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Almost every Sunday, I used to strip. Of course, I mean this in the comic sense — that is, I comic stripped. Clad in pajamas, bedraggled and in desperate need of orange juice, I pored over the funny pages. These were literal pages in my youth, but later were the webpages of The Washington Post. Over Thanksgiving break, I observed the remnants of this weekly routine: Tomes and volumes of comic strips still litter my room, including the complete “Calvin and Hobbes,” “The Far Side” and “Garfield.”Moreover, the catalogue of “Peanuts” holiday specials continue to hold cultural sway over many Americans, including myself, bizarrely relishing the pathetic lamentations of Charlie Brown as he mopes through every festivity. As this print medium enjoys its tragic decline, among its brethren in physical artwork, where do the comics still lie in our consciousness? Is this goodbye, Charlie Brown?
Look me in my eyes. Admittedly, this may be quite an ask, given that through this newspaper column, my identity is somewhat abstract. If you could look into my eyes, maybe they really would tell the full story. Eye contact improves cognition and attention, after all. For the time being, please look me in my Is, as I elucidate that endlessly entrancing, palindromic organ: the eye.
Crimson and gold cascade down the hill, forming a bristling canopy of color to envelop our campus in an inescapable autumnal energy. Mousy, dimmer leaves lay scattered across the pavement. They give way to a passing footfall in a somber crunch. They rustle listlessly on their own, intimating the passing of a squirrel or, more than likely, a gorgeous Somerville rat. The fall of the leaves is decidedly upon us.
Trick or treat. Smell my feet. Give me something good to eat. If you don’t, I don’t care. I’ll pull down your underwear. Woah — maybe I wouldn’t go that far, but I am ‘dead’ serious about Halloween. Among the dominant (American) holidays, Halloween sticks out like a sore pumpkin. It lacks a prototypical communal or religious element, like many other notable festivities, instead imbuing celebration with an individualistic and distinctively subversive tilt. To examine this proclaimed Christian and historically pagan holiday from a Jewish perspective: On all other holiday nights, we celebrate joy and contentment, but on this night we celebrate fear. Why is this night different from all other nights?
I’m always stacking bread. And I don’t mean to suggest that I’m flush with dough — far from it — rather, I can never have just one slice of good bread. Whether soft and sweet or crusty and sour or the entire world of options in between, bread is as delicious as it is ubiquitous. We need bread, it seems. It is the “staff of life” to many Europeans, while, in Egyptian Arabic, “eish” (bread) originates from “y’eish” (to live). Peering through the thick crust of this universal, life-bringing force and appreciating all its wonder seems to be the yeast we can do.
I’m afraid of the dark. While it may be natural to fear what we cannot see, I can’t help but race to dive beneath the covers in the brief moment I have after turning off the lights, until my seemingly plain room is transformed into a den of shifting shadows. Maybe I am a coward for not simply enduring an ordinary fact of life. Or maybe, I’m a craven, a poltroon, even a dastard, to speak more boldly. Or maybe, by facing my fear and emerging triumphant in my bed every night, I am courageous. For words that, on their face, appear antonymic, cowardice and courage are often difficult to distinguish.
