These Months, Which Have Been Some of the Fastest of My Life by thenassau_weekly

After a brief holiday, the Nass is back slinging steel, learning Russian, and falling in love.

The Nassau Weekly

4 6 8

These Months, Which Have Been Some of the Fastest of My Life

They could never make a Sofia Coppola robot By Alexander Picoult

I agree, a little, sometimes By Sofia Cipriano

Attempts to Exhaust Yourself By Sofiia Shapovalova

I’m So Painfully in Love with All of You By Emmett Souder

Conversations in a Time Warp: Tribute to my Beloved Cafe By Margo Mattes

The Second Life of U.S. Steel By Julia Stern

Trong, Lam, Trump, and Biden: A Vietnamese Student’s Thoughts on the Upcoming Election By David Chau

Nass Recommends: Gay Romance Novels By Chas Brown

Letter from the editor:

My summer vacation felt like a body. Mine felt like a river. It’s generally useful to build up a number of unreasonably applicable metaphors that seem to withdraw profundity from just about everything. It’s the only way you’ll produce what we could call meaning from something as acrid and mercurial as summer. You can best accomplish it with a process that formally resembles titration.

Here, part of that titration with the metaphor of a body as titrant: I went to India, and I didn’t get sick, even though I took the malaria prophylactic less frequently than I should have; on the train from Jaipur to Delhi, I realized I didn’t have a train ticket, and even for foreigners, the Indian transit police take this kind of offense with moderate seriousness, and unfortunately, I had spent all my cash in the city, so I had no real outs, and a guy I met on the train informed me that I might have to spend a night in the jail in Rewari if caught, but I had work the next day, so that couldn’t really happen, so I hid in the train bathroom for more than an hour, and the squat toilet sloshed with human refuse, and the whole thing felt like a dream; I listened to a lot of The Doors when I went on runs; I sweated a lot.

And so on.

Charlie Nuermberger, EIC

Editor-in-Chief

Charlie Nuermberger

Publishers

Isabelle Clayton

Ellie Diamond

Managing Editors

Sofiia Shapovalova

Julia Stern

Creative Director

Otto Eiben

Senior Editors

Frankie Duryea

Eva Vesely

Junior Editors

Ivy Chen

Melanie Garcia

Teo Grosu

Marisa Warman

Hirschfield

Mia Mann-Shafir

Alex Norbrook

Aiko Offner

Sasha Rotko

Head Copy Editors

Cailyn Tetteh

Sabrina Yeung

Design Editor

Vera Ebong

Art Director

Alexander Picoult

Masthead

Events Editor

John Emmett Souder

Audiovisual Editor

Mia Dedic

Web Editor

Abani Ahmed

Historian

Jonathan Dolce

Trustees

Alexander Wolff 1979

Katie Duggan 2019

Leah Boustan 2000

Leif Haase 1987

Marc Fisher 1980

Rafael Abrahams

2013

Robert Faggen 1982

Sharon Hoffman 1991

Sharon Lowe 1985

Overheard through Instagram

Obsessedstalker: “Tell her I miss her.”

Intermediary: “What about her?”

Obsessedstalker: “Her jokes… her thirst for hot guys…that time she ate frozen pineapple.”

Overheard at a gas station in Floyd County sitting in an idling truck with the AC turned to 0 degrees on August 2

Over-itintern: “Everyday I listen to my coworker’s homeopathy TikToks aloud.”

Overheard at the RNC J.D.Vance: “The Greeks were so advanced because they embraced homosexuality. But then the women ruined everything.”

Overheard while debating picky eating ThinksCokeZeroisbetter: “Zero coke people are notoriously very adamant.”

Overheard on a bus Ahumanist,shackledbyBSE: “I don’t have time to read Proust. I’m searching for my own lost time.”

Overheard in book store Steamy,typo-riddenerotic novel: “‘I could hear her exhaling steam.’”

Concernedreader: “Why was she exhaling steam? That doesn’t sound very healthy.”

Overheard in newsroom Health-consciousboss: “If you’re gonna take risks with your life, take it with something more exciting than cereal.”

Daredevilemployee,chowing onCocoPuffs: “There’s nothing more exciting than cereal.”

Overheard in France Agingcousin,indistillery: “I miss valium.”

Overheard through iMessage Boomermother,textingson: “Hi sweetie. How’s my brilliant, Mr. Rizz doing?”

Overheard in cafe Sorrowfulromantic: “Worst case scenario, do you think it’s better to stay single forever or revisit my past?”

Sensiblefriend: “By ‘revisit your past,’ do you mean get back with your ex-boyfriend?”

Sorrowfulromantic: “I didn’t say that.”

Overheard on move-in day

Saddenedspiritcomingoffa summer9-to-5: “I am going to need you all to start saying very funny things very soon.”

Friend1: “Why?”

Friend2: “What do you mean?”

Friend3: “We’re not entertaining you enough? Is that really all we are to you… mere jesters?”

Overheard in the office Posh&primboss: “Hi there, how are you today Marco?”

MarcotheSweat-drenched Serb: “Sweating like a whore in church, but I’m alright.”

Submit to Verbatim Email thenassauweekly@gmail.com

& Twitter: @nassauweekly We meet on Mondays and Thursdays at 5 p.m. in Bloomberg 044! The Nassau Weekly is Princeton University’s weekly news magazine and features news, op-eds, reviews, fiction, poetry and art submitted by students. There is no formal membership of the Nassau Weekly and all are encouraged to attend meetings and submit writing and art. To submit, email your work to thenassauweekly@gmail.com by 10 p.m. on Thursday. Include your name, netid, word count, and title. We hope to see you soon!

THEY COULD NEVER MAKE A SOFIA COPPOLA ROBOT.

Thoughts on filmic solitude from a solitary Nass writer in Portugal

By ALEX PICOULT

Last year, on November 2nd, I published a piece in the Nass titled “It’s Art, AIn’t It?: The Artificial Art Debate.” The piece served as my rumination over ‘dark fantasy’ AI videos that were popping up in my feed and my immediate fascination with them. I couldn’t understand why these videos kept tugging at my stomach and giving me an uneasy yet addictive feeling of nostalgia. I stand by my conclusion: these artificially generated videos have the ability to conjure specific feelings in humans that are unique to that medium. I did also say the videos were ‘scary good.’

I may have jumped the gun there. It’s definitely entertaining, but I’m starting to feel that classifying it as ‘good’ may be an insult to us all.1

For the past two months I have been working in Lisbon, Portugal. My job is pretty relaxed, leaving me with atrocious amounts of free time and my inability to speak Portuguese has left me with zero

1 A quick disclaimer: I don’t know what the metric for ‘good’ art is, and I don’t think it’s my job to make one. Perhaps it will always be completely subjective but, alas.

(0) friends. Free time plus zero friends usually leads to two things:

1. Sitting silently with my thoughts.

2. Sitting silently with my thoughts but watching a movie at the same time.

I tend to watch at least one movie a night in my apartment here; I’ve done a lot of re-watching, but I’ve incorporated some new items as well. Here are some highlights from my Letterboxd (which I had to redownload to support this endeavor): Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love, The Sunlit Night, Sometimes I Think About Dying, The Farewell, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Mysterious Skin, and Asteroid City.2

What stands out to me about these films is not so much the subject matter, but the ways in which someone can curate mundane environments and the complexity of emotional solitude in a creative (yet natural and readable) way. It’s this complexity that I believe AI can’t replicate. At least not like we, the knowers of loneliness, can.

If there’s one place to observe silent solitude firsthand, it’s here on the Metro in Lisbon. No one is speaking, yet I know everyone is thinking about something and all of those little somethings are combined into the buzzing nothingness of the hot train air. I think I’ve become a bit obsessed with how

2 Yes, I recognize the depressing trend here. I assure you I am fine.

to portray this in written word or through film. It seems like it would be easy to do…after all, nothing is being said out loud.

So, I tried to do it myself. I’m pursuing a theater minor, and I figured I would use the city’s artistic inspiration to draft ideas for possible scripts that may become a thesis later on. Over the last eight weeks, I’ve attempted to bring to life several solitude-focused plots involving alien abductions, a playwright in the recession, an office in another dimension, and a daydreaming museum goer. But, I keep getting stuck. I reach a certain point where the essence of nothingness has become almost too nothing, and then the goal and all feeling has been lost. I don’t plan on giving up, but in the meantime, I want to jealously fangirl over a couple instances where I feel this has been executed wonderfully.

The two films I have watched the most while abroad are Lost in Translation along with its sister film, On The Rocks – both directed by Sofia Coppola. I watched Lost in Translation for the first time about a week before I flew out to Lisbon. I really enjoyed it, but I knew it was something I would have to rewatch many times before securing a full grasp of its subtleties. I have since watched this film about six times. Naturally, I felt some connection to Charlotte as we were both isolated in a foreign country for weeks

on end.3

I would say more than half of the scenes in Lost in Translation are masterful uses of silence. There’s very little dialogue in the film, particularly on Charlotte’s end, while Bill Murray’s character tends to talk at her. Somehow Charlotte’s lack of dialogue is in no way restricting; I still feel as though I learned so much about her. But how does Coppola craft silence in a way that moves past laziness and is instead interesting and packed with information?4

All of this mental work I’m doing to find more effective writing strategies is difficult and time consuming, and I believe it requires a certain level of firsthand experience to flesh out the intricacies of busy silence. And just like that, I found myself (unintentionally) reconsidering my place in the AI conversation.

If AI did attempt to represent this feeling, would it even have the skillset to do so? Could it craft a silence that felt meaningful? I understand that generative AI models are fed pieces of human-made work to initiate the machine learning process, but does it have the empathy to understand the gravity of those experiences? We can feed

3 Not because I’m also recently married and feeling detached from my husband (but who’s to say that won’t be the reality a decade from now).

4 This remains an ongoing investigation on my end.

as much information and as many firsthand accounts into these models as we want, but I’m not convinced that it will ever know how to handle them properly.

Imagine me, at my job in Lisbon. My boss is talking to me, but it feels more like his words are just knocking on my forehead. My gaze falls on his nose, conveniently missing his own eyes. He’s saying something about Adobe Illustrator and resizing images for the company website but I’m really only thinking about the fact that my shirt is stuck to my back in the heat and whether or not my butt sweat is going to show through my pants when I stand up.5 I hear cheerful chatter around me from my coworkers after my boss walks away, and I know that I could join in if I felt like it. But instead I turn to look out the window and fixate on the painter sitting on the cobblestone sidewalk outside his studio. He’s taking a smoke break. The street is too small for the buses so from my vantage point, it looks like his toes are about to get run over every five seconds. He doesn’t see me, probably because he’s doing his own thinking too. Most likely about the painting he still has to finish inside. He looks disappointed. There’s a quiet current between the two of us but it screams with the sound of solitude.

Now, this may not be the scene that someone wants to make a movie about. But, I’m trying to imagine a world where a computer can represent all of these tiny moments without the help of someone who knows people. And most importantly, someone who knows

5 Yes, this is TMI, but we really gotta dissect the intricacies of this.

what it feels like to be staring out into the street in ninety-degree weather on a random Tuesday.

I’ve looked into Rashida Jones’ and Scarlett Johansson’s eyes enough times in the last two months to know that their robot-made versions wouldn’t be half as effective. I suppose this warrants a kudos to an actor themself given the strange ability to hold emotions in your eyes and embody the written vision of an artist. Contrary to what I wrote last November, I’m not convinced that a machine can imitate a vessel of emotion and complex thought no matter how complex its algorithm may be.

Perhaps the human in us all also restricts our ability to fully engage with AI-generated art. Maybe there will be a time in the future where a machine really can recreate this feeling flawlessly but we still won’t be able to connect with it; we’ll know in our gut that whatever entity created it has never and will never know the real thing.

Writing this seems to have dropped another plot in my head: what if a corporation in the future set out to make an AI for every well known writer and director in the world? And each one produced hundreds of films a year in their own little metal box in the exact style that was described to them? I’ll start writing that script another day.

But, for now, I know I wouldn’t trust a Sofia Coppola robot in a million years.

“I love truth — as I once wrote in my homework). I soon learned to compromise by articulating smaller truths when I couldn’t articulate bigger ones.”

By SOFIA CIPRIANO

Ilearned the Russian alphabet in the Helsinki airport on my way to Estonia. After listening to the Duolingo owl read through the unfamiliar letters two or three times, I attempted to pronounce “Hello” — Здравствуйте — under my breath, conscious that the silent, stony-faced Finns in my vicinity would side-eye me if my clumsy utterances were audible. Two minutes later, I forgot the word, and had to look it up again. The point being: on my first day of classes at Tallinn University, a twoyear old native speaker would have easily bested me in a Russian-face off. From the moment we stepped into class, Lukasz — our teacher, a man of mysterious national origin and fluent in no less than 5 languages — exclusively spoke to us in Russian. I quickly surrendered to the realization that, from the hours of 10am - 1pm (GMT +3), my communicative abilities would be

severely limited. Although uncomfortable, the thought was strangely liberating: the bar was on the floor. Forming a basic sentence was a feat worth celebrating.

I’ve taken Spanish since 6th grade; my memory of my first few weeks of classes is not vivid, but I do remember starting with the basics: simple phrases, colors, numbers. For the first two or so years of taking Spanish, instruction was in English. We had 50 minute classes a few days a week. The Russian course I was now taking, however, was by design more fast-paced. I’m also not in 6th grade anymore. Difficult topics came up quickly. On the first day, we learned the Russian word for “communist.” We learned the words for “crisis” and “freedom” before the word for “happy.”

I soon realized that I have taken for granted my ability to express nuance (or even doubt) in English. In the first few weeks of class, we were inundated with deceptively simple questions. Are compliments dangerous? What do you not love? Do you like to rest? When I hesitated in class, Lukasz often turned towards the white board to preemptively review a grammatical concept; I didn’t know how to tell him that

I agree, a little, sometimes I

agree, a little, sometimes

I understood the prepositional case — I simply did not know how to answer his question in English. I quickly armed myself with the word “иногда” – sometimes. While “sometimes” was often the honest answer to the puzzling and concerning questions our textbook posed, I felt it demonstrated a lack of linguistic creativity. I needed to diversify my sentences. But I also have a visceral resistance to formulating sentences containing sentiments which I knew to be false. (я

люблю правду — I love truth — as I once wrote in my homework). I soon learned to compromise by articulating smaller truths when I couldn’t articulate bigger ones.

Confronting the homework prompt What do I want? once sent me into a half hour tailspin. Due to the constraints of my understanding of Russian grammar, I could not immediately ascertain the scope of the question. Did I have to state what I wanted at the very moment of my writing, with my immediate needs (water, dinner, etc) in mind? Or what I wanted in life more broadly? In Russian, does one ask these questions in the same way? I decided that I would answer the question in a more existential fashion, but my limited vocabulary once again created a number of issues. I could think of things I wanted in life: I would like to be happy, to have no regrets, to have a good marriage and fulfilling career. But for Lukasz’s purposes, these paths were closed to me. I settled on: freedom, coffee, and peace. An equally true and far more grammatically simple answer. Answering the question What does everyone hate? posed similar challenges. Instinctively, I wrote down the word for war, which we had learned the previous day. But I hesitated. Does everyone really hate war? What does it mean to “hate war”? Certainly there were those who benefited economically from war — weapons manufacturers couldn’t possibly be honest peace-lovers. Putin likely does not “hate” war (a fact particularly

difficult to ignore as a student studying Russian in Estonia during the war in Ukraine). After deciding that I had to move on with my life, I settled on: Everyone hates genocide and bad tourists. (Later, I realized that mosquitos would have been a better answer).

Once we had past tense under our belt, our conversations grew more complex—and occasionally downright philosophical. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, Lukasz looked me in the eye and asked: How do you understand progress? The room was silent for a minute as I mulled over a response, eventually answering his question with a confused: I think do better and better every day? A week later, we busied ourselves with assigning colors to abstract concepts after adding the words for the former to our repertoire. I incorrectly stated that “Love” was red (the right answer was pink). We spent five minutes discussing whether purple or green better embodied “Elite” (I was in the purple camp).

We soon reached more dangerous territory when we learned the names for countries in Russian, promptly followed by adjectives. You think Spanish and French textbooks are questionable? Our textbook, Поехали! (2019) — which roughly translates to Let’s Go! in English—had some eyebrow-raising takes. After talking about Swiss chocolate and Parisian museums, we upgraded to vaguely offensive generalizations. Africa is interesting, but dangerous and hot. It’s hard to live there. Lukasz seemed to agree with this sentiment and opened up the class for discussion. What I really wanted to say in response to the prompt was: “It’s obviously problematic to label an entire continent as dangerous. At the same time, it’s kinda insensitive not to acknowledge that the average quality of life is lower in most parts of Africa when compared to most European countries.” I tried to think of the Russian words for “exploitation” and “imperialism,” but came up blank.

I managed: “я согласна, чутьчуть, иногда” — I agree, a little, sometimes.

The authors of Поехали! also had a penchant for assigning the adjective “exotic” to every non-Western country. One night, our homework prompts included: What countries do you think are exotic? Unable to reference Said’s Orientalism in Russian, I settled on: “I think exotic is an idea” and hoped it got the point across.

No topic was off-limits to the lovely authors of Поехали! Some of my favorite discussion questions included: Are you on a diet — why or why not? Is bitcoin a good investment? Do men wear dresses? What kind of clothes does God like?

I found some of the textbook’s questions offensively fallacious. Once, after listening to an audio describing the imaginary Ivan, we were asked if he can play guitar. Our options were: yes or no. I said: I don’t know, since I did not hear the word “guitar.” Lukasz corrected me: No, Ivan cannot play the guitar. He thought I did not understand the exercise. I decided to hold my ground.

“Life—big; Text—small. Text is not everything. Maybe, he plays guitar—secret.”

Lukasz conceded my point.

That moment generated quite a bit of laughter on Lukasz’s part (and mine). I had grown flustered as I tried to explain myself; my face warmed as I mentally ran through my vocabulary set, searching for words. Distilling my objection into simple language felt like pushing my thoughts into a funnel.

Thankfully, though, I’ve only really embarrassed myself once or twice—and only when I wasn’t contemplating my words as closely. (Even typing out the prior sentence leads me to recall a classic Spanish class scenario: confusing the words “pregnant” and “embarrassed.” If Señora Ramos, my 8th grade Spanish teacher, is still out there, I hope she knows that I have, so far, managed to avoid teenage-parenthood.) One day,

our conversation turned to movies. Upon being asked what kind of films I would like to act in, I responded:

“I would not like to act, because I think it — uncomfortable. But I like to watch active films.”

Lukasz laughed and raised an eyebrow at me; clearly I had miscommunicated something. He corrected me in Russian: “I understand what you mean: action films. In Russian, what you said implies…”

I laughed it off and consoled myself with the realization that at least I had sidestepped saying that I would like to act in pornographic films. (I don’t even enjoy action movies very much; it was the first movie-adjacent phrase that came to mind.)

But nothing I could come up with rivaled the absurdity of Поехали. One moment took the cake, at least for me — or perhaps I was just particularly delirious (in a Dostoevsky coded fashion) on a warm Thursday in July and couldn’t take it anymore. I was asked to read the following out loud in front of the class: Если

My classmates began giggling as I reached the end. It took me a moment to translate the sentences in my head: If a woman says no, it means maybe. If a woman says maybe, it means yes. If she says yes, it is not a woman.

I sighed. “Not true.”

“Why?” Lukasz asked, an ironic glint in his eye.

“How do you say in Russian — “problematic”?”

Once he recovered from his laughter, Lukasz supplied the word, which has since become an essential part of my Russian vocabulary — right up there with

Citation for our Russian textbook:

ATTEMPTS TO EXHAUST YOURSELF

A line every minute.

This is the constraint which you have given yourself.

An attempt to exhaust yourself.

How many minutes does it have, your patience?

And the truth is that you had thought of these first five lines yesterday : a not so bad idea, you told yourself, really not so bad.

And so, you had to wait five minutes before you could permit yourself to write sur le vif.

You see now that it isn’t exactly a line that you express with each minute.

It’s rather a phrase that comes to you, sometimes brief, sometimes a bit longer.

You ask yourself how many of these phrases you have in your thoughts this evening.

You are in the street, you tell yourself.

This street, it is the train which you take to return to the place you call chez toi this summer.

La beauté est dans la rue, you remember.

The street, it is the train –or the path– that you follow?

La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.

But, in truth, it is the train that cries in this moment…around you, nonetheless.

The train, it is all that there is inside of this vehicle…and it is also the thread.

Did you miss a minute?

It’s imperative that you are always attentive to the hour.

Now, you have the feeling that you don’t have enough time to write it all.

Or, perhaps, it’s your incapacity to say without reflecting that prevents you?

And, if you have to go to the restroom, you ask yourself…what would become of this project then?

If you leave your backpack, which has followed you through multiple countries and for multiple years now, with the man that is seated across from you, would you still find it there upon your return?

You find that you don’t even have time to think of anything other than this endeavour.

Either, you wait for the next minute to arrive in order to say something, or you find that there is not enough time to say it.

You will miss the mountains, this beautiful scene in which you’ve lost yourself for the past day.

Their height, their green, their liveliness (they live, you think)... these giants which remind you that the human race still rests so small.

The humility which you feel in front of all their grandeur. There are no mountains where you are going now…can you even have this feeling of chez toi without them?

Already, there are less and less of them and you feel how the sadness has begun to take you.

You have missed two minutes. Is it worth it to regain them?

Perhaps, you have simply miscounted.

You start your next thought again with the next minute.

It is nearly the countryside once more…the fields, the yellow…less of the green and you lose the forests which gave you a fleeting moment of happiness.

You do not like yellow.

Yellow, it is a colour near death.

The train slows without warning…you did not hear the name of the next stop.

It’s broken, you think…of coure, this misfortune comes for you.

Can you write if the train does not move…they are linked after all, your very thoughts and the rolling of the train.

Perhaps, this is the moment to see if your backpack would remain after all…

The train breathes again!

But you are late, the minutes run away from you.

You are hungry, but you cannot think of anything that you would like to eat, except perhaps the well-aged cheese that waits for you in your fridge.

This cheese which you have saved from waste, in doing your part as the good neighbour which takes the food of others who no longer want it.

Good cheese, salted.

In fact, you are not even hungry…it is your soul which you find emptier than your stomach.

You are thirsty, but you are afraid to let yourself go.

But it’s that, isn’t it, which inspires the writing you seek?

You seek to write without prevention to the very moment of exhaustion, but always following this regime which you have given yourself.

You ask yourself how much more you might have written if you hadn’t limited yourself to one.

You look at the sun, how it paints the canvas of this countryside in which the street finds itself.

The street that moves you and that moves with you.

You see the trucks, signs of movement far away in the background. In this street, the sun cannot succeed in touching you.

Tant pis, you think…your shoes, your socks, your pants…they are all soaked by the rain that drenched you two hours ago now.

If you see the sun, does it see you as well?

And how many more minutes of sun are there left this evening?

Perhaps, you should push yourself a little bit more…to write just to the very last second of each minute, really no matter what comes to your mind…as long as you continue to write.

You do not want to…you are tired.

One hour.

You are not exhausted.

It is you, the next stop.

But you are wrong.

You didn’t hear it right, or, perhaps, you heard rather that which you wish to hear…or you are always afraid of missing something. The next stop, it’s you, you are sure this time.

The mountains have become cliffs that tell you goodbye. Perhaps they are speaking to god, à Dieu. You do not know how to respond to them. You take a pause with the train. In one minute, you tell yourself. It will come very soon. At this very minute in which you write right now.

You have lost time…fifteen minutes, and the nature of this attempt changes as well with the changing of the train. And so your street has changed.

There are many more people here. And you are cold…the sun still cannot touch you. Why are you cold in the middle of the summer? There is something within which is also broken. Now, you ask yourself why you had paid for these tickets…no one has come to check them and no one will come.

You miss the mountains.

But you do not have more than a week left without them…not to say that you will see them again after this ending, but rather that you will leave their absence.

You think that you write without sense. You are without sense. You have an hour left of this writing without sense. You search for sense.

You realise now that you are completely surrounded by men. The man to your right will arrive in five minutes…he tells his phone. The man in front of you smiles without stopping at his phone. The man to your left does not look at his phone, but he speaks to the man to his right…they are speaking of Paris. Paris, je pense à vous!

The city which always inspires all, or, at least, you and your life without sense.

You switch places with the man to your right who will arrive in fifteen minutes.

You are right by the window now. There is everything and nothing to look at. How did this idea arrive to your head? Is it even warmer where you are headed?

The deafening train screams around you. You are hungry for what, why, you do not know. No one comes to check your ticket.

You no longer know either, what is it that has rendered you so tired.

You still have more to say, it is imperative that you always say.

The people do not cease to speak. Like you do not cease this writing, your exhaustion.

You want to close your eyes, but how will you write your words without looking?

It all depends on the look.

You do not see any more mountains.

You are still wet, the waters have seeped into your skin.

The train stops to empty itself of people, thankfully, you think… they speak too much.

There remains one man that speaks too loud on his phone…it is always men that speak particularly loud, particularly much.

Perhaps this isn’t your best idea.

It was, at least, an idea…you seek to create.

The time passes quickly when you succeed in making it so.

You do not know what you want.

Why do you seek to write this sense you have of yourself…one must look beyond that!

Perhaps, because it is your mind that moves and not you.

The train moves and not your legs.

You think more of the train’s exterior and of your interior, rather than the train’s interior and what is exterior to you.

But you are not interested in the interior of this train.

You are not interested in the interior of yourself either.

You have not even found the beauty in the street.

You have not described it.

But you know, without doubt, that you have seen it.

The impression which it has given you rests always with some part of you.

It is because of that, perhaps, that you look within without cease.

You remember the beauty.

It lives because you have seen it and because you think of it. Your thoughts render it alive.

Witness to the street, to you, to this minute, to this writing, to this exhaustion which has not yet overcome you.

You do not have much time left.

When will it be, the grand finale?

The time passes, the train passes, your thoughts pass.

You see the moon, and you have lost the sun which has left you cold and in shadow.

And if your thoughts stop?

It is not possible, you think!

You write what you think because you see.

You cannot think without seeing, without looking, without movement.

There is, in the train, a drunken man, who does not know anything but where he is going.

He asks every person whether it’s that, his stop?

Not yet.

His stop is yours.

One must wait, play the game with patience.

Not yet exhausted,

cannot stop.

I’M SO PAINFULLY IN LOVE

“This summer I’m remembering how real my flesh is. When I was a kid everything was tactile and I just wanted sugar and didn’t think abstractly.”

By EMMETT SOUDER

Condensation on the inside of the stopped bus, I never feel claustrophobic but we’re stalled on the tarmac late at night waiting to get on the plane, and it’s hotter inside than out. Humid. Almost like we’re in the same water. Too much intimacy with strangers. Smells of sweat and a chicken sandwich and this old man’s breath each time he bumps into my backpack. We’re too corporeal, fleshy, and I wish I could just abstract my mind away.

8,760 miles away my friend writes me a long email. I read it on my phone greedily, trying to escape the bus.

‘It’s 11 PM—Do you know where your children are? I’ve been awake for roughly 21 hours and am becoming less lucid by the minute. Prime time to drop some sweet sweet verbiage’

It took us two hours to get to the airport. Buses like logs in a dysfunctional river and motorcycles like idling fish. Unplanned growth, noncooperative behavior: the local maxima of cooperative efficiency are pitifully low. I was looking out the window hating the people in our way. We were going to miss the flight because of them.

On the delayed, unmissed plane, we’re 3 rows of 3, twisting back in our seats to talk to each other too loudly–interrupting, laughing at, and shushing each other. 222 other people in here. I counted. Later, at 2 am, we’ll deeply frustrate one another as we check into the hotel–the staff is overwhelmed by our arrival, too much noise, and exhausted stumbling. But in the morning at breakfast, we’ll all eat

and laugh together. That ancient activity.

Eight billion choose ten is a number with ninety-two zeros. I’ve wondered what ten-person combination has the least in common as I speculate where we fall in the distribution. In life experiences, we’re all young and go to school together and study similar things, but in personality, we’re a thousand-piece puzzle in five dimensions.

We intern together and share hotel rooms and even beds on the program trips. We’ve argued about everything even conceivably debatable. We know way too many weird things about each other–about our strange habits and recent digestion, about our opinions on one another. The people far away I don’t argue with. They seem so amicable. But soon positions will flip and I’ll be with them and so far from the ones I’m with now. All the time. Everywhere. Fighting. We nearly evaporated when the feelslike was 116. We met professional skeet shooters at a club after dancing sweat-soaked and thirsty, then walked back to the hotel together at three am when the city seemed silent.

‘But yeah, I guess that’s why I think you’d love Rome. You just happen upon beautiful monuments like that and for a brief couple of minutes, everything is still. Peaceful. Wonderful.’ - excerpt from my ex’s response to a long, angsty email

I’m so painfully in love with all of you. And don’t you kind of hate the people you love? You resent things about them because you want them to be this idea you made up. Do we love ideas of identity or the physical people they’re supposed to represent?

“Maybe we’re just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there

are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn’t it in a way a nice reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine?

Because when we should have been reorganizing the distribution of the world’s resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it’s the very reason I root for us to survive–because we are so stupid about each other.”

—Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Pair those pretty words with sweaty crowds, traffic, arguments, and the fears of rejection, leaving, and death, then you have both this simultaneous attraction and repulsion to other people. The real human magnetism.

I’m so hungry for attention and affection. For connection and understanding. For respect and validation. I’ve met a couple of people in my life who don’t seem that way, and I don’t understand them. What does that independence feel like? I have this like horrified respect for them, just impressed they can exist and a bit jealous of their invulnerability.

But I love to be loved. I do care what people think of me. And I don’t want that earnestness to die.

I know I’m clingy, immature and both overly sensitive and insensitive. Distant and rude. I’m quite self-centered, and I barely know what that center is, or is supposed to be, or what I want it to be. I orbit these vague, grandiose concepts of self and get sucked into a singularity of my own experiences. Slap me! I’m serious.

But I really do try, man. I always respond. Always. I reach out.

I invite. I initiate. And I get temporarily forgotten or completely ignored. Or maybe you’re all just completely disinterested? Is it apathy? We all have busy lives. Just take five seconds and respond. I know you’re on your phone—It drives me insane. Am I immature for thinking this? Isn’t anyone else lonely? You say it’s self-focused and resentful, and it is, I am.

But YOU, I’m so glad I met you, even though the whole thing is kind of tragic really. We leave, we forget each other, we die. What’s awful about death is leaving people I think. And I’m sorry I’ve left you but I’m glad we’re not dead. I’m excited to see you again. Don’t die.

The people who do correspond just to tell me what they’re doing nourish me. Swimming away from the whirlpools of work and entertainment to float me their message in a bottle. I treasure them. At the speed of light, through undersea cable, bits of themselves fly to me. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we are our bodies, and we are the ideas of ourselves. Neither is independent.

What I’ve been thinking is we’re everything. We’re our gut microbiome and the air in our lungs. The most distant mote of dust light years away pulling at the cells in our bodies, affecting who we are (in a negligible sense, presumably, but in a very physically real sense). We’re our parents and our ancestors and even, in some sense, the continuation of the very first life to arise on the planet. We’re all a part of a system, and there are no Platonic boundaries between components. Individuality is an idea. It’s intuitive. It’s useful. But where do individuals really start and stop: what’s your border? If I take away too much of you, are you still you? How much of your body is enough? What makes you you?

I’m thinking we’re a part of

everything and everything is a part of us, and we’re especially a part of each other. I know if I die, my values, ideas, and memories will live on in you. You know who I am as well as I do. Your voice is deeply familiar in my mind, and you give me advice sometimes through that little voice. You were the impetus for my entire worldview shift, and you’re helping me figure out what I actually believe now. My beliefs, values, and memories are in a significant sense because of yours. -from a happy birthday letter to my best friend

Can something of our essence be transmitted in words? I’d like to believe so. We exist in each other’s minds as ideas, whatever those are. Love also seems a physical thing, a tangible chemical reaction. Does this potential fact cheapen our experience? I don’t think we have to let it. Physical explanations don’t preclude value. We don’t just have bodies. We are bodies. On an Uber moto, your core is engaged, thighs tense, and the skin over your knuckles tight. You can close your eyes in fear, but you’ll still smell, hear, and vibrate. The experience confronts you with your own physical vulnerability. This summer I’m remembering how real my flesh is. When I was a kid everything was tactile and I just wanted sugar and didn’t think abstractly. Now, in school, in winter, I can get to thinking I’m just a thinking machine, and it’s my thinking that matters. I wrote that last article in January, at night inside after weeks of the same. But the sun, physical exhaustion, swimming, dancing, bass that resonates your chest, alcohol, spicy food, and laughing have jerked my head out of some nonexistent metaphysical space and smacked me with atoms. Our bodies bring us together as much as our minds. Maybe it was you. But I’m re-embodied.

My grandmother with dementia doesn’t need to remember anything to be able to laugh, and

making her laugh doesn’t seem any less valuable because she won’t remember it. Something certainly seems spiritual in her iris. I’ve been staring at people’s eyes a lot. Imagining what they see. She makes me wonder about the grandparents of the people on the bus. Don’t you think we would appreciate each other more if we knew each other’s parents’ parents? It’s so weird to spend so much time with the other interns and never know anything about their families. We don’t even really talk about each other’s friends that much. We talk about work and make jokes. Get to know one another as individuals. That’s what we present ourselves to be. But where did we come from? Did we just fall out of coconut trees? They tell me I turned twenty last week, and that I’m reliant on others. I have no idea when I happened. I’m trying to remember that this summer. How much I need people. How I am a body and not an untethered abstract mind. This snippet sums up something about peace in the chaotic dance of people and bodies. That’s what I need I think. Peace in the chaotic dance of people and bodies. Peace in that bus.

“I’ll be glad to see you. I miss you. When do you get back? Nice cool morning here. We are weeding the pollinator gardens by the greenhouses. If the weather is dry this evening I’m going to cut my bread wheat patch with an aluminum scythe I’ve borrowed from the farm. I had my biannual cardio checkup at UVA yesterday. Things look good.” —My mother’s father

WITH ALL OF YOU

Conversations in a Tribute to my Beloved Cafe Time Warp

Vignettes

on an enigmatic Polish woman and the Boston area cafe she runs

By MARGO MATTES

Istumbled into this cafe—situated on a relatively quiet block along the prominent Beacon Street—because it was late and it happened to be the only thing still open. The place occupied a mere slice in the endless chain of Bostonstyle brick buildings, bay windows and all, with its boundaries marked not by physical space, but chipped white paint and a small sign reading Knight Moves. It smelled like an old library, a real one that is, not some suburban Barnes & Noble. There were board games. Lots of them. Stacked up the wooden shelves until they almost touched the ceiling. An Andy Warhol frame reading The World Fascinates Me hung to my left. Oddly-shaped lamps and scientific microscopes, a mars globe and a grand piano found their places among the remaining empty spaces. The green-line train begrudgingly passed outside the window every so often. Boston transportation

ran on its own time. Families, friends, and other groups whose connection I could not pinpoint coalesced around the varying tables playing board games. It made some sense now. Knight Moves, spelled not like night, but like the chess piece. It was a board games cafe that happened to also function as a public living room. My presence seemed to go unnoticed by those inside, everyone in their respective world, lost in the rules of some game I most likely did not know how to play.

I have come to see Knight Moves as more or less a time portal to some alternate world. That time travels differently—maybe slower or maybe not at all—inside those walls. It is like a Las Vegas casino, but with more natural light and significantly less financial risk. It was not long before I learned that this strange yet mystifying time warp was the creation of Joanna Cutts.

I met Joanna on my first, or maybe second, venture to the cafe. She worked Sunday nights, with a thick Eastern European accent, perfectly round glasses, curly brown hair often tucked behind a skufia, and a knack for language

learning—fluent in three and literate in two more. She came from a medieval town in Poland, having studied nuclear physics and German studies before leaving Europe to marry an American.

Joanna exuded an almost infectious intellectual curiosity, one that I can only characterize as an ability to observe the moments that usually go unnoticed. She wanted Knight Moves to be a place where people could sit and observe without rushing. And maybe after enough time, they too might learn to appreciate even the mundane, to find out that the little moments are more meaningful than often given credit to. I thought I would write down a few ordinary memories from my times at Knight Moves, memories that very easily might have slipped away had I not been paying attention.

There’s a Nuclear Explosion in that Milkshake

We take our seats in the backroom, my friend Charlotte across from me. She is tall like me— short brown hair like me too–but with a more indie-cool-girl music taste and an undefeated streak in Banana Grams. While I flip over the letter tiles, she races through a Duolingo lesson on Mandarin grammar.

I took pleasure in dragging my friends along with me to Knight Moves, partly because I enjoyed the company and partly because I wanted them to validate its other-worldliness. Charlotte happened to be one victim in my scheme. We sit there in silence, like an unhappy family staring at their phones in an Olive Garden, piecing together whatever words cross our stream of consciousness—rave, foot, tarot.

The game takes a necessary pause when Joanna comes by with the chocolate milkshakes we ordered. She places the tall glasses on our table, long metal spoons leaning against the edge of the

glass. It is then when she casually warns that we should not stir the spoon too fast, otherwise it might cause a nuclear reaction.

Joanna walks away with the same grace she always has, but we are left uneasy, and truthfully, unable to continue our game. How can we? No sensible person consumes a drink on the brink of nuclear disaster without the utmost care, something Charlotte and I both understand. I look around. Everyone carries on with their games, oblivious to our perilous situation just a few feet away. They have absolutely no idea.

Deadass

I do not own a detective-style recording device, but if I did, I forgot to bring it. Empty-handed and unable to time travel, I am left to make do with the second best option, my memory.

In this makeshift transcript based on very true events, I recall a conversation I once overheard on an unassuming night at my usual spot in the cafe. It was late and I still had to write a character analysis on Milkman from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, but the exchange unfolding before my eyes turned too intriguing to disregard.

Milkman could wait. But this, well, this was once-in-a-lifetime, never to happen again.

In other words, this is all I have. I hope it will suffice.

Two girls, both dressed in sweats, sit comfortably at the chess table. They are not playing chess.

Girl 1: Do you remember my old history teacher?

Girl 2: No, but what about him?

Girl 1: Oh I don’t know. I just remember how nice he was to me, and, you know

Girl 2: No, I don’t know

Girl 1: Like he would always have me stay after class to explain things, and I was his favorite student

Girl 2: Okay, what is your point

Girl 1: Well my point is, basically, we are kinda-sorta-maybe seeing each other

Girl 2: Like you’re dating him?

Girl 1: Like I’m his full-time sugar baby

Girl 2: Deadass?

Girl 1: Deadass.

What in the Time Portal is this (Sad Version)

I walk up the stairs, almost collapsing on my bed. The sheets have not been changed from how I left them in the summer, a time when I still optimistically believed college would be fun. It felt silly then, and it feels silly now, to picture myself there, throwing up the baggage I forgot to leave behind in my shoe box of a dorm room.

Still lying on my bed, staring blankly at the plain ceiling, I realize I cannot recall anything from the last four months, as though I

have woken from a coma rather than simply returning from college. My mind turns white and sterile—like those padded rooms they used to put mental patients inside—as my brain plays catch up with reality, inserting false memories to make up for the lost time.

To solve this temporary amnesia, I put on the biggest coat I own and leave. I need to get out. From across the street, I can see the lights inside Knight Moves, illuminating the darkness. I trudge up the brick steps and pull open the door, my nose and ears blushing red from the cold. My amnesia, however, only intensifies upon entering—balloons, confetti, and frankly, too many people crowd the already compact room. My face immediately flushes from the heat spewing out the radiators.

Yet even in this daze I realize that I walked in on some party. I am unsure how to proceed. So I stand there—more statue-like than human—as though these unknown guests are not really guests but aspiring art students, pencils in hand, waiting to draw my awkward portrait. I refuse to move, not particularly because I wish to stay, but because I cannot seem to walk away.

It is precisely then that, in spite of all that changed, at least Knight Moves had not. It still smells like an old library. Andy Warhol is still there to greet me. The train still passes outside the window. My mind calms. Something in my memory returns—a version of myself I lost in college, one that I actually liked. I suppose this is how I am meant to find it again, standing in this cafe, crashing some unknown party. I let the tears well up, but not enough to let them fall. Maybe this party is for me. Then again, how did they know I would be coming home?

THE SECOND LIFE

A Nass reporter ventures as far as Arkansas to document new developments in the green steel industry

By JULIA STERN

One problem with U.S. Steel’s plant in Clairton, Penn. is that it can’t stop exploding. It happened in 2009, and killed a maintenance worker. It happened in 2010, and sent 20 men to the hospital. It happened in 2018, and disabled the plant’s pollution controls, making the air stink of smoke and rotten eggs.

For a while, U.S. Steel signaled publicly that it might do something to stop these incidents— something like a $1.3 billion upgrade. But that was little more than apocrypha. Behind closed doors, the eyes of steel executives had drifted elsewhere, some fifty miles up the Mississippi River from Memphis, to the tiny town of Osceola, Arkansas, where the taxes are low, the labor is cheap, and the county—desperate for economic growth—will spend millions to attract investment.

Profits have been rocky for U.S. Steel over the past few years, and a string of pollution fines have deflated their public image. But the steel mill in Osceola claims to be clean, cheap, and green, a break from the dirty mills of Western Pennsylvania. U.S. Steel shelled

out $1.5 billion for the plant. They recently announced another $3 billion expansion. The mill is on track to become the #1 steel-producer in America.

At long last, U.S. Steel has joined the scramble for clean steel. America’s dirtiest industry is cleaning itself up. And the biggest motivation is profit.

To make steel, you need heat. The grimy, hulking steel plants of Western Pennsylvania—think smokestacks and black ash—use coal to generate heat, a fossil fuel so pollutive that the name alone makes environmentalists shudder. Up until 2019, U.S. Steel powered all of their blast furnaces with coal.

But the plant in Osceola uses electricity—not coal—to heat materials. Electric furnaces, powered by an adjacent solar farm, melt down scrap steel, which is then recast as new steel. The whole complex is more of a recycling operation than a manufacturing one. This style of steel-making, known colloquially as “mini-mills,” has been around since the 1960s, but before Osceola, U.S. Steel had exhibited a dogged and mystifying disinterest in the new technology.

U.S. Steel used to be something of a big boss. They used to spew chemicals into the air without a drop of shame. They used to put up white billboards with

stilted messages like “Continuous Improvement to Environment,” and when the paint turned black from soot, no one would bat an eye. You had asthma as a child, and cancer as an adult. You went to the Carnegie Library, walked in Frick Park, and then cheered for the Steelers on Sundays. This was life in an American milltown. What could you do? Steel was money, and money was otherwise hard to come by. But in the 1980s, after an environmental reckoning in America, pressure mounted against U.S. Steel. They faced a dilemma similar to the one today: producing cleaner steel—or, at least steel that was less dirty—required new technology, and new technology meant fewer jobs. Just as residents had feared, money grew scarce. The mill towns of Western Pennsylvania fell into financial destitution.

This was no hiccup, but the start of a long fall. In the 1940s, more than 300,000 people worked for U.S. Steel. Today, the number is 20,000. People use words like “heritage” and “legacy” when talking about U.S. Steel, as if it’s more artifact than operational. Big boss no more, U.S. Steel has become the bleary-eyed grandfather of steel.

U.S. Steel reported losses of $900 million in 2020. For a moment, it looked as if the pandemic would cripple the economic leviathan for good. But the company

LIFE OF U.S. STEEL

took a sharp turn in 2021, when C.E.O. David Burritt, a pale, spindly man with wire-frame glasses, announced that U.S. Steel’s new priority would be achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“In the wake of the 2020 pandemic and the increased urgency of the climate crisis,” Burritt explained, his lips taut and thin, “we are reviewing all projects with an even greater focus on steelmaking’s future in a rapidly decarbonizing world.”

“The Future of Steel” is the tagline for U.S. Steel’s $3 billion expansion in Osceola, Arkansas. Clif Chitwood, an Osceola native and the head of development in northeast Arkansas, walks through the plant’s blueprints with child-like glee.

“They heat steel in a clay pot the size of a two-story house,” he exclaims, pointing at an intricate diagram of the plant’s bowels. When he says “steel,” his heavy Southern accent draws out the e’s. “Steeeel.”

Chitwood has reason to be enthusiastic. He has been president of the region’s economic development for 25 years; more than anyone, it’s Chitwood that’s responsible for creating a steel industry in Northeast Arkansas, and it’s him who sees its payoff. “Three years ago, I thought to myself ‘well, maybe you’ve done your job, but I don’t see your town getting any better.’

But all of a sudden, things started to happen.”

When Chitwood was a boy in the 1960s, Osceola was the place to be. Big churches, rotary clubs, schools that graduated doctors and lawyers—a “classic American town” on the banks of the Mississippi River. But cotton died, industry left, and the population fell by half. Now, Osceola is mostly poor, mostly Black, mostly a ghost town of better days. Shuttered storefronts fill the downtown, as do chipped sidewalks. The local paper has three sections: “News,” “Sports” and “Obituaries.”

“These were proud, prosperous towns,” explains Chitwood. “We lost a lot.” But steel promises a new chapter for Osceola. “It’s hard not to be optimistic,” he says. “It took them a day and a half to close down the shoe factory in Osceola. But the steel plant’s not going anywhere. Neither is the demand for steel.”

“They’re using technology that has never been used in Arkansas” explains Rex Nelson, a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “It’s the cleanest steel mill ever built.”

There are now four steel mills in the county, two owned by the steel company Nucor, and two owned by U.S. Steel. Each one has a site on the Mississippi River. All of them employ Electric Arc Furnaces (EAFs) to produce recycled steel. All of

them were built after 1985. So far, the plant in Osceola is the only out of these four—and the only steel mill in America—to receive certification from ResponsibleSteel, a nonprofit that monitors low-carbon steel production.

This means that Osceola, a crumbling town in Arkansas, now boasts America’s most cutting-edge steel mill. Why here? Why in this tiny, unassuming corner of a poor and rural state?

Arkansas makes sense for the reasons western Pennsylvania made sense—rivers, for one, a dirtcheap way to bring in scrap and send out steel. Then there’s the railroad, a freight line that cuts up from Birmingham and Memphis, and an interstate that runs along the Mississippi River. The county is flat, agricultural, huge, and for the most part, empty.

Better yet, there are no unions, no democrats, and certainly no pesky environmentalists to fire up the far-off Arkansas Division of Environment. The Osceola plant sits in the middle of a field—if it explodes, who would know? Who would care? A feeling of confidence pervades northeast Arkansas — we have all the parts — but so does a self-aware urgency — what else do we have?

So, Arkansas plays nice. There were 40 other locations in the running for U.S. Steel’s $3 billion project, but Osceola won out thanks to

a package of incentives offered by state and county officials. It was a win-win deal for the company and the town. U.S. Steel credited the decision to the Arkansans “who will go the extra mile to compete for opportunities.” Osceola’s former mayor described the project as “winning a mega-billion dollar lottery.”

Behind these negotiations is a tax-funded advertising campaign run by the Great River Economic Foundation, a non-profit formed in the 1990s. This body has facilitated every steel project in the past eighteen years, bringing the region nearly 5,000 jobs and $4 billion in investment.

Since 2002, they’ve operated under the slogan “From Cotton to Steel.” This plays off many points; evolution, yes, but also an appeal to the good ol’ days of booming business, a nostalgia U.S. Steel knows all too well. A century ago, Mississippi County produced more cotton than anywhere in America. When U.S. Steel’s expansion is complete in 2024, Mississippi County will hold the same title for steel. Cotton once thrived, the logic goes. Why can’t steel?

Unlike the “Steel City” of Pittsburgh, the association between steel and Arkansas is not yet automatic. But Great River Economic Foundation has a fix for that too; they’ve devised a new nickname for Northeast Arkansas,

calling it the “steel mill heaven.” Now, their hands are everywhere, in potential sites, industry-starved communities, technical colleges, all to fine-tune an edenic portrait of an otherwise desperate place. Heaven might not have much, but it is the best place to make cheap, clean steel.

People’s biggest gripe with Northeast Arkansas is that there’s no good reason to stay. No nice towns, no good jobs, no bars or bike trails. But with the U.S. Steel’s expansion in Osceola, change is coming fast.

“We’ve turned a corner.” Osceola Mayor Joe Harris told me, when I asked him about the town’s future. “We’ve got 65 new homes going up. We haven’t had a subdivision in Osceola in the last 27 years.” Harris, a 71-year-old trucking magnate who served on the Arkansas state legislature, speaks in the same slow, Southern accent as Clif Chitwood. He has the mannerisms of a businessman, leaning far back in his chair, crossing his arms when he speaks.

Harris grew up in Osceola. Like Chitwood, he can painfully recall the city’s decline. Unlike Chitword, he is Black, and still resides within the town limits of Osceola, where the housing crisis is one of too many empty, dilapidated structures. Much of Harris’ vision for the town depends on what he calls “cleaning up.”

“We have to clean up first, and then we can sell the town,” explains Harris. “Just like a car or a home.”

Harris agrees that the steel industry has been a “tremendous financial contribution” to the region.“They’ve been great community partners,” he tells me, without a moment of hesitation. “They’ve built parks, made contributions to our schools. Our residents are very happy about this change.”

But where there is money, there is competition. Eleven miles south of Osceola, another wilted, rural town is vying to be the destination for steel executives: Wilson, Arkansas. The former heart of “Boss” Lee Wilson’s sharecropping empire, the town was purchased by billionaire investor Gaylon Lawrence Jr. in 2014. His goal is to make Wilson a place where Arkansans can enjoy art galleries and British car shows without leaving the state.

All this means that for the first time in decades, there are good reasons to stay in Northeast Arkansas. Young people can attend the twoyear Steel program at Arkansas Northeastern College; move into jobs that pay on average $150,000; and purchase one of Mississippi County’s new homes through the “Work Here, Live Here,” under which their employer will cover 10% of their house cost. Since 2014, they can even send their children to a small private academy, The Delta School.

The residents of Osceola are wary of another town stealing their spotlight. In 2020, when rumors of U.S. Steel’s Osceola expansion began, the city promptly formed a community development committee to overhaul everything: two new

housing subdivisions, a major hotel, a new grocery store, and a new sewage system. There is a small window of time to capitalize on U.S. Steel’s momentum.

Mayor Harris feels the heat. But he is anchored by a sense of duty. “I love this town,” he says, gazing out his office window. “I am still here in Osceola. Steel can be our savior.”

When steel is recast, it loses none of its properties. Steel is metamorphic. The furnace is indiscriminate, devouring anything—a rusted car frame, a broken saucepan—and producing something brand-new. In the core of the heat, impurities melt away.

It seems that U.S. Steel hopes to do the same. Soon, the mill in Osceola will take on the rhythms and rumblings of industry, and it’s hard not to note that the country’s oldest steel company will produce its highest-tech steel. That within a few years, one of America’s greatest polluters found itself on the forefront of sustainable steel — and that financial trouble was the final push.

The second life of U.S. Steel is now rising above the cotton fields of Arkansas, boxy, blue, and sprawling. Its enormity is rivaled only by the river and the sky.

TRONG, LAM, TRUMP, AND BIDEN A Vietnamese Student’s Thoughts on the Upcoming Election TRONG, LAM, TRUMP, AND BIDEN

A few things Americans might be missing about November’s general election

By DAVID CHAU

At 80 years old, Vietnam’s top political leader Nguyen Phu Trong’s untimely death, during his third term as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, should come as a warning to Americans with another term with either President Biden (age 81) or Former President Trump (age 78).

In 2021, Mr. Trong assumed his third term as the General Secretary, breaking from the Vietnamese Constitution, which imposes a two-term limit of ten years. The Party’s approval of this constitutionally unprecedented act signaled its inability to find new successors to Mr. Trong’s role. As a result, his passing this year marked the beginning of a period of anxious waiting for organizations and businesses across the nation. Questions of anti-corruption campaigns, and US-VietnamChina relations, among other strategic shifts in economic policies abound.

Just a few days before Mr. Trong’s death, Vietnam’s current President—a rather ceremonial role—assumed the position of interim General Secretary. Known

for his background in the Ministry of Police, Mr. Lam has yet to discuss new policy preferences. And for the case of Vietnamese politics, the general population has been apolitical at the grace of a fast-growing economy—leaving policy discussions to their representatives in the political class.

It is ironic that I drew parallels between Vietnamese and American politics. For one, Vietnamese citizens don’t elect their President nor the Party’s General Secretary; their representatives do. Hence, they don’t—and can’t—vote on policy matters, ensuring the robust stability of the Communist Party in Vietnam.

The system outlined above might resemble the electoral college in America. However, in the US, the presidential candidates are shown on the ballots. And, Americans’ abilities to vote on policy matters make the stakes even much higher, considering the age of the Presidential candidates.

Therefore, the death of a top political leader for Vietnam might be less worrisome for citizens than the death of a top political leader in the U.S. in terms of consequential policy shifts. Biden stepping down as a Presidential candidate relieved Democrats of this risk. Had Biden not dropped his Presidential bid for 2024, voters of both parties would need to think hard not only about their

Presidents (whose old age remains the biggest liabilities) but also about their Vice Presidents if their number 1 choice dies in office.

Voting for a Vice Presidential candidate in a general election is strange and risky at the same time. We all know VPs are supposed to echo the President’s policy preferences. That was why for the last four years, Kamala Harris struggled to create her own political footing. Her political stance doesn’t perfectly align with that of Biden—unlike Scranton Joe, she is from the most liberal part of California. But even then, serving as his VP, Harris never had a platform to argue her own stance to Americans, until now when she is number 1 on the Democrat ticket.

The same set of predicaments apply to the case of J.D. Vance as well. Trump is 78, and if he wins, he will be 79 when assuming office and 82 when he leaves the Oval Office. And although he survived an assassination attempt, the Secret Service can’t protect him from the wrath of old age. By then, if J.D. Vance assumed office, how would voters know what his policies are? J.D. Vance has been and will be campaigning on Trump’s policy. However, when given the chance to run the Oval Office without Trump, would Vance’s wild ideas come to life?

Before becoming the VP candidate for Trump, Vance criticized

America for being run by “childless cat ladies,” basically arguing that Americans without children should not run for public office. Vance has also run with anti-feminist policies, stating that women’s advocacy to move into the workforce and the political class is an erasure of a dignified American family life.

And most importantly, Vance was anti-Trump. Would Trump supporters want to vote for a VP who could very possibly step into the President’s role with an anti-Trump mindset? Trump supporters should think long and hard about Vance’s prospects of running the Oval Office.

As a Vietnamese citizen, I am not voting in the upcoming 2024 election. However, as an active observer of such democratic processes, I can’t help but advise that Americans should not only keep in mind whom they are voting for as President but also whom they are voting for as Vice President. The world can no longer function on democracies that take bets on political leaders’ age and their deaths. Now that Biden has stepped down as a candidate, the political liability lies solely with Trump, a man who would never step down for the sake of the country or even his own party.

NASS RECOMMENDS:

GAY ROMANCE NOVELS

Ten of our top picks (plus a couple honorable and dishonorable mentions)

By CHAS BROWN

If you’re anything like me, you’re always searching for that next great work of fiction—something you can pick up but can’t put down, something that whips you up into its own story and simultaneously gets you to think about what parts of it reflect your own life. If you’re a little bit more like me, a good gay romance will sate your appetite while you search. Male-male and more often than not white-white relationships have historically enjoyed the most media representation of all LGBTQ subcommittees. On the one hand, that means countless queer experiences remain in the shadows, and people with less privileged identities may have difficulty finding themselves on general LGBTQ reading lists. On the other, this genre has a lot of books to choose from! Here I’ve ranked my favorite 10 of this guilty pleasure of mine. Read through to pick up your next summer read! Or simply peruse the ranking so you can feel like you’re the most well-read in your eating club (and end up finding one you’ll like).

10. Maurice by E. M. Foster

This entry is a bit of an outlier. Written by E.M. Foster in 1912, it was not published until after his death in 1971. The early 20th century Oxford and England it describes are foreign, and the cultural contexts, understandings of homosexuality, and certainly the author’s own idiosyncrasies, make the story a bit hard to understand. Lovers of English classics might find it more approachable and might even be swooned by its unconventional three-act structure. The main character, Maurice, was written to be the total opposite of E. M. Foster. He is physically

attractive, bold, and sometimes selfish. His romance with another Oxford boy strains his relationships with his mother and younger sisters, and then with himself.

9. Find Me by André Aciman

The sequel to Call Me By Your Name will please fans of Aciman’s writing but will disappoint those who came back thirsty for more Oliver and Elio. (If you’ve lived under a rock and don’t recognize those names, scroll to number 3 in this list). Connections to the first book are vague and not super relevant to the story. For better or worse, it is its own work. Split into three smaller narrations and a short concluding chapter, Find Me makes it clear that Oliver and Elio’s age gap, which caused quite a controversy among fans of the first story, was no fluke. An overwhelming focus on age-gap relationships in the novel could straddle the line between variations in the equally valid human experience and an author’s personal fetish. First, a straight man falls in love with a younger woman. Then, a younger man falls in love with an older man. Third, a man internally pontificates about his attraction to both a younger woman and a younger man. The bisexuals will clap. I should also warn it is disgustingly pretentious at times, though that might be right at home for you Princetonians. Also, fair warning, this book is quite, um, descriptive.

8. Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Perfect for people who wouldn’t get kicked out of the house when they came out, but whose parents aren’t hosting pride parties this June. I don’t remember much from this book other than the fact that I finished it in a day after watching the movie adaptation, Love, Simon. Many people criticize it for its simplicity and bi-erasure, but I found it comforting and empowering,

as Simon deals with being honest with himself and with his friends over the course of his senior year in high school. The spin-off TV show, Love, Victor, will entertain fans who plowed through the book and original movie.

7. In Memoriam by Alice Winn

The newest on this list, it starts out as a deceptively joyful love story between two English school boys and their friends in the early 1900s and turns into a full on war novel, akin to All Quiet on the Western Front. When German Gaunt is pushed to enlist in the English army to stave off nasty allegations about his family, idealistic Ellwood soon follows. Very fast-paced, very emotional rollercoaster, very good.

6. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller somehow makes the Iliad accessible even for someone like me whose exposure to Greek mythology was limited to the Percy Jackson series. Achilles— brave, strong, and arrogant—is the best of the Greeks. His companion, Patroclus, is kinder and more measured. Their relationship is the core of the book, and it will sate your appetite for a love story, but it is not a mere romance novel. Its rootedness in mythology and classic literature makes it so much more. A best seller and absolute page-turner you don’t even have to be gay to enjoy.

5. Lie with Me by Philippe Besson

Originally published in 2017 in France where it won several awards, this potentially autobiographical novel was translated to English just two years later by actress Molly Ringwald of The Breakfast Club fame. It takes place in rural France of the 1980s and is narrated by the bookish son of the local school’s principal. He is destined to move on to bigger and better things (any small town

Tigers in the chat?), unlike his secret lover, Thomas, whose working class background limits the paths he can take, in terms of career and love. What starts as a light and youthful romance grows into a much more complex drama as these two characters deal with the environments and expectations around them. Illicit romance, class tension, memory, yearning, and loss, all in a short 160 pages.

4. Less by Andrew Sean Greer

I don’t remember much from the plot of this book. I do remember that it won the Pulitzer Prize and is hilarious while also being contemplative. Author Andrew Sean Greer tells a complex story about author Arthur Less, whose much older and much more famous poet husband had recently passed away. Their relationship was filled with love, poetry, and problems. Less recounts this history alongside his world travels, from Mexico to Paris to India. Short and probably worth a read. I found the sequel, Less is Lost, even funnier.

3. Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman

This book likely needs no introduction. Popularized by the 2017 film adaptation which also served as the breakout role for now A-list celebrity Timothée Chalamet, the book tells the same story in a different way. The main character, Elio, entertains us with flowery descriptions of the northern Italian countryside as well as his relations with Oliver. It’s smut, but elegant, somehow? There is an indulgence in art and culture that create a mesmerizing experience. Call Me By Your Name the book is an addictive page turner, but for all the busy Tigers out there who save up enough free time for one movie a month, the adaptation might be the way to go. And if you’re already in love with Guadagnino’s cinematography, visual metaphors, choice of music, and acting in the movie,

you’ll be equally intrigued by the tension and desire that Aciman delivers on the page.

2. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Short, complex, enthralling, poetic, the story is one of the first modern examples of gay love in literature, and certainly one of the first by a black author. Our complicated and often selfish protagonist, David, is a New York expat living in Paris. His fiancée is traveling through Spain while they both consider an impending marriage. He meets a handsome and poor Italian bartender named Giovanni and they fall in love as David struggles with his sexuality, pressures from his father back home, and his fiancée’s impending return. Giovanni’s Room, which stands out among an already stellar body of work, showcases Baldwin’s ability to conjure diverse, appalling, and relatable characters that illuminate universal aspects of the human condition. Not at all just for gay men, but for any reader.

1. Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski

My top pick, Swimming in the Dark, sets its scene in the communist Poland of the 1980s. Familiar stigmas around gay life are made extreme by the authoritarian regime influencing every area of public life. Less intrusive “don’task-don’t-tell” sodomy laws we’re used to in Western literature are actually threatened and acted upon. Tensions are high. The indulgent summer camp romance in the beginning is a foundation for a bigger story dealing with relationships challenged in different contexts and uncomfortable power dynamics. It is carried along with beautiful prose and relatable emotions. I could not put this book down.

An Honorable and Dishonorable Mention

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

According to the internet, a gay novel. While it is a wonderful read and a classic that explores the privileges and assumptions around youth and physical beauty in contrast to true inner moral good (certainly relevant for the modern gay community), queer romance is absent from the story, so it’s not strictly a “gay novel.”

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara I just wanted to share my beef with this book. I couldn’t finish it, but for the first few hundred pages, I couldn’t put it down. The characters are interesting. Then they got a bit too interesting. What started out as a cozy portrayal of a group of friends living in New York City right out of college, morphed into, crudely put, trauma porn. My suspended disbelief fell and shattered about halfway through the 800-page novel, and I didn’t pick it back up. It began to feel like a challenge to make the reader cringe, both from the extreme goriness of the as well as from the unrealistic events. I found it on a Goodreads list of gay literature, thus spurring the creation of this (superior) list.

listen for green anemoia listen for green anemoia

By OLIVIA ROSLANSKY

twenty minutes from the center of the city once rice fields that my grandmother admired each morning whispering to dragonflies in the cup of her palm squint at night and see cold stars tearing away the horizon motorcycles and black clouds.

in our kitchen, my mother cuts her finger unwrapping three layers of stiff plastic around microwave hotdogs from the grocery store. but if you look into our home,

there are still house geckos that i hear chattering in our curtains making sounds of contentment

and tomorrow morning i see a pair of dangling feet and two paws above coconuts and bottles floating in the river across the street a strangers breath suspended in morning beams torn flip flops and a pail of fresh dog food that smells of cereal and love.

i latch onto green anemoia by its feet drawing lines of nature along the streets below the graffiti: there are desert roses in ceramic pots black squirrels tracing trees against the malls cats clawing at fresh coconut shavings on the floor of the flower market

licking their paws before they fall asleep beneath fresh ginger

you are a living thing your lotuses have and will grow out of mud