Perfectionism and My Iphone 6

A personal Essay by Siera Lara

Who would have thought that my broken screen could represent healing? 

For me, there is something satisfying about the brand new. When it’s yours, you feel as though you have started over, that you have a clean slate with no mistakes.

I remember, specifically, the day I got my brand new iPhone 6. The box it came in was sleek and shiny, but not as shiny as the phone itself. I marveled as I ran my finger over its polished surface not finding a single defect. As I held it in my hand, my attention was drawn to how perfectly it fit there as though it had been custom made for me. I imagined that only the hand of my soulmate would fit better.

God’s Forgotten Pen Pal

A personal essay by Cassie Wood

"Only the children know what they are looking for." 

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince  

I sat at the park reading Walt Whitman while watching a child sit alone on the swing with no one to push her.

I watched a different girl with her grass-stained knees and Dorito dusted fingers flitter across the grass as she gathered a buttery bouquet. The sun-fallen weeds bunched in her chubby fists. She gave her collection of starbits to her mother, sneezing. "Wow! They're lovely," her mom said, she said she is going to put them in a vase in the kitchen. My kitchen has scab-red roses from Costco. I guess I picked them out too.

I am not nostalgic for childhood innocence. But at one point in my life I exchanged my dad reading The Little Prince to me at bedtime for white noise to drown out my thoughts while I sleep. And I don’t know why.

No Final Feeling

"Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final." Rainer Maria Rilke

I repeated the same mundane phrase that I really only recited when my manager was around, “And if you apply for a Nordstrom credit card you can save 10% today!” I scanned the screen for the total and told the customer, “That will save you over $90!” Had I actually just convinced someone to spend nearly $1,000 on a baby stroller? My hands took the customer’s card and entered the information and my mind buzzed around the transaction that just took place. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that my hands had helped mother’s tie their babies to their backs with nothing but a piece of fabric? 

The first neighborhood I lived in while in Cape Verde. 

When I first came down the escalator, my grandpa handed me a large Diet Coke, with lime, that welcomed me home. My sister gently brushed through my tangled hair while my mom’s hands sorted through a suitcase full of long skirts and uneaten granola bars. My fingers sped through T9 texting on a small flip phone, because something about an iPhone seemed daunting and yet unimportant at the time.

Friends Once Lost, Are Friends Again?

By Buckets Hall

Infinite apparitions from the past swarmed me, each awaking a separate, transcendent sentience.

People I saw and talked with the first week of the semester

January 5-9, 2018
Maya. A young woman from one of my mission areas. Anastasia. Childhood friend. Used to have sleepovers at her grandma's house. Alex. Ate at his apartment almost daily my freshman year. Garrett. Went to a scout camp together when we were twelve. Miraculously still looks twelve. Hayden. My mission trainer.

Actually, Hayden was the first person I saw on campus. Messy hair tousled by bitter wind. wrinkled pants clutched his slim thighs. A massive grin spilled over flushed cheeks. The needling cold numbed me, but the warm, sweet essence of our relationship pierced through the frost. 

Spider-Web Ties and Double Stuf Oreos

“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” 

Ernest Hemingway

Milk is poured and drank in one gulp.

   
   Everything that you do not expect to happen will happen. Someone will call you and manipulate you into giving them thousands of dollars over the phone. You will do it. You will do it in spite of that feeling you have in the pit of your gut that it might be fraudulent. With a chilling fear down your spine, you continue blindly until it is too late. 

Insufficient funds and one sleeve of Oreos eaten.

  You will have a hard time returning to that bank. With the artifacts from that incident stuffed under your bed, they will haunt you like a ghost in your dreams. For days after, you will jump when people unexpectedly, but harmlessly come too close to you. 

Second sleeve of Oreos gone.

Between a Rock and a Dark Place

A Personal Essay by Henry Morris

"There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand."

I’m not sure I fully knew what exactly I was getting myself into. Neither did my dad. We never really stopped to ask ourselves if it was worth it or if we should we just find a different weekend to go.

Stuck Below the Mountain

In the summer of 2009 my dad, three of my brothers, and I set out to hike King’s Peak, the tallest peak in the state of Utah sitting at 13,528 feet. I was thirteen and had zero interest giving up a summer weekend filled with swimming, video games, my couch, and friends, to go backpacking for a whole weekend. We piled in the Outback and headed to the trail. Cramped and grumpy, we arrived. Well, not really. Adam realized he was holding the map upside down (yes, a map) and led us to the wrong trailhead. My dad is usually a quite aggressive driver but man, I had never seen him drive like that before. Running hours behind schedule now, we arrived at the real trailhead. Our trailhead.

A Desert as my Safe Haven

A personal essay by Cameron Cornejo

Faster, Faster, Faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death. 

– Hunter S. Thompson

Sometimes, I reflect on the days when it was ok to just be me. The days when there was nothing but the wide open plain to accompany me and my dirt bike in the desert of Nevada. 

“Will it be safe to ride today?” my brother whimpers. Paralyzed with fear, he looks up at our father with those grey-blue, sleep filled eyes. He’s young, about 8. For a family that is so active outdoors, he seems to fear a lot of things. 

Our father looks out over the subliminal beauty of the desert, contemplating his youngest son’s question.

“You know,” he replies, more to his wife than to answer the question, “the desert would be very beautiful if it wasn’t for all these annoying dirt bikes."