Flash Topic Essay

13 thoughts on “Flash Topic Essay”

1. The Manilkara zapota fruit, commonly known as sapodilla, sapote, chicozapote, etcetera, is a brown, grainy, fleshy little thing. You can eat it peel on, but I prefer to eat it sans skin, eliminating the experience of tongue on fuzz to focus instead on the smoothness of sinking my teeth in, sweet juice spilling to coat my throat. In the Philippines, we call it chico.

   I don’t know how to tell you what this means to me. I don’t know where to begin.

   On Sunday mornings we would make the trip to Carbon. Carbon, in my memory, is a dangerous place. One of the oldest markets in the country, its potholed streets lined by baskets filled with overflowing produce, nipa storefronts selling toy ukuleles for kids, low grey rooms displaying aquariums overstocked with fish. And in some of the baskets, sometimes, chicos. Rare finds.

   Carbon is where you go when you need good food, cheap, and so on Sunday mornings we would make the trip. The taxi would stop right by the edge, and then my parents, holding one of us each tightly by the hand, would haggle and bargain and sniff and weigh. Mostly, I would zone out, looking instead all around me to wonder at the colors and the noise and the smells, returning to myself sometimes when someone came too close, clutching my little pink handbag tightly to my chest. Seven year-olds, obviously, are the primary targets of snatchers.

   All this would change as soon as we made it to the fruit section. What do you want? my father would ask, and immediately, a long list. Rambutan! Sineguelas! Mangos, please! We would sniff and weigh and pick with them, then step back as they spoke with the vendors, eyes shifty, eager. Were there chicos in Carbon today? We would circle like eagles, missing nothing. When we found it, we would not celebrate, not yet. Immature chico tastes chalky, is dry and firm. Sniffing and weighing and picking was, in this case, a near scientific process, all the scientific training from first-grade brought to bear in a critical moment. My father taught me to feel for firmness near the stem, to sniff there. When all else failed, to ask the vendor, smiling sweetly, if we could buy just one at first, just to taste.

   In December of that year, the last Sunday before Christmas, the chicos were ripe. I came home with the plastic bag double knotted and hugged tightly to my chest, bruising some chicos, I’m sure, in the process. At home we set them aside and busied ourselves with putting up the decorations, cooking the Christmas eve dinner, preparing for the potluck of Christmas day lunch. My father carried me so I could put the angel on the tree, a yearly tradition. We split one chico that night, saved the rest for Christmas.

2. My mother came to this country when she was sixteen, her mother ailing and her brother left behind. She is the toughest woman I know, but that wasn’t something she chose for herself. To thrive in this country, she could never bend, for fear she would break. We have always fought, for as long as I can remember. I am just as headstrong, and when angered, I burn just as bright. It’s hard for me to apologize, but her pride makes it impossible. And so my mother has always chosen to give her apologies in the tradition of immigrant parents everywhere, in the form of delicious fruits cut up on a plate.

   To my mother, food is love. She was our household’s sole breadwinner, and yet woke up early every single day to create intricate, gourmet lunches for her children. Bento boxes with fresh rice, kimchi, and bulgogi, wrapped carefully in seaweed. Garlic chicken pasta, with spinach and chili flakes, and delicately sliced fruit on the side. Salmon with artfully arranged lemon slices on top, with fresh pico de gallo for topping. Slices of steak with homemade chutney poured carefully on top. None of my friends had lunches like it. Dinner was more of the same. If we had a birthday or special occasion, my mother didn’t ask what we wanted for presents, but what we wanted to eat. If we won awards or received straight A’s, the only thing she wanted to know was our choice of restaurant. And every time we fought, apologies took the form of peaches and plates, instead of concessions and compromise.

3. 6:40am, Day 6-7, time to head home. We threw all the bags in the car and packed into the backseat once again. No one spoke. What was at one point our relaxing escape, was now something we were escaping from. I slept for most of the ride back, feeling less guilty about missing scenery I had already looked at. Ella watched movies on her phone and Eli tossed the bouncy ball on his lap over and over again. Mom and Dad were still not speaking. The final stretch of our ride landed us smack in the middle of Houston during rush hour. Talk about going out with a bang. Two hours of road rage, swerving, holding the yellow puke bucket now no longer empty, and we were finally home. I dumped the bucket in the grass, and my sibling stretched their legs in the driveway, Mom had already gone inside to attend to the dogs. As I helped Dad with the bags and trash cluttered on the floor of the rental car, he groaned in exasperation. “Next time we fly”.

4. I have been dancing since I was six. Sadly, I was not part of any formal dance training and had to source for opportunities on my own. And that is all I did. Throughout primary school, secondary school and polytechnic, I kept joining Indian Dance because I only wanted to dance. Dancing was my happy pill. I met amazing people who are my friends till today, and I have learnt so much about dance.

   I clearly remember the day I experienced the joy of dancing. The Singapore Arts Festival was coming up and my friends and I were practicing day and night for it. One day, my dance teacher brought us to the venue to prepare us for the actual competition. The stage was huge and I was excited to perform as I have never performed on such a huge stage before. When it was finally my school’s turn, I stepped onto the stage and started dancing. The happiness I felt from dancing on that stage on that day was something I never experienced before. That was when I realized how much joy dance gave me, and I vowed to never stop dancing.

   To be honest, there have been days where I wanted to stop dancing. However, I am very thankful that I did not. Dancing is not easy, but it is truly worth it at the end of the day.

5. Surströmming, balut, sannakji, haggis, rocky mountain oysters – these are all fascinating foods that I want to try at least once in my life. People say I like torturing my tastebuds, but is it really torture if it’s emotionally fulfilling? Some of my favorite memories consist of pigging out on tripe, river snails, or even dim sum style chicken feet with my family. Every time my father could barely contain his excitement, so excited to introduce something new to his palate. My mother always reluctantly agrees, picking at her food like a bird does with seeds. The person most unhappy about our culinary outings is my younger brother, who in his naivety, sits in the corner and orders chicken or steak instead. But who am I to preach about the glories of adventurous eating when I’m guilty of picking all the onions and garlic off my plate. Food is a form of expression, but not everyone has something to say.

6. It would be an accurate statement to say that my parents have done their best to instill a love of art in me. As a child, I was dragged through countless museums on vacations or family trips, whether it be in Washington DC or Florence. Once, I remember going to New York for the sole purpose of seeing Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. I was young then, but old enough to not want to speed through museums just to sit in the gift shop and stare at my own shoes. I don’t remember the drive up, the food we ate that day, nor the name of the museum showing the piece. I have vague flashes of arriving and waiting in a line, and knowing myself, I was likely bored out of my mind. When things come into focus, I’m next to my father towering over me, as he always has; people, masses of gray and brown moving around me in and out of a giant doorway, velvet stanchions and being pushed around. Seeing the piece is hard. We’re at the back of an eager crowd, and everything in the room is muted and sad. I can’t begin to imagine who made the choice to place such a striking piece in such a dreary, flat room; perhaps it was to emphasize the nature of the artwork. I recall The Kiss being much bigger than it really is. My memory tells me this piece was an imposing ten by fifteen foot monster. The actual dimensions are still large, but I now stand just an inch taller at 6ft. To me, it was hard to understand what was going on in the piece. I was enraptured by the shine of the gold and the singular message. There was nowhere else to focus your attention, as the two lovers were front and center on a barren sea of gold. Besides a few other works of art I’ve seen more recently, The Kiss is the earliest memory I have of wanting to truly stand before a piece and internalize it. I wasn’t able to stay for long, as the sea of people around me had similar intentions, and a much smaller me stood no chance at winning that battle. We continued into the rest of the exhibition that day, or so my logic tells me, yet I have no memory of that museum besides Klimt.

   I’ve since been to see many an artwork, sculpture, and installation in my life, whether through my own volition or from the scheming of my parents. I’ve felt energized by works from Monet, and completely dispassioned by the works of Warhol. Memories of striking scenes are etched into my mind, with no name attached. I can recall conversations with my mother about how useless I find certain installations, or how much I adore the glass patterns high above me in looming cathedrals. My taste has been developed, and I don’t think it’s ever changed; rather, I’ve become skilled at identifying the qualities of an artwork that make me drawn to it. I’m not a trained appraiser or restoration artist, but I can appreciate the materials used or the motion of the brush, at the very least. I know I love impressionism and that Francis Bacon is super cool; I also know that Dali turns me off, and that I can’t look at Ancient Greek pottery for too long. Recently, though, I’ve started to second guess my own taste. Not to say that I don’t think I was ever wrong, but rather I wonder if my preferences have grown as a result of how I’ve grown up, and what I’ve been exposed to; I ponder the real extent of how truly independent my tastes are.

   This fall, I was able to enroll in the perfect storm of history-oriented humanities classes. I’m in an art history class, an anthropology class, and an American history class. In the meantime, my creative writing class and architecture studio have me preoccupied with generating something original; I get to work on my drawings every Monday and Wednesday, and type away on my laptop as I chronicle the first novel works that I’ve fashioned in years. The rest of my time is spent reading. Primary sources, secondary sources, academic analysis of Western standards, and Toni Morrison explaining how the concept of race has permeated intellectual thought. Each text has begun to blur together. Something I have to annotate for art history becomes just as applicable to a conversation that was had a day before in anthropology, and the most recent lecture from Casey Bohlen relates to both classes while somehow examining my entire method of thought as if it was under a microscope. I don’t necessarily doubt myself now, but I’m nowhere near as confident in any single idea that I once thought was the end all for logic. I find myself grappling with the oppressive standards of artwork the West introduced onto non-Western cultures; how certain groups may not have even conceptualized the idea of “fine art” and yet their work was taken and scrutinized under a lens they had never encountered before, let alone thought about while engaging in their own creative endeavors. I think about literature from the Meiji era, and how westernization of Japan caused such turmoil in their culture as a whole, leading to the downfall of powerful samurai families and the reactionary militant nature the Bushido practitioners took on in order to counter it. I find myself wondering if tackling this as a concept is as serious as I’m making it out to be— after all, these ideas have been documented long before I even existed, and my newfound insight is little more than a fact of life to most. I’ve begun to scrutinize the logic I use when evaluating art and literature. I try to consider context and culture, my own standards as well as acknowledging that the “academic” way something may be viewed can be incredibly skewed. I don’t think my tastes will change, if I’m being honest. I will likely always have an inclination towards stained glass and an aversion to concrete as a material. As I move through life and continue to observe and interact with art, however, I can consider more than just my tastes now, and know how to go about it. I believe this is the first step, and I hope to broaden my own knowledge of the history of artwork alongside maintaining my own taste and preferences. It is likely that I will soon find this much less impactful as it becomes a long-standing concept in my analysis, but for now, I wish to sit with this as I keep learning.

7. Walking on stage for warm-ups before the show. Stretching fully out while leading a full dance company in my final show before graduation. Feelings of frustration, pride, and stress are all sitting in the back of my mind while I prepare to put everything out there while the rest of the company chatters behind me. Leading warm-ups will always be something I take pride in. Making sure everyone feels good and confident with everything we’ve worked all year for. I listen to our director as she gets ready to call lights, music, everything. After the show last night, notes are worked through with me leading and counting through it all. I know what needs to be fixed. I don’t know when I’ll dance again, the plan is college, but who knows at this point. A quick walkthrough of the harder pieces, then back to the dressing room. Dance Company bonding while we finish makeup, throw a little hairspray in before changing for the first number. Going backstage, silence as we hear the show slowly begins with an introduction asking for phones to be turned off. Being in a professional theater is amazing and terrifying. Wanting for the show to go perfectly, I quiet the other dancers as we all check each other for hair ties or other miscellaneous items. Walking out for the first dance, the last first dance. Brightest smiles on our faces while we wait for the curtain to open.
   We finished all the dances except one, we sat on stage silently while watching the Dance Company slideshow. Everyone watches as we cry and awww at different baby photos of the seniors. We all are sobbing, probably not the best to do, but who cares what happens, we only have one more dance. The most high energy number of the night, we nail it, every turn is landed perfectly, jumps are beautiful. We run off stage all of us prepping for bows. All the other dancers from lower levels run out to have a party and clap for everyone else. It’s finally our turn and I look across the stage to my other Dance Company Officer. We nod and run out to each other, hugging quickly we all wave and cry as it’s our last time. The seniors take one big step forward bowing before we receive flowers and step back in line. The curtains close, the last time being on this stage. I take it all in, gazing around at everyone and seeing how everyone’s reacting. I walk out and see my teacher who was someone who helped me through the last 2 years of my high school experience. We make eye contact and I keep crying. He pulls me into a giant hug telling me how amazing I did and how proud he is. We pull away and he commends everyone else as we head back into the dressing room before heading out to see our families. I walk back into the hall to find my momma and dad. I’m still so sad, tears streaming down my face. My momma grabs me into a tight hug telling me how well I did and how much she loved watching me dance. Dad takes a picture of momma hugging me and us crying. My last show, forever bittersweet and amazing.

8. Why do we only have 24 hours in a day? I look at the rainbow across my calendar and wish that the days were longer, by like an extra hour or so. My to-do list wishes that the days were longer. However, the sun loves to travel and will not stay a minute longer than it has to. I want to be the sun, only having one job to do every day.

9. There have long been dystopian works about Artificial Intelligence taking over human jobs, human social interactions, and eventually, all functions we previously deemed as ‘human’ privileges. Now, with ChatGPT on the rise, this future doesn’t seem so far from reality. People from all over the world have already begun developing reliance on artificial intelligence technologies. In fact, Google Docs is suggesting the next part of my sentence as I’m typing at this very moment.

   This raises many concerns about the role of technology in our daily lives. Will Artificial Intelligence serve as a helpful tool for societal development? Or will this type of technology eventually grow to a scale where it’s able to overtake and replace its makers?

   To consider the future of AI, we must first understand its origin and purpose. A.I is a learning algorithm that is trained on data that humans put into them. It’s purpose is to learn and observe from this database, and then use this knowledge to predict patterns in the unseen data. Yet, if the data humans input into this machine is biased or wrong, then the data AI produces will be a mirror image of the incorrect data it consumes. Specialists who work with AI primarily focus on minimizing the bias and inaccuracies in data in order to produce a more efficient and intelligent AI.

   Seeing how AI can calculate, write, and even hold conversations indistinguishable from the actions of a human, many people believe that AI will gain consciousness over their actions and ‘become’ us. But this belief remains a false myth. As generative language models are rewarded for language that sounds real, they are always writing fiction – regardless of the truth. Its dialogue may be human-like, but its content is nowhere as accurate as the actual work of human intelligence.

   The usage of artificial intelligence also threatens to infringe on creative copyrights. Artificial art and writing seem to be a much faster, easier way to produce creative masterpieces instead of spending years trying to hone the craft. Why bother picking up a pen at all when you can do it at the press of a few buttons? Some ‘AI Artists’ seem to believe that creativity can also be manufactured. Using this algorithm, they’ve begun to profit off of artworks produced by stealing the works of other artists and writers without their consent.

   The future of AI remains grim, as there are still no legal restrictions on the usage of this technology, it’s growing faster than we can respond to it. It’s a handy and convenient tool, sure. But when placed in the hands of irresponsible users, who knows how much damage AI can truly cause?

10. Approximately half an hour before I am supposed to throw, I’m sprawled out on the grass, accidentally matching with one of the opposing teams. (I suppose I should have thrown the shirt away when I switched schools, but even emblazoned with the wrong logo, it’s the most comfortable long-sleeve that I own.) The marsh is seeping through the jacket I’ve laid out, so I sit up. Armed with a sandwich from the team captain, enough pre-meet anxiety to spook a horse, and the right uniform underneath, I test out a few shoulder stretches.

    It’s our last meet of the season before New England’s, which I haven’t qualified for. Effectively, it’s my last meet of senior year. My last track meet. I’m equal parts devastated and elated– the sun is pleasantly warming my melancholy into gratitude, but I’m still frustrated that I have had four years on our glorious team and have still not qualified. I’ve done everything else I’ve set out to do– I’ve taught the new kids how to throw, I’ve convinced my sisters to join the team so we can hang out before we graduate, I’ve thrown better this year than any other, I’ve even won a few of the smaller meets, but all I really want is to qualify. All I have to do is throw seventy-five feet, and I’ll extend my last season by three more throws.

    As the official announces that the women’s runway is open for warm-ups, I open my eyes and roll onto my feet. As I wait, I flick my hands back and forth in a gesture akin to warding off negative energy, which is essentially what it does: warm up my wrists and provide a small outlet for the mounting jitters. I hop up and down on the balls of my feet. I rock back and forth, leaning onto my javelin with one hand, pushing the tip further into the ground. My mouth is metallic, slightly sweet from the coffee I drank on the bus. I miss good coffee. I’ll miss this moment, the taut elastic of apprehension. Of the movement inherent in anticipation. I envision the perfect throw, as I was taught, and I wait.

11. It’s meant to be dark by this time of night, but when we reach the athletic fields there’s a noticeable stain on the entertainment.

    “Were those lights on last year?” I ask Elizabeth. They’re massive, polluting the darkness even from a decent distance away.

    “No, and they’re not supposed to be,” she replies. “Sydney says the astronomy people have been trying to get them to turn them off for the last hour.”

    “Whoops,” I say, and we both laugh.

    Eventually we find a spot, far enough away that the lights seem less threatening, to lay our blankets out and settle in. Elizabeth and I are sharing my pink and white towel, heads together, looking upwards at the stars.

    It’s strange, the different things that become clear when you change perspective. Sitting up, I can register the stars above me, and that there are stars to my left and to my right, but when I lie down and look up, it all comes across as one dome, encasing me in stars on all sides like a protective shield. Then, if I look at it another way, I see the endlessness of the night sky and wonder how far beyond what we can see it goes, how deep the out in outer space really is.

    “I think I’m having an existential crisis,” I say. The group laughs with me, and it feels good, and through it all I don’t stop looking up.

12. I walk into the musty-smelling classroom full of chairs set in a circular shape. No tables, just chairs. I slightly bowed as I made my way through the empty classroom towards the front near the main desk. I must hurry; it is my turn to lead. I throw my backpack on the chair, not caring if it falls on the floor with a loud ‘thunk’ or if it lands on the smooth surface of the chair.

    I rush to the corner of the octagon-shaped room where large wooden cabinets safely guard the prized goods. One of the doors hangs loosely from a corner, ready to fall any moment. Parts of it are breaking off, exposing the worn-out plywood while others show scribbles from all the times it had been vandalized by pubescent children who did not appreciate art. The door is yanked open, exposing what I had been craving for all day.

    Smooth leather and cloth cases poke out from the several squared shelves and I stick my thin arms to grab ahold of the handle. As I slowly pull out, the shelves clunk with the weight of the black case, and parts of decaying plywood float into the air. I stare at the large body—not large, but just the perfect size for my height. Carefully, I stand it upright to not hurt anyone as I walk with it.

    I make my way back to my assigned chair and begin to unzip the cloth case. The zipper, too old and in dire need of being replaced, gets stuck every few seconds until it is finally unzipped. I set the case down on the floor and open the two halves to expose the brown marvel of my current obsession.

    4/4. A curvaceous brown body that glistens under the harsh lighting of the classroom. I delicately graze my fingers against the neck and onto the fingerboard. My callused fingertips spark a hollow sound from the G string and I clasp the neck to stop the sound. Before I take the body out, I rotate the bow holder and grasp the sticky ends of resin-covered metal and bow hair. It has only been a day since I last played, yet I was desperate to come back to this haven.

    I bring out the bow and rub the resin against the horsehair, leaving the surface of my lap covered in white powder. The violin, lying flat on the ground in its open case waits for its turn. From my backpack, I pull out a neon green shoulder rest and squish it into place on the violin’s lower bout.

    Without notice, the room is filled with buzzing voices of students setting up. I walk to the center and the voices quiet down as I pull my violin into place. Wrist straight, shoulders back, pinky on the bow tip, finger on its tip.

    With a slash of my bow, my body is under someone else’s control. I no longer own it; the music does. My fingers have recognized where they should be without looking at the music sheets. Oh, the marvels of muscle memory. My foot, a natural metronome, keeps count of the time signature. My upper body sways with the traditional sounds emitted from the violin, feeling the music resonate throughout my body.

    I am entranced.

13. I remember thinking about it while lying in bed last night. I needed to get my hands on this thing as soon as humanly possible. Tomorrow was the last day that this item was going to be available in stores. It was an annual special, only in stock for the festive season. I had never been able to see it in person, only in pictures on social networking. Some of my friends had gotten the chance to experience it, and they raved about it. I had a detailed plan ready to go. Wake up at 7 a.m. and start my mission. I had named it too, ‘Operation: Save Christmas”. As I went to bed, all my thoughts were simply on completing this mission, and getting this item in my hand and experiencing it.
    I had overslept. It was D-Day. On the one day I needed to be awake early, I wasn’t. What could’ve been a simple retrieval mission, is now a do-or-die situation. I was a little over 3 hours behind schedule, but I could still do it. The item is available at 4 different stores across the city. My parents weren’t at home. I left them a note, grabbed the car keys, and determined to complete this task.
    The first store is a bust. The second store had the prettiest little decorations set up. The smell of Christmas floated through the air. As I went to up the salesman, he had a kind yet sad smile on his face. He knew what he had to do. Break the unfortunate news to me. The same went with the old lady manning the register at the third store.
    I only had one store left. I was somewhat dejected, but I still had hope. It was the largest store in all of town. However, as I walked in, I could smell it. Smell it leaving the store in a box as a lady walked out the door. All the patrons in the store looked as upset as me. Although the store was smelling wonderfully delicious with the aroma of spices, I could only smell one thing: defeat.
    I drove back home with tears in my eyes. I worked so hard to complete my mission. Instead, Operation: Save Christmas had failed. As I opened the door to tell my parents the devastating news, I smelled something different in my home.
    The smell was hard to describe. It was nutty and caramelly. It was like the smell of dehydrated oranges, mixed with dates and cashews. That’s when I knew. I was smelling IT. What I had been looking for. How was its smell in my house? All these thoughts were rumbling in my head when my mother walked out of the kitchen holding a tray full of it. “Where were you? Your father and I went to Prince’s Bakery earlier to pick up some Sticky Toffee Puddings for our guests today. Could you please quickly whip some fresh cream to serve with it?”
    I couldn’t believe it. Those Sticky Toffee Puddings were in my house. I would get to experience them. Finally. After days of pining over their pictures on Instagram, I finally saw them with my own two eyes. Ooey-gooey pieces of sticky cake with caramel sauce dripping down their sides, they looked better than the pictures. Those pictures never did them justice. With fresh tears of joy in my eyes, I went to the kitchen to whip some cream to serve with my dream on a plate. I was going to savor my Sticky Toffee Pudding and live my dream after all. This truly is a Christmas Miracle.