Post- Feb. 11, 2016

t s o p UARY R B E F

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, y s i r c o p y h i efronts, hom rry styles a h d an

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upfront

Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Abby Muller Managing Editor of Features Monica Chin Managing Editor of Lifestyle Cissy Yu Managing Editor of Online Amy Andrews Arts & Culture Editors Liz Studlick Mollie Forman Features Editors Lauren Sukin Halley McArn Lifestyle Editor Corinne Sejourne Creative Director Grace Yoon Copy Chiefs Lena Bohman Alicia DeVos Serif Sheriffs Logan Dreher Kate Webb Her Grey Eminence Clara Beyer

contents 3 upfront

mad at dad Spencer Roth-Rose

4 features

small towns Kimberly Meilun

5 lifestyle

the ratty’s underbelly Taylor Viggiano my shitty brain and me M. F.

6 arts & culture the hypocrisy of om Emma Murray

a lawyer’s verdict on making a murder Gabrielle Hick

7 arts & culture the tell-tale tweet Ryan Walsh

8 lifestyle

top ten overheard at brown pitch perfect Amy Andrews

editor’s note Dear readers, This week our issue is about struggles: the struggle to adjust to loss, the struggle against procrastination, the struggle to realize our possible complicity in oppression--above all, the struggle to order the chaos.

“Ordering the chaos” sounds a bit dramatic. A slightly more sedate (or reasonable) view might simply be that we are all in the midst of making choices. Every day, we decide on how to spend our time, how to treat the people we value, how to choose what is important to us, and how to fulfill the goals we have chosen. The quotidian things we do may not feel and in fact are not often in reality important.

But brief and ordinary decisions turn important when they become instances where we choose to decide how we feel and think about our lives. Our writers talk about such moments, choosing to share a card game and let go of loss or choosing to defend their fathers against the overwhelming wrath of anonymous commentators.

In the meantime, I have sprained my back reaching for a piece of pizza at Prod Night. The struggle is real.

Best,

Yidi

Head Illustratrix Katie Cafaro Staff Writers Sara Al-Salem Kalie Boyne Katherine Chavez Loren Dowd Rebecca Forman Joseph Frankel Devika Girish Gabrielle Hick Lucia Iglesias Anne-Marie Kommers Joshua Lu Caitlin Meuser Emma Murray Spencer Roth-Rose Jacyln Torres Ryan Walsh Claribel Wu Staff Illustrators Yoo Jin Shin Alice Cao Emily Reif Beverly Johnson Michelle Ng Peter Herrara Mary O’Connor Emma Marguiles Jason Hu Jenice Kim Cover Katie Cafaro

From right to left: Yidi Wu ‘17, Abby Muller ‘16, Monica Chin ‘17, Cissy Yu ‘17, Amy Andrews ‘16, Liz Studlick ‘16, Mollie Forman ‘16, Lauren Sukin ‘16, Halley McArn ‘19, Corinne Sejourne ‘16, Lena Bohman ‘18, Alicia Devos ‘18, Grace Yoon ‘17.5, Logan Dreher ‘19, Ellen Taylor ‘17, Kate Webb ‘19, Katie Cafaro ‘17 (Pleaseeeee send us a photo at post.magazine.bdh@gmail.com)

upfront

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mad at dad internet cruelty on the homefront SPENCER ROTH-ROSE staff writer Growing up has a mythic quality when your dad is a memoirist. Make a particularly witty remark and watch his eyes light up. Show uncommon tenderness towards your brother and watch him sprint to his office, a shantytown set up in the sunroom of your home, and begin typing furiously on his albatross of a PC. He’s read you excerpts from a Word document entitled “boys notes,” ranging from his thoughts on the day of your birth to his reactions on watching your sixth grade play the night before.

You don’t know what observations might wind up in there, nor do you know if you’ll ever know.

You do know that this kind of documentation can bring drama with it.

You’re in the second of two batches of sons, the older of two but the secondyoungest of four. This means you’ve saddled yourself with the self-appointed responsibilities of an older brother—but somehow you’ve always felt like déjà vu in your father’s eyes. From your perch in the middle, you’ve seen the rift grow between him and his first son, your halfbrother, 20 years older than you. Among other disputes, and though details are hazy, you’ve gleaned that your brother was less than thrilled with how he was portrayed in your dad’s latest book, which heavily featured him as a supporting character.

This is to be expected, you’ve learned.

Dad calls it “embellishing the past,” and argues that it’s his job as a freelance writer to make a story as compelling as possible. The emphasis on freelance is not lost on you. It’s a competitive industry, and to make a living using only your brain to arrange words in ways they’ve never been arranged before, and to convince someone else to pay you money for those words, is no small task.

But as for you, well, you’re 12, and you just think it’s super cool that you’re on the page. And when you hear that he has the front-page article on Salon. com this Father’s Day, you happily note that nothing you could give him could top that gift. Things always get a bit easier when Dad sells an article. There was that time when dinner was interrupted by a phone call from National Endowment for the Arts, informing Dad that he (along with Jhumpa Lahiri) had been awarded $20,000 for his literary contributions—but that was years ago. In the meantime, he’s been in his sunroom, chomping religiously on cinnamon gum, juggling three different books and three different articles and three different short stories and three different memoirs in the hopes of getting someone to pay him for his newly arranged words. To this day you associate the smell of cinnamon with creativity, with hard work, with the satisfaction of a man who never compromised what he wanted to do with his life.

The Father’s Day article is funny! You giggle while reading it, even though much of the humor is at the expense of

you and your brother. It’s a curmudgeonly piece, with a comically grouchy tone almost entirely distinct from the engaged, vibrant man you’re used to. It details the drudgery, the annoyances, and the boredom that come with raising children. Yeah, you know you might beg your dad’s attention for some banal everyday occurrence, like a cool-looking beetle. And sure, you might scream and shout at the dinner table, forcing Dad to shove in earplugs and passive-aggressively go on with his meal. But, hey— you know you’re a kid, and it’s practically your job to pull stunts like that. You’re fine with Dad stretching the truth a bit to make his trials and tribulations more entertaining in exaggeration (and besides, you note smugly, most of the complaints are really aimed at your brother’s mischievous behavior).

It makes the front page of the website, and Dad spends much of the day in the sunroom on the phone with his editor, his agent, and other mysterious business-related people.

He even calls your mom in on occasion to hover, with oddly strained expressions, over his computer screen. Then comes the call from your half-brother, and the raised voices barely made out through the French doors, and the atmosphere of exasperation and exhaustion that grows more and more apparent, and you begin to pick up on the fact that something isn’t right.

But what? The article is up, so that’s not the issue; you’ve seen the headline, “Bad News Dad,” as soon as you type in the web address. The accompanying photo of a man’s foot about to stomp on three baby blocks that spell out D-A-D is a tad dramatic, but it gets the point across. You scroll down, past the photo, past the self-pitying listicle entry titles like “Being forced to play games that bored me light-years ago” and “Tripping over squeaky plastic things,” until you get to the comments. All 238 of them.

Oh. It’s a massacre. A posse of righteous defenders has shown up to your virtual doorstep with pitchforks. They’re calling Dad stupid, narcissistic, harmful, an asshole who should have gotten a vasectomy. They’re calling Mom a trophy wife who is being taken advantage of by an older man. They’re calling you stunted, a delinquent whose prospects for emotional maturity are next to none thanks to your father’s negligence. One

comment sarcastically envisions future Father’s Day cards from you to Dad, placing all of your impending problems squarely on his uncaring shoulders: “I thought about getting you a tie, but you’d probably just bitch about that, too!” “Father, you made me the adult I am today. Please arrive at County Courthouse on Tuesday at 9:15 a.m.”

When you see the comment about how Dad wouldn’t deserve to have you attend his funeral, the tears start coming.

They think they’re right! They take any scrap of biographical detail they can find in the article and use it against your family. When Dad (with deliberate dismissiveness) approximates his wife’s age as “10 or 20 years younger,” they pounce and extrapolate. Suddenly she’s his “hot young wife” whom he “convinced to pop out a couple kids just so he could prove his virility.” You think about Mom, just nine years his junior, whose career supports your family, and are paralyzed with outrage. Is he really going to abandon her as she ages, the same way the commenters assume he abandoned his first wife? Are you really going to turn out “in fetal position on the therapist’s floor,” as one of them envisions your future? Are those Father’s Day cards going to come true? Are they right? Are they? Does he really not love you?

No. You know he does. You experience his love daily; it’s never even been a question. You tear your eyes away from the screen and come back to reality—it’s relieving, the return from this hateful plane. Even at 12, you understand that while the piece is inspired by real life, it’s by no means an accurate representation.

But the enemy doesn’t know that. They imagine weapons and brandish them, vicious and snarling, to beat your father down.

With Dad the victim, the normal familial protection apparatus is compromised. Mom’s cooking dinner, and, well, your brother’s nine years old. Someone needs to step in and defend your family’s honor. It’s time, you decide grimly. You imagine yourself as modern-day Mulan, taking your old man’s place, fighting his battles for him when he is unable. Gritting your teeth, you create an account on Salon.com and type the first line of your rebuttal.

Fifteen minutes later, ihaveagreatdad101 posts his first comment. It’s a point-by-point list of the fieriest truth entitled “An indignant reply from his son,” directed at one particularly offensive attacker. To you, this rogue is more loathsome than any Hun of medieval China, and you are ready to do battle.

Aside from a “screw you” and the cringingly dramatic coup de grace, “you

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features

will always be hated within this family,” though, the response is admirably onangle. Between strings of exclamation points and liberal caps lock, you manage to disprove most of Attila’s accusations.

As a matter of fact, you don’t just feel like you’re a pain in Dad’s ass. The first two sons are well-functioning adults, not emotionally damaged crack-ups, and their mother is still on remarkably good terms with Dad. You drop examples of Dad’s devotion to you and your brother, describing whatever you can to illustrate the reality of the situation and rectify the damage wrought by the article’s misrepresentations. You even get sardonic, mentioning how Mom thinks it’s flattering to be called a trophy wife as she approaches 50 years old.

Soon, the reactions to your response start rolling in. Someone tells you that you’re not helping your dad’s cause.

Someone wonders how a writer could have begat a son with such slipshod grammar skills. Someone else even suggests that your response was ghostwritten by a certain father with hurt feelings.

You log off. The Internet is a pitiless space, its anonymity uncovering humanity’s cruelest impulses. Why do these people hate your family? you think, as you run, glassy-eyed, up to your room and throw yourself on your bed.

Suddenly the mattress springs depress with a squawk. Someone else has sat down next to you, and is rubbing your back, and is saying, “My sweet, sweet boy” to you over and over. He’s seen it.

Darn darn darn. You wanted to be the warrior, Mulan returning victorious from battle. But now you lie, defeated but safe, in the arms of the very man you swore to protect.

“They wouldn’t listen, Dad.” “It doesn’t matter. They don’t know us.”

Years later, when you write this, you wonder if the cycle is repeating itself. After all, you are memorializing an event that happened to you, using your family as supporting characters and glorifying your own achievements by way of historical military metaphors. Maybe you’re turning into your father—you’re considering a career involving words and new ways to arrange them. You’ve been doing it yourself since one fateful

Father’s Day almost a decade ago. You remembering experiencing their power, both to create and to destroy, feeling them knock at your door but then break it down with a battering ram. And you know the responsibility that comes with bearing them.

But you haven’t come to a conclusion yet.

Illustration by Mary O’Connor

small towns

rewriting the past

KIMBERLY MEILUN staff writer Rhode Islanders live in microcosms of quiet, marine, farm, and urban communities that remain isolated from one another despite the closeness and intimacy of our tiny state.

North Kingstown, Rhode Island, is my microcosm. The beach is a fiveminute walk from my house, my closest friends are one elementary school bus stop away, and marinas are like second homes. The air smells like the ocean. The green beans from my favorite local restaurant taste like the ocean. We Rhode Islanders have salt water in our blood.

Sometimes when I’m in Providence, when the night is warm and misty, I get a waft of the sea. I do not know if anyone else smells it, and I hope no one else does. This is an intimate exchange between my home and me. I breathe in hellos and exhale goodbyes.

The two-lane road that centralizes North Kingstown traffic travels through quiet streets spotted with local businesses, gyms, grocery stores, and colonial houses. White Christmas lights that are two months too old for the holiday season peak out of overgrown, bristly bushes. White paint chips from doorframes, peeling away from wood soggy with salt, seaweed, and water droplets. Drip drip

drip from the gutters cluttered with debris from hurricanes and bonfires and kids drunkenly throwing shit into the air on that snow day we had. I’m one of the few drivers on Post Road tonight. I roll down the windows and blast the music, taking in the intimacy of the night and breathing in the ocean air.

We walk to the beach at 6 a.m. It’s not really a beach. It’s sea and shoreline before architects manufactured the beach and carved boundaries in the sand between populated and natural space. He grabs a seashell and we hold hands. We close our eyes and make a wish. We open our eyes and promise one another that we’re starting over. Together we throw the shell into the oncoming waves, alleviating a weight that never truly went away.

My sister and I scratch our nets against the wooden pole that grounds the dock.

We gaze down at the creatures lurking on and around the pole, digesting molecular pieces of underwater nutrition to feed their translucent, meaty bodies.

Our nets scrape against the archive of vegetation that planted roots, like veins, in the wooden pole. We bring shrimp, minnows, and crabs to the water’s surface, feeling their slimy bodies with our

waterlogged fingertips. In a fit of that satanic delight so characteristic of childish exploration, we unravel the contents of our net on the hot dock, watching the creatures flip flop under the blazing sun.

We watch the hue of their scales turn pinkish, like a white shirt that turns colors in the sun. We collect the creatures and gently release them into the cool water, letting the chilled saltwater gradually heal and nurture them.

I wake up to the melodic slapping of waves against the bow of the boat. The boat sloshes side to side, rocking its sleeping passengers like a mother rocking her baby. I crawl out of the cabin and onto the deck of the boat. At 8 a.m., the ocean feels holy. A light mist covers the tops of bins, the cushions of chairs, the steering wheel of the boat. I sit in a damp chair in the cool, fresh air that moisturizes my skin with the nutrients and the wholesomeness of the sea. Today is a fresh start.

The white mailbox protrudes from the driveway, drawing my eye from the road to the mailbox, to the driveway, to the house, to the dogs who nipped at my ankles, to the old station wagon I learned to feel at home in, to him. Rhode Island is too small to leave memories or people behind. Nothing is untouched. Rhode Islanders rewrite their homes and write over the past. But overlaying new experiences in familiar places does not erase the bottom layers, the first interactions I have with a space. Old memories resurface, bubbling up and popping in my eyes. They seep through cracks, from drunkenness or a familiar smell, in porous surfaces.

I sit in the backseat of the mini van next to the boy with the white mailbox at the end of his driveway. My body is tight and clenched, afraid to move too far one way or the other in the packed car filled with people who are older than me and seem cooler than me. He reaches for my hand, feeling my slippery, clammy palm. I brush him off and say my hands are wet because I was holding a water bottle beforehand. But nothing gets past him. She drives over the curb

and makes a U-turn in the middle of street. Her boyfriend turns up the music and praises her for her confident driving.

The music is loud and the car is fast and the people don’t give fuck. We finally get to Sakura and we’re seated at a table in the back. We tell everyone how we met in Chemistry class. And how special I feel for dating some with the last name Valentine on Valentine’s day. + The four of us sway drunkenly into Sakura, belting the words sake bomb! He grabs my waist and I entangle my arm with his arm and together we make our knot. We indulge in mochi, bubble tea, fried ice cream, shrimp tempura, and cups of beer and sake that fuzz our brains and distort our visions. We take pictures of one another to commemorate our drunken double date. I lean my head in and he leans his head in and we smile goofy smiles into the camera lens.

I run into the waves, kicking away the friction and the pull of the current to the shore. Deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. Then submergence. My body feels absolved in the ocean water.

It coats the nooks in my body, the round surfaces and the sharp edges. The water is between my toes, under my arms, down my back and washing the back of my neck. The ocean knows intimate parts of me. The waves coach me to let go, surging me back and forth and tousling my hair and kicking at my heels as I lie back onto the mattress of salt. I stare up at the blue sky, salt suspended in the air above me, falling into and floating out of my lungs as I inhale and exhale my aliveness.

I feel everything all at once.

Illustration by Clarisse Angkasa

lifestyle

the ratty’s underbelly

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a fresh look at the sharpe refectory TAYLOR VIGGIANO contributing writer As the largest dining hall on campus, the Sharpe Refectory often sits as an object of affectionate disdain. To most of the student body, the Refectory is just a single floor with old booths and an outdated 1950s-service-style cafeteria. But they don’t know what happens below.

Home to the quirky administrative staff and energetic culinary team of Brown Dining Services, the Refectory’s base floor is where the ingredients are chosen, delivered, tasted, and prepared.

Every day’s menu choices, from the forty-andone-tenth of a pound of fresh squash to the milliliters of handmade pesto sauce, are thoughtfully and objectively chosen based on metrics like last year’s attendance numbers and food volume records. Many of the ingredients are locally grown, purchased from small farms in and around Rhode Island and delivered to the team who shapes our food with the utmost care. And that is where the story begins, with these people.

-------------------- I first met Aaron Fitzsenry in my freshman year. As an impassioned advocate for healthier food options, I had reached out to Dining Services to discuss improvements. Linked first to the head chef, John O’Shea, I set up a meeting one Friday afternoon in late April. I arrived nervously, brimming with ideas and prepared with materials and recommendations based on student surveys.

But it wasn’t John who sat down with me that Friday in the almost empty Ivy Room.

Over the low murmurs of BuDS workers on a late lunch break, Aaron Fitzsenry, assistant chef, sat across from me, his blue eyes bright with energy and optimism.

I started by addressing the most common complaint about Brown’s lack of fresh fruits. He

responded with measured words: “As we try to stay local and seasonal, it is hard to get berries and other fruits that grow in the winter months.”

As our conversation went on, what I learned about food at the Refectory turned my misconceptions on their undercooked heads. His tone wasn’t defensive, just energized and informative, as he told me that the chicken I dismissed as peculiar or grayish were all-natural chicken breasts sourced from a local distributor, Warwick Poultry.

Or that the squashes that populate different dishes throughout the winter months come from Art Mello of Mello Family Farms and are chopped, roasted, and seasoned by the chefs who work their days one floor below us in the hot and harried basement of the Refectory.

Our conversation drifted and I learned more about his life. He talked about his pastry chef wife and recapped recent food adventures. “We spent our winter searching for the best brownie in Providence. It was a big undertaking,” he said through a smile. I asked for restaurant recommendations and he obliged, revealing gems that soon became my favorites: Rasoi, Pakarang, Ellie’s Bakery, and Cafe Choklad.

He revealed his love for running. Yet running seems to be an understatement—he runs marathons. Outside every morning and every season—autumn, spring, summer, winter—he trains. And he simply loves it. He lives his life like he prepares his foods: “As simply as possible with the best quality ingredients so as not to screw up something good.”

And so, our conversation grew into a friendship.

--------------------Almost a year later, Aaron directs me through

the lower level of the Refectory attached to the Ivy Room. Walking through the steel double doors into the central area, I’m met with a burst of moist air. Large industrial-grade dishwashing machines release steam as they groan and creak, churning out clean dishes for the next meal. These loud and oddly comforting noises intermingle with the staffs’ conversations in an inviting way. To the left of the dishwashers, across the enormous floor, large steel food-preparation tables sit surrounded by the cooking staff who chop and prep ingredients for dinner. To the right sits the bakeshop decked out with any and all of your baking needs: flour, chocolate, icing, and more.

He leads me to a little room that I had missed on all my prior visits to the Ratty. With floor-toceiling clear windows and a glass door, the room is visible to all bystanders, but stands separate.

Working around the central steel island, four student workers are wrist-deep in pesto preparation. Two are conversing animatedly as they wash the fresh basil, while the others are picking the leaves off the freshly washed stems. Isolated from thoughts of schoolwork and midterms, they clearly relish the time they spend working with their hands. Their reward is a tangible product: a fresh pesto sauce for the tortellini dinner that will feed likely a thousand undergraduates.

If the discovery of handmade pesto had not made me reconsider going off meal plan, the sight of pasta from Venda Ravioli did. A famous Italian restaurant at the center of Federal Hill, Venda Ravioli is one of Providence’s most authentic Italian grocers. And there they were—frozen, handmade noodles ready to be boiled into life as pasta primavera.

Aaron interrupts my thoughts, asking me to guess what time the Ratty starts operating. I consider the question, turning it over in my mind: 6 a.m. or 7 a.m.?

“We have workers arrive here at 4 a.m. to start preparing the handmade pizza dough for the eateries and Ratty meals. Every pizza cooked at Andrews comes from the Ratty daily. There is a two-hour break between when Andrews closes at 2 a.m. and the Ratty opens at 4 a.m. and the process begins once again.”

----------------- Before I leave, I ask Aaron about his weekend plans. He smiles genuinely as he says, “I am working a pretty full weekend. I’ll be handling four major alumni events on campus. But I am lucky that I get to plan the menu for these catering events.” He later discloses that he’ll be working almost 14 days straight. I don’t know how to respond after this, but he says: “You go home happy when this is what you do for a living.”

Illustration by Emily Reif

my shitty brain and me M.F. For despite all this progress, all these medications, I come into Blue State twice a day. I order my latte, I order my hot water. I sit down ready to work, laptop open, notebook in hand, and out comes— 1. I stare at the screen.

2. I type a few sentences. Erase them. Type a few more.

3. Highlight my notes. Move them between documents. Make mind maps.

4. Stare some more.

5. Think of the two other chapters I have to write after this, plus intro and conclusion. Think of the amazing writing I’ve done in the past, and how horrible I’ll feel if this work doesn’t live up to that quality. Think of the advisor who has been so amazing to me and how disappointed she’ll be if I fail.

With a sigh, I flip over to the fanfiction I’ve been working on in my free time. The words come easily—beautifully, even. I leave Blue State without any significant thesis work done, but at least I’ve produced something I’m proud of.

a winter break at war

Rinse. Repeat. Avoid. Await. Nap. Nap more.

Watch another episode of “The West Wing.” Ignore. Cope. Fail.

And it goes on.I’ve become something of a constant fixture at Blue State. The baristas know my name, even if I don’t know theirs. Almost every day since winter break has started, I’ve come in in the morning and ordered a tea latte. I’ve kept the cup and teabag, then come back in the afternoon and asked for free hot water. Voila: two drinks for the price of one. You’re looking at Brown University’s next great kingpin, coming soon to a bookstore near you.

My evil scheme to rip off the establishment isn’t the point, though. The point is what the baristas think when I come in every day. That I’m a lonely loser, probably, being the only regular who sticks around for weekends. That I’m some prolific author, maybe; an auteur writing her next literary masterpiece, or a genius grad student working out the theory that will change the world.

As you’ve probably guessed, I’m neither. When I’m at Blue State this winter break, I am doing one of three things: 1. Working on my thesis 2. Staring at the screen trying to work on my thesis 3. Writing fanfiction after giving up on working on my thesis ‘Cause see, I’m in trouble. I wasted my first semester. Well, didn’t so much waste it as let it pass me by. To be fair, I was taking a heavier course load than I should have: Two 1900 level seminars would be a lot to handle during a normal semester, let alone one during which I’m supposed to be writing a veritable book.

But I studied this topic for an entire semester before it officially became part of a thesis. I knew my shit, I thought. I knew my shit, and I know I can write quickly when I need to. I expected to be pumping out chapters by semester’s end.

Of course, as you’ve probably guessed by now, that’s not even remotely what happened. I fucked up. I fell into the black hole of secondary sources, never to return. My advisor assigned me 15 pages to write over Thanksgiving break. I wrote two of them with ten pages of accompanying notes and no idea where to go from there.

I ended the semester with a few final papers attending to my thesis topic and not much other work to speak of. But that’s okay, I thought. I’ll stay on campus over winter break. I’ll apply myself. I’ll crank out those chapters.

I’m sitting in my usual seat at Blue State, sipping my free hot water and covering my face with my scarf so no one sees how hard I’m crying. Winter break is half over, and I’ve written two shitty pages. And I don’t know where to go from here.

I’ve been in therapy for depression and anxiety since fifth grade; I am currently on a cocktail of six separate medications that allow me to masquerade as a functioning human being. For the most part, they work. I don’t want to kill myself anymore (at least not more than once every few weeks). I can go several hours at a time without feeling like my body is trying to force my ribcage out of my chest.

I have good friends. I get good grades. Generally, I would qualify myself as happy; and if not happy, at least older, and stronger, and better able to deal with the fact that maybe happiness just wasn’t meant for someone who spends every day at war with her own brain.

I know this is probably how everyone writing a thesis feels at some point or another: Overwhelmed, helpless, useless, worthless, pathetic, incompetent, stupid. I know I shouldn’t blame all of this on mental illness; I shouldn’t allow myself to use that crutch. I’ve accomplished everything else school has thrown at me; clearly, my brain and I have found some way to live together.

Here is the inescapable truth: I am crying in public for the third time this break. In a few minutes, I’ll walk home and convince myself that it will be better tomorrow. I’ll take my medication.

I’ll go to sleep early, prepare myself for a brand new day.

After so many years of unsuccessful new days transforming my brain’s chemistry,I’ve learned helplessness is a thing, and panic attacks are a thing, no matter how much Xanax I have on hand, and I’m on my way to wondering whether this struggle is worth anything at all.

Maybe tomorrow will be my day. Maybe I’ll break through this wall, and by the time this piece is published I’ll be well into my third chapter.

Maybe I’ll impress my advisor, impress my peers, impress myself. Maybe my brain will lay down its arms and decide to hate me just a little bit less.

Or maybe there will be more of this. And more. And more.

And my only accomplishment this winter break will be scamming Blue State out of a second latte every day.

Illustration by Ruth Han

6

arts & culture

the hypocrisy of om is yoga just another bout of cultural appropriation?

EMMA MURRAY staff writer Patanjali, an Indian sage, first documented Yoga around 200 CE in his work Yoga Sutra, establishing the foundation for the nearly 2,000 years of yoga that has since followed. For Patanjali, the physical practice of “yoga” as we now know it was only a small part of his original spiritual doctrine. So how did a mere fraction of an ancient religion mutate into one of the biggest fashion and fitness trends in modern America?

In the past four years, there has been a steep increase in yoga participation within the United States—of almost 180%. A joint study published by the Yoga Alliance and the Yoga Journal predicts that by the end of 2016, yoga will be the second most popular fitness activity in the country, second only to walking. This newfound popularity may seem positive. According to studies and articles everywhere, yoga cultivates better, calmer, and healthier people, so more yoga must be good.

But with growing suspicion that the yoga craze is fueled by Lululemon leggings, glamorized models stretching and expensive studio memberships, the faintest aroma of hypocrisy starts to rise. No one can deny that these consumerist trends directly contradict the original foundations of yoga. In fact, some would say, the American’s yoga practice is nothing short of another grave bout of cultural appropriation.

Patanjali’s sacred Yoga Sutra outlines what he calls the “Eight Limbs of Yoga.” These eight limbs played a large part in Hindu and Indian culture of his time, and still continue to do so to some extent today. They serve as a manual-like guide to Patanjali’s “completeness,” or perfect unity and connection with the divine.

For Patanjali, all eight limbs were important and therefore balanced; no single branch was emphasized over others. Though each targets specific aspects of existence, all focus on the ways in which we interact with the world around us and how we interact with ourselves. The first two limbs, for example, outline moral behavior, suggesting things like “compassion for all living things” and “neutralizing the desire to acquire and hoard wealth.” Other limbs focus on different observation and concentration techniques in order

to control and understand the senses and cultivate a deeper inner perceptual awareness. Only one of the branches actually refers to what we now commonly know as “yoga.”

This limb is referred to as Asana, a Sanskrit word that translates literally as “seat,” but which is more commonly thought of as a translation for “pose” or “posture” (hence the names of yoga poses ending in –asana, like savasana for corpse pose and bakasana for crow pose). Patanjali intended for the Asana limb to act as a preparation for the work to be done within the other seven limbs. For him, asanas were revered as an essential warm-up activity for demanding physical and mental activities like seated meditation, similar to the role that dynamic stretching now plays before professional basketball games.

The asana practice once only constituted a fragment of a much larger picture. The fact that it is now the main focus of a glamorized multibillion dollar industry makes a strong case for the argument that the majority of the “west” is not honoring an ancient practice, but rather appropriating it. As S.E. Smith, a writer for xojane. com, argues, “Yoga furnishes a textbook example [of cultural appropriation]; westerners lift something from another tradition, brand it as ‘exotic,’ proceed to dilute and twist it to satisfy their own desires, and then call it their own.”

To some extent, this is inarguable. According the YJ and YA study, the top reasons Americans practice yoga is “flexibility, stress reduction and overall fitness.” This isn’t to say that no one practicing yoga cares about its original intentions, but simply that the overwhelming majority of practitioners have extracted the asana practice from its core and left the rest aside.

The western adaptation of yoga has been absorbed readily by mainstream culture. Somehow it became in vogue to plaster Ganesha, Namaste and Om symbols on water bottles, posters and t-shirts. An entire fashion category was created to accommodate the overwhelming, booming popularity. “Yoga leggings” commonly retail for over $100 (so much for neutralizing the desire to acquire and hoard wealth). Instead of encourag-

ing people to seek purity and contentment or find compassion and practice discipline, the yoga industry encourages consumerism and fuels obsessions with outward beauty.

Summer Chastant, a retired yoga teacher based in Los Angeles, California, , created a comedic TV series in 2015 called “Namaste, Bitches” that exposes outrageous culture revolving around the high-end yoga scene. In a New York Times interview Chastant said, “Teachers in the Western world are increasingly hired by the number of Instagram followers they have… That is kind of the antithesis of yoga, which is all about being selfless and being of service.”

This kind of image-focused yoga can cause even those with a claim to the original culture to feel alienated. Susana Barkataki, author of the popular article “How to Decolonize Your Yoga,” wrote, “As an Indian woman living in the U.S. I’ve often felt uncomfortable in many yoga spaces… my culture is being stripped of its meaning and sold back to me in forms that feel humiliating at best and dehumanizing at worst.”

Yet even as awareness of yoga’s potential harm has grown, only a few institutions have taken actions to curtail the symptoms. In November of 2015, the University of Ottawa cancelled their yoga program. The Ottawa Sun reported that the administration was concerned that the cultures from which yoga has been taken “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy.’”

Michelle Goldberg, author of The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, doesn’t fully agree with this argument. She makes the case that thinking about yoga in this context “completely ignores the agency of Indians themselves, who have been making a concerted effort to export yoga to the West since the late 19th century…

Indians have played an active, enthusiastic role in globalizing their spiritual practices.”

For a time during British colonialism, practicing yoga was actually banned, so in 1893 Swami Vivekananda traveled to the United States as India’s first missionary of sorts to raise support

against British rule. Indian leaders thought that by spreading knowledge about Hinduism, they could undermine the misconception of Indian culture as backwards and insufficient. Swami Vivekananda’s mission was an overwhelming success: Despite the fact that his original intention was never to spread asana practice, as Swami Vivekananda adapted his teachings to suit the western audience, “yoga” as we now know it quickly became one of his central tenets and the most lasting message. Swami Vivekananda found that westerners could relate to yoga the most because it was seen as a practical way to “realize the divine force within,” which was a large focus of the concurrent western Christian theology.

Even today, India plays an active role in spreading yoga, and the Government of India has made it one of its public relations focuses for several years. In 2014 the government created a new ministry of yoga and in early 2015 the country succeeded in lobbying the United Nations for an official International Yoga Day, which is now celebrated worldwide on June 21 with mass yoga demonstrations. Commenting on these changes, Anmol Saxena, the Delhi-based Al Jazeera correspondent observed “New Age Indian gurus… have created multimillion-dollar business empires through yoga centres, traditional treatments and TV shows. Clearly, there is a lot more economic potential in yoga than just yoga pants.”

This only goes to show that the case against yoga isn’t simple. Both sides certainly played a part in how the current manifestation evolved.

But what does it mean to practice yoga while wearing luxurious clothing? Or, worse, to cut someone off in the parking lot in order to get a good seat in yoga class?

Illustration Mithra Krishnan

a lawyer’s verdict on making a murderer asking for parental advice

GABRIELLE HICK staff writer Growing up as the daughter of two lawyers was a particular kind of childhood, one in which I rarely won arguments, developed an intense fascination with criminal psychology, and learned that what’s fair or what’s just is not always the verdict. My mother specializes in health law, privacy, and corporate governance. My father wanted to be a criminal lawyer until he realized that his clients tended to actually be guilty—like the man he was tasked with defending who was charged with having special relations with a goat. After that, he switched to corporate and securities law.

Over the holiday break I brought “Making a Murderer,” the explosively popular Netflix original series, to the attention of my parents.

My boyfriend and I had binge-watched the show’s ten hour-long episodes over the course of a week, and, while we had our opinions on the guilt or innocence of the central figures, I wanted to see how my lawyer parents would

react. For those not familiar with the show, or who have avoided it the way one avoids hard drugs—it is scarily addictive—it is a documentary series, filmed over the course of ten years, that concerns a man named Steven Avery and his encounters with the law. In 1985, Avery, who is from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, was found guilty of first-degree sexual assault against fellow Manitowoc resident Penny Beernsten, and sentenced to 32 years in prison. After 18 years, Avery was released in 2003, a consequence of new DNA evidence that proved his innocence.

The first episode of “Making a Murderer” deals mostly with how and why Avery was falsely convicted, citing specific instances of possibly intentional negligence by the sheriff’s department that may or may not have freed Avery from prison earlier.

One thing I’ve learned from my lawyer parents: If you aren’t certain, “possibly” and “may or may not” are your better options.

Upon his release, Avery sued Manitowoc County and its former sheriff and district attorney for $36 million in damages, while also expressing his forgiveness for the whole business. I thought about that all throughout the first episode—about how much, monetarily, 18 years of a life spent sitting in a jail for something you didn’t do was worth, and about whether I would be able to forgive so easily. I couldn’t answer either of those questions.

But then something happened on Halloween, 2005. A photographer named Teresa Halbach went missing, and her last appointment of the day was on Avery’s property. Her car and burned remains were soon found on the property, and Avery was charged with intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse, and possession of firearms as a felon.

This is where the spoiler alert would go if I were to keep summarizing, but it won’t be necessary. The intricacies of the murder

case and the complexity of the evidence brought against Steven Avery are better left to the show, and I don’t like to ruin surprises, of which there are many in “Making a Murderer.” By the final episode, when the ruling is announced, I had gone back and forth between, “He has to be guilty” and “Wow, are you kidding me, he’s 100% innocent,” so many times that I lost count. In the aftermath of the show’s release there have been articles, timelines, conspiracy theories, and petitions about the case, and I’ve read most of them.

And I still don’t know what I think—whether Steven Avery murdered Teresa Halbach, or not. Part of what makes the show so popular, I think, is the discussions it generates—on what actually happened, was the ruling just, and will we ever know.

So, in my doubt, I gently forced my mother to watch the show, and give me her opinion. (She wanted me to clarify that she isn’t a criminal lawyer, and that her thoughts

arts & culture on the case should be considered with this clarification in mind.) There are two things she thinks are important to keep in mind: 1.

Before his 1985 conviction, Avery pled guilty to animal cruelty, having doused the family cat in gasoline and thrown it over the fire.

“I was young and stupid,” he says in the first episode. 2. Avery did not take the stand in his defense in the murder trial. As my parents explained to me, when a defendant does not take the stand, the jury is more likely to convict, because if you plead “not guilty” you should theoretically have nothing to hide.

My mother’s opinion is based, therefore, less on the evidence than on Steven Avery’s personality. “I thought he was guilty because he acted too forgiving after his release, which seemed false. I would be very angry, as I suspect he was, and I doubt prison teaches you

7

to be kind. He tortured a cat, so he lacked empathy in that respect and had the capability to be cruel. I suspect he thought he was untouchable once he had been exonerated and could do anything he wanted. He was arrogant not to take the stand in his defense if he was truly innocent.”

So there is a lawyer’s verdict on the central question of “Making a Murderer.” My father has not seen the show, but based on my description of the premise and the facts and he thinks similarly. While I still have my questions, and perhaps will never know where the truth lies, I highly recommend the show. Especially if your parents are lawyers.

Illustration by Soco Fernandez Garcia

the tell-tale tweet how nine words erected one direction’s gay empire RYAN WALSH staff writer “Always in my heart @Harry_Styles.

Yours sincerely, Louis.”1 With over 1.85 million retweets, the above words constitute the second most shared tweet in the history of Twitter.2 Sent from Louis Tomlinson, eldest member of English-Irish boy band One Direction, to bandmate Harry Styles, the message is a rallying cry for a subset of 1D fans who believe in a suspected but unconfirmed romantic relationship between the two 20-something singers. The coupling is known by its portmanteau “Larry Stylinson,” often shortened to “Larry” and whose disciples are known as “Larries.”

Originally posted on October 2, 2011, Tomlinson’s tweet (referred to by fans as AIMH) is claimed, along with the duo’s matching nautical tattoos and brief stint of cohabitation in 2011, to be evidence of Larry’s legitimacy. Others, however, namely Larry naysayers called “Antis,” insist that the two simply share a platonic bromance.

Whether Anti or Larry, no one can deny the power of AIMH, which currently boasts more than twice the number of retweets enjoyed by its closest rival, President Obama’s 2012 re-election tweet.3 Oddly, however, only a year ago, Tomlinson’s now-viral words claimed fewer than a million retweets.4 Another

year earlier, the tweet claimed fewer than 350 thousand retweets.5 And, in 2011 when the post first appeared, before One Direction’s breakout album “Up All Night,” one can only imagine that Tomlinson’s note passed largely unnoticed before the eyes of the Twitterverse.

AIMH’s delayed rise to fame differs greatly from most vi-ral tweets.

Obama’s skyrocketed to 530 thousand retweets just days after its posting but lost momentum soon after, drifting slowly upwards to its current 745 thousand over a four-year plateau. 6 So, what happened? What came up midway through 2015, four years after AIMH’s drafting, that propelled Tomlinson’s Hallmark card to the top? Why did Larries blow up this post from the past? And, with such fervor surrounding these nine words, the question must be asked: Could Larry be real, after all?

Many say no. After all, each of the five members of 1D has at some point been “shipped” with another. All 10 permutations of 1D couplings tout thousands of (often explicit) fan-fiction stories written about them on forums like Archive Of Our Own. While Larry dwarfs the rest in terms of popularity, 1D pairings certainly can’t all be true just because the fans believe in them.

Elsewhere, there’s Tomlinson’s tweet from September 2012 that states:

“How’s this, Larry is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard. I’m happy why can’t you accept that.” Also damaging to the faith was a March 2013 interview in Dallas where Tomlinson responded to Larry rumors by saying in an incredulous tone, “Some people genuinely think that we’re in a relationship. That’s what they genuinely, seriously think.”7 And then, there’s Tomlinson’s run-in with Jenn Selby, author of a 2014 article titled “Louis Tomlinson supports gay apple CEO Tim Cook.”8 Having been spotted sporting a T-shirt with Apple’s 1977 rainbow logo on the chest, Tomlinson responded to Selby on Twitter, saying, “The fact that you [Selby] work for such a ‘credible’ paper and you would talk such rubbish is laughable. I am in fact straight.”9 But then there’s all the other stuff that made fans believe in Larry in the first place. For starters, there’s Styles admitting in a 2011 backstage interview, “My first real crush was Louis Tomlinson…

It’s mutual, we’ve discussed it.”10 And then, from their early days on The X Factor, there are the video diaries that depict the two making eyes at each other and cuddling close in matching pajamas.11 At one point, the two are draped over one another with Styles pronouncing, “Kiss me, you fool!” and Tomlinson consequently descending upon him, delivering a furtive neck bite.12 There’s also the inexplicable and rather public red carpet smooch in 2012.13 These “proofs”—various photos and documents dug up by fans with juicy titles like “The Paris Interview”14 and “The Wellington Video”15—all serve to undermine the two pop stars’ highprofile, tabloid-selling relationships with women.

So-called “canon” pairings like “Haylor” (Harry Styles and Taylor Swift) and “Elounor” (Louis Tomlinson and Eleanor Calder) are majorly denied by Larries, who claim that such couples are fabricated by the band’s management to prolong fangirl interest in band. One such relationship scrutinized by Larries is Tomlinson’s connection to Brianna Jungwirth, L.A.-based stylist and now also mother of Tomlinson’s newborn son Freddie, who arrived just last month on January 21.

Which brings us back to AIMH. Remember that odd detail about the timing? How the tweet had strangely lain dormant for years before surging to power overnight last summer? Funnily enough, Rumors of Jungwirth’s pregnancy broke right around that time. In all likelihood, Tomlinson’s ancient tweet was buoyed to its current top spot by ever-hopeful Larries seeking to remind the world of Larry’s long-standing legacy in the wake of what many call “Babygate.”

So where does all this leave Larry?

With a new child and a new girlfriend, CW actress Danielle Campbell, Tomlinson has left many Larries wondering whether his “front” has really been fact all along, potentially spelling death for the institution that is Larry.

And dead it might have been, if not for a mysterious stuffed animal known as the Rainbow Bondage Bear (RBB), a multi-colored plush teddy that was thrown onstage and pocketed by the band’s crew during their 2014 tour.

RBB, so named because of his black electrical tape wrappings made to look like BDSM leather gear, can be seen at most 1D concerts strapped to the stage scaffolding, surveying the crowd with his enigmatic smile, black aviators, and Village People moustache.

Larries take RBB to be a coded endorsement for Larry because of the bear’s Twitter page, an anonymous account that claims close to 200 thousand followers and that routinely shares cryptic, gay-themed updates, including group shots with drag queens and selfies with Liberace’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star.16 In October of 2015, the bear shared a curious post that warned of bears “coming out” of hibernation, which Larries worldwide took to signify an imminent outing event.17 Regardless of whether Larry is fact or fancy, there is just one thing I want to know: What the hell was Harry Styles doing sincerely in Louis Tomlinson’s heart back in 2011?

Illustration by Emma Marguiles

8

lifestyle

I think I threw out my back reaching for a slice of pizza.

The armpits are the eyes of the heart.

As I always say, I’m not going to sit back and take the shat on my face.

We need more overheards.

People say more funny things.

topten

1. creamy vs. chunky peanut butter 2. apple vs. android 3. flat earth vs. round earth 4. oxford comma vs. you’re wrong 5. blognonian vs. bologna 6. apple vs. orange 7. snow much fun vs. i fucking hate snow 8. early bird vs. night owl vs. eternally tired emu 9. pro-choice vs. pro-life 10. apple vs. not having original sin

pitch perfect on games and grieving

I just have a thing for diabetics.

My professor just said he has a fetish for pomelos.

Ah yes, how hilarious it is to laugh at clowns, the painted jesters of a dying circus industry.

As soon as I saw you on “tinder” I knew you were a loose “millennial” tramp who tries to undercut good old traditional values like arranged marriage and the patriarchy.

hot post time machine

Something peculiar happens when you cross anarchy with a banjo... of bicycles, quail and illustrious fathers -12/03/2011

controversies since the chicken and the egg

AMY ANDREWS managing editor of online Some families play poker. Some families play bridge. Some families play Monopoly, or Scrabble, or Taboo, or what have you. But my family’s game is a card game called pitch.

If pitch doesn’t ring a bell, you might know it by the more descriptive but ultimately unwieldy name High, Low, Jack.

And more likely, you haven’t heard of it at all—it’s not that common a game, and I’ve only encountered a few people outside my family who are familiar with it at all.

The rules of the game can be a bit complicated to explain, and they don’t matter here. What matters is that my grandparents loved pitch. Over the years, they played in multiple pitch leagues in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, not far from Providence. They loved it, and they were good at it—more often than not winning games (and sometimes money) against the other (mostly old) people they played against. And they passed that love of pitch on to my mom and her siblings, and eventually to me and my brother and my cousins.

There are many things I love about pitch. I love that it is the perfect combination of luck and skill. Sometimes the cards are in your favor, and sometimes they’re not, but there is nothing more satisfying than using years of practice and learned strategy to turn a handful of low cards into a winning hand, or at least a helping one. I love that it’s a team game, that you have to rely on your partner and hope they’ll be able to back you up when you make a risky bet—sometimes they can, and sometimes they can’t. I love that it moves fast but not too fast and that I can play it for hours on end without getting bored because every hand is different as the luck of the cards changes.

My family always used to joke that I was lucky, that I got lucky with cards, and I often did. But luck doesn’t last, and most things don’t last, and the last time I played pitch with my grandma

was about three years ago, before she died. I didn’t know it would be the last time and then it had happened and we would never play cards together again. I don’t specifically remember the last time I played cards with my grandpa—sometime in 2009, before he got too sick to play.

For a long time pitch was something I kept to myself. It belonged to me and my family only. But after my grandparents died and I only got to play pitch once a year at Christmas, I decided I missed pitch and I wanted to play again.

Last year on spring break with three of my friends, I taught them to play. I hadn’t taught anyone to play in a long time, and it took a little while for them to get the hang of the rules and the strategy. But they got it, and we played, and it was the best.

When we returned from spring break, I went to a game night with other friends and I taught a bunch of them to play too. This was nothing like how I used to play with my grandparents— here we were, nine or ten college students huddled on the floor of the Hope basement, surrounded by other people playing other games. And here I am, ten years old and thirteen and sixteen and eighteen, sitting at the dark wood table on Mendon Road, with my grandparents and parents, aunts and uncles, brother and cousins, playing endless games with endless permutations and endless wins and losses.

After my grandma’s funeral, my aunt gave me and my cousins each one of her decks of cards. There was nothing special about them—just the standard red and blue Bicycle packs—but my grandma’s death had been fairly sudden and unexpected, and this gesture was what made it feel more real.

Writing about grief is hard. Grieving is hard. But this is about the after-grief, the end of the active grieving period when you’re not thinking about your loss all the time—instead it’s the occa-

sional missing, the occasional tears. At my grandma’s funeral, we were asked to share memories of her, and I didn’t, because it was too soon and too hard to think of something profound to say about her death; because nothing about it felt profound, it just felt awful. But three years later I can think about the little, less profound things: all the times my grandpa would end up spectacularly “in the hole” (losing more points than he won), just to keep the other team from winning. He was the kind of card player who always tried to shoot the moon in Hearts—and who succeeded more often than anyone I’ve ever known. My grandma shuffling carefully, deliberately, passing the cards in and out over and over until my grandpa, impatient, said, “Don’t marry ‘em!”, an exchange that happened exactly the same way every time we played together. The way my cousin Tim takes the exact same risks, makes the same spectacularly gutsy, occasionally stupid bets my grandpa always used to make. All the times my grandma beat me, or all the times we were partners and no matter if we won or lost it happened together.

My family didn’t play pitch again for a while after my grandma died, because it was impossible to play without feeling her absence, being too aware of her empty seat at the table. But eventually we did again, because not playing was harder than playing, and eventually the grief dissipated and it was a little easier.

I don’t think about my grandparents every day any more, because I guess that’s what happens with time. But I miss them and I miss them somehow a little less and a little more when I play pitch with my friends. I didn’t speak at my grandma’s funeral, but writing about her is something I know how to do, and it’s one way I have of honoring her and my grandpa. The other way is by playing pitch.

Illustration by Jenice Kim