Retired Eyes

February 21, 2013

The Short, Implanted Grass

The first time I met Leah, she was reading an evolutionary biology textbook in a tree in the Mathey courtyard. As the weather grew warmer in the spring, I began to see her there almost constantly. One day, I decided to overcome my aversion to aerated New Jersey soil and sharp acorns, and joined her reading session.

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Color War

Our guns were semi-automatic, which means you could shoot as fast as you pulled the trigger, and even an amateur like myself found myself reeling off three or four paintballs a second. I could feel every individual shot through its reverberations—no real recoil to speak of, but a satisfying pneumatic thwunk as the ball hurtled through the barrel.

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Scenes from Petey Greene (Part 1)

Maybe it’s just the New Jersey weather or the tint of the van’s windows but it seems like it’s always foggy when I drive to Garden State, a sprawling correctional complex whose hallways I’ve walked through without ever really managing to glean the building’s external shape. We always drive towards it from the same side. Inside the hallways shoot off from rounded enclosure where the guards sit like identical grayish-beige spokes from a wheel. Sometimes it’s hard to find my way out because everything looks the same.

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Scenes from Petey Greene (Part 2)

The classroom always has a smell. It’s because there are too many bodies for the space, grown bodies, breathing and milling, restless. Too many adult men looking like tea party guests behind children’s desks, legs spilling out from underneath. The … Read More

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The Band

Just a few nights ago, I was eating at Whitman when the band came to play during dinner. Their entrance was met with the usual palpable dread. Aside from a few clapping friends, the reaction of the dining hall was mostly a muffled groan, rolling eyes and petulant, commiserative stares at nearby friends.

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The son poem begins:

‘ . . . And what greater calamity
[be]falls . . . than the loss of worship . . .
or , in the first eras , territory , river ,
and sure on that tongue . . . my elder-tongue . . .

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The Good Old Days

A couple weeks ago, legendary shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine released their first album in twenty-two years. The press surrounding the release of m b v was as extensive as any I’ve seen for a musical release in quite a long time. Why? What’s the big deal about this band coming back after so long?

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Splitsville.com

Our Photo Booth binges are etched with permanent pixels in ways my pubescent voice-cracks will never be. Which is terrifying. So I exhausted hours upon hours to bury three years of my life in Mark Zuckerberg’s treasure chest of secrets, but only after staring down each, one by one, and casting it into the dark anonymity of “untagged.”

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Swift’s Circus

When Taylor Swift pranced onto the stage dressed in a white circus ringmaster’s costume at the most recent Grammy Awards, I thought fleetingly that perhaps this girl was not Swift, but rather Britney Spears performing an homage to her 2008 album Circus. This fantasy was quickly quashed as the first twangs of “We Are Never Getting Back Together” filled the auditorium.

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Nitty Gritty City Committee

The beauty of North Jersey is in its honest, unassuming appearance and demeanor. If you’re scared away by the old factories with broken walls, signs advertising divorce for $399 dollars, or oil tanks, these places won’t be nice to you. But if you go inside, take the train to Journal Square and walk up JFK Boulevard, and say talk to the guy leaning against an old street lamp outside the train station, you’ll find it welcoming. It’s a rugged, middle-class area, but it won’t reject you unless you refuse it.

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Jeremiah Was a Prophet

Jeremiah (“The Weeping Prophet”) is famous for prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews. In the Hebrew Bible, God called to Jeremiah in 626 BC and said that the Jewish people had forsaken him by worshiping false idols. God instructed Jeremiah to proclaim that unless they repented, the Israelites would be pillaged by a foreign nation and exiled from their land as punishment.

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Photographs: Trimble County, 4 a.m

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Kanye West’s Top 120 Baby Names

1. Mistake
2. Hieronymus
3. Magical Negro
4. Doubletree
5. Krampus
6. North by North
7. Glass Spanish
8. CRIME
9. Susanorlean Orchid
10. Sheikh

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WPRB Top 30 Charts

1. Toro y Moi
Anything in Return
Carpark

2. Bibi Tanga and the Selenites
40 Degrees of Sunshine
Nat Geo

3. Paint Fumes
Uck Life
Slovenly

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Verbatim

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Overheard at Shabbat

Future Bridgewater employee: I just had a moment where I realized how glad I was to be white.

Overheard at Terrace

Dude: If it’s covered in chocolate who cares if it’s a dick?

Overheard at Terrace

Ivy sophomore, screaming: FUCK, I WANT A HOAGIE.
Nass staffer: Do you have any cash?
Ivy sophomore, even louder: I would, BUT I SPENT IT ALL ON LUBE.

Overheard in Frist

Math major, to other math major: Padding your GPA with Econ classes is like beating fourth graders in basketball.

Overheard at Late Meal

Butter-covered Terrace sophomore: If you get anywhere near this ass it’s gonna be danger.

Overheard at a Nass meeting

Nass Freshman: Anyone here on a varsity team?
Frist center: [dull hum]

Overheard in Forbes Dining Hall

Girl, near-hysterical: You’re in Cap now, baby, nothing else matters anymore!!

Overheard in Forbes

Bathroom Nazi, to roommate: Fuck, man. Did you shit in the toilet again?!

Overheard at Ivy

Boy: Charter’s really beautiful... If there were no people there, I’d go.

Overheard in Pyne

Tower senior: We’re letting in 70 Indian kids. I’ll never speak to any of them.

Overheard in Mathey

German freshman: I vud like to know more about Monica Levinsky.

Overheard at Sunday Mass

Girl 1: She is such a bitch.
Girl 2: Jesus, you can’t insult people in church.
Girl 2: Well, you just used the Lord’s name in vain.
Girl 1: Yeah, but you insulted a real person.

Overheard in Wu

AEPi Sophomore, inscrutably: Yeah girl you all about that forbidden fruit life.

Overheard in Math Alive

Adjunct professor of Mathematics: So the question is, how many peo- ple are you going to date in your lifetime? But don’t ask a math- ematician that question because the answer is 0, or 1 if you’re lucky.

Overheard after initiations

Inebriated Ivy member: I was the most popular person at PMC.

Overheard in The Daily Princetonian

Quad Officer: We’re a pretty popular club on the street.

Overheard at Ivy

Member: I mean, it’s not hard to become a senator.

Overheard in Foulk

Tigertone: I get more head than anybody I’ve ever seen before.