Mr Mascellani's Musings

I love sunshine and I love rain. But grey overcast days make me feel
a heavy sadness. Heavier than a heavy lead yoke that burdens a
depressed and forlorn mule as he plods along doing his dreary chores.


It's not a visual thing. It's not as though I step outside, or look out a
window and see that it is overcast day and then become sad.
It is more that I KNOW that if I step outside or look through a window
that what I will see is an overcast day even before I do so.

Overcast weather is the only thing that I can thing that I can think of
that makes me feel solely and purely sad. Other things make me feel
sad 'plus' (angry, depressed, anxious, disappointed concerned etc.)


It's often said that there's a relationship between depression and
anger. That they are both two sides of a coin,
that depression is anger misdirected inwards and anger is depression
misdirected outwards.
Or some such psycho babble.

Psychobabble or not, I do think that there is something to said about this depression-anger hypothesis. But is debateable as some of the links I
have posted attest. However, for the purposes of this prompt I'm not
going put a my own case for it but just accaept it as something that I
feel is right.

And if there is a relationship between depression and anger, then
there has to be relationship between sadness and anger.
Sadness being one of the symptoms of depression.


The point of the preceding rambling preamble is that when I started to
consider te topic of this prompt "what makes you sad and why?"
I found that a lot of the things that made me sad were also things that
made me angry: Imjustice, cruelty, people taking advantage of the
helpless and the weak: children, the elderly, the physically, mentally
and emotionally challenged and damaged, the hapless, the hopeless,
the dysfunctional.


A Divine Image-William Blake

Cruelty has a Human heart
And Jealousy a Human Face,
Terror, the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy, the Human Dress.

The Human Dress is forgéd Iron,
The Human Form, a fiery Forge,
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd,
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.



Next:
Book Review 1: Wild Meat And The Bully Burgers by Lois-Ann Yamanaka

Click to continue reading writing prompts

Hmmmm, it would come in three parts,

1) A stately manor in Sydney, near the water,
2) A stately manor in Florence, Italy,
3) A stately manor in Upstate New York.

Some people might say that this would be three presents rather than one-

but I like to see as three parts of the one present.

Anyways, anything you get me will be appreciated. After all, I'm not

materialistic.


The Red Wheelbarrow -William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

NEXT: Writing Prompt 16- What is something that makes you feel sad?

Call it diplomacy, cowardice, or a breaking of the code that says that

writers should speak the truth. But I have to say that it is difficult for

me to pick out a favourite birthday present, seeing as they were

(except for a few exceptions) given to me by family and friends- and

one doesn't want to hurt or upset the feelings of such people.


But, having said that, I would have to say that one the lost interesting

and coolest was one that was given to me by my older brother for one

of my birthdays in my late twenties. It was a sculpture of a blowfly made

out of old motor scooter parts. My brother bought it from a sculptor friend

of his.


Headlights were its eyes; a wheel rim was its body, blue thingamabobs

were its wings and a whatchamacallit was its arse. It looked great, lived

in my loungeroom and was quite the conversation piece. Unfortunately,

it is no longer with us (but that's another story). I wish that I had a pic to

post, so as you could see it.


"for one of my birthdays in my late twenties." Actually, it might have

been one of my birthdays in my mid twenties or early thirties. Hell, it

might have been a Christmas present!


One of the things that these writing prompta and certain other things

have bought to a fore for me- is a reminder of how weird my memory

is. For example, I might rember that I went to Melbourne and did such and

such and met So and So, but I won't be able to remeber if this happened in

1984, 1987or 1995. Or I might have a clear memory of something that

happened when I was 12, but I will have totally forgotten something

that happened when was 23, unless I'm reminded of it. And when I am

reminded and then I wonder why I forgot it, when it was no great

traumatic event. Weird, weird, weird.



Tears, Idle Tears -Lord Alfred Tennyson

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!


Next: Writing Prompt 15- What is the best birthday present you could receive?