Day: October 1, 2022

Jindabyne and Raymond Carver

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

TITLE: “Jindabyne, Water, Water, Everywhere, and…”

Susanne Lorraine Johnston 8 pages
2500 words (without quotes)

Assignment 2, Option 6, CCC32111, S2, 2020

Question:
Answer in a critical essay of 2,500 words, making specific reference to print and

film: How does ‘place’ function in “Jindabyne”?

“Jindabyne” is a 2006 film adaptation by Ray Lawrence and Beatrix Christian of Raymond Carver’s 1981 short fiction “So Much Water So Close to Home”. This critical essay will consider how place, and its absence and water function in Carver’s story, and how in his film, “Jindabyne”, Lawrence causes a magnificent landscape to function as Australian Gothic theatre. Though Carver and Lawrence each engineer the function of place to be the provision of comfort, the main focus of this essay centres around several examples of how Carver’s lack of place functions to amplify the terrifying spectre of gendered violence, and how place assists Lawrence to present gender and race issues.

“Place”, the noun currently has nine definitions and numerous sub-categories, and the verb has four (2020). Many of those definitions of place feature and are in operation in Raymond Carver’s “sparse new fiction” (Mosley, 2006, p. 23), where he provides little “specific background information” (p. 23). Instead, he instils tension in his 2009 work “So Much Water So Close to Home” and Carver describes his practice, saying “It’s true… I try to cut my words to the bone” (cited by Mosley, 2006, p. 23). These quotes explain Carver’s approach to place and setting.

Carver deliberately builds a up a distinct lack of information about place to increase tensions. Carver’s writing strategy forces readers to seek information about location in his modern, everyday “moral dilemma” (McFarlane, 2006, p.1). For Carver

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

creates empty spaces where locations should be. He apparently sublimates the importance of place. In this absence of location information, Carver’s unhappy characters experience a series of unsettling events, where, as McFarlane says, Carver leaves out “actuality of place” (2009, p. 1) . Carver explains he omits much information “in order to imply a “landscape just under the smooth, but sometimes broken and unsettled, surface of things” (cited by Mosley, 2006, p. 23). In addition, Carver’s narrative strategy ensures all action first occurs in an unexpected place.

Harking back to the large number of definitions of place, in Carver’s 2009 story his sole narrator’s mind functions as ‘place’. Carver leads the reader into the mind of Claire, wife, mother and his female lead. Claire delivers Carver’s story, as his first-person narrator who sketchily describes life events, generally in real-time. While Claire’s “articulation [is]… time and again brushed off by her husband [it does] reach the reader”, (Kleppe, 2006, p. 39). At the same time, Carver deliberately creates uncertainty, causes Claire to name water sixteen times not counting the title phrase. As Carver’s story progresses the reader gradually realises Claire’s strange fixation with water, much of it real and nearby.

In particular, water appears whenever Claire tells the reader about journeys. An example is Claire’s narration of a short drive with her husband where they stop at a pond near their home. While there, Claire watches other men fish “So much water so close to home” (2009, p. 70), she thinks. Claire then questions Stuart, her husband, one of four men recently returned from a distant camping trip, about his journey: “Why did you have to go miles away?” (p. 70). As Carver’s writing style also provides no specifics of place to Claire, her question seems reasonable, and to operate on one level. For Claire’s stress levels, like community tensions, have risen since the men returned to their town. Yet Stuart, Carver’s male protagonist simply replies: “Don’t rile me”, then opens cans of beer for them both. Stuart’s words and action open the door to another interpretation. For this is the only time Claire drinks in this short story and yet alcohol features twelve times, and here, Carver links place and water to alcohol and combined they function as building blocks; alcohol with further warnings Twice before they complete their drive home Stuart tells Claire he “riled” by her (pp. 70, 71). Carver thus creates a metaphor; alcohol with water signal violence against females and this may happen in this place.

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

Carver’s absence of detail here in this sunny, watery, public recreational space is a signal of what may happen to any woman in any place. Claire further recounts “We sit on a bench in the sun”. Where Stuart says “Relax, Claire” (Carver, 2009, p. 70), Claire desperately seeks details about the female body her husband found in the remote region. Claire attempts to gather this information from her husband to “make sense of her place in the family” (Kleppe, 2006, p. 39). She receives no such information. In its place she may expect violence.

Next day, Claire drives from home to town where she is comforted by a visiting her hairdressers. While Claire’s nails are manicured, her hair washed and styled, her stylist Marnie, says “Well get you fixed up for it” (Carver, 2009, pp. 71, 72). Marnie thus gives Claire the only support she receives in this story, and this place of beauty treatments and human warmth functions to provide real solace and safety. This is Claire’s preparation for a long, solo drive to another town. This journey (p. 72) creates another big, empty space where the reader wonders about violence, whether it is perpetrated within these private lives (Hallett, 1990). Water is present, for Claire travels to the unfamiliar place for the funeral of the unknown murdered girl (p. 73).

That girl recently found floating in the Naches river. By four men including Claire’s husband Stuart (Carver, 2009, pp. 68, 69). Carver’s “style” (Hallett, 1990) is

specifically… the fate of women who are victims” (Kleppe, 2006, p. 39). Claire, the stay at home wife-mother, who now drives along alongside that same Naches river the murdered girl was tossed into (Carver, 2009, p.73). Thus Carver’s perspective presents this story, though through his lead character’s mind.

Claire and Stuart’s domestic relationship functions as “subversive practice” where Carver questions his “authorial self” (Berryman, 1990, p. 1). Such “post- modern distress” (Lehman, 2006, p. 2) occurs when relationships fail and apply pressure to masculine identity (Bullock, 1994). Joining water and places fails to make Claire a gendered spectre, while obsessed by places with water Claire is not

his male gaze which here views events about“the lot of women… and more

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

mad. She exhibits stress and horror whenever she closely observes the world she must exist in.

The most startling example occurs at book’s end, where, returning home from the funeral she finds her husband drinking whiskey (Carver, 2009, p. 74). This causes Claire to becomes fearful about their child’s safety, then finds their son is in the backyard, away from his father drinking in the kitchen, While Claire hurries her intimacy with Stuart, before their child enters their home, her mind-space again fills with that haunting, repeated phrase about water (p. 74). So much water, again signalling danger, this time to herself and their child, and even to Stuart. For their home is no place of safety.

A literary adaptation by Ray Lawrence and writer Beatrix Christian of Raymond Carver’s 1981 short novel “So Much Water So Close to Home” sits in the dark heart of Lawrence’s 2006 Australian film “Jindabyne”. Lawrence structures Carver’s 1981 core to become one strand in a bunch of “hybrid”, “multifacted” Australian Gothic narratives (Raynor, 2009, p.1). Lawrence’s most important information to his viewer is delivered by landscape. In his 2006 full-length feature film, Lawrence’s chosen landscape. His his chosen cinematography tells the viewer of history, a country and a region; Lawrence’s landscape for Carver’s “urban fiction” (McFarlane, 2006, p. 1). Lawrence displays a landscape filled with direct messages, and almost no blank spaces.

Carver’s core 1981 tale is outfitted with what seems an unnecessary emphasis on aesthetics. Lawrence recalls he said to Beatrix Christian “Let’s go where we want to set it and see what happens” (cited by McFarlane, 2006, p. 2). His 2006 film is not pictorial, rather, the natural beauty jolts in reaction to “the horror perpetuated” (McFarlane, 2006, p. 2). Into the “physical location” Lawrence structures values “fluid, uncertain or shifted“ (Rayner, 2014, p. 2), for he sites Carver’s tale in the company of other stories whose subjects are not fiction.

Auteur director Lawrence chose an arresting arena of Australian countryside. To present ideals about real, historic injustices unresolved in today’s contemporary Australia (Roberts, 2005), Lawrence deliberately “relocated” Carver’s 1981 story,

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

and others to sit within an “anterior text”, a brilliant environment filled with dark history (McFarlane, 2006, p. 1). Lawrence’s wants landscape to function as a “superb theatre for implied violence and dark, unresolved conflict” (McFarlane, 2006, p. 3), as multiple layers of Australian Gothic tragedy.

Lawrence here explores conflict between Australia’s original people and “The Crown”. Though Carver’s 1981 story gives Lawrence “other places” gender violence “roots” (McFarlane, 2006, p. 1), Lawrence dedicates his 2006 film to indigenous actor Kevin Smith. Neil Armfield wrote of this NSW Walbunga clan elder, his deep involvement in their long unresolved land claim. His tribe call him “nuyrama”; he knows culture, the land talks to him, he can join “totems and Dreaming” (2005, p. 2). Playing tribal leader and murdered girl’s father, at film’s end Smith devises, conducts a traditional funeral pyre in the grass, and reveals that smoky place’s powers.

In his opening scene, on sleek, bitumen road snaking though primly fenced and farmed colonial-marked landscape, Lawrence deposits contemporary evidence of racial conflict. A hilly region early indigenous people knew well where he films in sacred places. Flooded lake Jindabyne now floats above and covers much evidence of those people (Curiousity Rocks, 2020). This place is not safe for the girl, Susan, an indigenous performer, who drives alone, sings, sweetly yearning “Jindabyne”. Soon she becomes horribly frightened, then violently murdered by a white man on that road in the very region her people come from within the Snowy Monaro.

Early in this 2006 film, with the viewer in freefall about what exactly is going one, Lawrence shows what appears to be firm ground. A place of safety, into homes, and family life there. For those places, with displays of inhabitants’ familial love, to cause the viewer to relax. However, they too soon become sites where family members reveal inhabitants’ important, unresolved and often barbed conflicts.

Lawrence imprints Carver’s story into that drowned region. McFarlane (2003) muses how nature supports Lawrence’s mimesis, his intention to realistically convey historic social messages of great importance. The ripples the murderer causes as he tosses in a girl’s deathly still and severely damaged body are soon forgotten by the large lake’s waters, even as he flicks his smoking cigarette down upon her. Here the

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

viewer sees “the power of the aesthic principle… more is less (Barth, 1986, p.1), with Lawrence building Carver’s 1981 spare tone into this gender violence landscape.

a Gothic landscape in Lawrence’s 2006 film appears as the men descend steeply, down to that hidden river running though this remote region. First, they see an area already riven with huge power lines, clear signs of modern life. These powerfully affect the youngest male, he is spooked at how they drive up and down the steep hills, wires buzzing through the surrounding region, so he scrambles back up the hill to get away. Then Lawrence frames the specific places where Stewart, in the water, moves the body, ties the leg with a string to a drowned tree, each an Australian Gothic image. Emanating out of what appears to be normalcy, an established Australian tradition when responsible, reliable family men go each year to camp in an isolated place.

In the film, Lawrence shows the four men fish in this remote Nachos river. Here he supports a “parable”, via a “conscious crafting of complex narrative situations” (Raynor, 2014, p. 4). For they stand in that pristine, clear and gently flowing, magnificent waterway, wash their dishes there. Yet all the while all see a real woman’s body floats nearby (Carver, 2009, p. 69). During those days the trout they catch here prove hard. Yet the men’s actions here are far more unpalatable.

In book and film, Claire is further horrified to learn Stuart’s party stay there, and they stay a girl’s body with a tender. To get to that River Nachos, the five-mile walk with their packs over a final rough area is rationale for staying several days (Carver, 2009, p. 67). However, this year, a dead person is there before them in that place, (p. 68). This scene and its breaks function to support further Lawrence’s creation of an Australian Gothic atmosphere. This remote, Australian valley is now forever linked to the tragic decision; four men chose to keep company, here, for several days with the dead body of a girl.

Lawrence finds and uses such details from Carver’s book. His landscape echoes Carver’s 2009 questioning of the places Claire always finds herself. The beauty of Lawrence’s 2006 choice of place matches his bigger tale and he does justice with high Jindabyne, historic, Australian country mise-en-scene (Rayner, 2014, p. 1). In Lawrence’s filme he shows historic Jindabyne hold a up modern

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

mirror (Lambert and Simpson, 2008) and shows Australia its history, how it looks today as the awful contemporary Gothic of Australia (Raynor, 2014). Yet while place here supports Lawrence’s primary mimetic desires (McFarlane, 2006), Lawrence here also reflects Carver’s equally effective creation Claire, a creature of his male- gaze horror, the unreliable environment of her mind.

Lack of place functions to ably support of writer Raymond Carver’s 1981 short story “So Much Water So Close to Home”. An abundance of place is everywhere in director Ray Lawrence’s adaptation of that story into his 2006 Australian movie “Jindabyne”. In each, place occasionally functions as comfort zone, yet generally functions to support the presentation of tragedy. Throughout, Carver reduces all unnecessary detail and causes the unsettling spectres of the mad woman and other gender violence to be functioning in every place in his story. Where his story takes place is uncertain; while he presents the mind of Claire, his sole narrator and female lead, as already unstable, still her internal voice still clearly functions as place. For Claire’s mind is the lens through which the reader views all other places of Carver’s story, inside, outside and around the key characters’ home. Which home also functions as the departure point for mostly dangerous journeys. Lawrence discards Carver’s narrative strategy. He choses instead to film his larger, far bigger and entwined version of Carver’s core story, with two of its journeys, in a strange, historic, outback and relocated town and its surrounding, drowned region. An eerie, uniquely Australian landscape. Lawrence’s chosen place functions to superbly assist him, auteur with a great grasp on cinematography, to develop and display his unique form of contemporary Australian Gothic tragedy.

Reference
Armfield, N. (2005, September 24). A Great Spirit Now Returns to the Land.

Sydney Morning Herald.

Barth, J. (1986, December 28). A Few Words About Minimalism. Byline. Book Review Desk. New York Times.

Berryman, C. (1990). Decade of Novels: Fiction of the 1970s: Form and Challenge. Whitston.

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Bullock, C. J. (1994). From Castle to Cathedral: The Architecture of Masculinity

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In R. Carver’s “Cathedral.”

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ECU S2, 2020: CCC32111, ASSIGNMENT 2, Option 6, “Jindabyne”

The Journal of Men’s Studies, 2(4), 343–351. https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.0204.343

Carver, R. (2009). ‘So much water so close to home’.
In R. Carver, What we talk about when we talk about love. Vintage. (Original work published 1981)

Curiousity Rocks. (2020). New South Wales Government

Department of Environment and Heritage. https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5063428

Kleppe

Lambert, A., & Simpson, C. (2008). Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland. M/C Journal, 11(5). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.81

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Hallett, C. W. (1990) Minimalism and the Short Story: Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel,

and Mary Robinson. Mellen.

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, S. L. (2006). Women and Violence in the Stories of Raymond Carver.

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Journal of the Short Story in English

http://journals.openedition.org/jsse/497

. 46 | Spring.

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Lawrence, R. (Director). (2006). Jindabyne [Film]. April Films.
Lehman, D. W. (2006). Symbolic Significance in the Stories of Raymond Carver.

Chercher. Open Edition Journals. Spring. Special Issue, 75-88 McFarlane, B. (2006). Locations and Relocations: Jindabyne and Macbeth.

Metro Magazine. Issue 150. Bauer Media Group.

Mosley, J. (2006). Senior Paper. Sinking the Titanic: The Iceberg and its Minimalist Implications In

Raymond Carver’s Fiction. The University of North Carolina.

http://toto.lib.unca.edu/sr_papers/literature_sr/srliterature_2006/mozley_john. pdf

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Place. (2020). In Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English. Place. (2020). In Oxford Learner’s Dictionary of Academic English.

Rayner, J. (2014). Adapting Australian Film: Ray Lawrence from Bliss to Jindabyne. Studies in Australasian Cinema 3(3), 295-308
DOI: 10.1386/sac.3.3.295_1

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Roberts, G. (2015). Discrepant Traumas: Colonial Legacies in Jindabyne. In A. Ward

(Ed.). Postcolonial Traumas. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137526434_11

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Jindabyne and Raymond Carver

Wasteman, 2020

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Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella WASTEMAN

aka Cinderella

Assignment 1, CCC3211, S2, 2020 Student 100438098. Susanne Lorraine Johnston 961 words

In the 1950s, any Anglo-Celt child might be introduced to a repertoire of narrative elements in ancient fairy tales such as Cinderella, as generally described by Lutz, (1999). WASTEMAN is a fantasy Cinderella of sorts, created for today’s viewers, contorted by requirements for visual storytelling with minimal text, and preparatory to film making. These task stipulations forced me into continuous, substantial adaptations and to discard or replace many initial, nuanced, abstract and atmospheric strands.

Important pedagogic life lessons are presented in Cinderella, via character!

“#$ life-adventure (Lutz, 1999) and in WASTEMAN, three are main themes and

three others deliberately omitted. My narrative is well- aided by Amelia, a child who provided an early critique and several key graphics which appear in my presentation. The great powers of colour, semiotics, and particularly onomatopoeia (Guynes, nd) are essential elements, and strategic sound, music and lyrics placement. This made me made obvious how ageing has reduced my visual narrative skills and how it takes me to fully think through any set university task.

As a young Anglo-Celt Australian child of the 1950s I was introduced to a then current Cinderella., via hearing, and exposure to a sparsely-illustrated text, with

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Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella
occasional ‘fancy dress’ opportunities. Carey et al, (2007) made me perceive that

fairytale as one link in an always evolving chain descending down the ages from an ancient, original oral, teaching tale (Lutz, 1999). While possibly a part of that ancient chain, WASTEMAN, has been disassembled over and over in efforts to fit the assignment terms and conditions Here, an omniscient storyteller makes stellar observations of varying levels of isolation, dislocation and loneliness experienced by the protagonist. The de-humanised electronic music video by Raja The Resident Alien (2020) “All Distortion is Intended” its speed and disorienting rotation signifies WASTEMAN’S harrowing, lonely journey from someplace far away in the universe. As the journey nears the earth, that dislocation is compounded by the use of erratic, quick long shots, zooms and jumps and changes of pace between backgrounds and locations, all with associated speech, in some cases “cheating” bubbles as described by Guynes,(nd). This also creates an allegory of Cinderella’s rocky life journey where the expectation is she will accept and travel alone through a strictly ordered and demanding social class structure, where even her creature-helpers must adopt mannered and socially appropriate costumes.

Conversely, a child’s drawing of a suited astronaut and ship next defines the character WASTEMAN. His wave, a simple gesture, conveys his warmth of character, confirmed by his arrival where there is a short slowdown of film pace. There WASTEMAN makes his first, astounded and delighted acquaintance with nature and its creatures. Thereafter the film speeds up again, into the climax of the disastrous helmet-removal, disposal notice and subsequent jettison actions, where WASTEMAN’s placid acceptance through these scenes represent

Tutor: Dr. A. Dadswell. Student 10043898. Susanne Lorraine Johnston. 5 pages. 2

Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella Cinderella’s quiet acceptance of the loss of slipper, dissolution of coach and

elegant gown. The story arc closes at the denouement, when slower action returns after the bird-friend creature saves the protagonist, brings him to safety where offers of companionship and a new way of life synced within the earth’s natural cycles.

An important key factor in the Cinderella tale is the concept of an uncomplaining acceptance of the vagaries of life, sweetened by a great love of all of nature and its creatures, and accompanied by the desire of the characters to find true love (Lutz, 1999). Studying different text forms derived from “Enduring Love” (McEwan, 2006) helped me spatially and emotionally distance characters and roles, alternate being apart and moving in close, to create story flow with extreme close-ups of eyes, faces, other body parts human, and of the key bird creature. I also rely upon specific colours to convey emotions and freely use semiotics, particularly onomatopoeia (Guynes, nd.).

The recent re-exposure to WATCHMAN (Moore et al, 2014) and my introduction to BEFORE WATCHMEN (Straczynski et al, 2014) assisted me, particularly in how to represent character in alternative ways. Analysing comic formats, Guynes’ paper (nd) and reading Flood’s 2020 article about the delightful picture stories of Sam McBratney somewhat compensate for my inability to keep up with ever-changing electronic tools. After realising the astounding communication values of line, form, colour aligned with semiotics and onomatopoeia I constructed long shots of dwelling, close-ups of tools, waste collection, use inserts shots from WASTEMAN’s POV, alternate longer shots again in scene

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Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella
where helmet comes off, play occurs with condor, hero eats pretty, yummy fruit.

Then, when he suddenly looks around and up, the camera goes in and out of focus as he realizes the young woman ‘watcher’. Camera switches to her POV seeing how he registers: her, love, panic, grabs helmet, runs to ship, departs. WASTEMAN’S POV again then, with reverses, flashbacks as he flies away. Alone again.

Reading, reflection shows me my WASTEMAN narrative sits squarely upon the foundations of that ancient Anglo-Celt story (Carey et al, 2007), and throughout I try to companion rhythmic, temporal, spatial and graphic of my plot form. To support the action with earlier-era popular romantic songs, lyrics and other sounds and thus present a sense of the characters’ enduring wonder at their diverse, yet finally same, world. Three principal characteristics I rejected as a child are still alive and vital within other Cinderella versions circulating in today’s world I deliberately omit; strict adherence to gender roles; importance of class order; steady development of an inequality between characters.

WASTEMAN grew out of Cinderella, a key Anglo-Celt pedagogic fairytale introduced to me at an early age, when I rejected great parts, and adopted, for life, some vital components. To create WASTEMAN I crash through an uncertain trial and error struggle trying to create an understandable visual text. Substantial changes occurred constantly for I want to deliver forms decipherable today. In this assignment and through personal preference, I vary film speed, camera shots, and angles, use distance, colour, semiotics and incorporate a number of

popular, now dated songs, lyrics, sounds and images to echo the visual and oral

Tutor: Dr. A. Dadswell. Student 10043898. Susanne Lorraine Johnston. 5 pages. 4

Assignment 1, CCC32111, S2, 2020: Exegesis: WASTEMAN aka Cinderella narratives of my youth. WASTEMAN, a modern Anglo-Celt pedagogic tool

echoes Cinderella in its acceptance of, wonder and yearning for life, nature, and love.

Reference

BFI. (2020). Teaching Literacy Through Film. Future Learn. (Now Retired). From:https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/teaching-literacy-through-film/0/steps/11363

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Carey, J., Ellinghaus, K., Bourcher, L. (Eds.). (2007). ‘Historicising Whiteness:

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Towards a New Research Agenda’, In Historicising Whiteness: Transnational

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Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity, Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2007:

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vi-xxiii.

Flood, A. (2020). Guess How Much I Love You author Sam McBratney dies aged 77.

Book Review. The Guardian.

From: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/21/guess-how-much-i-love-

you-author-sam-mcbratney-dies-aged-

77?fbclid=IwAR0RBF2asRxoqiGXKGDO9XkCLrK4XvOrmoMdnGMwHVyk2_HQ3n

5F7eit8ug

Guynes, S. A. (nd) Four-Colour Sound: A Piercean Semiotocs of Comic Book Onomatopoeia. Public Journal of Semiotics 6 (1).

Johnston, S. (2020). WASTEMAN. Storyboard proposal for short film.

Lutz, R. (1999). Cinderella’s Social Transformations (1999). USFSP Honors
Program Theses (Undergraduate). 101. http://digital.usfsp.edu/honorstheses/101

McEwan, I. (2006). Enduring love. UK: Vintage.
Moore, A., Gibbons, D. (2014). Watchmen International Edition.

Burbank, CA, USA: HBO series DC Comics.

RajaTheResidentAlien. (2020). All Distortion Is Intended. Music Video. From: https://vimeo.com/448031743?fbclid=IwAR2BYc2W2- vq83FE_l8o3SQa4SVkCNDueEyUaWFMczDhEvnZoAP1V2G0xbw

Straczynski, J. M., Hughes, A., Kubert, A., Kubert, J., Sienkiewicz, B., Risso, E. (2014). Before Watchmen. Burbank, CA, USA: DC Comics.

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Wasteman, 2020

8 Wildly Successful Old-Agers, 2021

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Wildly successful true-life stories from the Beyond

Introduction

Today, countless ordinary, very old Australians continue to be capable and happily active throughout the entire last era of their lives and they are admired paid for this. Yet, normally elders such as these, who aren’t billionaires, or millionaires, or even any other form of financially rich, or powerful, are hardly ever acknowledge, nor encouraged. Neither are they normally paid for their extraordinarily faithful, valuable, even sometimes essential services to their societies.

The true life-stories in this book are just some of those in the last two generations, and a tiny few of the many successful lives, little-recorded, in Western World history. These people provide us all with understandable models for successful old life. These are humans to be inspired by, and to learn key life-survival skills from.

For these powerhouse elders show to us all that capable, responsible, strong-willed and everyday people can continue to generate plentiful, personal income. Perhaps these true tales of life also show we should never, ever too quickly discount serendipitous factors.

Peace, happiness, laughter Susanne Johnston

Story 1
Story one is itself a metaphor. The luscious fruits symbolise the old lady and her solo, though lovely life. As is her ascension and descent from a fruit tree each morning and night a life ceremony.

Title: Aged Lady-Expert Fruit Caresser

Many days of every year, particularly from the warm dawn to cooling dusk of every beautiful day of late summer, a tiny, laughing lady of more than 100 years old sits happily high up in some verdant tree. There in the sunshine, she chooses and expertly picks luscious. perfect fruit which she then wraps around with soft tissue. Immediately hereafter, she nestles each picked fruit down, with the others, into a pretty and sturdy though ancient basket right there beside her, up in the tree.

The basket is tied to a strong rope and pulley. When the old lady gives the signal, younger people waiting at the foot of the tree gently lower the basket down. They reverently carry the basket and its aromatic contents off, to be immediately transported to the best fruit markets in the big Japanese city nearby.

Who is this very old lady, and how does she get so happily so high up into that tree? This very old and happy lady is called “The Fruit Caresser”, the most expert picker and packer of her community’s Grade A unblemished, highest quality fruit this community is so famous for. So this old lady is greatly valued, and she is very well- recompensed by her community for her skills. The loss of her skill to her community would be a great blow.

To ensure they, and the old lady, receive maximum benefits from her unique abilities, this community ensures the old lady can continue to carry out her invaluable skill. They prune into the design of their fruit trees, shapes that grow to act like steps, and thus, they design each of their most valuable fruit trees to assist the old lady to mount to where the highest, and also often the choicest fruit, grows.

Meanwhile, the community has arranged younger people below, mainly to draw up and down the baskets so those are ever ready at her side.

Yet, while her community provide the old lady these able companions to assist her deliver their best fruit to market in the best possible condition, she ascends and descends each tree by herself. She uses two sticks to walk between trees as each day progresses, and to board the public bus service to transport her each day.

END

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Story 2
Story two is of a family where the carrying out of every morning’s game is a symbol of diverse, discrete links to power, wealth and success across three lives.

Title: Aged Experts

Some decades ago, a warm and friendly, slim and healthy, well-known and aged man resides, with his wife, in his own home in an inner-city, leafy Eastern Australian suburb. Where, around 5am almost every morning of each year the man is picked up and driven, by his 71-year-old son, to the local squash court.

There, they undertake a set of games together, and the father often wins. After each showering and dressing, they come together to sit down and enjoy hearty, laughter- filled breakfasts.

Thereafter every weekday, having exchanged sports clothes for impeccable business suits, the younger man drives to his father’s office. After dropping his father off outside, the son waits, watches his father ably mount the stairs, then continues to his own place of business.

Every workday dusk, after the son picks up his father, they often discuss their workdays. They stop to do a little shopping and sight-seeing, greeting of well-known associates in the nearby village shopping streets before driving on to return to their respective homes for dinner with their spouse.

The father and his wife are a close couple who generally enjoy each evening together at home. Sometimes friends and family members of all ages drop in and are made most welcome.

On weekend mornings, husband and wife stay at home and read and relax separately. Each afternoon of each weekend they come together to work in their large and beautiful garden. As they work, they chat about events which have occurred to each of them during the last week, and they plan.

Every year, the entire family spends the whole month of August together at the seaside.

The older man is 93 years old and has for more than a decade headed up one key area of the practice of psychiatry in the state in which he has lived all his life. His develops psychiatric theory and both also remain in private practice for two half-days each week.

This aged father and son still occupy the highest levels of their professions, where both roles are challenging, difficult and absorbing. The older man’s lifelong wife has an equally lifelong and robust editing and publishing career. The results all achieve are universally admired and each is very well-recompensed. All their lives remain happy, healthy, highly productive and fulfilling.

END

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Story 3

The third story is a magnificent ceremonial act leading to lengthy performance; a life of admirable optimism and reliability, trust, determination, perseverance, and hard work.

Title: Body Builder Buddy, Friendly yet Formidable

When in her 70s, an American married lady has a very close, lifelong, girlfriend, her sister, who suddenly dies. The sisters did many things including watching many body-building competitions together. For months, the lady is inconsolable.

Until, suddenly, she recalls a vow she and her sister made together, not long before her sister’s death. Recently they had become so inspired while watching a particular TV programme they had agreed to find out how to become successful bodybuilders themselves.

Though the sisters often attended gyms during their lives neither had any involvement in bodybuilding. So, the woman decides to honour her vow with a positive frame of mind, and actions, and begins, intellectually and physically, to learn how a person becomes a successful bodybuilder.

The lady has been married to one man for decades and with her husband’s support, she begins. The first cornerstone of the routine they create is they begin each day, in the half-light at 2:30am, with a 20-mile jog.

Suddenly she is out of her fog of sadness and depression and is now positive. Soon very fit, and happy too, by the time she is in her early 80s, she is an international superstar bodybuilder.

She and her husband are rich and successful as they have created hugely successful fitness of mind and body classes, for all ages, and especially for couples and families.

Their deep love and support for each other, their inspiring health and happiness are all admired and loved by countless followers.

4

Story 4
A ‘boys-own’ type of adventurous life-story with great family ties, plus heaps of fame,

fortune and ceremony, forever and ever.
Title: Story-book Life Adventurer surpasses the beyond

As a very young man, a long-term South African citizen of English genes starts his tertiary education in the field of archaeology, where he is a top student. However, halfway through his degree decides he will never get in life where he wants to go. Unless he changes disciplines. So he changes, and then successfully becomes a conceptual exploration geologist – for all his life.

When his career takes him all round the world, his novel geological concepts prove extremely successful, and he gains considerable success, fortune and fame. Throughout his lifetime he continues to work throughout the world in this field, where he successfully develops new theoretical concepts. These are two of his greatest enjoyments in life in companionship with his family, and the love of life itself.

By age 70, his fame and reputation are world-wide. As he grows older, he always ensures he is in top physical form and as time goes on, deliberately develops more closely his closest, long-term family relationships. He returns full-time to his historic domicile in South Africa.

This decision-making means his personal happiness and life-quality has increased vastly. Though he finds ageing and staying in one place now reduces the possible number of new, interesting clients with their new ideas and opportunities.

So he accepts a long-term invitation from his alma mater to expand his regular activities to include part-time lecturing. This proves to be a most serendipitous decision for all, for quickly he becomes extremely popular with students. There is a great demand for his courses which are of much great and unique value, for he has always been delighted to share and exchange information with interested others. In doing so, he provides quality access to his own real-life stories.

Those are of real-world information, via the personal lens of his own vast experience and novel ways of thinking about the physical world. Now he particularly enjoys acting as teacher-guide to show others how to enquire, plan and then carry out the physical activities of exploration, and thereafter to draw conclusion and describe and illustrate those.

By 80, to his great delight, his tutoring opportunities have expanded to include regular trips into diverse geologic realms. He becomes even more famous, and in the process, extremely rich. Still entirely fit and absolutely ready for this type of work in South Africa, he once again returns to his beloved areas of almost every known, or imaginable terrain. Where he delights in teaching the like-minded in return for very high payment.

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Story 5
A dramatic tale of English decisions which led to far-flung choices and chances in life. A heart-rending true tale of love, support and partnership where the last partner continues, to the very end of life.

Title: Englishman in the Antipodes. In old age? To India A life performance across the global theatre and even into the beyond.

An Englishman by birth and education became a qualified agricultural scientist. Fresh out of university and given his family’s traditional volunteering habits, he soon found himself working for a pittance in various the islands surrounding Australia. Due to dangerous work conditions, he soon became badly injured.

Luckily will recuperating he met his lifelong partner who was of Chinese descent. Together and though virtually penniless, they decided to move to Australia. Then in their early thirties, once there, they each took advantage of the free education of that time.

Soon each became an expert gemmologist. Over time they built a substantial reputation and business, however, Australia’s boom and bust cycles proved too much for them. Being of serious, studious mindsets, they had for years read of the projected huge global growth. So they once again agreed to completely change their lives.

Again, with little capital and this time in their mid-60s, they disposed of all their belongings. This time they moved to another somewhere neither had ever set foot before, India. Once there they found paid advisory work in the gem business immediately. At the same time, and against all evidence, this couple and a few relatives successfully invented an on the ground network new to rural India.

They offered a way to loosely interlink landholdings of historically poverty-stricken farmers. Those who each owned a tiny plot of land located within the same area. To do so, they invented novel ways to maintain harmonious agreement within a group of people with a long history of alienation. Here, this Englishman’s dormant, though well-maintained agricultural skills assisted him to sew together this patchwork of small landholdings.

Once amalgamated, he created a realistic, economically successful farm management plan. Now in his late 90s, and though no alone, he still happily continues his advisory work every day, and is well-paid for his expertise. Meanwhile, he maintains the success of those small-farm Indians, and their land bank.

END

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Story 6

The masterly venerable musicians of New Orleans hardly need any introduction, and their ranks now continue, even into their 100s.

TITLE: Yes, Music is the stuff of every age of life

New Orleans African American masters of jazz are musicians who hardly need any introduction; their fame spreads all through the world with every modern generation.

Nonetheless, these particular, aged individuals remain especially inspiring when seen and heard up close and personal. When they can be met in this life is in a tiny, historic wooden shack they regularly inhabit at night, when they gather to perform together.

There is where normal people can go, too, for they provide a continuing exhibition of their very great talents to all and for modest return. The continuance into old age of their superb performing lives graphically illustrates the great generosity of communal spirit they, and their life-giving sounds foster and nurture.

I know little about the group of very old master musicians I once saw and heard there. For a few hours, in dense and humid heat, and smoke. Only know that I will never forget them, and their sounds. For everything about all those very old people clearly exhibited their enormously positive life-energies to me in ways I could immediately perceive through their magnificent music and their separate and collective presence.

Even though some infirm, some stick-thin and wizened, some far too smooth and rotund, all were masters of their art. Clearly, all loved music so dearly, and their enjoyment, of their own continued abilities to perform superbly, was palpable.

Each there was impeccably and perfectly costumed, each voice memorable. Each instrument glowed. Each in its own perfection. Equally evident the encouragement and admiration each of these inspiring individuals supplied to their peers.

I hear and see them each, still perfectly inspiring me on every possible level of life, at any age.

END.

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Story 7
A Girls’-Own Tale of High and Turbulent Old times Successfully Sailed

TITLE: Once-Upon a Time Girl’s Life

Once upon a time a happy little girl decided she wanted to have all the marvellous, sea-going adventures only boys usually have. So, she did, because at that time, the world had become ready for what was then a most unusual master achievement for any lady.

This fabulous girl, with the greatest encouragement of her family and friends, first became a very capable and qualitied skipper of large fishing and prawning sea-going vessels with many crew in her command. For years she was extremely competent and also well-paid and that went on until the end of her 40s.

At that point, because of her abilities, another unusual opportunity arose, again to move on and to break ground for her gender once again. She then made sure she was highly qualitied as a harbour-master, if possible an even more unusual and admirable achievement, for any female anywhere in the world, at that time.

Master of the operations of an important port, she successfully held that key position for decades while her fame became legend. Afterwards, she changed her life. Now, instead of successfully conquering the waves she has moved 9 months of each of her later life inland. To again travel and now to act as knowledgeable and well-paid guide to friends. To any others also wishing to travel.

She walks along, along or with others, the entire length of the Italian and Spanish sections of the ancient pilgrims’ ways. Wending, on foot, through the mountains, always with the intent of moving along to visit some of the most famous, venerable Christian holy places.

For relaxation and further happiness, she spends 3 or 4 months every year deeply immersed within her large and happy family. All of her life has kept her superbly fit in mind, body, and spirit.

Happy days of life continue thus for our now herself venerable, admirable, and inspiring, life-adventuress supremo.

END

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Story 8

Serendipity touches life at all ages. Only some know how to use it well TITLE: “Love Work: want to do so up to the very Day I Die”

Perhaps the early privations and separations led to the extraordinarily early resolve to make the best of life.

A serendipitous suggestion provided on a whim to an impressionable teenager led to a high achievement in education. Then onto a successful working life in the earth- sciences which played out all over the globe, although in his fifties, with his nine lives all nearly used up in dangerous lands, locations, and environments, he encountered some mighty health problems.

Some lingered, for some years, three, perhaps four, remained serious enough to hamper his then 60-year-old life-dreams. Though not for long; soon he was back on his feet and back at work successfully looking at, and for rocks and rivers and many other signs and all their effects upon each other, and upon metals and other materials.

At that stage, and despite some considerable physical disadvantages he decided he wished to learn other facets of the earth-sciences. Immediately he began to do so, through books and by engaging in many actual field practices, some difficult and tiring.

So, very soon he was out under the desert stars at night once again, and round him in his new adventures he gathered a tribe and they all learned entirely new, though related skills.

Some, most, from his oldest and most trusted compatriots, although some also new and till then unknown. Those elders loved their unexpected return to the field life of their earlier years. Every one of them has prospered, and continues to do so, and that allows them in many ways and means to overcome all the aches and pains involved in continuing a very physical old age, and all are happily far more fit than previously. Perhaps they always will remain so, happy and fit, all.

END

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8 Wildly Successful Old-Agers, 2021