Themes

[perelleth]

I should have been on a plane, but a volcano erupted on the central part of the country and all flights going south have been cancelled. I've been told that the fireworks are visible from any of the various vantage points in town but I was too tired, so I came back to the hotel straight.

I have had some busy days, in which I discovered that I was

Comments

[meckinock]

Wow, Perelleth, you've sure given me a lot to think about. I can see your point that you would find it unenlightening and somewhat boring to write about your own experiences, but I also agree with Daw, Bodkin, and Dot that others might find them utterly fascinating. I was struck by your "jumping on a plane to Teheran" analogy because I actually have been reading a book about a guy jumping on a plane to Teheran that I find utterly fascinating. It's called "A Persian Odyssey" by Rami Yelda. He's an Iranian expatriate who traveled back to his home country in 2002 for the first time in about 30 years. I found his account so riveting because he shows us little everyday details of Persian culture, like the fact that to pay for your meal at a cafe in Iran (even in 2002!) you have to engage in a stylized, ritualistic exchange with the cashier in which they tell you they couldn't possibly accept your money and you insist on paying. That kind of stuff fascinates me. So I agree with the others that we would eagerly devour your memoirs.

But...I take your point that writing such an account would be unsatisfying, or at least much less satisfying than taking one's experiences and applying them to the writing of fiction. I don't think I would ever want to write about something I did for a job, simply for the reason that I write to get away from my job. If I wrote about my job, I could never escape it!

I also liked your point about needing a theme to apply to the writing about your personal experiences. That ties in nicely to one of your themes (love the list of themes!) - at times, life only gets its meaning when it meets death, and you may not survive to appreciate it. This is so true. It can be unsatisfying to write about our personal experiences because we don't yet have the perspective to understand what they mean, maybe we never will.

Your observation that people with fascinating lives can make them sound dull, and people with supposedly dull lives can make them sound fascinating was, er, fascinating. And also so true. I almost always find myself more delighted to be enlightened by the hitherto-unknown ins-and-outs of, say, the dry cleaning industry than to read about the exciting world of professional skydivers. The unexpected delight is always more delicious. One of my favorite books ever is "Salt" by Mark Kurlawsky. Who ever knew salt was a fascinating topic? I didn't.

I have to stop using the word fascinating. Need to go into the other room and dig out the synonym finder. But thanks for the thought-provoking post. I'll have to drop back in later and see what other interesting comments it has spawned.

[dawtheminstrel]

at times, life only gets its meaning when it meets death, and you may not survive to appreciate it

The Greek Solon said "Call no man happy until he is dead." He didn't mean that life is terrible and we're only happy when it ends. He meant that until someone dies we can't see the shape of their lives and know whether they were happy or not. Until then, anything could happen.

[perelleth]

Yes. And this was added recently. A couple of weeks ago I learned that a long time friend died in car crash. It is hard to learn of loved one's deaths when you are so far away, for you cannot share with anyone, but the irrealty of it all gives you the distance to think about it.

I have pondered Solon's saying for a long time bt it was the other day, contemplating this friend's passing, and the loss it means to me, to his wife and litle girls, to all of our friends, when I finally understood that, young as he was, (43) he was truly fortunate because his life had a true meaning and made real sense, although I am not sure if he was aware of it.

[perelleth]

LOL! Well, as you say, writing about job is like never getting rid of it.. unless you find an entertaining thread. I am not sure I would be able to find the plot line to thread all those things together. IN your example, the man surely has a theme, going back home after thirty years si a powerful one, which reminds me to add Exile to my list, (one of my favourites and just left out!) In my case, I have the memory, the feelings, the silence and the conniving winks exchanged, but in my opinion that is not enough.

I almost always find myself more delighted to be enlightened by the hitherto-unknown ins-and-outs of, say, the dry cleaning industry than to read about the exciting world of professional skydivers.. THe same to me! I am delighted to be enlightened by anyone who knows his/her trade beyond the simple practice and can tell you the tricks that make that trade an art. I am almost overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge that was needed to perform in a perfect way many of the tasks that are now unsatisfactory performed by machines, and the amount of knowledge that is going to be cancelled from our common human heritage in a couple of generations!

If you like salt you might like this
http://www.maldonsalt.co.uk/downloads/SaltMakerofMaldonBook.pdf

Anyway, thinking about what I wrote, I suppose that it would be far more easy to build a different world than to try and find a thread in which to fit diverse experiences in this one, since I do not have yet the pesrpective, you are right...