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
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