Today I am grateful

There is a Maori phrase which I cannot now remember but which roughly translates as

 "the most important thing is the people, the people, the people". 

 Today I feel the strength of that in a truly profound way.

Yesterday I decided finally to act on the suggestion of a friend (thank you) and ask for help with my final act - the rituals of my death.  Since sharing my story with those I have come to know online - so many through my involvement and advocacy in real food for us tubefed folk - my world has expanded exponentially.

I have been a very social person in life: And also not.  Moves around the country and long hours of work plus certain needs to leave certain past previous truths behind meant my world, my world of people, shrank and dwindled.  But of course, in the skein of life that lives outside of time the real friends and connections remained.  I never really felt alone, but at times, not ...........sufficiently connected.  

I sought help online with my tube diet.  I found it.  I admired, and still admire, all those who help and who bravely feed their young and their loved and themselves real food when they can despite such staunch opprobium from such a wide swath of medical opinion across the world.  Accidentally almost, by dint of some time on my hands and my passionate nature, I became one of those who helped as well.  Now I find this repaid a thousandfold with the thoughts, heart, and spirit of friends and strangers alike.  I am strangely uplifted, yet humbled, simultaneously.

And the old friends reappeared.  I did not so much seek them out, but over time they just......popped up, and how I cherish those reconnections.  Some have grown even stronger with the passage of time, perhaps as we grew in similar directions despite not hearing from each other for so many years.  None have lost the spark.  New old friends have been made from once-acquaintances.

So today, as I start the joyous task of preparing for myself - well, really for you - the shapes and flavours, the heart and soul, the music, tears and laughter of my funeral, I am celebrating this:  The people, the people, the people.  For it is in others that we find so much of who we have become.  The necessary opposite of still, personal silence.

Is it unfair to be honest here?  To say that one person stands out?  I am torn.  So I shall be honest.

There is the old Zen koan, which goes something like this: "There was a monk being chased by a tiger, running and running for his life, suddenly confronted with a lack of anywhere to run - a sheer drop down a cliffside.  He hurled himself off, and as he fell he managed to fling out a hand and cling on to a small craggy bush tenaciously growing on the rocky cliffside.  There was a single, tiny berry growing on the bush. How sweet that berry tasted!"

My week has been a little like that.  I was scared for a time, and I was running.  I saw an end; an end that was not peaceful nor far enough away, and I was found wanting in my preparations. I flung myself over that cliff because I simply had no choice but to surrender to the fates.  Meeta is the berry.  How inexpressibly sweet; how boundlessly nourishing of soul to have a friend in life such as her.  In that moment when the people, the people, the people, shrank from view.....as well as the Godhead void, there was her.  For this too, I am grateful.

So I accepted that suggestion, and let the energy come to me in material as well as spiritual ways as well, and when this morning I logged on to find so many had given of their well-needed coin to help us pay for my ritual of passing, it reminded me that sometimes the people, the people, the people, are the berry.

Thank you all, deeply - thank you.

You can still make donations by following the link below.

http://www.gofundme.com/My-Natural-Burial

I will finish by sharing a poem I have just discovered by a very dear old friend, Mark Reid.  So cheekily titled, so.....brutally subtle.

The Falling God?

I heard the aphorism

a god-shaped hole in every heart

& wondered

what could possibly

make such a hole.

NOTE: You can also buy Mark's latest book a difficult faith (from whence this poem came) from Fremantle Arts Centre Press, HERE.
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A Humble Request

Reading back a few posts, you'll see I have been a bit overwhelmed by the love and kindness of so many.  Well, since that last post I took quite a dive and now the new plateau stretching out before me has much more of a feel of gradient.  In short, I'm going an little downhill, a little faster, and am more awed then ever that just sharing my journey on Facebook and here brings so many others such.....I don't know....good.....stuff.  (If you're new here, please try reading THIS first )

People keep asking how they can help.  A friend made a suggestion.  Here it is:

http://www.gofundme.com/My-Natural-Burial

Please go there and consider a donation towards the cost of my natural burial at Fremantle cemetery.  I'd love you to come, too, as it will be a great day whenever it comes - not a sombre affair in the least.  A celebration of all the life and loves I've lived and shared and believe me....there's been some.

There's more info on the link.

You can find out more about natural burials at Fremantle HERE.

Thank you.

Just a little overwhelming.

I posted the other day on - well, what else do most people blog about but themselves? I guess it was a bit more raw subject matter than you might see any day of the week, but my rules as laid out when I started this blogging caper were essentially condensable to one - honesty.  You can read it HERE if you've not done so already.

Thins is, it feels like it went just a tiny bit viral.  Not VIRAL viral, but a few friends posted it out to their networks, and...you get the idea.  I've been getting emails and messages from people I've never even met online - messages of such love and compassion and honesty that; look, I was hoping not to cry any more today but here I go again.  And I'm just a little bit overwhelmed.

I can't keep up right now with answering everyone personally, but I will get there, I promise.  This post is just to say thank you to everyone.  I'm guessing from what many people have written that there are lots more who have read the post, had some things they might have wanted to say, but not known how to say them.  This post is to thank you as well.  The thoughts really do count, I'm sure.

Honestly, I just wanted to express what it's like to be in a spot like mine is like right now, because I figured that on the one hand it's pretty unique, but on the other....we're all there, all the time.  I didn't think it would lead to me feeling so loved, or to hearing so many wonderful stories of other's amazing journeys, or to hear so many heartfelt words of spirit and spirituality.

I'll answer you all, but for now, thank you.  All of you.

A New Beginning?

That's a positive way to look at it, I guess; a new beginning.  Just as I was sitting here, contemplating whether to try and organise my thoughts by employing my internal honesty-in-public pressure and blogging about the issue, a friend's Facebook status popped up - all timely like.  The gist was about how she was feeling a new opening, or returning, of self confidence, self-acceptance, embracing her uniqueness, and how this banishes one's self-doubt and fears. etc.  No small thing.  I replied with yays and yeses, as she is in fact quite awesome, but immediately felt a hypocrite.  For here I am suffering, and I can't decide whether it's dire, noble, or if anything I think about it is even relevant.  Whether it might just simply BE.

Lately, I've been on a downward run, for sure.  More pain, mainly from my back, and also my GI tract is getting worse.  Slower, painful, etc.  Speech mostly gone now.  Hands nearly all clawed-in, all symptoms pretty much worse.  In consult with the Doc, we've experimented with various painkilling techniques, as chronic pain truly does suck, and naturally there's a trade-off.  Most analgesia also deleteriously affects my already-dodgy digestive system, and increases my nausea, so we've had to add meds for that.  Got to a place where there is little or no pain though, finally, which is.....nice, in its way.  But the price is, I am now, really, a proper cripple, and beset with all other manner of unpleasant symptoms, like restlessness, cold/hotness (yes, at the same time), insomnia/tiredness (again, simultaneous) and this weird, all-body general discomfort.  There just are not words.

So, pain, maybe?  It's a possibility, but then I remember how that is, and that my symptoms are not all drug-related anyway, there'd still be other shit to deal with.  Oh yes, that's right.....I'm dying, aren't I?

You forget, see.

Or rather, the knowledge just engages you that much more with how much of life you can participate in, so as things deteriorate, you just take your joy more in what's left.  Pardon my slip into the second person there - it's a defense mechanism, you see.  I mean to say I have been finding my joy in what is left, but now - the list is so small I don't have to write it down to take it to the shop of life.  A 'milk, bread, eggs', sort of thing.

Today I faced the choice starkly - go into being in pain, suffering that way, and being able to participate more with things like physical activity - being able to drive a long way, go down the hill, see some sights, do some shopping outside my home town, visit friends or family - possible, but then, I've seen me after 3 days of full-on pain.  Ask around, chances are you know someone who never gets relief from pain, it's shit.  Plus, over time it makes my other symptoms worse as I tense and stress. Or, accept that my new, low-energy self, with chronic discomfort and annoyance, unable to move far from a comfortable chair or bed, unable to drive far, even as a passenger really, and that I'll more likely than not never see a place beyond the few miles around unless some medical necessity and transport dictates it.  Fucking grim thought,  I can tell you, because it's not like I'm on the edge of a rainforest rivermouth and sandy beach in an eco-lodge in Costa Rica here, you know.  My house is fine, the garden is, well, 'getting there', but now there's not much I can do except look at what needs doing there anyway.

Look at Mr Sad Sack complain!  What rights do I have to be so down about it all anyway, given all the inevitability of suffering in the world?  I guess because we must need to suffer.  Maybe that's why we're so bad at just dying.  Because surely, not long ago, my situation would have seen me off well before now.  As I've mentioned before, we seem so loathe to just let nature takes its course - because we can change it!  We are a part of this nature, and can act on it, so why not?  Somewhere, there must be the balance.  I don't know where it is, but I have made a few decisions lately.  And this is not news to my wife, nor will it shock those close to me, so it's not a publicity stunt (pfft) or avoidance of personal communication.

One thing I've decided is that I won't be doing TPN.  That stand for Total Parenteral Nutrition, or intravenous feeding in layperson's terms.  It's how we keep people alive when they have no gut function these days, and yes, one can live on it successfully for years, if nothing goes wrong, or if nothing else is wrong.  But to me, it's too far a step into the unnatural, and I won't be doing it.  This means, bluntly, that once my gut does finally stop working, I shall remove my tube and allow myself to starve to death.  Takes a couple of weeks, I'm told, unless you refuse hydration also, and then it's fast, like 48 hours, but nastier.  Symptoms are manageable on the journey, and I could possibly stay at home, which would be nice.

Another thing is that I might stop watching Global Village and nature docos for a bit, as I am wanting to cry too much seeing places I will now never see at all.  A bit pathetic, but I love this planet so very much, and once planned to travel frequently and far.  Ah well.

A third, undecided, but nascent thought is that I might have a little going-away party.  I have a few friends left here and there, and if my condition progresses at the rate I suspect it will, then I might enjoy a chance to say 'thank you' in person to those who have filled and loved in my life who are still local enough to make it.  That way they won't feel like they have to go to the funeral either (and I have that sorted now too btw) if they don't want to, I guess :-)  Humour, people, humour!  Perhaps a luncheon at the Zoo, or Mundaring Weir, or somewhere lovely.  I could manage that with a little help, I'm sure, and I'm confident of waiting for the better weather too.  Just a thought.  maybe next birthday, yes, perhaps.  We could live FB it and my overseas friends can be there too, as it were.

Making these decisions and planning a little helps some with the suffering.  It does take you out of the present temporarily, which can be a relief at times, but more importantly it's empowering to decide things, makes you feel still a participant of sorts, rather than just being totally strapped in on the ride.  But the real journey for me, I suspect, is how I am transformed - or not - through the suffering.  Quite clearly, decisions like the removal of my tube or more extremely direct measures against life are always there, but I've made my choices.  As above.  The drugs change things, but do not remove the existential stuff, nor all the physical discomforts.  I must just spend more of my day living it, suffering and all.  I seem to get a good 4 hours every two days on the drug cycle where I can write a bit, so if I'm super diligent, I might even get my half of the book finished - but it's no longer the thing-to-live-for type of goal it once was.  That's OK.  It'll work out as it needs to.  And, of course, 'miracles' happen.  To quote, again, a twit I follow - 'The road to Lourdes is littered with crutches, yet not a single wooden leg'.  There are limits in the physical world, it seems.

So, yes, a new beginning beckons.  As the old saw goes, the 'beginning of the end'.  As I said to the doc the other day, after all the changes, deteriorations, losses, adjustments......it's this new reality of spending so much time just sitting that makes me feel like I'm really dying now, emotionally.  The physical facts have always spoken for themselves.  I think it's time to embrace the me that is now within sight of that final slalom gate on the big downhill run.  But just to be clear, I still have a lingering fondness for the idea of a massive exit courtesy of a rogue bit of space junk just as I'm watching some lovely thing in the garden.  Well, they talk about the laws of attraction and all that, so.....that'd be superb.

After all, there's half a million bits up there now, travelling at 25,000miles an hours, and it's all gonna come down eventually.....

Gundy, Gundy.....gone?

There's a place called Gundy, near Scone in NSW's Hunter Valley, where there's an unusual search underway, reminiscent of days gone by.  But we'll come back to that.

At Doomben last Saturday, lightly-raced 3 year old bay gelding Turnitup won the Grand Prix Stakes, which is considered THE lead-up race to the Queensland Derby.  Nothing unusual there, horses win races all the time, it's what races are for.  Also, he was more or less favourite, with good lead-up form, so again, no surprise.  But back when he was but a wee foal, he was never expected to be anything special, just like the 8 or so previous foals his dam had proudly brought forth.

But something had changed.  Sires so often get all the glory in the amateur punters' psyche, and why not - they're rock stars rocking out with their cocks out several times a day covering a book of mares not even Errol Flynn could have contemplated and naturally, with thousands of progeny, there will be standouts.  A thoroughbred brood mare of course can only have so many foals in her lifetime.  To so many amateur (and professionals who should know better) punters and wannabe breeders, they look not much further than the sire's pedigree,  thinking that the potent semen of a hotshot stallion will find comfortable purchase and flourish in the receptacle provided.  Of course, real breeders know better, and the art and science of breeding is indeed a majestic tapestry of wonders.  But when a mare has been through a few different sires, and none of the progeny is much good, well.....there are several paths retired broodmares can go on, not all happy ones.

The season prior to Turnitup's propitious birth, a colt (now gelding) oddly named Coroner was eased from his dam's loins, and turned out to be a little bit of a slow starter - a city winner in Queensland; no superstar as yet, but a 'handy type' as they say. Coroner, and the following year Turnitup, are by a sire called Dane Shadow.  Dane Shadow is not exactly a superstar stallion, but with more recent developments he's getting a good reputation as a great 'improver' of second-tier mares.

Dane Shadow

The stud operation that held our mare is near Gundy, and they also breed polo ponies.  This is not exactly a scientific operation like thoroughbred breeding, and if I were to be a kept horse, I think being one of these guys would be a good way to go.  They roam in a herd of 100 or so mares (with 4 attentive stallions) across over 1200 hectares of woodland in the Hunter, untroubled by man except for an annual roundup when foals who are ready are weaned off and assessed as polo pony material, or other fates.  And every so often, a thoroughbred mare (polo ponies tend to be thoroughbreds) who is healthy and well but not making great strides on the track with her offspring is released at the gate to the Big Paddock and finds her way - presumably - with the herd.  Sure beats becoming pet food, and this is what became of Turnitup's dam.  Freedom with the big herd.

It takes a few years to tell if a racehorse is going to be much good, you see.  Also, it can take time to discover the right genetic 'nick' (a term breeders use to describe a sort of synergistic pattern of ancestral influences in a mating) for any given mare or stallion.  Suddenly with Turnitup showing such winning ways against very good opposition and Coroner definitely not a complete dud either, well, it looked like they'd found a really good one with our mare. And her value went from pretty much zero to Rather A Lot Thanks Very Much.

But there's just one problem - they can't find her.  Teams of riders have been out, searched the whole area, all of that - nothing.  As if she's just vanished, or something.  Now a Man From Snowy River-style muster is underway, with a reward offered to the lucky person who can find the prodigal mare.

I just think that's a gorgeous story.

Oh, her name?  No Finding.

Mountain Lion...?

This is the story of a song - a song without words.

Sometimes music just comes to a person, or it may be dragged out screaming in a protracted birth process, or it may emerge into human agency any number of ways.  Sometimes it happens in a night, in response to something, between two people.  This is such a story.

Thanksgiving time, 1994, California.  I'm travelling with my guitar partner, friend and composer Tim Andrew, his wife Beatriz, and 9yo daughter Anna Maria, on a musical odyssey taking in the US, Mexico, Spain and the UK.  We'd been staying with friends in LA, but what with Thanksgiving being such a fraught and frazzling time for most American families we took a week or two's road trip northwards.  It's amazing the places you find.  Just over the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco is the happy hill-and-bayside enclave township of Sausalito, home of wealthy and artistic types and many touristy things.  We most decidedly did not travel as tourists, except in those moments necessary to amuse and placate our headstrong young fellow-travelling lass.  But Sausalito is also home to a stupendously excellent Youth Hostel place, in the buildings of a former US Army hospital from WWII. It's now called Marin Headlands Hostel.

We stayed in this building. You can imagine our little hire care parked right there, if you like.

There used to be many of these sorts of buildings placed around a U-shaped shallow wooded valley, floored with a great expanse of meadowy grass, but judging from recent photos all but the main buildings are now gone.  Must be a nightmare trying to keep those old wooden buildings in good repair in the damp environs.  As you can see, there is some sort of cypress in front of the building, and there is a belt of these running around in front of where the 'U' of buildings once stood, but the vegetation behind is what was really interesting to us.

The story goes (and I have no clue as to its veracity) that when the US Army commissioned the buildings originally, they wanted some decent camouflage from the air, and asked for fast-growing tree species to be planted.  California has a long history of using Australian eucalypts, seeing as they grow so well, and they chose to plant a small forest of varied eucalypts, including many Eucalyptus diversicolor, the majestic Karri of Australia's Southwest - our own local 'cathedral' forest trees from home.  The climates are certainly very similar, but I always wondered if the original planters really appreciated just how large Karris tend to become.  There was a belt of Karris and other large eucalypts (there are 700-odd species, and I'm only good at identifying a relative handful, sorry) right up to the ridgeline, so a probably a couple of hundred metres deep, and they were well matured, I'm guessing then 50 or 60 years old.

This is from the closed end of the 'U', looking back towards the main building.  You can't see the extent of the plantings beyond the cypresses or the slopes either side here, but that hill in the distance gives you an indication of the terrain.

We arrived to find we had the place pretty much to ourselves, what a blessed peace!  It is more hotel-y than hostel-y so I had a room of my own, and the Andrews shared a nice family one.  We headed out for supplies and a look around Sausalito (apologies for lack of actual photos - I just don't have any left these days).  On arriving back we discovered the entire huge kitchen had been taken over by a loud and happily boisterous mob - some kind of Chinese Christian group gathering, and every available horizontal surface was being used by someone making wontons, or chopping vegetables, or whatever.  I think that's what we ended up eating too.  Later on, things quietened down considerably.  As evening fell, Tim and I took a walk to get some nature-contact time (he's a tree hugging nature spiritualist type like me).

It should be noted that at this stage in our journey that we were not smoking.  You know, smoking.  We only really bothered to score once in LA because we were hanging with fairly 'unconnected' straight law-abiding types.  Making that score is definitely the subject of another hair-raising anecdote, however.  I'm pretty sure none of that stash remained for our Thanksgiving trip.  I was drinking a bit those days, but was definitely not drunk, and nor was Tim.

The moon was still not risen, and in any case there was scattered cloud but peeks through into that peculiarly northern hemispherical sky, as Tim and I made our way up into the darkening wood.  There was something surreal about it all - knowing with certainty where on the planet we were, yet feeling the particular snap of a eucalypt twig beneath your feet, the smell of trees of a homeland on the other side of the world, and of course the hyper-sense frisson you get in the dark of night if unfamiliar forest.  We'd made our way maybe halfway to thew top of the ridge, with a vague intention of getting to the top for the view beyond, when there was a sound in the woods.  An animal sound.

Now my instinctive reaction of course was 'kangaroo', but obviously
"That wouldn't have been a kangaroo, really, would it?" I say, or something very like that.  Tim had been thinking just the same thing.

Whatever this large Thing was, it was between us and the only known safety, the hostel now well over 100 metres below.  It's not hard to gauge direction of sound, especially sounds like that of a limb of some description being placed carefully, quietly, yet snapping a twig regardless as weight was applied.  But distance is a harder to estimate. The Thing was moving to the left, slowly.  We would go right, slowly.

Rather concentrates the mind, the certain knowledge that you are a guest in the home of large carnivorous mammalian predators but having no idea what exactly is out there.  Might just be a deer, but could it be a bear?  Do they have bears here?  Whatever, we're not talking about it, as foolishly our instinct is to try and out-animal this animal, with our inferior senses and knowledge of place.  There were large warm-blooded breathing sounds also, maddeningly unidentifable. So we're moving as quietly and deliberately as possible, also trying not to startle or provoke the Thing.  Did I mention it was just a little unsettling?  After a little while, it became apparent we were being circled.

It took ages.  We'd move a little, wait, listen, move a little more, wait, listen, and I'm sure that the Beast would time much of its movements for when we moved to, the better to muffle its sound.  This is the feeling of being hunted, whether that was taking place or not.

I am reminded as I write now of the joke doing the rounds roughly around that time when Bill and Hillary Clinton are hiking in the mountains somewhere and are confronted with a hungry bear.  Hillary sits down, opens her backpack and hastily puts on her running shoes. Bill says
"Hillary, surely you don't think we can outrun that thing." and Hillary calmly replies
"Maybe not Bill, but I figure I just have to outrun YOU."

I didn't have such thoughts at the time though.  Eventually, as we counter-circle the Thing, always heading downward and counter-clockwise, we got between It and the beneficent light of civilization.  Well, the car park anyway, and were able to make a straight and more hasty, if cautious retreat.  By the time we came out into the open space of the car park we were in a semi-run, I think.

A little later in the evening, we reconvened in the massive common lounge space and set up in guitar space.  It's a brilliant thing, guitar space.  You just need two chairs, two two people, two guitars (in our case the flamenco variety) and instantly the magic space is invoked.  Into this space we breathe our still-buzzing spirits, exultant from the close contact with a great scary unknown of nature, bathed with the majesty of a predator's attentions, yet well alive to tell the tale. Tim shows me a little thing, a riff he's been playing with. I am inspired to respond with another little thing that complements.  You can see where this is going, and we throw back and forth, mostly wordlessly, for an hour or more, until.....there it is.  Rarely has such an odd, underivative, whole piece of music come so easily and fully into being.  I don't think the piece ever really changed from that night on, keeping its little quirks and eccentricities.  It always stayed as a guitar duo too, never really felt like it wanted anything else going on. Maybe it's not the greatest track on the albums (how would I know anyway, I'm way too close to judge), or the most representative, but it is the most rooted in a Tim-and-I moment, and for that I thank it.

Of course, we did discuss what it may have been, this Beast.

The next morning we get our gear together to pack into the little Chrysler Neon hire car and within 10 metres you gt the first hit.  The most profoundly huge and eye-watering tom-cat piss smell I have ever experienced, as evidenced also by the huge (and quite high up) spray marks all over the front tyre.  The locals tell us they're there.

We called it Mountain Lion, and you can hear it here:
(You may need Quicktime to play, if your browser hasn't already sorted it for you, then you can get it fast and free HERE)

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My Prom Night. I think......

The end-of-school Prom night is one of those things like Halloween trick-or-treat that we seem to have largely imported from the US, and like Halloween, only really do half-heartedly in comparison.  When I endured my rite of passage it was called a 'Formal', presumably referring to 'formal attire', but these days I think they call it simply a School Ball.

(ASIDE): I'm writing this because somehow I ended up daring a friend to write about the high school prom she was having flashbacks to by proposing an "I'll blog you mine if you blog me yours" sort of thing.  Nice the different ways you can be a little harmlessly flirty on the interwebs, isn't it?  Nice too that I haven't lost the knack of unthinkingly committing myself to uncomfortable things for my personal betterment by sabotaging my more habitual cautionary mechanisms.  It is unusual to be blogging on a topic that did not spontaneously enter my mind as such.  I have no idea how this will go....

It's also worth noting that I remember very little about the actual night itself.

1987, year with perhaps one of the shittiest all-time Top 40 lists ever; THE Number one was Kylie Minogue's version of Locomotion, and it was the year Rick Astley first told everyone he was Never Gonna Give You Up.  The fluorescent colours of a couple of years earlier had toned down just a tad, men were by now completely comfortable with hair products, the New Wave was already getting old and the shoulder pads were starting to recede, but just a little.  Water-wave taffeta was the choice of fabric for every Formal and bridesmaid's dress in the land, so if you listened carefully on Friday nights in the suburbs the silky swish-swooshing of nervous ballgoers doing the final touches to their makeup could be heard over the usual din of televisions, dogs and tinnies being cracked..  

My high school was a fairly progressive (yet Catholic) school nestled in bushland at the edges of a market-garden and residential suburb on the Northern Beaches peninsula of Sydney.  The school had an interesting and relevant history in that only three years prior to my starting there, it was an all-girls school.  Then they introduced the first lot of boys just in Year 7, then again the following year and so on, so when I started there were two years of boys above me, but girls all the way up to Year 12.  Change is often slow, with the effect that in my year, the ratio of boys to girls was still something like 1:2.  As Year 10 rolled by and some boys left for trades (but virtually no girls) the disparity rose, so for those of us fellows interested in the fairer sex it was a well-stocked playground indeed.

Let's face it, Proms are all about the date, really, aren't they?

I had a girlfriend in high school.  Well, one major one anyway.  She joined our school late in the piece, maybe Year 10, and lived just around the corner from me.  I found myself a tad smitten and would walk the extra half-kilometre to go past her house and use a different bus stop just to get close to her, using whatever charm and guile a 15 year-old guy could to woo this lovely blondie large-boned lass, Sarah.  Eventually it worked.  We were a little on-again-off-again (but mostly on) pretty much from then on for the duration.  We were actually sort of in an off-phase by the time the Formal came around, and I now can't recall who she actually went with.  It wasn't me, but I remember having a photo taken with her there.  Things were weird and confusing then, so excuse me if I can't quite nail it all down.  I have never had a straightforward or regular relationship life, even to this day.

I  had another sort-of girlfriend by that time, my first experience of a 'younger woman', in that she was in the year below me at school.  Also the larger-framed variety (this was a pattern I had for a while there) with deep golden cascades of ringlets, who was also worryingly the daughter of a local Police sergeant.  Her name was Collette.

See the thing is, I was in a really nihilistic frame of mind during all of this time.  Lots of little things and events combined and contributed over the years.  I used to be a pretty good and smart student, until probably Year 9 or so when I could no longer bear the feeling of futility from the whole conformity and socialisation thing, and really just ran out of ability to be interested in an abstract future over a concrete present I guess.  I was then and still am reasonably intellectually able, and had learned early in life how to be a good learner, so just turning up seemed enough to get decent enough grades.  But as we neared the end of the final year, it became increasingly apparent that I would not magically arse my way into the sort of grades I might have perhaps achieved had I in fact applied myself, as they say.  Then a big blow - halfway through that year it was deemed (I've mentioned this elsewhere) that my family and I would be moving to the other side of the world (well, continent, but it might as well have been) at years' end, so all my previous notions of a continuity of friendships, social life and all that were sent sailing out a very high window.  I was still as vain, egotistical, arrogant and insecure as any other almost-18-year-old, but with a hefty dose of really not caring what transpired.....I'd soon be gone.

Collette and I weren't hugely together as a couple, partly as inter-year romances (romances at all, really) were very much verboten at school, and because I was busily twanging as many strings on that particular bow as I could.  Apart from my school-based social circle, I had an outside one of sorts, and at this time I was seeing a lot of a particular person, who once had been at my school, but had since left.  Estelle and I had a really lovely relationship, a deep-felt mateship thing, relatively unsullied by any untoward sexual tension.  We went places together as a sort of mutually-protective duo, who both easily managed to pass for over-18, and hung out in her bedroom playing music and discussing frustrations in love, etcetera.  We were getting er, closer over time, and may have ended up in a more 'friends with benefits' scenario of it weren't for a key morsel of information dropped by both her mother and mine, separately, coincidentally, on the same night.  We'd each been speaking of the other at home, and in my case I mentioned Estelle's last name, when my mum asked what Estelle's mother's name was.....and said "oh, you two are cousins then!"  Something distant, like fourth cousins, but enough to make our next meeting rather, well, awkward.  Not as if this was redneck backwoods country.

Estelle had a deep and abiding thing for the older brother of a friend of mine, and when that failed to bear much fruit, she went for my friend (who saw through this as a ploy to get back with his brother and who was in any case otherwise occupied) and then discovered that both of them would be at my Formal.  My friend Jordan with his date (from outside of school) and big (like, 6 ft 5 as I recall) brother Kimberley with a girl from our year.  Estelle asked me if I'd take her to the Formal.

Collette also expected to be asked, and in fact I was just about to do so.  Luckily, Collete was canny, flexible (she had actually trained in dance :-) and not terribly possessive of me.  Plus, she had what may have been a detective's daughter's taste for intrigue.  She was very creative at manipulating her parents to have more time with me, for example.  So very naturally, I just asked my erstwhile currently off-again girlfriend Sarah (we separated the last time due to some territorial matters, namely me getting caught out in a rather public fashion with her best friend, also called Sarah, followed by girlfriend Sarah's retaliation; weekending at a male friend of mine's house - kids, eh??) what I should do. After all, we were still good buddies. We had in the past each been key in certain social evolutionary developments at my school, like multiple earrings for girls, jewellery for boys, not actually getting expelled for kissing one's significant other in a car outside of school grounds (we did have our school uniforms on, the shame!) and relationship 'outing' rights in general.  She suggested I take them both.  Estelle, Collette, and both Sarahs were actually delighted to be in cahoots with such a scheme.

I planned it very carefully, this I remember well.  There was a finite number of tickets, but it was clear given the enormous disparity in gender numbers and the fact that not everyone felt compelled to produce a 'date' for the night that there would be some spare.  But each person could only buy two.  I didn't have very good gaydar back then really.  Well I did for guys, but not so much for girls.  I only worked it out many years later,that these two special friends who planned just to go together were most likely closer than average friends.  One of them kindly allowed me to buy her a ticket for a pretend date.  I basically made sure no-one knew until it was too late to do anything about it, and although I can't specifically recall, had doubtless readied a whole series of well-rehearsed denials of any impropriety and justifications on wholesome, moral and righteous grounds - some of which I must have successfully deployed on my surely-complicit parents (I wonder what their recollections might entail) in any case, such was my MO then, as it still sometimes is now.

I wish I could remember the arrival scene a little better now, but I think I was so wound up with anticipation and possibly fear (of ridicule, of failure to be cool, of whatever really) that all I can bring back now is entering the nightclub (we'd booked one whole floor to ourselves) with a comely young woman on each arm, some flashbulbs going off, catching my reflection once in a mirrored pillar or something and getting a mighty egotistical charge, and then the three of us dispersing to our preferred missions for the night.  I recall Estelle spending much time flitting and flirting about the dancefloor with the brothers Brebach (Jordan & Kimberley), Collette mainly hanging with the other girls from her year brought as dates and me trying to be cool with the few male friends I had who were essentially dateless.  I had my picture taken with Sarah (Sarah the First, that is,) in a royal blue water-wave taffeta thing which clashed horribly with the coral bow tie I had accessorised my dinner suit and fine-striped black shirt with, the better to match Colette's rather fetchingly cut coral (wait for it) water-wave taffeta gown.  Estelle wore something black, like always.  Maybe I had a picture with Collette as well.  I suspect the pictures are either long gone or buried in a box somewhere at my mother's house.

There was an after-party, and I was actually really pleased to be invited, because it was at a Cool Person's house, where alcoholic beverages (etc) would be served openly by Understanding Parents, and as Estelle had by this stage lucked out, had her Teary Catharsis and Gotten Over Those Scumbag Brothers For Good she came too.  Plus, Collette had promised the Detective Sergeant to be home etc etc.

Maybe if I'd stayed in the state, stayed in touch with schoolie types I'd remember more.  After all, it's the practicing of memories, the retelling that keeps them vital and fresh.  It probably also warps them more over time - it's well proven by now that a great deal of what we believe to be incontrovertible historical fact we just actually make up.  Anyone in a life partnership for more than a few years will attest to this - to the faultiness of their partner's memory.

What did it all mean?  At the time, it seemed pretty important, an antidote to the stress of study (I did in fact cram a few weeks before exams, the only such study I have ever really done in my life) and an opportunity to put a definitive stamp on one's social standing and persona - to create some closure on the fraught world of teen social politics and identity creation.

When Amber (my challenging friend) first called my bluff and said yes to my dare, I squirmed.  Just thinking about who I was back in that time really creeped me....so I had to find out why.  And I think it's because the overwhelming feeling then was anxiety, something that comes to a head in exams and mass social rituals, and it's a feeling that still rears itself every now and then today.  It's a place I don't like to go, unsurprisingly.  For me, anxiety is characterised by being trapped in a loop of the same thoughts going around and around, and they're all questions to which there are no answers: "What if this, what if that......"  Doing mental laps, as my PE teacher once drolly observed.  It's why I can't access the prom arrival moment very clearly, the paralysis of anxiety forcing out all sensory input.  

Still, I'm glad I went.  I'm glad I was true to my nature anyway, and took two girls, regardless of how that might make me look to my adult self (or to you, dear reader).  I'm glad I can still remember parts of it at least.

Thanks Amber, and thank you, for reading.

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PS, if I do unearth photos, I'll edit them in, and be sure to share.

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Krishna Drives My Chariot

What do you do when someone who is clearly not quite at one with reality attacks you?  Someone who may not be entirely off their rocker but who nonetheless seems teetering on that line somewhere between very odd and actually mentally ill.  Are the rules different from when someone completely sane has a go?

Possibly, possibly not.  By the end of this post you may reach a conclusion, I don't know.  I haven't, but in the end I decided it.......well, you'll see.

When someone who is from out of left field in their own reality attacks, then chances are it will come in a slightly bizarre form, and may require extra consideration in defense.  Issues of compassion also arise, but this takes us straight into the territory of 'who is right to judge', doesn't it?  I mean, is a person whose grip on consensus reality is demonstrably loose more worthy of our compassion than one who can be said to be rational?  Back when I was at school, there was this whole thing about 'not hitting a kid with glasses' - turning a supposed deficiency into some kind of moral defense.  By the way, when that kid eventually took one liberty too many, you can bet those glasses got slapped right off his shocked little head.

The more spiritual (and possibly more intelligent) martial philosophies teach us to be flexible in the face of a force against us - to deflect, bend, or absorb the energy of an opponent's strike rather than meet it with simple opposing force.  Newton's Third Law applies - all you would achieve is an expenditure of your own energy and cause a cessation of the opponent's force.  But instead, directing the opponent's energy and momentum to one's own advantage - think how a quick sidestep and extended foot sends the charging opponent sprawling -  is a far better use of energies.

Sometimes though in the realities of our imperfect social world, things aren't quite so neat.

I was attacked recently, in an online sort of way.  Complicating my emotional response was the fact that the attack hurt good friends of mine - was actually calculated to do so - and as a by-product hurt hundreds of other more-than-innocent bystanders.  It removed a whole bunch of people's ability to help each other in important and (not to be overly dramatic) sometimes life-changing ways.  An attack purely on my person I can deal with pretty easily and be clear about.  But when I and my friends are used by another, clearly unhinged person to do such hurt to others, simply getting out of the way will not do.

What happened, in brief, is this: friends and I set up a Facebook page called 'Blenderized Diet' as an adjunct to the popular and helpful free forum of the same name (blenderizeddiet.net) so that people could offer mutual support about all things to do with real food used for tubefeeding to one another.  It was an entirely not-for-profit thing.  4 days later a third party, let's call her Lesley Diane Marino for that is her name, had the page shut down, in a deceitful and malicious way.

She did this by unlawfully misusing a Facebook policy.  This policy is a self-protective mechanism for Facebook, whereby if a third party like Lesley alleges through use of a legal instrument that they are the legal owners of intellectual property - in this case use of the term 'Blenderized Diet' - and a page breaches their IP rights, then  Face book will take down that page and it can not be reinstated without the consent of the plaintiff or a legal ruling contravening their claim.  They take no account of evidence or simple logic - the like fact that the term was in print at least as far back as 1952, before Ms Marino was born, and is in such common usage it generates 43,600 google returns.  It was deceitful because she just did it without asking us first to stop using the term, and then would not confirm or deny she had done so until Facebook finally released her name to us as the complainant.  It was malicious because she only directed a complaint against us, not any of the other thousands of pages on Facebook using the term, nor against any other party.  You see, Lesley has a personal problem with me and one of my compatriots, from a similarly cowardly action she took in banning us from what she considers 'her' forum a few months back.  Lesley claims to be protecting her 'business interests' btw, which can be barely said to exist, if they do at all.

But this is where we get into the unhinged territory.  Lesley may actually - despite reams of evidence to the contrary, despite hundreds of people contacting her directly with good reasons why she is wrong and should rescind her complaint, - may actually believe the words she wrote, that she "invented Blenderized Diet after my daughter was born".  which was in 2001, btw.  Her actions subsequently do seem to my not-professionally-trained eye to be those of someone with both a grudge and a very tenuous grip on consensus reality.

But does that mean anything for how to respond and protect ourselves and the rights of others to help each other, to continue to use the very words they have used forever to represent the thing that's so important in their lives and for their health and that of their children and loved ones?

I couldn't quite decide.

When it first erupted, I was sure it was her, but there was no proof.  I was angry.  I do not like anger so much, it makes my tummy hurt after a short while.  Plus, it's just not nice.  Yet I have always had the curse/blessing of a strong righteous streak.  Only one thing to do, I realised, as I watched my brain start to over-analyze my response - let Krishna drive my chariot.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it comes from the Mahabharata, an epic poem of some 18 volumes or so that forms sort of the creation stories of the Hindu pantheon.  A single chapter from one of those volumes, the Bhagavad-Vita, forms the basis of scripture of the Hare-Krisna movement.  The whole Mahabharata is frankly a rocking good tale.  The Bhagavad-Gita is essentially a conversation between Krishna, a sort of immortal avatar of the forces of love and 'goodness' and a warrior monk type called Arjuna.

To set the scene:  There are goodies and baddies.  Arjuna the archer, the invincible warrior, is with the goodies.  The baddies have turned up with a massive army to do bad things to the goodies and all of the people.  Arjuna is torn.  Here it is in 30 seconds:

Krishna: Fight them and win. Just Do It.
Arjuna: Dislike.  Fighting kills and life is sacred etc etc, so shut up.
Krishna: Suck it up.  You are a good character, born invincible, and they will do bad stuff.  You must act. HTFU and do it.
Arjuna: OK then, because you are like, wise and stuff, but only if you drive the chariot so your radiant spirituality blasts my mind clean of its over-analysis and lets me see the spiritual purpose of doing bad shit like killing as a natural and good thing.  Dude.
Krishna: Hop on board, here's that never-run-out sack of arrows I promised.  There will be blood.  They'll write a book about this day, you'll see.

So I just surrendered to what I hoped was my higher nature and let it be an abstract. Let Lesley no longer be the bitchcowmollslagbushpig I had unkindly and judgementally cast her as (old skool tribal hardwiring for demonising an enemy to get aroused for physical combat and danger, you see) and let it be an action by someone without character except as a strategic fact to be considered, and acted from there.

I can tell you, it made for interesting viewing.  I got to see my friends' reactions in a slightly more dispassionate way, which helped me feel less hurt on their behalf.  I saw and helped marshall the responses of quite literally hundreds of folks all arrayed on 'our' side against this outrage.  I allowed a natural righteous anger to flow out, rather than occlude my view or propel my hand too hard.  I recalled how, as a young male testing my virility and so forth that excess anger would always be my undoing in a fight, yet a steely resolve simply to prevail would get the job done.  Counterintuitive, it seemed, at the time.

This all reminded me how there's a part of me that really does quite like a good fight, and much as my spiritually seeking self might find that backwards and needless it is there, and needs to be honoured.  Good thing too, when and if the need arises.

What I had to do to be effective was to let go of the righteousness and just act.  Trust that my actions would lead to 'right' outcomes.  And that's harder to do than it sounds, when you're someone who has made a great career on the moral high ground.  It's harder to hit the targets on the low ground from up there, and sometimes it seems they do need to get hit.  One must remember that as we are all blood, occasionally we must spill and wade in it.  Without the righteousness my compassion was more easily able to return, even as I took harsh and determined action to corral and disempower the destructive wrongdoer.  I feel for her, just as I feel for my friends and all those who have been affected.  Yes, there is a sadness.  Yes, there is a certain elation in the moments of battle enjoined.  It's all very real.

It is all turning out well, in ways I would not have predicted.  We may not yet have seen the back of Ms Marino's attempts to despoil the good works and names of others, as she seems not dissuaded by the clear evidence that every time she tries it, she ruins her name and face all the more.  This is her karma, perhaps.  The more I stay free of any surety in that judgement, the more I stay with dharma, and go as Arjuna.

When you just act, not thinking about whether it's right or not, with a mind as close to Zero as can be, I feel that the room for the 'right' things is there - it allows what's needed to happen.  You feel free of worry.  You do in fact feel the thrum of a certain spiritual invincibility in your veins, without it being an ego or a competitive  thing.

Perhaps it's what Spike Milligan was alluding to when he said:

"We don't have a plan, so nothing can go wrong".

Doug Anthony Allstars once did a song called (I think) Krishna Drives My Chariot.  I couldn't find it.  Please enjoy this instead.  Paul McDermott is one of my favouritest singers of all time.  Seriously.  And this is a great song.
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How far, how fast we travel.

It's been said that the whole blogging phenomenon is essentially a mass exposition of narcissism.  I can see that point of view, as I can see the whole modern consumerist western edifice of society as driven by just that very narcissistic impulse.  To love ourselves into a sense of safety and security that our too-slowly-evolving hunter-gatherer headwiring does not allow, perhaps.  More personally, I acknowledge my sometime delight in seeing my expression of myself here in the mirrored surface of the online pond, shining back at me with the assurance that as I can see evidence of myself there, I must be - as I think I am.

Of course, that is but one part of my own motivations for engagement online, with the social aspects more and more fulfilled of late by work for the real-food-for-tubeys cause and the countertextual plays of wittery, blathery and genuinely meaningful engagement through Facebook and the like.  Which is why I'm not blogging as much - well, partly.  But I've had cause to re-read an old and quite personal post here, and what's touched me the most is not how different a person I feel to that person who wrote it (in his then-narcissism, if you will), because I feel really used to changing now: Rather what struck me was just how recently I wrote it.

I mentioned just a little while ago that I've got two book writing projects going on right now.  As part of that I'm writing a piece including stuff about what it was like for me to get my feeding tube.  I was merrily tapping away at the keyboard when I remembered - "I did this a while back".....and if you haven't read the story I'd encourage you to read it before going on (I'll wait for you) , it's just HERE.

It was written and posted on the 27th of July 2010.  Now if you're in your twenties, that was probably, like, before last Christmas which was ages ago.  If you're in your thirties (or if you have a home-gestated child) you can probably already appreciate how stuff that happened less than 9 months ago can seem like yesterday and forever ago at the same time.  I'm 41, and if you're much older than that you might still smile wryly and indulgently at how young that is too.

So yes, I am used to changing as a person now, I seem to be doing a lot of it.  Or am I?  Has it always been this way and only now that time seems to be speeding faster and faster do I actually notice a rate of change as we go along?  I'm not sure.  The Doppler effect is definitely more pronounced.

But I remember that feeling, being that guy who suddenly got that realisation, and if you'd have asked me earlier today about my feelings of relative acceptance of my illness and near-certainly soonish demise I'd have told you that I'd have come to that point "quite a long time ago now, really."

The Doppler effect - where waveforms like light and sound seem to compress as they rush at you but elongate as they fall behind, like the change in pitch of the ambulance siren as it powers on quickly into someone's destiny story.  Doppler seems to act in memory too. It makes me feel like the past is further and further away, and the future much trickier to predict than ever before:  Leaving me increasingly motivated to specialize in the now.

Do you suppose that's what they mean when they talk about the wisdom one gains in aging?  Is it simply that your ability to still be one with your ill-remembered past and naively-imagined future diminishes, leaving you standing all the more clearly reflected as yourself in the still mirror of the quiet moment?  Or was I also right back then, that it's often the agency of tipping points like the stress and compulsion to accept what's needed right now for survival (or die) regardless of how it might change you that root you more firmly in your middle place?

One other thing I've noticed though - although I ask a whole lot more questions, my need to find the answers is slowly fading into a vague sort of interestedness rather than a desperate path of want - of search for self-identity.  And that's a relief.

This is also a relief.

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TFTD - how many are not really here?

Today's Thought For The Day is brought to you by the letter D and the number 'lots and lots'.  D is for drugs.  Those who have been following my story of late would know that I've had occasion to sample quite a variety of drugs for different purposes, but the ones I'm thinking about right now are the ones that definitely alter one's mood.  I do have pain, true, and to be kind to myself decided some time back to dispense with my knee-jerk anti-meds-wherever-possible reaction and allow myself to be in less, or perhaps even no pain.

Paracetamol doesn't do it, and neither does ibuprofen.  Not that I'd ever take ibuprofen for more than a day anyway.  I can't believe it's still legal.  So the next step up is the opiates and opioids, and after much trial and error I settled into a reasonable regime.  Reasonable in that once I got used to the side-effects, I was perfectly functional whilst being in little pain for most of the time.  I could supplement with extra, other drugs if needs be for 'breakthrough' pain (wonderful terminology they use, isn't it?).

But that's the thing, you have to get used to it. And there are two ways you can go with that.  Because your perception of the world subtly but undeniably alters, you can either learn to work your mind around the drug's effects and back to a 'clearer' pre-drug state (much like developing resistance) or just give in to the stone and go zombie.  It's nice to know that you can always choose the latter state for a holiday anyway.

I have a slow-drip regime, with a transdermal patch doing the heavy lifting analgesia-wise, so it's a little different from the up/down/sideways cycle of oral drugs, but the experience has made me wonder - given the huge amount of prescriptions written for these sorts of drugs every day in Australia - indeed in the developed world - what percentage of people we see in the supermarket are off their dials on painkillers?  I'm thinking lots.  Let's say that as 1/3 of the population suffers back pain at some point in their adult lives, and they have that 1/3 of the time, then 1/9 of the people have dodgy backs at any given moment.  There's more than 10% right there.

Imagine this.  Stand still in your local shopping mall.  See the people all about you milling around, and notice that they're all getting slower, and slower, until they're barely moving, like they're in treacle, and they almost, but not quite, completely stop.  Now, place a little yellow light above the head of 1 in 5 people.  I reckon that's the amount of folks with some painkillers in them affecting their mood somewhat.  Now look around again.  1 in 8 people are on antidepressants at any given time, so give them a light too.  Now do another 10% for those using prescription and other drugs illegally.  Don't forget to do just under a quarter of all the kids on ADHD meds and more than 3 quarters of anyone over 65.  Now do 5% for the functional alcoholics.  Add another 5% for the undiagnosed or untreated seriously mentally ill.  Give yourself a light if you need one.  Getting pretty yellow in here, isn't it?

Is it any wonder that advertising is so effective, when so many people are not the prime determiner of their own brain chemistry?

OK, you can let them all go now, not forgetting to thank them and give them a little nod and bow of love and kindness.

Zombies don't need to eat our brains, they're eating their own.