on Chapter 2 ends in Lowe stating,” He had to rekindle his spirit, command his life, think up new dreams, fill up the deep bottomless gaps in his stomach. He had to start again.” New beginnings by Tracy Chapman speaks on creating new beginnings from the tragedies of the world. There is pain in Lowes situation, and at the end of the chapter he makes a commitment to undue and fix this pain.
on Here is a song I’ve got in mind for a few weeks now, that goes very well with On such a full sea, Exit West and The Pagoda:
”
I left my soul there,
Down by the sea
I lost control here
Living free”
on I had recently read these poem for a class on gender, ethnicity and immigration. As we continue our conversations about migration, movement, people, and stories untold these two poems bring in a lot of points and questions. What stories are told and how? How do we utilize language? What is considered worthy enough to read? What is proper? How does poetry define time?
Dabydeen’s Coolie Odyssey: another side of the Caribbean immigration experience
on Good thing to read and keep in mind as we continue our discussions of afro-asia, the in between and outside. This is relevant to Lisa Lowe’s text on intimacies between “different worlds.”
on “Nadia thought about this. They were achingly beautiful, these ghostly cities- New York, Rio, Shanghai, Paris- under their stars, images as though from an epoch before electricity, but with the buildings of today. Whether they looked like the past, present or the future, she couldn’t decide. page 57
In this passage, the author uses specific word choices/diction in order to emit a certain feeling and point. Achingly in front of beautiful, signifies a sorrow and longing. A sorrow because, her own country was once this beautiful. Maybe Nadia, is pained by beauty in certain ways because she cannot find that in her cities exterior now. She longs to be in a place that looks like the photographs shown. There is a wish for her home to look beautiful and illuminated like that again. The sorrow in the beauty is calls to the past, her present and a future she cannot see. Ghostly may have been used to allude to the unnaturalness and unrealness of the photo itself. That her wishes may as well be “ghostly”. Her home is in ruins, her past is painful and her future is uncertain and could end up in death. Her city lives under the stars and in darkness, but the situation is not beautiful nor worth longing for. Her darkness exists because of power. The darkness is controlled not, natural but forced. Bringing in the past, present and future evokes questions of time, space and irony. How much can a photograph tell? Is this her city now? There is an irony of utilizing editing technology to create darkness, when Nadia’s darkness is reality and not edited to make more beautiful.
on 04
Even though there is uncertainty for whats to come with Nadia and Saeed’s relationships, this song captures the beginning and start of thier love. “Sweet love, bet you bring me, cutting my darkness like a knife…
And when I thought my life was almost at an end, you gave me the strength to start it over again.”
Wherever, the love ends up being, Saeed was important in Nadia’s life during the war and vice versa.
on This weekend I attended an on campus event called MOSS (Men of Substance Showcase), where the whole idea of the event is similar to a male beauty pageant. There I saw many spoken word pieces that had instrumentals or some music track played in the background. I thought about how I would perform a spoken word piece summarizing what I learned in this chapter and this is the instrumental that I would use to speak over. I’m not exactly sure why, but this beat sets me in a mood to be expressive and talk about an important/ not as comfortable topic.