Goaltender35’s Weblog

Today on “This American Life” we take a look at some high school highlights. Our first guest today is Matthew Drapeau from Auburn High School, hows it going Matt? Hey. So tell us about a highlight in your high school experience? Well probably the most significant thing that has happened during my high school career would have to of been my hockey season during my sophomore year. Really, tell us a little about that season. Ok well the year before that season we made it all the way to the district tournament and lost, I mean we got our ass’s kicked all over the ice the final score being like 12 to 2, anyway we were just way under what we were expected to do in that tournament. After that game something happened that I will never forget in all my years of playing hockey. What was that? Um after that game the seniors where so upset that pretty much all of them just cried which was understandable, but thing that got me was that the crying was accompanied by  severe puking and some very emotional words. I knew that from that moment on that just by looking at the other people on my team, my family for over three months would honor those who had past before us not just by getting back to the tournament next season but by making it all the way to the big game, and that I would do anything within my ability to help make that happen. Anyway the rest of there passes quit quickly and before I knew it the hockey season was apon us once again and we were starting to have captains practices which  you can love or hate based upon your feeelings about getting up at 5:30 in the morning to play hockey which of course for me was fine because I’d play hockey any time day or night it realy didn’t matter to me because I loved the game so much. Well we had a few of those before the first Monday morning practice of the regular season which I knew from the previous year  wasn’t gonna be an easy one let me tell you that. Let me say that that practice was one of the worst days for me as hockey player. We skated until everyone had either dropped from just sheer exhaustion or had thrown up in one of the barrels the where put out for just that reason and then we’d skate some more. Pudge, my coach, pushed us like he never had before during those first couple weeks of practice. Then the night finally comes, the night of our first game of the new season. Pudge comes in, sits down, and takes a long look around the room at our faces. Then he stands up to deliver the usual pregame speech, but all he says is ” By the looks on you guy s’s  faces  I can see that maybe only half of you are ready to play in this game.” and you know he was right we go out, played hard, but ultimately we came up short in that game and the next one. So now we are 0 and 2 and we know that something needs to change quick or we are going to be in some serious trouble this season. So Pudge calls the team in for a meeting in the locker room to discuss whats happening, and by and by we as a team talk about what things that we see that aren’t happening that should be on the ice. This all concludes with the showing of a movie about a hockey team known as the California Surf and their journey to the national championship. At the conclusion of this movie everyone is like dead silent because the movie we had just watched was about not only the Surf but about us as well, I mean their story could of been told as ours, and it all concluded with their winning a national championship after being defeated the previous year. Any way  seeing this just lights a fire or something under us and we begin to get to work, and work we did everyday through the rest of the season. After all that we go into the post season with a record of I believe was 16 wins and 4 loses which was pretty good.  The first game of the post season was like a dream we played the best hockey of that year and we ended up making it all the way to the district finals a game that to this day I still get excited to watch. It was played at the DCU center on a Saturday. That day was like nothing we as a team, and as a family had never experienced before. That morning on the radio we had heard on the radio “We are the Champions” by Queen, and we knew right then and their that it was a sign that we where meant to win this hockey game. So we arrive by bus like two hours before the game, and we just sit there in the bleachers looking at our school name in lights right above our heads, it was so cool. Then we all headed down into the locker room to get ready mentally. It was so quite in that locker room that you could hear a pin drop. By the time Pudge comes in to give his speech no one can sit down any longer because everyone was just so amped to be there. Pudge comes in, looks at us, smiles, and walks right back out onto the bench. Later we find out that we didn’t need no stinking speech to get us ready so he didn’t give one. So we are lined up ready to go out for warm ups, and as soon as we hit the ice the arena just explodes with noise. Everyone from the school, and the town must have been there, it was amazing. The game just seemed to of passed so slowly. We go into the locker room after the first period high on adrenaline and in the lead 2 to 0. We just couldn’t wait to get back out there it was killing us not to be on that ice where we knew we were meant to be. So the second period comes and goes, now we are tied 4-4, and we are working the hardest ever. Then the third period comes and it like a games of freaking tennis back and forth they score, we score, they score then we do. Any way’s it all comes down to the last few minutes and we are down by one, dead tired and yet still not willing to give up. We go out with all that we had worked for this season on the line. We sacrifice our bodies and put our hearts on the line for what we may never see again, and with like a minute left on the clock Mike Lubin, a senior captain, blast’s a pass from Rick Bylund, another senior captain, right by the Gardner goaltender to send us into an overtime bout.  In overtime everyone just seemed to be like, I don’t know words can’t even describe exactly how we felt, the nearest thing that I can think of is that it was like a dream that none of us wanted to wake up from. Unfortunately we are slammed back into reality so hard it hurt when with a 1:26 left to go in overtime our defensive zone breaks down and a player from Gardner slips past our defense to go one on one with Lee Murray, our goaltender, and would you know it he finds the one opening right between Lee’s legs that ended our chance at a district trophy, but we still played one hell of a game and where proud of that fact. We fought until the bitter end and not a single person broke down and cried because we had nothing to cry about. You know to this day I still get nervous and start to shake with excitement every time that I watch that game on t.v. it was that good. Even though that I and everyone else has moved on from that game, sum have gone away to college, and others still around, we all will still remember that for as long as we live that one game will be chiseled into our memories as the greatest game of entire lives.

Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” is hard to describe because e it speaks for itself. It is a hard hitting work of tormented human persona at its core. The story follows two incredibly intelligent men by the names of Perry Smith and Dick Hitchcock who at first seemed to have committed the perfect pointless crime. They left almost no evidence behind in killing a unknown Clutter family the only things being left behind a bloody foot print a special type of knot that connected Perry to the crime. During their trial the prosecuting attorney claimed that Perry and Dick had no remorse in their crime. I believe this to be only true for dick because in the scene in which Perry relives the crime to the cop Perry says things like “I want to remember it the way it was.” and” Mr. Clutter was a good man and I thought of him as a good man right up until the moment when I cut his throat.” Perry also show remorse at the very end when he says, “I want to apologize, but, but who should I apologize to?” unlike the conman that Hitchcock was smirking, showing no remorse, and trying to wiggle his way out of any trouble until the very end.

Even though Perry committed the crime of multiple murder the audience seems to feel bad for him where as they would feel little or no sorrow for the character known as Dick Hitchcock. I believe this to be so because at his very core Perry is a brilliant good hearted person whom loves children, to draw, and play music. Some of Perry’s painting that he did in the years in which he awaited the noose are currently hanging in a small museum in Holtom, Kansas, the very state in which the crime was committed. If only there had been the insanity plea in the days of Mr. Smith’s trial because an later it was found out the Perry would not of been fit to stand trial. If only his talents had been realized sooner then just perhaps Perry could of resisted the thief/murderer life style of lying and running and of became one of America’s brightest new hopefuls in art and music.

In Eugene O’neill’s”Long Days Journey into Night”  novel  O’neill finally expresses how he truly has felt ever since he was a young man still living with his parents. It seems that in the novel as well as in his real life people around O’neill and his character Edmund just seem to give up on themselves and their lives. So these people/characters dive into a world of drug abuse, alcoholism, and anything else that can ease the pain of reality. From start to finish “Long Days Journey into Night”  is an autobiography  and a fitting masterpiece to a tormented soul. O’neill truly brought life, his life, into the theatre with this one.  By breathing life into his work O’neill will forever be immortalized within the lines of his play.

Long Days Journey into Night follows the Tyrone’s also known as the O’neill’s into a downward spiral into night. This spiral starts with the mother Mary relapsing into her addiction of morphine. Mr. Tyrone and the two sons Jamie and Edmund notice almost immediately but are reluctant to admit it until Jamie says, ” Oh, for God’s sake, do you think you can fool me, Mama? I’m not blind. No? Take a look at your eyes in the mirror!” When Mr. Tyrone finally admitsit also it crushes almost all hope within him that his wife will ever be free from her addiction. This also leads him to drink because he doesn’t want to deal with the fact that the wife that he adored so much is loosing her battle with an addiction for the final time. Thus becoming an alcoholic Mr. Tyrone dooms himself to not a life full of pain or happiness, but a life of numbness by alcohol which is something that no one could understand the reasons behind. Edmund the younger son is also cursed by some particularly serious condition, the only difference being that he didn’t have a choice in catching the disease know as consumption, unlike his parents whom brought their disease’s upon themselves. So Edmund’s way out was chosen for him unlike his parents who chose their own paths. Finally Jamie the only one who saw passed all the smoke and mirrors of his families pathetic life of penny pinching, disease, and addiction found his way out with alcohol and prostitutes which he was just fine with unlike the rest of the family who showed a least some sort of remorse towards others in the family with what they where doing. I guess one could say that the Tyrone family was just one big cycle of depression and some sort of substance abuse, one making the others continue down their ever destroyed paths of torture. The only escape from which is death, and the Tyrone ( O’niell) family saw that inmany different ways from death from illness to the task of taking ones own life. Even with such turmoil within one family for such a great writer to come from such a place is like the old legend of a   Phoenix riseing from the ashes so to did O’neill rise from the ashes or a turmoiled family to shine with the light of a Phoenix as a writer.

In the play “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams the character by the name of Laura is just like the pieces of glass figurines that she covenants so very much. By this I mean that she is very fragile in her nature and yet so very unique. Laura is so self-conciuos about the fact that she has a  minor physical handicap. Because of these doubts in herself Laura is incredibly shy around new people to the point that it makes her sick. This is where the whole point of the play comes to fruition. Since Laura’s brother Tom wants to leave, and go off on adventures like he see’s in the movies, their mother Amanda says:

That’s right, now that you’ve had us make such fools of ourselves. The effort, the preparations, all the expense! The new floor lamp, the rug, the clothes for Laura! All for what? To entertain some other girls fiance! Go to the movies, go! Don’t think about us, a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who’s crippled and has no job! Don’t let anything interfere with your selfish pleasure! Just go, go, go-to the movies! Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!

The struggle between mother and son is so very apparent within the play. It seem that every scene there is a fight between the two of them, usualy ending when Tom storms out of the house heading towards his movies. For Tom the movies are like his alternate reality, while for Laura the glass managerie is hers. The two go to these special places to escape their annoying mother. Tom and Laura are like ying and yang. One is passive the other agressive, but both can not stand their mother in some way. Yet Tom chooses to leave while Laura chooses to stay. This story is full of  paradoxes within these two personalities. Tom is blunt, fierce tempered, loud spoken, and selfish, while Laura is shy, soft spoken, mildly tempered, and charitable. Tom has a hard personality unlike his sister who is relatively soft. Yet Tom has a reason for the way he is, because his family is so self-dependent apon him that the pressure apon his soldiers must be imeasurable, and the stress that he faces having to deal with people like his mother gives him a fairly decent reason for wanting to leave. Although Tom can never realy leave this place. This is apparent when Tom says,” Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger-anyhting that can blow your candles out!” Tom tries so hard to find something to take his mind off of his sister, but in the end the only way that he can move on is to know that his sister has done so also.

In the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams the character called Blanche is just surrounded by a darkness. Everything that happens to Blanche always seems to blow up in her face, and because of this Blanche is loosing her grip on reality. Blanches past, present, and future all seemed to be marked with the touch of death. One might say that she is an angel of death in a humans body. Since death seems to follow Blanche no matter where she goes, Blanche starts to blur the line between reality and imagination.Thus (re)presentation of inner (psychological) reality, including the ‘flow’ of experience, through devices such as stream of consciousness plays a very big role within this play. An example of this is when Blanche flashes back to the point in time in which she had caught her husband in bed with another man.

By coming suddenly into a room that I thought was empty-which wasn’t empty, but had two people in it . . . the boy I had married and an older man who had been his friend for years . . . Afterward we pretended that nothing had been discovered. Yes, the three of us drove out to Moon Lake Casino, very drunk and laughing all the way. We danced the Varsouviana! Suddenly in the middle of the dance the I had married broke away from me and ran out of the casino. A few moments later- a shot! I ran out-all did!-all ran and gathered about the terrible thing at the edge of the lake! I couldn’t get near for the crowding. Then somebody caught my arm. “Don’t go any closer! Come back! You don’t want to see!” See? See what! then I heard voices say-Allan! Allan! The Grey boy! He’d stuck the revolver in to his mouth, and fired-so that the back of his head had been-blown away! It was because-on the dance floor-unable to stop myself-I’d suddenly said-”I saw! I know! you disgust me . . . ” And then the searchlight which had been turned on the world was turned off again and never for one moment since has there been any light that’s stronger than this-kitchen-candle . . .

Since this event was so traumatic for Blanche it is a natural thing to feel depressed, and often to start to loose ones mind, but because Blanche blamed herself for what happened to her husband these feelings were amplified ten fold. However this would not sadly be the last encounter with traumatic death that Blanche would face. Upon arrival to her sister Stella’s house in Elysian Fields, Blanche tells Stella hysterically how she lost their old home of Belle Reve. 

I,I,I took the bows in my face and my body! All of those deaths! The long parade to the graveyard! Father, mother! Margaret, that dreadful way! So big with it, it couldn’t be put in a coffin! But had to be burned like, rubbish! You just came home in time for the funerals, Stella. And funerals are pretty compared to deaths. Funerals are quite, but deaths-not always. Sometimes their breathing is hoarse, and sometimes it rattles, and sometimes they even cry out to you,”Don’t let me go!” Even the old, sometimes, say,”Don’t let me go.” As if you were able to stop them! But funerals are quiet, with pretty flowers. And, oh, what gorgeous boxes they pack them away in! Unless you were there at the bed when they cried out,”Hold me!” you;d never suspect there was a struggle for breath and bleeding. You didn’t dream, but I saw! Saw! Saw! And now you sit there telling me with your eyes that I let the place go! How in the hell do you think all that sickness and dying was paid for? Death is expensive, Miss Stella! And old Cousin Jessie’s right after Margret’s, hers! Why, the Grim Reaper had put up his tent on our doorstep! . . . Stella. Belle Reve was his headquarters! Honey-that’s how it slipped through my fingers!

The deaths of her family was about all that Blanche could endure, and with the last of her relatives gone from Belle Reve Blanche was finally free to begin her spiraling journey down into the boules of insanity. However this is not her complete downfall. It is with the meeting of a man when that truly happens. The man was Stanley, Stella’s husband whom Blanche knew from the start that he would be the end of her. It would turn out to be a battle of wits and nerves pitting these two up against each other, but as luck would have because of her past Blanche would be at a disadvantage in both categories, ultimately leading to her commission by Stanley to a sanatorium for the chronologically insane.

In “The Hollow Men” the author seems to be somewhat mentally scared by some experience that he had before writing it. Every word is so precisely chosen and fits ever so perfectly within each line. Within this poem death and someplace beyond, not living and yet not dead either, but someplace in between the two seem to be the main settings for this poem. In the lines

Those who have crossed With direct eyes,

to death’s other Kingdom

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column

The eyes are not here There are no eyes here

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

one can see a fixation with the word eyes. The eyes are the gateway to a persons soul. People experience so many different things using their eyes. Every persons eye is unique, like a snowflake, to that person. Eyes capture so much of who a person is. By looking into a persons eyes you can see happiness, sorrow, hatred, anger, compassion, love, or as in the case of The Hollow Men eyes show nothing but a hollow vessel, an empty soul, with no purpose but to be hollow and empty. With no purpose in life or in death one would just be just stuck between the two, sentenced forever to survive in a motionless void not moving, or speaking. The only thing left to these unfortunate souls is one word meaningless. Meaningless perfectly describes the hollow men and the author obviously knows this because he has known what lies in deaths other kingdom.

 Eyes are only the first complexity the author seems to have written about in this poem. The last five stanza’s or so the author describes paradox’s and says that a shadow lies between the two.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
  For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
  Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
and the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
  For Thine is the Kingdom

For thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

The author then goes on to say how the world will end not with a bang, but with a whimper. These lines are what make this poem a truly unforgettable thing. The eyes, the paradox’s, and the end with no more then a whimper gives us a truly magnificent piece of work from a person who mind is no longer bound to the earth, but has reached a plain beyond life, and even escaped death to see with unclouded eyes what there is to be truly seen.

In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot examples of modernist literature in the representation of inner (psychological) reality, including the flow of experience, through devices such as stream of consciousness can be seen throughout. In the lines “And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?””and “Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” it is extremely apparent that the writer has a deep inner fixation with time which leads to the very prime of his inner consciousness. The writer of this poem has seen and known so many things within his life, which just seems to build up this temporal window of words of what he has experienced and done within his own life. Time plays a key figure in all things, but especialy within the lives of people. Time and experiences determine who we are and who will we become. The line that especialy show this is “In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse” meaning that it only takes a minute for our lives to change in a thought or a word and in another minute a life has once again been altered in some way, with another thought or word. Time like our lives is always moving forward and never back and I believe that T.S. Eliot has fully captured the essence of this within his poem.

Heyy people it’s me Matty D here to talk to you about something that I think is interesting beyond all compare, and something that we all have in common to one another. It is the human mind. This part of our body is what controls everything within our body from motion to speech to memory, everything is controlled or influenced by ones mind. People only use a fraction of their total brain power at any one time. Could you imagine what the possibilities might be if one were to harnace even more of the total brain power that people are capable of? What could we create, what problems could we solve, and what would we find out about ourselves. People have a natural need to grow and improve themselves. Evolution has brought the human race so far, but how much further can we transcend the boundries of the mind until something gives.

So in order to further the boundries of the mind I will be talking about the (re)presentation of inner (psychological) reality, including the ‘flow’ of experience, through devices such as stream of consciousness in modernist literature. You see in life as well as in writing one can not always trust one’s self because ones mind may be playing tricks on one’s self. So the real question comes to pass are the character’s of a modernist’s writing going insane in a sane world or sane in an insane world. Is what we believe to be true actualy the truth or is some made up lie blinding us to what we can not understand, and thus is the flow of conciousness of a insane person any different then that of a sane person without this natural restraint within ones own mind. The mind like the universe is full of the unknown. We only understand a fraction of the whole in both the universe and the mind which is what I find so very interesting about this topic.