3. Mozarella

                                                                    Image Citation Human civilization always treats time as sacred and meaningful. A lifetime is long, a century can seem infinite. Living a long life is important, waiting a long time matters. Time is such a significant aspect of human life and almost everything we place value on is tied to how much time has passed like memory, growth, and even (POAS!) legacies. But, time is not consistent across the universe. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity , time stretches or compresses depending on how fast you move or how strong gravity is around you, also known as time dilation. If someone were to move close to the speed of light, or spend time somewhere with very strong gravity, like near a massive planet or black hole, th...

I don’t remember exactly when I first learned this, but one thing that many of the novels I read when I was younger spoke about how power best suits those who do not want it. This sentiment, to me, has always gone hand-in-hand with another saying—absolute power absolutely corrupts. While these sayings are clearly opposites, they compliment each other solely because they are opposites that speak about the same thing. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” is a well-known saying about the dangers of power and giving it to one person, and “Power is best held by those who do not seek it” is a saying that expresses how power isn’t dangerous when placed in the correct people’s hands. Of course, both sayings have their own merits. I can completely understand how giving one person too much power can lead to horrific consequences. Just looking at all the dictatorships proves that fact well enough. However, some people do better than others at handling power on their own, especially when it comes ...

Every day, I basically follow the same routine. Wake up, scramble out of bed, go to school, come back, take a shower, and stare at my phone. Wake up, school, study. Wake up, study, binge novels in my free time. Constant, unceasing, endless stimulation.  It disgusts me. Some days, I go to sleep with eyes throbbing, my body telling me to stop. What am I wasting my time here for? Schoolwork isn’t going to help me be successful. Certainly not the 300 chapters I’ve read in the past two days. I’ve got to stand out, I’ve got to be a leader, I’ve got to be something special in order to have a chance to maintain my mediocrity.  And so I fall into stories, with their beautiful idyllic worlds. It just seems so perfect. No college, no big and scary world. Simple and straightforward. Good and evil. The stronger person wins. And even if you fail, you can still go and live a quiet life on some hill somewhere. Yet deep down, I know I can’t be doing this. I feel disgusted with this procrastina...

  Imagine this: it’s 2005, you are a sixteen-year-old girl living in Palm Beach, and to make some extra cash, you decide to become a masseuse for a rich old guy because your friend told you she made $240 in an hour doing this. Spoiler alert, this guy is Jefferey Epstein, and now you are forced to become a prostitute essentially for him and his other rich buddies. These pals include a former and future president, the Prince of England, and the former Prime Minister of Israel. You are forced to endure years of both sexual and psychological abuse at the hands of these men. To make things worse, when things finally come to light, people on the internet make jokes about the horrific abuse you went through. Some are even blaming you for what happened, while others are creating idiotic conspiracies to try to justify their president being in the files. We are often told that our words have power, but does the majority of the human population understand that? I guess not, because within t...

It’s miserably cold. I pull myself out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and head out to the park in front of my house, just in time to catch the sunrise. My shoes are sopping wet as I trudge through the morning dew, leaving behind a snail-like trail in the grass. And then, not even five minutes later, the stupid stick I spin smacks me in the middle of my forehead. This is almost a common occurrence; once I was left with a comically large bulge that didn’t go away for a whole two weeks. Another time I tried a parallel (kinda like a pizza toss?) and failed with ringing ears. Just yesterday, the end of my baton hit my nose and I left the ground stained with splatters of red. Perhaps this is the price I pay for Schadenfreude -ing…. What is this stick spinning? Basically, it’s a competition where I have to create a four minute routine and spin a fiberglass stick with a metal dome in an “L-pattern” of 150 yards by 70 yards. And what makes it so fun is how you’re able to select any song to spin to, as lon...

Every single time after I watch a movie, my finger drifts to the app with blue, orange, and green circles on my phone: Letterboxd. I’m pretty sure I downloaded the app when I was thirteen, and since then, I have logged almost every film I have ever seen for all twenty of my eager followers. Yeah, social media has rotted our brains. I mean, what is more quintessentially Gen Z than writing a witty remark for a review of Green Room or One Direction the London Session (yes, I have actually watched and logged a One Direction interview).  You could say that I am “performative” or whatever, I mean, I guess you could say that? I have logged a short film of David Lynch cooking quinoa, and three out of the four of my favorite films released between the years of 1975 and 1995. Is it really my fault that I enjoy niche classics and underground electronic music? Sue me for watching the 1970s Nosferatu on a biweekly basis, can’t a girl enjoy avant-garde horror? Rant aside, I don’t only wa...