酷我-北美枫

[Champagne]

A Day in Her Life* co-written by ericcoliu


She passed the kitchen clock hung on the wall, glanced at it, then gasped and murmured to herself, "There won't be enough time!" She wouldn't have enough time to make the bed, wash the dishes, wash the walls upstairs, clean the mirrors, and to vacuum the carpets so that she could get the dinner ready. All of this took place on some interior schedule that she followed faithfully. What she has been doing with her life is to clean her house more efficiently.

Today, like another day in her past life, she kept asking herself, "Can I do better than I am doing? ... Is my house right as to its sanitary arrangement? ... Can I make the best use of my time?"

She started a new day by cleaning her house, and no matter how well it had been done yesterday, she willed to make new gains every day, or else be a failure.

*This is a rewrite of one of the silenced Hertories in the ericcoliu-esque sense.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[[Champagne]]

A Day in Her Life* co-written by ericcoliu


She passed the kitchen clock hung on the wall, glanced at it, then gasped and murmured to herself, "There won't be enough time!" She wouldn't have enough time to make the bed, wash the dishes, wash the walls upstairs, clean the mirrors, and to vacuum the carpets so that she could get the dinner ready. All of this took place on some interior schedule that she followed faithfully. What she has been doing with her life is to clean her house more efficiently.

Today, like another day in her past life, she kept asking herself, "Can I do better than I am doing? ... Is my house right as to its sanitary arrangement? ... Can I make the best use of my time?"

She started a new day by cleaning her house, and no matter how well it had been done yesterday, she willed to make new gains every day, or else be a failure.

*This is a rewrite of one of the silenced Hertories in the ericcoliu-esque sense.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[ericcoliu]

This is a seemingly never-ending story of housewifing of women.

Like Marcia Cross's character, Bree Van De Kamp, in ABC’s Desperate Housewives, she is married to a jerk neglectful of his responsibility of taking his fair share of domestic chores. But she has a defence mechanism: obsessive housewifing: cleaning, washing, sewing, etc.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

This is a seemingly never-ending story of housewifing of women.

Like Marcia Cross's character, Bree Van De Kamp, in ABC’s Desperate Housewives, she is married to a jerk neglectful of his responsibility of taking his fair share of domestic chores. But she has a defence mechanism: obsessive housewifing: cleaning, washing, sewing, etc.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[Champagne]

Are you blaming the “victim” of a patriarchal society?

Up to this moment, I still vividly remember the unexpected encounter with a married woman seventeen years ago, who was the wife of my newly acquainted and helpful friend and mother of two pre-schoolers, who more importantly, was getting a master’s degree in computer science with no working experience in her field. After our almost thirty-minute engaging discussion on recent developments in the computer industry and the emergent importance of WinTelism, Shi-wei sighed deeply and said to me, "I'm green with envy because you're a man and unmarried. You can pursue what you would like to do. Unlike you, I’m bound with my duties as a mother and wife, and more importantly, as a woman," she continued to murmured, "My days are always busy yet dull. What I do is to busy myself around my domestic duties: getting up around six, waking up my PhD husband, making breakfast and preparing the lunch box for my husband, helping my children get ready for breakfast and lunch, washing dishes after meals, doing some laundry and cleaning, sometimes, and shopping, making dinner after my husband's comes home, cleaning up the mess after my husband finishes playing games with the children and sends them to bed. In between these domestic activities, I can sit down and take a rest for half an hour or an hour or so. Most of the time during the day, I'm trying to find out where my children are because of their fondness of playing hide-and-seek with me, and to smooth things over between them. ......Every night, when I lie beside my husband, I can't help asking myself, 'Is this what I really want? Is this all?' I'm too cozy to escape from this comfortable prison built up by socially obliged familial duties and mutually warm affections towards my family. ......"

Shi-wei kept “rambling” about her sense of loss and emptiness about her life, and finally bowed her head in her hands and unstoppably wept. At that moment, I felt embarrassed and didn't know how to deal with this seemingly out-of-control situation. That was completely “un-Chinese”.

Finally restraining herself after ten minutes or so, Shi-wei made an apology to me for making me uncomfortable, and said calmly, "I think I'm a little tired and overwhelmed by my reading of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique earlier this morning." This was my first time hearing about Friedan's work, but I didn't have any interest in reading her work. About five years later, an unpleasant encounter with a Taiwanese female graduate student during a four-day seminar on the oral history stirred my interest in reading Friedan's work, and I found out about its appealing power to Shi-wei and her like.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[[Champagne]]

Are you blaming the “victim” of a patriarchal society?

Up to this moment, I still vividly remember the unexpected encounter with a married woman seventeen years ago, who was the wife of my newly acquainted and helpful friend and mother of two pre-schoolers, who more importantly, was getting a master’s degree in computer science with no working experience in her field. After our almost thirty-minute engaging discussion on recent developments in the computer industry and the emergent importance of WinTelism, Shi-wei sighed deeply and said to me, "I'm green with envy because you're a man and unmarried. You can pursue what you would like to do. Unlike you, I’m bound with my duties as a mother and wife, and more importantly, as a woman," she continued to murmured, "My days are always busy yet dull. What I do is to busy myself around my domestic duties: getting up around six, waking up my PhD husband, making breakfast and preparing the lunch box for my husband, helping my children get ready for breakfast and lunch, washing dishes after meals, doing some laundry and cleaning, sometimes, and shopping, making dinner after my husband's comes home, cleaning up the mess after my husband finishes playing games with the children and sends them to bed. In between these domestic activities, I can sit down and take a rest for half an hour or an hour or so. Most of the time during the day, I'm trying to find out where my children are because of their fondness of playing hide-and-seek with me, and to smooth things over between them. ......Every night, when I lie beside my husband, I can't help asking myself, 'Is this what I really want? Is this all?' I'm too cozy to escape from this comfortable prison built up by socially obliged familial duties and mutually warm affections towards my family. ......"

Shi-wei kept “rambling” about her sense of loss and emptiness about her life, and finally bowed her head in her hands and unstoppably wept. At that moment, I felt embarrassed and didn't know how to deal with this seemingly out-of-control situation. That was completely “un-Chinese”.

Finally restraining herself after ten minutes or so, Shi-wei made an apology to me for making me uncomfortable, and said calmly, "I think I'm a little tired and overwhelmed by my reading of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique earlier this morning." This was my first time hearing about Friedan's work, but I didn't have any interest in reading her work. About five years later, an unpleasant encounter with a Taiwanese female graduate student during a four-day seminar on the oral history stirred my interest in reading Friedan's work, and I found out about its appealing power to Shi-wei and her like.
_________________
I'm Champagne,
Bottled poetry with sparkling joy.

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]