post- 04/02/2021

In This Issue

Pandemic Fragments

Andrew lu 3

Batter Up

Jack Walker 2 Kaitlan bui 4

By Ourselves, with Each Other Allegra friedman 5

Just Scream"

"If You Can't Breathe, Adi Thatai 6

An Ode to Chess

postCover by Nina Yuchi

APRIL 2

VOL 27 —

ISSUE 9

FEATURE

Batter Up on masculinity and athletics

By Jack Walker Illustrated by Chloe Chen

F

umbling past my brother’s legs, I slid between the driver’s and passenger sides of my dad’s white pickup truck, into a makeshift seat on top of the center console. The swarming summer heat mixed with pine air freshener and made my throat sting.

On our way down the mountain, we wove through a canvas of greens, each different shade plastered on top of another. Turns jostled the whole car, bumping my knee into my brother’s and brushing my shoulder against my dad’s. I felt close to them like this, every unintended touch making the car feel so full, like no matter where I turned I would be surrounded by their love.

We made our way into town and pulled into a

gravel parking lot. Our wheels kicked up dust and turned the windows hazy. My brother and I grabbed our bags out from the bed of the truck and walked to our youth team’s dugout, right in front of the bleachers where my dad would watch us play baseball for the next hour.

I felt a deep apathy for sports, but we would get free pizza and snow cones after games, which made stepping foot onto the field very important. While waiting for my turn to bat or run or catch the ball, I would wonder about the world around me. How could I get into the announcement booth above the concession stand? Who were those older boys over there, building a treehouse in the woods behind the ballpark? Staring in

every direction but the field, the gravity of rec league baseball was lost on me.

I was always last in the batting order. I hated the buzzing feeling that would run through my fingertips and up my arms each time I feebly made contact with the ball. But I was fascinated with first base, the idea that once I finally got there I could just keep running, and maybe even score for my team.

Unfortunately, my fear of hitting the ball always outweighed this. Whenever it was my turn to bat, I would refuse to swing and hope the ball would hit me so I could walk to first base. To my chagrin, this rarely worked out, and I had to return to the dugout uninjured and struck out.

Letter from the Editor

Fools

Dear Readers, Lately, I’ve been thinking about endings—a lot, like a truly obsessive amount. Last February, when I set off to write a thesis on post-apocalyptic literature, I lived in a world where the apocalypse was still an abstract concept. But, as my page count steadily mounted, I found my words gaining an eerie relevance as the pandemic swallowed up my senior year.

This past week, I have struggled to reconcile myself with how my thesis ended. Instead of the triumph I imagined I would feel when I hit the submit button, I was burnt out, sleep-deprived, and dehydrated. I wanted to hide away this 100 page monstrosity which I turned in without proofreading a single word. I’ve been so focused on picking apart this ending, I forgot to listen to my own advice: while we can’t control how things end, we can control who we will be when we face them.

This week’s writers for post- similarly reflect on identity in our changing world. In Feature, the writer maps his journey to understanding masculinity by overcoming his tenuous relationship with sports.

Memories of the past year figure in the two Narrative pieces, as one writer recounts his life in Beijing and Wuhan in the thick of the pandemic, while the

2 post–

other muses over the comforting presence of strangers. The writers for Arts & Culture depict shifts in their personal lives as one writer describes her experience with skydiving through Tom Petty’s “Freefalling,” and the other rediscovers the magic of chess over quarantine. With the weather getting warmer, Lifestyle welcomes spring with a musical guide of outdoor spaces at Brown, and suggestions for springtime activities based on astrological signs.

When it feels like the end of the world is upon you, it’s hard to step away from the anxieties of the future. It’s best to remind yourself that the ending is beyond your imagination. Sometimes it’s better not to think about it at all, so that you can live in the present. I’ll stop obsessing over all the typos I might have made, all the things I didn’t get to write. Instead, I’ll choose to bask in this small sliver of time—this present quiet moment. I hope you’ll join me.

Throwing the apocalypse in the trash,

Minako Ogita

Narrative Managing Editor

1. “FOOLS” by Troye Sivan 2. Booboo The Fool, born yesterday 3. Me most days 4. First person to join the Zoom call who just has to chill with the professor 5. Court jester (dream job) 6. Pulling The Fool Reversed from the tarot deck 7. Waving your wet hands in front of an empty, unsympathetic paper towel dispenser 8. “You fool” (said endearingly, flirtatiously even) 9. April 10. According to Shakespeare, a wise man

FEATURE “Whatever you do, we just want to see you swing,” a coach told me one day after practice. “Even if you miss, just go out swinging.”

With his advice in mind, I decided one day it was time to hit the ball and make it to first base all on my own. Walking up to home plate, I fastened the Velcro straps on my fashionable batting gloves and got into position.

“Just think of first base,” I thought to myself.

“Imagine what it would feel like to finally get the chance to run, to round the diamond infield and slide your way home. To finally be a part of the team.”

I took a couple of practice swings and felt the blood rush to my knuckles. The bat steady behind my head, I braced myself. When the pitch came, I swung with my whole body, landing the ball squarely on my nose.

The referee gave me a walk, but I was preoccupied with choking back tears. A small stream of blood ran across the curve of my lips. I didn’t want to take first base. The coach switched me out for another runner, and I sat on the bleachers with my dad, watching the other boys while pinching the bridge of my nose. *** As I grew older, my inability to succeed in sports began to feel emasculating. I tried swimming and martial arts and cross country, yet, no matter what I did, it seemed as if I was incapable of meeting the standard for boys set by the world around me. The excitement I had for afternoon baseball games turned into discomfort, and I felt alienated from my amily on our long drives into town.

I was unconscious of it at the time, but my frustration with sports fit into a growing sense that I did not belong in masculine spaces. From the very first time that I swung at baseball practice, assimilating into the world of men hurt.

In high school, I wandered into soccer team tryouts four years in a row and, by senior year, was still incapable of passing the ball. The coaches would look at me with exasperation, like I was an old horse needing to be put out of my misery.

But during those four years I kept coming back to try again. I felt an overwhelming desire to make the team and publicly affirm I could do it, too, to make up for the aspects of male identity I was so apparently lacking. I was desperate to fit into the unspoken guidelines of manhood that would reaffirm my masculinity and, by proxy, my humanity.

The state of modern athletics is largely performative. Baseball stadiums come with giant flat screens that offer close-ups of the field, replaying highlight reels with animations and loud music to celebrate each demonstration of physical prowess.

In between innings, audience members fight for screen time with wacky antics or elaborate displays of team loyalty. The biggest fans throw some extra cash forward so their kids can meet athletes and

dream of one day making the big leagues themselves.

These performances come with high stakes that trickle all the way down to youth athletics, making even recreational sports hyper-competitive. Coaches focus entirely on winning, pressuring their teams to repress vulnerability for the sake of the game. For today’s generation of male athletes, to navigate sports is also to navigate masculinity. Success in athletics, winning games—all of it is rooted in the expectation for men to meet societal norms of how they should operate in our world. And, for boys like me, failing in sports means failing as a man. *** Pacing the halls of my freshman dorm, I found myself in a new environment with less demand for social conformity. Growing up in a religious and conservative part of the country, I had internalized an understanding that self-exploration was dangerous.

Branching out from standardized male behavior meant risking losing whatever semblance of community I had created around me, facing rejection from startled peers. I internalized my feelings and kept my walls up at all times.

But, at college, I came to a place that encouraged conversation. With programs literally created to discuss gender normativity, I found myself in a new world where people wanted to talk about their differences. Even in the way my male peers presented themselves, hair dyed or ears pierced, I found that there was no pressure in exploring my individuality, even in the ways that it might conflict my performance of gender.

I hyper-invested in college life, leaning on the support of a space where I was safe being myself. I took classes discussing gender and sexuality, had conversations with friends about the pressures of masculinity, and, thank God, never touched a baseball bat again.

I loosened up and got comfortable with myself, my body, as if I was a new person entirely. I felt like I was healing.

Yet, by its very nature, my self-expression was tied to a rejection of the past. As I stepped foot into my new person, all of the self-hatred that had once so exhaustingly weighed on my shoulders was transferred to my previous self. I was angry that I once felt the need to perform manhood, that I had tried and failed at sports then tried again. Embracing my present self and condemning my former grew intrinsically connected. *** On March 22, 2020, Brown University sent home its entire undergraduate population, transitioning to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On the car ride home in my dad’s pickup, I was scared of losing the world I created, returning to a place that had grown so far removed from the comfort I once found riding into town with my brother for practice.

Coming home meant the sense of self I had created at college became unsustainable. I could not just be myself in the present, because I was surrounded by pieces of youth that shaped my current life. Forced to reckon with the past, I spent late nights staring at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom, intimately near to a world I hoped to leave behind.

While in quarantine, I picked up running. My morning routine passed under the same forest lining the country roads my dad used to drive us on. My steps took a familiar rhythm, down a path I walked before with my mother, picking raspberries and blackberries that burst upon first touch.

And sometimes, while running, I pictured myself in a room with all of the previous versions of myself. I imagined how they would look at me now, hair dyed orange and more confidence in my step. I imagined telling them to just hang on, that one day the smalltown world they had always known would become so much bigger. I imagined assuring them that striking out at baseball practice or failing a soccer team tryout would mean so little in a couple of years. That, in spite of everything, they mattered.

Crossing fields of grazing cows and stepping foot over soft-spoken creeks, the irony of my newfound willingness to engage in the things I once so pointedly hated was not lost on me. But I felt in my gut that sports were no longer the same. It had always been a matter of just walking to first base, making some headway in the game of manhood. But I’ve gotten so far past first base. I’m running now.

Pandemic Fragments notes from 2020 by andrew lu Illustrated by joanne han It was almost noon and the sky was pale brown with rolling sand. Unmasked, I stood at a bus stop on a wide, open road, choking on the Gobi desert as my friend took videos of the empty streets. Three days into Chinese New Year break, we headed down-town to brunch, putting on our newly-purchased masks only as we climbed into the crowded, city-bound bus. In many ways, that was the last day of 2020.

An hour and three transfers later, we sipped mimosas on a terrace overlooking the sprawling alleys of downtown Beijing, talking about exams and prom and my friend’s new boyfriend. In the end, none of those things would turn out the way we expected. Exams were cancelled by March and prom became a pipe dream. My friend would leave for Bangkok in February and never see me or her boyfriend again.

Of course, we didn’t know any of that yet. In

“I’m just gonna pretend you said SMEG, which is my favorite brand of mid-century refrigerator.”

“She’s kind in a California way, which scares me because I don’t know what they’re doing over there.”

April 2, 2021 3

NARRATIVE To drive until disorientation, until we were lost enough to not know the right way home.

Goggles November came swiftly like the westerly wind and carried me home. I had hoped to run out the clock in Wuhan, but Beijing was calling my name.

“Graduation goggles” is what I call the nostalgia we experience when a period in our life is about to end, even if it was completely miserable. I saw everything through the lens of these delusional glasses. Beijing’s scything winds suddenly felt less abrasive on my peeling skin, and the sardine school that is the China World Trade Center became tinged with nostalgia. Why must everything regain its luster when it comes time to leave it behind? All winter long, Beijing desperately pleaded for me to stay, but I could not be fooled.

Goodbye to All That Joan Didion once wrote, “It is easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends.” I

fact, I was supposed to be in Wuhan the next day— the city where my family has spent every Chinese New Year since I was born. This year, however, my cousin’s wife who worked as an intensive care nurse in Wuhan called us the evening before our flight. “Do not come back,” she said after a 24 hour shift. Sitting in our living room, surrounded by packed suitcases, we asked her why. “Something is happening here,” she replied, “I have a bad feeling about it.”

Zombie Spring zoomed past without leaving any trace of its shadow. What I remember most clearly about this period of utter solitude was falling in love with rock music. As the magnolia tree outside my window blossomed, my bedroom became saturated with the voices of Kurt Cobain, Joan Jett, and the Stones. One night, after yet another numbing day of online classes attended in pajamas with the camera off, I turned up the volume of “Zombie” by The Cranberries. The shouting voices and throbbing beat roused a craving for action within me. Swinging and twirling, I danced because nobody was watching and my body needed to move. I danced because it was impossible not to. I danced to prove I was still alive.

June The month I turned 18 was also the month I fell out of love with my city. All the people I knew went away—a period of mass exodus. I stayed home with a battered copy of Eat Pray Love and scrolled through photos of girls and boys on beaches, trying not to cry.

Of course, I failed. I cried everywhere that summer.

On the couch, in bed, at the park, while walking home from the subway at 1 a.m. after a rare happy evening, knowing full well that tomorrow was already crashing down on the city like a sledgehammer.

Sometime in June, things fell apart. Cases were rising again and the uncertainty was overwhelming.

Something as trivial as a neighbor’s intrusively loud piano practice drove me mad. I was besieged in a room where “Für Elise” bombarded me from the ceiling and my parents’ yells crashed through the walls. Every day, I checked some 15 sources for infection and death rates around the world, and obsessively refreshed my email to see if the university had made its plans.

I was not supposed to be in Beijing anymore— that was the mantra of my despair. Every day as I woke up in that virus-stained city, my resentment grew.

In June, I mourned the death of a life that could’ve 4 post–

been. It was clear when I stopped eating altogether and couldn’t get out of bed on my birthday that I’d stayed too long at the fair, so long that the tent had fallen and the ground folded in on itself beneath my feet.

thought of these words as my plane rumbled into the dust-glazed sky on December 15, 2020. In the early months of this year, all of us saw something akin to a beginning; but I wonder, years later, when we look back over our shoulders at this devastating pandemic, will we be able to lay a finger upon the exact moment it ended?

Like a Prayer Some days after writing an existentialist cry for help, the opportunity came for me to get a COVID test, which was required to fly out of Beijing. Armed with a big fat “NEGATIVE,” I left for a city that had just risen from the dead like Lazarus in the holy book.

The day I arrived in Wuhan the sky was gray and pouring rain. I stayed one night in a hotel room overlooking the Yangtze, alone. I ordered room service because it was cheap and I didn't have an umbrella. That night, as I ate chicken and rice on a goose-feather bed, it felt almost okay. It felt as if I had finally fled the virus's reach, not just the virus that attacked your lungs, but also the one that gnawed at your mind until it was Swiss cheese. I spent the last day of July in front of a hotel window, praying to gods I did not believe in, just in case.

Lotus Roots Two days in Wuhan turned into a week which melted like smooth molasses into months. It rained every day at first. For a while, I didn’t leave my grandmother’s apartment except to get breakfast noodles from the vendors down the street. Those days were spent in a quiet bed watching Netflix and reading King. None of it scared me anymore.

When the rain finally stopped, I biked everywhere. The virus left almost no trace of itself except in the rows of fresh graves along the river bank.

Summer slipped into fall as I wrapped myself in a soft blanket of loneliness. Insulated, I was grateful for the peaceful solitude of a city that could not atomize my existence. All fall, I biked until my thighs ached and went home to eat lotus root soup, each bite a return of warmth, long overdue.

Will we have changed so fundamentally that there is no more “end” to speak of? Or will we forget and never look back at all?

I did not let myself believe that I was really leaving for America until Beijing faded beneath the clouds.

Eleven hours into the flight, as the Laurentian Plateau of the Canadian shield came into view, I let out the breath that had been trapped in the back of my lungs. Goodbye, I whispered. With every exhale, my protective face shield fogged up a little more, so I closed my eyes and leaned back. In my ears, competing with the thunderous hum of the airplane engine, the 4 Non Blondes sang about screaming from the top of their lungs: “What’s going on?”

By Ourselves, with Each Other books, politics, and the sunshine of strangers

by Kaitlan Bui Illustrated by ella harris I’m sitting outside my public library, you know, the one that issued me a library card when I was eight.

I remember that day had been a proud one for me: I had just learned how to write in cursive— crossing my t’s on the dotted middle line, making sure the loop of the lowercase y fell underneath— and all of a sudden, there I was, diplomatically printing my name on the back of an official piece of plastic. I think the frizzy-haired librarian even complimented my penmanship.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the last time I

Road Trip In October, we drove west to the mountains in my uncle’s van. Everywhere, the roads shimmered.

No one in the countryside wore masks anymore, and the air was rich with memories.

For ten days, we drove around the province and only stopped to indulge in fried fish and sticky buns. We’d been cooped up so long that it didn’t make sense to stay anywhere for more than one night.

The only thing that did make sense was to drive and keep driving until we were not in Kansas anymore.

used cursive with such purpose. I’m not even writing down anything at the moment. I’m recording myself on my phone, sprawled across a scruffy yellow Adirondack, trying not to think about all the missed readings I need to catch up on. Although I’ve journaled a lot, I’ve never actually recorded my life, my voice echoing with awkward inflecti­ons. It feels narcissistic and weird, but we’ve tried a lot of things in the past year, haven’t we? Like binging Netflix to no end and buying the sea salt caramel tin at Costco because why not. Like living solely online and wrecking our sleep

NARRATIVE our intimacy is fleeting, because I don’t attach expectations to it? Or is it because in documenting our encounter, I’ve made sure it “will leave a trace, will reverberate forever”?1 Whatever the answers may be, it’s getting chilly.

Even the numbers on my phone tell me it’s time to bid farewell. And so I will walk back to my hand-medown car, will pick up my brother from school, and after driving home, will unlock the front door and find myself once again in my childhood bedroom, the one with the yellow walls and flower-print curtains.

At some point, my mom might come knocking, asking for a hug, and I might think to myself how much I’ve gotten to know her this past year, and how lovely she is, but also how strange.

And I’ll think of the library ducks and the chubby boys and the old, white-haired man, and maybe then I’ll say to myself, ah, here is my half-answer, here is the reason I am left smiling. Maybe it’s because, regardless of how empty the wind can feel, there is sunshine in strangeness. Maybe it’s because strangeness means not knowing, and not knowing means discovering, and discovering means hope.

1 Also a quote from Lost Children Archive, which has snuck its way into my Favorite Books and is now seated next to Frankenstein. If you can’t tell, this article/audio entry is

schedules. Like getting goosebumps when worrying

not as he wishes to think we are.”

about the 2020 election and getting goosebumps again

I’m not sure if I agree with Zafón, even though I’d

when a young black woman stole the national scene

like to. Maybe this is because I am at heart a writer, or

with her poem.

maybe just a human, which means I like to inscribe

Anyway, I’m sitting here, and the wind is blowing,

things with stories, which means that everyone I bump

and Canadian geese are honking. The pond speaks in

into becomes a little indie film in themselves.

burbles, green and gray and very unkept, and the

I like to think in poems and potentials. In other words,

concrete library smiles at me from behind. There are

I’m a dangerous dreamer. So when one of the little boys

ducks and there are people feeding them, none

skips across the bridge and scoops dirty pond water

of them wearing masks. Any other day, I would’ve

into his pudgy hand, I wonder what kind of man he will

gotten angry, maybe started rambling to myself about

grow up to be. Is that seeing him the “way he is”?

the political and privileged implications of strolling

I realize that it is the strangers I have missed,

outside unmasked on a Friday afternoon, maybe gotten

which is honestly, well, strange. The chatting with

even angrier because there’s literally a sign next to the

a seat-neighbor on the plane, or the head-dip-and-

pond that says DO NOT FEED BIRDS.

smiling to a theme park employee, or the standing

somewhat of a love letter to that novel, and to strangers, and to you.

“If You Can’t Breathe, Just Scream”

on skydiving and Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin”

by Allegra Friedman Illustrated by jeffrey tao

But for some reason, I don’t really care about any

next to a bespectacled Asian auntie as we sift through

Tom Petty’s song “Free Fallin’” begins with bright

of that right now. For some reason, the scene makes me

the supermarket oranges, without worries of COVID

strumming on an acoustic guitar. Accompanied by

happy—that is, it makes me forget the cotton fabric

infection rates. “I’ve been thinking about the way, when

a sunny chord progression, maracas, and soothing

covering my mouth. I am thrust into my own indie

you walk / down a crowded aisle, people pull in their

harmonies on the chorus, he sings about wanting to

film, the kind that my mom hates because there’s no

legs / to let you by. Or how strangers still say ‘bless you,’”

“glide down” over the earth and “free fall out into

obviously happy ending but I love because, mom, it’s

writes poet Danusha Laméris. It is those things I miss,

nothing.” Petty’s look in the music video has the same

just good art. This one is a low-budget production with

those small reminders that there is good in the world

laid-back vibe as the song itself: He sits in front of a

six characters: a father and his three young sons, skirting

still, that there is love still.

chemically bright blue pool, looking cool and sunkissed

the edges of a clearly neglected pond, picking up rocks

And yet there is this passage I’ve highlighted (in

in a pair of Ray-Bans. His signature blonde hair is

and sticks and a helpless turtle or two; a college kid

a book I was assigned to have finished weeks ago, Lost

windswept and golden; it could give SNL’s Californians

with a library book, obviously too distracted to read

Children Archive), reminding me that not all strange-

a run for their money.

(if you can’t tell, this is me); and an old, white-haired

ness is immediately comforting. Such is the strangeness

With his blissed-out demeanor and lyrics, Petty

man admiring the scene from an opposite bench. He

of the past year: the unfamiliarity of things we thought

makes falling through the air at warp speed sound

kind of looks like Bernie on Inauguration Day, minus

were once familiar, the gripping fear and the televised

idyllic, liberating, even otherworldly. He sings about

the mittens.

violence, the gradual recognition of growing differences

flying over Mulholland Drive, a winding, scenic road

Everything is okay because we are all separated by

(or maybe differences that had been there all along),

in Southern California that follows the ridgeline of the

30 yards, which means there is no pressure to converse,

the slipping in and out of friendships, the surrender

eastern Santa Monica Mountains to the coast, with

or to nod our heads in polite greeting, or to cross to the

to an in-between because what else can we do. I’ve

dramatic views of the Los Angeles Basin and the San

opposite side of the street in order to socially distance.

crayoned the passage in purple, which is the color

Fernando Valley. Petty wants to glide along the route,

There is a quiet understanding in the air, an agreement

of hurting hearts but also of blooming lilacs:

taking in the view while he writes some girl’s name

between strangers: we won’t bump into each other

The thing about living with someone is that even though

in the sky, before gently floating down to earth. It’s a

again, and so nothing much matters. What matters is

you see them every day and can predict all their gestures

surprisingly romantic gesture for a self-proclaimed

the pelican-looking bird perched atop the statue in the

in a conversation, even when you can read intentions

“bad boy” who “broke her heart.” Still, it’s pretty

center of the pond. What matters is that, in this

behind their actions and calculate their responses to

dreamy.

moment, we are our own versions of happy, by ourselves,

circumstances fairly accurately, even when you are sure

As nice as this sounds, I can say with full

with each other.

there’s not a single crease in them left unexplored, even

confidence that Tom Petty is either 1) a massive liar,

then, one day, the other can suddenly become a stranger.

or 2) has never actually experienced free fall. I made

And considering everything that has happened up until this point, all the national tragedies and the

When I look up from my book, the old man across

this grave realization as I leaned out the open door

global catastrophes and the personal mournings, this

the pond has disappeared. The boys and their father

of an airplane in Monterey, California, split seconds

means a lot. For well over 365 days, we have been living

are walking further and further from the ducks and the

before completing the world’s highest skydive at

in respective isolation, so to see strangers in this shade

turtles and me, doubtless smiling, doubtless unaware

18,000 feet. With a ratty harness cutting into my

of spring is a glorious thing. “Probably,” as Carlos Ruiz

of my bittersweet gaze. Is their strangeness comforting

hips, I was painfully strapped to the barrel chest of

Zafón writes, “because a stranger sees us the way we are,

because it cannot hurt me? Is it because I know

a six-foot-five man named Rocco. He was a textbook

April 2, 2021 5

ARTS&CULTURE

An Ode to Chess a lifelong journey with the greatest game ever made

by Adi Thatai Illustrated by Talia Mermin

adrenaline junkie, claiming to have moved to Mon-

pushed back to fully expose your teeth, as if before a

terey solely for the extra 30 seconds of free fall made

root canal—and the air is freezing up there, so be pre-

possible on each jump by our high altitude. In other

pared for some serious tooth sensitivity. Rocco has

words, he was just like Petty, one of the “bad boys

a heavy build, so anticipate the weight of a 250-pound

standing in the shadows” in the song—exactly the kind

man strapped to your back with his hips grinding

of guy I’d want to go out with on a Friday night, but

into yours, and not in a fun way. Also, he is right:

maybe not the person I’d have chosen to entrust with

You cannot breathe at all. There is too much wind

my life on a Tuesday morning.

blowing directly at your face, and you instinctively

As I clung to Rocco’s chest, I realized that I was

try to close your mouth from the shock. It feels cruel,

making a huge mistake. I had told myself when I

like the experience of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s

signed up for my jump that this was something I’d

ancient mariner, who finds himself at sea, surrounded

always wanted to do—it wasn’t. The reality was that

by “water, water, every where, / nor any drop to drink.”

I had been feeling starved for adrenaline that winter.

You feel everything and nothing all at once, as you

The previous summer, a month-long backcountry

are simultaneously overwhelmed by air and deprived

hiking expedition had pushed me to my limits, and

of it.

life had been boring ever since. I felt too much like the

Free fall is the opposite of “leaving this world

girl Petty sings about in the first verse, going thro-

for a while,” as Tom Petty puts it. In the song, he

ugh another “long day, livin’ in Reseda” where “there’s

promises a break from reality brought on by the

a freeway, running through the yard.” I wanted a

chance to appreciate Southern California’s land-

break from what had become a monotonous, every-

scape from a new perspective. But you find the

day life like the one Petty describes, where the only

opposite to be true; you’ve never felt so overwhe-

things that matter are “Jesus and America,” Elvis,

lmed by how unforgiving Earth and its elements can

and a boyfriend.

be, and just how small your place in it is. If you had

Feeling weighed down by routine and college

time to reflect, you’d notice how insignificant and

coursework that seemed pointless and uninspiring,

vulnerable this whole thing makes you feel—you had

skydiving was an obvious choice for the thrill I was

thought you wanted a thrill, but maybe that average

chasing. I hadn’t realized just how terrifying it would

life Petty describes in the first verse isn’t so bad

be, though. Especially considering my fear of fall-

after all. Right now, though, all you can focus on is how

ing. I thought I’d gotten over this phobia when I’d

you can’t wait for this to be over so that you can finally

pushed myself to start rock climbing a few years

breathe again.

earlier as a kind of self-administered exposure the-

The feeling of asphyxia, combined with an

rapy, but I questioned whether my “treatment” had

immense pressure around your head as you drop

really stuck as our plane climbed in altitude.

in altitude, makes you feel as though you’re about

By the time I realized what a terrible idea this

to pass out. You try closing your eyes, but you start

was, Rocco had already dragged me to the edge of the

seeing black and white spots, which just disorients

plane. My heels clung to the platform jutting from

you more. Mental fogginess overcomes you, until a

the doorframe, and time stopped as I looked down at

particularly cold gust of wind brings a brief moment

my toes and saw nothing beneath them but air and

of clarity, and you remember Rocco’s advice: just

Monterey Bay. Before I could even consider whether

scream. Once you do, you see where Tom Petty is

my poor decision might soon become deadly, he yelled

coming from, at least partly—where else can you yell

in my ear, “If you can’t breathe, just scream.” Then

at the top of your lungs without anyone else hear-

he pushed me off the ledge and into the open air.

ing you? Other than Rocco, of course.

The next 90 seconds of free fall were, in every

You scream as loud as you can, which gets you

way imaginable, a fully sensory experience. I’ve

enough oxygen for things to start coming into focus.

never felt so aware of my body and overwhelmed by

It is only now that you appreciate the view from this

physical discomfort. Have you ever wondered what

high up, with its giant, saturated swatches of green,

your face would feel or look like while falling thro-

ridges of deep blue waves, and tiny specks of people

ugh the air at 120 miles per hour? Or the sensation

on the beach. It is surreal, like being dropped into

in your stomach as you drop with such incredible

a three-dimensional scale model of the California

velocity? Or the religious fervor with which you’d be

coast. Really, I’m not sure you could get closer

begging yourself not to vomit directly onto Rocco’s

to a view of Heaven on Earth. It isn’t the gentle

gorgeous face? Or the dread that would overcome

“glide” over mountains and winding roads Tom

you upon remembering you paid extra to have this

Petty promised, but the sharp nose dive towards the

entire horrible experience memorialized on camera?

landscape is beautiful all the same. So maybe Petty

If you haven’t considered these questions before,

is somewhat right. Idyllic? Not at all. But liberat-

allow me to enlighten you: Those 90 seconds feel

ing, or even otherworldly? Sure, as long as you

terrible. Imagine your cheeks filled with air and

remember to scream.

6 post–

“This is the hathi, the elephant.” My father held a strange wooden figurine between his earth-brown fingers as we sat cross-legged on the ground. He placed the hathi on the checkered board between us and slid it gently over the board’s surface. “It can move only in straight lines, front to back or left to right,” he said in Hindi. My five-year-old imagination began to race as he demonstrated the hathi’s strange movement.

I started to see the lumbering, unstoppable strut of the great elephant, walking over the board and taking everything in its path. “Yeh ghoda hai,” he continued, picking up a different piece. “This is the horse. I’ll tell you a secret—this one’s my favorite. It moves in an L-shape, and it’s the only piece that can jump over other pieces.” Watching my dad make the figurine dance hypnotically over the brown and white squares, my young imagination saw the graceful horse galloping around and over all obstacles.

He continued, introducing me to the rest of the pieces: the pawn, the camel, the king, and the queen.

He taught me the rules of the game, and I began to see the board as an arena, captivated by the almost magical interplay between the jungle animals, Indian royalty, and the creativity of the player to direct them all to the win. In only a couple hours, I learned how to play chess. I had fallen in love with the game already.

For the next couple years, chess stayed a family thing for me. I would play on weekends with my dad or sister, and every Diwali, Thanksgiving, and Christmas my whole extended family would gather around the chessboard and play nonstop until a victor emerged. Being the youngest of 12 cousins, I started off the undisputed loser—an easy win in every bracket.

But within a couple months, I began to really get the hang of the game. More and more, I’d leave my 18-yearold cousins scratching their heads and breathing through their teeth on the other side of the board.

By the time I was 10, nobody in my family, except my dad, could beat me.

“I’m taking you to a free chess class in town this Saturday—I think you’ll have fun,” my dad told me on a sunny spring Thursday. Usually I would have complained about spending weekends in more class, but this time, I happily agreed. A couple days later, my dad dropped me off in the basement of our local town hall. I sat quietly in the dingy corner as a strange old man barked strategies at us. He called the pieces unfamiliar names: the magisterial hathi became the rook, the prancing ghoda became the knight, and the knobby camel became a bishop. At the end, when we sat down to play, he checkmated every kid in four moves—a gimmick called Scholar’s Mate. Where was the beauty, creativity, and interplay? Where were the jungle animals and Indian royalty? If this was the next step of chess, I didn’t want to be a part of it.

My dad made me attend a few more classes, just to give it a shot. Each one was worse than the last, and soon I stopped going. I continued to play chess with my family as I had before, but the game’s original magic was missing. Where before I enjoyed positional beauty and imaginative movements, the class had drilled the ethos of winning only for the sake of winning. As my already mature cousins grew older, left home, and got jobs, our Diwali tournaments and Christmas chess-fests dwindled. Outside of the odd

game, I even stopped playing with my dad. By the age of 13, chess had faded entirely out of my life. *** I got back into chess during last winter break thanks to my brother-in-law, Phil. He came home with my sister for a couple months around Christmas, and with him, he brought his obsession with chess. His first day home he asked me to play with him. I said yes, hoping to spend some time together, not so much caring about the game. An hour later, Phil had destroyed me five or six times in a row.

Trying to wrap my brain around the genius way he moved his pieces on the board, I felt a familiar spark light in my chest. I did the first thing any quarantined 18-year-old would—I made a chess.com account and binged The Queen’s Gambit.

From winter break on, chess developed into a full-blown obsession for me. I still love the beauty of each game the way I did as a kid. I’m fascinated by the near infinite possibilities of play. The Shannon number puts a conservative lower bound estimate of “typical” 40 move chess games around 10^120 (for scale, there are estimated to be around 10^81 atoms in the universe). Chess, a game centered around decision making, requires players to think ahead multiple moves, attempting to consider the thousands of possibilities of what their opponent could do.

Chess is a world of what ifs. There’s nothing hidden on the board—it’s one of the rare games with no randomness. Players can see everything their opponent can, and it’s simply about who can interpret it

more fully, coupling creativity with analytical rationality. Super grandmasters, the top competitive chess players in the world, can think around 15 to 20 moves ahead, considering the merit of an unfathomable number of positions. In 2019, for example, Russian grandmaster Daniil Dubov (my favorite player) found a forced checkmate 13 moves ahead in his game against Rasmus Svane. This means that Dubov chose his move because he saw that no matter what Svane responded, he could force checkmate 13 moves later. Although I know I’m unable to do that level of calculation, I find immense joy in trying to parse through infinity for those impossible-to-find lines.

Outside of the positions and possibilities, chess is still a two-player game, and the opponent is everything. With the infinite possibilities available, a player’s choice in moves—their playstyle—is incredibly individualized and reveals aspects of their personality. My brother-in-law Phil prefers aggressive and tricky moves that throw off the opponent, a playstyle I see in the way he played tennis during college. My roommate Sacha plays sly defensive maneuvers that reveal themselves as brilliant attacks five moves later, and I see his playstyle in his quiet kindness and thoughtfulness. As for myself, I like to think I center my game around aggressive pawn moves that disrupt the opponent’s position—I try not to think about what that might say about me.

I’ve realized my childhood chess teacher was wrong: chess isn’t really about winning. It’s about the

ways in which you try to win, how you play to your own strengths to achieve your goals.

I’m far from alone in falling in love with chess over quarantine—online chess has surged globally since March of last year. In many ways, the 1500-yearold Indian game has found a new home in the world of e-sports. Long before COVID-19 pushed tournaments online and top players started getting signed to e-sports labels, online chess was already hugely popular: in 2014, chess.com reported 1 billion games played on the site. Online chess personalities like Agadmator and Hikaru have garnered millions of subscribers analyzing games, giving lessons, and streaming on Twitch and YouTube. In many ways, good chess is more accessible than ever. For centuries, chess was the game of elite European gentleman; now all the tools necessary to become a good chess player are available to anybody with an internet connection. Despite this, professional chess remains incredibly inaccessible—increasingly, reaching the upper echelon of play requires training from the earliest age. Becoming a professional chess player requires expensive classes, a childhood dedicated to the game, supportive parents, access to tournaments, and so on—all the marks of privilege. Even more, chess and its fans have made the game an elitist online space that worships a false and constructed idea of “intelligence.” As masses flock to the game, the world of professional chess remains elite, inaccessible, and dominated by white men.

This doesn’t seem to be getting any better. *** Despite its issues, I still appreciate all that chess has added to my life—the mesmerizing moves, the individuality and communication, and the selfdiscovery I associate with the game have made the overwhelming stress of the last few months much more manageable. In January of this year, a month after getting back into the game, I challenged my dad to a serious match. After some clever maneuvers with my ghoda and hathi, I trapped my dad’s king in the corner of the board—a suffocating checkmate.

“You played a good game,” he said, resignation weighing on his voice.

“It really wasn’t all that,” I replied. “Here, let me show you where you went wrong.” I moved the pieces back to where they had been a couple moves earlier.

“You should have moved the rani here, not here.

Now I get to fork you with the ghoda and your entire position crumbled.”

“Ahh, I see. Chalo, I won’t do it again. You want to play one more?” he asked.

“Of course.” I slid all the pieces back into position, watching the jungle animals reform around their king and queen. “Let’s play.”

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Olivia Howe FEATURE Managing Editor Alice Bai

“Maybe there will always be something I cannot fully articulate, in either language, in any language, and maybe I will have to rest in the restlessness and find certainty in my uncertainty.”

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April 2, 2021 7