The room where all the artworks were shown was not as big as I thought it would be. I heard random music and I smelt wood the moment I stepped into the room. The white lighting and the music had produced an unsecured atmosphere and made the visitors wanting to leave as soon as possible.

There were different kinds of artworks in the room, most of them were seemed to be violent, but there did have some that tried to portrait beauty. The artwork that left the strongest impression to me was the one where a mother with no legs was holding onto her child’s leg, meanwhile the child was hanging upside down in the air. The expressions on both the mother and the child’s faces seemed to be very creepy to me, and they were hard for me to interpret–was the mother being jealous of her kid who has legs and she does not? Right next to that work was a painting of a pregnant woman–and I was not sure whether that painting was related to the work. I did not see beauty within this work, which indeed did left me in this emotion of “negative capability,” where I was dragged into uncertainty.

I am glad that I went to visit the artworks. That was the first time my mood was actually changed due to the given surroundings. I understood what the author was trying to show and indeed looking at the artworks was an interesting experience.

Why does the parent has to be so mean to the girl and calls her a “slut’? Would the situation be different if the parent is actually talking to a guy? (The parent’s son)

Why would the author writes: “death does not complete me?”

If death does not complete one, then what completes one?

I do not really get the style of writing. If the main character of the story is the northeastern girl, why would the author spends the first ten pages on himself? And also there are some long sentences without any punctuation, which makes the readers hard to “breathe.” Did he write that on purpose? Did the author mean to write in a style as if he is only talking to himself?

Do you think that culture can really be changed? Especially in a country like the US, where people from all different places are gathered and lived?

Father vs. son

…even if the younger generations are willing to change, what about the older generations? And what do they consider as change? Do the older generations really want change?

Family Romance

I agree to the fact that The reading is essentially saying that parents served as the first role model that a child is looking toward. But I doubt a little when the reading says that the child would not be satisfied once he or she has a sibling, due to the fact that the child feels that the parents’ love is no longer full for him/ her– because if the child looks at his or her parents as role models, then he or she should know that there are many things in the world that are to be loved, so there should not be a saying of “nothing getting all the love.”

It is a nice sunny day today—but just a little too cold. Minghui Zhang tucks her head in her jacket’s collar, half awakes. Is the door locked? Does she have everything? She paces up a little, going straight to the bus stop—is the bus here yet? Is the station crowed? Will she able to get on the bus?

She crosses the street. The bus is not here yet. She checks her phone and the app says that it would be here five minutes. She reaches for her metro card and stands aside when she sees a person smoking, frowns a little but does not say anything. John Swell notices the girl in the black jacket, remembers her. A quiet girl living next door with her family, probably just reached eighteen years old…or a little older than that? Can’t really tell, it is always hard to tell Asians’ ages; but he knows that she is Chinese, from a communication that he heard once when he was watering his plants at the front yard. He sees her holding her phone with her left hand, checking the time.

The bus finally arrives. She immediately covers her ears when she hears the sound of the bus tires, so sharp that makes her recalling the sound of nails scratching on blackboard—probably not as severe, but still. She lines up and already can hear people talking in the bus.

Does love make one go insane easily? To think too much and to have one’s perfect parts to be shown to one’s lover, thus making one go “crazy”? That love is a drug and it makes one feel ashamed about one’s imperfect parts? …But should not love provides one courage? Why in this case is the opposite?

Money vs family relationship

How can one weight materials over a family member? Does that make money on top of everything else? “Love is the thing that people would only consider after they are satisfied with their basic needs”… Social Darwinism…social pressure…

Also, as a female during the story time period, how can Gregor’s sister able to stay home and does nothing–even the mother was working.

Why does the author choose to make George Samsa turns into a bug but not other creatures? What does the bug symbolize in the story?