Cicadas

Lynda’s new experience in “Cicadas” with friends, relationships and also drugs, helps her better understand who she is and how she is. In the summer were she is 14, Lynda says she turns bad. She started hanging out with new friends, started drinking, going out at night when she wasn’t supposed to and even tried new drugs. At the beginning of the chapter, Lynda tells us about her summer and says:” When I was 14 I met a boy whose face I barely remember now, although I remember he was cute, and we took speed together. We got some wine once and chugged it. We kissed that day.” (Barry 160-1) Lynda tells us about the things she did and she tried, but also about a summer romance with a boy named Bob. Trying new stuff and doing rebellious things is something that most of the teenagers do in order to get a sense of identity, when dictated by parents one doesn’t necessarily have a sense of self because they don’t have control over most of the decisions that affect them. Another thing that happens in “Cicadas” is that her summer love, Bob, kills himself. When it happened, Lynda discovered that she doesn’t feel any emotions and describes it as blankness. A certain time after Bob’s suicide, Lynda is in her room and tries to understand her emotions and says:”[..] I waited for the emotion. Nothing. I stood in front of the mirror and watched myself whisper, ”Bob’s dead.” The blankness spread itself. An opaque stain where knowing and believing meet. A gap of nothing. His silhouette.” (Barry 164-2) Grief is also a very important part of someone’s understanding of themselves, the way Lynda has to deal with the feeling of blankness is also the kind of experience that helps one grow and go through tougher moments. Symbolism is a literary device used in this chapter, the name Cicadas is a reference to the insect that stays underground for 17 years and then goes outside for a few months to mate and then die. At the end of the chapter, we see Lynda in her later life remembering Bob’s death and the emptiness she felt when it happened. Like the Cicadas, memories come back when you don’t necessarily expect them to do so. Experiences like the one she lived are the ones that forge a person’s character and help develop such things as plastic power. In Lynda’s summer she discovered a more intense sense of identity and it also helped her understand her emotions in way that she has more control over things like the balance between historicality and unhistoricality.

Momento Mori

Living without the burden and the weight of past memories might seem like something that some of us would enjoy because of the simplicity it brings to life. The story “Momento Mori” suggests that living in complete historicality is impossible even when one is obligated to do so. Earl, the protagonist in the short story, is unfortunately forced to live with a memory of only about ten minutes. At the beginning of the day, he realizes once again that he has a memory problem and says to himself: “You can live a normal life anymore. You must know that. How can you have a girlfriend if you can’t remember her name? Cant have kids, unless you want them to grow up with a dad that doesn’t recognize them. Sure as hell can’t hold a job […] No. Your life is over. You’re a dead man.” (Nolan 41.) At this point we understand that Earl is going to have to live for his previous memories because he will simply not be able to create new ones. He is forced to live historically for the rest of his days and we would simply expect him to stay in his room, eat and sleep like a fish in an aquarium would do. After having his short reflexion he asks himself an important question and says to himself: “so the question is not “to be or not to be,” because you aren’t. The question is whether you want to do something about it. Whether revenge matters to you.” (Nolan 41.) Even if he is forced to live with his past memories he still wants to move forward, he doesn’t want to always have to live with the same memories. The fact that he was obligated to live with his past experiences and couldn’t create new one but still felt the need the need to move forward shows that living completely historically is impossible to do.

320 words

The Corner

The drug cartels are unfortunately present in any major city in the world, understanding the universe in which these people live is actually essential to help decrease the presence of such thing in our society. The Corner shows the lives of the people implicated in any ways in the heroin/cocaine industry at a street level in Baltimore. The main idea in this text is that drug consumption creates a much bigger problem in the lives of the addicts than health issues. This problem is unfortunately forcing kids that could have done something else with their lives to join this industry and do this for the rest of their lives. In the next quote the authors tell us about the implication of minors within this field:” On every corner, street dealers began using minors […] most were ready to work and willing to work conscientiously for a bit of pocket money. […] until, at last, the day of the-year-old drug dealer was at hand.” (Simon, Burns 63-64) the dealers are simply using the children to do the dirty work because they get in less trouble than them if they get caught. It is obviously easier for a 14 year old boy to sell drugs at the corner of a street than trying to find a job in grocery store or a fast-food restaurant. The young dealers also find it more rewarding to be a part of the game than simply go to school and sit there all day. Heroin in the late 1950 and early 1960 was more of an underground drug and the users were mainly man that were frequenting after-hour bars and other places like that, although when cocaine arrived later on there was much more competition and an even bigger market. The authors tell us about that newer and bigger market:”…The cheap cocaine of the 1980’s had turned the women out, bringing them to the corner in numbers previously unthinkable. […][T]here had been a network of single mothers who managed to get the essentials done, there was now raw anarchy in many homes.”(Simon, Burns 64) The consumption started with man and then women joined as well leaving the children alone to raise themselves, this is also how the kids managed to join the drug business at such a young age. These kids would now have to raise themselves either alone, either by drugged parents or by the cartel itself and none of these options are acceptable for any children. Most of the kids that are affected by the corner either become addicts or become a part of the supply side and once again none of these two options should be one for these kids. The drug use isn’t only affecting the users themselves but also a lot people around them on the long run.

Lightness and weight

This is a short story about the idea of lightness and weight. One day, a man in his mid forties woke up in a hospital without any major injuries and couldn’t remember who he was and how he had got there. As soon as the man had the strength to call the nurse he did so. The first thing that came to his mind was to ask the nurse who he was and she replied “we don’t know we were hoping you would tell us sir”. At first the man thought it was a joke, but he soon realised that the nurse wasn’t in a mood to laugh. The man then spent a few days in the hospital and figured out where he was and how he had got there; some people had found him on the ground in a park. Doctors then did tests on him only to realize that this man had forgotten about memories, but hadn’t lost his intelligence. The doctor were astonished to see that the man wasn’t going crazy and had actually decided to live his life normally. He told them that if no one had visited him his life must have been that important and that he was going to visit the whole world with his backpack until he was going to die. He told them that he didn’t have to be haunted with memories and could start a new simple life without worries. Fifteen years later the man had travelled a lot, but he wasn’t finished doing so. One day he while he was in a restaurant in a young man started talking to him probably just because he was looking for someone to talk with. The two man ended up talking for hours and the young man said the older man reminded him of someone. He finally knew where he had seen him, it was in one of his books about war heroes. It turned out that the man was in fact a special force soldier who had saved a group of 50 people from terrorists by himself 20 years ago. In the first place the man thought the kid was trying to prank him, but he showed him the book and the man simply couldn’t believe it. The man had intentionally not wanted to know he was to live has a free man.

The night after the man started remembering things from his past, he drank to try to stop it, but his memories were stronger than anything the man could drink. When the man had finally recalled most his past he was full of regret and remembered why he was in the park that night. The man was haunted from all the memories he had accumulated troughout his years of service with the army. He remembered the people he killed, the ones he tortured to get information and the eyes of the people that feared him while on the battlefield. The man had tried to kill himself 15 years ago because he couldn’t live with his actions and memories. The man’s subconscious had intentionally forgotten his memories, but kept his inteligence for his survival. The man then decided to never deny his past, but to use it to help others live live with a good balance of lightness and weight.

About

Hi, my name is Mathieu Albert, I am a 19 year old, business management student at Vanier college. I was born in Moncton New-Brunswick, but I have only lived there for the first month of my life and I actually never been to Moncton since then. All of my family comes from New-Brunswick, but my parents moved to Montreal about 19 years ago. I lived in Montreal and Laval, but I moved to Aylmer three years ago to then come back to beautiful Montreal, more precisely in Blainville. I am the kind of person that always needs to learn something new or to understand the things that I can around me. I work as an account manager for a protection plan company located in Laval. I would like to work in the financial field when I finish school. I have discovered what you could call a passion in the stock markets and I invest regularly in companies if I have the chance to do so I would like to keep doing that for a living. I am also a person that loves to travel, when I finish my studies I would like to work in different countries and visit the world. I always wanted to own a sailboat when I retire and navigate throughout the many beautiful coastline that earth has to offer. I live a very regular life, I like to hang out with my friend whenever it is just to go out on Saturday night or to go play hockey at the rink. I think I would get along pretty well with a 10 year older version of myself because I don’t think I’ll be much different from what I am. I think or I wish that I’m going the same person with the same kind of personality. I like to think that I have a good balance between being able to be very serious or completely disconnect and enjoy the present moment.