A severed Head in good Word order
January 16, 2013
Writing words in a reasonable order.
The first thing in writing is to start with a word which you follow up with another word. Usually the first word suggests the next one. It is best not to start off with a word plan that would prevent the freedom to change as you go along. It mustn’t be too preconceived. That would stifle the creativity of things that words are capable off. You wouldn’t know how words behave once they have been put in view. I mean, you can have certain words in mind but on reading those words it might just not always work out. It’s a bit of a mystery, but that’s the power of words for you.
“Head,” here is a first word. “Head found”, might be the next. Was it yesterday I read someone found a head in a plastic bag? The horror of an eleven year old girl finding a severed head in a plastic bag will be a difficult memory to overcome. Can you imagine? Poor girl. Why is it that lately we seem to read so many of those strange stories of murder and mayhem? I mean, a severed head accidentally could be possible, but a head in a plastic bag seems to have something deliberate about it. I mean man-made deliberation. I can’t really get to ‘woman made’, I really can’t imagine a woman capable of doing something like that, even though packing things in plastic bags might be more the domain belonging to the female sex.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-17/man-arrested-over-rottnest-head-find/4468644
Heaven knows how long the head had been in the plastic bag but police, after staring at it for a long time, seemed to have recognized something familiar about it. Something about the glint of those eyes perhaps? At first they couldn’t put their finger to it, but there was something, just something about it. You wonder how they viewed the head. Did they put it on a desk wedged in between a couple of weights preventing it from rolling around? Perhaps it was adorned with ear-rings. How did they determine the sex of the head? So many questions, so many answers, all related to this gruesome object of a body-less head. For me it seems difficult to imagine a head without a body. Sure, I have seen paintings of heads being held, usually triumphantly aloft, but curiously mainly in biblical scenes. The power of the sword, because those scenes, if I remember correctly, usually showed a man with the dripping head in one hand and a cutting implement in the other. Is there also not a famous scene of a head presented on a serving platter?
As a child it held enormous fascination and I was captivated by the scene for many years. I would contemplate if it was possible to be still alive, even for just a split second, after the head was cut off. What exactly was the precise point of death? Could the eyes still see, just for a short second afterwards, or did everything look black? I vividly remember at history lessons and the French Robespierre being led, oh so deliciously and finally to the guillotine with the women in the audience, comfortably seated, cheering on, while some were knitting booties for their babies.
Can you imagine?
Tags: French, Head, History, Robespierre Posted in Gerard Oosterman | Edit | Leave a Comment »
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
It would certainly be a traumatic experience for any 11-year-old to find a head in a plastic bag… but I also heard a story recently about posties in the USA (where else?) who found a whole boxful of ’em! Eighteen heads in a box, sent via normal postal services… Of course, it was ‘legit’; it was on its way to some uni-hospital or other for whatever teaching purposes they use human heads for these days…
Still… makes you wonder dunnit, where they got ’em from’n’all… I wonder if Messrs Burke and Hare would make a living in this day and age… my guess is they would probably thrive!
😉
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Yes, Big M. A houseman’s work is never finished. I got the vacuum cleaner at the ‘ready’ but have walked past it a couple of times. It is so hot. Still, it beckons, just has to be done. Probably cook a simple meal. A couple of Kranskies cut along its length and the barbecued till it has a crispy outer crust. I’ll do the same with red capsicums all char grilled and then,.. and then.. a red Shiraz with H outside. The reward after all the work.
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Gez the very subject touched on by Stephen Fry t’other night was how long can a chicken last without its head and I think they said 12 months; proof was there in a photo of a headless chicklen fed with an eye dropper. It stands to reason doesn’t it. It was an eye dropper.
As for the case of the recent head found by the 11 year old-child, I cannot imagine how long a child takes to recover from the experience, supposing it was recognisable to her as a head. 😦
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Yes, must be dreadful. It is one thing to ‘imagine’ a severed head., but to actually see it in ‘real life’., I mean in its real death state. The 11y. girl was beach-combing. Anyway, they have charged a person with the murder. What brings a man from a lovely and loving boy to a fully grown adult, to such deed? I say boy and man because to say ‘person’ is so much pc and doesn’t write well.
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At again first thought, the condition Big M referred to. Witness however docos of children who are not able to manage their emotions and relationships and neither their adults on their behalf without medication. I can imagine especially where a child has not been treated in any shape or form with proper medical management that the step is not a big one as soon as the child has matured enough to be physically capable. dear. Yes, ir does happen and we rarely talk about it, us people.
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typo alert; it, not ir
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I heard of a headless chook that became a huge celebrity… toured the USA and lived for years after its decapitation… Of course, it’s hard to imagine what kind of quality of life such a chook might have…
I think the head does still retain consciousness for at least a few seconds after death, Gerard; I seem to remember a description of a decapitation in which the jaw was said to have kept opening and shutting for a few seconds after it had been cut off… (but this could also just be my imagination and memory playing tricks on me!)
Of course, the original ‘head on a platter’ thingo was Salome, wasn’t it? With the head of John the Baptist?
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At first thought, one cannot imagine a woman dismembering another. It’s usually us war-like filthy, lustfull men. But, recently, here in the idyllic Hunter valley. A place with coal, and coal mines for all, a young woman admitted that she had killed, then dismembered (the usual order of these things) her former lover, then fashioned him in to a soup, for the family to enjoy.
Waste not, want not.
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Very good word order. I remember starting out to write a novel. Great idea. Great plot. The first sentence was exquisite. Mary Shelley would have been proud…then it all turned to detritus.
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I would not be too modest BigM. I always enjoyed you tale. Next one coming soon, or still busy with Mrs M. How is she? Give her our regards.
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Mrs M is surprisingly well. She tells me that women are stronger, as I scrub away at the shower recess. As for Foodge, I thought he might tell Uncle Emmjay some sort of tale of derring do, with O’Hoo!
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That is amazing. What a story. Into soup? Who was the family, her kids?. It throws a new light on Eve in paradise and spare ribs.
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Recall if you might the case in Europe somewhere of the fellow charged for indulging in some curious fetish with another who he advertised for or vice versa or both. The chap died, who was being eaten, and I swear I recall the case was, at least initially thrown out on the grounds he was co-operating/complicit or something.
How wouild you be if we have judiciary of the ilk, Gez. I try to get my head around a decision that would allow the gate open for dear old Uncle deciding to make a meal of Aunt and then convincing the crowd she lined up for it?
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Yes, I remember the case. The partner, he claimed, was totally complicit in wanting to be eaten after being killed. He was either jailed or put into an institution. I suspect the latter.
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It must be one of the First rules of Self Love not to allow anybody, surely, to have a piece of you.
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