该是好好静下心来规划规划人生的时候了。

 

目前觉得要在美国留下来还是得靠会计。毕业后一定得进UIUC或者UNC深造才能竞争得过白人。

 

要加10倍得努力才行了。

 

中国我爱你，上海我更爱你，不过现实所迫我估计是回不来了。

 

所有正在留学或者有意留学的兄弟姐妹们，趁早开始打算啊。选一条最适合最可行的路吧。

 

Marriage is a very risky investment.

First, think about what you use to make the investment? 

Second, think about what do you base on when you make such investment?

Finally, think about how many factors may influence the “profitability” of the investment?

So how can marriage be not risky? You invest YOURSELF into it; you dated your would-be “significant other” for like 3 or 4 years and you use that as the most important reference which usually is the most romantic and unrepresentative period of the whole relationship; and finally, there will be tons of things that may affect the marriage and those best known ones are financial crisis, “men’s nature” and time.

 And most tragically, what make people make such investments? Hormone and LOVE!!! What’s hormone? Something makes people horny. What’s LOVE then? LOVE is some amazing thing that can make people extremely brave, optimistic and illogical.

 

So here are a couple of measures that I think people could take to make marriage a bit safer:

1.       Date your future “significant other” long enough. I used to believe that dating someone for a long period is not healthy if it finally comes to marriage because nothing is gonna be fresh anymore and honeymoon will no longer be like honeymoon, no to mention having consummation. But now is seems to be more like a bull-shit theory to me kz if you really love ur significant other, it doesn’t matter how long you two had dated, if love is still there and holding strongly, nothing should seem old or not fresh.

 

2.       Know what kind of person your significant other kz you plan to spend the rest of your life with her/him.  If there’s something about her/him that you can not stand (especially if he/she is LAZY/ignorant/having an addictive personality, kz these kinds of people can get into financial crisis quite easily), you better figure that out before you two get married. And DO NOT force yourself or even change yourself to accommodate her/him.  DO NOT sacrifice yourself kz it’s not worth it and it WILL come back. You better find a way to accept this her/him truly and completely. By saying “completely” I mean 100 percent, by saying “truly”… I mean “TRULY”…!!!

 

 

3.       Not only do you need to accept your significant other, but also need to be similar to her/him.  If there are not enough common things that you two share, then it will be a pain in the ass once you get married. IT WILL BE, TRUST ME.

 

 

4.       Be sexy. We call ourselves “advanced/superior/smartest animals” and that’s exactly why we are more easily dominated by our lust than dog/cats/donkey/tiger etc.  So take good care of yourself once you get married and be a sexy wife/husband. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with pleasing your significant other visually& sexually.

 

In order to make my point even more clear and not to digress, let’s see how doing these things helps to make marriage a less risky investment. The reason behind it is quite simple and straightforward --- the more profitable the “investment” looks, the more the couple are willing to be involved in such “investment”. In another word, the more the couple believes that they will constantly get abundant happiness out of this marriage, the more they are willing to devote to the commitment. Therefore doing those four things simply makes the whole “investment” look more assured and profitable and at the same time, eliminates as many undesirable factors as possible. Thus, once the stability of the investment is created, a virtuous circle is pretty much established.

这段时间，感触颇深。

 

先从最近的说起。

 

凌晨两点，也就是刚才那会儿，看了Frank黄晟的Space。

 

 

看了Frank拍得很多照片，印象中最深的有两张。一张是湛蓝的海边的红顶小房，另外一张是日出时那滚滚袭来的暗红色的云朵。发现这应该是我一时半载都不会具有的情趣的产物。

 

我一直以为自己是个还算有情趣的人，不过我突然意识到，自己活得很沉重，而活得很沉重的人是很难算得上有情趣的。

 

 

原因估计是一直以来我都给自己的肩上摆上许多的压力。因为我知道爸爸工作很辛苦，我若是不努力读书会对不起他；我也清楚作为一个男人，将来是要做顶梁柱的；每当我看到那些我认为的活得很底层的人，我总会以此来告诫自己要更用功的念书…

 

 

一直以来，虽说不上引以为豪，但我还是为自己有这般居安思危的意识而感到满意的。不过Frank的这几张照片真的有点近乎当头棒喝的意味，让我开始反思：为什么同样身在北美的我找不到这般的景色？得出的答案是估计自己忙得有点盲了吧。有句3岁小孩都知道的话：眼睛是心灵的窗户。我虽不瞎，但觉得自己的窗沿上貌似已经积了一层薄薄的灰。

 

 

 

接下来是第二件事：俺恋爱了。 a

 

 

最后要谈谈自己在枫华招生办打工的感想。

 

这两天一直有一个叫罗成的初三毕业生和他的妈妈联系我，向我征询关于入学枫华方面的建议。

 

说实话第一次他的妈妈打我手机我心中有一丝莫名的烦，但是又用手机接了他们母子几次电话以后，我真的感受到他妈妈的一片焦心和对自己儿子的期望，还有就是罗城自己心中慢慢形成的一片上进心。

 

然后我觉得自己有责任去帮助他，协助他的妈妈，告诉他我积累的经验，用自己过去的那些经历，来引导他。我真的希望因为我曾经为他指过路，他今后在枫华的学习生活能一帆风顺。

 

 

小节一下：Brian，你不能忘了有一样东西叫生活。

 

 

 

  

The Study of the Two Categories of Borders

ChunQing Yin

 

It is obvious that borders are not the same. They could be titled in different way and thus change completely. However, the categories of the borders in the First World War and the Second World War are considerably limited. Those borders could basically be sorted into two groups: the byproduct and the catalyzer. For instance, geographic borders were nothing more than one of the byproducts of the First World War, whereas racial borders that Nazi Germany built over Jewish people in the Second World War not only serves as one of the most predominant aspects of Hitler’s racial superiority lie, but also maximized the cruelty of the war by being an essential precondition of the holocaust. This border could definitely be considered as an extremely powerful catalyzer of the escalation of the war. In the following paragraphs, the negative influences that the “byproduct” border cast upon people and the significant role that the “catalyzer” border played will be examined in a more detailed way.

      It is very necessary to introduce a great Austrian writer before the investigation of various borders starts. Stefan Zweig (November 28, 1881 – February 22, 1942) was born in Vienna in a wealthy Jewish family. His experiences in the two world wars transformed into a great amount of inspiration and cast a big influence on his creative works. In many of his fictions, very simple plot was complemented by extremely rich descriptions, which always reflect the helplessness and desperation engraved in those characters’ hearts straightforwardly. In the introduction of one of his bibliographies, it says that “Zweig felt duty-bound to bear witness; he knew that he had an urgent and incredible tale to tell, and he hastened to get this memento of an age down on paper while he was still able to do so.” (Introduction of World of Yesterday, vi, by Harry Zohn) As a matter of fact, Zweig had already fulfilled his role as a witness of those two world wars perfectly by composing master piece fictions. In connection to Stefan Zweig’ two short stories Buchmendel and The Royal Game, similarities between the byproduct–borders built in those two wars will be looked at first.

Readers may feel an intense sense of sympathy after reading Buchmendel, in which the tragic story about the “murder” of an eccentric but brilliant man was told. Jacob Mendel, a Russian-Jewish second-hand book dealer who devoted his whole life to books, had an encyclopedia-like brain, where numerous information about hundreds of thousands of books was stored --- his titanic memory “was indelibly recorded a picture of the tile-page of every book that had been printed” (Kaleidoscope, 238).

 The narrator of the story, “I”, made acquainted with Mendel through consulting him about the books relevant to Mesmer the magnetizer, “who is even today too little known” (Kaleidoscope 235). After sneezing at the librarian’s unwillingness to provide help by redefining it as his incompetence, Mendel “closed his left eye for an instant, as if excluding a grain of dust…Then, as though reading from an invisible catalogue, he reeled out the names of two or three dozen titles, giving in each case a place and date of publication and approximate price.” (Kaleidoscope, 237) Such a man who was so generous about his knowledge, however, could also be offended easily. Later when “I” proposed to write down the names of those books for him, he flashed a scornful and overwhelmingly superior look at “me” --- “the royal look with which Macbeth answers Macduff when summoned to yield without a blow.” (Kaleidoscope, 238) Nevertheless this kind of arrogance was definitely understandable, which further consolidated his identity as the absolute authority in this area. 

However, tragedy befell on him partially because his remarkable mind --- Mendel was too concentrated to let the fact of a war going on enter his mind. In his world which was the universe of books, the First World War never happened until he was held custody for the accusation of collaborating with Austria’s enemies --- he merely sent a postcard to Paris, an enemy country to complain that the magazines he had subscribed failed to reach him. The real disaster came later when Mendel was questioned about his birthplace, he did not even hesitate for a single second before admitting that he was actually a Russian draft-dodger without Austrian nationality. He was sent to a concentration camp consequently and was deprived of everything --- his watch was taken away, his spectacles were broken on his way to the camp and most importantly, he was separated from his beloved books.

Up to now, several different borders have been set up --- the clearly-defined geographic border, which was marked with conspicuous red lines on the map of Europe; the barbed-wire fences, behind that a magnificent brain in its unique perfection, which was “no less remarkable a phenomenon than Napoleon’s gift for physiognomy, Mezzofanti’s talent for languages, Lasker’s skill at chess-openings, Busoni’s musical genius” (Kaleidoscope, 239) was apart from its once abundant irrigation forever--- those words, titles, names; in addition, out of those two types of borders, the most detrimental and lethal border was constructed: a powerful mental border which forcedly dragged Jacob Mendel out of his Eden and imprisoned him in the reality, which was a piece of barren land without any findable knowledge, a huge suffocating human dunghill in which Mendel got lost and wilted unceasingly. He was no longer a lonely astronomer immersed in the observation of his familiar stellar of books --- two years later after he got out of the concentration camp, he was never the same man, “the blood-red comet of the war had burst into the remote, calm atmosphere of his bookish world”. (Kaleidoscope 255) By that time, Jacob Mendel had already been assimilated into a piece of wretched belonging of the concentration camp, a grain of dust vanished in the cold wind full of the smell of blood, and one of the thousands same victims who perished at the edges of those borders. Jacob Mendel fell down in the street on a freezing January morning and died of pneumonia in the hospital soon after.

 Same kinds of borders were present in the Second World War, too. In Stefan Zweig’s most famous novella, The Royal Game, which was written in the last four months of his life, similar tragedy was staged again. One of the main characters, Dr. B, once was targeted by Nazis since huge amount of funds could be elicited from the crucial information of Austrian imperial families which he was holding and protecting. Inevitably, Dr. B was captured and sent to a concentration camp. Instead of torturing Dr. B physically, Nazis merely locked him in a single room in a hotel. The room did not seem unpleasant at all at first, but in this confined space, Dr. B felt a total void surrounded him physically and spiritually, “a complete vacuum in time and space”. “There was nothing to do, nothing to hear, nothing to see” (The Royal Game & Other Stories, 24) and Dr. B spent four months in this room with several pieces of silent furniture.

  An unexpected breakthrough came on a humid rainy day --- Dr. B stole a book! However, it was merely a chess hand-book, a collection of 150 championship games. Noticing that rehearsing the games on the book as the only option besides going crazy in this dead silence, Dr. B started to play these games through. Little by little, playing chess concentrated his mental energy and reconstructed his messy mind, and his brain was no longer worn out by the surrounding void.

 The readers may think that Dr. B was finally out of danger. Contrarily, this was the start of an even worse “self-torture” to some extent. After playing every game twenty or thirty times, “the pleasure of novelty and surprise was lost”. (The Royal Game & Other Stories, 33) The only way out of this peculiar maze sounds extremely absurd: Dr. B had to invent new games by himself, so he forcedly split his own brain into two parts --- a white brain and a black one.

 We may generalize that Dr. B was not only a victim to the Nazi, but also to the Second World War, and three layers of borders was built orderly during this devilishly clever “solitary confinement”. The first border consisted of the walls of that hotel room, which even though was the shallowest one among the three, separated Dr. B from the entire world, and more importantly, all the human things. The nothingness around him never stopped destroying and corroding his mind since the first day he moved in, which incurred the second layer of border consequently: Dr. B was no longer in touch with his sane mind and was pushed by this motile border to the edge of insaneness. The incident of practicing chess, which even though postponed the date of Dr. B going crazy, failed to prevent it from happening. It even worsened the situation, since when Dr. B played against himself, the separation of his mind gradually matured and developed into the white ego and the black ego. Each part also gained the desire to win, to dominate, to defeat the other and they kept rushing each other to move forward. From morning to night, one game after one game, Dr. B was totally controlled by his two selves and “thought of nothing else except Bishops and pawns, Rooks and Kings, Ranks and files, and Castling Mate”. (Royal Game & Other Stories, 36) Playing chess, which used to be a self-salvation a few months ago, had turned into “a compulsion, a mania and a frenetic madness”. (Royal Game & Other Stories, 37) Dr. roared to himself and never stopped pacing angrily and impatiently, as if there were really two aggressive people there playing against each other. Finally he fainted from the exhaustion under this madness. This by no means created the third border based on the other two, which probably had engendered the most amazingly destructive schizophrenia ever.

If the border is not significant enough, neither is the war. Though the physical and mental damage on people done by the “byproduct” border like the ones showed in Zweig’s stories can never be neglected, the significance of the “catalyzer” border is way more catastrophic. This explains why the Second World War could be considered as an updated version of the First World War in both its scale and ruthlessness. One of the goriest borders in human history was installed in the Second World War --- the racial policy which first aimed at Jews and extended to other non-German race later. Its range and absurdity was unprecedented, as Hitler’s intention was to build a purified Germanic Empire; and so was its unmeasurable influence, since it had physically and mentally traumatized the whole Jewish race so severely that Zionism was created and treated by Jews as a necessity to survival.

Hitler claimed that a non-ideological program is like a church without its dogma, he also declared before his military leaders on 23 November 1939 that “a racial war has broken out and this war shall determine who shall govern Europe and with it, the world” (Cesarani, 87). Hitler was completely an advocator and fanatic of social Darwinism. In his lunatic mind, “war was not a moral issue, a question of right or wrong, but the physical means to a social end: the survival of the superior Germans” (Cesarani, 86).

 Nazi German’s invasion into Poland was marked as the commencement of the Second World War which was also the point where “the corrupting process of racial imperialism could be launched most easily.” (Browning, 430) This victory should mean a lot to Hitler, since in his concept, it was the moment that the Diktat Versailles was tore up and the start of not only the conquest of German’s survival space, but also the process of gaining the political power with the intention to achieve the extinction of World Jewry.

In order to let this process accelerate, Hitler embarked on setting up the racial border by putting forward the notion “the Jewish Problem” --- A glance at Hitler’s writings and speeches indicates that two Jewish problems existed: “First there was the ‘conspiracy of world Jewry’, by which Hitler meant the power of Jewish-led international finance to do Germany harm”. This lie definitely worked very well in causing the hatred in Germans. Secondly, “there was ‘sub-human Jewry’ ... which had contaminated German blood and would still do so, unless checked” (Michman, 238) It should never be hard to understand Hitler’s euphemism --- the discrimination and dehumanization against Jews are shown clearly here, and the word “checked” can not imply anything other than aggression and slaughter. Based on the ideas of those two problems, a whole set of long-range provocatively racial concepts like “Lebensraum (living space), Volksgemeinschaft (folk community), Entfernung der Juden (removal of the Jews) and Vernichtungskrieg (war of extermination)” were set up step by step. (Cesarani, 99)

Also, it is intriguing to see how the growth of those racial concepts synchronized with the escalation of the war  --- In September, after succeeded in the blitzkrieg against Poland, Hitler initiated a demographical reorganization based on his racial lines; In May and Jun 1940, delighted in the victory over France, Hitler consented to the disposal of the eastern populations and the Madagascar Plan (the evacuation of European Jews to the island of Madagascar); In July 1941, when German troops marched two-thirds the distance to Moscow after penetrated Russian border defense and besieged huge number of Russian soldiers, the implementation of the mass murder of European Jewry was foreseeable after Hitler granted his approval to it; and when Hitler retrieved the hope of destructing the final Russian forces from the victory of Vyasma and Bryansk, he permitted the executions of all Jews --- men and women, old and young, which was the very notorious “the Final Solution”.

Though the idea “that the euphoria of victory emboldened and tempted an elated Hitler to dare ever more drastic policy” (Browning, 427) is valid, it seems even more proper to say that every victory injected more confidence about the realization of racial purification into Hitler and those followers of the racial dogma. In Hitler’s peculiar mind, there was a belief that “conflict in all its forms was inevitable and the father of all things” (Cesarani, 86). Therefore, it is not hard to find the reason of the exponential growth of the war’s scale, since both the racial ideologies and borders were evolutionary: at first, only the German-Jews were targeted, who were blamed for causing the contamination of German blood; then disasters befell on Polish Jews, of which one of the most significant events could be the ghettoization in Poland --- from 1939 to 1941, “the Warsaw ghetto contained more Jews than all of France; the Lodz ghetto more Jews than all of the Netherlands. More Jews lived in the city of Cracow than in all of Italy.” (Browning, 194); and when German troops finally raced towards Soviet-Union, it was obvious that “the idea of acquiring living space through the conquest of Russia was inextricably intertwined with the extermination of Bolshevism and Jewry”. (Cesarani, 97)

Here, another new ideology which was the anti-Bolshevism was added to Hitler’s vocabulary and the troops were indoctrinated that they should see the German-Russian war as “a struggle between two different races and act with the necessary severity.” (Cesarani, 90) During the invasion of Soviet-Union, “the capacity of the Nazi regime to mobilize Germans to kill even non-Jews by the millions is evident. In these cases anti-Semitism was not even a relevant much less sufficient motivation” (Browning, 432), since Nazi racial imperialism had already devalued the lives of whole categories of human-beings in addition to Jews. Thus, Russian was categorized as a degraded race in Hitler’s concept, too and Nazi racial policy definitely “was radicalized in quantum jumps… with war shaping those objectives by its own momentum” (Cesarani, 99). Once again, the racial border evolved; meanwhile it shadowed and devoured more victims with more variety.  The dogma “blood and merit in battle formed the basis of the selection process of the new German National community” (Cesarani, 92) could be considered as a very important essence of the racial border (ideology). It would be no exaggeration to state that this border was generalized, radical and provocative enough to serve as the most powerful and decisive “catalyzer” to the escalation of this whole war.

 So much animosity had blended into Hitler’s malicious ideology that it seems like such an intangible thing was solidified to some tangible object --- any methods besides physical destruction of Nazi armies would seem to be futile in a battle against the racial border constructed by them. However, it is reasonable to infer that there might be some thing that was convincing enough to compete with the hatred derived from the racial border. Actually, such magic things are not hard to be detected and two movies, Schindler’s List and The Pianist which contain such magic things will be looked at first.

Portrayed by Liam Neeson, German munitions manufacturer Oskar Schindler used up all of his property to save as many Jews as possible. It would not be possible to depict every single atrocity done by Nazi officers in that movie, since countless crimes committed by them were presented during merely those three hours; neither would it be necessary to acknowledge that precious list here, which was worth 1,100 lives, because numerous people have already thanked it. What will be focused here is just the ending --- how those Jewish survivors gratefully wrote a letter and every one of them signed on it to thank Schindler, also with the aim to assuring he would not be captured because of his identity, a member of the Nazi party; how Schindler put on the ring contained the bless from 1,100 people, which would definitely stay on his finger permanently; and how Schindler kneeled down, sobbing like a penitent and kept saying “I could have got one more person…” (3:03:25). The brief dialogue which was when Schindler said “I didn’t do enough”, responded by Stern “You have done so much” makes people think so much --- while most of the Nazis were engaging in slaughtering Jews, what makes this exception devoted everything that he had into the salvation of Jews? The answer is simple and obvious: the humanity Schindler possessed and his sympathy towards Jewish people completely transcended and smashed that powerful racial border. Too pathetic that so few Germans were able to find those two things which should be right in their own hearts.

In another movie, The Pianist, which is based on the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, at the time Poland's most acclaimed pianist, the audience may see how the life of this genius was transformed during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw beginning in 1939. Though the scenes about this Jewish pianist’s life in the concentration camp and the ruin of every single block are indeed astonishing, they appear to be far less compelling than just a piano-piece, Chopin's G Minor Ballade that Szpilman played near the end of the movie. This piece of music not only melted the stone-coldness in the German officer’s expression, but also deeply moved that enemy officer. Music, one of the most important parts of human arts, is universally recognized borderless. Such a trait lets the beauty it reveals become extremely heart-quaking and the power it possesses is absolutely capable of competing with that border. Later, the German officer helped Szpilman by bringing him food and a coat. However, before that, merely from the German officer’s meditative gaze at the piano and the silhouette of Jewish pianist sitting in front of him when the melody died away, we might say that the racial border rooted in his mind had already collapsed at that moment.

Now it’s time to looking back Zweig’s works, (also those that are not examined here)  and it is not surprised that Zweig did not try to impugn Hitler explicitly, since such thing would be clearly identified as a political attack which seems to contradict his identity --- one of the purely greatest writers in the western world. Also, his depression which engendered his suicide was mostly caused by the thoughts about the decay of not only the literature in Europe, but also the whole human arts. It is a pity that such a great writer didn’t choose to use his pen to fight against the racial border set up by Hitler, which could have been a force that might be hardly neglected. However, on the other hand, such limitation in Zweig’s work helps us focus on the byproduct borders more easily, which definitely let the comparison between them and the catalyzer borders become more conspicuous --- In Zweig’s fictions, the borders that could be detected are more like supporting roles which merely constitutes part of the destructions of the war, whereas the racial border in the Second World War was so significant that they had already mixed with the war itself and moved along with it. Such trait can be the reason behind the success of movies about the Second World War, especially one like Schindler’s List, since intensive attention was paid to such noteworthy history events in that kind of movie.

                                                                                                                                               

References:

1. Zweig, Stefan. THE ROYAL GAME & OTHER STORIES. Harmony Books, 1981.
2. Jürgen, Föster. “THE RELATION BETWEEN OPERATION BARBAROSSA AS AN IDEOLOGICAL WAR OF EXTERMINATION AND THE FINAL SOLUTION”.  THE FINAL SOLUTION, Origins and implementation. Cesarani, David. Routledge, 1994. 85~102.
3. Zweig, Stefan. KALEIDOSCOPE. The Viking Press · New York, 1934.
4. Browning, Christopher R. THE ORIGINS OF THE FINAL SOLUTION. UNIVERSITY OF NEVRASKA PRESS, Lincoln, and YAD VASHEM, ferusale.
5. Zweig, Stefan. WORLD OF YESTERDAY. UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS, 1964.
6. Michman, Dan. “‘The Holocaust’ in the Eyes of Historians: The Problem of Conceptualization, Periodization, and Explanation”. Modern Judaism © 1995 Oxford University Press. 233~264.
7. Schindler’s List. Steven Spielberg. Amblin Entertainment. 1993.

今天碰到两个每天只睡3个小时的女人. =   =''

 

于是我开始对自己说:

 

“还没学到极限，还没。”

从psy 101中学到了什么?

 

没学到什么有价值的东西，除了一条人生哲理。

 

今天考了心理学。是准备的最充分的一次，也估计是考得最不如意的一次。

 

第一次的时候，记得只是把书看了一遍，然后考了很多上课的notes.最后只考了86（老师给附加分了）。

第二次的时候，把书看了一遍，还看了notes，最后因为老师给了很多附加分，考了91。

然后是今天的这次。为了能考好我做了很充分的准备。每次上完课当天趁还有印象就把教的那章chapter看一遍。考前一个星期把6个chapter 300页看一遍。昨天硬是花了整个晚上再把300页看了一遍，还看了notes，还吸取上次教训，把所有和人名有关的知识都背得烂熟。

 

结果考完有8道不确定...C A O！

 

所以Psy101教会我的人生哲理就是：有时候拼了命也不一定会成功的 T_T。

 

 Two Women’s Obsessions with Fantasies, Concerned in Two Aspects

 

It is obvious that the lives of the daughter and yellow woman, who are respectively the main characters of the stories “A Rose in the Heart of New York” and “Yellow Woman”, are impacted with obsession with fantasies. The Obsession, which colors these two women’s lives, could be considered as the most important element in both of the stories. The way in which Edna O’Brian and Leslie Marmon Silko demonstrated the obsession varies noticeably but the negative influences it casts on the characters’ lives can be considered similar.  

When comparing the way the elements were unveiled, the whole process by which the daughter harbored her fantasies was depicted in more detail than the one in the story “Yellow Woman”. From the point when the mother fed her daughter “its first bottle, looked down at its wizened face” (53), to the moment the daughter lost her mom forever, various feelings like happiness, helplessness, or extreme love were frequently revealed throughout different scenarios. For instance, the daughter and her mother built up great attachments simply by sharing food and watching each other eat. Another example would be their leisure Sunday promenades, which later on developed to “strolls, picked blackberry, consulted them for worms, made preserve, and slept side by side, entwined like twigs of trees or the ends of the sugar tongs.” (55) Readers can immediately feel the intimate bond between the two and the delight that they shared by reading these words. The daughter’s nightmare of losing her mother as a result of choosing the wrong path and her imaginary realization of “she was not wanted, she was in their way” (Page 59) clearly indicates the strong feelings of insecurity caused by the over-dependence on her mother. The most intriguing part is her incomprehensible desire of killing her own mother. It instantly convinces the readers how deeply this daughter immersed herself in the obsession with the image of her mother. This imaginary murder could be considered an action which would ultimately bring her possession over her fantasy, since from that time on she might have felt that she would always take over her mother’s heart, from which others would never be able to usurp her position. These exquisite descriptions that Edna O’Brian used made the daughter’s intoxication from her fantasy look so clear and believable, to which the readers paid the most attention.

In the story “Yellow Woman”, Silko revealed the cravings for fantasies in a more implicit and mild way. Great effort was afforded on depicting beautiful environments. For example, a placid morning could be pictured in no time based on the following sentences: “The small brown water birds came to the river… They bathed in the river silently. I could hear the water, almost at our feet where the narrow fast channel bubbled and washed green ragged moss and fern leaves” (260) This piece of description not only served as a very impressive beginning of a short story, but also as a distant implication of the depressed heart of “yellow woman” that was rejuvenated because of the presence of Silva. During the scene when they stood beside each other on a high mountain, very little amorous conversation between them was recorded, nor was any detailed description about their excitement. Their “standing in the sky with nothing around” (263) and their hair being tousled by the wind was simply a beautiful scene. However, because of a brief sentence from Silva, “From here I can see the world”, (263) this whole wonderful scene became very meaningful--- Instead of his love being expressed straightforward, Silva hinted it by referring to the expansion of his entire horizon.

It is also obvious that extremely strong feelings could seldom be found throughout the story of “Yellow Woman”, even at the scenario where the yellow woman and Silva were separated. The gunshots, which literally ended this yellow woman’s fantasy, should have been strident, sorrowful and dark, whereas its echo merely faded into silence like puffs of smoke dispersed by breeze and not even a fit of disturbance was generated from there. Later, Silko simply used the sentence “I walked toward the river on a wood-hauler’s road that I knew would eventually lead to the paved road.” (267)to imply that the fantasy of the yellow woman was over.

Through Edna O’Brian and Leslie Marmon Silko’s powerful writings, which even though were composed in quite different styles, readers were able to realize the significance of how both women’s lives were empowered by their fantasies. In “A Rose in the Heart of New York”, this obsession with fantasy has already become an intense addiction. When the daughter’s mother was gone for a week so that she had to live with those two old neighbors, she would only “answer them in single syllables, just yes or no, mostly no.” (57) Her rude rejection towards others’ care is quite noteworthy. During her mother’s one-week absence, it seems that she was almost in a state of drug withdrawal, which made her heart lose the capability of sensing any other feelings like gratitude temporarily. Also, the continuity of tracking the fantasies was so crucial, or even addictive to the daughter that she had to look for substitutes when her mother wasn’t with her, which incurs the interlude about her fascination with the nun. Their innuendos were quite ambiguous, which finally led to an immoral intimacy which could only be conveyed secretly, as both of them were aware of. Even though it was very unacceptable and turned out to be an extreme grotesque later on, obviously the daughter could not stop herself from chasing this fantasy.

Regarding Leslie Marmon Silko’s story, yellow woman’s action of satisfying her needs of fantasy could be viewed as a sacrifice. She gave up her fidelity which is generally considered very important to women in exchange for a true romance. By investigating yellow woman’s monotonous marriage and learning the indifference came from her family, it looks like yellow woman’s suffering in real life incurs this sacrifice. However, it seems even truer that her dissatisfaction of her current marriage and the betrayal that she committed were generated from her obsessions with the fantasies. The yellow woman’s imagination about how her family moved on without her was deeply disappointing. Her wish of the family realizing her absence indicates that she was still concerned about them. By further adding the joy she got from building romance with Silva, an extremely complex sentiment had been concocted. It might transform to an everlasting moral dilemma in which the yellow woman will struggle along.

It is true that brightness and darkness could both be found in these two stories and when they start to mingle, it is grey that will be produced. In these two pieces of stylistically different writings, both the daughter and yellow woman’s lives look miserable --- this obsession of fantasy could be more appropriately described as a desire, which they kept looking for a way to satisfy it but failed at last: The mother died at the end of “A Rose in the Heart of New York”, which definitely is not the end of the daughter’s misery and contrarily, it would be the beginning. The daughter “cried with such delight, cried like a child who has done something good and is being praised for it and yet cannot bear the weight of emotion.” (70) just because of the thought of attending her mother’s funeral in time. This tear of joy serves as a very strong support that later on, infinite pain would be generated from losing the most important thing in her life and “a grief at not being able to be wholehearted again.” (70) For Yellow woman’s part, when she and Silva were separated at the end, she still tried to convince herself that Silva “will come back sometime and be waiting again by the river.” (268) It is imaginable that she will probably pine when she starts to realize that this belief may only be a personal wish , and she will be burdened, not merely with the pain caused by her unappealing real life, but more with too much hopes from her obsession with this fantasy.

如果一根手指代表一个星期，那我的这个space起码已经一个手没有更新了！！！

 

记得刚开学的那会儿还没怎么忙...后来略有起色，再后来就开始challenging了...

 

不过总的来说还是可以的。最值得一提的是英语。第一篇essay才吃了一个B- ，心芭凉芭凉的。第二篇一开始花了15个小时写好交上去，然后拿了个C.......... =    =' 拿到手的时候第一个动作是揉眼睛。然后发现还是C，哑然...

 

幸而后来主动找老师谈话，受批准修改后再交给她重批，最后吃了个A- ... = v=

 

真所谓塞翁失马。

 

在Dinning Hall 打工... 哎，把我当Nigger使。 回想当初抱怨只给我1个星期5小时的工，现在感激都来不及...

 

寝室问题也早就顺利解决！印度人被kick out 后，我干脆搬回495，现在室友都很好！！哈哈哈～　晚上１１点就熄灯，人手一幅headphone...　这两天刚赏了他们一些韭菜饼~~~     =    v =

 

还有my buddy Mike 准备把烟草戒掉，我呼应说我游戏已经不打了～　=   3=

 

先汇报这点吧~

 

 

寝室里一个香港人找抽。操，跟我另外一个香港来的朋友简直不能比... MB 对他客气当福气。

 

下面是大致故事情节，这是我跟我朋友说事情经过的聊天纪录，

 

patientBryan: i really wana kick this Larry kid's ass
patientBryan: last night he left his light on till 2 AM because he was playing computer game...
patientBryan: then i asked him if he could shut his light and he said "not yet"
patientBryan: i was like if u r playing some fuking computer game, why couldn't u shut the light, and he said if he did so, that would kill his eye
MALaGiSi1892: that sucks, i know exactally how you feel, EXACTLY, turn it off then, next time don't ask him, just shut it off
patientBryan: lol, worse thing happend this morning
MALaGiSi1892: what..
patientBryan: so this morning when i got back from class, I tried to talk to him, try to make some mutual aggrement w/ him
patientBryan: first thing i said to him :" Larry, could you give me like 5 mins" and you know wht he said? "NO"
patientBryan: but later on we still started the conversation, and i talked to him in a very polite way, i was like "yo, if you said you refused to shut the light because we didnt shut the light when you go to bed, next time just ask us to do so, we will definitely do it."
patientBryan: then i also said " I will shut my light 12 Sunday through Thursday and you may keep ur light on till 1 am."
patientBryan: and he said "I dont give a shit"
MALaGiSi1892: this kid sounds like a fuckin tool, do you want me to come over and put him on the ground by his throat and tell him what's up if he wont co-operate with my boy brian
MALaGiSi1892: let me know right now
MALaGiSi1892: cause i will come over right now
patientBryan: then he even started to educate me, pointing at me using his index finger, saying something like "you know what? this is how college works, ppl need to stay up, thats how it works"
patientBryan: and you know last semester he had a hard time w/ that hispanic guy?
MALaGiSi1892: wtf......but with other people in the room, there has to be an agreement like me u and zach made last semester, he needs to know this
MALaGiSi1892: yes
patientBryan: now it seems like he was still pissed off by that. he told me things like "last sesmter that fag put his light on the table and  it was so bright that i could not sleep, so i bought a blind"
patientBryan: so i was like wTF is the point of telling me that stuff?
patientBryan: so now he seems enjoying leaving the light on so he could relieve his anger on me
patientBryan: yo i was sooooooooooooooo pissed offfffffffffffffffffffff
MALaGiSi1892: that is bull shit, make a room mate agreement
patientBryan: i really want to beat the crap out of him
MALaGiSi1892: talk to the RA, for real
patientBryan: yo he is such a mother fuker
patientBryan: yo the first thing i said to him this morning guess wht it was
MALaGiSi1892: not sure......
patientBryan: "Larry, first I want to say sry about leaving the light on when you go to bed."
patientBryan: that was the fuking first sentence came out my mouth
patientBryan: oh! i even suggest if he may use thant Tibet kid's little lamp instead of that bright light, and he said he " I was not comfortable w/ using other properpty and that was Y I didnt touch your crap"

 

晚上JB还跟我刁，MB这次你个“港B”就没有那么爽了。操，一顿臭骂，JB还想吵一句 " Shut ur fuking mouth full of CRAP" 丢给他。我操，个B终于投降每天晚上保证1:30熄灯。今天电梯里看到我还白我，JB我搬Off Campus那天一定把他蛋抽爆。

Fine... everything is fine... i start to love here now...

 

记得半年前刚来这里的时候，释怀大笑。那时想起以前每次校车停到枫华，自己都会感叹这校园如此的鸟不拉屎，却不料自己直到踏上这块陌生的土壤，才体会到鸟不拉屎的真谛。

 

这半年是宝贵的。我和我这辈子第一个认识的意大利人，大陆人，美国人，土耳其人，香港人都成为了好朋友。说实话...在他乡交朋友的过程是漫长的...你获得的每一份新的友谊都不亚于一份财宝...（有车的朋友是无价的...= 3=）

 

学习方面... 我一直很怀疑自己的英语水平... 不过现在觉得真的是长进了不... 记得以前在国内屁话很多，然后刚来这里的时候连个屁都没有...现在各方面发言凭率INCLUDING屁话指数都大有回升...

 

感情方面... 白纸啊... 优良传统... 貌似还要保持一阵子... 老子认了...哈哈哈 = 3=

 

健康么... 我很健康！！现在除了每个星期泡5~6次健身房，每次去都跑个1 公里半

 

开学来的两个星期，饱受挫折... 记得第一天上课就因为把时间搞错miss掉一节历史课... 买textbook买到要引进外资的程度... 在网上订的textbook选了特快邮寄搞到最后花了10天才寄到... pissed offffffffffffffffff...

 

不过现在一切不幸终于告一段落... everything seems fine now... 这也是为什么我终于启动了MSN打开自己一度被打入冷宫的space，写了这07年来的第一篇日志。

 

 

 

昨天被告知不能再住在Abe的apartment后，连忙拜托一个朋友帮忙，找了一个房子，付了180美刀，让我住到开学，算下来10块钱/天吧...

 

说实话...昨天又一次带着大包小包的换住所心里真的有点不是滋味...站在公寓门口等朋友喝着西北风...百般无奈...

 

算下来来这几个月根据地已经转移过3次了... 现在才真的了解“孤胆”这个词的意思了... 想想以前在国内的时候...其实从来没有寂寞过...父母亲都在身边，呵护之至...回想起来不禁对那时自己的一些无病呻吟感到好笑...

 

 

不过还是觉得自己算是幸运的了...在这里还交到几个心地很好的朋友...如果没有他们...早就歇菜了...

 

 

...ShiBer...Life Sucks...不过往好的方面想...也算是一种体验吧~ = 3=

 

Good luck to myself... in a brand new year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, there are some good examples provided by Kilbourne. For instance, the ad in which a girl dressed provocatively and looked submissive (Page 461) and the one that portrayed a sexy almost naked male body (Page 464). Both of them were designed to provoke the most inner and original nature of human-beings. We would be absorbed in it, as a result of the recognition of our brute hood.

 Sometimes I feel that we are so blind and unfortunate, because it seems like we are putting too much concentration in improving the standards of our lives to care about the standards of our morality. It definitely had shifted enormously and people could hardly tell whether part of it has melted with some dark side of our nature. When we stop by and stare at those ads which aim at catching our eyes by arising our sexuality; when those designers keep churning out provocative ads which always challenge our morality and tempt us to act dependent on our most primitive nature; when we finally lose the standard and “become numb to these images” (Page 462); and when we follow the desire completely, regardless if it is depraved or not… Will we be able to realize that we have morally lagged behind too much? Is it still possible that we are capable of catching up again???

 “There is no question that men are used as sex objects in ads now as never before.” (Page 464) Ironically, I believe this is a proof that women are gaining more social status, because it seems like not only men need to be visually sexually satiable, but also women.  Even though the imbalance is still there, it is being diminished, and women have started to realize their rights to demand of something above board which they desire.  

Many of the students in the class thought that Kilbourne was paranoia when we were discussing about the topic brought up by her. My point of view is that even though people  

(including myself) may say that she is paranoia from looking at the flaws in her article, I still appreciate her efforts of paying attention to the over-saturation in sex (violence) filled ads, and her intention of warning people who are surrounded by them.

All in all, I believe that everything we have looked at could be used as evidences of our degeneration, being morally lost, and being worse at acting like real human-beings. When more and more people abnegate their ability to recognize shame, and let the latent defects that exist in their nature be evoked more and more easily, there definitely will be a day, when we look around and get astounded. At that time, I am sure that, there is no way people may detect any beauty, creativity or even humanity in those ads.  On the other hand, it will also be like that we are staring at some magical mirrors, which may reflect our shallowness, numbness, ignorance, and even true identity of us. 

 

An Unsolvable Contradiction                                                             

    If this world is becoming increasingly judgmental based on materials, shall our lives turn to be the same? Tim Kasser talked about the relationship between the materialism and our well-being in his essay “From The High Price of Materialism”. (Page 364) Studs Terkel also told the story about how Stephen Cruz was finally “swallowed up by the same set of values that governs the top guys.” (Page 351) Why does it seem like that people may easily get lost if they have a strong desire for materialistic pursuits? Is it because we have to give up our own dreams when we are obsessed with the “American dream”?

 

   “Self-acceptance (desire for psychological growth, autonomy, and self-esteem), affiliation (desires for a good family life and friendships), and community feeling (desires to make the world a better place through one's own actions)” (Page 366) are the three values that Kasser professed which materialism goes against. This conclusion seems reasonable to me: if you are very materialistic, you have to lose some “self-acceptance”. Say, when people are trying to gain a higher position in a company, most of them could hardly be their own boss at first. They will be evaluated by someone else for a long time; and sometimes you must be humble even humiliated for survival, which is by no means“autonomy” or “self-esteem”.

 

    It can not be more common that someone who is captivated with materialism may neglect the importance of his family and friends, or even the whole environment. And sometimes many people are forced to act in that way because they do not have the chance or time to care about people that surround them. It's not really their fault, but still, it's completely opposite of the second value – affiliation.

 

    Then, how is a person supposed to care about the other 5,999,999,999 people in the world when he is totally concerned about only one? People become more and more materialistic and finally turn to egoists. Though it seems like they are extremely concentrated, ironically, they are actually suffering from the worst distraction ever which is the very concern about themselves. They can barely think about other objects anymore. Materialistic people usually live in their own space instead of a “community”, which therefore brings out the consequence that they lack for a sense of “community feeling”.

 

    As a matter of fact, Stephen Cruz had lived in a contradictive way for 15 years – from what he has told us, it seems like he had been pursuing both the material things and the “self-acceptance”. His final escape was quite understandable to me: I believe he could have gained the “self-acceptance” much more easily without “becoming concerned about losing that fifty grand or so a year”. (Page 351) Meanwhile the other two values would come along, too: more of his free time might be spent with family and friends which definitely was helpful to the generation of the “community feeling”.

 

    When I reached the sentence saying that “you might as well take the bucks and continue looking for the answer.”, I felt a little bit chilly for Cruz's bitter experiences and his final compromise. It's even more pathetic than the abnegation of self-acceptance. Materialism made Cruz forgetful, about the fact that he “was a visible man” in Procter & Gamble (Page 349) and the procedures he was told on how to interview black people (Page 349). He also forgot about, while on his vacation, his boss arbitrarily terminated his secretary's job without notifying him. (Perhaps it was because of the fact that both Cruz and his secretary were of minority race. They both lost this battle.) Moreover, it looks that the seemingly everlasting, half-joke and part sarcastic sentence, “get to know our business.” (Page 350) was not engraved in his memory anymore.

 

    Has Cruz GOT USED to the DISCRIMINATION after having been through so much? I hope not because this idea should be too horrible to be accepted – A man whose most important part of the life which was sort of engaged in the support of the civil rights movement finally quit his involvement because his own beautiful dream was contained by the American dream, just like light was devoured by the black hole. It is really a vicious trade: “The American Dream has treated you beautifully. So just knock it off and quit this crap you're spreading around.” (Page 351)

 

    To me, Cruz is still a lucky guy, and probably one of the luckiest minorities in the United States, even though he didn’t win at last – during those fifteen years, he has still preserved a chance to let himself evade from facing “the issue of discrimination” (Page 349) anymore. But what about that poor black secretary who was fired for no reason? What would become of her after such a strike? Was it possible that she could fight for her civil rights for the rest of her life? I don’t think so.

 

        Also, I believe only an extremely small group of people would have the same kind of experience like Cruz did back at that time, as“There were few managemet jobs for minorities…” (Page 349), and even fewer would contemplate about the treatment they received as they might not even have enough time to celebrate for being paid fifty thousands dollars a year. Then the questions were brought up right away: “is it considered as materialistic?” and is it wrong if people want to live better? What if people just don't fee like to give up the things they had earned like Cruz who didn’t want to lose that fifty grand?

 

    There should hardly be a way to find a balance between the three values and materialism, and one will find they are so incompatible especially when they are minorities: you have to get some material first for survival and then followed by the three values. But when you finally get the material, it seems like that you are not supposed to own them because logically you have become materialistic. I may not articulate well enough so I’d like to use a question to help me with that: tell me which life style is easier to achieve, to earn 200,000 dollars annually and live not that happily, or to earn only 20,000 dollars a year while at the same time, enjoying life? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To tell you the truth, I somehow start to hate this place, and I really want to go back to my own country, back to my home, for a gurantee of a 7 hour-sleep everyday...