Plaster Of Paris
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Plaster Of Paris
Do you remember those art classes in primary school when our art teachers used to make us build little figurines? They'd have us buy big chunks of plasters that came in rectangular bricks so hard that it would have broke some teeth if thrown at someone else's face. We needed to dip those blocks of plasters into buckets of water just to soften them back then, and then they'd turn into chunks of soft mold for us to shape into whatever that we wanted, be it a polar bear or a tow truck. The possibilities with a single block of plaster is endless, which is why so many people back in the ancient days used plaster as some of their sculpting material as well as in architecture. Plaster is a versatile material, which is why it is a favorite amongst sculptors in the past, and it is called "Plaster of Paris" because of a large gypsum deposit Montmarte in Paris, which is a raw material for making plaster after heating. My sister used a block of plaster a few years ago to make a figurine of my father on Fathers' Day, and the figurine is now standing inside his office in Taiwan, short and proud. I must say that my sister did a fantastic job on that piece of unattractive plaster, she has always been good with the arts and the crafts. That plaster, with her hands, was transformed into something entirely different, and it is interesting how the plaster is a material with such contradiction to me.
Do you remember those art classes in primary school when our art teachers used to make us build little figurines? They'd have us buy big chunks of plasters that came in rectangular bricks so hard that it would have broke some teeth if thrown at someone else's face. We needed to dip those blocks of plasters into buckets of water just to soften them back then, and then they'd turn into chunks of soft mold for us to shape into whatever that we wanted, be it a polar bear or a tow truck. The possibilities with a single block of plaster is endless, which is why so many people back in the ancient days used plaster as some of their sculpting material as well as in architecture. Plaster is a versatile material, which is why it is a favorite amongst sculptors in the past, and it is called "Plaster of Paris" because of a large gypsum deposit Montmarte in Paris, which is a raw material for making plaster after heating. My sister used a block of plaster a few years ago to make a figurine of my father on Fathers' Day, and the figurine is now standing inside his office in Taiwan, short and proud. I must say that my sister did a fantastic job on that piece of unattractive plaster, she has always been good with the arts and the crafts. That plaster, with her hands, was transformed into something entirely different, and it is interesting how the plaster is a material with such contradiction to me.
It is an interesting material I feel, to be able to switch between hardness and softness so quickly. You soak it in a bucket of water, and a brick as hard as rocks would turn into something as soft as dough. And then you mold it into something, wait for it to dry, and then it will return to its original state of hardness all over again. I've never been very good with such things, I was the child that played with Play-do mostly when I was young, making fake French Fries and hamburgers for my sister and I. I used to make a mess out of those plasters though, and it can get quick dusty once it dries, and the plaster sticks to the floor if you do not clean it up fast enough. It is a messy material, which is probably why I preferred to see my sister mold them into different animals and food back then. She created a whole series of fruits with those plasters once for a school project, everything from watermelons to bananas, from grapes to papayas. Then there was that period of time when she was fascinated with Barbie dolls, and she used to make little buns and hamburgers for her Barbies, something which I thought at that time as being completely mind-blowing. With something like that, the possibilities are endless, and it seems like I can see a certain trait in the way that plasters of Paris works in the life of a friend of mine.
People say that a person's character can be hard or soft, and it depends on the individuals. I wonder who came up with the idea of saying that someone is "hard" and the other is "soft" anyway. Perhaps it is rooted in the whole debate between masculinity and feminism, or the whole Mars and Venus issue I mentioned a few entries below. Men were brought up to be tough, to be 'hard', to be able to withstand whatever the society decides to throw upon them. Those are the common traits of rationality, of logic, characteristics that are so commonly associated with men. On the other hand, women were never meant to stand up for themselves, fence for themselves, and these characteristics are commonly associated with emotions and the pathos. But really, I do not believe in the extremities of this world, I do not believe that hardness or softness in a person's character exists solely by itself alone in the genetics or in the mind. I believe in balance, and a healthy blend of both when dealing with anything in life. In every hard, there is a soft, and vice versa. That is also why there is a saying that goes "A woman's strength is in her weakness". No other proverbs can describe this human condition better.
This friend of mine, is the kind of person you'd expect in a drama serial to be caught in a limbo. You know, when you are passing underneath the pole with your back bent backwards and you know that you can't bend any longer? So you are kind of stuck in a balance, between moving forward and falling down to the ground - but not just yet. That's the state that she has been in for the longest time, to be unsure of her "hardness" and "softness". To say that she is confused would be inaccurate, in my opinion. After all, she has clearly seen both sides of the coin, she knows that she is a living, breathing, walking contradiction when dealing with the affairs of the heart. And yet, she allows herself to be that way in spite of contradictions, in spite of falsehood, in spite of compromises that could potentially lead to regrets in her life that she cannot revert or change. She isn't alone in this syndrome of things, somewhat like the properties of the plaster of Paris. You only need that something to turn her hard attitude soft, and that soft attitude hard again. Never ever remains constant, everything changes. When your heart trumps your mind in everything that you do, nothing ever gets done. Nothing.
Perhaps it is the stubbornness that makes her a "hardy" person. A stubbornness to prove to her parents, her friends, but mostly herself, that she is capable of maintaining a relationship. It was a promise that she made to herself, but aren't those promises the easiest to falter most of the time? You never stick to your new year resolutions, nobody ever does. Which is why her promise to herself comes as a confusion and contradiction to my own beliefs for the most part, and I wonder to myself very often how somebody has the ability to put up with the kind of nonsense that she gets from her partner. After all, someone with such a "hardy" personality should also have the ability to put her foot down in an argument, to fight for her own rights in a relationship, to fend for herself, right? Well, that is true only if you keep the water out of the equation. You see, it doesn't take a lot for her to falter from her stubbornness - you only need to add water. She softens into a mold, and you can shape her into whoever you want, whatever you want. Which is why, I feel, the contradiction in her personality is pretty interesting, but then again I guess a lot of people I know already suffers from this sort of personality disorder, for the lack of a better word.
To his employees, my father is a no-nonsense type of boss whose presence in the office commands respect and, admittedly, a certain amount of fear. His bushy eyebrows would stick upwards into the air like those of an ancient Chinese emperor, and his laconic nature in the office creates an aura of mystery and respect for the most part. People see him as being a "hard" person, a person who is dead set on his goals and never falters from them under any circumstances. People who knows him, however, would beg to differ. My father is actually a soft person at heart, you cannot possibly force him into anything. What you need to do is to ease your way into his heart, which is why he is a sucker to women like my mother and sister. He can never take their softer side, always the one giving in and willingly so most of the time. He's like those M&M chocolates, the ones that are hard on the outside and melts on the inside. Well, if my father is a M&M chocolate, he'd be a giant one at that considering his weight. Still, I guess this character trait in all plasters of Paris isn't something that is exclusive to this friend of mine, but also someone important in my life too - my father.
It's difficult to draw the lines I suppose, as to when you need to be this person and when you need to be the other. That is the tricky and complicated part about any relationships, you can never get a hang of it. What I do know, however, is that I'd never allow myself to be compromised in any relationship, to always be the one bending over backwards for somebody else. I just don't feel that it is something that a relationship should be about, especially one that involves a love partner. It isn't what it should be about, although love is about compromises at times. There are, however, compromises that no one should ever be allowed to swallow, at least that is how I see it. Nobody should be allowed to be manipulated into the will of somebody else, doesn't that make it less of a boy-girl relationship but more like a master-slave one? If the victims remain silent, does that make the crime right? Of course, there are no crimes, and there are no murders here. But there are a lot of silence on her part, simply because she is more afraid of the silence in between the two parties rather than the ones she has to force down her throat.
But, like any piece of plaster, we see so much opportunities. A piece of plaster could end up as a pile of nothingness, like how it'd probably end up in my hands. Or, it could turn out to be the best Fathers' Day gift like the one my sister made for my father. The point is, that this friend of mine deserves, I feel, a better pair of hands to be molded into something better, someone greater. If you are going to allow yourself to be manipulated by others, why not be manipulated by somebody who's going to make you into a better person. Love is not about sweeping issues under the carpet just to avoid long drawn out silences, and love certainly isn't about making compromises just so that the other party could exploit and take advantage of you. You may not feel it of course, because you are a fool in love - lovers are fools, aren't they? Objectivity is what people around you sees, and the word "ungrateful" comes to mind for me, for some reason. I see a lot of possibilities in this person, but yet these possibilities have been stifled because there hasn't been a single drop of water in her life to make the brick soften, to let the seeds grow.
It is depressing to know that, not just her, there are so many people in our society today living like a brick of plaster without water. You know, the mother of three at the age of forty realizing that she never actually loved her husband, or the father sleeping with his back to his stranger of a wife, realizing that he's staying in the same bed as the woman next to him because he wanted to prove something to himself and everybody else. Prove what, and what for? Prove that you are a consistent person and that you never break those promises to yourself? Truly enough, because in that respect you are doing very well, an A plus for that. But we have all broken promises to ourselves, I have broken promises to myself. I have once promised to love a woman for as long as my lungs drew air. I broke that promise, but it hasn't hurt a hair on my body at all. There are, at this moment, a lot of people going to sleep at night hating their partners, but mostly themselves. There are a lot of people out there staying in a relationship because of them falling slavery to commitments and consistencies. Should you end up as one of these people, or the ones who are unafraid to break the mold and turn yourself into something more than a hardened piece of plaster - the choice is up, ultimately, to you.
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on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 12:01 AM.
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4:32 PM
Very cool design! Useful information. Go on!