One of the biggest draws to Ann Arbor is the food- the city is home to hundreds of restaurants and is a huge center for culinary diversity. This week, a few friends and I decided to try a restaurant that none of us had been to before. We headed to the south side of campus and wandered briefly before deciding on Lan City Noodle Bar. The restaurant had very modern decor, and two of the walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that let in abundant natural sunlight, both of which made for a very bright and serene environment. My friends and I all ordered different dishes (similar to the one I drew below) and we enjoyed taste-testing all of them and comparing flavors! This was my first time trying a new, non-chain restaurant since I moved to Ann Arbor a few months ago, and I’m really looking forward to trying more local restaurants throughout the rest of the school year! It’s a very fun break from doordash and dining halls : )
The space station Sombre dimanche drifts into orbit around HKC 2901, closing in on a far trajectory from deep space. Here, it will linger, a vast geometry visible to any dirtside observers even in broad daylight, comparable in size to the biggest moons in the system at its widest, a silent and shimmering beast mantled upon the horizon. To the station, this is but a brief stop on its endless journey; in two months, it will set upon its plodding trek again, outbound into the dark to parts unknown.
– excerpt from records collected on HKC 2901 d circa E.S. 2765, unknown author
Sombre dimanche was the first, and last, of a line of DSE superstations. Designed and built by several HIC member nations, it was part of an ambitious project in pursuit of interstellar exploration and research. Equipped with four Horizon drives, a modular design, and autonomous self-repair and -construction systems, it was meant to be a mostly self-sufficient station destined for long independent expeditions, crewed by over ten thousand personnel selected from varying backgrounds. The decline of the HIC, delays caused by multiple problems during its troubled development, and rising tensions between the various powers of the time brought an end to the program not long after Sombre dimanche‘s commissioning.
Over time, design oversights and software quirks enabled its robust autonomous systems to continue building upon the original structure long past its intended specifications, sometimes even independently rerouting the station for self-resupply. Communications with its human crew became sporadic and entirely ceased two decades into its expedition, and the more supernaturally-inclined even claim that all the original humans had slowly become supplanted by the ship itself. The sprawling structure grew so large that many of its oldest partitions are functionally abandoned: at the heart of the station, one can travel for miles without seeing another living being—with nothing for company except the arcing bones of a rusting skeleton and the echo of one’s own breath in the dark depths.
PIRATE SHIP FACT: During overnight sailing trips, shipmates who were not the captain would either sleep on hammocks, or the floor.
Wednesday, October 16th – 1:15 a.m.
I came into college hoping that my roommate and I’s dorm room would become somewhat of a hangout spot, yet now it has evolved into (basically) an additional Bursley lounge. Whether it’s a movie night, sleepover, or a “study session” that requires “locking in,” I always volunteer our room to be the medium.
After a long day of classes, a couple of us Bursley pirates had resigned to the blanketed floor of the room with our computers waiting patiently to be used for actual work. It was during this yap convocation that Krithi brought up Hawke Mountain.
As a Pennsylvania native, Hawke Mountain was just a two hour drive from her hometown. Internationally, it is the largest sanctuary for birds of prey, along with the grand caves, scenic views, and hiking trails that give tourists the social media worthy pictures. Unfortunately for Krithi, her ability to take pictures during that trip would cease to exist when her phone slipped and fell into one of the mountain’s cavernous crevices.
This story is supposed to be somber and make you, the reader, feel a growing sympathy in your heart for Krithi’s seemingly soiled vacation. However, once I saw the picture of Krithi sitting on a rock while a her experienced friend is head first in a cave looking for her phone, the experience seems almost worth it. In context, the idea that her dad saw her distraught while waiting and decided to take a picture is the icing on the cake.
Thankfully, Krithi has a fully functional computer, not stuck in a cave, that enables her to study Computer Science here at Michigan. Her story inspires us to keep our phones close and our family/ enemies with their camera apps open, closer.
This woman, a trailing bright blue coat and chestnut brown ringlets tight on her scalp, walking hand in hand with her son. The father, plainly dressed and hurrying to cross the street, caught up with them, only to join their connection. Handfuls of hands testing their strength as they lifted their son up and down, and up and down, and up and down, until he broke out of their love with laughter. I thought how wonderful it is to be able to love without thought.
There is a certain trace of grief felt when you realize your wants and needs have changed. And changed so fundamentally that you can never go back. The journey lies in objectivity and progress, but flips your insides out with an ease that you can only call growth. It begs for you to notice.
I want to be happy in the way that the river flows and finds constant peace in its unending motion. In the way that trees turn red, yellow, orange, and bare, just to come back alive in the spring, knowing that they were never really gone at all. In the way that the goose, swimming against the current, knows it will make it home at the end of the night. I want to be enveloped and protected by nature, and return to dust feeling completely whole. Even the rock that weathers against the tide locates itself under my step scrunched.
The question now is: when will it happen?
Whenever it does, I imagine that day to the one day of my life where there is no doubt and no hurt. There is only divine femininity and blue jays singing their songs as the river continues to run and never stop. The baby squirrels will only burrow under the leaves with acorn gifts for their mothers. Huitzilopochtli crystalizing me for the rest of time.
