Saving Graces

Huge house, smaller life, but hey, I'm still recovering from quite a few Times of Trauma.

I have so much to sort after times of cognitive dissonances when my own true story was stolen. I thought I did pretty well to put together a memoir dealing with What Really Happened (from an Autistic point of view, somewhat) and now the old computer isn't working.

I never was a very patient person. At least if I'm learning patience now, I have more space with which to work some new solutions.

The Sixties was a time of many changes. Me, by the time I'd got to University I'd missed out on my classical schooling because my family situation had already seriously broken down.

In the old home life, there were saving graces indeed. There was an abundance of books and magazines in our home for example. (Mind you such a phenomenon may offer a slightly skewed perspective in a family who doesn't communicate.)

My own book world was built out of ideals. With a Father who'd gambled away my Private School Fees and a Mother stressed beyond measure, I took to Religion and Bible Studies. Crazy, crazy stuff really.

We still say we're a Christian country in Australia. What does that mean?

Well, for myself, while trying to maintain Spiritual ideals and ideologies, I worked at as many jobs as I could, and my Muma, a well paid teacher also took on jobs and then eventually I was the one to do the cooking and housework and so on, and none of it got us ANYWHERE!!!!

I considered the Lilies Of The Field and envied them. I would willingly have been Mary as a relief from being Martha, but hey.

'The Rich Man and The Kingdom Of Heaven', did that have something to do with the money disappearing faster than it was earned? O Dear.

Now it seems to me, we live in a time when Money is Everything and Nothing Again!

With Asperger's Syndrome, with my own peculiarities of interpretation, I truly believed it to be better to be honourable in one's doings and to serve creativity and understanding than to principally pour oneself after wealth. I believed that if the creativity was attuned, then wealth would be automatic.

Admittedly it was a mistake to marry a Liar in the midst of the Breakdown in my early twenties and it was also a mistake in terms of the dissonances which had caught up with me and manifested themselves by the time the Seventies arrived.

That particular breakdown which caused me to drop out of University was at least diagnosed.

Trouble was that Old Time Asperger's Trap:

'DO YOU HEAR VOICES?'

That's what the shrink said, and I said , 'Well, yes, (I hear your question, for example.)'

Oh yes, there had been a little bit of Acid, not much, (I was underweight & fashion only allowed a small amount of some things). Not much is probably still too much in the light of some downtime dreamtimes.

Marianne Faithfull describes the amazing insights into archetypes which can be gained by such experiences, but the problem with Archetypes is that if they've already been disrupted in one's world, the visions of the same can easily fool one.

If all that wasn't enough, there was also the Sexual, soon to become the Sexist Revolution, not to mention the Vietnam War which I'd originally believed in until I read the History of that business!

For a child who decided to be conservative in order to cope, all that stuff was indeed a breeding ground for serious Cognitive Dissonance (as if the original family crap hadn't been bad enough!)

So it's interesting to read Memoirs of Those Times. Marianne Faithfull, Wow!

Today, I'm pretty much through the latest fluey illness, still overdoing it sometimes. I'm preparing for the Dentist tomorrow etc, and today I've been pretty much absorbed in Lou Reed's Biography.

I heed the fact that Victor Bokris' bio of Andy Warhol was in some ways negated by Andy's Diaries, but the Lou Reed Book is interesting indeed.

I couldn't have guessed that Lou had had serious Electric Shock Therapy as a youngster.

(One friend of mine, John M had that treatment lately. He said he stopped when he realised that he'd become addicted to the preparatory drugs.)

My Dad had ECT too, way back in the mid sixties, soon after Lou Reed went through it, and it was strong and heavy back then.

I think my Dad had Asperger's. Did they ask HIM about Voices perchance?

Well, when they put my Dad in The Bin, he later said to me that he dreamed they cut his brain into four pieces and put them all back the wrong way round. I understand that possibly questions, drugs and treatments are a lot more gentle these days. I understand that if, for example, a person is gay, they wouldn't be likely to have to endure a lobotomy as Alan Ginsberg did way back when in the forties!

All the same, I got very scared of psychiatry after what happened to my Dad and after my own enormous and stupefying dose of Largactyl.

Believing that some things may be saner in these times, a couple of years ago, I decided to see a Shrink because I'd been through Domestic Violence and a particularly nasty violating legal disaster which mucked up all my prospects at the time... (I agree I may have colluded with some problems, but if you are losing your temper on account of Bad Dentistry, that's something else, even, possibly, mitigating circumstances!)

Anyway, I went to The Shrink and I said, "I have Asperger's Syndrome."

She said, "There's No Such Thing"

Please remind me, which Century are we in?