The Preservation Plate

                    “‘I'm never coming back home again. Once I leave this place, I’ll never come back.’ Oh, if you knew the angsty high school version of me, you’d know that this was my mantra. I used to idolize going off to college and being this grand version of myself that was carefully curated thanks to Pinterest. But...I didn’t know what that fully entailed. 14-17 year old me correlated good grades to success and if I was having a 4.0gpa, I might as well be Warren Buffet. Oh, how I was comically wrong. Not in a bad way, just in a way I never expected.  So, picture this: June 2021, COVID-19 still has lingering effects, our outdoor graduation was given the green light, and I (KSF) was graduating with honors in the top 10% of my class. With a ticket into UC Berkeley for Mechanical Engineering? Woah baby a quadruple. I was riding on a high and I could see it now. 4 years of a grind and then I’d be somewhere in the PNW w...

             *Warning: this essay includes a description of a dog bite. Pursue at your own will*      Merry Christmas to all of my 5 readers! I hope your holiday was lovely. Mine was a very nice time, doing something I’ve never done before. Visiting the in-laws, making sentimental gifts, and meeting the grandparents-in-law for the first time. My day started off irregular. I set my clock for 3AM after having bowels about as backed up as L.A. traffic before Christmas. Hoping to escape the dreaded bathroom break without anyone in the house finding out if I poop or not, I made the perfect plan. Alas, nothing came to fruition. Then I woke up at 7am, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Excited to open gifts, I awoke my fiance in kisses and rushed down those stairs after a quick pitstop of “hello hello” with my in-laws. The night before I set out a glass of water and a blueberry bagel split in half with a note that said “Sorry Santa, budget cuts...

       I recently gave myself windburn after picking up cycling for the first time. If you don’t know what that is, if you ride around crusty AF in the freezing winter with no protection you’re going to dehydrate your skin and look like baked parmesan. I suppose it became a hyperfocus of mine, but let me bring you to the beginning. My older sister, not the one we don’t speak about, my lovely older cool rich sister is one of my inspirations. She’s gifted with words and incredibly passionate. She’s a very cool person and I don’t mean that as a synonym to awesome or rad. She’s not warm or hot (badum tss) or cold. She’s cool.      She loves at a distance and most people don’t understand this. Growing up when she was awake I’d smother her, because that’s how I knew how to love. This of course annoyed her, but I’d rather take a beating from her than not hear from her at all. And as I watched her withdraw from the world, I realized she needed to be loved at a...

      As I lay here in the night, with the devilish blue light twinging against my aching eyes, I feel a great heat emanating from my forever partner. I hear a deep sigh rattle out of him, and I feel the movement of his body as he reaches for tissue, one after another. He is incapacitated. Stuck and melodramatic in my eyes.   I cannot understand it. He calls it the "Man Flu."      What makes it any more different if a man has it versus a woman? I have gone through various lengths, stretching my head as if it were malleable putty, just so I may be able to wrap my mind around it. Alas, I am just as incapacitated as he. Stuck. I do not understand this illness.      All around my feet, it circles—and then it sits. Like an obedient dog, it begs the question from me: Do men feel illness worse than women?      It came as soon as it went. Guilt. I cannot imagine such theatrics from something as mild as a head cold or a sniff...

       It’s an odd feeling. On the brink of excitement and nervousness. Teetering back and forth like a pendulum. Ignoring the laws of Newton as I force myself to stay in the middle. Unwavering. In between, yet imbalanced.      So many questions rush through my head as I am about to attend my first Powwow. After a night of searching for proper etiquette and wondering whether I have the right clothes, I can’t find answers within myself. Do I bring cash or card, or both? How much do I buy to show respect? What if they know I’m an outsider? What if… What if… What if.      As much as I am excited, this is my first real experience with embracing a culture that I do not embody. I can’t help but ruminate over the thought that I might do it ‘wrong’. How do you observe a culture wrong? What if I call her Auntie but she’s actually Cousin? What if I don’t call her anything? Am I even allowed to call her that?      A flurry of t...

As I’m reading Fahrenheit 451, I’m finding it difficult to get into the book. I’m constantly surrounded by sound and technology. There isn’t a moment in my day where the world is quiet and when I do happen to find it for a brief second, I fall asleep and restart the day chasing that moment again. I suppose there is a lesson to be learned here. It’s ironic if you think about it. This story isn’t a speed read. It’s shorter than other books I’ve read. It’s comprised of an archaic world that no longer follows their inherent rules. The prose is theatrical and amusing. And even I find that difficult to digest. I think it’s written this way for a reason. You have to sift through the uninvited amusement, like putting sand through a sieve, hoping that if you look hard enough maybe you will understand Mr. Bradbury’s words are a little deeper. The world around him. The match that lights the books back.  This reminds me of anthropology in a way. More specifically archaeology. You are constantl...