November

Nothing left in/from November, they say, but I didn’t think so. I’ve believed November’s nothing has been something the fullest. Why? I cannot tell exactly, because articulation requires artificiality. I just can say I perceived the nothing as by-product of overflowing. Yes, overflowing… that’s it! The over-flown fullness is the nothing of November, and it is not just exhaustion, or rather, pro-germination. I’ve loved November all through my life. Disguising barrenness, it embraces everything in the name of nothing, November. Time is snatching away my November, but I still love it.

Brit…

My new Friend

V. S.

There is something in his voice, a certain irresistible charisma. I could feel it from the start. Somewhat languid and low, it sounds cynical even when he expresses affection. I love it. I, then, didn’t imagine he was so young, much younger than I am and than I expected. He must have been much older than the forties to meet my guess. I don’t mean that his voice sounds old, yet it has some dignity enough to make me guess him to be much older than himself. Oh, if I were younger with ten years and more, I might love him as a man! Ha, I know how ridiculous I am, if fall in love with voice tone. I had too much reading and imagining. ))) In fact you know, I have so many lovers, some of whom are around my age, such as Sean Bean, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Ian Bostridge, Mikhail Pletnev, Andrew the Duke of York, and so on. I think I always fall in love with my imagination, even though I’m getting older and older. That’s it!! I can’t help it, because it has been my disposition since childhood, you know. As the girl, so the woman, and I add more, so the nanny. You don’t have to worry about me, though, I won’t go over the line. ;)

Anyway, I'll remember 22th of November. I've loved November all the way.

Brit…

A short Review of Sam Shepard's FfL

Victimization or been Victimized?:

Love Scratched and Erased in Fool for Love

What is the meaning of love? The dictionary says it means “a very strong feeling of affection towards someone who you are romantically or sexually attracted to.” In this sense, the feeling between Eddie and May is a faultless love, even though they are obsessively attached to each other. They can/must not share such a desirable love, though, because they are siblings. However deep the love is, we see a ridiculed love of brother-sister incest, though they are just half-blooded. Convention or morality defines the love as irrational and sinful, which leads us to sense the absurdity of it, simultaneously victimizes it. I say “victimize” here, but cannot say it is right formulation.

Eddie says to Martin, “The reason you’re taking her out to the movie is because you just want to be with her” (78). Love claims to be with, and just starts at that moment. May and Eddie would “never stop being in love” (86) from the beginning, and they not only “couldn’t take a breath without thinking of each other,” but also “got sick at night” when they were apart (91). Eddie tried to love another and May did so, but it’s just like running their heads against the wall. Their love is like a curse to their father, the Old Man, who lived a double life. It might be also a revenge on the deeds of the father and their mothers. The mothers, one of whom might smell but tolerate her spouse’s adultery, the other stuck to a married man, both were finally causers and victims of family tragedy. Eddie's mother blew her brains out with his father’s gun. The father’s duplicity and selfishness begot his children’s destructive love, and the mothers’ adherent loves brought the ruin of their own as well as the children’s misery of heart. Consequently, the parents and the children victimized each other.

The scenes are performed in a cheap motel on the edge of a desert―the Mojave Desert―. The desert, which implies infertile dryness, initially determines the love’s fatality. The love results in the void itself, and seems like the imaginary picture at which the Old Man keeps staring. In the early part of the play, May tells Eddie “You’re either gonna erase me or have me erased” (48). Eddie is like a disease to May (59) to be erased, and May to Eddie. They know their perceptible love is destined to vanish into nothingness. It is away from the sight of the audience as well. Paradoxically speaking, the nothingness in this case can/might be something indescribable, but it should be formless anyway, as if it’s in a dream. This kind of paradoxical sophistication would serve as appeasement between the characters and the audience, who have many things to say but hard to articulate them. One cannot but let it be.

There is no absolute victim in the play. By victimizing one another, they all become injurers not victims, who accept being inflicted. Loves of the play deserve to be erased within the context of the text, because they―the children as well as the parents― separately loved in each own way, that is some addicted selfish way, scratching and devastating themselves. The love of the children―Eddie and May― lies in the heart of emotional ruins. Love has no victim but itself. We humans victimize feelings in the name of love, so love is done by its name.

Brit...

(Written on 9 November, Handed out on 10 November)

A short Review of B. Henley's CoH

A review of Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart:

Patriarchal and Racial Absurdity

(aka. Understandable Absurdity and Unacceptable Absurdity)

Before proceeding, I want to pay reverence to the work of an attractive playwright, Beth Henley. Of all the American dramas I’ve read till now for this semester, this one of Beth Henley’s was most comfortable for me to read at one glance. As compared to other dramas I read earlier, CoH has more moderate and easier dialogues with which protagonists communicated. I, as a woman, could share some emotional depth with those three sisters. Of course, the sisters are in different situations and their attitudes run cross to each other in some cases, so I feel empathy with them separately. This play has many things to be discussed, but this time I’ll choose just two parts about patriarchal and racial absurdity because I am to develop discussion in only a page.

Lenny as the eldest girl retains certain modulation of attitude toward the conventionally patriarchal order to which she has been accustomed. Her recognition of Old Granddaddy’s devotion to the girls (264) shows it well. We, however, become to know that all of three sisters were victims of patriarchal ideals in a sense. Lenny, due to her deformed ovary, was psychically branded as an unproductive woman, so has been regarded to make useless wife. Meg, who seems to be impertinent and liberal, was also a victim of [grand] paternal expectation as seen from Act Three. There she says “he’s just gonna have to take me like I am” and “finally I get my wits about me, and he conks out” (278, 279). Babe, let alone commenting about her macho/bad husband, was victimized by patriarchal convention, which has bound women with typical classification and stereotyped wisdom. Old Granddaddy “remarked how Babe was gonna skyrocket right to the heights of Hazlehurst society and how [bold/wild] Zackery was just the right man for her whether she knew it now or not” (240-41). Even Old Granddaddy, represented a good patriarch, dominated his granddaughters’ lives and served as causes of their miseries. There seems to be no need to take Zackery or the girls’ bastard father into discussion because we already saw authoritative patriarch, good or bad, exerted harmful influence upon women.

I declare the most serious defect of this drama is the dealing with the relationship between Babe and Willie Jay. Babe is twenty-four and the black boy Willie is fifteen. Consequently Babe had sex with a Juvenile and their intercourse is plainly illegal. Babe’s excuse of loneliness or her after-protection for Willie against Zackery and Hazlehurst society cannot compensate for her deed. Nevertheless, the play justifies Babe’s situation and makes readers sympathise with her. Its absurdity becomes clear when we consider other similar situations. Let us think of other three cases of intercourses: between adult black man and young white girl; between adult white man and young black girl; between adult black woman and white young boy. What do you think of those? I might not have to discuss further, and probably some definite answers can be supposed. In the strict sense, the defect I proposed would not be imputed to Henley, but to the social.

Family relation, that is, the confirmation of the strong ties among sisters, and self-awakening/self-realization of them as independent and positive/active women are partial virtues of the play. Simultaneously we cannot ignore the uneasiness that the play gives us, though.

Brit...

(Written on 31st October, Handed out on 3rd November)