Good night, Macbeth

Fair blood and foul blood,

It matters not.

Quench my thirst.

Against my honours,

I shall wade in your life wine.

With my silver skin laced in direst cruelty,

Innocent and delicate day shall wake no more.

Smoke of hell, drown the wind

As my mortal murdering hands

Knife your wound twenty.

Your assassination will borne valour.

Your death will let stars shine.

Play, hell spirits.

Come haunt our gentle senses

As daggers scream and babes cry

In the fatal entrance of heavy night.

Good night, Macbeth.

Neverwish

Where shall we meet again,

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

If you can look into time,

The future in the instant,

Will my tears drown the bloody earth,

Or will we, like stars, shine?

To hold thee to my wither’d heart,

The delicate welcome in your eyes, 

The heat of your hand.

Let not light see my desires.

My wish must not be thought of,

It will make me mad,

Because it will never become reality.

So love hath left me unattended, lost.

Our separated fortunes exposed upon the glimmers of day,

The unguarded thoughts in my heart not known,

You depart.

My tears,

Let them come down.

TFA Monologue: Mgbafo

Brother, I’ve come to you for advice. What should I do? As you know, it has been nine years since I’ve been married to that man Uzowulu. This is hard to say... I thought that I’d be happy, but all these years, there has not been a day where he didn’t leave me on the floor, curled up, beaten. I had hoped that having another child would please him but because of his actions, that child is no longer with us. Now, all I am is a useless mouth to feed because... Because... I... It... I am no longer able to have children.  He veils his violence  through excuses that say I was with another man, or that I have been stealing cowries and using them for my own luxuries, but all of those are lies! All of them! He thinks that by lying to himself, he would be able to make me think that I deserved his fury. I try so hard to please him, but, is this really worth it? Is it? It’s fine, I guess,  since I’m the one he releases his anger on, but what if one day, I’m not enough anymore? What if one day, he decides to hit  my Nneka or Obialo? I have thought about fleeing many times but I have nowhere to go. Sooner or later, he would come find me, wherever I am. And even if I ran, it would have given him more of an excuse to beat me! You understand, don’t you? Plus, I was born here, I grew up here. To completely separate myself from him would mean that I’d have to leave this village. But for me, someone who has never been outside these familiar lands, I don’t know anyone out there who would help me; they may not want to have anything to do with me! No brother, I can’t move back home. I would not want my beloved family to have to suffer the burden of caring for me, I am afraid. I fear that one day, I will not be able to get up again once he beats me down, that he will crush my soul and  I am afraid that he will destroy what is dearest to me, my children. I must admit, this is where it gets complicated. I still love him, but at the same time, I fear for my life. Brother, you are known to have wisdom beyond your years... How do I make this man see me as something of value? Or maybe to just make him stop his violence or just … Or just... I’m lost, what should I do?  Which path should I choose?

Okonkwo the unhero

          Unfortunately, even after finishing the novel, my view on Okonkwo hasn't changed. In my eyes, he is still just a human being with violent tenancies. Again, I stress the point that for a person to be considered a hero in my eyes, he must have done something that has benefited a person or a society etc. Okonkwo may have been a war hero, but to me, that is a totally different type of hero.
          Although Okonkwo died for his beliefs (or maybe he was just really fed up), he didn't really accomplish anything apart from murdering an overly talkative/egotastic village-mate. Perhaps his action led the village into finally rebelling against the missionaries, but I doubt it.

I just realized that I forgot to define post-colonialism in my previous post ;_;

The Polygamous Dilemma

          As you all know (Or for those of you who don't know), I have recently switched my INS from the novel The Grapes of Wrath to The 19th Wife. Therefore, I'll just briefly introduce the main character in a condensed version of our first INS post.

          The main character, Jordan Scott, is a twenty years old young man who is a son of the nineteenth wife in a polygamous family. He was kicked out of the community of Mesadale at the age of fourteen for holding hands with a girl, and has lived on his own since. He is described to have "a face like a ****ing doll", and a "high kinda girlish voice [he] used to wish was lower but [he] doesn't bother worrying about anymore"(23-24). The color of his eyes was compared to blue sea glass and sapphire gems. Later in the book, it is assumed that he has blonde hair like everyone else in the community due to the small gene pool.
          In the beginning, we watch as he sees his mom on the title of an online newspaper, stating that she murdered his dad. He drives to the jail to visit, but when his mom begs him for help, he was torn because a part of him was angry at her because she "tossed [him] on the highway at two a.m. in [God's] name" (29).

          Since then, he has decided to help get her out of jail, because he believes that his mom was not the murder. In order to gather the evidence to set her free, he faces many man vs. man, man vs. environment, and man vs. society types of conflict. He tried returning to Mesadale to gather evidence, but many residents (his brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, etc) tell him to leave.  His mother's lawyer, Mr. Herber, isn't exactly getting along very well with Jordan. Jordan can never tell whether "[Heber] wanted [his] mom out of jail or [him] out of his office" (165). So far, Jordan is travelling with another lost boy who was recently thrown out of the Mesadale community named Johnny. On top of finding evidence to get his  mom out of jail and taking care of Johnny, Jordan is running low on money because in order to help his mom, he had to leave his already low-paying job to travel from California to Utah.
        
          So far, the conflict hasn't been resolved yet, since I'm only halfway through this novel, and because this is such a unique situation, with the polygamy and whatnot, I have yet to think of a similar conflict from another piece of literature or any personal experiences. In fact, I'd be worried if I had an experience similar to Jordan's. Not counting the polygamy factor though, the novel does remind me of the television series "Prison Break" though, because of the whole he-didn't-do-it-so-I'm-going-to-get-him-out-of-prison thing. Then again, that's a whole different meaning to "getting someone out of jail" (laugh).

Post-Colonial Colors

          Without even realizing , the meaning that we traditionally associated with certain colors have changed over the years into a more European one for many of us. For example, white is the "pure" or angelic color. (White isn't really a color, but you get the point.)

          Now, since I'm Chinese, I'll be using "Chinese" colors as an example.

          Traditionally, red was the good color. Gold represented nobility and wealth but red was the "happy-day-feel-good" color. It is the color of traditional wedding attire, for both male and female, which looks something like this.

          Although traditionally, white could be used to represent purity or clarity ( 明白 = Bright white= Clear= "Understand"), the character "white" was also used in other words which means "emptiness" or "moron". Not only that, it was a color of mourning. Therefore, traditional Chinese mourning attire was in white, like so. 

          This brings me to my main point. Due to post-colonialism and major western influences, many weddings now look like this.

          So white.