my word for it.

If Ev-Pol's walls could talk, they'd have so much to unload that they'd be yapping until Keeney crumbles to the ground. So let's be thankful that they can't. Known for its extra-cold showers, lack of an elevator, and walls so sickly green that North Campus residents get nauseous at the sight, Ev-Pol is truly the sore thumb of Keeney. I admit this. Out of our five washing machines, there's typically one or two that are broken at any time, all the toilets are normally unflushed or clogged, and we don't talk about the single-stall bathrooms. But I've come to see Ev-Pol, which sits between the ever lofty ArchBron and the oft-forgotten James-Mead, as the steady heart of Keeney.

The key is to recode your criticism. Follow my lead: yes, that is mold that you thought was just black paint, but it gives that area of the ceiling a cute accent, and now you don't need to leave your room to get in touch with nature. And yes, those are flies in the single-stall bathroom, but isn't it impressive that they made it so far into the winter? And, in that bathroom, where the air is hellishly humid and heavy, doesn't it sort of feel like you're taking an outdoor

shower in the tropics? And that walk to Arch-Bron when Ev-Pol's laundry machines are in use or dead: all Ev-Pol wants is for you to see the world.

Onto my fellow Ev-people. There really is something special about the characters in this dorm. They stampede you in the stairwells, cough a lot while sitting on the toilet for some reason, and leave the bathroom without washing their hands. But they do it all with a smile. Ev-Pol only wants to make you laugh.

There are some moments when you know what happens in Ev-Pol you couldn't find anywhere else. For example, when you wake up and right before your eyes is the largest spider you have ever seen in your life strutting along a web that stretches from your nose to the lamp at your bedside, and your next-door neighbor helps you squash it to death. Or when you (inevitably) have to use the single-stall bathroom because it's the only reliable source of hot water, but when you step through the door, you're wading Crocdeep in cloudy bath-water. But fear not! The previous occupant assists you in pushing the flood water into the drain, using their flip-flop as a squeegee, and the room goes from swamp to shower in seconds. Thanks! These moments of kindness in Ev-Pol are really quite common. In fact, lots of what gives EvPol its charm is its constant sensory stimulation: when the screaming never stops (it really never does); when the doors slam to no end; when the heat and AC in the lounge blast at the same time, so you both sweat and shiver—this is the music of Ev-Pol, and you just learn to love it.

Further, Ev-Pol is a structural wonder. Since its construction in 1950, it has never ceased to amaze its residents—myself included! One and a half semesters in, and I still get lost. Ev-Pol always keeps me on my toes. Nonetheless, I have come to learn that where Arch-Bron and James-Mead are not, Ev-Pol is. This building takes the unused space of Keeney and runs with it. It doesn't care about architectural conventions or its physical appearance, or even

certain safety codes! Because of this, Ev-Pol is home to several innovative, liminal spaces that simply cannot be ADA approved—but you love to look at them from a distance, anyway. This also explains some of Ev-Pol's especially unique hallways—like the concave third floor extension which should really be James-Mead and makes you feel a little bit sorry for the people who live there. (I had to bend my neck down the only time I walked through there because the ceiling was too low). But think about the camaraderie there! The people of that enclave must be super close—both spatially and emotionally. Areas like this one also make for very fulfilling dorm exploration—with equal access to both Arch-Bron and James-Mead, Ev-Pol is the perfect origin. This dorm both brings us together and makes us wonder. We really do have it all.

Having fallen for Ev-Pol, I've realized—and you will too—that I cannot bear to forget what I've witnessed here. The scenes of Keeney, however scarring they may be, are not to be blocked out of our memories. Though I've certainly lost the last of my innocence to everything I've seen and heard here, it's all too special to neglect. Ultimately, I will miss the folks whose pull-ups in the door frames I duck under, whose dramatic FaceTimes in the lounge I deliberately overhear, and whose blissful sips of the sinks' lead-positive water I turn the other way from. Going forward, when I watch the stars at night, I might see the patterns of piss that have permanently stained the toilet seats, or, in the darkness, I may just feel what the Ev-Pol pranksters made me feel when they shut off all power with the unlocked breakers in the halls.

I love Ev-Pol because, inside the dorm, I can genuinely do nothing wrong. Every nick I make in the wall blends right in. Everyone looks just as nasty as I do in the sick-green halls. I farted? No, that's just how it smells here. The bar is truly on the floor. And, really, it's easy to love a place like this—one that couldn't judge you if it tried.

suits

an exploration

by Sean Toomey

Illustrated by Klara Davidson-Schmich

I’ve been wanting to write an article about suits for nearly my entire time here at post-. Seeing as this will be my last article before my grand venture into the adult world (Vogue, hire me), I figured now would be a good time to cover it. Suits. Not the TV show, the real deal. For many of you, I imagine your first associations with suits are homecoming, prom, weddings, bad weddings, and CCB events where you linger on the outskirts of laughter and joy as you fruitlessly try to commit the night to your impaired memory. But beneath the veneer of their formal expectations, suits are amazing garments that can express taste and fashion, and there’s so much beyond the standard navy slim fit suit you bought at the mall in 2019. My article won’t be a guide to buying a suit, as there are a thousand guides out there for this (about three of them good), but more so a journey through what makes a suit great in my eyes, and how to style an old garment for the modern era.

To get our definitions straight, a suit is a clothing set consisting of a jacket, a pair of trousers, and sometimes a vest made from the same bolt of cloth. Occasionally, this definition changes for a morning suit or a stroller suit—variations outside the general purview of this article.

The lounge suit—the normal suit—was invented in the mid-1800s as a casual, sporty alternative to the frock coat and trousers look that was the popular fashion of the Victorian era. As the suit evolved, it was worn primarily by working-class people who lacked the means and the need for a formal daytime ensemble.

Eventually, the suit started to gain gradual acceptance as formal wear by the 1910s. By 1930, it had completely eclipsed any of the Victorian or Edwardian holdovers and morphed into something that is recognizable today.

Some of this casual legacy is still found in the suit. For example, the aforementioned existence of the lounge suit indicates that the domain of the suit extends beyond strictly business connotations. Unfortunately, in this day and age, the suit has been culturally restricted to job interviews, banks, and awkward school events. But, dear reader, it need not be like this. There is a whole world waiting to be explored beyond the paper thin worsteds and cottons found at the mall.

To effectively style a suit, you first need to find a silhouette and a material that best fits your needs. For most people, this would probably be something in a sober navy or gray worsted wool that you only wear for weddings or interviews. But I would also recommend exploring more distinctly styled options in order to better express your personality. Play into the more casual environment of today and wear something in the trendy neapolitan style—with minimal padding and structure, soft flannels and linens in the summer give off a relaxed air. Or you could go the other route and hop on the 70s train with a big-shouldered, big lapel, flare leg suit in shiny and silky mohair blends or gabardines. Right now I’ve been religiously searching for three-piece sack suits in the old American style. While they’re not for everybody, the relaxed, padded shoulders and hint of a waistline in thick herringbone tweeds, tan cavalry twill, and even seersucker, is an ideal look for me as I slink into the natural laziness of spring. Above all, the most important part of effectively styling a suit is comfort. You should feel at home in your suit, as

if it is a natural extension of yourself, and not like you are a stuffed sausage being forced to wear it at a brunch. When you buy a suit, make sure you can move in it, sit in it, and wear it longer than an hour. Look at old movies where suits were the standard—almost casual—attire of the day; Clark Gable wore a tweed three-piece suit for a haphazard trip up the East Coast in It Happened One Night, and you too should aspire to such levels of refined comfort.

The most common pitfall you see with suits right now is guys wearing them about two sizes too small in order to show off their physique. Please don’t do this. It looks like you listen to Andrew Tate and don’t know how to spell. Tailoring is supposed to improve the best parts of the body and hide the not so good. If suits were just supposed to show off your gains, there would be no point for a suit in the first place. A lot of this issue is due to the fact that most menswear media is still stuck in 2013—slim, slim, slim fit navy suit, skinny tie, skinny lapels, double monkstrap shoes, etc. I recommend looking to the past, when the suit was more commonplace, for inspiration. My many, many photo albums in my photos app will attest to this. For those of you who don’t have direct access to my phone, I recommend @voxsartoria on Tumblr for a very extensive selection of classic photos. Go for classic silhouettes and styles and you’ll be headed in the right direction.

There you have it, folks: a brief guide to suits. While you might feel constrained by the formal connotations of a suit, we live in an age unmoored from the strict dress of the past, so let your imagination run wild. I hope my extremely specific fashion advice articles have helped you kit out your wardrobe with suits, tweed jackets, dress shoes, and just about every other thing you need to be well-dressed in this day and perhaps 80 years ago as well. This is Sean Toomey signing off.

Across

1

Matted textile often used in crafting

Remove all traces of

*First word in the acronym SJP

*First word in the acronym MLM

Ice cream brand 8

“Just like Chester, my sister and I slipped glass hearts—our mother’s kisses—into the outermost pockets of our backpacks to hold close when home seemed too far.”

Ellyse Givens, “Shield Me” 3.24.23

“Even so, there must be some long-hidden part of her that longs to be up, bobbing and buoyant with lungs full of fresh air, as there is within me”

Mack Ford, “Longing Upward” 3.25.22

Phony

*First word in the acronym ED

Tests for future attys.

"Let's go" in Navajo

Name derived from the French for "esteemed"

Ayoola