Happy New Year!

Sociabilities May Be Alarming

However, it was a jolly Christmas and I hope everyone else had a good Christmas or at least an OK one.

This year I emailed several Christmas cards. 

For local friends I got some bright cards with a tree very cheap from the Indian Everything Shop in Surrey Hills. I was on the lookout for things to add to the collections of angels, gods, goddesses, heros and feng shui animals. (My place isn't as crowded as the collections suggest because it's a large place with ledges and picture rails.)

A good statue of a well known hero caught my eye. It was out of my budget, but having read about such flights of humanic vision in many ways since childhood, I decided to peek inside the neat little card that was titled Greek Hero ($89). Somehow someone must have got a little mixed up. It was a small and excellently crafted statue of Moses, MichaelAngelo's Moses.

My lost sister would have loved it. She collected statues.

These cards (10 for $2.85) only said Merry Christmas inside them so when I got ready to give them out, I copied one of my poems for the text. It is a poem I wrote ages ago when I lived in the box over the road, and things got mixed up in storage and I ripped the poem out of the notebook to read to someone, (one doesn't have much forethought in moving times, in illness times) and the rest of it is still hopefully the box it was in when I borrowed those pages back then whichever box that was:

And let my own words now sing song,

make music roll forth all day long.

May my words embrace the soul,

do this to make an old world whole.

May singing bless, may good words ring,

may poetry cause our hearts to sing,

be in our bones and in our blood,

make goodness come in righteous flood.

The poem came from a dream.

Slowly I thread through the phases of those older times when my possessions became debris. I need filing folders. There may be some somewhere but I can't find them. Easier to work with folders on the computer, easier to find things here, even though I can get my titles mixed up if I'm not careful. 

Recently I've noticed that when I emerge from the screen or page or move around the weeds, that there have been several days of such divine warm sparkle after a bracing Southerly Buster that I can't imagine being unable to dip my body in water or feast my eyes on the loveliness of the sea. 

(Mind you the storms frequently leap in response to a stinking weary fuming hot day when all you want to do is go to the pub).

There have also been many lovely balmy days, not so many returns to iciness as there was a few weeks ago. On a warm fresh day I recall the days of childhood and young adultry when we were always tuned to the beach.

When himself and myself lived at Bondi, we were just up the cliff from the ocean which was then a part of our every moment. I began a series of poems because there was inspiration afoot.

Poetry is amends for the future. On a crystalline day following a stormy night, I found myself yearning for a taste of the ocean on a perfect ocean day, so I hunted for the Bondi poem which illustrated the storms which stomp regularly around Sydney's summer and Christmas Season suburb by suburb and sometimes in one place out of the blue.

Although I found many poems from the Bondi Seasons Suite had been transcribed onto the computer from a variety of note books and an edit of some of the collection last year when I was going for competitions, the precise long ago Summer Storm which was ringing its words at me wasn't there.

To breathe the breath of the ocean after a storm is a good thing.

Change.

A veil of rain

thrown over the sea

from this morning’s storms

is lifted by the sun

as the surface of the ocean

gleams in light.

The Ocean From Mark’s Park.

The green waves flow,

the horizon a moist mist blue.

The flats are struggling down the cliff, climbing over

to catch the view, the glimpse of blue.

Torn by the weather,

The sea opens its heart

And mist rises

Above the surface of the water.

Those Stranger Times

The recent poem about the experience of Domestic Violence is now in print.

It's a declamation of woe and protest and astonishment. Maybe it’s a part of a larger script.

How does one write poetry about such painful events?

It's not pity that I'm chasing here, nor is it despair because I always was curious about experiences and learning to choose survival.

I am writing about these matters because I require and desire Justice in this once much more FAIR land of Australia!!!

I write here and in my poetry of things which should have been private and the subject of therapy, counselling and maybe support, but the story was picked over with an inordinate amount of clumsy stupidity and a barrel load of that sort of rubbish began an avalanche which later would involve a concerted bullying by many Government Departments, even when I was homeless and especially after I finally found paid work which was taken away from me...

I'm not a hater, but I hate such processes.

The Editor of the Magazine who published my poem said most people didn't write or talk about the subject of violence in the home or in offices such as those of Bureaucrats because there were and are still petrified with fear.

Oh yes, I had my time of terror also and I didn't think I scared that easy.

I hesitate to call Himself The Perpetrator, Him who I frequently loved so much before his greed and selfishness over money matters drove us apart.

I still have compassion for Himself because he saw violence happening next to him when he was but a Baby and I know now that that toxic sort of thing can twist perceptions. Forever.

At least I was an adult when it happened to me. I'd moved a long way away from him the first time he confiscated the first money I earned since I lost that last job and even more so after he first ridiculed me in public.

We shared the same dwelling because we started out so fond of each other and initially and for a long time afterwards we were interested in each other's work.

I thought if I stayed as far away as possible, if we mostly slept apart, we left a clear path and made clear plans, then all would be well in the end.

I know now that he told sob stories with a bent brain to that wretched Medical Clinic we'd both attended and also I know now that he's had a pattern of turning against those folks he gets close to who end up loving him.

How could he not when someone close did whatever it is lies hidden behind the warpings that are eventually intrinsic to violent attitudes.

Well, DH Lawrence did just that thing of writing a poem about Domestic Violence and that poem told me for the first time in my teens that those kinds of things could happen. The Ash Tree, his Mother thrown outside, locked outside one cold night and finding pollen from a lily on her face.

DH Lawrence was an adult by the time he wrote that poem and the events were long past by then although apparently dinner parties at the Lawrence's could be difficult much later once the plates began to fly.

I was an adult when Domestic Violence happened to me, and even so, although I continued to keep a journal when things were at their worst, I hadn’t known how to talk about it all, or even yet comprehend it. Sometimes there was a blunt description, at other times I repeated and tried to focus on my belief that things would heal.

When I got thrown out, it was in the heat of Christmas when Himself at the time of year when the family had been called to account, felt like a failure and blamed me.... on my face and on my reputation there was nothing but his self hatred which was thrown at me to deadly effect. It made me consider certain mysteries of misunderstanding within my own family because I was diagnosed as Autistic when young and a lot of things went way above my head.

Most frustrating with Himself was that the whole business then was something I couldn’t wrap my mind around. No such thing had ever happened to me in any how excepting maybe for literature or the very occasional intimation.

There was this Doctor. She was angry with me because I refused antidepressants and hormones and she was also angry because I denied that I was depressed.

(To be sad, worried or even despairing isn't the same thing as depression and when things were getting dangerous I thought it best to keep my wits about me.)

I told this former Doctor that in the past, I'd experienced pretty bad dentistry (which still affects my health and probably my immune system). I told her that sometimes when I get very stressed, I lose my appetite and sometimes also my temper when under duress. I told her Acupuncture had helped me with my appetite problems for many years and that those treatments probably stopped me from being depressed. Soon afterwards, admittedly with her initial help, I began to regularly see an Acupuncturist in that Clinic and it helped me keep going although it also hid the symptoms of the Worst Abscess.

(Oh I have that X-Ray still. That thumb print sized hollow in the bone of my face. Everyone should know that I was not only probably an angry part of that first serious incident but that I was then not well enough for the ordeals to come less than a year after the bone was scraped!)

In those years, the only expectation for treatments from the ex Doctor was certificates when I couldn't meet obligations because of colds or flu.

And...oh yes, she did once treat me for earwax which is when when the arguments about depression began, excepting for that one serious incident further down the track.

At first I'd said to her, OK, I am depressed.

Then I said No, my dear sister is dying, I can't find work, my relationship is bad, I hate being broke. I am not depressed, I am miserable and I have bloody good reason, OK?

Looking back, above all, when an event approaching real violence occurs, I believe that confidentiality must be assumed. If a person in shortened circumstances finds it hard to escape such a situation then they should NOT be endangered.

The incident of the bruising push concerned the time, the one time back then when his tantrums got physical. Thankfully, he'd spent much of the year touring, and that one time, he came home in a filthy mood and pushed me against a bookcase after smashing up my study.

Those smashups I had hated but they weren't too frequent thankfully.

My Acupuncturist would say if I appeared in the surgery trembling and stressed,

'Oh he's being Artistic Again, is he?'

You see my Acupuncturist had become a dear friend, she GAVE me books about the subject to study and I never once mentioned to her, my closest friend back then, what was going on at home!

Better to laugh I thought at first, until that one time when it hit my person.

It was in case it got worse I went to that dire Doctor.

And I showed her those bruises in case the whole thing got worse.

What got worse of course that she told a hostile Lawyer about it as the only comment on my health matters, thinking no doubt as many people do that if a person cops violence it's a slur on their character and their own stupid fault.

(Hardly one's fault if one has no comprehension of the same!!!)

So there I am, as I wrote a few posts ago, just as I thought I'd be off Benefits, with a part time job and the worst of the Dentistry done and I get dragged through that Tribunal crap and the 'victim of violence' crap was my only allowable defense!

It's a Solicitor by then, a Solicitor who was even dumber than myself about violence and they wouldn't talk about these Acupuncture treatments which I'd been receiving ever since I'd read about ex-President Nixon's Doctor being CURED of peritonitus, (techniques studied for millennia and applicaple to Martial arts and much much more!)

(The Martial Arts aspect would save my life much later when Himself tried to kill me after taking Valium and Vodka after reading That Fatally Lying Tribunal Finding. Sure I got that eye blackened and my nose was poring blood, but I knocked him off balance and since he'd already smashed the place up, he fell on the smashed things and got bruised and later told folks I'd attacked HIM!)

(Next day my friend says, 'My God, what happened to You?' I says, 'You should see the other guy!' Was meant as a joke, but I trembled for months and had to drop a lot of work things which is another story, how much that all cost me.)

They shouldn't call Acupuncture a 'New Age Thing' should they? From my studies, it looks like something like seven millennia has gone into that field f research.

'Modern' Medicine after all is only a few hundred years old.

So this doctor said that despite the fact that I'd told her of the scary dentals and the appetite and the stress problems, that I had no health problems, but that the Lawyer should know that I'd once been to see her and I was bruised and in some distress.

(Isn't there somewhere in the Doctor's Code about Confidentiality?)

(Isn't there something in a Lawyer's code about Confidentiality and Endangerment?)


As to 'violence', me and my sisters had been frequently belted as kids of the Fifties, and smacked very hard on the back of the legs or the buttocks.

(Later, when my gal friends danced to Madonna’s old spanking song and swatted their own posteriors, I found it horrifying.)

I’d hated the smacks, the beltings and so on and I‘d a tendency to go rigid and glare at my mother when it was happening. That didn’t help because it infuriated her. The last time some idiot swatted my posterior in so called fun, I belted him round the head with the newspaper I was carrying which is maybe the second most violent thing I ever did in my life.

I knew that a folded Newspaper wasn’t going to hurt but I had to show my utter outrage. How people can enjoy that sort of thing is beyond my comprehension!

I didn't want to go through with those stupid cases at all and the Welfare Rights people said I had to.

They didn't even tell me it would different Tribunal the second time. They didn't say I'd be in an actual Court Room all day facing a Rigid Army Type Bitch who'd apparently concluded ahead of time that I was a liar. She even slandered my Mother!!!!

For the record, my Muma had a tough time in her life, was a teacher famous for her work and she tried alcohol a few times and didn't like it. That that finding called my Ex a bruiser, myself a liar and my mother an Alcoholic...well you know how stupid people get caught in cliches.. I am not going to forgive this crap you know, and I think I can guess who began the crap and I'll need a Lawyer by then...

And it has to be said here that it was our wonderful Federal Education Department under those face pulling sneering Liberals who wasted $30,000 of tax payer's money to put me through that 'Case' simply so I now understand, to prevent me from becoming the Tax Payer I had been before I went to the horror Dentist in the first place.

Rather than being the hard eyed level headed Defender of Injustice we see on the television sets, my so-called Solicitor fluttered apoplectically and apologetically all over the place.

She'd been to all those Preliminary Hearings without briefing me and without even knowing anything about me, except that she seemingly agreed that I should be punished for liking Acupuncture.

It must be said here that ambition and especially achievement CAN be considered as a crime in Australia. We can be slavish about our trivialised Cultural 'heros', but if an ordinary person, Heaven Help us, if a 'Dole Bludger', shows Ambition, even the ambition to get beyond Benefits, why then they are 'Up Themselves!!!!

In point of fact I hadn't wanted to be 'On The Dole' at all and only coped by doing immense amounts of Voluntary Work, some of which includes a much larger number of Essays than I ever presented at Conferences. I believed that at least while I worked, having been involved with Media, I was still 'out there'.

I could have meetings and coffee with former colleagues, talk about my projects, keep my CV updated etc etc.

The Dental Situation which had caused an instant health fall out before I had to attend a cheaper dentist as I was minus income, wasn't the only thing that had prevented me finding paid work in the Nineties. It was also a Tragic Truth that all my old Work Places had been absorbed and reorganised and positions were lost and people my age were being made redundant everywhere.

It was depressing applying for jobs but I kept doing so until the abscess hit the bone of my face and incurred a whalloping health crisis. OK, I hate the Dental Hospital & had been going to a cheap Dentist who didn't X-Ray. There wasn't much money after the part time voice work dried up.

During that particular crisis, the level of general physical pain was acute. I couldn't then (and can't now), walk very far. Maybe thats partly because I overdid it during the months when I tried to stay off the Dole. Walking from Bondi to Kings Cross and back for the job interview certainly roused those old sports injuries and the bad operation on the foot had me grounded for a week following.

I knew that any blessed part time job would be fine, but it was apparent even back then that I'd be better off working from home and maybe doing some part time things outside home.

The old time Employment Agency, the CES agreed. I attended every meeting with them and they only ever sent me after one job.

Eventually, I had to drop my Private Medical Benefits and I bought a Fax Machine, and after cashing in my Superannuation, I bought a Computer, my first Macintosh, now with most of the leads lost in the eventual process of homelessness.

With the Fax, the Phone and the Computer however, I organised quite a few Shows for Himself and spent a lot of time with Arts Lawyers hammering out the rights for all the people who gave us their time. Seventeen people contributed to our Music Project about The Last Of The Irish Bards.

As well as the Music work, there were several publications and one Seminar to the Graduate Literature Class at Sydney University.

There were a couple of Recording Deals too. I enjoyed negotiations although when stresses of Himself's awful work built up, I was hampered by the awfulness and tensions of the home situations. (And by the fact that some people became greedy about the project and began to harass me by telephone!)

The important thing I discovered was that like Writers, Musicians have to do a lot of Voluntary Work, and Work is the important thing. Maybe a person may find themselves without a job, but they should never stop working, whether it's study, Caring for other people or Voluntary Projects such as Bush Regeneration, even House Work such as can be managed despite various official and unofficial SmashUps, Work Is The Important Thing.

My study of Cultures continued and I was fascinated to discover Feng Shui, the Ancient Study of Time and Space which involves rituals in regard to the damaged areas of One's life. It's no Good Luck Charm. Luck is like the Life Force, it's called Chi and it can help even in the worst times because when one becomes helpless, there are still rituals and ways of making sense. I'd already investigated Taoism back in the Seventies not long before I discovered Acupuncture and I was fascinated to discover the similarities in the essential rules.

Well, Himself after the disaster which followed that second Tribunal case was apt to say that he'd 'supported' me all along.

Well, I've still got the bags and bags of receipts from all I paid from those times and I would dispute that claim from an exhausted and overly defensive mind. In fact his work expected him to go on the Dole for half the year when not working, which he hated so much that my Dole became our sole income when he was at home composing because I thought that by those means I was saving that much grief.

In all that time his former Boss ridiculed him for laziness. He certainly wasn't lazy. During the off periods when there was no paid work he rehearsed and composed at least ten hours a day. Those phases were good. I could get on with my writing and study.

I admired his work very much, but the Laziness accusations bit deep and eventually to my amazement, he accused ME of 'Laziness' and would say so even when I'd worked myself to the point of exhaustion.

At the AAT Hearing, during which none of these realities were ever raised, when I mentioned that it would be more productive to be at home improving my essay on Australian Rivers for the first International Conference I'd been asked to participate in, the 'Lawyer' jumped up and explained the statement away by saying I have a 'Personality Disorder'.

In fact I have Asperger's Syndrome.

I was speaking of my Seventh Conference Paper, still not yet read and the deadline for submission had been absorbed over the days waiting for the promised calls from the Lawyer who claimed to be conducting the preliminary business of The Case.

So eventually they found me guilty of maliciously missing three Appointments one time back in 1997 when my paper work had been hurled about and after the CES had written to tell me that I'd have no obligations that month.

Well Himself had cracked up, hadn't he and it was very bad. Did I say I have a tendency to forget dates and times when stressed? I do.

If my paper work is chucked about, how would I know about appointments? They were very obviously out to get me, and if that very fact is a breach of Tribunal Law, noone noticed.

Acupuncture, Depression, I mean, what was going on there?

Yes I did crack up myself eventually. It's awful to be homeless. Awful and I hope I inocculate myself against repeating such a pattern by these means.

You see, the real violence occurred after himself read the exaggerated lying Findings from the Tribunal and concluded that I'd exaggerated. I hadn't.

What had gone on was that my only allowable Defence was the one instance the Doctor leaked and they used my Work History to ridicule me as if I was a liar.

O Boy. Thus the poem.

Someone should explain to the Tribunal that Domestic Violence isn't simply the Lot of those they see as Losers!

Funny about this economic downturn. The recent American and Australian Governments spent an awful lot of money persecuting individuals solely for the purpose of whipping up paranoias.

They say I'd have to get to the High Court for justice. Qe?

Getting There

Rain falling and I'm remembering.

Two people I seemed to be as a child.

First born for a couple of decades in Old Jindabyne before the dam, I postured and pranced expecting admiration and laughter.

Then Daddy left us behind.

It's in the memoir, all that.

Muma and me, there we were remembering the old times and no-one spoke of them.

The world grew silent, no-one ever saw me and I thought to myself, am I here, is this a pretence?

Thus was the first breakdown and the first horror dentist.

There's a lot already written, a few books.

One time I believed in music per se.

If a person believes in music, perhaps they shouldn't get to know musicians.

I don't know Bob Dylan although he advises me with regard to my writing in my dreams.

(Dream On!)

A poem published while worlds fall apart.

I have got the hang of the things gone wrong in my life.

I've been writing in my note book.

There is another horrid abscessed tooth. Awful.

I ain't whinging about it all.

I never knew about the Asperger's or the effects of bad dentistry and so on until recently.

I got me facts together with the 'Education' shit I went thru in this country.

It's in the note books.

Tryin to get a couple of my essays published overseas.

Noone here in Oz seems to be interested in the process of accumulating and investigating the processes of belief and knowledge.

Especially those I once believed to be open minded and honourable people.

I guess the next post should deal with illusions as I look out from my imaginary Beach House over a quiet pale sea!

How To Make Friends And Not Influence People

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.

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

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.

Bits

As it happened, my daughter came by & helped me clean my kitchen. (Kitchen, kitchen!)

It was boring to be ill.

It's good to feel somewhat more like meself, but I haven't quite got it together yet.

I'm plotting my next blog.

It's about body images. I mean if a gal is skinny these days it's seen as a crime!

And what about beautiful full figured gals,

Self hatred sells these days, I say.

I been busy too much for details here.

Farewell Paul Newman!