The Same Thing, again and again

[gruntingslime]

He stared at the donkey grazing in the field and thought bull.

He read the word blue and thought black.

His stomach growled so he sat at the table, opened his mouth and ate a bullet.

His neighbours lined up behind his fence and waved their arms and shook their heads yelling, "No, No, No!" He waved back and smiled, snipping each blade of grass to half its size with his pair of kitchen scissors.

There was dirt on his arms and his cheeks. He stared at the tub and decided he would have a bath.

All that is created stands for itself.

Meaning is extracted from what is created to stand for itself.

[l0rd]

I could see this as lyrics or poetry, but not really much of a story.

I kind of feel like it is just throwing out ambiguous and "deep" phrases at me without really saying much about them.

[gruntingslime]

I'm not really sure exactly how to reply to your post without sounding defensive, but you said throwing out "deep" phrases which I would like to adress. First of all I like to say that, whatever I write gets its meaning from the reader, no matter what the reader thinks, be it the complete opposite of the intention, because in the end my writing can only be a product of the thoughts it inspires in others. And that's actually what this whole thing is about. I'm suprised though that you called them deep, for one because they only "mean something" so far as you yourself interject any meaning into them, otherwise they're a load of hogwash. I'm not sure if the final lines sounded pretentious,
"Meaning is extracted from what is created to stand for itself." but I couldn't think of many other ways to say just that. Maybe, we take meaning from what we see, but it doesn't say the exact same thing because what we see obviously stands for itself, a pen is a pen until we call it a peacock, or until we begin to write with it. On the other hand, a pen has been created by humans to fuction as a writing utensil, so it's meaning is explicit, and again it stands for itself. It doesn't need to be called a peacock to teach the fuction of pen.

This idea is far from original, but it wasn't exactly my intention to write philosophy here. True, I might overcomplicate my words and I'll have to deal with that and definitely face the reprocussions. But my main goal was in posting this on a writing forum, where the main audience would be people who write. When we write, depending on our intentions of course, we often use symbols, call them metaphors or analogies, often to say something that we're not exactly saying. So again the point of writing this perhaps was to have someone not understand what I was saying, but only because that's the trouble anyone would face as a writer while trying to express something behind a word.

Another simplistic example, which doesn't completely express what I mean, would be describing stars but never calling them stars, saying shining explosions in the sky... the meaning is there, and I'm sure a lot of people would understand it. But we can go further, what I mean is expressing ideas as images, and a lot of times you end up calling the donkey a bull, or cutting the grass with kitchen scissors.

[gruntingslime]

Writing that first response sort of undermines the point of my first post, which is stated at the end "All that is created stands for itself. -And- Meaning is extracted from what is created to stand for itself." Meaning that things only mean as much as we want to want to attach to them. So in a way, that you thought the post was possibly a bunch of pretentious hoo-hah would be about correct, because that is all I was able to illicit as a response.

Although you asked me to explain myself, so I've done that, and in a way that's important too because I wanted the people on this site to understand the meaning in as much as they will encounter this situation many times while writing themselves and while reading, where a sentence's (or entire story, or paragraph, whatever) meaning is skewed or hidden behind a compilation of words that on first glance are nothing more than word salad, or the ramblings of a pretentious *******.

I guess another reason for these sentences which you might be able to spot in them is for one, is the meanings we extract from things their actual purpose, or is it simply what is stated? Was the purpose of cutting the lawn with kitchen scissors to make everyone hit upon convoluted truths without any real purpose? Or was it simply to have a character cut the lawn with garden scissors for a few laughs. And subsequently, is any "deep" meanings we could attached to a story really anything more than mental masturbation? Is it all for some greater purpose or is it just for the benefit of sounding pretentious and attaching important to ourselves?

I don't think I'm qualified to answer those questions I've posed because again, "All that is created stands for itself."

[l0rd]

Writing that first response sort of undermines the point of my first post, which is stated at the end "All that is created stands for itself. -And- Meaning is extracted from what is created to stand for itself." Meaning that things only mean as much as we want to want to attach to them. So in a way, that you thought the post was possibly a bunch of pretentious hoo-hah would be about correct, because that is all I was able to illicit as a response.

Although you asked me to explain myself, so I've done that, and in a way that's important too because I wanted the people on this site to understand the meaning in as much as they will encounter this situation many times while writing themselves and while reading, where a sentence's (or entire story, or paragraph, whatever) meaning is skewed or hidden behind a compilation of words that on first glance are nothing more than word salad, or the ramblings of a pretentious *******.

I guess another reason for these sentences which you might be able to spot in them is for one, is the meanings we extract from things their actual purpose, or is it simply what is stated? Was the purpose of cutting the lawn with kitchen scissors to make everyone hit upon convoluted truths without any real purpose? Or was it simply to have a character cut the lawn with garden scissors for a few laughs. And subsequently, is any "deep" meanings we could attached to a story really anything more than mental masturbation? Is it all for some greater purpose or is it just for the benefit of sounding pretentious and attaching important to ourselves?

I don't think I'm qualified to answer those questions I've posed because again, "All that is created stands for itself."

Thank you for the elaboration, and, while I did interpret it in my own way, it is nice to know the primary intentions from the author.

I was in no way speaking with contempt when I said that it seemed more like poetry. My point was simply that since it wasn't in the Poetry sub-forum, I assumed you considered this prose.

It seemed to me more poetic than prose because, as I said, I recognize a huge aspect of ambiguity. This is why I said it felt like it was throwing out "deep" statements--to elaborate on my claim.

My only point is that if you already thought of this piece as poetry, then this is unproductive; however, if you considered it prose, then I disagree.

[AuntShecky]

This piece started out fine, with numerous concrete illustrations, which I thought would develop into a study of a person with a disability, synesthesia or the like.

I must confess that I have an aversion to the use of a catchall pronoun ("he.") One way you can make your characters life-like is to give them names.

But then the piece ends abruptly into abstractions. There isn't enough corroborating evidence to make a philosophical statement, such as appears at the end.

Also, it's usually better to use active rather than passive verbs such as the one that appears in your concluding sentences. Active, "virile" verbs that will make your prose less dry and help it "come alive." Also, passive verbs often make awkward constructions.

[gruntingslime]

This wasn't meant as a peice of prose or a piece of poetry. It was meant as an illustration or remniscence on how either particular sentences we write, or read, are allusions to something either concrete or abstract, and as soon as we leave them they stand on their own, regardless of their innitial functions. I'm not sure I completely agree with you AuntShecky, because All that is created stands for itself, is not a philosophical statement. In the first sentence a Donkey grazes in the field, and when we think of a donkey and even delve into the properties of a donkey, they are merely aspects of the donkey, what I mean by that is that the donkey stands for itself, and if we add to it for example the label "bull" it doesn't become a bull, unless we attach that meaning and carry it with us.
The man who is dirty, in the bathroom, looking at the tub, decides to take a bath. He doesn't attach a new meaning to it, but he attaches a meaning to it which isn't at the moment prevailent, there is no water in the tub and no evidence which tells him he can be cleaned in the tub except the memory and knowledge he has attached to it beforehand.

I would agree with what you said about things like changing he for names, if it was meant as a piece of fiction, but it was meant more to point out that no matter what we write or read, it will, like the things in the sentences, end up becoming themselves.

But alternately, for this very reason, you are both entirely correct about it, because there is more involved than the piece itself. There is for example the conditions in our own minds when we read which makes us interpret things a certain way. There is the fact that it's placed on thier forum without any explanation outside of the piece itself. And I think this is why there is always an inherent success and failure factor to much of what we do as humans, in that we can't make everyone happy, or end up making no one happy no matter how hard we try. And it's this I wanted to address among people who are writers, because we will all suffer things like misenterpretations.

Another example would be the way I enterpreted L0rd's first post, as it seems somewhat falsely. I don't think I could call it a direct fault of either of us, but I'm sure anyone could find a way to attach that meaning and make it stick, at least within themself.

There is a problem with language which I don't think anyone is free of, no matter how well you follow the rules of grammar or simply state your point. It's related to emotions, the way your reader or listener is feeling or is ready to interpret, the time or effort they are willing to put into what they read, and it's also because there are things which are uncommunicable. If we talk about Bill's green cowboy hat, we all may get an image of it, some may only see the words and acknowledge their meaning and move on, but there is no guarentee we will all see the same green cowboy hat.

Here, with the hat, and above, when I made the allusion to the pen, I spoke of concrete objects which again, like the donkey, are able to be called something their not, or be attached to emotions that not everyone will see, and this is important too because most fiction deals with objects, but what if we want to express something that is simply an idea? Which is exactly what I tried to do in my initial post. The idea that all that is created (meaning, somehow finds a place on this Earth, whether made by man or born or grown...) can only be itself, whatever that entails, and then there's the empty space in between, where we attach a meaning that not everyone will see.

Like I said, the thing was a failure and a success, possibly a success because it was a failure and a failure because it was a success. It was an illustration of the point of a paradox in our thought and creation, which in being made must suffer from being both a failure and a success for the very reason that it touches upon something which can never be made perfect. Which is something all of our writing, and everything we read will suffer.

For example, though I love writing and though I love reading, I have never read or written anything I would call perfect, and maybe not even anything I actually liked.