by Heather Plett | Jan 6, 2005 | Uncategorized
I found some of the files I thought had vapourized when our computer crashed! Yay! I haven’t retrieved everything, but this is better than nothing. In honour of this great event, I’ll post this poem that I found among my writings…
Drift
She is bubble
fragile and transparent
riding on the edge of a dangerous wind
some winds come softly
lofting her gently
to the heights
some winds come cruelly
crashing her blindly
against the cliff
She is bubble
iridescent and brilliant
riding on the edge of a dangerous wind
by Heather Plett | Jan 5, 2005 | Uncategorized
It’s funny how much pleasure I can derive from a good pair of long underwear. I LOVE my new long johns. They are so cozy and soft and warm and they help me maintain my sanity when I’m standing at the bus stop waiting for the bus to take me to work in this disgustingly cold weather. They’re SO much better than the old pair I borrowed from Marcel that were losing their elasticity and were constantly sliding down my butt and bunching up around my thighs. These ones fit so nicely and snuggle up against me like a warm blanky. (I’d say they’re “soft as butter” against my skin, but I’m not sure I’d like the feel of butter slathered all over my legs!)
What’s that they say about small things amusing small minds? Oh well, I don’t mind a small mind if it helps me enjoy simple pleasures now and then.
by Heather Plett | Jan 5, 2005 | Uncategorized
I LOVE this story about a secret language created by women for women to help them survive and thrive in a male-dominated society. It just seems like such a unique way to cope with the oppression and gain a little power. I’m sure it drove the men CRAZY that their wives and daughters were communicating and keeping journals in a language they couldn’t understand! It reminds me of the “code language” Fern and I or Laurel and I used to create when we were kids. We would spend hours creating symbols for all the letters, writing notes with the new symbols, and then trying to decipher each other’s notes. This article gives me great glee. Too bad the last woman with the language died.
China’s last woman proficient in the mysterious Nushu language, probably the world’s only female-specific language, died at her Central China home earlier this week. She was in her 90s.
Yang Huanyi learned to read and write the language as a little girl. Chinese linguists say her death put an end to a 400-year-old tradition in which women shared their innermost feelings with female friends through a set of codes incomprehensible to men.
Yang was born in Jiangyong County in Hunan Province where many people believe the language originated.
She learned the language from seven sworn sisters in the county who were regarded as the most authoritative speakers and writers of the language. Yang became its only survivor by the end of the 1990s, after the seven had passed away.
Until her death Sept. 20, it remained a mystery as to how old Yang was. During an interview with Xinhua in 2002, she said she was 94. Authorities in her hometown, however, said she was 98 when she died.
The letters, poems and prose Yang wrote were collected and compiled by linguists in Qinghua University into a book published early this year.
Although some linguists are trying to learn the female language, experts say Yang was more authoritative and unaffected by mandarin Chinese, in which she was totally illiterate.
None of Yang’s children and grandchildren inherited her proficiency in the unique language.
Nushu characters are structured by four kinds of strokes, including dots, horizontals, verticals and arcs.
by Heather Plett | Jan 5, 2005 | Uncategorized
“We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us….
“I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a striking similarity to each other. Both men had talked of their intentions to commit suicide. Both used the typical argument – they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that for the one it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other it was a thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still needed to be finished. His work could not be done by anyone else, any more than another person could ever take the place of the father in his child’s affections.
“This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and he will be able to bear almost any ‘how'”.
(Written about the author’s experience and observations in a concentration camp.)
by Heather Plett | Jan 5, 2005 | Uncategorized
Here’s the Viktor Frankl quote:
“To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. This suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the ‘size’ of human suffering is absolutely relative.”
by Heather Plett | Jan 5, 2005 | Uncategorized
Ah, the smell of Old Spice. I kept an old bottle of Dad’s. I couldn’t bear to throw out something that smelled like him. I dug it out of a box just now, and now I have the smell of it on my hands. I didn’t mean to – just came across it while I was looking for something else. It’s not quite right though. It’s missing all the nuances that used to mix with the Old Spice smell – the hint of animals and fields and his own human smell. His Sunday smell. I can still see him splashing it on just before we left for church. It belongs with his black leather Bible and his Sunday clothes.
I still miss him like crazy. I still have those moments when the pain chokes me with sudden and unexpected strength. The moments don’t come as often any more, but they still come. And they still grip my throat and make it hard to breath. Viktor Frankl talks about how suffering is like a vapour – it moves into you and occupies every inch of the empty room of your body, soul, and spirit. Grief is like that too. It takes over my whole body when it comes.
