what i’ve learned of love, i’ve learned it from trees.
Tag: new york city
For Comrades and Lovers
More than anything, Glenn Ligon’s UC installation embodies Whitman’s ideas of solitude as time spent alone that inversely enables someone to come closer to the city around them.
Camp (It’s a Mitzvah!)
It is 1982. I just turned 14 last month. It is the summer before 10th grade. I am at a sleepaway camp in the Catskills. I am staying in what used to be a hotel that the camp randomly assigns to campers. It’s not fancy, but it’s better than the cabins. It’s really cool because I am with a group of girls from Long Island. It’s like they are a gang of Rizzos from Grease.
I Bought a Rug
Recently, I looked around my room and thought, if I were to die inexplicably in my sleep, I would be surrounded by nothing.
Letter from the Editor, 2023-24
The phrase “particularly in these times” stands out to me.
Unbecoming Homeless
Who cares about which direction the stocks are headed when you don’t know where you and your family will be sleeping tonight?
Cecilia Gentili’s Legacy, Southern Transness, and the Reclamation of Sainthood
Above all, Cecilia embodied the spirit of a saint, transcending the boundaries of convention and challenging sanctimony as a trans sex worker of color.
I HATED THE MOVIE, BARBIE.
Yes, the production design and costume design (which, if you’re counting, were BOTH nominated) are meticulous and delicious. The mostly pink pastel color palette is like visual cotton candy. But, much like real cotton candy, it is just a dessert; scrumdiddlyumptious, but not a meal.
Flaco in Memoriam
To encounter him was a blessing.
NYC Babies & Dogs Just Don’t Give a F*ck
The vibrant tapestry of city life leaves these pint-sized locals unfazed, a stark contrast to their counterparts living elsewhere who find wonder in the smallest of things.
Dos Cabezas: Basquiat × Warhol at the Brant Foundation
The combined work of these artists is at its best when their individual contributions become indistinguishable. Their two different styles—Basquiat’s menagerie of symbols and words drawn from street signs and textbooks and allegory, and Warhol’s infamous screen print copy-and-paste—melt into a sea of painted expression.
Family Reunion: NYCB’S 75th Anniversary
It was the youngest looking crowd of all ages ever; Ballet has a way of preserving the body in time. While wrinkles and sallow skin are an inevitability, their bodies remain strong and erect, belying their age.
Figures
When a people are made into numbers, by nature, they become divisible. By design, subtractable.
Pumpkin, Spice, Naughty, and Nice
If Christian girlies who love the fall season truly knew and embraced that their bescarved, twinkly-eyed glee comes at the behest of many who suffered brutal deaths, or that their Target scarves were forcibly made by Indonesian children for less than a dollar a day, would they smile so big when sipping those tasty PSLs?
The Fun Will Never End
Now concluded, Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake has catapulted the franchise to new heights with its willingness to grow with its audience and expand its universe—or, rather, multiverse.
Our Back-to-School Playlist
12th Street staff talks about the media that’s kept them charged during the hottest summer in history. Whether you’ve found yourself on a rooftop or at the beach, or just sweating through your pants trying to catch a train, turn to our curated assemblage of recs!
Frijoles Negros al Indios
But you cannot pick around home. Maybe your home, but not my home. I can throw the doors wide–and often do so with open arms–but to refuse a beam–whether it be a corpulent bird or a hi hat trill–is to cripple such a font to its foundation. For it comes from the depths of my soul, indivisible and not mine, but inherited slowly over time with no recipe to speak of, only a dance rediscovered over and over with folkish steps, a memory recognized when lived out with abandon. I cannot choose what bubbles up from this stew.
Circles and Rectangles
I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when he is struck by the Seurat painting, except there’s no John Hughes movie soundtrack in the back, and I fail to fall into the painting the way Cameron does. The pressure to discern meaning increases when other people are nearby. I’m afraid that they see something I can’t.
Ode to Looking Down
Looking up at the world was now far clearer and a lot less scary, but self-preserving habits are hard to break. I mean, I had spent most of my life avoiding looking up for fear that I would be perceived as rude! But in Western culture especially, eye contact shows you’re polite. Eye contact with a handshake establishes confidence. Eye contact is a way of connecting with someone and showing them that you care about what they have to say. But can’t I look at the ground and still be a good listener? Can’t I still look at the ground and be a confident person if I feel like I can protect myself better? Can looking down ever be seen as a positive?