hu (pronoun): used to refer to a person of unspecified sex.
hut (possessive adjective): belonging to or associated with a person of unspecified sex.
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Ben Rohrs may have made up "hu"--I remember discussing it with him years ago. I have just made up "hut". I have used a "t" to finish this word as a way to distinguish it from "hu" without making it too closely associated with either "his" or "her".
The proposed words above, if added to the English lexicon, should obviate much trouble experienced when writing academic papers in which one is to describe persons in the abstract, and wants to avoid both the ungrammaticality of "they" and the general awkwardness of "his or her", without falling into linguistically sexist tendencies.
1.15.2010
Toodle-oo.
I wrote the following on December 31, 2009:
It is the last day of the year, and I have just walked from Colorado and Pasadena to Colorado and Lake, and back.
Already by 2pm today the south side of the street had been exhaustively divided by masking tape on the sidewalk into 4x10 sq. ft blocks of 24-hour realty. Sometimes this property was adorned by the names of its proud, territorial inhabitants; sometimes they were actually fenced off. They were staging areas for folding chairs of every shape and color, a surprising profligacy of mattresses, and gads of people people people. Most people played games: according to my personal field research, these games included, but were not limited to, monopoly, sorry, chess, checkers, texas hold'em, solitaire, scattergories, operation, dominos, risk, and mah jong. Some people read books, some played musical instruments, many from a sweeping assortment of socio-economic/cultural groups blasted inexcusably bad music. Some people drove "tricked out" automobiles. Some people took shelter from the maddening crowds from behind restaurant windows, out of which they gazed back at those maddening crowds into which they would soon be subsumed. Oregon, Ohio, and Jesus were all well represented--most seemed to be rooting for Oregon. Some people sold cotton candy, some sold hats, some gave hats away. People moved together until hardly perceptible as individuals. People spoke in ambient noise. It was a complex network of trajectories, attempting to navigate the maze it composed.
A stone's throw from Colorado and Lake I found what I was looking for: a used book store, to which I had been months before. Or, more specifically, a book I had seen months before, within said store. It had waited for me: "The American Language" by H.L. Mencken. There were majestic old volumes of both the text itself and its 600-page supplement. I may have salivated. The temptation was strong. I felt the weight of the large black volumes in my hands as I weighed mentally the magnitudes of my desire and my penury. I could not justify purchasing the expensive books, and did not. Instead, I will continue to aggrandize my desire, which has grown beyond the simple want of an object, and, feeding on itself, has become, in addition to mere desire for some erudite text, a desire for its own satisfaction. There is pleasure to be had in my snowballing covetousness, the gradual accretion of which is delightful pain, promising to me, as it grows more difficult to endure, greater pleasure in its eventual fulfillment. As I left the bookshop, I winced and inhaled through my teeth, savoring the delay.
On my way back, threnging through the throngs that had chosen the streets of Pasadena for their year's birthplace, I was impressed less by the mass as a single phenomenon, and more by its components. I saw a portly security guard, guarding a door, asleep on his feet; I saw two very young children, just older than babies, pretending to play monopoly; I saw a young woman toting freshly bought art supplies, including a 5x5 ft frame; I saw a boy playing an xbox that was connected to a big screen TV and powered by a rumbling engine that could have belonged to a jeep from the earlier half of the 20th century; I saw, and heard, two boys blaring horns at every car that passed, especially the cop cars; I caught a girl checking me out.
I made it back to the coffee shop from which I began--my feet ache of payment, my shoulder of a full book bag; my mind dwells not on the year behind me, but on the burgeoning present, as it seems always to do, and perhaps must do. Thus will I let another year die, most of it lapsing unnoticed.
It is the last day of the year, and I have just walked from Colorado and Pasadena to Colorado and Lake, and back.
Already by 2pm today the south side of the street had been exhaustively divided by masking tape on the sidewalk into 4x10 sq. ft blocks of 24-hour realty. Sometimes this property was adorned by the names of its proud, territorial inhabitants; sometimes they were actually fenced off. They were staging areas for folding chairs of every shape and color, a surprising profligacy of mattresses, and gads of people people people. Most people played games: according to my personal field research, these games included, but were not limited to, monopoly, sorry, chess, checkers, texas hold'em, solitaire, scattergories, operation, dominos, risk, and mah jong. Some people read books, some played musical instruments, many from a sweeping assortment of socio-economic/cultural groups blasted inexcusably bad music. Some people drove "tricked out" automobiles. Some people took shelter from the maddening crowds from behind restaurant windows, out of which they gazed back at those maddening crowds into which they would soon be subsumed. Oregon, Ohio, and Jesus were all well represented--most seemed to be rooting for Oregon. Some people sold cotton candy, some sold hats, some gave hats away. People moved together until hardly perceptible as individuals. People spoke in ambient noise. It was a complex network of trajectories, attempting to navigate the maze it composed.
A stone's throw from Colorado and Lake I found what I was looking for: a used book store, to which I had been months before. Or, more specifically, a book I had seen months before, within said store. It had waited for me: "The American Language" by H.L. Mencken. There were majestic old volumes of both the text itself and its 600-page supplement. I may have salivated. The temptation was strong. I felt the weight of the large black volumes in my hands as I weighed mentally the magnitudes of my desire and my penury. I could not justify purchasing the expensive books, and did not. Instead, I will continue to aggrandize my desire, which has grown beyond the simple want of an object, and, feeding on itself, has become, in addition to mere desire for some erudite text, a desire for its own satisfaction. There is pleasure to be had in my snowballing covetousness, the gradual accretion of which is delightful pain, promising to me, as it grows more difficult to endure, greater pleasure in its eventual fulfillment. As I left the bookshop, I winced and inhaled through my teeth, savoring the delay.
On my way back, threnging through the throngs that had chosen the streets of Pasadena for their year's birthplace, I was impressed less by the mass as a single phenomenon, and more by its components. I saw a portly security guard, guarding a door, asleep on his feet; I saw two very young children, just older than babies, pretending to play monopoly; I saw a young woman toting freshly bought art supplies, including a 5x5 ft frame; I saw a boy playing an xbox that was connected to a big screen TV and powered by a rumbling engine that could have belonged to a jeep from the earlier half of the 20th century; I saw, and heard, two boys blaring horns at every car that passed, especially the cop cars; I caught a girl checking me out.
I made it back to the coffee shop from which I began--my feet ache of payment, my shoulder of a full book bag; my mind dwells not on the year behind me, but on the burgeoning present, as it seems always to do, and perhaps must do. Thus will I let another year die, most of it lapsing unnoticed.
A poem.
I wrote this poem, like it, and now post it.
The James Wright mentioned in this poem is the poet, not my father
Now I get what James Wright means
when he mentions the delicacy
of a girl's wrist.
I got it when I saw her lift her tote bag,
the straps wrapped around her index finger
and her thumb,
like rings.
I imagined circling her wrist with my index finger
and my thumb,
like a bracelet.
And I imagined her turning her palm upward
delicately,
adjusting slightly her bracelet,
my hand.
The James Wright mentioned in this poem is the poet, not my father
Now I get what James Wright means
when he mentions the delicacy
of a girl's wrist.
I got it when I saw her lift her tote bag,
the straps wrapped around her index finger
and her thumb,
like rings.
I imagined circling her wrist with my index finger
and my thumb,
like a bracelet.
And I imagined her turning her palm upward
delicately,
adjusting slightly her bracelet,
my hand.
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