Fall 2019 | Volume 2, Issue 1

Guns had gone muffled and silent. Heartbeats had slowed to a frighteningly contented and calm
sort of rhythm. The last decent literary age was over; the next one not yet in sight, and worse, not even
yet yearned for. The economy ostensibly worked. Love seemed easy and always within reach. Sports
made sense. Trains showed up on time. Every movie that came out was satisfactory to its intended
audience. War was a memory. Peace was non-philosophical. Music was good again, but not great. And
with the tepid acceptance of the Good Friday Agreements, quiet had come to even the north of Ireland.
The questions of the age had not been settled, but instead had been forgotten; lost in the malaise of
store-bought joy, practical use degrees, and timeshare vacations. It was an age of too little despair and
not enough righteousness.

I wrote the above paragraph about the 1990s in 2017. Just two years later, it doesn’t really feel
all that true. As of last year, I’ve been out of high school for more years than I was alive when I finished
it, and the 90s suddenly seem a hell of a lot more consequential, at least in the context of the farcical
absurdity we inhabit from all corners now. Maybe time and era are just nonsense, or at least relentlessly
changing subjectivities of perception. I am different even as my prior experiences are steadfast and
unyielding. So maybe now we try just living in our new realities without retrospection or comparison;
our understanding of history contingent on our evolving and devolving experiences. These perceptions
are endowed with intrigue and humanity and collectivity only when we write them down—an action
comprised of equal parts seclusion and vanity—as Norman Maclean’s “half-light of the canyon” is made
permanent by what we do here. New Square is all vanity and all seclusion—an azure triumph over the
dreadful counter image on the other side of the half-light.

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-JR