To Choose or to be Chosen?

Reading parts 3 and 4 of the Knight’s Tales made me remember about this summer and my trip to the castle of Versailles. There were many rooms, each had its own purpose but the one I remember the most was pink, it had a small bed and a dresser, it was Marie Antoinette’s room . Why I remembered this I don’t know, what I do know is that she reminds me of Emelye because the first things the guide told us about her was that she was forced to marry king Louis XVI of France.
Palomon and Arcite had both fallen deeply in love with Emelye so Thesues decides to hold a contest and the winner would marry her. I find that completely unfair because she has no say in the matter whether she wants to marry one of them or not but then again this is not so shocking in other cultures, it is accepted. I am one those people who finds it shocking. It’s not because I believe in “mr.right” or love at first at first sight but I do think that we should be able to choose even if we make a bad choice. There is no point in judging since both ideals have a valid reason, you just have to consider them both.
There’s no point in saying that one is love and the other is not because you can eventually learn to love the person that you are arranged to marry. Some, may think it is best to arrange a marriage because parents always know what is right for you so they will pick a man that meets their standards and reflect the life that you are used to living. Then again we are different from our parents and we want different things even though we are raised under the same standards.
I want you my reader, to put yourself in that position. You are 21 let’s say and you know you have two options:
1. You parents choose this wonderful man for you. He is handsome, wealthy, and respectful and can give you the life you have been used to living. Considering the circumstances you know that if the end you have to marry him, it won’t be a misery to live with him and eventually you may learn to love him.
2. You know you have the choice to marry the man you want. You may fall in love and he may not love you back but you are able to live with the tranquility that you choose that and that you made the mistakes, no one forced you to do it, so the you try again and again if necessary until you find the person that you choose knowing it was what you wanted and not what someone wanted for you.
Going back to the Tales, in this case Emelye has no choice but I thought it was interesting to see how even though we are talking about stories that happened many years ago, they still resemble things that go on today, and not only arranged marriages but also how the women is not treated with the same respect as a man, or have you ever heard of man forced to marry a woman?

From Here to Where?

If you were only to read the poem Migrations by Dorian Merina you would not have enjoyed the poem as I did. Watching the video, full of shapes and colors in motion and listening to the music makes you feel as if you were taking a journey with the author through his poem.

“On the boats come the goods that cross the waters
Like veins and blood rushing
The goods cross the water.”

With that first verse you don’t only feel you are on a boat but you know that the poem shows how the ocean is the main source of migration and how everything started moving through it. Just “like veins and blood rushing” through your body, cultures, knowledge, food, beliefs and even people move through the ocean. The words in other languages and in general the words he uses make you feel from home sort of like a tourist but not precisely because you are accepting the wide range of cultures that Dorian expresses.

The poem creates a connection between the reader and the author that would not be possible otherwise because with this poem the author has more than one way to transmit his emotions. Words, shapes, colors and music all link together to create a migration experience of a movement of ideas because the poem itself migrates it starts at the beginning and then flows with the different words and you actually feel as if you get from one place to another.

No Satisfaction.

Satisfaction. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of that word is pleasure. Am I happy with what I have? Do I feel full field or do I want more? It all starts with wanting something, first you choose it, then you do whatever you have to do in order to get it, once you have it you should feel satisfied. That’s how it works but then again is doesn’t. The satisfaction of that thing be it whatever each person wants, last so little that we start wanting something else almost immediately. This has nothing to do being ungrateful because we don’t depreciate what we just got we just want more than what we have. It can also be seen as the pursuit of happiness. All the things that we want, all the decision we make represent something that will lead up to our final answer. This only questions the nature of happiness and Arcite, a soldier being held prisoner in The Knight’s Tale has to question his. He is imprisoned and has the chance to be free but if he does leave then he will not be able to see the woman he loves. It comes back to satisfaction. There are two possibilities: he leaves and he is free or he stays, only seeing the woman he loves but imprisoned. He will not be satisfied because winning something implies loosing something else.
He must decide what to do and which decision will satisfy him more because “we seek eagerly after felicity but we go wrong very often, truly.” (1266-1267) It is all part of the chase and what we think we want may be the worst decision we ever made. Again, like Arcite who leaves Athens and then returns full of regret and miserable of not being able to see his lady. But then we must ask the question again, is he satisfied? That we don’t know because neither pleasure nor satisfaction is happiness.