Author: Hanli

PR #4: O Happy Dagger

Watching the 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet was indispensable for me to be able to visualize the play’s setting and characters and better understand its poignant and heartbreaking story. While the story can certainly be enjoyed in book form, it is important to recognize its origin as a play, where its scenes, setting and characters are not described. While we may learn about its characters through occasional description by others, they are generally left bare of any significant description of their appearances. Similarly, we never learn more about a character’s surroundings than the roughest details of the set they are in. These absent descriptions (due to the required liberties of the stage) could be overlooked using the powers of imagination, but I struggled to pass the last missed trait, the lack of descriptions of the characters’ movements, tone, and emotions. Unlike a novel, the author of a play will not mention the character’s intonation (“he spits angrily,” “he yells”) nor their facial or hand movements (“she grimaced”). In reading Romeo and Juliet, it is necessary to interpret Shakespeare’s elaborate writing to tell the characters’ tones, and here is where I found the movie an essential addition to reading the play as a Shakespeare newbie. As I improved at deciphering Elizabethan lines, having hints to guide me around what could be intended by certain phrases was very helpful. By watching the movie beforehand, I not only could pay more attention to what characters said, but I also understood the passages much better than if I hadn’t heard them acted out first.

By seeing it visually, I was more saddened by the tragedy of this fatal romance, as both the actors but also my ability to correctly interpret the humor throughout made the story feel more realistic. Through seeing the characters portrayed by actors similar to my own age, the disastrous effect of Romeo and Juliet’s love was made more personal. Since I could hear the characters laugh or their tones while giving comical statements, I also knew more often when a line was meant to be comical, and this made the tragedy all the more striking. Nearly everyone has some humor in their daily life: by changing it from being just a dramatic, romantically intense story, the additions of Shakespeare’s spots of humor throughout the tragic tale helped it feel more lifelike. Sharing some of the jests of the main characters and their friends made it more heartbreaking to me when Romeo and Juliet tragically took their lives. Overall, watching the story acted out, as it was intended to be consumed, was essential for me to better comprehend the meanings behind Shakespearian words and strengthened my connection to the story.

PW #7: A Childhood Memory

A fresh, calm afternoon. Sunlight trickles through gaps in the branches, leaving stains of golden light on the ground. On the side of the wooden house’s steep driveway, a patch of trees filters out the sun. Their leaves shine as they attempt to stand guard against the glow. Birds converse in short chirps all around, and ever so often one of them breaks out into a trilling song.

It is the perfect day to be fairies.

Through a delicate deer path, a girl slips through the tall glowing sentinels. She hears her sister already in the hideout and quickens her pace to go by the fir decorated with a small red wooden fairy door. After a moment, she passes through the trees and reaches the top of the hill, where the path inclines downward, carpeted in plush moss. Below is a flat rock outcropping, a meter or two wide, before the rock suddenly falls away vertically to the road.

The girl pauses at the bottom of the hill, at an empty stump where the incline flattens. With a dramatic gesture, she drops a crumpled brown leaf into its hollow. Having paid her fairy toll for entry, she ducks under the lazy branch of an arbutus tree into the fairy hideout and greets her sister.

In their sanctuary, there are several flat areas of rock cleared of damp moss on which to sit. Weeds inch over the ring of rocks for cooking dinners on the right. They soon section off tasks, with the girl assigned to breaking off dead twigs of broom bushes to cook for spaghetti while her sister swiftly makes a fire by arranging fallen orange maple leaves in the firepit. After barely a minute, the spaghetti is ready and seasoned with small herbs and flowers.

While cooking meals is certainly entertaining, what calls them to the hideout most is the sense of excitement as a car passes on the road below. Being fairies, they cannot be seen by anyone, so the drone of a passing engine spurs them into action. Quickly, they must duck to the side, behind a tree, to avoid human recognition. After the vehicle’s departure, they slowly sneak out of their places to resume their activities.

Above where they sit, in the branches of a thin sapling, a bird resumes its song.

IRJE #6: Plant life

For my next IRJE, I am writing about a quotation from Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (the novel on which the film is based). The paleontologists Dr. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler have been flown out to a Costa Rican island called Isla Nublar, where huge developments in genetics have allowed a private company to create a park with herds of genetically reconstructed dinosaurs. The quotation takes place as the two of them, a guide, and other experts pass the park’s swimming pool and Ellie notices that the huge, previously extinct ferns planted decoratively next to it are actually very poisonous – enough so that they could make anyone who touched them sick. Ellie muses about how “people” view plants:

“People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction – and defense. […]

“People who imagined that life on earth consisted of animals moving against a green background seriously misunderstood what they were seeing. That green background was busily alive. Plants grew, moved, twisted, and turned, fighting for the sun; and they interacted continuously with animals – discouraging some with bark and thorns; poisoning others; and feeding still others to advance their own reproduction, to spread their pollen and seeds. It was a complex, dynamic process […] which she knew most people didn’t understand” (pp. 85-86).

I chose this quotation because I liked how it not only made me think about how we may ignore plants in our daily lives, but also foreshadows the general irresponsibility of the park creators. While knowing that plants are alive, they are still used so often as decorations that it can be easy to forget that houseplants have their own cycles and “motivations” – to find more sunlight or create flowers to grow their species. Ellie states how the planting of deadly ferns at a pool where any visitors could encounter them demonstrates how the park creators see the plants as just decorations. Despite how ancient the fern is, the developers planted it without regard to how it might fit into today’s world and the defenses it may use. This foreshadows the rest of the book, where (spoiler!) dinosaurs escape their pens and wreak havoc on the humans who they don’t know how to react to.  This violence by the ancient life against humans is a theme of the book, showing how the money-driven park operators neglect to think about the fact that their assorted displays are not museum exhibits but living creatures unaccustomed to today’s world.

PW #6: In the Morning by the Sea

The dawn crests behind a tall cluster of hemlocks: spraying the sky with its light, it creates a gradient from a cold yellow to a delicate blue. The clouds are thin strips of cotton, laid lovingly on in front of the increasing blue backdrop, and fade away as the morning deepens.

Above me, I can hear birds swoop and dive in the frosty air; they exalt in the quiet, the freedom, they have before their kingdom is overtaken by human visitors. The sea laps at the rocky beach in front of me, tickling pebbles down into its depths, and ducks paddle lazily across the lagoon, uttering an occasional ‘quack’ at my presence.

The air is crisp: it hardens my face and chills my movements. As I inhale, it ices my throat. Nevertheless, it’s my favorite time of day: a time where the world is subdued, welcoming; there are no screeches and honks of passing cars, nor patches of scorching sunlight: rather, there are the chirps of birds making their nests, and waves of gold stretching toward me, gradually encapsulating me in its gilded light. It’s a time to rest, to catch up, where time may not stand still for you but will certainly slow down.

Behind the trees are clouds in shades of indigo and violet: they peek through their branches, glinting off of the water in sparkles of purple. As I sit here on a frosted log, the purple is turning to gray.

IRJE #5: The stars

For my next IRJE, I chose a quotation in the next book in the “Emily of New Moon” series, Emily Climbs, by L.M. Montgomery. In the story, the protagonist Emily is on a trip with her best friend Ilse canvassing for subscriptions (visiting neighborhoods asking people to subscribe) to a newspaper from their town in which they are boarding for school. However, while walking they get lost and will not be able to get to the house in which they are to stay in time before dark. Instead, they decide to stay the night on a haystack near the road, and Emily stays awake gazing at the stars and the beauty of the night.

“She was glad Ilse was asleep. Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in life, but when they do come they are inexpressibly wonderful – as if the finite were for a second divinity – as if humanity were for a space uplifted into divinity – as if all ugliness had vanished, leaving only flawless beauty” (p. 177).

This quotation highlights one of my favorite parts of both this series in particular and L.M. Montgomery’s writing in general – her descriptions of the world, even the smaller things in life. She often describes nature in very fantastical and vivid descriptions and accentuate small things such as the wind rustling through the trees or a clump of flowers. Even a simple thing such as laying and gazing at the stars can have great meaning, and be what make life interesting.

Personal Response – Technological Dystopias

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.”

“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“All right, then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”

There was a long silence.

‘I claim them all,’ said the Savage at last.

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (p. 211)

 

Of all the perceptions relating to technology and the removal of individual thought in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, what stuck most in my mind were those relating to true happiness in the Brave New World, and how soma fits into our own modern, technological world.

Reading in class was actually the second time I’ve read the first book, and while I was able to grasp concepts and ideas much clearer, the same concept stood out to me:  happiness and what it meant in the Brave New World, where everyone is happy, but no one knows the true meaning of unhappiness. I couldn’t help but think in circles. What would I choose to do with my life if I had the choice of the Brave New World, fully conditioned, or a life elsewhere? Certainly, life in the Brave New World would be joyful, but I would be robbed of all the consciousness which gave me the ability to comprehend what that meant or why it was at all significant. For I see true happiness as a happiness which you feel that you don’t deserve; happiness which you have to relish because you know that it can slip away and that not everyone can enjoy it. In the Brave New World where happiness is regular and a constant part of life, it would never be anything out of the ordinary – never anything to enjoy and hold on to. In normal life, my troubles could be lacking the comforts of the Brave New World; in the Brave New World, I would be oblivious, never knowing what I was missing.

The next thing which stood out to me was soma, and its connections to social media and technology in our culture. This was pointed out several times during Amusing Ourselves to Death, but Postman’s argument lacked the strength with which it could have had written today. One of the disparities which stood out to me most was where Postman writes about how the pace of television, and also how we “expect books and even other media (such as film) to maintain a consistency of content… we have no such expectation of television” (p. 104). While this is certainly true, in today’s world our pace and continuity of content have sped up and decreased even more. With sites such as YouTube and TikTok, where you need absolutely no context for what you watch, where videos may be seconds long and they can be passed by the instant that we cease to be interested by their content – perhaps because we find the speaker unattractive and uninteresting – Postman’s arguments can be seen in a more potent modern form.

It reminds me of a quote in the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma:” We’re training and conditioning a whole new generation of people that when we are uncomfortable or lonely or uncertain or afraid, we have a digital pacifier for ourselves, which is atrophying our own ability to deal with that.” Just like the soma in Brave New World, social media is becoming increasingly normalized as a way to block out the world when we are anxious, troubled, or upset – leaving us unable to deal with our emotions.

A key distinction which can be made is that the “Orwellian” world is tyrannized by an extreme ideological group, while the in the “Huxleyian,” it is controlled by technology (Postman, p.155). The question is whether that world is a utopia or a dystopia – if everyone is constantly happy, would happiness cease to have any significance? In a world where technology becomes increasingly integral to our daily lives and AI abounds, it merits looking at. Many of our visions of the future contain technology, and it is depicted negatively and positively. It reminds me of movies such as the Terminator series, where a computer intelligence attempts to take over by force, and the fears that some people have of artificial intelligence as a result. However, upon reflection it seems that the smarter option would be to gain control from the inside: corrupting our culture and discourse through technology, bit by bit, until no one would be alarmed or even conscious of what was happening. As Postman writes, it is not necessary to conceal anything uninteresting from a culture which is used to contradictions and diversions (p.111) – they have no interest.

PW #5: At Camp

When I first stamped out of my car into the drenched dirt outside the dripping timber camp lodge, I never expected I would be shaking hands with a murderer that very night.

After a grueling five-hour drive past kilometers of damp forests and soggy clouds, I was relieved to finally arrive. I had been looking forward to this camping trip for months, as an escape from the staleness of my room and a fun hiking holiday in the mountains up island. I’d been to the camp the last year and the year before, and I considered myself pretty prepared for anything that might arise. I’d even come within sight of a bear last time – though it was technically on the other side of the lake. (I still prefer to see it as a dangerous and risky encounter.)

Once I’d hurled my backpack amongst the pile under a small, covered area on the gravel outside the camp kitchens and we’d sat down on little wooden stumps, we got to ice breakers. There were only five other campers, all new, and all other girls around my age. That was rather unusual. I’d never been in a camp that didn’t have a mix of kids, and I typically recognized at least one of them, but not this time.

The guide cleared her throat. Her name was Mikaela, but everyone called her Mike, and she was a young dirty blonde-haired woman with a grey windbreaker who was there every year I’d been.

“We’ll start by each naming a fun fact about ourselves,” Mike encouraged.

I hate that question. Immediately, every potentially interesting part about me flies out of my head. Maybe something about what I last ate? No, not really personal. How many teeth I have? No, not quite ideal.

A straw-haired girl, tall and splotched with freckles, started off the circle.

 

To be continued..

IRJE #4: The Walk Home

My next IRJE is on a book I’m currently reading, Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery. The protagonist Emily is a young girl who is orphaned after her father dies of tuberculosis and is taken to live with two of her aunts. She loves nature, has an active imagination, is quite animated, and adores writing, especially writing poems. Emily also doesn’t properly understand the expectations that her aunts have for her behaviour, which often gets her in trouble with her Aunt Elizabeth.

In the following quotation, Emily describes her walk after mailing a letter at the post office.

“She found the walk home very enjoyable. It was a bland day in early April and spring was looking at you round the corners. The Wind Woman was laughing and whistling over the wet sweet fields; freebooting crows held conferences in the tree tops; little pools of sunshine lay in the mossy hollows; the sea was a blaze of sapphire beyond the golden dunes; the maple’s in Lofty John’s bush were talking about red buds. Everything Emily had ever read of dream and myth and legend seemed a part of the charm of that bush. She was filled to her finger-tips with a rapture of living.

‘Oh, I smell spring!’ she cried as she danced along the brook path. Then she began to compose a poem on it” (p. 227).

I chose this quotation because I loved the creative way that the author described Emily’s surroundings. Not only is it very descriptive, which makes the scene easier to visualize, but it connects with Emily’s personality and the way that she would view everything. She is very romantic, in the respect that she is very inclined to romanticize things, and this passage captures that as it claims that she sees all the wonderful things of myth in the bush’s charm. The passage also shows how she is able to entertain herself on her own by writing poems and exploring things in her head. She is very artistic in this way, and it can be recognized in the metaphors and creative language used to describe what she sees and how exhilarated she feels to be there.

PW #4: A simple question

Have you ever had a simple question you always struggle to answer when asked? For a while I struggled to define my favorite season. I found it difficult to choose – each season had its own merits, and the best one seemed to be the one at the time.

In springtime, I love the fresh crispness of the air; the exalting way that the daffodils burst out of their buds; the cool clear spring water in the streams trickling down from the mountains; and the color everywhere as everything which seemed dead returns to life.

In summer, I love the cool of the ocean in a midday swim; the sunflowers cheerfully shining up at the sky; the warm breeze tugging eagerly at your hair; and the stars sparkling, in a somber black sky over the tents in a campsite.

In autumn, I love the crunch of pumpkin leaves under boots; the rain transforming the world to a mysterious gray, with flashes of thunder in the distance; the rainbow of leaves on the trees in the parks; and the whistling leaps of the wind through the beams.

However, I realized recently that my favorite season is winter. I love the warmth of a mug of creamy hot chocolate; the lazy drifting of a crystal snowflake in the chilling air; the contrast of colors, from white snow and blue frost to cozy red Santa hats and warm gingerbread cookies; the scent of pine needles fallen under the tree; the glitter of sparkling lights on the trees in the park; and the feeling of a winter morning, spent surrounded by freshly packed snow, carving an icy fort. For me, winter is the time when I see my family and friends, and good cheer is all around.

IRJE #3: Keeping Memories Alive

My next IRJE is from “The Kalahari Typing School for Men,” the fourth book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. The series follows Mma Ramotswe, a detective running the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Botswana, and her fiancé Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who runs a garage. Mma Ramotswe was hired by a man named Mr. Molefelo to find the people he had once stolen a radio from in for him order to make amends, and in the following paragraph she reflects on it:

“The more she thought about Mr. Molefelo, the more she admired what he had done in coming to see her. Most do not bother with the really old wrongs; many forget them entirely, whether deliberately – if you can make a deliberate effort to forget – or by allowing the past to fade of its own accord. Mma Ramotswe wondered whether people have a duty to keep memories alive, and had decided that they have. Certainly the old beliefs were that those who had gone before should be remembered (p. 107-108).”

In this paragraph, we can see Mma Ramotswe as she reflects on what happened that day, and the philosophies which she holds. The things that I like the most about this series are the slices of life in every page and that Mma Ramotswe often “muses” to herself about things in life. While these things aren’t rather important for the story, they add a element of realism. They also characterize her – for example, showing that she holds a strong belief in the old ways of her ancestors. They demonstrate Mma Ramotswe’s wisdom, allowing the reader see how she thinks and contrast the way that she thinks about things to the way we usually do in Canada and the US. Many times, the more modern and “advanced” isn’t always better.

PR #2: All Quiet on The Western Front – Desensitization

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is a novel that I found very poignant and tactful, but what struck me the most about it were the descriptions of death throughout the book, which felt very realistic about how the soldiers may have felt.

One of the first depictions of death, which I found the most moving, was the death of Paul’s friend Kemmerich, due to the inclusion of Paul’s thoughts and emotions. Paul, sitting by Kemmerich’s hospital bed, attempts to ease Kemmerich’s suffering by describing what he could do after he healed, despite being aware that Kemmerich would not survive, and ends up worsening the situation. Paul’s thoughts are shown in this example: “…he is crying. What a mess I have made with my foolish talk (p. 30)!” For me this is a very heartbreaking scene as it brings me into Paul’s perspective as he berates himself about his behaviour during Kemmerich’s last moments. It doesn’t show Paul as someone who always knows what to say, and instead depicts him as someone who sometimes makes mistakes. This scene felt very genuine, and also let me relate to Paul and imagine what it would be like to have to comfort someone in such a situation.

Something else which struck me as very lifelike were the changes in the ways that the deaths of Paul’s friends were portrayed. At the beginning of the book, where Paul is present at Kemmerich’s death,  he has many strong feelings as he describes the moment: “[Kemmerich] says nothing; all that lies behind him; he is entirely alone now with his little life of nineteen years, and cries because it leaves him. This is the most disturbing and hardest parting that I have ever seen (p. 31)…” Paul is deeply affected, and we as the reader also have the opportunity to connect him to Kemmerich, as they are both the same age. This scene is very emotional, and differs greatly from the descriptions seen later in the book. When Müller – another of Paul’s old classmates – dies, he gets a much shorter description: “Müller is dead. Someone shot him point-blank in the stomach with a Verey light. He lived for half an hour, quite conscious, and in terrible pain (p. 279).” Little more is said about Müller. When I first read this, the significant change in tone and description surprised me. In the first example, Remarque  illustrates Paul’s feelings, but at Müller’s death the description is very factual and none of Paul’s thoughts are shown. While Kemmerich’s death occurs first in the story, it still seemed strange that Kemmerich, someone who wasn’t described as being a particularly close friend of Paul’s, was given such a long description but Müller was not. Upon further reflection, I saw it to represent how Paul’s mindset changes throughout the book and I found this distinction very realistic. Before he has seen as much death on the battlefield, his friend dying is a substantial blow. However, by the end, Paul has seen many of his friends die and is desensitized to death as a whole. The addition of another death is not significant, and it is mentioned only as a passing fact.

I found All Quiet on the Western Front quite profound and emotional, but what I admire most about the book is the author’s ability to realistically portray the war in so many of its facets. Even when writing in a less expressive manner, Remarque manages to convey very meaningful parts of a soldier’s life.

PW #3: Memories as a Patchwork Quilt

Do you ever think about how we never fully appreciate a moment until it’s gone? We look back on the past, at moments that may have been melancholy or pulsing with hatred, and we smile (albeit wryly). Sometimes we look back in nostalgia, but either way our memory is embellished, embroidered on the edges like an intricately adorned quilt, changed from a few patches of fabric to delicately sewn artworks. When we first experienced the event, they were just squares of cloth that weren’t particularly special – but after a while, they became so. Even when we appreciate the moment, it’s bittersweet. We know that the time will pass, and though we’re still in the moment, we’re aware it won’t last.

Over time, the colours fade and disappear, and the fragile embroidery is all that is left of the original pattern. I know that so many of the memories I have today will fade and that it is an inevitable part of life, but sometimes I still can’t help from wishing that they wouldn’t: hoping that the colours would stay forever bright, and the quilt would never be tucked into a box in the attic and forgotten; that it wouldn’t be found faded and moth-eaten, years later while looking for mementos to show around, but instead stay in use, something to decorate a room and a reminder of a different time.

IRJE #2: Dead Leaves

I decided to write my next IRJE about another quote from Sense & Sensibility that connects with the first one rather comically. This quote takes place some time later after Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters have left Norland Park, where they had lived for many years. After their friend Edward mentions it, Marianne and Elinor have this exchange:

“And how does dear, dear Norland look?” cried Marianne.

“Dear, dear Norland,” said Elinor, “probably looks the much as it always does at this time of year – the woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves.”

“Oh!” cried Marianne, “with what transporting sensations have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight.”

“It is not everyone,” said Elinor, “who has your passion for dead leaves.” (pp. 52-53)

I chose this quote because I found it very funny after reading it, but also because it shows the difference in character of the two sisters. Marianne is much more ardent and sentimental, which can be seen in the way that she describes her old home with such nostalgia in this and the first quote, while Elinor is less emotional and more withdrawn. This is an important part of the story, as (slight spoilers!) Marianne ends up having troubles with her emotions after suffering a disappointment, and Elinor, after going through something similar, instead hides her pain and acts as if nothing had happened.

PW #2: reading in the rain

It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon, and she hears the tempest outside swirl and paint rushing images with whistles and roars of wind. It’s been raining since she woke up, and her breakfast was splattered with the delicate echoes of droplets pattering above her head.

The trees outside look dreary, as if they’ve been half-saturated, and the grass is dyed a darker shade, coated with water, but she loves it. On days like these, the clouds look like a blanket of grey cotton balls tinted with slight stains of darker grey tinged throughout. They stretch as far as she can see and suppress memories of sunshine and cerulean skies. The beads of water inch slowly down the window next to her, intersecting and conjoining. Rain patters over the sombre skylights as she sits reading in the dim light of an amber lamp, and the gale brushes her ears.

It reminds her of sitting in a classroom years ago while everyone was working quietly. Rain would splatter against the windows, and the class would become still and calm, a hush growing over the group. She would sit with her friend, looking out the slick windows at the shadows shifting as the world transformed into a cooler, greyer version of itself.

As her book’s pages crinkle, the incessant deluge pounds on. It drums and patters, joining in with the whispering flips and whirls of the wind as it dances across the grey sky.

IRJE #1: Leaving Norland Park

The book I’ve chosen to write this IRJE about is Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen, which I have recently started to read. The story so far centers around the Dashwood family, Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret. Mr. Dashwood has recently died, and his son by another marriage inherited the estate, Norland Park, where they had lived. The son’s wife is unempathetic and persuades him not to give them any of his inheritance, and Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters go to live elsewhere.

Upon leaving, Marianne is very saddened:

“Dear, dear Norland!” said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there; “when shall I cease to regret you? when learn to feel at home elsewhere? O happy house! could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more! and you, ye well-known trees! but you will continue the same. No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer! No; you will remain the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade! But who will remain to enjoy you?” (p.16)

I chose this quotation because I find it very beautifully written and it touches on how I felt when I moved homes, though my feelings were less acute as I had spent less of my time there. I also felt regret and sadness upon leaving, and especially as we rented it out for a time, that it may not be “enjoyed” enough or ever quite in the same way.

I like how Marianne reflects on how the trees which she has loved so will continue as they are though she is gone. It makes me think about how often we can be so absorbed in our own issues that it feels as if things are more affected by us than they really are. For Marianne, it may feel as if Norland Park has changed so much ever since her father died and her half-brother and his wife inherited it, but to the trees, nothing has changed except the normal passing of time.

PR: They Shall Not Grow Old

I found several parts of They Shall Not Grow Old very striking due to the realistic elements of the time period and the people portrayed. For example, in one clip the German and British soldiers are swapping hats and joking, and in another part, a veteran says, “Snipers would fire and not hit anybody, you know?” I found these examples very moving because they highlighted the fact that the soldiers were all people just like us, but in a different time period. You can sense what life was like during that time through what they say and how they act, and I find that very humanizing. While we’ve grown up being taught about people from other nations, they may not have and have spent the last few years hating the opposite side and hearing stories of their brutality and monstrosity. But nevertheless, certainly some of them managed to be empathetic and compassionate and treat the soldiers that they had been fighting so long against as people.

I feel that “out of sight, out of mind” is a concept that greatly affects me. Sure, I can know the facts about historical events and people, and may even know their life stories, but it doesn’t seem real until I see something like this movie that shows the people involved being “real people” – not just unknown faces and mystery soldiers of the past. Looking at old pictures and hearing about “the soldiers of WWI” doesn’t make the events from over a hundred years ago feel real, but seeing the soldiers, in color, joking about with another, having a cup of tea made from water their gun heated, and hearing veterans talk about how “no one cared who won at that point,” really brought it home to me, so to speak.

PW #1 another blue day

PW #1: Fictional Writing

*Fictional story*

The day wakes me with a crisp blue morning. Blue in more than one way – blue as in the sky, peeking out from behind the crumpled white window shades above my bed, humming with cold light. Blue as in my first class that morning was math, which I had carefully color-coded as a pale cerulean on my schedule in my spiral notebook, and in which I always used my wrinkled pastel blue graph book to take notes.

But most significantly, blue like sadness, melancholy, and sorrow. Blue that makes you think of gray skies and heavy rain. Blue that weighs me down, tightening my throat and constricting my lungs. Blue like my drenched heart, hanging heavy in my chest like the muffling fog of a cloud barely hovering over the ground. Blue that fills my veins, pumps my blood, and injects my sinuses with the thick saturated burden of grief.

Blue because last Tuesday, my dad died.

I can’t deny it.

Can’t rephrase what happened, or avoid it.

I always try to restate it, to forget it by erasing the memory. But it can’t be done. Every morning when I wake up, the fact crashes through my head like a tsunami, leaving destruction and chaos in its wake. Every morning, I’ve ended up here, staring at the light leaking through my window shades, and wishing.

Remembering.

Hanli’s Very Original Blog Post Title

Hello! My name is Hanli Loubser. My sister and I have lived in Victoria all of our lives, though my parents are both South African and as a result, we speak Afrikaans at home (it’s like a subvariant of Dutch). I live on a farm with my cat, dog and chickens. This is my second year at Brookes Westshore, and I’m excited to meet even more new classmates and people this year! I enjoy reading, writing, and drawing, and I’ve loved dinosaurs since I was little. I also do aerial silks outside of school and I enjoy learning new tricks.

I would describe myself as a very avid reader! I read less now since I’m busy, but I usually read at least a chapter or two every night. I read most everything, but I prefer fantasy, science fiction, and Agatha Christie murder mysteries.

I enjoy creative writing, but not so much academic writing! I love writing fiction stories and books, and I have a few book ideas, including one that I’m writing with my friend, but none finished. I’m part of a writers club with some of my friends, but have increasingly less time to spend on it, so I’m hoping that I will be able to as I write my personal writing blog submissions!