So much would have been easier if I’d known about the Asperger’s Syndrome a long time ago, but all the same, it’s really good to have gathered so many insights into that particular explanation. It’s also easy to laugh at some of what went wrong these days.
Not that I can yet laugh at the bullying techniques of those who steam-rolled me into the ridiculous case I began to describe recently, nor can I laugh at the total contempt and insensitivity of some doctors, or the fact that I attracted bullies anyway. That sort of thing has been difficult to comprehend.
One thing I’m grateful for is that I’ve always had a few good friends, people who can put up with my obsessions and most of all, people who can laugh in non-malicious ways.
It was in the course of all these years of studying dreams that I began to like myself as a person. In the dream life eventually, I saw the part of me who willingly made good cups of tea for my friends, who cooked, who looked into various psychological mirrors without too many qualms.
That’s why, no matter how difficult things have become, I refute the diagnosis of Depression. Even if external circumstances and misunderstandings both by myself and by others can be depressing, this doesn’t turn to self-hatred.
I know this because I did have Depression in my teens, in my twenties and the dark self-loathing isolation of it all was horrifying.
A couple of things changed that. First of course, was the discovery of Acupuncture. Already bothered by some things which I felt hadn’t been handled well medically, I’d been consulting a Naturopath. I don’t follow Naturopathy these days because it seems to me that the precepts of Naturopathy are a bit vaguer and somewhat more untested than Acupuncture with its thousands of years of research.
Naturopathy did enable me to improve my diet however. The crushing tensions of my teen years and the frantic level of stress at home had meant that food wasn’t a thing to be enjoyed and like many families whose dinner table isn’t a centre of harmony, we ate a lot of processed food.
One day, shortly after Nixon Went To China, I noticed an article about Acupuncture pinned to the wall of the Naturopath’s Waiting Room. China overnight had transformed from a scary giant intent upon perfection, into a place with which we could now trade Goods and Ideas. Above all, I noticed that the techniques were helpful for ‘nervous tension’.
I asked if I could have a treatment. The Naturopath certainly didn’t know about Acupuncture in depth, but he applied two needles to the Shen Points in the ear and attached them to a vibrating machine.
I’d been in a state of exhaustion and despair. On my way to the appointment I’d noticed yet again how grey the world was, and how grimly awful the rest of humanity appeared to be.
I stepped out to a sparkling world where everyone appeared to be happy. It was astounding to find that I could laugh aloud.
Soon after that, I discovered the course in Religion and Culture Studies at Teacher’s College and I was on my way to work which resulted in Conference Papers and eventually, the beginnings of what I thought would be my career. (There but for bad Dentistry….)
The effects of the treatment lasted about a week. By the time glumness and greyness set in, I was back for another appointment. Who cared if it was $15 a pop? There was so much more to do and be when I felt fine about myself.
Eventually, the Naturopath, who perhaps had become bored now that he wasn’t giving advice about vitamins and potions rebelled.
He told me that I should ‘get a boyfriend’.
I left in high dudgeon to try other Acupuncturists and that was good, but it wasn’t until the Nineties that I discovered how powerful these treatments can be as administered by individuals who never stop learning about this ‘Web That Has No Weaver!’
I can do some points on myself and usually take the disposable Acupuncture needles with me to the Dentist. Early this week, I forgot to take the needles with me. It was a serious treatment and I came away feeling just ghastly. The weather had turned cold and I had a definite dose of the Greys during the interminable ride home.
Uncharacteristically, I began to feel mighty sorry for myself. I even remembered the times before the madnesses set in, when my former flatmate would make me a cup of tea, cook a fabulous omelet and just be as sweet as he could be. (If we wonder why we stay around when things get mad, it’s partly because they weren’t always mad.)
“Oh why can’t I attract a nice companion?’ I thought.
Well, the Universe may be as incomplete and as illogical as dreams themselves and it seemed that day as if Somewhere Out There, someone caught the thought.
It was by then late in the day, so instead of going straight home, I stopped at my Handy Local for a sweetly numbing drop of Cooper’s Ale.
All I wanted by then was to bury myself in the newspaper and maybe hang out with my comfortable and comforting friends a bit later.
I noticed the startlingly blue intense eyes watching me as I entered. I acknowledged the smile and the wave, got myself the beer and the paper and went to sit at a table somewhere distant from any feeling of intensity. The owner of the blue eyes came across and joined me. He offered me a limp and silken hand and we exchanged names. His breath was terrible.
As he prepared to sit, I said to him,
‘Please, I’ve had a truly awful day. It’s been the Dentist and Root Canal Therapy and all I want to do is have a drink and read the paper and calm down a bit.’
He tried to make conversation and I apologized for not being up to conversation and that I didn’t want to explain Root Canal Therapy but he had to believe me that it takes some getting over. He looked crestfallen so I added that if he left me alone, I’d join him at his table later.
There was gradual relaxation. Soon afterwards two of my comfortable friends arrived. Ross has Asperger’s too and like Mark, he plays a lot of silly jokes. On the other hand both have sensors which can determine if a friend requires quiet sympathy, and I went to join them taking the paper with me.
This is not rudeness according to the codes we’ve built up as friends. We like to do the puzzles together. If someone’s had a bad day, we may growl a bit until someone thinks of something funny to say and that’s it. Comfortable.
Ross drove me to my storage places when I was homeless and refused any payment apart from allowing me to buy him the odd beer. Mark came later and over time, I got to know Glen and Tom as well.
We tell each other what we have eaten and what we plan to eat and how sometimes we don’t feel like eating.
Blue Eyes jumped from his seat and took the spare seat at our table.
Since none of us go to The Local particularly to Meet People, this was startling and introductions accomplished, Ross and Mark took themselves off for a bit of Poker Machine Therapy.
I found I so much didn’t want to talk to this poor guy that it was horrid. There’d been no consent to his immediate company and I wasn’t through the grey mood yet. He lives in a neighbouring suburb, he said, he occasionally goes to Pubs there but they are very unfriendly and noone is interested in Religion either and he thought I might be.
I am. I told his about my work as a Broadcaster working in Religious Current Affairs. It turned out I’d once interviewed his Guru.
I found I couldn’t stop the hackles rising and I got shorter and shorter in my speech. I’d only read a few pages of the paper and I was yearning for the daily dose of trash. Abruptly he got up and left, no doubt concluding that here was another unfriendly Pub and strange to say, despite all appearances, that isn’t the truth.
I never was much of a drinker. It affected me too much before the brief era of The Good Dentist and later on I was just too busy. However when the Flat Mate became too difficult to deal with, I took to the Cooper’s Ale somewhat enthusiastically because I wanted to go somewhere I could laugh and where problems were simple.
The habit continues these days, partly from loneliness and also because of the many friends who will let me sit alone and write in my notebook if that’s what I need to do. We all know where we should sit and where we shouldn’t sit.
I first approached this Pub about seven years ago. I made no attempts to sit with others. There were Bushfires blazing at my old place and I wanted to watch what was happening on the Big Screen TV.
Eventually I was invited to join a table of blokes who are still friends and who I can sit with and flirt or be flirted with. They like to ask me about Poetry and Literature sometimes.
That’s how it works I think. You can go to a place and feel things out. Although I didn’t initially stare at people, I became aware of who everyone was and how they operated. I noticed which people had a nice laugh and which people had kind expressions on their faces.
As a young Aspergian, I can remember bluntly going up to people in social situations and being very insensitive myself so I wasn’t blaming Blue Eyes.
It was simply a day when my general social tolerance was very very low. Blue Eyes did find a nice Pub and nice people, but he was too hasty. I might have found a kind nice friend, I don’t know.
Sometimes I’ve looked at a person and we are friends from the word go. Maybe I’m more cautious since the dreadful experiences of a few years ago. I know that these days I like to carefully work my way around potential shadow realities. I don’t trust as much as I did.
I hope Blue Eyes finds himself a nice lady, I really hope so and maybe their eyes will meet and that will be that.
As it happened I went to the Service Station to buy some milk a bit later and bumped into gorgeous Shannon and we stopped and had a talk in the street. He’s caring for an elderly relative and he doesn’t come to the Pub and I like that.
He asked me about my book. That must be when I last saw him, when I had that expression of interest from the Publisher. I had to report that since I wrote it so long ago, it’s only on hard copy and for awhile I’d lost the manuscript and only recently had I found it again.
Friends are people it’s easy to laugh with.
It was a relief to write about the Trial and all the injustices of the past which still impact upon me. Maybe it’s because I’ve only just been able to digest some f that bizarre saga or maybe it’s because, I’ve found a reasonable Dentist. Maybe under a new Government, it’s also been easier to understand certain factors in a situation which was astoundingly illegal and illogical.
That story will continue.
And I don’t want to make it the sole topic of this blog.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Weird Ways Of Music And Government
Most of my Computer learning has come about from the advice of friends and relations and so my progress as an older person who previously only used a computer for Word texts, has been rather slow. I signed an agreement to study an Internet Course with the CES back in 1998, but that plan was destroyed by the Powers That Be in Australian Education.
And here I am, late as usual and still trying to solve problems.
Only this week did I hear about News Groups and I checked them out for Traditional Chinese Medicine, a favourite Study Arena for more a decade and a half or more.
I’m in the strange position of having had my work opportunities removed from me by Government Departments in order to ‘make an example’ of me as ‘an Exponent of Alternative Medicine’.
I don't think Acupuncture could be called Alternative. Even if its precepts are not the same as the ones we derive from Scientific Study, it's been researched for many millennia and scientific study has proved its efficacy in terms of complementing many medical treatments.
My feeling in the light of the length of research time involved, Modern Medicine could be seen as belonging in the Alternative camp.
It’s true I don’t like many Doctors because I’ve had rather bad luck as far as those scenarios are concerned. That my previous Doctor refused to divulge anything apart from confidential (and endangering) information in the instance of an eventual 'trial', didn’t help my mistrust at all. This Doctor knew I attended an Acupuncturist in her Clinic but she became very hostile when I refused to try antidepressants.
After a session of bad dentistry and the dissolution of several of my previous work places, I’d found myself reluctantly on Benefits and in very bad health. In the mid Nineties, I thought I was in luck with the discovery of a decent Dentist and I also was able to resume the regular Acupuncture Treatments which were my primary health care back then. (I’d previously attended a cheap Dentist after attending a rather bad one a few years previously and I didn’t know that a large abscess had developed under an old crown. Worse than childbirth? I’d put bonescraping right up there).
However awful, the bonescraping was worth it. The strong Acupuncture, the herbs and the even stronger dentistry had me recovering so fast that I think maybe I was considered ‘above myself’.
Soon after Mr Howard ascended to the power which would be so misused by the Liberal Party back then, My Dole was cut off. I had a strange sense of relief. At last, I thought I will have to launch myself into paid work, come what may!
Then the phone calls started. These Welfare Lawyers kept on ringing me to persuade me to be involved in a ‘case’ which I guess for them, must have sounded a bit juicy. I refused repeatedly, but they caused my insecurities to grow. I also got a number of sneering unpleasant calls from Government Departments.
With my new improved energy, I was working amazingly hard, but doubts began to grow. We went for funding for a Symphony. The call which came just before that meeting was so hostile and nasty, that even though I’d got an article about our projects in the Sydney Telegraph that day, I was crying and trembling throughout the meeting and our application failed.
No thanks to Peter Groves!
As these calls, one lot pretending to be helpful, the other lot insinuating harm, increased, I began to worry. What if the larger funding I’d been working toward for so long didn’t occur?
I was already behind in rent and still fighting for part time work and for funding. Eventually thanks to some very good friends, I was able to borrow enough just to keep going. Yes guys, I haven't forgotten and I will pay you back eventually!
Finally I said, OK I guess I can stick to The Dole for a few months and agreed to meet with the Social Securities Appeals Tribunal who agreed that I’d been under enough stress to miss a few meetings, especially if I lived in the company of a friend who tended to hurl things about while upset. He’d recently resigned from an impossible job and had been very upset indeed.
The SSAT meeting was quick and I began to pick up my work again.
Himself insisted on busking and I helped. He wanted to play concerts and we organized them together. I still have copies of the posters and when my promised scanner comes in, well maybe I’ll show some of them.
Eventually it was to my great astonishment, that Australia’s Federal Government Education Department appealed against the Finding of the original Tribunal! I was pretty upset about all that, especially given a situation of post eviction, being involved firstly with house hunting and then eventually with the most difficult and horrifying house move I’d ever experienced.
(Imagine moving house with a Flat Mate, who in the midst of a breakdown and a serious loss of faith in himself, kept smashing things up before, during and after the move. If that wasn’t bad enough, the new place had 60 metres or so of steep steps to carry the intact remains of our possessions mostly by ourselves and with some occasional help from friends.)
(That saga was exacerbated by himself pretending sorry at my ‘lack of organisation’ while I sat trembling and shaken amongst fresh chaos whenever those friends turned up to help. I didn’t know that finding someone to blame was so much a part of Domestic Violence before all that happened and as it turned out, I knew a great deal less than the fools who decided to persecute me for uncharacteristically missing a couple of appointments when things were at their almost worstest!)
The fact that almost a decade later, I can hardly manage to walk a hundred metres, probably wasn’t helped by those ordeals.
As to how I got the news of the new trial:
We’d hired a van which I drove as the Flat Mate wasn’t a driver. Weary from the first of the three smashups which introduced us to our new home, I made a last drop in to our old place to pick up whatever mail there was, as well as the remnants of my garden.
So it was a hundred or so exhausting kilometers from the new place that I found the letter from ’Education’, which as I’d eventually discover, promised further bureaucratic persecutions. I managed to recover the last of the boxes, and remembering that I’d have to return the van the following day to Clovelly and then find my way back via Public Transport, I left the last of the garden behind.
(How many gardens have I lost since I first met that former Flat Mate? Four I think and the last one was the best with many rare herbs I’d been able to collect.)
At first I was relieved that friends were there to help with the final load, but the relief and dogged sense of purpose which was by then accompanying my exhausted crawl up those interminable steps was shattered when I opened the letter.
The letter said I’d have to appear at The Administrative Appeals Tribunal to answer why I missed those appointments. (Hell the Flat Mate was throwing even my mail around during that time and I’d been told I’d have No Obligations until the following month and I still have that letter intact even though I’ve lost a lot as various emotional floods swept most of my library, practically all of my furniture and my entire previous decade of work away!)
Flooding was at its beginning as firstly I was swallowed up with fury and then, although it was out of time, I began to haemhorrage!
The next day was exhausting as may be imagined, and when I finally got back to the new place by bus, by train and on foot, despite my prayers for peace, there were two more smashups with the Flat Mate wildly accusing me of laziness because I couldn’t rise from my bed.
I tried to close my ears to the noises. He’d been mad enough to book two gigs back in Sydney, the first of which would take place the following weekend and I had to hold onto what strength I had, for that. Such strength as I had then is now a long way away from me because the ordeal which was to come was worse than anything I’d ever imagined.
One factor lit my way in that awful time. Perhaps it was the beginning of remorse, but himself gave me Bob Dylan’s then latest album, Time Out of Mind about a month before the eventual Kafkaesque Trial and from that point I began to imagine that someone might one day sing such a tender song to me as Make You Feel My Love!
Oh I know I have my faults. I can easily forget dates and times when I become stressed and stretched and with Asperger’s Syndrome, I tend to overly obsess about my obsessions.
(Sometime I’ll have to include what our wonderful local Doctors had to say to me about my discovery of my Asperger’s Syndrome at a later date, and sometime soon, now that some horrors are somewhat sorted, I’ll continue the saga which now has me appealing to Australia’s Attorney General in relation to certain Policies which the last Government I believe, was very foolish to initiate. A newspaper recently estimated the cost of AAT trials at $30,000, which is a lot of money to waste trying to prove that a 'Welfare Person' should have no Medical choices and thus be prevented from becoming a tax payer!)
I can’t afford Acupuncture these days and I miss it very much but I still study my herbs.
I still look for paid work…. (NOT in music!). It’s difficult because the smaller dental problems I had previously are now major.
I hate the Dental Hospital. I always paid for my own dentistry. I never cost Medicare very much because I prefer Acupuncture. I refused Public Housing, which is probably lucky because there have been many allegations of corruption and I wouldn’t have had enough to pay anyway.
Yet there were people who made me out to be a ‘typical welfare case’!
Yes I will have to deal with the slanderous processes of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the ordeal of encountering the most stupid Solicitor in the world but I’ll save that for later.
Here’s a Newsletter I encountered last week through a News Group:
Acufinder.com Newsletter.
"The sages of antiquity did not treat those who were already sick; they instructed those who were not yet sick..."
- Huangdi Neijing
And here I am, late as usual and still trying to solve problems.
Only this week did I hear about News Groups and I checked them out for Traditional Chinese Medicine, a favourite Study Arena for more a decade and a half or more.
I’m in the strange position of having had my work opportunities removed from me by Government Departments in order to ‘make an example’ of me as ‘an Exponent of Alternative Medicine’.
I don't think Acupuncture could be called Alternative. Even if its precepts are not the same as the ones we derive from Scientific Study, it's been researched for many millennia and scientific study has proved its efficacy in terms of complementing many medical treatments.
My feeling in the light of the length of research time involved, Modern Medicine could be seen as belonging in the Alternative camp.
It’s true I don’t like many Doctors because I’ve had rather bad luck as far as those scenarios are concerned. That my previous Doctor refused to divulge anything apart from confidential (and endangering) information in the instance of an eventual 'trial', didn’t help my mistrust at all. This Doctor knew I attended an Acupuncturist in her Clinic but she became very hostile when I refused to try antidepressants.
After a session of bad dentistry and the dissolution of several of my previous work places, I’d found myself reluctantly on Benefits and in very bad health. In the mid Nineties, I thought I was in luck with the discovery of a decent Dentist and I also was able to resume the regular Acupuncture Treatments which were my primary health care back then. (I’d previously attended a cheap Dentist after attending a rather bad one a few years previously and I didn’t know that a large abscess had developed under an old crown. Worse than childbirth? I’d put bonescraping right up there).
However awful, the bonescraping was worth it. The strong Acupuncture, the herbs and the even stronger dentistry had me recovering so fast that I think maybe I was considered ‘above myself’.
Soon after Mr Howard ascended to the power which would be so misused by the Liberal Party back then, My Dole was cut off. I had a strange sense of relief. At last, I thought I will have to launch myself into paid work, come what may!
Then the phone calls started. These Welfare Lawyers kept on ringing me to persuade me to be involved in a ‘case’ which I guess for them, must have sounded a bit juicy. I refused repeatedly, but they caused my insecurities to grow. I also got a number of sneering unpleasant calls from Government Departments.
With my new improved energy, I was working amazingly hard, but doubts began to grow. We went for funding for a Symphony. The call which came just before that meeting was so hostile and nasty, that even though I’d got an article about our projects in the Sydney Telegraph that day, I was crying and trembling throughout the meeting and our application failed.
No thanks to Peter Groves!
As these calls, one lot pretending to be helpful, the other lot insinuating harm, increased, I began to worry. What if the larger funding I’d been working toward for so long didn’t occur?
I was already behind in rent and still fighting for part time work and for funding. Eventually thanks to some very good friends, I was able to borrow enough just to keep going. Yes guys, I haven't forgotten and I will pay you back eventually!
Finally I said, OK I guess I can stick to The Dole for a few months and agreed to meet with the Social Securities Appeals Tribunal who agreed that I’d been under enough stress to miss a few meetings, especially if I lived in the company of a friend who tended to hurl things about while upset. He’d recently resigned from an impossible job and had been very upset indeed.
The SSAT meeting was quick and I began to pick up my work again.
Himself insisted on busking and I helped. He wanted to play concerts and we organized them together. I still have copies of the posters and when my promised scanner comes in, well maybe I’ll show some of them.
Eventually it was to my great astonishment, that Australia’s Federal Government Education Department appealed against the Finding of the original Tribunal! I was pretty upset about all that, especially given a situation of post eviction, being involved firstly with house hunting and then eventually with the most difficult and horrifying house move I’d ever experienced.
(Imagine moving house with a Flat Mate, who in the midst of a breakdown and a serious loss of faith in himself, kept smashing things up before, during and after the move. If that wasn’t bad enough, the new place had 60 metres or so of steep steps to carry the intact remains of our possessions mostly by ourselves and with some occasional help from friends.)
(That saga was exacerbated by himself pretending sorry at my ‘lack of organisation’ while I sat trembling and shaken amongst fresh chaos whenever those friends turned up to help. I didn’t know that finding someone to blame was so much a part of Domestic Violence before all that happened and as it turned out, I knew a great deal less than the fools who decided to persecute me for uncharacteristically missing a couple of appointments when things were at their almost worstest!)
The fact that almost a decade later, I can hardly manage to walk a hundred metres, probably wasn’t helped by those ordeals.
As to how I got the news of the new trial:
We’d hired a van which I drove as the Flat Mate wasn’t a driver. Weary from the first of the three smashups which introduced us to our new home, I made a last drop in to our old place to pick up whatever mail there was, as well as the remnants of my garden.
So it was a hundred or so exhausting kilometers from the new place that I found the letter from ’Education’, which as I’d eventually discover, promised further bureaucratic persecutions. I managed to recover the last of the boxes, and remembering that I’d have to return the van the following day to Clovelly and then find my way back via Public Transport, I left the last of the garden behind.
(How many gardens have I lost since I first met that former Flat Mate? Four I think and the last one was the best with many rare herbs I’d been able to collect.)
At first I was relieved that friends were there to help with the final load, but the relief and dogged sense of purpose which was by then accompanying my exhausted crawl up those interminable steps was shattered when I opened the letter.
The letter said I’d have to appear at The Administrative Appeals Tribunal to answer why I missed those appointments. (Hell the Flat Mate was throwing even my mail around during that time and I’d been told I’d have No Obligations until the following month and I still have that letter intact even though I’ve lost a lot as various emotional floods swept most of my library, practically all of my furniture and my entire previous decade of work away!)
Flooding was at its beginning as firstly I was swallowed up with fury and then, although it was out of time, I began to haemhorrage!
The next day was exhausting as may be imagined, and when I finally got back to the new place by bus, by train and on foot, despite my prayers for peace, there were two more smashups with the Flat Mate wildly accusing me of laziness because I couldn’t rise from my bed.
I tried to close my ears to the noises. He’d been mad enough to book two gigs back in Sydney, the first of which would take place the following weekend and I had to hold onto what strength I had, for that. Such strength as I had then is now a long way away from me because the ordeal which was to come was worse than anything I’d ever imagined.
One factor lit my way in that awful time. Perhaps it was the beginning of remorse, but himself gave me Bob Dylan’s then latest album, Time Out of Mind about a month before the eventual Kafkaesque Trial and from that point I began to imagine that someone might one day sing such a tender song to me as Make You Feel My Love!
Oh I know I have my faults. I can easily forget dates and times when I become stressed and stretched and with Asperger’s Syndrome, I tend to overly obsess about my obsessions.
(Sometime I’ll have to include what our wonderful local Doctors had to say to me about my discovery of my Asperger’s Syndrome at a later date, and sometime soon, now that some horrors are somewhat sorted, I’ll continue the saga which now has me appealing to Australia’s Attorney General in relation to certain Policies which the last Government I believe, was very foolish to initiate. A newspaper recently estimated the cost of AAT trials at $30,000, which is a lot of money to waste trying to prove that a 'Welfare Person' should have no Medical choices and thus be prevented from becoming a tax payer!)
I can’t afford Acupuncture these days and I miss it very much but I still study my herbs.
I still look for paid work…. (NOT in music!). It’s difficult because the smaller dental problems I had previously are now major.
I hate the Dental Hospital. I always paid for my own dentistry. I never cost Medicare very much because I prefer Acupuncture. I refused Public Housing, which is probably lucky because there have been many allegations of corruption and I wouldn’t have had enough to pay anyway.
Yet there were people who made me out to be a ‘typical welfare case’!
Yes I will have to deal with the slanderous processes of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the ordeal of encountering the most stupid Solicitor in the world but I’ll save that for later.
Here’s a Newsletter I encountered last week through a News Group:
Acufinder.com Newsletter.
"The sages of antiquity did not treat those who were already sick; they instructed those who were not yet sick..."
- Huangdi Neijing
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Body Images
It doesn't matter what our body shape is like, as long as we like ourselves.
The 'Elephant Man', saved from being a circus freak by scientists, was proud of the one arm which was free from his illness, and insisted that it be shown in all photographs.
And even if any of our physical characteristics seem to be inadequate to us, most of us do not suffer as much as the Elephant Man did.
Codger, a former friend, remembered as a one time Golden Youth, is very irritated by the world these days, particularly after a few drinks.
Last time I saw him he yelled at me about the Sixties, saying that I'd looked as good as Twiggy when I was young and why didn't I become successful in the way that Twiggy has done? An 'ugly duckling' as a child, the swan phase was unnerving when I was placed somewhere between Catherine Deneuve and Garbo!
OK, after several people suggested it, I tried. I saved up and went to modeling school. I was taught to apply false eyelashes and advised to try falsies. An older woman attended. It turned out that she was a Madame, hell bound for recruitment.
As to our modelling success rate, one very nice short gal with blunt heavy features and a stumping walk, gained the highest marks for the course. She came from one of Adelaide's wealthy families. Her old fashioned bouffant would appear in newspaper fashion shots for a few months.
I don't know, people in those days compared my looks to various people and so on, but I guess I tried too late and I was in the wrong place. Besides I just couldn't relate to the scenes around that modeling school.
Besides, Adelaide had apparently, even in the early seventies, not then noticed than slender framed gals with straight hair had been doing pretty well over seas for some time.
Twiggy? Well I can tell you quite a lot about her since I obtained her autobiograhy lately.
It was her fifty ninth birthday on September 19th and a local rag which features a 'birthdays column', stated that she was.. 'a well known model from the sixties who never succeeded as an actor because of her cockney accent'.
This is factually wrong and I note this because of the very different lives both Twiggy and I had even if we were born in the same year.
Twiggy came from a stable family and she learned to read music at school. She was a good dressmaker and wanted to work in fashion design. She was sewing fast enough to supply many local fashion shops with her designs in her mid teens. The suggestion that she try modelling came as a complete surprise. (Even in those days, five foot six and a half inches, (You work out the metrics), was considered to be too short.
She didn't want to cut her hair, but Vidal Sasson was a good choice. She'd barely made the papers when she was declared The Face Of The Year.
The clown-like caterpillar bottom lashes were her invention and, apart from the surreal make up for David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album, she always did her own make up.
She wasn't a cockney at all, she was brought up well away from the sounds of the Bow Bells in Neasdon. Her accent was London, although as her father became deaf, she increased her volume until she was once described as sounding like a 'demented parrot'.
Ken Russell spotted her early in the piece and decided that she had enough presence for him to feature her in a movie. The Boyfriend showed that she could not only act, she could also dance. Eventually she performed tap dance on Broadway for three years, attracting in her audience such awesome luminaries as Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright.
She acted in Pantomine and also appeared in several plays. The Boyfriend wasn't her only film. She could be cockney if required and she adapted to accents because of her musicality. She's released several albums, (one which features Carly Simon as back up). Apart from that, she's also worked as a film producer and... so it goes.
Presently, she's appearing on our television screens in America's Top Model and is surviving very well in that particular shark pit.
Her face is softer and her figure is fuller, but she's still sane sweet gifted Twiggy.
Comparisons? I could sew, but not fast enough to sell clothes to shops. Noone we knew did that sort of thing back then.
My family was a disaster zone. True, I was sixteen when an older woman asked my mother if she could take me to Adelaide and coach me for modelling but my mother said no because she believed I should be a teacher.
I didn't want to be a teacher after I wasn't allowed to do Art at school (too useless) but I did eventually study drama, which I loved.
By the time I was twenty, I had liabilities such as Asperger's Syndrome and a fast encroaching Nervous Breakdown.
Above all, I hate other people messing with my hair and my face and my looks and if I don't get time to study and work at my writing, then I am uneasy and even clumsier than usual. I'm now casually designing garments and collecting fabrics and maybe I'll sell some to friends if I'm lucky. I've modelled for artists and for various friends who design and sew, but I never hit the serious prfessional scene.
I don't tap dance. Indeed, even my walking is difficult on certain days and in recent times.
I love clothes, but don't dress up very often. (This is admittedly boring, but Oh Well).
I love acting and anyone who wants to try me in a part may do so.
I've never been in a situation where I'd be likely to meet Noel Coward, Fred Astaire, Paul McCartney or even Fran Drescher.
On the other hand, people still put Twiggy down even if she's still recognised all over the world. They put me down because not only am I not recognised all over the world, but I wouldn't care to be!
I prefer Bob Dylan to Carly Simon.
Apart from all those differences and one or two vaguely similar inclinations, I'm no Twiggy at all and neither could I ever have been.
Bless her all the same, and I must say that if a girl or woman is naturally slender, then they should be inspired by Twiggy.
The 'Elephant Man', saved from being a circus freak by scientists, was proud of the one arm which was free from his illness, and insisted that it be shown in all photographs.
And even if any of our physical characteristics seem to be inadequate to us, most of us do not suffer as much as the Elephant Man did.
Codger, a former friend, remembered as a one time Golden Youth, is very irritated by the world these days, particularly after a few drinks.
Last time I saw him he yelled at me about the Sixties, saying that I'd looked as good as Twiggy when I was young and why didn't I become successful in the way that Twiggy has done? An 'ugly duckling' as a child, the swan phase was unnerving when I was placed somewhere between Catherine Deneuve and Garbo!
OK, after several people suggested it, I tried. I saved up and went to modeling school. I was taught to apply false eyelashes and advised to try falsies. An older woman attended. It turned out that she was a Madame, hell bound for recruitment.
As to our modelling success rate, one very nice short gal with blunt heavy features and a stumping walk, gained the highest marks for the course. She came from one of Adelaide's wealthy families. Her old fashioned bouffant would appear in newspaper fashion shots for a few months.
I don't know, people in those days compared my looks to various people and so on, but I guess I tried too late and I was in the wrong place. Besides I just couldn't relate to the scenes around that modeling school.
Besides, Adelaide had apparently, even in the early seventies, not then noticed than slender framed gals with straight hair had been doing pretty well over seas for some time.
Twiggy? Well I can tell you quite a lot about her since I obtained her autobiograhy lately.
It was her fifty ninth birthday on September 19th and a local rag which features a 'birthdays column', stated that she was.. 'a well known model from the sixties who never succeeded as an actor because of her cockney accent'.
This is factually wrong and I note this because of the very different lives both Twiggy and I had even if we were born in the same year.
Twiggy came from a stable family and she learned to read music at school. She was a good dressmaker and wanted to work in fashion design. She was sewing fast enough to supply many local fashion shops with her designs in her mid teens. The suggestion that she try modelling came as a complete surprise. (Even in those days, five foot six and a half inches, (You work out the metrics), was considered to be too short.
She didn't want to cut her hair, but Vidal Sasson was a good choice. She'd barely made the papers when she was declared The Face Of The Year.
The clown-like caterpillar bottom lashes were her invention and, apart from the surreal make up for David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album, she always did her own make up.
She wasn't a cockney at all, she was brought up well away from the sounds of the Bow Bells in Neasdon. Her accent was London, although as her father became deaf, she increased her volume until she was once described as sounding like a 'demented parrot'.
Ken Russell spotted her early in the piece and decided that she had enough presence for him to feature her in a movie. The Boyfriend showed that she could not only act, she could also dance. Eventually she performed tap dance on Broadway for three years, attracting in her audience such awesome luminaries as Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright.
She acted in Pantomine and also appeared in several plays. The Boyfriend wasn't her only film. She could be cockney if required and she adapted to accents because of her musicality. She's released several albums, (one which features Carly Simon as back up). Apart from that, she's also worked as a film producer and... so it goes.
Presently, she's appearing on our television screens in America's Top Model and is surviving very well in that particular shark pit.
Her face is softer and her figure is fuller, but she's still sane sweet gifted Twiggy.
Comparisons? I could sew, but not fast enough to sell clothes to shops. Noone we knew did that sort of thing back then.
My family was a disaster zone. True, I was sixteen when an older woman asked my mother if she could take me to Adelaide and coach me for modelling but my mother said no because she believed I should be a teacher.
I didn't want to be a teacher after I wasn't allowed to do Art at school (too useless) but I did eventually study drama, which I loved.
By the time I was twenty, I had liabilities such as Asperger's Syndrome and a fast encroaching Nervous Breakdown.
Above all, I hate other people messing with my hair and my face and my looks and if I don't get time to study and work at my writing, then I am uneasy and even clumsier than usual. I'm now casually designing garments and collecting fabrics and maybe I'll sell some to friends if I'm lucky. I've modelled for artists and for various friends who design and sew, but I never hit the serious prfessional scene.
I don't tap dance. Indeed, even my walking is difficult on certain days and in recent times.
I love clothes, but don't dress up very often. (This is admittedly boring, but Oh Well).
I love acting and anyone who wants to try me in a part may do so.
I've never been in a situation where I'd be likely to meet Noel Coward, Fred Astaire, Paul McCartney or even Fran Drescher.
On the other hand, people still put Twiggy down even if she's still recognised all over the world. They put me down because not only am I not recognised all over the world, but I wouldn't care to be!
I prefer Bob Dylan to Carly Simon.
Apart from all those differences and one or two vaguely similar inclinations, I'm no Twiggy at all and neither could I ever have been.
Bless her all the same, and I must say that if a girl or woman is naturally slender, then they should be inspired by Twiggy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
