This piece is a part of the OneFiveHundred series. Read the mission statement here. i: CRASH You wake up to the first day of the rest of your life. Your Google Calendar looks like Rothko’s Color Fields. Something in you might hurt a bit as you scrape yourself out of bed: sore back, abdominal ache, jaw clenched too tightly, inch-long scrape in the vertebrae, pinch-sized wound in the underbelly[1]. You…
Hilde was young enough to remember playing Dragonslayer when she was little. She had pretended to fight off the drakes who ruled the kingdom with wooden swords and cardboard armor like the knights of old. She was old enough to remember when the inventors made the first bolt-rifles to defend their villages and the Kaiser declared that they were free from draconic rule. She was wise enough to keep Maxmilian…
Moonrise Kingdom – Absurdity and Hope, at River Oaks Theater On a 1960s New England Island, precocious teen girl Suzy and outcast orphan boy scout Sam fall in love and run away into the wilderness, building their “Moonrise kingdom”. “Moonrise” is, of course, in opposition to sunrise, what the mainstream world views as hope and new beginnings. The teenagers, who find themselves irreconcilably different, decide to be different triumphantly. The…
Umpteenth (After Eden Knight) In mid-March, her skirts are deserted in a trash dump and she is reduced to a refrain, her name chanted like a rain gutter gurgling its guts out in a flood so thick it suffocates the cement. Her syllables shine like fairy dust and stained glass as they seep into the runoff and rise above the curbs. Crumbling packages of estradiol peel open in the bloated…
Final Operation Chauffeurs never had full shells of skin because it was more efficient to seal them directly to their seats. The wires inside of them ran directly through the driver’s seat, making the robots indistinguishable from the car. This made it harder to dismantle them to commit vehicle theft. It also made fixing chauffeurs harder. The older models tended to get their wires jostled out of place when braking…
Another Letter to my Big Brother The toasted New York bagels we had, spread with strawberry cream cheese, and how you’d dab my nose with it, and how I’d jokingly shove you around. The horrible c-pop we’d dance to on your old Sony, and how you’d play the D note on your school flute. How we’d ask for sweet, glazy char siu or smoky Beijing duck with garlic bok choy,…
Have no Valentine on Valentine’s Day? Feeling lost on what to do with all your free time? Tired of reading sentences that end with a question mark? Look no further than this list! Sometimes, all we need is a pick-me-up, an escape from the unpredictability of life. We love to know there’s a happy ending (except for all you masochists out there). It’s a comforting thought that, at the end…
A new year offers the potential of possibilities. New habits, new paths to take, and — most importantly — new media to consume. To help you wade through the mountain of books releasing this year, here is a collection of books that can help narrow the scope. Full disclosure: this list is completely biased and includes mostly books that I am personally excited for (that’s why they’re mostly in the…
OneFiveHundred Mission Statement 0: three lines I consider “Special Registration in MECH 340” a prose poem of sorts, better than most of the poetry I’ve written. I remember reading the email for the first time on Fizz, (an anonymous posting platform), and bursting out laughing. It’s really a diamond in the rough, as Fizz frequently consists of students bemoaning their classes or commenting irreverently about life events (as they should).…
There are things too large for us to handle. There are things that overwhelm us. There are things that can take us away, break us, twist us, keep us alive. There are things in this world that need to be done and aren’t, things that shouldn’t be done and are. There are worlds within our world that are incorrigibly plural, there are worlds born dead and still living. What I…
