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Table of Contents

Post 1 - Children’s Story

Post 2 - PSA (Speak Up)

Post 3 - Personal Narrative (Family)

Post 4 - Voice Poems (Home Sweet Home, Mine, Gone)

Post 5 - Profound Art Poem

Post 6 - Poem

Post 7 - Rant (Annoying Types of People on Social Media)

Post 8 - Literary Devices Video 

Post 9 - Giving Back Video

Post 10 - What is Happiness Journal

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Dedicated to the Writer’s Craft class for sharing all the inspirational stories that I will carry on for a lifetime.

-Richard La

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Foreword

The ten pieces I have chosen for my Magnum Opus all revolve around the theme of voice. Through writer’s craft, I was made comfortable to freely express myself in my work and not shy away from any personal experiences when writing. As a result, the pieces I have chosen exhibit the feeling of myself being uncaged as well as the development of me being a writer, filmmaker, and person. The first piece in my magnum opus is my children’s story, Eddy’s Friends. I have chosen this piece as my first because It represents my innocent and inexperienced self at the beginning of writer’s craft, not knowing how much it would eventually change me. This piece is also significant because of the value it has to me. Throughout creating the book, I had to tap into my childhood in order to gain inspiration. The entire process was very nostalgic as I was reading old books that I read or were read to me by my mother or teachers. Going through the last year of high school and soon entering the ‘real world’, it felt as if there was a moment of innocence that rekindled for me during this process. Second to this piece is the PSA Jasneet and I created titled, Speak Up. With suicide being a major issue in today’s society, especially within students. We decided that through using our voice to create a PSA addressing it. Drawn from my own experiences, the main message in the PSA is to not only to try to speak up for yourself when you are feeling suicidal, but also to be more attentive and recognize the symptoms so that you could potentially save somebody else’s life. Following this is my personal narrative. Prior to this assignment, I have always felt caged although I did not know why I felt that way. Although I have expressed myself through writing and other pieces, I still felt muzzled when it comes to expressing myself. Through the class opening up and sharing their own personal stories, I was also able to share my own. From that point on, my chest felt a whole lot lighter. Next are my voice poems. This is in this series as it pertains to me sharing my voice through poetry. I speak about my personal life at home in Home Sweet Home, as well as relationship life in Mine and Gone. These poems represent a time in my life where I felt helpless; where I was not given the chance to use my voice and through writing about it, I get to finally have a voice about them. The next piece is my profound art poem. It’s a haiku that represents integrity and the will to never give up. Throughout my life there are many times where I felt as if there were no other options other than to give up. However I eventually learned through writing and film, that it was my way of still having hope. Next is the poem that Nathan and I created. The poem is about finding comfort in pain because we are used to it. The poem was significant to me because while writing it, we were able to open up to each other and share some of our experiences. I find that this process is what makes poetry so beautiful and impactful to me.

After this is my rant Types of People on Social Media. I included this in my rant as a way of comedic relief. Most of my pieces are serious so I thought that this would be fitting to relieve some tension. This also applies to the significance of the assignment. Throughout writer’s craft, we share a lot of personal stories and for this project, I wanted to share something light-hearted and take a break from writing about sad experiences. The next piece is a video that my group created for the literary devices assignment. We chose to do allusion and onomatopoeia in a rap music video format. From writing, filming, editing, to presenting, it was a process that made us friends closer and another memory to cherish forever. Following this piece is another video that I have created as member of Weston Aces. The video is about giving back to the less fortunate and spreads the message of love. Through this act, it reminds me to be grateful and appreciative of what I have. To conclude my magnum opus, I have chosen a journal where I described what happiness meant to me. I believe that this is fitting as the end because we all have goals that we aspire to in order to make us happy. However when we do obtain these goals, it is important for us to strive for even better things in order to make us even happier. Just like how my happiness in high school is ending, it is important for me to start a new chapter in my life and seek such happiness again.

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Family

Love, respect, and trust your family. This is the motto that was ingrained in me by my parents ever since childhood. It doesn’t matter how much I suffered from beatings, it was just discipline; tough love. All they do and everything they do is for me, so I shouldn’t be ungrateful. Most  , they told me to never think ill of family, to never talk back because it is a sin.

Ever since the police came from the downstairs neighbor’s complaint, I was never disobedient again. The mere thought of my parents being taken away haunted me. From then on, silence was the best way for things to eventually stop, or so I thought.

I was five when I moved to the city. This was when I was introduced to the rest of my family.

We had a considerable amount of relatives, with eight aunts and uncles. Every weekend we would have a family gathering at my grandparents. The place where it all started. I found this place to be my childhood haven of joy as I would see all my cousins that I grew up with here. While the adults were upstairs gambling and drinking, all of us cousins would be in the basement hanging out, playing video games. Out of all of us, I was the most quiet one.

I remember the awkward sound of him walking down the stairs would immediately send chills down my spine. Face red as the devil with the stench of twenty distilled spirits, he slurs to himself as he staggers towards us. I was always the first victim. His massive calloused hands gripped me. “I’m going to tickle you” my uncle slurs as the smell of alcohol from his breath clouds my nose. I was young and naive. Even though I felt discomfort with bruises leftover, all my other cousins were laughing and snickering, so I thought it was okay. I laughed along as he tickled me specifically in my genital area. All I could remember is that the tears I cried were not those from laughing. For the rest of my life, every Saturday I was touched.

I knew it was wrong, but I could never bring myself to say or do anything about it. I tried to rationalize by telling myself that this is normal since all my other cousins didn’t mind it. Besides he was family and all he had was good intentions for me.

For years this persisted. It even came to a point where my testicle was severely bruised. I couldn’t urinate for an entire week. I was a couple of years older by this point and I finally decided to tell my parents. Their response hurt me more than my uncle hurt me. All they told me was to tell him to stop. I couldn’t even bring myself to even imagine what my uncle would do if I were to tell him that. His authoritative elderly position in the family was probably the reason it was hard for my parents to say anything.

It all stopped in high school. Up until this point, I didn’t realize how severe my situation was until I was exposed to the public service announcements and hotlines about molestation. I never realized how much it all impacted me until I read the side effects of molestation victims. Throughout all my life I felt as if I never had a voice. I was an introvert. I was always afraid of sharing my opinion, and anytime I did speak passionately about something, my voice would tremble and my eyes would tear up immediately. I hated speaking. This translated to my academic life where I was afraid to talk to teachers, afraid of presentations, anything social I was afraid of.

This all still affects me to this day, however I have learned to accept and learn from this experience. It has taught me how powerful my voice is if only I used it back then but also how powerful it still is.

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Home Sweet Home

Home sweet home,

There’s something tragical

Yet magical about you.

 I’ve learned to love, trust, and adore you.

I’m getting used to you;

It feels normal.

I’m stuck home. (stockholm)

 Their eyes blinded by red,

As they scream and yell.

The flames grew as I sat and watched for hours like an arsonist.

 The constant fear of something bad happening;

He’s on edge with closed hands.

My anxiety levels rise.

I leap in front of her as she covers her eyes.

 Still wide awake at four in the morning on a school day.

I try to console them

But my chirps echo off the walls.

 I can’t leave yet.

This is my home,

My safe place,

My menagerie.

I can’t wait to graduate.

Mine

What you are to me,

No one else could ever be,

Don’t ever leave me.

Gone

Pale and quiet as ever.

She hasn’t moved a centimeter

Her skin calmly goes cold.

 I lean in for a kiss,

And encounter her crusted, chapped lips.

 Excited as I am,

She is dry as ever.

 She keeps me warm as I lay on her hollow chest.

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The boulder falls hard;

My limp body is shattered.

Still I breathe, I breathe.

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I fall backwards

                 sinking deeper 

                             and deeper.

Suddenly I’m drowning.

I don’t panic,

the feeling comforts me.

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RANT: Annoying Types of People on Social Media

God knows there are millions of annoying types of people on social media.Now as the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility” and I feel as if it is my responsibility to spread this message across so that if you are one of these types of people; please stop being one. Everybody uses social media. Everybody. And it’s really unfortunate. I really believe that there should be a screening process where people are tested for whether or not they are eligible to use social media. With so many different social media platforms, it’s as if each one has their own breed of annoying people. I used to actually enjoy social media. Now I just want to throw tomahawks at majority of people’s fingers that I have friended or followed so that they could never use social media again. The only reason why I still use it is for asking people for homework or notes I’ve missed.

Let’s start off with Facebook. I remember liking Facebook, when people actually used it for socializing. I used to get my news from there and I remember genuinely getting excited when I saw a notification. Now it’s literally a labyrinth of game invites. It started off with Farmville, and now it’s 8 Ball Pool invitations. No, I am not going to send you back 800 coins, you piece of shit. And fuck you for getting me excited, thinking that my crush liked my profile picture. Moving on are the preachers. These are the people who only post or share inspirational quotes or anything related to God. It’s cool if you want to spread the positivity, but I don’t want to feel like I’m walking into church whenever I log on to Facebook. Lastly are the attention seekers. The ones who have cryptic one-liners as their statuses. They’ll post things like “I can’t believe what just happened” or “Life just sucks” just to get people to ask “what happened” but never tell the rest of the story. They just let the comments and questions build up as they sit in a corner of their basement, staring at their phone while masturbating to all the attention they’re receiving.

Next is Twitter. The home of pussies. There’s this thing called sub-tweeting that absolutely drives me insane. It’s when  people indirectly tweet about someone without mentioning their name, though it’s clear as day who they’re referring to. What’s worse is when two people who have mutual animosity are simultaneously sub-tweeting each other. Please just grow up and say it to their face. It’s petty childish. Next are the wannabe motivational speakers. All they tweet and retweet are inspirational quotes or poems. If you’re one of these people, let me just tell you that nobody cares about your shitty tweets, that only you find cathartic. The least you could do to seem less cringeworthy is learn how to spell and use proper grammar the next time you feel like being Ghandi. The worst type of people on Twitter are the spoilers. These are the people who see the finale of a show or movie that you’ve been wanting to watch and ruin the ending by tweeting it. These are definitely my favourite people, and I certainly don’t wish death upon them or anything. Moving on is Snapchat. They need to change their name to CringeChat because that’s all I’m doing when I’m using the app. First are the one second snappers. This is when people set their snap so that people could only view it for a second. What the fuck is the point of that? Are you trying to be artistic, because you’re not. Next are the shitty singers. Stop singing if you can’t sing, please and thank you. Then there are the infamous “dry-streakers”. This is when people only snapchat you so that they can maintain a streak score. I’ve had it with all the blank “goodmorning snaps” and the ones where you press your camera against your shirt to make it black with the time of the day filter. Last are the people who literally snap everything that they’re doing. Nobody gives a shit about what you’re eating or what you’re doing on the toilet.  Finally is Instagram. Please stop it with the hashtags. There are some hashtags that will just drive me nuts. People will make the most obscure hashtags that nobody will ever search and then proceed to add 30 more under every upload. The whole purpose of hashtags are for people to search common or related topics, so when you upload a picture of you and your “squad” and hashtag it “mysquad100gangganggang”, you’re not helping anyone. Hashtag overkill, hashtag you’re annoying, hashtag stop. Second are the foodies. Unless you’re a professional food photographer or your food is really that exquisite, then please stop constantly posting photos of your Big Macs and whatever else that you eat. Last on the list are the self-proclaimed photographers. Just because you own a DSLR and the background is blurry, it doesn’t mean you’re a photographer. Just because you have three different filters on your photo, it doesn’t mean you’re a photographer. Just because your photo is black and white, it doesn’t mean you’re a photographer. Please save yourself from embarrassment and remove “Photographer” from your bio. Hashtag your photos look like my feet: crusty. 

Overall, If you find yourself to be one of these types of people on social media, please deactivate all your accounts.

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What is Happiness?

Happiness is classified in two different categories for: external and internal. I believe that true lasting happiness is found from within. It is easy to get lost in confusion between the two and indulge in the external happiness, mistaking it for internal. However, it is necessary to have both forms of ‘happiness’ in order to remain sane. Materials like cars, clothing, or money in general, are all classifications of external happiness. Having this is important because internal may be hard to find at first, so having some sort of external happiness is healthy as you go on your journey of obtaining true internal happiness. To have internal happiness means purpose. A purpose you are willing to die for. Once you figure out this purpose, you will be happy. You don’t need to necessarily achieve the goal as the process of obtaining this would also bring you happiness. Finding a relationship, health, religion, and so on are all examples of internal happiness. For me, my purpose is to make the world a little less shitty through filmmaking.