I’m convinced that this fixation on photos and words stems from my love of revision. To revise is to prettify. For photos, there exist filters; for narratives, lovely words. Still, there were some things I was either unable or unwilling to varnish.
When I arrived at Princeton, the first item to adorn my dorm room was a 16x20 print of my baby cousin — on a playground swing set for the first time, her face awash with sunlight and a kind of unadulterated glee. THIS IS WHAT THE LIVING DO spans the top of the image. It’s in all caps, impossible to miss. I took this caption from one of my favorite lines from Marie Howe's eponymous poem, turning it into my own personal maxim.
