Shouts From Down Under

Once, someone spoke the first word, and kept mum about it...

I didn't seem to notice until today, or had forgotten (fancy that) that Writing dot com has a button to click on for site news.

<<<------- on this side between the My Favorites, and My Notepad buttons

Scrolling through the stuff, I realised what I'd been missing out on. News. Site News. Now I'm almost with it.

This one particularly caught my eye, because I remember being part of it and still recall the excitement, the fun of surprising total strangers, even if they are the origin of the site. Australia is a bit far away to shake their hands, or offer to feed their pets when they go on holidays (vacation).
But, we all share this common interest of pushing pens and thinking up better ways with words. And without such a site as this, it would be so much more difficult. They really do make a difference. No - they make it possible and easy.

"Be Still Our Hearts" 

A thought entered my head, something like - what if cave men and women (and children) wanted to write, and aspired to novelism, poetism, bookism and songism, paintingisation and other forms of artisticness?

What if it were commonplace to have a time machine in the back garden shed, one that you bought the kids at ToyWorld three years ago, but they never use it now. A couple of plastic bits have broken off it and there's a chip in the screen, but it still works. Probably needs batteries, and where is that dang charger?

And the reason no one uses them anymore is that the folks from bygone eras sent a diplomatic envoy to the future, to us, the only people whose present matters (yes it is meant to be a joke in case anyone from the past stumbles across this sometime in the future and perhaps gets offended).

The bunch of negotiators came to ask us nicely to cease forthwith our encroachment on the past centuries and millennia, because, as it was stated in the very official looking draft document form their factional caucus committee, we were being an embarrassment (one never knows when you pesky people will just suddenly appear in our bathrooms, in our bank vaults, frighten people in cemeteries, crash parties with your modern drugs etc, and just, well, just be a nuisance in other people's space).
If you don't stop it, they wrote, and said, you'll cease to exist, much like the movie Looper you've made. By the way, that idea was also stolen from whatever century in your past. Yes, we'll select the ancestors of the culprits and...problem solved sunshine!

So, being astute sensitive people of this sharp and quadratic time, we did mostly stop going back into the past. We felt red cheeked when we thought of those times...well, best not to go into detail just now!

But, if you could go back like that, and talk to people who were just beginning to sort out their rock collections, sharpen up their clubs, sweep out their cave entrances of all those bones that are annoying of a night when the fire has burnt down, and you stumble on them so hard they even cut your callused feet.

And you'd surely find that some of them wanted to write. They really did. They talked about it. Quiet voices discussing being able to speak a language, learn letters, invent them. Make up something to communicate. I'll see if I can think for a minute and get some echoes from that conversation. Yes, I can hear some of them, like a family sort of unit, talking about it right now. Very loudly. Maybe they are inventing the first crude arguments?

Scene fades in on the time machine screen, with the occasional bit of static and refresh lines scrolling up.

*************

"Zik, don't be a der brain. How y' gunna wroit, mate? Ya can't even spell yet."

"Well Einstein, look whose talkin'. You carn't even speak anyfink ya doughboy. Language hasn't been invented yet. So backinyabox mum."

"Don't call me that word again Zik! I won't hear that sort of language, well if speaking had been thought of yet, I won't have rude words said in this cave young man!"

"Oh muuummm."

"Zik!" She fumes. There's a rustle of, not newspaper, but just handfuls of bark, as Pop Nean Derthal clears his throat. He's been trying to make sense of these barks, and turning the leaves, searching for truth and happiness - news in other words.

"Harummmph! (Hmm that'll probably become quite an important word one day, ha ha ha! And it was old me who thought it up!)
"Listen here son! Zik, you can't go calling your mother such a disrespectable name as mum."

"But Pop."

"Nope! Ah won't have ut! Now, go to your ledge boy, and learn yor manners." So, off Zik trots, clambering over the mammoth bones, and scraping his bruised and scabby shin on the rough conglomerate edge of the cave shelves that were their separate rooms.

His Pop them says sotto voce to his maternal carer,

"Maybe Mum, or Mom is a good word for you, dear. It has a certain charm to it. And I think you'd be more beautiful with a naughty name like Mum..." He bares his teeth at "Mum".

"Maybe you're right Nean. Who'd have thought it? Our young whatsy / void / no name for it yet, is inventing new things, to make speaking easier. Who knows eh? One day he might even scratch these inventions onto the walls of the cave here. We could invite all our neighbours to have a sneak preview, maybe have a publishing party!"

"Hey, that would be so exciting!" Now the scene, and the time machine, have to cut away, and be turned off, so as to give these early language and written expression brain stormers some privacy. Without it, we may not exist, and they may not have a future.

***************

Incidentally, the past is ripe with the sort of technology and straight thinking that we can sometimes only dream about.

You know, those old direct methods of doing things. They worked. And there are times when they still do, better than the new fangled things. Lifehacks for all the family here...

http://www.epicdash.com/the-46-most-brilliant-life-hacks-every-human-being-needs...

Sparky

Featured as part of my signature, the video below is here to raise awareness of Carly, who thrives despite the difficulties of severe Autism. Watching and learning about her may change how we think of these people, and how we treat them.