Shouts From Down Under

Selling bad experiences Any takers? All for the greater good

It took some News about Steve Irwin's fractured team, here:

http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/steve-irwins-crack-croc-team-reunites-br...

- and a statement shared by Nicole Byrne, Steve's personal assistant:

"It was like a hot iron and I kept everything bottled in," -to set me thinking.

What experiences have been like that for you and me, and how have they shaped our writing?

We never forget "hot iron" events. Our mind will replay those moments, sometimes at the most inappropriate times, when we cannot or should not stop to dwell, to remember, to grieve, to find some sort of footing, to reach out our hand for a stable grip.

Later we'll re-run that horror movie again and again. People will wonder why we don't answer them sometimes, why we appear to be absent in mind, why our faces and eyes have that thousand yard stare into an abyss of traumatic pondering.

They cannot share our pain.



Examples of writing where the author (moi) tried to pack an extreme quantity and quality of grief, pain and suffering into a brief reading experience. Although the second story, The Door, isn't my personal experience, I feel we can only imagine too well what it is like to lose someone dear to us, especially if some perceived blame falls upon us from off fate's dinner plate of bad-day distribution.

STATIC

Answer me! Please tell me the answer...!  (13+) Is everyone in your family happy? Are you sure? You'd better check. Do it now. Run! #1921419 by Sparky

STATIC

The Door  (E) Sometimes we struggle to sleep, or fight to stay awake. #1928987 by Sparky

Perhaps these incidents of mourning, or remembering a sad terrible time, are our minds' way of preserving sanity. Maybe we need these mind-ware / soft-ware pauses, when a "patch" can be uploaded - a small bubble - a temporary relieving, anaesthetic healing.

I don't feel it is a good thing to dwell too much on sad stuff. Yet, being tough can be a problem too, as is Nicole Byrne's bottling everything up.

Should we be on psychological life support forever?

No. Real life has to resume sometime. But, I think it does affect our writing quality and variety more than we realise.

It has to.

It must. Cause and effect. Unless we are mid PTSD episode.
You know how it is, when something happened that fateful day and afterwards.

You are a different person.

If it changes us a little, or dramatically, if that explosion or implosion matures us, builds a buttress of our character, even negative ones, then surely that must carry forward, transfer the speed hump into our writing expression. If we allow it.

Human Voices don't usually become gravelly, measured, sober, with kindly timbre, hesitant, broken, hoarse, or any other age related / wisdom effected trait by accident.
Our vocal state probably mirrors our façade. Those wrinkles didn't get there the easy way.

If people could purchase plastic surgery for their voice, to take away the "elder sound" - that croakiness telling us of their years when they learned memorable lessons, lessons that would change them forever, lessons they can relate just by speaking in our vicinity, would they? Would they arrange the scalpel's incision to smooth out those pleasurable, elderly person's pronouncements? Why on this earth would you get rid of such hard earned traits?

Well people do just that with their visage. I don't condemn those that do get plastic surgery done. If that helps them feel OK, if it takes some pain away then OK. However, like with taking away deep and meaningful sounding voice, surely it's just artifice?

Wrinkles, and judicious cadence- intonation- are life's rewards for our deeds. Good or bad, ageing gracefully or dis', there is no point (that I can see) in removing such character from our selves. As we say in Australia,

"That's just having yourself on."

So why not take advantage of whatever life has dished out, and the preparation our experiences has delivered to our minds that has made us into someone learned, given us the ability to advise, to foster, to mentor, to calm, to help, to benefit?

There is no need to make our writing a list of complaints, or bitter excuses. If our life has been stepping stones of failure, bad decisions, unprofitable purpose, doubtful choices, then there must have been something that happened because of those?

Write about that.

And, on the contrary, if we are now self made publishonaires, Novelandlords, material merchants, people placebos, artificial android-like action advocates, and other supposed positive pinnacles of societies pond of puddle jumpers, then take the leap that many frogs have scoped out, and cross-hair that far lilly pad of expressing your experience end results.

Write about that.

How many times have you read something, or watched movies, or listened to a song and felt only sadness, desolation, dismay and hopelessness?

Time and place, but wouldn't it be so much better to take something away from those mind effecting scene grabs, that helps us to change? A simple way to change is begun by making a decision. Any decision, but the obvious better choice of that coin toss will gift us a future that is a few lumen brighter.

"So, do the mathematical equations," Said Mr Pythagoras. Did he drink Cappuccino Coffee, like Tomato Sauce, and eat Carrot Cake?

"Do your sums, properly this time," Said my exasperated, weary Mathematics teacher.

Well, if it's not your favourite "subjeck" then just come to a conclusion. No need to be a startling one, just gradual fading to bright.

Sad = happy if {Your Experience x Writing prowess} x Time + Patience > The Injury / Trauma - (minus) Self Pity..

Sparky's sausage roll theory of sadness.

This feeling of disappointment and deprivation increases exponentially, in a linear motion, as the rolls are devoured and disappear.



Something like that anyway.

I feel that Mathematics, in spite of the logical cut in stone with diamonds immovableness of it, always seems to contain a hidden element of vagueness, ambiguousness, leading questions, loop holes, tricks, extra add-on rules whereby what you thought isn't what is.

They are sad words, the meaning of which many of us understand, first hand.

'You don't ever think that's going to be your last goodbye'

But it doesn't have to stop there, with parsecs of unspoken, unwritten, proverbial sharing- unshared.

This sadness, these hot iron branding incidents are only the beginning of wisdom.

Proverbs 8 comes to mind - written so many centuries ago. This proverb is like an email from someone called Wisdom, addressed to us here in the future. (http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Proverbs-Chapter-8/)

The cry of wisdom can be heard, that cry spoken of in that proverb, on the shores of a beach near you. Go there if you get a chance, and hear for yourself what it means to go through a humbling experience.

That's what happens to the ocean's waves every day, every break.

They cry out with thunder, even though water seems so weak, droplets easily fobbed off by a lettuce leaf, yet they grind away relentlessly, attempting to move something that has been commanded to stay and repel.

That, is wisdom right there.

"When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth:...etc."

As I said, you'll hear that voice of the sea crying out with urge, and with the indignation at the pain of correction, when it surges against, or comes up to, the "firmament" that is called land.

I've never yet seen rocks dissolve under this momentous onslaught, have you?

Our voice, whether audible or written, is a pounding of thoughts on the beaches, rocks, cliffs; the shoreline of people's minds. They may remain unmovable, but every grain of the troy ounces of our skilful verbiage incrementally changes those same minds, and redirects - even if only a micro cosmic particle.

We did that, not from bedrock perfection, but from an outcome of learning, brought about by an encounter with something that will not move.

The change, folks, is in our mind.

You can use that learning that happened in your mind to attempt change in someone else's, for the better.

When you sit back, sipping a brew, and thinking on this stuff, doesn't it make you see the profit in these experiences? Good gold from bad nasties.

Are you now sold on grabbing some trauma or pain while stocks last?

Have I, through some word segments, caused even a speck of change in your mind today?

Maybe there is a gold rush here just waiting to happen?

Maybe I'll try selling "Bad experiences" on eBay? People will be clamouring for them. Doesn't seem to be any to buy, only people's advice on how to get out of them:



Pity the "Buy It Now" price seems so high. When you think of the endless profit from what some people have written or said, then being branded by hot irons in life seems a gift from Santa Clause.

Credit card "plastic surgery" cannot buy wisdom, or sections of gizzardology (spell check suggests cardiology- probably not a bad replacement) of the school of hard knocks.

But a little of it (Wisdom) can be obtained from your local Author, if we've had even a bit of "being there" times in our life.

- hopefully with a few less ofs.

Sparky