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Fleeting Memories

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Original Poem, by Briceida Cuevas Cob: Papalote El recuerdo es un papalote. Poco a poco le sueltas, disfrutas su vuelo. En lo mas alto se rompe el hilo de tu memoria y te sientas a presenciar como lo posee la distancia. Translation: Kite Memory is a kite. Little by little you let it go, enjoying its flight. At its height the string of your memory breaks and you sit and watch as the distance possesses it. I wish I had taken some poetic path to find this poem so I could write about it here, however that is not the case. I found this poem while looking online for something that connected to the current stage of my life: senior year, and my culture: latinx. That's when I encountered this poem about memories and nostalgia, written by a Mexican woman in 2010. I interpreted this poem multiple ways, which I think goes to show how simple and short poetry is often more complex than we realize, which is why it is my favorite kind. Dear Briceida Cuevas Cob,      My name is Ana Sofia ...
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Activities Desk

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Original Red and blue uniform Still and Unyielding, supervising  The cabinet. One item, missing unreturned, waiting for it's rightful place. Constantly lingering in the back of the mind the burden, that must be returned Gone for days, passed around, and what if  it remains unreturned? Broken Red/Blue-uniform Still/Unyielding, Supervising-The cabinet. One/item-missing unreturned/waiting for its/rightful/place. Constantly/lingering in the back/of/the/mind the burden that must/be/returned Gone for days- passed around. What//if unreturned- During my vacation in Cancun I constantly found myself forgetting to return a plastic ball I borrowed from the hotel's activities desk. I would usually remember after they had closed, and I distinctly remember the desk had a human sized statue of spiderman next to it, almost like it was looking over the remaining items. Still, much like how Rosal states that "A poet makes use of what’s ruined, discarded, or forgotten ", my cousin and I...
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The art of repair and reshaping

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     Kintsugi is the act of repairing broken pottery with gold . The act of honoring, embracing, and celebrating the misfortunes, accidents, and struggles of life. It is a state of Zen that Siddhartha found by the end of the book and one we discussed in a harkness discussion in class.      As mentioned in class, it seems that to find enlightenment or inner peace, one must go through suffering. In order to find what he sought, Siddhartha had to suffer the loss of his son. Consequently, he realized that by letting go of his son he had let him grow into his own journey of grief were he would find his own enlightenment , ultimately turning a bitter detachment into a moment of learning. This is the moment Siddhartha turned his fragmented father-son relationship into a new masterpiece of hope , embracing the situation as what it was-improvement. Suffering seems to come with a sense of peace even in stories like  Across the Spider-verse.   Much like Sid...
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Greed vs Hope

  Greed vs Hope Ana Sofia Hernandez Gomez Troy High School 12 English AP 1/17/2025 Greed vs Hope The rich donate to ‘give back’ but realistically they only donate to get tax breaks. A man gives up his jacket for his date, but only in hopes of undressing her later. A woman graciously supports her lover’s journey and sacrifices her immediate desire in order to gain the single thing she craved the most: becoming a true desert woman. Are all human decisions based on greed and gratification? Is it naive to have faith in humanity and believe selfless decisions can be made? If selfless decisions are rare, can they be enough to restore faith in humanity?             There is nothing humans won’t do to get what they think they deserve, and they are wired to crave the risk of losing everything for the possibility of winning it all. This is portrayed in The Alchemist and Squid Games , where a common theme of conveying the intermingling...
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That Feeling When

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"But how do you stop water from going up your nose?" "Nose clip"        As Tim Harford suggests, chaos is an important part of life that should be embraced, not avoided. He claims that it encourages progressive solutions and superior alternatives to habits, and I couldn't agree more. In synchronized swimming, there is always pure chaos under water. Sculling, lifting, kicking, swimming. To add on to that your basically half blind and everything is blurry because you can't wear goggles. How to get scored higher? Get closer. What does that entail? Kicking each other under water. What can that lead to? Getting kicking or smacked in the face and consequently getting your nose clip knocked off.      If that happens, the show must go on. Right?      I once had a team mate with a knee injury. A day before her small routine competition at nationals, she had a really bad episode of pain, and our team held its breath as she dove into the pool with ...
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Sarcasm

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As we watched  Sarcasm 101 by SNL in class this last week, I got to thinking about when sarcasm is funny, and when it crosses a line. There seems to be a couple of must-haves: 1 ) Everyone is in on the joke 2 ) There is one common target (preferably a dislikable or oblivious person) 3 ) The jokes stop when the target becomes pitiful  In the skit, the two targets were Kevin and Marissa (might have butchered that spelling but she's not a real person so it's okay). When Kevin (the one that constantly repeats jokes as if they will get funnier) is ridiculed, it's funny because he seems unaffected by it and there is a collective sense of impatience everyone shares towards him. Basically, everyone is in place where they feel safe to comment on how stupid they think Kevin is. Isn't that what humor is about? Saying everything that's on your mind and sharing that with other's in the form of irony and wittiness that shows nothing is ever THAT serious? Additionally, the...
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Memento Mori

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     The short story memento follows a pattern: a reminder by the main character, Earl, to himself of his purpose, followed by a glimpse into a 10 minute frame of clarity in what seems to be his present life. However, the story ends with the incompletion of the pattern. It ends with ominous and ambiguous instructions that fail to clarify what the past or present is or whether his purpose has been fulfilled or not, and leaves the story open to a feeling of inadequacy. By structuring the story in this manner, author Jonathan Nolan succeeds in portraying the fractured mind of his character and presenting the broken fragments of his life in a way that fits together to form a puzzling yet intriguing story of the after effects of a neurological traumatic accident mixed with the sudden loss of a loved one. The repetition of the pattern parallels Earl's memory loss and the lack of clarity at the end of the story reflects the lack of fulfillment he experiences in his life after ne...
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