Words of Innocence and Experience

It was my last day being free from duties. I wanted to write “a free man” since it sounds more noble, but the gender case of the word “man” irritates me. English is such a sexually biased language!

Even NTU, the university of the supposedly highest profile in Taiwan is sexually biased. I visited its campus this morning after taking the MRT to measure how much time is needed to travel from my current residence to my company. One huge real doll in the shape of a newly graduated student in his robe stood at the main gate of NTU. Oddly, there was only a male doll but not a female one. I’m not a strong Feminist, but I couldn’t help frowning at the doll. Perhaps I’m a weirdo. A few students, who were in their robes, posed in front of the doll for a picture. I pulled out similar postures only a couple of days ago, but they seemed so far away.

Anyway, I liked the NTU campus, which is flat, not mountainous like that of my alma mater. There’s an easy-going air about it. Its library was quite friendly to outside readers although the feeling could’ve been my imagination; I’ve never entered the library of other universities before. Then again, the library is a balm to all my troubles. I know I will be a frequent visitor.

My apologies to my readers (that is, if there are readers) who have to tolerate another lame beginning of a blog entry. I haven’t written here for more than three months. It appears that I’ve almost dropped the habit of writing altogether although I’ve always wanted to write.

Things have been turbulent during the past three months. I became active in hosting the movies festivals in NTHU. I made my first overseas trip this March and went to a number of conferences here in Taiwan to present my thesis. I grew close to a former student, but the relationship ended almost too abruptly. With the near completion of my thesis last week, now it’s time for me to begin the course of job hunting.

To this day, I’ve had several job interviews. However, I don’t think I presented myself well. Perhaps I haven’t warmed myself enough to the idea of being an employer in a company. My desire to be a scholar has been so strong that it clouded my senses.

Oh, dear, the song “Mistaken by Strangers” by the National affects me deeply. Is working really this horrendous?

The thing is, I’ve seldom been prepared for anything in my life. I mostly go with my instincts and intellect. Gradually I’ve realized that instincts and intellect do not always take me to where I want to be. In addition, I tend to act like a silent observer rather than an outspoken presenter in life, but this tendency is unappreciated in the job market. I must learn to speak no matter how much I hate to do so.

Should I take part-time jobs such as teaching and translating documents so that I could still concentrate on studying and thereby fulfill my wish to study abroad? That is a question. I reckon I’d still try working in a company, albeit temporarily.

Despite my confusion over a clear future direction, life has been good. I used as much time as I could to read, listen to music, and watch movies. I’d like to write about them in my Chinese blog.

So I have decided to start writing here again. I hope the decision becomes a habit. I saw my friend Winnie yesterday and we both conceded that we were disorganized people. I don’t like being disorganized. I want a change. Well, I’m sure this post is going to be as disorganized as the current state of my room, with half-open suitcases and plastic bags strewn all over the floor.

Anyway, the lunch with Winnie yesterday was heart-warming. I’ve always admired her personality, which is a fascinating combination of gentility and persistence. We were scheduled to meet in front of the record store opposite National Taichung Institute of Technology. I arrived early and could not refrain myself from entering the store. When was the last time I actually purchased a CD at a record store instead of looking for cheap copies online? Probably a long time ago. Boy, I felt ashamed of myself.

The album that immediately caught my attention was “Boxer” by the National. I LOVED the album and should have bought it as soon as it was released but did not. It was time for me to make amends.

I was so happy that I had brought it home. The sound quality of CDs is indeed superior to that of mp3 files. I had written a Chinese article about the band’s previous album “Alligator” on my Chinese blog, and perhaps I’d write something about “Boxer” soon even though plenty of bloggers have talked about it.

I went back to Hsinchu this morning. It was freezing here. My heavy luggage was creating pain in my fragile arms, but I had no choice but to venture on. May my last four months in Tsing Hua as a student be my best moments here yet.

At first glance, Kundera seems to portray Tomas and Tereza, two of the four main characters in his novel, according to gender stereotypes, in which a man can freely go on physical adventures without injecting emotions in the process while the woman takes pains in tolerating his infidelities. In this regard, the relationship between Tomas and Tereza is complete inequity. Tomas is a skilled surgeon in Prague whereas Tereza is a waitress in a provincial town before they meet. Practically, Tereza is dependent on Tomas during the first few years of their love life after being ‘rescued’ by Tomas from her meager means and household humiliation (and Tomas himself considers her a child sent to him in a bulrush and whom he picks up to love and protect) and agonizes over Tomas’s unfaithfulness. Nevertheless, with Tereza’s distinctive self-perception, or to be more precise, obsession with her soul, her ineradicable residence in Tomas’s heart eventually transforms the libertine into the loyal husband.

To begin with, Tereza’s fixation on her soul is slightly different from the common female experience. According to Rivkin and Ryan’s introduction to essentialist feminism, women’s physical differences from men (birthing, lactation, menstruation, etc.) make them more connected with the physical world. Essentialist feminists argue that men must abstract themselves from the material world by separation from mothers in order to enter the patriarchate. They take a violent and aggressive posture towards the world they leave behind by interpreting it as an “object.” Women, on the other hand, are not required to separate from mothers. Thus, women’s psychological and physical ties to physical being remain unbroken. For Tereza, on the contrary, the blood ties and close proximity to her mother have brought her endless suffering and humiliation. Traumatized by her two dreadful marriages, Tereza’s mother puts all blame on Tereza, who has no choice but receiving the punishment. Not only is Tereza forced out of school given that she is an excellent student, she is both the breadwinner and the one responsible for household chores in the family. Worse still, her mother deliberately puts the ugliness of the body (e.g. marching around the mouse in the nude, farting) on display and denies the existence of youthful beauty in Teresa’s body. To bolster herself in the environment of physical repulsiveness, she longs for something “higher,” something not anchored to the body, as analyzed by Misurella in Understanding Milan Kundra: Public Events, Private Affairs. She worships books, music, and most importantly, her soul. When Tomas appears in the restaurant where she works, the fact that he is reading a book and the radio is playing Beethoven calls to Tereza’s very soul. She feels her soul within her body ascend “through her blood vessels and pores itself to him” (48), propelling her decision to leave her hometown to for Tomas without hesitation.

Unfortunately, Tereza’s expectations on Tomas are, in a way, mistaken. Although loving Tereza deeply, Tomas is the Don Juan who has the compulsion to hold various women in passionate embraces. Teresa’s anguish over Tomas’s infidelities is vividly reflected in her dreams. The most prominent one is the nightmare in which many naked women march around a pool and knee bend and Tomas would shoot a woman if her pose is not in accordance with others. Troubled by the women’s celebration of their sameness and struggling to keep up with them, Tereza feels that she is about to be shot by Tomas. Away from her mother and with Tomas, Tereza’s still feels that her individuality is ruthlessly violated. To have the man all to herself, what she could do was to overpower him, but she does not realize it until much later in the novel.

The Prague Spring forces the couple to take refuge in Zurich. While Tereza has photography as her profession in Prague before the Russian invasion, she counts on Tomas for everything in Zurich. Picking up a call from an unknown woman with a German accent further fills Tereza with jealousy. Driven by vertigo, defined by Kundera as the “heady, insuperable longing to fall” and “the intoxication of the weak” (76), Tereza decides to return to Czechoslovakia, the country of the weak, as an action not to drag Tomas down by her weakness. Tomas, of course, follows her to Prague. As they lie side by side in bed on the night Tomas returns, Tereza feels responsible for Tomas’ life and fate. Misurella regards Tomas’s homecoming as a turning point of their relationship, in which Tereza becomes the stronger partner in the marriage.

Due to the increasing social oppression in Prague, Tomas descends to work as a window washer. Tomas works from morning till afternoon while Teresa works from afternoon till night, so the couple rarely sees each others on week days. Although stuck with a job much inferior to his own profession, Tomas regards it as a break from surgery and makes the most of his working hours for more erotic adventures. Tereza, after sniffing another woman’s existence in Tomas’s hair, again feels her body’s inability to prove her uniqueness to Tomas. In another nightmare of hers, Tomas takes her to a park with red, yellow, and blue benches in it. Tomas sits on one of the benches and asks her to walk on top of a hill to acquire what she really wants. When she reaches the top, she sees men fulfilling people’s wish to die. The men carry rifles and escort people into a forest to choose a tree where they would like to end their lives. Tereza says it is not her choice to die when it is her turn, and the men let her go. This dream is a variation from the dream with marching naked women and Tomas since Tereza has the right of refusal this time. Tomas has absolute authority in the previous dream, but this time Tereza takes the responsibility of her own life. It is a sign that Tomas no longer has complete control over Tereza.

The aforementioned nightmare still leaves Tereza with bitter aftertastes. She makes up her mind to try sleeping with someone whom she does not love, to test Tomas’s theory of sex without love. She goes to the house of an engineer, who was a customer of the bar where she works. During their sexual intercourse, Tereza experiences contradictory feelings—her body’s excitement and her soul’s rejection to take the engineer in. She rebels against the man with whom she has sex in order to affirm her soul’s unconquerable position in her identity. Even though she considers her one-time affair with the engineer a mistaken step in her life, it instigates her choice to move to the country.

Tomas, having indulged himself in one or two erotic adventures, finally experiences emotional tiredness. His libertinism, interestingly, is linked to his desire to know the individuality of his lovers, the “millionth part dissimilarity” (199) that separates a woman from others. However, no matter how many women he has slept with, his heart is tied to Tereza alone, and none of his mistresses can replace Tereza’s position in his heart. Both he and Tereza realize how spiritually and physically ugly Prague has become, and amid pangs of stomachache, he agrees with Tereza’s suggestion to move to the country even when he knows that both his career and erotic adventures would come to an end afterwards. As Tereza comforts Tomas when he tries to sleep, role reversal has taken place in their relationship.

The lovers’ village life is not always pleasant, the peacefulness disturbed by Tereza’s suspicion of yet another Tomas’s affair and the death of their beloved dog, Karenin. During the days where Karenin’s health deteriorates, Tereza envies Karenin’s reveling in daily repetition and also sees the love from an animal as better love, as it does not require anything from the beloved one. In one dream of hers, Tomas shrinks into a tiny rabbit before her, and Tereza happily holds it in her arms and takes it into the room she had when she was a young girl. All in all, seeing an aging Tomas trying to refill a tire of a car one day, she understands that she is responsible for the end of Tomas’s professional career by making “a display of her suffering to him, thereby forcing him to retreat” (300). In the end, Tomas loses his strength and became a rabbit in her arms. Revealing her feeling of guilt to him, he assures her that he feels happy in the country.

Tereza’s love for nature in the last section of the novel reenters the shared realm of female experience. She identifies herself with the tranquility and harmony of nature and takes Tomas into her world in which they are both enveloped. Kundera makes light of the existence of idyllic happiness by killing off Tomas and Tereza in a car accident, but at least in their last hours on earth, they are bathed in bliss.

References

Irigaray, Luce. An Ethics of Sexual Difference.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
New York :Harper Perennial, 1999.

Misurella, Fred. Understanding Milan Kundera: Public Events, Private Affairs.
Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, c1993.

Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. Literary Theory: an Anthology.
Malden, MA : Blackwell, 2004.

For the “NTHU Memory” contest

1.

My cousin and I walked towards the auditorium, at whose door students and their parents protested angrily, “Open the door and let us in!”

“We can’t,” said one guard firmly, despite the increasing pressure from people’s jostling and shrieks. He did not move an inch away from the entrance to the auditorium, intricately adorned by ornaments especially for the graduates of National Tsing Hua University.

“Never mind being in that red-carpeted hall and listening to the insincere speeches,” I whispered to my cousin cynically. “It looks like Clytemnestra’s banquet for the returning Agamemnon, anyway, and the guard is the poor Cassandra.”

“Huh?” his expression was one of sheer bewilderment.

On the day the graduation ceremony was scheduled to be held, it was bright, sunny, and sweltering. Several friends of mine and I decided to meet in the late June morning to feast on the beauty of the Tsing Hua campus with our cameras. After all, some of us did not know when we would set foot on Tsing Hua again after that special day. We all excitedly anticipated the graduation ceremony to take place at the “Vast Lawn” and the fireworks to close our university days with splendid explosions in the sky later in the evening.

Unfortunately, it was literally a bolt from the blue when the sky grayed at dusk and raindrops fell violently to the ground. Our celebration at the “Vast Lawn” was cancelled, our fireworks intact and unlighted. The ceremony had to be switched to an indoor location—the auditorium. Since the auditorium was not spacious enough to accommodate all graduates, their families, and friends, students who did not arrive there before 6:30 p.m. would not be allowed to enter the auditorium.

Having indulged myself with photography all day long, I desperately wanted to fill my empty stomach before joining the commencement party. “They won’t block me,” I thought smugly. However, I was proven wrong when I walked to the auditorium leisurely with my cousin, who was an ESS (Engineering and System Science) graduate student in Tsing Hua, and was confronted with crowds of frustrated students with their furious parents, bundles of flowers in hand. They all shouted for the gates of the auditorium to be opened, but to no avail.

How could the guards forbid me to join my own graduation ceremony? I felt enraged and betrayed in front of the auditorium, fresh and gleaming white in the night air, having been washed by the rain.

Wandering to the nearby Cheng-Gong Lake, my cousin and I sat ourselves down on the unoccupied stoned chairs. I chuckled to myself, realizing that not only did my college life begin and end at the auditorium, but it also witnessed some crucial events during my days in Tsing Hua.

2.

Four years earlier, my roommates and I, after quickly finishing our breakfasts, dashed to the auditorium at full speed at eight o’clock in the morning. While the dormitory is the first place where all first-year students spend their first night in Tsing Hua, they were asked to participate in the “Freshman Training Program,” which lasted for six days in the auditorium. When I stepped onto the stairs before the gates of the auditorium, I imagined the following events to be eye-opening for a coy and clumsy newcomer like me. However, my original enthusiasm turned into boredom and drowsiness as I listened to one speech after another. The speakers’ monotonous voices, the soft couches, and the comfortable air-conditioned air sent me into deep slumbers.

Luckily, my impressions of the auditorium as a huge bed chamber were dramatically altered after attending various musical concerts, plays, talks, and performances there. I was often thrilled at seeing posters advertising upcoming shows at the auditorium, waiting to be entertained and inspired.

3.

The auditorium also witnessed my failed date with my first crush in university. It was the day before the Christmas Eve, a cold and windy night. Being a diligent student, I had spent my Christmases in Hsinchu mostly by myself, only dining with several friends at night. Then I met the male student from another department who stirred inexplicable feelings in my heart. I could not endure another lonely Christmas. By all means, I had to make a meeting happen. He suggested a movie to be shown at the auditorium, and I consented at once despite the fact that the movie appeared to be uninteresting.

He suddenly text-messaged me that morning, telling me that he would leave immediately after the movie was over, that a friend of his would possibly come along. I might as well cancel the date if it was the treatment I received after swallowing my pride and discarding my modesty. After hours of mental turmoil, eventually I reached the auditorium a little earlier than the hour we agreed to meet. The tall trees opposite the auditorium hid my thin form, which was trembling with nervous anticipation.

Then he showed up on time, dashing on the darkling stairs of the auditorium, alone! I longed to give voice of all the surging emotions in my treacherous heart but could not. Walking myself out from behind the trees, I told him that I would not go to the movie with him. The brutal wind, carrying the foolishness and tumult of the whole incident, crashed on me with every step I took away from the auditorium, which stood still, unmoved.

4.

For us students of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, the senior play occurring annually in the auditorium is the perfect culmination of our university life. After months of painstaking preparations, we locked ourselves in the auditorium for a week before our performance dates. For most of us, it was the first time did we have the chance to explore the insides of the auditorium intimately instead of staying in the audience seats. During the rehearsals of our senior play, we busied ourselves backstage, in the dressing rooms, the sound control room, and the light control room. The days grew nearly unbearable as the auditorium practically became our prison, but all bearing was worthwhile when we released our pent-up anxiety on stage. We had two nights with nearly all audience seats occupied.

5.

The graduation ceremony was over. My cousin and I easily slipped in the opening doors of the auditorium. My eyes immediately found my classmates.

“Hey,” my friend patted on my shoulder as I approached her. She was smiling but there was a slight frown between her brows. “In the end, they let us in if we were in our bachelor gowns, of course without families and friends. Didn’t you try?”

“Well, no.” I gestured to show my companion’s presence. “How was the ceremony?”

“Tedious, as expected.” I could hear the wry amusement in her voice. The opulent life in Tsing Hua had been priceless even if the beginning and the ending of it were not spectacular, I reckoned.

“Besides,” she continued, “it doesn’t matter at all even though you missed the ceremony,” then referring to my admission to a master’s program in Tsing Hua, “You will have another commencement party soon.”

“Yes, I know.” I smiled. My life in Tsing Hua goes on.

I have been in Tsing Hua for four years, and this semester is the beginning of my fifth year (and hopefully the last one) here. The longer I stay in Tsing Hua, the fonder I grow of the campus. Although I love Tsing Hua dearly now, my first impressions of it four years ago were not all pleasant.

Tsing Hua has a large, spacious campus with trees, lakes, and hills. Not all college campuses have environments full of natural wonders, and perhaps the spacious campus is what Tsing Hua students should take pride in. However, it was time-consuming and tiring to travel from one place to another within Tsing Hua. Although school buses were available, it was difficult to arrange my daily routine according to the bus schedule, as I had too little patience to wait for the bus when it was not right before my eyes. Moreover, sometimes when it was packed with people, I had to walk. I walked so much that my feet were sore at night. The trees and lakes looked beautiful on sunny days, giving the campus a poetic air; unfortunately, they brought mud onto the roads on rainy days, making the walking experience even less enjoyable.

Compared with the cuisine in my hometown, Taichung, the food in Tsing Hua and in Hsinchu (the city where National Tsing Hua University is located) in general tasted terrible but cost a lot. The food stalls in Taichung usually offered free addition of rice/noodles and drinks, but this was not the case in Hsinchu. My jaw dropped at the price of sixty dollars for a bowl of noodles here. Worse still, not only I but also my classmates complained about the taste of the food; our consensus was that even the most ordinary restaurants in our hometowns were gourmet, a sharp contrast with the ones here.

Hailed as Hsinchu “City,” oddly, there was little to do downtown on weekends. To my astonishment, there were not many stores when I went downtown my bus. Born a city dweller, I was accustomed to seeing the city full of crowds, shopping centers, outdoor activities, and cultural affairs, but Hsinchu was virtually quiet and boring. Thus, I ended up returning home every Friday afternoon.

Now that I have been in Tsing Hua for a long period of time, I have come to appreciate the distinctive characteristics of the Tsing Hua campus. With the abundance of plants and animals here, the fresh air always keeps me in good spirits. Since some paths on Tsing Hua are steep, taking a walk is almost equivalent to hiking, so I do not need to spend extra time doing exercise. The foods served at cafeterias are still far from tasty, but I can recognize the school’s efforts to improve the food quality over the years. Finally, the scarcity of entertainment in Hsinchu has made me a diligent student. If I want to take part in activities, it is convenient to go to Taipei, which is merely one hour away from Hsinchu by bus. I know that I am going to miss this place at the time of my departure.

Since I’m currently helping Professor Viphavee rating the students’ essays, I’m constantly reminded of the pieces I had written in the past. This would possibly sound self-satisfying, but reading my past compositions again this evening, I was struck by the beauty of the words as well as the heart and soul I was able to put into the writing. That was why I said studying in the TESOL program is mind-damaging, for I am not receiving any critical or inspiring input. At first I was extremely frustrated with the meaninglessness of the TESOL studies, but as time proceeds, I gradually got used to the nature of them and acquired the ability to produce redundant, mindless, and forced papers on my own, even when I didn’t put my heart in the process.

If not for the personal crises happening in the first half of 2007, the urge to write might have still possessed me to this day. Unfortunately, one person’s accusation of me being too fantastical and dreamy extinguished the creative ardor in my heart, and I reflected less and less on the things going on around me; instead, I numbly went with the stream.

Time heals, and I realize what has been missing in the previous six months of my life–creative spirit.

“With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there’s nothing in it
And you’ll ask yourself

Where is my mind?”
–The Pixies “Where Is My Mind?”

Well, at least there is something I DID learn in my foolish, lamenting days–the diversity and power of rock music. If I am able to restore my literary sensibility, I’d love to combine it with the rock n’ roll fervor, as both have become integral elements of my way of thinking.

It’s been a long time since I posted anything on this blog. I had been lazy in the previous semester and wrote on my Chinese blog and BBS board instead.

However, I suppose I’ve always suffered from a bout of “graphomania,” as termed by Kundera, the urge to write books. I tried to analyze the reasons for my obsession with being an author and came up with some explanations.
Firstly, I need to write things down so that forgetting them will not worry me. Secondly, similar to what Kundera says in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, I only have this life to live. Thus, I personalize and beautify things even though I’m quite certain that most of them are merely coincidences. Writing them down grants them a curious air of significance.

Many things happened to me last semester, some of which are sublime to me. Having experienced inexplicable, traumatic incidents, I’m like the ancient mariner who needs to have his stories heard; in my case, read.

After finding proper pseudonyms for the people I encountered, I may start writing. Stay tuned~ (Hopefully, I won’t break the promise).

Like dry, waterless land
Yearning for rain,
It was bliss
When that storm crashed on the parched earth
of her weary heart.
But the flood overtook her sanity,
Her defense, her dike

Eventually it would fade
The sun sap the remains of escapade
And dry spell retake

Often I lurk behind the curtains, letting others take the stage and tell my story, which is then adapted and twisted. Won’t I tell my own story? Perhaps, but I’m suppressed, smothered.

People are enamored with storytelling, or blogs and personal spaces or writing an autobiography when becoming a celebrity wouldn’t have been all the rage and desirable. Thus, I turn on the computer, click on “Mozilla Firefox,” and hit the keyborad. A friend I met on the Internet wishes to become a storyteller under a skybridge. Such a romantic idea!

I’m still unsure about whether I want to share my story or not. Hence the words come out in mysterious codes only comprehensible to my close friends and me. I never intend to be pretentious. Rather, I want to record things; my youth cannot be obliterated.