TT #10 – HOW TO BE GROSS

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to my Thursday Thirteen #10. Today I’ve decided to go with the suggested theme of ‘gross’. Now, that’s a word that can have many connotations, so I hope I offer a little fun, and some things to think about.
I think the idea of a theme is a good addition to Thursday Thirteen – not that I’ll always use it. But sometimes it just fires the imagination in the right way. But certainly it works best when it’s just a word, like this week – I mean, gross.

COUNTDOWN

13. Picking your nose, flatulence, scratching bits you shouldn’t be able to reach. There are so many possibilities here. But get the above over with, please, and then concentrate.

12. If you do so, then you are engrossed. This can be a good way to be. This means you are fully occupied, and I’ve been a success as a writer/blogger. So come on, don’t fail me!

11. You can become too engrossed – not here, you understand – and if you do, you become obsessed, and obsessions can take over your life. This is bad. It leads to fanaticism, and in my book, all fanatics are wrong. They take ideas with a touch of commonsense, and make them ridiculous – and often dangerous.
I have a mantra which says: ‘I’m fanatical about moderation.’ Yes, I know, it’s a contradiction, but the subject engrosses me.

10. A Gross is, of course, a dozen dozen. Yet, this is Thursday THIRTEEN, and thirteen is a Baker’s Dozen. This is supposed to come from Medieval English bakers who often gave one extra. Generous people, the English. I’m one. Except Yorkshiremen. They’re said to be stingy. Oh dear! I’m one of those, too.
Better, though, not to have a Baker’s Dozen dozen. That would be a gross gross.

9. Gross can mean overfed. This is often a touchy subject. Yes, I know some people do it for comfort, others because of genetic disposition. But I’m not talking about you. I’ll concentrate on the greedy. And I won’t dwell on it.
But often, being overfed comes from indulgence. To indulge yourself you have to have a certain amount of wealth. This leads to excess in all things, many of them harmful. Have you ever noticed how increased wealth leads to increased masochism? Aren’t we happy with wealth?

8. Gross can mean coarse. This is language or actions that people can find vulgar. This seems to be growing, today. It is particularly prevalent amongst celebrities. Why do they do it?
Well, we live in a media age, where image is all-important. But what happens when ‘image’ becomes a science, and all celebrities jump on the bandwagon? Easy. They make their image more and more extreme – and more and more coarse.
Which tells us what ‘coarse’ is. Attention seeking.

7. Gross can mean indecent. This often has a sexual connotation. And it is increasingly obvious that sex is on the rise today. Sex is everywhere, indecency all around us. Now, I’m not a killjoy. I like sex. But it has a place.
Sex is best behind closed doors. Sexy is clothing and action that ‘suggests’ what’s beneath, letting the imagination reign free. Full frontals take that away, and reduce sex to an animal state. And not only this, it makes it ‘available’ on demand.
Sex has become a commodity. Stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap!

6. Gross is what you have before overheads. This can be a metaphor for ‘you’. You are, as a person, your full self. This is the ‘gross’ of you. But life can be a bitch, and constantly it takes bits away.
What is left is the ‘net’ of you, depleted – a shadow of your former self. Yet maybe we should think of our life’s path as an account in itself. And in doing so, we can maybe work out how to balance the books.
We can do this because life’s experience not only depletes you, but teaches you important lessons about life. Hence, we can learn from these experiences, refreshing the account with growing wisdom, and balancing the books.

5. Gross can mean gross profit. Nothing explains the modern world more than this. Modern super capitalism is all about profit. I’m not anti-capitalist by any means, but remember what I said, above, about obsessions? Well super capitalism is an obsession.
When you have a society run by tycoons who’ve forgotten the importance of ‘service’, and search out profit alone, you end up with a cold, calculating society that simply does not know itself, other than its choice to buy. This is perhaps the most repugnant use of the word ‘gross’ we can have.

4. This post may be getting a bit gross in itself. Yet I’ll leave it up to you to decide what I mean by ‘gross’ here. For the last three in this week’s post I thought I’d be a little different. Throughout my blog you’ll find lots of poetry and flash fiction. So I thought I’d end with a bit of – you’ve guessed it – poetry and flash fiction.

© Anthony North, May 2008

ENGROSSED

What is this beauty I behold?
Within my mind it does enfold,
its grace and elegance for me to see,
as if an answer to a plea;
Such posture, grace, and charm are you,
your peers are so, so very few,
a delight, an absolutely perfect scene,
sometimes I think it even obscene,
as every morning,
in the mirror
I preen

(c) Anthony North, May 2008

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WITNESS TO A GROSS EVENT – Fiction

Oh, how I wish I’d never taken the short cut home that night. If only I’d stayed with the road – not gone down the path in the dark. But wishes are no use after the event.
How do I describe what I saw? How CAN words be enough?
She was dead, that was plain to see. And how she must have suffered, as the monster attacked her, and then did that …
I don’t remember contacting the police, but they eventually arrived to find me almost comatose by the body. Of course, I was no good as a witness – I’d not really seen anything. At least, not then.

Later, it was a different matter.

How do you sleep once you’ve seen images like that? How can you stop the nightmares?
Many a night I woke up in a cold sweat, screaming, reliving how it must have been for her. And even when awake the images would not disappear.
I suppose, eventually, you get used to them, and they become part of you. But it was a changed me, that was for sure; no longer shrouded by innocence, but in a way, gross, as those images were gross.
They say such an experience affects you for life, and I think that is true, slowly turning your mind, your very being, until the night I deviated from the road. Walked down a path. Waited.
I can stop myself.
I CAN!!

© Anthony North, May 2008

TAKE AWAY TAKE OVER

The slugs they came, crawling along,
six foot tall and twenty feet long,
run, run, run, try to escape,
from their manic, gross, gross gape,
chomp, chomp, chomp, they eat all in sight,
giving us all a damned big fright;
This nightmare ain’t so far in the future,
born from us, and our modern culture,
they say you become just what you eat,
and you ate them,
didn’t you?
Your hamburger treat

(c) Anthony North, May 2008

FUTURE CO

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FUTURE CO

The chief executive sat at his desk. The window, to his side, was huge. It needed to be in order to see the whole panorama of his creation. It was one large corporation indeed.
They had advised him to be cautious before he began the project. After all, he was taking capitalism to a whole new dimension. Yet, if only he’d been more aware of the outcome, maybe he would have thought twice before proceeding. But when has such fear stopped the human need to advance?

To advance. Is that what had happened?

Efficiency was the key. A society is best if full efficiency is achieved. If everything runs like clockwork, and everyone operates to their maximum ability, and time is used to perfection, with just enough time to sleep, just enough time to eat, just enough time to work, and just enough time to buy.
Well, he’d achieved maximum efficiency, that was for sure.
And now, as the chief executive sat at his desk, looking down on Earth, he offered one last smile before raising the gun to his head and firing.
It was the last act of inefficiency before the zombies came in, and efficiently cleaned him away.

© Anthony North, May 2008

MAYBE MAN

The maybe man, he’s a scream,
going there, in his dream;
Cautious is, his way to be,
going nowhere, like a tree;
All through life, he thinks it out,
swimming nowhere, like a trout;
A human being, he certainly is,
but his existence, has no fizz;
sometimes you’ve just, got to say,
get on with life, its full array,
or in your head, or in your bed,
you’ll stay, until
you’re very dead

(c) Anthony North, May 2008

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CAUTIOUSLY GOES

There are two ways to go through life – throw yourself into it, or be cautious. Yet to me, both stances are erroneous. To go ahead with something without thought usually ends in disaster.
We have a mind for a good reason. It is there to work out odds and consequences of our actions. And we are well aware of the thoughtless individual, the centre of a whirlpool of chaos and tragedy.
Alternatively, caution can be counter-productive, too. So often we say ‘maybe’ – should we do it this way, or that? What will be the outcome of this? And before you realize what’s happened, nothing has, and life has passed you by.
Problems no matter which way we go. So rather, to be fully human we should search out the happy medium. Think things through, but not too much. Jump into things, but giving a thought to others and yourself.
If anyone ever works out how to do it, please let me know.

© Anthony North, May 2008

COINCIDENCE AND THE THOUGHT PATH

We’ve all heard of fate, but what is it? To some it is a force in the universe that influences you, driving you towards a life preordained. Whilst to others, it is a superstition, a fallacy – something that doesn’t exist.
I don’t like the former – it suggests that you have no free will, and without this, what is the point of choice? But on saying this, I don’t like the latter either. It is too reductionist, ignoring the experiences of many of us.

Is there a coming together of the two extremes?

Some people believe that luck has a lot to do with it. Some people are just born lucky, and their life seems to be one success after another.
Research into luck has provided a clue. Those who are lucky tend to be good at calculating odds. In such a way, they can unconsciously assess a situation as it arises, and usually take the right decision.

This gives a clue to those who are unlucky.

In calculating odds correctly, the person learns optimism, and this seems to go into the world ahead of you – whilst the unlucky seem to project pessimism onto everything – a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Carl Jung would point out synchronicity. Here, coincidences seem to happen that seem to have meaning above the coincidence itself. It is almost as if the person has made the coincidence happen.

Is this possible?

Can the mind have a direct affect on the events of the world? Events that, for all intents and purposes, are out of your control? One possibility is to look at another attribute in the lucky.
They are not ‘lucky’ at all. Rather, they have a form of selective attention. They simply remember the good times more than the bad; whilst the unlucky tend to remember the bad times more than the good.

This is simple psychology.

But I don’t think psychology is ever simple. At present the mind is thought to be personal to the individual. I think it is much more interactive than that.
I work with what I call psycho-sociology. Basically, what happens in the personal mind is simply a reflection of a wider world, and vice versa. Hence, if selective attention affects the person, it also affects the world at large.

Let us change it to ‘selective observation’.

The lucky person only sees in the world those things that are useful to his success. Hence, he convinces himself that the world is acting in his interest.
This is, of course, a belief. But to what extent can a belief become a reality? If we take religion, a belief in a God-form leads to action that changes the world in such a way that the world is how it would be if the God-form was real.
And the same can happen with the person, I’m sure. An absolute belief in his destiny creates only those observations that confirm his reality. And as he goes through life, his actions make that ‘reality’ real.
The world has been ‘tuned’ to his mind. And this simple mind-state means coincidences will happen more and more, as it directs his life to the correct choices he needs to make. Mind and world have become one.

© Anthony North, May 2008

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