First off, we're gonna hafta have a serious talk about cats, Setanta.
Second...what is the point here of reliving horrific events by writing about them? I've started a couple of stories in my mind, only to decide I didn't want to go there again. Is this healthy?! (serious question)
Personally, the original thread was a bit confusing, but here are two things: It was originally posted in 'general', which was a clue, and Setanta's story did indeed capture the theme of personal feelings of horror. It seems that in between the digs, farmerman has expressed some experiences of personal horror himself, especially regarding animals, despite his ongoing barbs with Set. I think it would be fair here for farmerman to drop the debate and share a story on the original theme of the thread, personal horror. Hell, mine wasn't easy to write, but let's open up the dialogue a bit, and stop nipping at each other's heels. I, for one, would love to delve deeper into the real topic at hand, however it was originally stated.
farmerman wrote:When you try writing parables, dont talk about dogs and animals to set up your line, cause , when I see, pain, suffering , animal, i want to help.I see nothing else.
I think this is very pertinent, and shows that these gladiators are not so far apart, at all.
At any rate, I've enjoyed reading the responses they have called forth from each other.
My first thought was pity for the poor little dog and empathy for the man who could feel her pain.
Hmmmm - horror is a part of life - it is a large part of the lives of some of us.
To me, it is something to be considered and embraced and understood and pondered as part of our deciding on our overall attitude towards life and its meaning, if any, and our manner of bearing ourselves through its pleasures and vicissitudes, and on into death.
Setanta wrote:Craven, i've often enjoyed London's writing, and will observe that i believe you've summed him up succinctly.
I think it was him who said (through a character of his) that life is the cheapest substance on earth, that in his loins he had the ability to populate the world.
But I have a lingering doubt that I am confusing books. The one I am remembering is The Sea Wolf.
dlowan wrote:Hmmmm - horror is a part of life - it is a large part of the lives of some of us.
To me, it is something to be considered and embraced and understood and pondered as part of our deciding on our overall attitude towards life and its meaning, if any, and our manner of bearing ourselves through its pleasures and vicissitudes, and on into death.
In the opening paragraphs of
Island, Aldous Huxley examines precisely the substance of the Bunny's contention here--ironically, given the blows traded here on writing style, i found Huxley's plot device and delivery very contrived and clumsy, but the essence of it, which Miss Lowan so well distills here, was the important component.
We deal with our fear in facing them . . . i am here suggesting that we can cope with horror in the same manner . . .
Although i don't recall the specific quote, CdK, that would be very much in the character of Sea Wolf. London was one of those authors i devoured in callow youth, and when rereading the same works in middle age, am dismayed at what i now see as my impressionable naiveté . . .
Well, maybe this will work--i'll go rename the thread, yet again . . . i was quite pleased with the original title, anyway . . .
again, it'll be renamed again?
oh, ok.
So are you going to take it from Pets and Garden? Hey, just let me know, ah seem to be windspeaking.
Yeah, that was Larsen, I looked it up:
Jack London wrote:"But you who make a mock of human life, don't you place any value upon it whatever?" I demanded.
"Value? What value? He looked at me, and though his eyes were steady and motionless, there seemed a cynical smile in them. "What kind of value? How do you measure it? Who values it?"
"I do," I made answer.
"Then what is it worth to you? Another man's life, I mean. Come, now, what is it worth?"
The value of life? How could I put a tangible value upon it? Somehow I, who have always had expression, lacked expression when with Wolf Larsen. I have since determined that a part of it was due to the man's personality, but that the greater part was due to his totally different outlook. Unlike other materialists I had met, and with whom I had something in common to start on, I had nothing in common with him. Perhaps, also, it was the elemental simplicity of his mind that baffled me. He drove so directly to the core of the matter, divesting a question always of all superfluous details, and with such an air of finality, that I seemed to find myself struggling in deep water with no footing under me. Value of life? How could I answer the question on the spur of the moment? The sacredness of life I had accepted as axiomatic. That it was intrinsically valuable was a truism I had never questioned. But when he challenged the truism I was speechless.
"We were talking about this yesterday," he said. "I held that life was a ferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might live, and that living was merely successful piggishness. Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eat life till the strongest and most piggish life is left."
"You have read Darwin," I said. "But you read him misunderstandingly when you conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wanton destruction of life."
He shrugged his shoulders. "You know you only mean that in relation to human life, for of the flesh and the fowl and the fish you destroy as much as I or any other man. And human life is in no wise different, though you feel it is and think that you reason why it is. Why should I be parsimonious with this life which is cheap and without value? There are more sailors than there are ships on the sea for them, more workers than there are factories or machines for them. Why, you who live on the land know that you house your poor people in the slums of cities and loose famine and pestilence upon them, and that there still remain more poor people, dying for want of a crust of bread and a bit of meat (which is life destroyed), than you know what to do with. Have you ever seen the London dockers fighting like wild beasts for a chance to work?"
He started for the companion-stairs, but turned his head for a final word. "Do you know, the only value life has is what life puts upon itself; and it is of course overestimated, since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favor. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself, yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He was worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead, he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. Don't you see? And what have you to say?"
"That you are at least consistent," was all I could say, and I went on washing the dishes.
Good question, that last one in your quote, Craven.
I also wanted to make an observation to Cav . . .
Boss, i may write the tale at this site again someday, and wrote it out, pages in length, at AFUZZ . . . the tale of my grandfather's death, a most profound event in my young life. Briefly, he retired in 1957, had a stroke in 1959, and died by 1961. After his stroke, he was taken away to a Veterans Administration Hospital, and when he returned, i had been cheated, because, in fact, the man they sent back was not my grandfather. Then i watched him struggle so hard to regain the simple dignity of caring for his own person, and feeding himself. This he largely achieved; he was still obliged, however, to use a wheel chair rather than stand for any length of time, or walk more than a few yards. On the morning of his death, December 27, 1961, i awoke at about 5:00 a.m. (from the depths of my childhood memories, that was the hour at which i arose to join him downstairs, just the two of us, every morning--but hadn't been true for two years now). I went down stairs and found my mother and her twin, and their mother--the grandmother who had raised me--huddled together as though fearfully, and weeping silently, while staring in dread at the door to the bedroom. They ignored, and i went inside. There on the bed lay my grandfather, as i had ever known him, the strange man who came from the VA hospital no longer in evidence. It was my grandfather returned to me, a faint smile on his lips, lying in peaceful slumber. I knew immediately that he was dead, and that he had gone gently and willingly into that good night. Fortunately, i felt no horror on that occassion, just relief that he had made it back to say goodbye to me with that faint smile.
Almost ten years later, i helped pull a boy off a medivac who had taken sixteen slugs from an assault rifle at close range--the doc and the medics were keeping the body alive with artificial means, and they were drenched in his blood. That i could contemplate this without any paralyzing horror i felt then, as i do now, to have been a result of the message i took from my grandfather's death--that the horror may be in the living, but not in the state of death.
To die, to sleep
To sleep, perchance to dream
For in that sleep of death
What dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil . . .
Osso, you can leave it here or move it, as you think best. I think its fine right where it is, because i always love to have the doggies around me, whatever the activity, but it's your call.
Eva wrote:First off, we're gonna hafta have a serious talk about cats, Setanta.
Second...what is the point here of reliving horrific events by writing about them? I've started a couple of stories in my mind, only to decide I didn't want to go there again. Is this healthy?! (serious question)
Eva, that is a giant question of its own, why don't you start a topic..um, perhaps not in pets and garden.
although not unwelcome here, I think philosophy might be more apropo... re writing about concerning stuff. Lots of places you could post it, including Original writing...
if you get stuck, ask Jespah or other moderators, they can direct you to the right place....
Big words.
Long sentences.
Mightily impressed.
Please carry on!
Horror is the limit challenging our depth.
Heart meets reality, reforms, then grows richly strong.
The rapid heart beat is what caught my attention, Setanta. When my son was small, we had a Persian named Murdoch. One afternoon my son and his little girl friend who lived next door, were pushing Murdoch in a doll carriage, and a neighbor's rat terrier came tearing into the road, leapt in the carriage and literally grabbed the tiny kitten in his mouth. The little girl ran in her house, but my son chased that rat terrier down and pried Murdoch from his jaws. This occurred several times, and my son was bitten each time, but he kept rescuing Murdoch. When I finally was able to get things under control with my son, I found Murdoch upstairs panting. I had never seen a cat pant before. I picked the tiny thing up and felt the little heart beating...beating...beating. I think, at that moment, I realized the "horror" of which you speak.
Incidentally, I loved London's "To Build a Fire". To me, he always cast dogs as protagonists, but in this short story, he showed that an animal in the wild has more imagination than an over confident human.
Hey, Tell Lovey to put on some music the next time a big thunderstorm hits the area. Dogs like music, especially Jazz.
Yes - I once rescued a little dog from two rottweilers which were killing it - just kept beating and kicking them until they finally let go - they were tossing it in the air and to each other, as cats do mice - and I rescued one of my cats from the jaws of a blue heeler, prising its jaws apart - the terror in the little bodies is awful to feel, and the look on the face of a cat panting and sweating with terror is not good.
It is a shock to see nice domestic doggies forming a pack, for savagery and plunder - since they often do not bother to kill, but maim and torment in a seeming frenzy - perhaps experiencing the joy of a pack without the necessity for food and the need not to expend needless energy in securing it. Trying to help a flock of sheep which have been the target of one of these packs of escaped Fidos is a horrifying experience.
I think it is that same energy and pack experience that occasionally drives gangs of normally quite restrained adolescent, and sometimes older, humans into frenzies of destruction.
It is said that, in the wild, a trapped prey animal releases pheromones into its body, once fighting has ceased, to calm pain and fear.
I hope it is so, since the terror we find so hard to feel in our pets is the lot of prey animals every day, everywhere.
I have been lucky in that my cats have always killed instantly, or brought a live, relatively unharmed, animal to me as a gift - for rescue and release, or a quiet death from shock in a softly lined box.
These are our common experiences of the terror of the nature from which we cocoon ourselves, until illness or injury or disaster drag us back into a consciousness that, as Yossarian puts it in "Catch 22" - "man is matter" and we too must obey the normal rules thereof.
