All 17 entries tagged Thoughts

The Key

What does a post card want to say to you? On what conditions is it possible? Its destination traverses you, you no longer know who you are. At the very instant when from its address it interpellates, you, uniquely you, instead of reaching you it divides you or sets you aside, occasionally overlooks you. And you love and you do not love, it makes of you what you wish, it takes you, it leaves you, it gives you.
Jacques Derrida Post Card

Long ago I told my students that I felt writing a blog is like writing a post card without an addressee. My text travels, and I locked up the meaning with my words. It frightens me suddenly as I logged into my long deserted blog today, that if the only key is my memory, what would happen if I lost it? Would I become a stranger to myself? Or rather would the place become a wasteland, not Eliot’s wasteland, but no man’s land of growing weeds?
Reading Sartre’s Why Write this week. Struggling to convince myself that he must be right: it is a commitment to freedom that we write; and then the amnesia becomes an ultimate blessing, for it sets the writer free.

Xiu Wang : 20 Nov 2007 01:09 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

blog or talk

We had an interesting discussion on the blog phenomenon at Susan’s a few days ago. With the blurred boundary between the public and the private, we are all facing a new type of awkward situation: how can we actually talk with friends in reality?
‘did you read my blog?’ One may start a conversation with this line to save time, as there would be no need of conversation if the other person had known everything already.

Do friends still need to talk, for real? The alienation effect of modern technology is always a modern topic. To some extend, we confused ourselves by forgetting which is closer, or more important to us: the phone, the laptop,the internet, or the real person on the other side of the line?

I bumped into an old friend in the library two days ago. No contact for a whole year. I don?t have his number, his msn, his skype or even any email address. Half way through my Sartre?s photocopying, he also came to photocopy some Russian performance theorist. I looked up and saw him. We stand there, dumbfounded at seeing each other.
I just can’t stop smiling like a silly kid. I know I was just too happy. The only reason I was not screamming was because it was in the library.

We had such a nice chat afterwards. It was so nice that I decided that I am never going to tell him any of my blogs.

Xiu Wang : 03 Jun 2007 15:06 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

bug

I was sitting in front of my laptop struggling somewhere among Toury and Bassnett and Pym when the bug flied into my room.

I don’t know from where I picked up the fear against almost all buzzing creatures: bees, flies, mosquitoes, beetles, bugs…and worst of all, the crazy (and maybe blind as well) bugs that fly and bump onto every surface at a suicidal speed.

And there it is, this creepy creepy-crawly suddenly was everywhere in my small, damn small study, desperately attracted to the light from my laptop screen. It bumped itself onto my thesis introduction and fell to the keyboard when my figures were trying to reach for the letter “K”.
My bloody scream even horrified myself. I don’t know which one scares me more: the bug or the writing.

While Roquentin in Satre’s Nausea realized the meaning of reality through holding a dessert knife, the feel of the handle and the blade, I recited exact the same lines when I was trying to get the stubborn insect away from my laptop:

Now I know: I exist - the world exists—-and I know that the world exists.

I didn’t get back to my work afterwards. Can’t get rid of the image of a huge bug struggling on my keyboard.
Maybe that “K” I was reaching for is for Kafka.

Xiu Wang : 16 May 2007 03:43 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

enough of it!

I stayed in my small room for almost 12 hours today making power points. At some point I really got frustrated and called Charlie and cursed this so-called technology-oriented teaching style which seems to be so desperately in fashion nowadays in China.
I still remember how much fun I had a few years ago when Lily and I designed powerpoints together. We worked till 5 o’clock till the morning and had 8’oclock class with silly sense of self-fulfillment. I am sure we were pretty much too overwhelmed by the discovery of multi-media dimension of teaching, which indeed had conferred us much fun in and outside the classroom.
But today all the technology-related issues have been developing really fast. Actually they have been developing too far for me to enjoy their use. I start to feel reminiscent for the days when we sit around the professor, who has huge piles of fat books on the lecture desk, who refers to the magnificent quotes from those books without even open them, who has good sense of humour to make us learn with a smile, not in the way that one may almost intuitively laugh at the stupid powerpoint animations.
In a writing seminar, we were told to use bullet points and subtitles while we write the first draft, and were strongly urged to take them off during the process of editing. That might tell something.
Often the seemingly most well-organized and framed way of presentation stands for nothing but an unpolished mind. Sadly we often forget how important the mind can be.

Xiu Wang : 07 Mar 2007 16:01 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

the deadly acedemia?

Writing about web page http://shehui.voc.com.cn/article/00/1065295.html

Yesterday Ouyang jie committed suicide. She was a famous economic professor with Sun Yat-Sen University, the most famous university in South China.
I do not remember how many times I heard news like this. Some PhDs, or professors, or researchers, often from the best academic institutions, often recognized as well-established or very promising, often relatively young, often with a family, often reportedly talented, commit suicide. Does that much studying and reading and researching leads nowhere but a total desperation? Is the academia, the place that I am so eager to go for, only a deadly site after all?
I feel sad and sorry for those who passed away. But I cannot agree with the media, which has been almost unanimously commenting on the ‘weakness and fragility of intellectuals produced by the defected higher education system in China’. There are certainly problems within the higher education system, but there are bigger problems with how much space there is for us to feel free and dignified. I am sorry for this almost pathetic Englightenment blief in human nature, but this is truely my bottom line of still willing to live.
‘Man exists. For him it is not of question of wondering whether his presence in the world is useful, whether life is worth the trouble of being lived. The questions make so sense. It is a matter of knowing whether he wants to live and under what conditions’. (Beauvoir,Ethics of Ambiguity, 15) I can not agree with Beauvoir more. We live this life not to find out when we do not want to live, but rather to understand when we want it to continue.
Suicide, to me, is a most serious and solemn decision. It may have nothing to do with ‘weakness and fragility’, but rather is a final declaration of freedom and dignity of an individual.

Xiu Wang : 23 Jan 2007 01:42 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Happy Western Winter Holiday??

This is the greeting I got from Yvonne---an obviously resistant translation of Merry Christmas. I told her that Venuti might adore that.
This resistant/foreignizing/covert translation somehow reminds me the simple fact that this is not my holiday after all. There was a stupid and perhaps ridiculous incident that happened to me when I was a sophomore in GW. Qi and I organized a fantastic Christmas party for our department, and it was until several hours before the party started we were informed that the university would not ‘appreciate’ any festival event with relate to the ‘western’, perhaps worse ‘western and religious’, holidays, and we’d better cancel the party for the sake of ‘being politically correct’. Qi and I were astonished, and eventually outrageous. After arguing with the ‘authority’ for a long time, the deal was that we could still have the party on the Christmas Eve on condition that there was nothing that connotes ‘Christmas’. We tear down smiling pictures of Santa Clause and removed the huge Christmas tree, and changed all the signs to ‘happy new year’. It turned out to be a very successful party after all, but that stupid ‘happy new year but not merry Christmas’ warning really pissed us off: For Buddha’s sake, this is a English Language and Culture Department!
Today nobody can say anything if I want to dress up Edward into a Reindeer. His kindergarten actually organized a grand Christmas party and put them on stage in XinHai Theatre, the most prestigious ‘high culture’ place in my city. Edward played a cute monkey with ‘Xmas’ on his belly, and the dance he performed was ‘All little animals singing Christmas Songs’. I really loved it, with out any feeling that this is a cultural invasion of the evil ‘west’.
Finally we have to agree the political is not the personal, but rather the personal is the political. The western and the Chinese, the religious and the Communist, the past and the present, the mother and the child, boill down to nothing but the life that I live every day.
This is written today, on the traditional Chinese Winter Festival. I bet Edward will also be very happy tonight---we reserved his favorite lobster from Australia and clam from Canada to celeberate this Chinese day of winter…

Xiu Wang : 22 Dec 2006 03:31 |  Tags: Life Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

fact or value

The collapse of fact/value dichotomy
This is not really about Putman’s book, which I eagerly read in the past few days. It is more of a interesting story about Edward.
We were playing weiqi today and he insisted on taking the white pieces at the beginning. Half way in the game, when the black side seems to be evidently overwhelming, he decided that he will switch to black. I protested by saying that it would be utterly unfair, but he looked at me innocently by saying: I do not do fair play. I dont care about the play; I just want to win.
Everyone laughed. I gave up, not because I wanted to spoil him, but because he made a point! A descriptive one! I am the one who endowed the word ‘fair’ with ethical considerations and the accompanying normative forces. It does not work for Edward who uses the word in its ‘pure’ descriptive sense. This funny phenomenon extends to his proud use of ‘spoil’:’my teachers spoil me!?’, ‘miserable’: I enjoy making mother’s life miserable’, or ‘brutal’: ‘Father beats me up brutally.’ We usually laugh at his (mis)use of these words. Today, he used the word ‘unfair’ so sincerely that I started doubt that he actually was trying to describe what he wants. The language that has been so morally-laden for me does not seem to be the same for him.
Maybe as soon as he grows older and develops his own moral system, he will find it hard to use these words again in the way he is using them now. Some day he will have to face the collapse of fact/value dichotomy, and realize that his actions and words will be heavier.

Xiu Wang : 18 Dec 2006 14:40 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

dont want to be old?

Derrida forcefully deconstructs almost everything, but he touches upon the topic of death gently. The Gift of Death--——the best gift that we can ever get from the mighty God, the absolute other, the singular other. A gift is given, a debt is then construed. The given of the gift is unconditional, the repay of the debt is doomed. We expect this gift from God from the first instant of our existence, and the knowledge of this gift set us into a forever debt, that can only be paid off perhaps by the life we live.
A period makes a sentence complete, and relatively stable and perhaps meaningful. Death, too, collects and sutures the fragments of our experiences and consolidates an identity for us that could have been scrappy otherwise. The awareness of an end makes each moment before the end meaningful. Dracula is the most miserable creature: they bear immortality, the worst curse that dissolves the significance of time, and therefore the meaning of life.
Heidegger tries to let us believe that life, like death, is just a way of our existence. Death is eternal, and life is temporary. In the space of eternity, time does not exist. We only time our life, and this timing makes our life a very special form of our existence. A philosopher friend once told me: want to know how much you love him? Well, count how much time you are willing to spend with him. I smiled. We give our time, or, put in a better way, our life, to the ones we love. We divide our love into proportions, and we spend our time accordingly.
These lines about life, death, time and love are written for you, Edward. You might not know what you actually mean when you told me that ’ I don’t want to grow old’today. I am glad you realized that we all get older each day, and I am glad that you fear for it. In fear and trembling, we cherish the life in a different way. In fear and trembling, we figure out how to distribute our time. You know what—-I decided my time is always yours when you need it. You know why? That is because I love you.

Xiu Wang : 15 Sep 2006 02:49 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

red hat

Somebody rang the bell. I went to get the door, and saw an old lady. She must be in her sixties, but she looks gorgeous in her elegant crimson outfit, and her smile is just like the sunshine outside. She explained that she was looking for J.C. Hat Studio, www.jchatstudio.com because she was really impressed by their products in the Alberta show last week.
Winny's studio produces wonderful hats with very bright colours. The first time I saw their products I was almost dumbfounded. Red, purple, pink, lavender, stunningly bright mixes that almost amounts to a colour symphony. On top of that, all the trims that they use are extremely astounding: feathers, huge silk flower, butterflies, shining threads of bead??How could someone wear anything like this?! That was the first question that come into my mind.
''Aren??t these hats beautiful?'' She asked me.
I have to admit that they are. To be more exact, they are alluring.
''They are beautiful'', I answered, ''but,,,''
''But what?''
''well, aren't these too much?'' I asked tentatively, hoping not to offend the designer.
Winny smiled. ''To you, yes, but to those members from the Red Hat society, the only problem is that they are not extravagant enough!''
That the first time that I heard of the RHS.
And now in front of me, I saw someone from that society, who looks so graceful and elegant that I could not help wondering how wonderful it would be if I were to be like that in my sixties. She tried some hat from Winny's collection, and I kept feeling amazed how beautiful she looked with those hats on. She was also looking for some gift for her friend. I was helping them looking for accessories, earrings, necklaces, scarves etc. When I handed to her a set of beautiful purple necklace, she examined it and handed it back to me: ''It is very lovely, dear, but it might be a little bit too pinky for my friend, who will be fifty next year. Seeing me puzzled, she explained that pink and lavender are for those ladies under 50, and only those above 50 are entitled to wear red and purple, because read and purple signifies maturity. ''The whole idea is to have fun, to make the idea of aging something that you expect rather than escape.'' She added.
I was impressed. It was until recently that I get worried about my age and weight, and those worries seems extremely stupid in front of this old lady, who is so enthusiastic to look for something red, something purple, something mature.
Maybe deep in our hearts, we all wear a big red hat and purple gown. Once in a while we put them on to be ourselves. That was the slogan of the Red Hat Society: all my life, I've done things for you, and now, I need a while for myself.

Xiu Wang : 27 Aug 2006 19:34 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Difference

A: How's your trip to Brazil?
B: It's good.
A: How?
B: Actually it is just different from the daily life.
A: Well, it is always the differences that make us tolerate, continue, and perhaps even cherish our daily life.
B: Philosophical!
A: Well, that is what I am studying for!

(A dialogue between a good friend and me. I never had a chance to go to Brazil… yet)

Xiu Wang : 23 Aug 2006 07:51 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem