Fear Of a New Morning.

Everything seems unfinished. I craved more time, but I had to accept the cruel reality. I always do.  I am used to fight against my bad luck, but now I believe in destiny, and everything is getting much easier than before.
I like this time of the day. It is quiet, and I don't feel anyone else's presence. It's so late that morning is going to come again. I am enjoying the peaceful time, but also so afraid of a new day's coming. In one or two hours, I have to go to sleep as I don't want to be awake when I have to accept the fact that a new day has come. I feel so giddy but so happy. I am happy that I am totally lost. Lost in a corner of the world.

Why I am in North America-- why I am in Canada? Why I have to go back? Did I ever think about these questions? I am not escaping--I hope not as I have enough courage to go back, but I am so scared that the moment the plane lands, all the beautiful memory that I had might vanish. I keep telling myself that all the beautiful things have an end--they always do. We come into this world alone and leave exactly the same way. I am going to treasure those warm and foggy days here. I enjoyed visiting Queen Elizabeth Park; I liked the restaurants here; I had a good time in the Chinese garden; I also liked the busy seabus.

I like the darkness and peace in the middle of the night, but even the night that I like is going to have an end--I don't want the morning to come yet.

The Mirror At Midnight.

I couldn't fall asleep, and as I couldn't fall asleep at an early time, I am not going to worry about how many hours I can sleep today. I was tired the whole day, but when I got  into the bed, tucked myself in and closed my eyes, a lot of pictures came into my mind, which bothered me so much that I had to get up and look for my vodka drink.

I turned the kichen light on--so quiet, everything was so quite as if there was only me in this world. I sat at the counter and felt a bit cold, but not that scared anymore. I know that everything that I want is like sand. I try to grab it tightly in my hand; it falls down. I'm used to it. Time goes by so quickly, and yesterday( technically the day before yesterday as it's passed 12am already) the alarm clock went out of battery...I didn't buy a new one to fix it as I wanted it to stop like that--it looks peaceful to me. I've only used the clock for a few months, but why the battery went out so quickly...

I felt that when the liquid when down my throat, it set a fire there. I am not drunk though, I am just getting a bit relaxed, and I wanted to keep a dairy--today I didn't write it on my qzone but this blog as I am using this one more often now.

That was absolutely not enough to make me drunk. I looked in the mirror, and I saw what I hated as it was not a smiling face, and I know it is not going to be one. If it was paper, I would tear it into pieces right away.

Personal reaction to "the Epic Of Gilgamesh".

This story is too difficult:( and I had trouble reading it; I wanted to read it again, but to be very honest, I couldn't focus on reading it at all. I think I only got a very general idea of the story, which is about life and death. I wish I could read the story more carefully as I like to discuss the topic very much.

About the structure of the story, it used many repetitions, similes and metaphors. I like the idea that there is always a limite of humankind. We can't have a everlasting life, which I think gives us more meaning to life. I sometimes think that there is plenty of time ahead me, so I can waste some time now although I don't want to. Imagine if you know life is everlasting, what would you do now? You probably won't treasure your life anymore. I think we are all trying our best to live only because we know that we are going to die some day in the future, and before that we have to make best use of our life.

I feel extremely painful when I think that I have to die though as I have been wasted a lot of time in my past few years. Of course I didn't want to waste any time of my life, but somehow I had to. My future is also full of uncertainty, which scares me whenever I think of it. I've always been hoping to be born again, but I also know it is impossible.

The story tells us that God give us life, and at the same time God give us an end of life, which is death, and no one can get rid of it. However, how we make use of our limited life is our own business. I like this idea as I think I become much less stressed about life recently as I truly realized that every one has to die. We are just human, and the best way to live is to learn to have what makes us happy, but not to waste our life by suffering all the time.

Rainy Thanksgiving Day ( assignment for "interview")

This weekend has been so long, yet not long enough for me to think about things that I have to. During the whole weekend, I have only been out for a short walk once. I love to stay home and be in my own world--no matter it is cold or warm.  If it is a good day, I can accomplish a lot of things like writing a story or learning about life in a movie. I don't like talking about things that I want to know with strangers or even friends, so I watch movies or ask my mom on the phone. That is why I prefer staying home during weekends.

As it is Thanksgiving, I thought about things that I should be thankful for. I am thankful for my physical health. I sometimes think that what an amazing thing it is to walk a long way as I enjoy thinking while walking along the green bushes. I am also thankful for having a good mother. She used to be very strict and lose her temper very easily, which I didn't like at all. Recently, she never gets mad at me as I told her that I would really die right away if she did. We can talk about a lot of things, and I know no matter how crazy the things I say, she would always accept. I appreciate that she has been more than a good friend to me--not like a mother.

Finally, I am also thankful for a lot of happiness and sadness that I have. Sometimes being able to be sad should also be appreciated as it means that I am a normal human at least at that moment. The problem is that I hate being sad about ridiculous things, so that is why I think sometimes being sad with a good reason is also a very happy thing to do. I am thankful for that.

Most of all, I am also thankful for being able to stay here for anther 2 months. Then I have to have difficult life again, but I am used to it, and I hope I can get used to it again.

It is so rainy today, which means it is at least not a bad day as I don't like to see a sunny day when I don't feel quite Okay. I am reasonably happy about the heavy rain, and I feel like running into the rain and get soaking wet; I somehow want the rain to wake me up from my fantasy world.

React personally to the story "The Killers".( Assignment)

I find the story interesting in many ways. Although chaos makes the story seems a bit confusing and I don't like chaos in real life, reading this kind of story somehow makes me feel relaxed--like enjoying a movie.

I like the way the two killers Max and Al talk. When George asks why Al is going to kill Ole Anderson, Al says "He never had a chance to do anything to us. He never even seen us. And he's only going to see us once." I am impressed by his confidence; maybe he is overconfident. Also, the story shows us the cruelty of the society at that time--people don't know how to express their emotions in a proper way. However,George seems so calm that nothing can bother him, which I think also reflects another side of extreme lack of emotion.

Besides these main characters, I also like Nick, who I think is a hero in this story. He does not even know Ole Anderson and Sam tells him to stay out of this business, but he stills goes to Ole and tells him the secret that Max and Al are going to kill him. In order to stay out of trouble, he decides to stay out of town. He is the only person in this story who seems to have normal human emotions, but it seems to me that Hemingway didn't put any judgement in it about different life attitudes of different people; he probably just wanted to reveal the fact that there are people with different attitudes living in the same society, and he might have wanted us to meditate on which causes this fact in that society at that time.

Hemingway Response ( not assignment).

I didn’t read any other people’s essays online as I want to have my own opinions about the two stories. I think I am not a very optimistic person, and I always love to read stories that have very sad endings; that is the main reason why Hemingway’s stories engage me very deeply. Hemingway’s life attitude is very much affected by his four unsuccessful marriages. When he was 61 years old, he committed suicide; obviously, even the last marriage didn’t seem to be a successful one, either. From both stories “ Hills Like White Elephants” and “ Cat In the Rain”, we can see that the conversations are not pleasant; we can feel that there is a kind of very bitter loneliness in them—the female characters are not physically alone, but emotionally lonely.

In my opinion, according to all those unsuccessful marriages, probably Hemingway is a misogynist. However, in both stories we read, I think he put his own lonely feelings in both female characters, so in the stories, he is sympathetic towards women.

In “Hills Like White Elephants”, Hemingway portrays a young and inexperienced loving girl who is trying to decide whether she should do an abortion or not with her American boy friend. The girl loves the man and she wants to have the baby and a future with the man, but the man says that he doesn’t want anyone else but her. He is afraid of their future with the baby. He is older but not mature enough. He says that “It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig.”(Line 42) It means that he doesn’t care about the girl’s feelings at all. Through their short conversation, the girl gets disappointed, and she finally realizes that they won’t have a happy future anyway; even if she doesn’t do the abortion, she will suffer more. When she says “I don’t care about me”( Line 66), she is actually saying the man doesn’t care about her. I think she becomes stronger in the end when the climax takes place—“Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”(Line 98).

In “Cat In the Rain”, the woman is lonely and demanding. Her husband George shows no interest in their conversation, so even the woman is with her husband in a very comfortable hotel room, she still feels lonely. She wants a cat so badly. She says “I don’t know why I wanted it so much. I want that poor kitty. It isn’t any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain.” The cat is a symbol of the woman. She is a poor character suffering a terrible marriage. She wants to be saved or to be loved the way she wants the cat to be saved. Reading this story, I got a very bitter feeling to see how the woman feel when her husband says “Shut up”. She is strong inside; she has her own desires and she craves them. However, she is also overwhelmed because of this unsuccessful marriage.

To sum up, I liked the way Hemingway portrays women. He does feel sympathy for women in both stories; however, this is because he put his image into the two female characters. In real life, I don’t think he was always sympathetic towards women as we can see that from Hemingway’s another piece of work “A Very Short Story”, in which he portrays the woman as a very loose one.

Discuss how the male protagonist changed in " A Very Short Story".(assignment).

This story is extremely sad, but also extremely real. I liked every single sentence in it, especially the last one. Obviously, the man loves Luz more than she loves him. He took temperatures of the other patients, and let Luz stay in his bed. They used to be together as if they were married. After the war, in order to marry Luz, he didn't want to meet any friends, and the only thing he wanted to do was to focus on finding a job and meet Luz. At that time, he was hopeful.

In one rainy winter, an Italian major made love to Luz, which made her think that theirs had been "only a boy and girl affair". I can understand Luz too. In winter, people feel cold, and even terribly lonely. Even if she didn't love the Italian major as deeply as she loves him, she still wants to be loved, especailly in such a rainy winter.

 However, he wouldn't understand her feelings for the Italian major. He is heart-broken. I don't think he likes the sales girl at all, but he hoped that he could express his anguish somehow by having sex with a stranger. He became hopeless as he was terribly hurt by Luz, and I don't think he did anything wrong, but he still got the punishment, which was gonorrhea being transmitted; I think he was very disappointed but wasn't able to forget or forgive Luz. Cruel fate even destroyed him more. I think Hemingway wanted to tell us that that is just the way things turn out in this world.