Our Mission
The Talon strives to be an innovative newspaper that is entertaining, intellectually provocative, and visually engaging. We are conscious of the responsibility of writing and publishing, and we seek to create a dynamic newspaper that is worthy of its readers. We show respect for our readers by exposing them to a variety of perspectives. Ultimately, The Talon seeks to bring Graded to the world and bring the world to Graded.
Submissions
The Talon wants to hear from you! We encourage submissions from all members of the Graded community as well as the general public. We publish in English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish. We reserve the right to edit submissions for length and clarity. The opinions expressed in the articles are those of the writers and not necessarily of The Talon. For this reason, we do not accept anonymous submissions. Send submissions to: talon@graded.br
Talon Staff 2005-2006 EDITORS-IN-CHIEF: Erika Diaz and Michael Darden EDITORS: Features - Ambar LaForgia, News - Simão Neumark, Sports - Avinash Mohanani, Entertainment - Anjana Varma, Photography - David Darden, Layout - Laura Torre ASSISTANT EDITORS: Features - Fernando Jorge, News - Pum-Sang Cho, Sports - Alexander Dzegar, Entertainment - Sofia Geld, Photography - Bonnie Jeon, Cover Design - Marion Geiger LANGUAGE EDITORS: Portuguese - Maira Braga, English - Maria Cecilia Masola WEBMASTERS: Paul Wortman, Hidenobu Shimizu, Michael Waddel TEACHER ADVISORS: Mary Pfeiffer, Josh Berg, Barry Dequanne FOREIGN LANGUAGE ADVISORS: Mme Matheus, Guillermo Loyola, Mario Spanghero ▪▪▪ E-mail: talon@graded.br Editors-in-Chief: erika.diaz@graded.br, michael.darden@graded.br Advisors: mpfeiffer@graded.br, jberg@graded.br, bdequann@graded.br Website: http://graded.br/talon Phone: 3747-4893 (Dequanne)
We’re sorry... The Talon would like to apologize for omitting a page of Figa Corner on Edition 36. The missing page is published in this edition.
The Cover
As Erika says in her editorial, this theme of The Talon reminds us of a young and happy forced love. Barbara and I decided to invert that somewhat. Barbara’s back cover is showing, rather comically, that there is a trace of love in everyone; even a tough biker can fall in love with a poodle. That contrast brings us away from the typical image of the perfect match. The front cover is one of the many photographs I took of Fabio and Marina Campello (Sophia Beckwith’s grandparents). I chose this one because it was spontaneous and not as posed as the others. The other photographs, however, are valuable in that they are traditional, in the same way the relationship portrayed is traditional.
By MARION GEIGER, BARBARA OLIVEIRA
On Love and Fear “Love and relationships” is one had something to say, but I was totally of those topics that immediately gener- clueless as to what that could possibly ates a cartoonish, stretching towards a be. Again, I must repeat that I had just corny, image of a young couple in love. seen her in class, so I really began to In the background one imagines hearts wonder what was it she had to say to floating in the air, and the mood of the me that she hadn’t said. “I…I have to tell you somewhole scenario is one of happiness…a thing, but please don’t kill me,” she happiness that is sticky and phony. began, and this last part she said so For a long time I struggled with this quickly that it seemed like she was gomonth’s topic. It’s so broad, yet so liming to run out of breath. “I won’t have iting. It’s one of those ideas that even my piece done on time. I’m sorry.” She though it can be looked at from a totalstopped. I looked at her without sayly different perspective, often times it’s not. And so I sat in front of my computer a number of times in futile attempts to write an editorial. It wasn’t until today, just three days before the final editing day, when it hit me that perhaps my role in The Talon itself was about love and relationships. I came to discover it in the oddest way possible, so odd in fact that the episode seemed worthy of writing down as a passage within a novel. Should I ever write a novel, I might try to include some variation of what happened. I believe it would go more or less like this: As I walked down the hallway headed to the cafeteria, without being hungry because I had just eaten a lot of candy and chips and all those types of food that you shouldn’t but still do, I ran Nicolo Machiavelli into a friend of mine, not a close friend, not even one I usually hang out ing anything, and judging from what with, but there were enough connec- she said afterwards I must have had a tions between us to make us friends. frown of disapproval on my face. “I reWe had just had class together, yet she ally am. It’s not my fault, you see. The stopped and said “hi” to me as if she woman that I was supposed to take a had not seen me at all that day. That picture of, well, she had…she had a didn’t strike me as unusual. I myself thing.” Another pause. I finally asked “When will it be have the habit of saying “hi” to people ready by, then?” several times in a single day; it’s always “No, don’t worry about it, I can a safe way to start a conversation. In eimake an example, for you to see how ther case, she didn’t go on walking her it’s going to look like, I can download a way as I would have expected her to, picture from the internet or something nor did she continue to talk to me. Injust so you can get an idea, and then stead, she just said my name, staring when I do take the picture I will do the at me for a second, and then remained actual piece. ” She was speaking so fast quiet looking elsewhere. I knew she
BEGINNINGS By ERIKA DIAZ trying to justify herself, trying to avoid making me angry, that she didn’t even listen to what I had asked, so I repeated my question. “Well, Sunday, actually Saturday, well, the cover Sunday, but I will take the picture on Saturday. Here is the thing, the woman said that she’s getting her hair done Saturday morning, and she doesn’t want me to take the picture before that. See how there really isn’t anything that I can do about it? But don’t worry. I will make sure it is here on Sunday. Early Sunday morning.” At this point it was beyond my comprehension why it was that her voice was so weird, why she was rushing over the words and giving me a longer explanation than I had asked for. “It’s ok as long as it’s there on Sunday.” “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, it will be. I promise.” She finally smiled. Again there was a pause, but this time it was more awkward than the previous ones because it was clear that the conversation was done and yet we were both still facing each other. As I was about to continue on my way to the cafeteria, for now I was hungry, she confessed, “It was really hard telling you this.” You’d expect that by now these words would come as no surprise because of how she had been acting, but they did. Here I was in front of a friend who could not tell me straight away that she had had some trouble along the way. She was actually afraid of me. Surely she must be a special case, right? It couldn’t be that other people were also afraid of me. It just so happened that a close friend of mine was passing by and so I went ahead and asked him right at the spot, “Are you ever afraid of me?” Immediately and with a brutal sincerity he answered, “Yeah, sometimes I am. Why do you ask?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I simply couldn’t. So unknowingly I stumbled on my idea for this month’s editorial, something that is connected to my
BEGINNINGS
role as an editor-in-chief of The Talon. There is a very well known quote in Machiavelli’s The Prince, where he answers the question of whether it is better to be feared than loved or vice versa: “The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.” But do you really find security in fear? Surely now I know that things will get done on time for fear of…to be honest I’m not even sure what people are afraid of. But fear only works as long as there is some sort of consequence to irresponsible actions, which in this case is negligible. I might get upset, The Talon might take longer to come out to print, but little else would happen. Love, on the other hand, is far more powerful. Love gives us the assurance that our loved ones will do whatever they have to do because they want to, and not because others have to. Love means that I can have a conversation about the same issue, in an open manner, without the hesitation, without the awkward silences. Machiavelli’s idea is known to most of us, but it wasn’t until now that I really came to ponder it. Fear or love? Surely love, but fear seems to grow far more easily and, in my case, unconsciously.
Perceiving Relationships and Culture By MICHAEL DARDEN One night in Manila my dad told us that we were moving. But we had an option: Vietnam or Indonesia? It seemed as if the choice had been made, but asking us served as leverage for us for not hating him for picking up and moving once again. Indonesia, it was. Life in Jakarta was an adventure. Looking back on my years there, two things challenged me. The first was living in the most populated Muslim country, and the second was the relationships between my culture and
theirs, which was quite a clash of civilizations. I was about twelve years old when I first met a Muslim, as insular as that sounds. Muslim culture was completely alien to me, a world in which I had no idea how to be accepted. For the whole five years that I lived there I stood out in the crowd because I was different. Every time I went out and feebly attempted to speak Bahasa Indonesian phrases that I knew, more times than not ended in a result of sign language. “Satu lagi” (one more) I said in my thick accent. Or the countless encounters with a worker in my house who seemed to ramble on, pointing and leading me to rooms to try to tell me something, or where she attempted to ask me where my brothers of parents were and all I knew to answer was saying, “Saya tidak tahu” (I do not know). Looking back I regret never taking the time to learn more Bahasa, but how many kids under twelve years old take the time to educate themselves and bring interest to a language that most of the time seemed like gibberish? For five years I was woken up by the five o’clock prayer, yelled from the top of the mosque when we first lived there, but with new technology and more money the mosque got speakers and a microphone, making my alarm clock obsolete as I woke to verses of the Koran. But what most made me feel different was Ramadan week where the entire nation would engulf themselves in a fasting ritual where they deprived themselves of food during the day and had massive feasts at sundown. The ritual was really impressive, with their determination to not drink or eat for twelve hours and the reward that came at night that seemed to me to make it truly worth doing. My best friend at the time, Reza, was Muslim, who took part in Ramadan. I vividly remember him at the point of passing out during the day
from heat and hunger as he watched me and others eat during lunch. I sympathized with him. Needless to say, in those five years I developed relationships in Indonesia. Yet I adapted to their culture because I was obligated to. Sometimes the aspects that struck me the most were the everyday things, such as to never give your left hand to any person (considered unclean), to never point with the left hand, and to never greet anybody with the left hand. It was purely an insult towards them and on numerous times I remember being called on it. When at the local McDonalds trying to figure out what combo meal I wanted I momentarily forget the word, “dua” (two), raising my left hand and giving the peace sign. The stare I received was awkward but I was never condoned for it, just warned by my parents or teachers. Living in Indonesia was truly a blessing. I was able to live in such a beautiful place, visit nearby exotic places, and learn to live with a culture that most people only see depicted in movies or in documentaries. Given the divide between my culture and that of Indonesia, how I was able to communicate and move around that city with relative ease goes to show just how two completely different cultures, with seemingly no connection to each other, are somehow able to understand one another. Every country brings a new challenge to us, but the struggle is worth it because we come out with a broader and better understanding of how the world works and how people connect.
Danish Cartoons
NEWS By PUM SANG CHO
On September 30 last year, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. This would seem a simple exercise of freedom of speech by Western standards; however, according to Islamic beliefs, pictorial representation of Muhammad, especially in a negative context, is considered highly blasphemous. Consequently, what started out as a depiction of a Danish author’s difficulty in finding an illustrator for his forthcoming book on Islam (due to fear of violent attacks by extremist Muslims), has turned into an international incident. The cartoons have led to major protests, some of which have been violent, throughout the globe as well as numerous death threats against
twelve cartoonists. As of now, the situation has escalated to a point where some Danish embassies and consulates are being ransacked and burnt by angry protestors. Why then, in light of recent outbreaks of violence, doesn’t the Danish government simply apologize for the cartoons? Why not make a formal apology and allow the matter to cool down? According to CNN.com, the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh R asmussen defended his nation’s actions, stating that “neither the Danish government nor the Danish people can be held responsible for what is published in a free and independent newspaper,” and that protestors should instead take their grievance to the courts. Though
this statement could potentially infuriate even more Muslims, polls have shown that the Prime Minister’s decision is not an unpopular one among the Danish; quite the contrary, it actually has a lot of supporters. According to a poll taken by Epinion of Danmark’s Radio, the national broadcasting company of Denmark, on January 29th, some 79% answered that the Prime Minister was right in not apologizing to Muslims. Five days later another poll by Epin-
ion asked, “Considering the events that have occurred in the past week, should Jylland-Posten have published the depictions?” In response, 47% of the people answered that publishing the cartoons was a bad idea; 46% said that it was a good idea; the remaining 7% was undecided. Meanwhile, Muslims remain more united in their anger, with the vast majority strongly disapproving of the cartoons. Though some may be critical of the Prime Minister’s refusal to issue a formal apology and bring an end to the mayhem, the fact that the cartoons have been reprinted in more than thirty different countries despite the chaos that ensued from the first printing in Denmark speaks for itself—freedom of speech is a force to be reckoned with. The question remains whether these cartoons are really worth the destruction, the violence, and even the deaths, they have caused.
NEWS EDITORIAL
Another Israeli Dilemma
How is it that the new world order, with its praise of democracy, can deal with Palestine’s newly elected government? Israel announced this week that even before the Palestinian parliament convenes on February 18th, it will cut fifty-five million dollars in revenue it collects for the Palestinian Authority. Why? you may ask. The new party in charge in Palestine, Hamas, was and still is filled with terrorists, who over the past years have killed hundreds of Israelis. Without Israel’s funding, Hamas has seemingly been placed walking a oneway street to political doom. Both Israelis, and Palestinians are being placed headon against each other. The Economist, a weekly newspaper from the UK, viewed Bush’s recent speech as a double edged sword: “Mr. Bush said again that America was committed to the ‘historic long-term goal’ of spreading democracy. But in the Middle East, ask his critics, hasn’t his democracy agenda ushered in something worse than the previous pattern of rule by strongmen: the rise in Iraq, Egypt and now Palestine of
a form of political Islam that is hostile both to the West and to the underlying values of democracy itself?” The problem that arises with Hamas’ leaders and funding is that the Quartet of Powers, composed of Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations, is not going to fund an alleged terrorist group. The
By SIMÃO HAMERMESZ NEUMARK Economist points out that the Hamas “charter calls on Islam to ‘obliterate’ Israel, rules out negotiation and says no part of historic Palestine can ever be given up. Citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery, it blames Jewish money for the French revolution, the communist revolution and the First and Second World Wars.” The West, braced and prepared as it is for democracy, and encouraging its flourishing power in the Middle East, does not know what to do with these new democratic governments. The Palestinian nationalist party Fatah was ousted by a radical Islamic party, in many ways because of its failure to deal with key issues affecting the Palestinian people, such as a decent health care system, rooting out corruption, and providing unemployment relief, along with state-funded schools. These services were already being carried out by Hamas; their successful bid for power stemmed directly from their effectiveness in providing social change over the years, and by not advertising its terrorist accomplishments. However humanitarian they may seem inside the Palestinian Authority, the truth is that Hamas’ “foreign policy” directed
EDITORIAL towards Israel has been anything but humanitarian. So can the Quartet, and the other Western nations fighting the war on terror fund such a group? So far the Palestinian situation looks grim. The acting Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, knows that he will gain much needed votes in the upcoming election in March by being tough on Hamas. What has Israel done so far besides cut off their funding? Because Hamas does not recognize Israel as a state, Israel has cut off the main border crossing between Gaza and Israel on January 15. The already-fragile Palestinian economy loses five hundred thousand dollars a day with this move, further destabilizing the situation that Hamas will soon take full control over. Israel has also pleaded for other countries to not receive delegates from the new Palestinian government, who are essentially Hamas officials. Unfortunately, Russian president Putin has already agreed to a visit with Hamas’ top official. The most pragmatic solution
so far has been adopted by Israel. Israelis understand that without their funding, and the funding received from the other members of the Quartet, there is no possible way that Hamas can remain in government; they simply cannot rule without this aid being poured in through the moderate Fatah party. The only way that Hamas can evade losing its grip over the population is
NEWS
by standing up against their current radical leaders, and by cutting off their despicable terrorist ideology of killing all Israelis. What can the Quartet do? Impeding any aid to Hamas is the first step. The second step is to take the money they would have poured into Palestine, and place it under the hands of the World Bank and the United Nations, organizations that could bypass Hamas and the Palestinian government to keep on aiding the Palestinian population’s humanitarian needs. H a m a s should, and hopefully will, forgo its terrorist past, and move to a greater ideal they also have, which is to continue to care for the Palestinian population. The Western world cannot abide a governing terrorist group. Western nations must act so that Hamas and its officials chose a path different from the one they are now on.
NEWS
The World in 2005 By SIMĂƒO HAMERMESZ NEUMARK In 1955, the World Press Photo awarded its first picture winner. In 2005 this non-profit organization celebrated fifty successful years of a competition recognizing the best photographs taken throughout the year. From the picture of a naked girl running after a napalm attack in Vietnam, to one of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire, and another of a demonstrator standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square, this competition has made its mark on what press photography is today. World Press Photo exhibits are visited by almost one million people, in over forty different countries. Here The Talon publishes four of the best pictures that won the contest in 2005, a reminder of what took place last year.
Mohamed Azakir, Lebanon, Reuters. Car bomb, Beirut, Lebanon, 14 February.
Finbarr O’Reilly, Canada, Reuters. Mother and child at emergency feeding center, Tahoua, Niger, 1 August.
Edmond Terakopian, UK, Press Association. London underground bomb attack survivor, London, 7 July.
Michael Appleton, USA, New York Daily News. Hurricane Katrina aftermath, New Orleans, 30 August-5 September
ENTERTAINMENT
Love’s Beginning, Middle, and End A Review of Alain de Botton’s On Love I am a fan of the British writer Alain de Botton, particularly his glorious pair of books How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Art of Travel, but as an anti-sentimentalist I opened this book with trepidation. It was early De Botton, and that title…would it be icky self-help or a philosophical dissertation? I knew De Botton’s books were more erudite than many in the Oprah canon, but I worried: Would it be a laborious treatise on an abstraction so subjective, so undefinable? I dove in during the holiday, read it, and have emerged to tell you, dear readers, that laborious treatise it was not. De Botton’s narrative analysis of his love affair with a woman named Chloe was thoughtful and entertaining, two typical characteristics of his prose. Read any of his books and you will see that his nonfiction is filled with scholarly allusions; this is a writer who not only paid attention in school, took good notes, and read voraciously, but he seems to have retained and synthesized it all. When you read De Botton, you learn a lot. When you read On Love, you learn a lot about how he loved. Yet worry not, you cynics out there, this is no hackneyed happy-ending romance, and De Botton’s playful tone makes his examination of love even more of a pleasure. Those of you who were recently required by two unnamed IB English A1 HL teachers to analyze the nonlinear structure of O’Brien’s The Things
They Carried would appreciate De Botton’s structure: beginning, middle, end. This plot is simple: man loves and loses. Reading about someone else’s relationship, including the minutia of living with another person, could be excruciating, but I have to say that I often found this book a fascinating readi n g . What vicario u s thrills I experienced as they become infatua t e d w i t h e a c h o t h e r, h a v e their f i r s t p a s sionate night t o gether, and fall into the c o m for ta b l e patterns of a relationship. What schadenfreude I experienced when they have their first fight over jam and when he hates her new, ridiculous shoes. Anyone who has loved and lived with that lover will see themselves at various points in this narrative, which can be rather enlightening. Were you the Alain on your anxious first date, in your petulant outburst, with your affectionate gesture or rude retort, or the Chloe? What is so engaging here is that both actors in this drama are human (and therefore fallible), and De Botton shows the intricacies of what it means to be human with another human. One thing I enjoy about De Botton’s books, but some may find
By Ms. MARY PFEIFFER too clever (and it is a bit of a disease of some current writers), is that he uses visuals to support or illustrate his points, such as the Müller-Lyer illusion, Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit, and even a diagram of the seating chart of the British Airways flight he was on when he first met Chloe. De Botton structures the tale of his relationship with her in short chapters, divided into numbered sections, each focusing on a point or thought about aspects of his affair, a structure that makes for easy intermittent reading, if needed. But what moves this book beyond mere memoir is that he analyzes all those steps into and out of love. Those of you who hate to dissect love will not like this book; I myself had little patience for several passages, during which I bemoaned his post-structural over-analysis and was grateful that it was not me with whom De Botton fell in love on the flight from Paris to London. After their fight over those shoes, De Botton discusses the tyrannical shift in a relationship from the personal to the universal; when I and you becomes us; then, he follows with, “Politics seems an incongruous field to link to love, but can we not read, in the bloodstained history of the French Revolution or of the Fascist and Communist experiments, something of the same amorous structure? Is there not the same ideal set against a diverging reality, producing the impatience… with the crescent of difference?” Can you imagine how irritating it would be to live with a modern critical theorist who turned his or her work on you and your relationship? De Botton examines the layers of their intimacy with often painful, embarrassing detail. If I were Chloe, I would have made De Botton sign a non-disclosure agreement. Yet in the last half of the book this sometimes-annoying narrator gets our sympathy. Nearly a year after he and Chloe meet, he begins to see signs of dissolution, and as he falls into deep dejection over her rejection, we want to give him a long hug and whisper, “She wasn’t good enough for you, Alain.” For cruelly, this once-seemingly-perfect wom-
ENTERTAINMENT an leaves our hero De Botton, and even worse, leaves him for a cheerful, successful California architect. Salt on the wound. I admire De Botton because he is a creative nonfiction writer who writes engaging prose on contemporary issues—similar to his Canadian counterpart Malcolm Gladwell, of Tipping Point and Blink fame. If you are
new to De Botton, I would urge you to read The Art of Travel first, a book reviewed by Ms. Marshall in Edition 35. If you have read Marcel Proust, or have heard that Remembrance of Things Past is one of the greatest stories ever (it is), De Botton’s witty, literate take on the self-help genre, How Proust Can Change Your Life should be your next one. If you want insights into one man’s unsuccessful love affair, read On Love. I
warn you though: If you go to Graded’s library to check out the book (with a fushia pink cover, of course) know that it was a previous patron and not me who rudely underlined passages— and quite banal lines at that. Besides a revocation of his or her library card, that library user needs to work on annotation skills. Certainly couldn’t be a Graded student, could it?
Breaking Down Reality TV By SOFIA GELD If the new millennium were labeled TV-wise, it would most definitely be known as the age of the reality series. Whenever I turn on the TV all I ever see is Dismissed, American Idol, Room Raiders, and Laguna Beach. A never-ending list of reality shows seems to be aired. What is it about watching someone else’s “real life” that keeps people glued to their TV sets, coming back every week to watch a new episode? Is it the malevolent glee we all find in watching someone publicly
disgraced? Or is it the fact that we all seem to be searching for someone to relate to even in those 30 minutes of a “real”
show. All right, I’m being harsh; I too have to admit that once I stumble upon an episode of America’s Next Top Model, I find myself instantly mesmerized. Seeing as this is the love edition of The Talon I shall question the appeal of finding love on a TV show. Are any
of the participants really in search for love? Or is it the growing desire for fame? It seems that people are driven to exploit themselves in front of an audience of literally millions of people to gain those superficial fifteen minutes of recognition. They are not after love. We all watch them, but why? I keep searching for an answer to the appeal of reality shows, an appeal that shows so much that is disturbing about our culture. Do we watch other people make a fool out of themselves for our own satisfaction? Many questions, but my only answer for now shall be that I’ll do my best to start turning off the TV.
A Literary View on Love
ENTERTAINMENT By Ms. HILLARY MARSHALL
Jemima J: A Novel About Ugly Ducklings and Swans, Jane Greene Greene’s début novel is chick lit at its best. Jenima is a fat girl with a good heart, a typical character who makes a terrific friend but never a romantic interest. Of course, she has two stunning roommates who are constantly stringing along men, flitting from interest to interest. It is Jenima’s passion to change in her life and the surprise is that the man of her dreams truly sees the real Jenima despite her changing physique. Author Jane Greene resides in the UK and frequently uses her dry British humor to capture the main character’s mannerisms.
Hole in my Life, Jack Gantos In his passionate autobiography, Jack Gantos confesses to his careless, risk-taking decision of illegally transporting hash, which eventually lands him in a state penitentiary. In this barren, hopeless arena, Gantos fills his time reading books from the prison library and inscribing his thoughts on a copy of a borrowed book. Fortunately, Gantos changes his life around and pursued his dream of college and developed as a writer. After acceptance into a college and his release from prison, Gantos embarked on his successful path of publishing children’s and young adult literature. Behind You, Jacqueline Woodson Fifteen year old Jeremiah (Miah) Roselind eerily opens this novel with his soul staring back at his bloodied, withered body. Each chapter reveals a voice of a beloved family member, girlfriend, and dear friend who all mourn, question, and discover their true feelings of love for Miah. All the while, Miah is watching over them as they grow, change, and question. A passionate read about how a person can leave an imprint of their life on our soul.
Enduring Love, Ian McEwan [recommended by Cecilia Zanforlin, US Librarian] This is a suspenseful story about love and a marriage described in a deeply psychological way, revealing McEwan’s sensibility and knowledge. Full of tension, the plot leads to anxi-
ety and apprehension so that sometimes one feels one’s heart beating so hard, making it necessary to close the book and take some time before starting again. Set in London, the characters are contemporary and well educated, as they talk about literature and poetry by Keats and Wordsworth, and about scientific topics like the Genome Project, DNA and Crick & Watson. But, above all, the fragility and strength of love is exposed throughout the narrative, making reality and fiction inseparable. McEwan, the author of Enduring Love, is British and the winner of the Booker Prize for his novel Amsterdam. His latest book, Saturday, is already translated into Portuguese and his book Atonement was discussed last semester at a Graded PTA Book Club session.
ENTERTAINMENT
Your Love Horoscope for 2006 Aries (March 20 - April 19)—2006 may just hold the ultimate love story for you. A fast and furious love affair may occupy your year. Old flames and exes may make it hard for you to break free and escape with your new love. Family and friends won’t be any more understanding either. It’s the chance of a lifetime to find true happiness with your prince charming. Follow your heart. Taurus (April 19 - May 20)—This is the year when your determined, absolute character will help you achieve your goals and desires. Materialize your dreams with the resoluteness of a bull and by June you will be proud of your accomplishments. Gemini (May 20 - June 21)—2006 for most Geminis is a year where you will be more open and listened to. Your mind will be focused and your thoughts accurate. Word of caution, don’t use your wit on your loved one, use your charisma instead. Cancer (June 21 - July 22)—A brighter future is up for grabs. A new love interest with the potential for long term commitment is yours. The challenge is that you will be haunted by a past love. Learning to let go and live on is not your strong point and you would have to work on it. Letting go of a past relationship that hadn’t worked out will be hardç getting a second chance with true love is not!
Leo (July 22 - August 23)—In 2006 challenges will push you to do your best. Work hard with your strong will to beat your lethargy. Making yourself do things when you’d rather not to will be rewarded this year. Virgo (August 23 - September 22)— 2006 finds falling madly in love with someone very unique and different than the type of person you usually go for. Is it true love, is it a fatal attraction? It is and will be a dynamic relationship, unavoidable and fascinating. It will shake you out of old ruts and predictable behavior patterns and frankly make you happier. Libra (September 22 - October 23)— You are the type that leads and likes to be in command. Therefore, it may not be easy for you to rely on others or surrender control to others. During 2006 work together with partners and you will benefit greatly. Some Librans may even find their prince or princesses sitting on a goldmine. Your focus will be on getting your finances together and padding your mattress. Stick to it and it will happen! Scorpio
(October 23 - November 22)—In 2006 your romantic choices are numerous. Few can resist your enticing Scorpio charm! Play the field and don’t jump into commitment so fast. Learn everything there is to know about potential romantic partners before committing. If not, there is a chance of a wicked surprise later in the year.
Compiled By ANJANA VARMA
Sagittarius (November 22 - December 21)—Sagittarius dance to the beat of a different drum, and 2006 is no exception. While all the other zodiac signs work hard and plod away this year, you may decide to endure the storm in quieter territories. A decision to follow your dreams may take you to distant lands, foreign countries, but wherever you go, you will quench your eternal thirst for learning. Capricorn: December 21 - January 20)—Where one door closes, another opens. And what a door it can be! Big ideas and goals can be achieved this year with the help of influential people who see your potential. Grab opportunities that you get in your love life. There is a feeling of “being chosen” this year. Aquarius (January 20 - February 18)— In 2006 you have real star quality. As you attract new relationships and friendships that reflect new found interests, you have little time or patience for someone who dominates your time. Pisces (February 18 - March 20)—2006 a is lucky year! Jupiter shines down on your sign and bails you out of any sticky situations. Be careful with friendships and take care to sort out any bad vibes that develop. The friends you have and make now could be around for years.
FEATURES An Outsider’s Guide to Real Relationships By AMBAR LA FORGIA Relationships are not my thing, at least romantic ones. I don’t quite understand how it works, how it’s mutual, how couples last as long as they do. But at this incredibly young age of sixteen, I don’t think it really matters. Since I’m absolutely no expert on romantic relationships, I’ll share my absolutely remarkable insight on a few of the great human interactions outside of the “when a man meets a women” love circle. I. Student-Teacher Relationships Our teachers construct our brains. They teach us multiple patterns of thinking, they criticize us constructively, when were doing poorly in class they offer extra help, they challenge us and plainly they just care. Though I have met people who say that teachers attempt to brainwash students into one strict mentality of “Don’t do this, don’t use this. Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” I honestly don’t see this at Graded. Our teachers give us creative liberty, a license that allows us to abuse the rules only if overall it helps make our paper, project, or whatever, absolutely better. And even though many of you have come to theis wonderful realization, it’s worth repeating: teachers do make the best of friends. Though they are authority figures, we just see them so often, and know they come to school because they care for us (we should hope!), that we get along. Students go to school because we care about our education; we want to learn (let’s assume). Thus student vs. teacher relationships fit well, like peas and carrots. II. Christmas Relationships Though not everyone
cel-
ebrates Christmas and possibly not everyone has experienced a snowy, wonderful, winter wonderland holiday, there is something mystical about Christmas to me, which makes every relationship a little bit more special. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. As a child it was much more colorful, the absolute excitement about what was under the huge frosted, jeweled pine tree (another Barbie doll perhaps?) and the cookies which give children quite a high and parents quite a workout, oh and Santa Claus! Wishing so hard to hear Prancer and Dancer and Rudolph thumping on the roof followed by the ho, ho, ho of the Santa you saw at the local mall. Even now, when I’m supposedly maturing, I listen to Christmas music year
round, watch the movie Love, Actually religiously, and cry, out of happiness, at a Secret Santa party just because my friends are so darn awesome. Christmas to me is a relationships; just thinking of it, I feel warmth, wanting to hug my grandparents whom I haven’t seen in a year, and appreciating my family for everything they mean to me. During Christmas, everyone (in my
head) is smiling, laughing, indulging themselves in a certain tradition they have, but what I indulge in the most, is the extra love I get to shower my friends with, the extra love I get to bestow upon my parents. I must confess I LOVE Christmas movies, which keep me on holiday year round. III. Chance Relationships Have you ever boarded an airplane and sat next to somebody, male or female, old or young, that you just suddenly clicked with? You had, say, music in common and for three hours you discussed the greatness of the Grateful Dead, or shared each other’s life stories? There’s just something great about “instant clicking” relationships. Typically they don’t last because you tend to not want to keep in touch; the memory of the moment is so much more meaningful. These interactions happen in hotels when you’re on vacations, at concerts, at parties, on school trips, everywhere. I guess sometimes it could lead to the finding of your soul mate, but look at it more as a preservation of a very weird moment when you found a person who shared the same love for some bizarre interest of yours by coincidence. Because it’s not the same if you simply go online and join a group that shared your passion for taxidermy. So I guess these relationships depend on the specific moment of meeting, all on chance. Each of these are types of relationship that I feel strongly about, and which I understand from experience. Though they live outside the box of the standard love formula, they can all still represent a different form of love.
FEATURES
Love has No Definition By CLAUDIA BECERRA
Is love only a strong romantic feeling for someone, as the dictionary defines? What about when we say “I love playing basketball,” or when we say “I love my science class”? Isn’t that also considered love? Or do we mean something else? I was reading the novel The Secret Life of Bees which mentions how it’s sad that in the English language we must use the same word to say we love ice cream and to say we love a person. “Love” can be so many things; it can mean so much to one person and so little to another. “Love” can be felt and expressed differently, and so it becomes a mystery. Have we felt love as teenagers? Some say we have, but then again, what love are we talking about? Are we talking about the love we share with our parents and siblings every morning, or are we talking about the love for our pet? Or the love for our favorite sports? Or the love we give to a girlfriend or boyfriend? How do we know it’s love? Is there a specific feeling? Is there a symptom to this inevitable disease? It’s so hard to write about love, because there isn’t any right or wrong answer. Love is a point of view. There
are no guidelines to study, no instructions to follow, no booklet we can read to tell us how to love; it’s simply just nature. And so, we are all left in this magical world, where we will find a person to love and love us back. It may be hard to accomplish, it may be hard to find,
but life is a road we all are taking, meeting each other along the way. I have been lucky to meet many people that I love dearly. Sadly during the journey I’ve learned that we don’t keep all of these loved ones. Some are lost and we might
not get them back in the same way. I have to admit one misses them greatly, but life goes on, and love has no limit. Or at least that’s how I like to view it. We may love little insignificant objects in our rooms, and to us they seem like the world or represent our whole life. We love our parents, not only because we have to, but because we couldn’t live without them. Yet the most important and amazing detail for me, is that we all want to be loved back. No matter how bad, or how many times, we have been hurt, the want of love is always present. It can be from an orphan girl, to a heartbroken mom, to a crippled athlete. All these examples show how we want to love and feel loved; as I said before, love is part of our nature and our lives. Amazingly and ironically, we can’t live without it. There is no word to describe love completely, so I like to think of it without definition. Love is just everywhere, waiting to be felt.
My Secret Love Affair With My TV
FEATURES By MA. LAURA TORRE
Boyfriends beware! Your girlfriend may have a special friend right alongside her right now –it’s sleek, modern, and a standard 24”. I am, of course, talking about the TV set. During summer/ winter vacation, released from “school duty,” many find their way to the family room and thus, the wiretangled backside of their TVs. Yet spaghetti mechanics are only technicalities, for what really matters is the screen and what is playing on it. Like many others, I suffer from homeworkassociated timelessness, which most nearly means: “Bro, leave me alone, can’t you see I got my head stuck in a book?” And which transcends to the point that, come December, I do not know the programs scheduled, find my favorite show was cancelled, and try to relearn how to use a remote control.
However, for those that have stayed away from the television too long, coming back to it (regardless of how much structural reviewing one must go through) is a blessing. It signifies, first and foremost, that there are no other things to take care of, and that we can bask in a delightful hour of reality TV and other seemingly insignificant and vacant plot holes. Woo hoo! This summer (or winter, or spring, or autumn—gosh, who knows anymore with all this global warming?) I found my joy in house-renewal programs, and other shows that have taught me absolutely nothing but how to handle drills. My brain was dead for
a good six weeks…and I sort of miss that empty silence that accompanies yet another show of While You Were Out; it is almost like the beep, beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep we often associate with ER, but without overly dramatized dialogue. I have also made peace with Sony, although their new “attitude” commercials proclaim more towards bad dentistry than anything else. Maybe they are trying to connect themselves with candy: Sony is sweet – but it will rot your teeth out. Hum…. I know that in the next few starting weeks of the second semester, my TV will once again be forgotten, and my brain will start to beep continuously again (for better, or worse, I still have to find out). Yet I have hope that when June flies by, for most vacant months do, I will be able to rejoin my square friend and venture into the sport of channel surfing and finger yoga. Come on everyone, let’s see that index finger in the lotus position!
FEATURES Love is Suicidal By MARIA AUGUSTA LOURO “Love” is just a simple word to define innumerable feelings. Emotions that are so similar yet so different, so devastating yet so astounding, so complicated yet so simple. Love can easily be substituted by hate or confused with obsession but in the end, you know you’re in love when you feel it. What is there to say about a feeling so intense that no words could describe? The feeling of pain that runs through your veins and breaks your heart when that one person is undergoing moments of agony and frustration. Those uncontrollable rivers of thought that hit you in such a way that tears stream down your face. That quivery feeling that brings you to smile when you catch sight of the one you adore. Love is, above all, painful and torturous. It grabs us in such way that it suffocates us with ignorance, causing us to be blinded by all we don’t want to see and deafened by all we don’t want to hear. We’re knocked by a force of such incomprehensible feelings that we allow ourselves to break down into tears or screams over memories of mo-
ments that are long gone. We grow with these moments, realizing that life is not fair.
Flashbacks of moments of pain make you realize that love is not easy, but if it is true love it shall stand up high and defeat all the dreadful fights and losses left behind. Together with love comes a feeling of fear. Fear of loving and not being loved in return, of losing the one you love, of being someone you’re not, of looking into the eyes of the one you adore and not seeing the truth b e h i n d their lies. eyes so into
Their look deep your
heart, and touch your soul in such a way it hurts, making you realize that you accept lovers for what they are, accepting their flaws, simply because they are part of who they are. When this force is torn out, it’s as if there was nothing in the world left to search for and part of you is gone. Yo u ’ r e standing in the shadows of life a n d that is when y o u reali z e : you loved but you weren’t loved in return. When you stand in the street and see your love with someone you thought did not exist for that person, and you feel heavy, as if your heart is torn into pieces: that’s when you see you’ve lost the one you loved. When you ditch your friends to be with that one and only, or when your friends start to vanish, that’s when you realize you’re not who you use to be. When you search for answers but all you find are questions: that’s when you see no truth behind their lies. But if it is so painful, so torturous and complicated, why is it all we search for in life? Why is it we wonder about such a powerful death of self and mind? Because it is, after all, something we can’t live without, something that makes us feel what we’ve never felt before, because it is something that makes us see the world from a different but often better perspective, because it is… love.
Love in the Life of a Queer
FEATURES By FERNANDO JORGE
Are homosexual men absent of all those negative qualities women nag about so effectively such as cheating, lying, being forgetful, shallow, insensitive, and sex obsessed? Are these fabulous men just blessed with the qualities and sensitivities of both sexes? Or are they still just men? When they go out to a new ultra-hip club or simply to a bar across the street, are they thinking about the opportunity of a lifetime or just entertainment for the next four hours? Is there room for love on the queer side of life? There are millions of single adult men in this city, so we can assume that hundreds of thousands are gay. Yet there are less than fifty strictly GLS (gay and lesbian sympathetic) night locations in the city itself. For an eighteen year old in the middle of a social breakthrough in São Paulo, things are not so simple. First comes acceptance, then admission, and later, curiosity and much needed exploration. It’s a difficult process, where you learn to abandon all those adulthood dreams that the media brainwashes you with: the suburban house with the perfect wife, two and a half kids, and a dog. The family issue is harder than movies such as The Family Stone and the television success Will & Grace makes it look. The adopted baby won’t come out looking like you and your lover, the neighbors won’t invite you over for barbecues, your marriage is probably illegal, and your life outside the domestic sphere won’t be your own. Most homosexual
success stories in the financial arena happen because they’re “straight” at work; macho advertising executives by day, flamboyant and healthy lovers by night. The classic secret identity complex, where we wear masks, trying to hide something we’re afraid for the world to see. For a teenager, it’s that much more difficult, a secret identity 24/7, for fear of rejection, loss, and turmoil, an abandoning of self to lessen the burden of just being “queer as folk.” When love is in the air, it’s much easier to be straight then to be gay. It’s more acceptable to display affection publicly, people don’t stare at you in the streets, and you aren’t kicked out of a movie theater for expressing yourself naturally as all other couples do. What’s all the fuss? People fear what they don’t understand. So dating gets to be, at first, more exciting than the average because sneaking around is adventurous and fun, but after the third and fourth dates,
things get dull fast. Mystery works for a while and sometimes it’s even sexy, but two weeks later, it bites the dust. You’re sneaking a kiss instead of actually breaking out in song as if you’ve joined the cast of Rent, minus the whole HIV-positive thing. The feelings you have when you love someone are incredibly hard to contain. Suddenly, after a month, or for some weaker knees, ten days, you feel the entire world needs to know how you feel. Perfectly natural, until you tell them who you’re with: another guy. Your friends will be supportive and generally join in on the excitement, while the typical ‘rents won’t react as well for a while. Dating is stressful in the 21st century, and more so on the homosexual front, because love doesn’t just move mountains, it is a mountain. Speaking of modern times, at the prime of the technological revolution, the internet is the easy step towards relationship heaven, but not always the smartest. In a time where we
FEATURES can order our food, clothes, medical supplies, dogs, and car insurance off the world wide web, why leave home? It turns out, relationships are a click away too. Gay love, according to the hopeless MSN fanatic, is possible. The problem is, everything else is possible as well. Think of it as e-photoshop, where you remake yourself and present it to the world because, you figure, they can’t see you; just one of the many problems of today’s tech generation. Suddenly, you make your first friend online, RickPlus, and after a few online whirls, you ask to meet. Death by chat, considering he might not be a RickPlus and you might not be the image you fabricated either. So, you choose not to go, and the lies keep on coming, until it evolves into a lifestyle of deception. Public chat rooms and massive relationship services are even more popular for the gay population, where “coming out of the closet” is depersonalized and demystified, simplified in a false manner, and where we begin to blend the barriers of reality over time. Web cameras, microphones, photo blogs, and other chat accessories are just aids in the journey towards a facilitated hormonal release. In one the chat rooms are divided into several categories, which under “gay” include: dating, sex, friends, and interests. The most popular one is “sex.” Why?
Imagine millions of men with easy access and raging hormones.There’s the problem: self-effacement. Any sensitivity to what is real is wiped clean, and personality no longer matters unless it’s tied to sexuality. The truth is men are still men, whether gay or not.
So, where does true love fit in the gay world? Commitment problems are doubled because neither side wants to be “emotionally available,” and both sides are thinking that while life under thirty connotes no responsibility and maturity, life over thirty means an
oxygen tank and Viagra. Either partner will tell you the classic dilemma regarding men: the male ego. In order to truly satisfy the gay male ego, you need power, the kind that allows you to pursue the entire gay population of São Paulo, and those chic Dior pants and matching scarf you saw in their new spring/summer collection. The ego complex is just slightly modified for those reading GQ and Vogue, and spending most of their time browsing the shops in search of the latest trend. It makes monogamy in a relationship, usually one of the more important axes of true love, immensely difficult. I often remind myself of the tagline “amor sem fronteiras” or “love beyond boundaries.” If two individuals feel for each other, then they should be free to love each other despite the circumstances. If it’s condemned by religious orders, persecuted by hate groups and organizations, or even chastised on national television, those are just some obstacles that make the feeling, in the end, that much sweeter. As society continually dictates what is right and wrong, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine who we are as individuals. In the end, the world needs to change its conventions to embrace gay love. It’s a rare flower, a fantasy that some find, and others spend their whole lives searching for. The odds are not in everyone’s favor, but the promising side of living in a New York or a São Paulo are its possibilities: endless.
In Defense of Saint Valentine
FEATURES By Mr. JASON BARTON
Lots of pink hearts and cut outs of lace adorn the walls of elementary schools across the United States while there’s an increase in ads hocking diamonds and chocolate and greeting cards: St. Valentine’s Day must be upon us. Some folks refer to St. Valentine’s Day as Singles Awareness Day. Is this simply dramatizing the case of a few people who are just jealous about being left out of the fun? What could be wrong with sending your love a little something nice just to say…? Funny though, sometimes our holidays become somewhat removed from their original intentions. Christmas, after all, is supposed to celebrate the birth of a man who lived his life as a pauper, among the poor, advocating the love of people over the love of things. Yet we celebrate his birthday by buying a mountain of things for people who might not even want, let alone need what we give them. Like Christmas, Valentine’s Day is a holiday that could be about love for the people close to us. But is it? Why do we put so much time and money into this holiday? I started my research within the world of advertising. Valentine’s advertisements display pleasant scenes of one looking into the eyes of the other and being glad to have the chance. I thought first of the women depicted in those glossy images and wondered how they got to be so thin. It looks like being loved today means keeping yourself fit, or maybe just a little bit hungry. But this is getting off track in our question of the Dia dos Namorados of the North. Of course they’d use pictures of only the beautiful people to sell this stuff since who’d want to buy what’s sold by the merely regular people who none of us really wants to be? The next step in my research was the internet. The U.S. National Greeting Card Association (yes, it really does exist) reports that they sell around one billion Valentine’s Day cards each year, which should mean one billion people who find themselves a little more content for at least one day.
Not all of them can be skinny. Indeed, there must be something deep within us that makes us feel the need to head to the malls to hand over our hard earned dollars and reais to express our love and our admiration for this special day, as well as for that special someone. It can’t be like we’re programmed to purchase things on that particular day, can it? Perhaps it’s the connection we all feel to the great St. Valentine and the sacrifice he made for our romantic sake. But, I learned that there are three different St. Valentines. We know almost nothing about two of them, while the third helped some Christians escape Roman prisons and further persecution during the fourth century. I’m not sure what this has to do with romance, but saving people from persecution does seem like a very nice thing to do. Well, so what if we’re not really sure who St. Valentine is, or was. It’s simply fantastic that we have a bit more encouragement to get together with someone else so that we don’t have to feel so darn alone all the time, or at least just this one day. This holiday shouts “Hey! You, sitting with no one to kiss! Get off of your bum and go and find someone!” For those who find themselves without someone special on this particular day, advertising provides us with portraits of the people who have solved this deficiency. Be like them. Be happy. In addition to the healthy nudge away from solitary independence, we also have economic incentives. We don’t have to look too hard at our economies
to know that they generally improve, albeit slightly, in the week before this lovely remembrance. And I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that this blip on the economic radar screen comes right in the middle of an otherwise low spot between the high Christmas/Channukah/Kwanzaa/Ramadan shopping season and the big swing into spring shopping that gets us all out there buying bikinis and diet pills to get ready for summer. A billion cards in one day also means jobs for loggers who get to cut down about a million trees (this is one part of this article that hasn’t been researched—I’m estimating here), and paychecks sent to a thousand millers who gloss the pulp with petroleum products after it’s been cut into neat rectangles and painted with red balloons and chubby puppies and, thank goodness, more skinny people. So maybe that’s the reason why this is such a special day: our love for others, or the best way we can think of to show it, creates jobs! And then there are those
FEATURES catchy verses we could never devise on our own. Once again, we’re providing income so mediocre writers like this one can put food on the table for our families. All of this to say “I love you…Today...To help the economy.” But with smarter people making up the words for us and telling us what to buy, we can be left with a little more time to work, to earn money, to go out and buy this stuff so, once again, we can tell the people around us how very special they are. If only we could find the time to tell them this without being told to do so by Hallmark Inc. Thank goodness for Hallmark Inc.
But all of these silly gestures of cards, flowers, and chocolates pale in scope to the folks so in love that they feel the need for diamonds. Those gouged-out hills from which we mine these gems stand as a monument to the love we have for the people around us. The depth of the mines reveals the depth of our affection, as long as we’re willing to shell out the dough. The shiny woman and star-eyed man in DeBeer’s latest advertisement for the diamond Valentine’s ring show me the true beauty of St. Valentine’s Day, and the little extra effort I can use to express my love for money. I mean for my love.
Try! Love By BONNIE JEON “Good Love is On the Way” says John Mayer in his latest album TRY! It’s interesting how people come up with different definitions of love. As I see, there are different kinds of love. Love for our family, pets, food, friends and sleep. Love is everywhere. We can see it in the smiles on people’s faces, smell it in the comforting smell of mom’s perfume, and taste it as strong as garlic, a taste that never leaves. But it seems difficult to reach for it. Yes, I’m talking about that “impossible” love that I’m sure everyone has experienced: admiring someone secretly, having a crush. Does this “impossible” love have to be someone that we see every day? Love is a forest that grows into a hot, steamy desert. It is hard for love to come and find us. I guess that’s why people are crazy to fall in love quickly, so that they can join “the experienced” and talk about their journey, which sounds greater than The Odyssey. My journey began when I met Room for Squares by John Mayer on a sweet, cozy summer two years ago. That summer, as I was tangled in my bed sheets, I pressed the ear phones tightly enough so that I could feel the sound vibrations shaking my ears. I kept it on repeat and listened to it from day to night. Every word of his lyrics, guitar strokes, and drum beats, had touched my soul. John Mayer is
my good friend that’s there for me when I’m down, my therapist that gives me good advice about love, and my love that makes me happy but at the same time gives a slight pinch of pain in my heart. Now you must be thinking, “Poor Bonnie. She has gone psycho. She doesn’t even know that she is going through something called obsession!” Well, dear readers, I have a question for you. What is the difference between obsession and love? By the help of a friend and dictionary.com, I have found the answer for the question. Obsession is nothing like a psycho stalker with a telescope in her bedroom. According to dictionary.com, obsession is a “compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety.” The definition of love is “a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.” Now, do you see the difference? Honestly, dictionary.com didn’t give me the help that I thought it would. That is when my friend came to the rescue. When asked on a late night conversation over MSN about the differences between obsession and love, he answered, “If you love someone, you’re willing to let them go. You care more about their happiness than yours. Obsession is being selfish and wanting what you want.” He cleared my confusion like a toilet that was stuck with tissues. We can’t be told by someone whether we are in love or not. Love is like a wind, ghost, or God. We can’t see it with your bare eyes, but when we believe in it, it lives in us. You can call me a John Mayer freak but I know my feeling towards John Mayer: it’s amore. However, I am smart enough to know that John Mayer is my “mission impossible love.” Therefore, I’m going to keep my options open and try to move on. Oh my, did I just say TRY!? JOHN MAYER’S LATEST ALBUM! Really, if you enjoy blues you better check out John Mayer Trio (wink wink)!
FEATURES
E N R R FIGA CO So Far but Yet So Close
By MARIO MIRANDA So far, but yet so close! I am inches away, yet I can’t make myself touch you. I want to rid you of your heavy masks and garments and have you bare in front of me. I want to be smothered in the tender torment of your embrace. I want to smell the blossom of your soul and be awed by the spectrum of colors in the petals of your thoughts. I want to be delighted by the sound of your words as they trickle down your mouth. When our eyes meet, I wish there were a way to vocalize my hearts profound yearning to be the elixir that quenches your desire. So far, but yet so close! Why do I need to hide behind curtains? To get a closer look at you? I wish we could make our bond transcend and shed the layers between us, so I could contemplate the canvas of your body. That pale skin, those dark eyes, those tassels of hair! If I were able to convey the intensity and passion Every time you shine the light of your eyes on me Would you let me be the artist that would
paint our future? So far, but yet so close! Your mere gaze undermines the horizon, but The flower of my love could not tolerate the voyage of the ocean that separates us. The petals languish and my easel remains untampered As the torch of hope burns my soul, Because I cannot begin to grasp the harsh truth that the ethereal blossom of your soul is someone else’s property, other than my own.
Stolen
By JEN PITT Is This... Not removed and a million times stolen to spill out words that wrap the world for stinging seconds, then drop it miles down. Those are the butterflies. The swallowing of what we want to be love. Words that I was fast to grab onto, feelings I was fast to answer to and call love snapped out of reach. You are no poet, you are used and used. Your words are stolen. How then do you still know it’s me? If we can learn to forget and forget to learn, there’s no reason to still see. I forget to forget, that’s why I still know it’s you.
FEATURES
Covered in Crimson By ERIK FARJADO It breaks me to see you As my knife dives into your chest My heart cries out, but it cannot stop The stubborn fist that stabs Restlessly. Mercilessly. Tragically. Yet you lay still in silence Your warm blood still runs through your cold eyes But they don’t meet mine Why won’t you ask me to stop? Please. Your words would halt this madness I won’t stop until I’ve butchered you Twisted your smile in my sight Smothered your sun in my sky But you don’t stop me You let me eclipse you so readily
So easily Do you even care? Crimson snakes escape your sunkissed skin With your last breath you break into laughter, and speak: Silly child, your feeble hands mean nothing to me How can something meaningless hurt me? I stop. My hands are soiled in red. Your death is your victory Your ghost is my curse My life is your trophy
Je T’aime…Aussi Loin By BRUNA ANDRADE Si jamais tu me demandes jusqu’où je t’aime, et si quand tu seras grande on s’aimera quand même…S’il fallait que je te dise tout mon amour, même en ouvrant les bras, ça ne suffirait pas. Moi, mon amour pour toi, je crois bien qu’il va jusqu’au bout du monde et de la Terre et le soleil et
jusqu’au bout des étoiles… au délà du fond des galaxies, dans l´infini de l’univers sidéral. Jusqu’au bout, où porte le regard de mon coeur, jusqu’à l’infini et jusqu’au fond du bonheur, je t’aime…aussi loin.
Una Tal Mañana… By MARIO MIRANDA Una tal mañana me despertó el sol. Ese día todo brillaba, Todo florecía a mí alrededor. Me contagié de la alegría por primera vez en años, y me uní a la algarabía ocultando así el daño que en mi alma yacía. Así que me di la oportunidad de sentir inusual felicidad, en mi vida tan vacía aunque fuese por un día.
FEATURES Exercises in Doublethink By MICAEL CIMET Is it wrong to kill a dog a second time? Is it right to kill a living pill? Is it killing to live pouncing yellow edges of infinity? If you have understood you have experienced. If you have experienced you have
understood. And you have understood nothing. Yet again the question is unanswered and -unanswerable. We draw near and far triangles and hand drawings with war ourselves in our land ourselves in our killing ourselves on Earth choking on god’s hands and illustrating nothing Forget life not, for that is all you have and all you will ever have. Forget death not, for it is all you will have when life is gone. Forget forgetting not, it is all. Never forget to remember again all you will ever ever ever ever ever ever remember.
Pero algo ocurrió Que con el júbilo acabó. Mas lo ocurrido es negligible ya que es algo cotidiano.
Lost Friend I heard the news and couldn’t accept them How could he have changed in less than half a year? I read the conversations 4 or 5 times Not believing we were talking about the same 16 year-old guy I knew so well I listened carefully to every detail Each and everyone one of them perforating my heart. Tears started falling one after the other like a dripping faucet
I needed someone there to help me stop the loss of water But I was alone Friends being so valuable, friends being needed always It’s hard to understand one has left you… Or that one has been lost and cannot be found anymore When I first heard the news, and couldn’t accept them When I couldn’t understand why he
had changed When I listened to all the details… I couldn’t stop thinking it was my fault Loving him like a brother, like a friend, and maybe more I rejected his parents question for help And now as much as I miss him, there is nothing I regret the most Than not being able to aid him Not being able to make him happy Not being able to find him anymore
SPORTS
Girls’ Salão: Emerging By CECILIA MASOLA Our second salão practice, with rain pouring down, was on the covered court. With the danger of slipping and injuries, we tried to conquer the big gym, the best indoor court, the place where we have not been allowed to play yet by the boys’ varsity volleyball team. I mean, come on; we were trying to steal from another emerging team, one that now probably has a bigger voice than girls’ salão. Man, that’s just sad. But even with a few days of practice, half of the girls never having played salão in their lives, our actions on the court reflected anything but a weak rising team. I was amazed with the girls who quietly destroyed the court. They were playing so well. There was Vicki Song running back and forth from the left side, dribbling, passing and finishing the goalie off with her strong left kick; Carolina Falanga showing ball control, shooting from half court and shaking the goal; Renata scaring everyone and stopping every ball. Gabi sprinted all over the court and showed not only her defen-
sive talents that I knew from soccer, but also her offensive abilities. Linn, who had never played salão threw herself on the ground and caught every ball. Bella debuted in salão with great raça and talent as a right wing. Of course, there
were the girls I already knew were talented: Luciana Amorim and Stephanie Waisman shooting bombs the whole game, and Daisy scoring beautifully in the angle from the midline. I was surprised by the talent,
the potential, the velocity and the ability necessary to play salão. I still feel very lost and deeply humbled by my fellow players. The amount of talent, along with the number of girls trying out (seventeen), showed me that although still emerging, girls’ salão will soon establish itself. This year I believe the team has a real chance at competing in Big Four and possibly winning, but most of all having fun with each other. Because the team is new, there are fewer competitive feelings among the players, making us play what’s in front of us and enjoy that moment. As for me, I still have some unfinished business with Chapel that I would like to clear up before I graduate. Perhaps in a couple of years I’ll come back to Graded to discover girls’ volleyball is practicing in the elementary gym, while the girls’ salão team occupies the gym.
Have You Ever Cheated? By JEFFERSON WEN Have you ever secretly fallen in love with someone other than the person you were with? Ever wanted to do something different from the expected path? I must be honest and say that I have betrayed one of the few loves in my life, replacing the qualities for something totally alien and unexpected. I have had conflicting thoughts of wanting more than I can handle. Yes, I have traded soccer, my childhood companion, for softball. That slow, boring thing to watch, supposedly a “gringo” sport,
is apparently the new love of my life. After all, senior year is all about trying new things. To watch is one thing, but to play is something else. Yes, I must confess that every day I wait anxiously for four o’clock, rain or shine, to grab my mitt and play. Softball has given birth to a feeling I had never felt in these four years of high school. Every catch, hit, slide, and safe is a new sensation, like those every new couple indulges in. I feel the same passion found in lovers – lasting perhaps a lifetime. The long phone calls, pleasing dreams
and watching movies are all part of my relationship with my new sweetheart, my softball. Yet the same nervousness, insecurity and fear of the future are also part of this fresh passion (as my position is still not clearly determined). “Strike one...trike two...” Seeing how ephemeral high school relationships are, I cannot help to ask myself, how long will this one last?
Super WHAT, Now?
SPORTS By ANDRESSA OSTA
Football has been called the National Pastime. It’s just the kind of game anyone deserves who has nothing better to do than try to pass his time. —Andy Rooney
I think I see it. No. Sorry. And the oval shaped ball....C’mon, I can’t be the only one that sees the absurdity in that phrase, “oval ball.” You do the math.
Walking around school a while ago, all I heard were comments like “The Steelers are going to win man” and “No way man, you’re so wrong” and I couldn’t help but wonder, what are these people talking about? What’s making these Americans fervently argue with each other in the middle of the hallway like there’s no tomorrow? As a Brazilian, I had heard of the Super Bowl but never really knew what it meant. Yeah, yeah, American football. We’re in the country of REAL football, so what’s so great about tackling each other on a field? (DOG PILE!) Now really, I don’t understand much about American Football. Let me rephrase: I don’t understand American football at all. But I do understand the two words SUPER and BOWL and I don’t see the connection. American football, Super Bowl. Wait,
Then there’s Mr. Bair. He got all excited over this Super Bowl, and for what? The Steelers win, then what? He runs around in the streets yelling “STEELERS!” If he happens to run into anyone that understands at least a bit of English, the most he’ll get as a response is “Who stole what?” So what is it about Americans and Super Bowl? The answer: It’s the same thing as Brazilians and the World Cup. One difference is, though, is that if you ask around Brazil what the Su-
per Bowl is, you will get perplexed faces. But if you ask around in the United States what the World Cup is you get hopeful, but so-very-wrong answers like, “The next accomplishment of the U.S.” American football. Because Americans play it better. Well, as far as I know, Americans are the ONLY ones who play it. It’s not like we call soccer Brazilian football—that actually sounds nice. But hey, every country has its sports, huh? Don’t get me started on Canada and hockey, bro! (You know, I heard if you put the São Paulo population together with the population in Rio de Janeiro, we could take over Canada. Are they counting the bears in that statistic? Canada’s got a lot of bears...) But don’t get me wrong, I love Canada, and I love the Super Bowl. Yeah, for real! It’s the one and only time Americans can say, “We’re good at football” and actually mean it. So next time the Super Bowl comes around, remember: Americans are funny. They think it’s called football.
The Non-Sporting Life Since seventh grade, I have been involved in the athletic program at Graded. Alternating salão and field football, I have been on fifteen distinct teams. Having taken part in twenty competitions and winning only three, it might seem like my athletic career was a poor one. But that is not the way I look at it. I might not have many medals to show for it, but my athletic career was a great part of my life. My victories came in different ways. Finally, after six years, more than 150 games, and approximately 58 goals, my athletic career at Graded
has been terminated. It has been more than three months since I have played a game in my school colors, and I already feel the effects of this abrupt life change. During the December/January vacations I gained four very welcome kilograms. Not having to worry about losing my shape for next season, I practiced absolutely no physical activity other than a couple of playful football and basketball games. On the whole, I worked on lifting weights – how much does a fork weigh? On Friday, the 10th of February, Graded varsity boys’ salão played
By AVINASH MOHANANI
St. Paul’s for their second game in the SPHSL. Since it was a home game and many of my ex-teammates still play, I decided to watch the game. Interestingly, after such a significant portion of my life dedicated to the game, I could not stand to just watch. I had to participate, so I became a cheerleader. Cheering and trying to communicate with the players during the entire game, I felt like I participated in the heartbreaking loss. At the same time, I realized why I loved the game so much and also why I stopped playing.
SPORTS
Varsity Sports: Getting Started Compiled By AVINASH MOHANANI Girls’ Salão
Boys’ Salão
Coach: Rogério Dezem Isabella Motta Cecilia Masola Stephanie Waisman Gabriela Gholmia Carolina Falanga Vicki Song Giovanna Peviani Daisy Wesson Luiza Linn Dalflo Ariela Dorf Luciana Amorim Danisa Blaser AnaDoro Stephanie Paquin Cynthia Glick
Coach: Ney Vieira Charles Mark Martin Rugeroni Santiago Rugeroni Patricio Vaisman Eric Ovrebo Erik Kim Victor Bustani Andre Yuzo Ferreira Max Goldvag Lucas Kanamori Marcelo Brull Jordan Yung Gerardo Sabbat Nathaniel Falber Ilan Lebl
Girls’ Volleyball Coach: Francisco Stefanie Hatt Julia Bordin Cecilia Barcelos Debora Olsson Karina Ylenia Lemos Mayara Benediti Sharon Feder Luiza Taveira Rafaella Ziegert Alessandra Kertzer Caroline Ferreira Claudia Becerra
Girls’ Softball Coach: Al Pagenkopf Addie Leach Elena Fajardo Elles Blom Gabriela Gerlach Iyo Yamasaki Jenny Cho Kate Greubel Lauren Corcoran Lauren Greubel Marcela Lima Marimar Jauregui Marion Geiger Sara Mizuno Tricia Warner
Boys’ Softball Coaches: Jason Barton & Ben Ladue Alejandro Arana Michael Darden Daniel Landers Andrew Leach Mauricio Matos Jace Nixon Jorge Perdomo Jonathan Pestana Alex Wortman Steven Cartolano Giuliano Roman Chris Cadena Jefferson Wen