Chapter Six: Back to Warrnambool

Going Home

Some things in this book are forgotten. I cannot remember our first kiss, or even where we did it. Nor when it happened, but after it, we did it often. We packed our meagre possessions and drove to Warrnambool to stay with Peter and Su in their empty bungalow. At first, the wine flowed freely with the spinach pie and baked potatoes. Wonderful dinners with friends on Peter’s super long refractory table. After the honeymoon, maybe two weeks, we became Prince Harry and Megan Markle. They didn’t like Pamela so we had to leave and rent our own home. Something we would have had to do eventually, but after two weeks I felt a lot of pain. The original plan, me playing the guitar and her singing was a disaster. It should have been easy, with the four of us, two couples, playing and travelling together as an Irish bush band.  It didn’t work out. She was not a fan of Irish dance music and preferred to sing Joan Baez in a parking lot, not the old Irish washing woman. This story played on then out, before my hapless eyes. She had a brilliant voice, but no desire to sing what we wanted.

We found a house near the beach at Killarney one mile from Tower Hill: the largest Nest Egg Caldera volcano in the world and around 20 km from Warrnambool—I never could figure out why we moved so far away from the band and her school. It was surrounded by a potato green, a treeless place with cold winds off the ocean, the same ocean, that  100 years before,  shipwrecked 638 wooden sailing boats. Pamela signed up to study art at Deakin University and went on to become an art teacher and I stayed painfully the same as my father: women ruled me more than I did. I played in the bush band twice a week: instead of a harmonious time we led separate and discordant lives. Money, as usual, was sparse. Most weeks we would search the cracks in the car seats for a dollar so we could buy some chips. This takes my breath away as the days get older: 30 years later I am still doing that, not so often though.

Among the many dramas, I remember four wonderful times, sustainable and memorable ones, at Killarney that were truly magic.  One morning after heavy rain flooded the land between the house and the sand dunes at the beach, 10 minutes’ walk away, an oasis of birds appeared like magic. From the house, when I first saw it, it looked like a mirage. Hundreds of mostly white-water birds floating in sun smacked, super glassy, shimmering water: the day before only long yellow-green grass. There were many different kinds, shapes and sizes. There was no one else home to share this vision with, and amazingly, the next day they were gone, hundreds of them, disappeared back to their habitats. The water was still there for a few days, but no hint of miracles remained or were ever seen again.

Next time, sitting on the veranda steps, staring, meditating, on the full moon. I stayed up all night, something profound happened to me. After about 30 minutes I was transported to an Alpha Mind Wave level: I felt more peaceful than I can ever remember. I knew light, seeing the light, enlightenment and light waves, really do transform, illuminate, and transport God, and the Moon is a way, the best way to do it, to experience the feeling, the state of being, Buddha and Jesus talked about because they had the same experience.

The third time, coming home from Melbourne after visiting the light and seeing the beauty and love in Pamela’s face. No one more than me needed to have a switch handy; one that turned off my inadequate being and energized my soul for the loving of everyone and everything: that is, and always has been light.

The fourth time, I helped Pamela do a coffee enema. I had done one a few months before. Roughly following directions, I bought an enema bulb and tube and some coffee, mixed the coffee into a pot of warm water and sucked it into the bulb. The directions said to place the enema tube into your butt and squeeze the coffee in as far as you could, slowly and patiently for 10 minutes. I was patient for 2 minutes then I squeezed the rest in like a fireman’s hose putting out a bush fire. I then patiently waited for all the poisons to flow back out and they did. Within a minute Picasso came screaming out my butt into the bath. There were so many colours in powder form, I was in shock. For 30 years my intestines were home to every poison known in the world. I felt better after my enema so I was excited for Pamela. And, hers was the same: a multicoloured abstract painting came out her butt too like a masterpiece would on any Parisian Sunday evening.

Goodbye Graham

I was studying naturopathy in Melbourne when my older brother Bill called me to say Graham was dead. He had committed suicide by attaching a pipe to the exhaust pipe of his car and then through a small opening in the window, while he sat inside drinking a can of beer, he had borrowed from his dad a few hours earlier.

His girlfriend Sarah, had left him a few months earlier. His dancing money was running out and so did she. Before she left, he was desperate to keep the dream alive, by buying her whatever she wanted. This was an impossibility because she wanted more and more and his bank had hunger pains, and he had no job to earn more money to feed it.

One day, oblivious to everything going on, I visited him in hospital. He said he tripped over and fell on a nail; which explained the bandages around his head. Later on, I found out he tried shooting himself with a 22, and only managed to graze his skull under the skin for a few inches before exiting above his right ear. His first suicide attempt. He asked me to buy him an MGB sports car which he would pay for, with his last bit of cash left in the bank. I can’t remember if I ever found one for him—I hope not. Every one of his friends knew he was on a bad trip with Sarah, eventually, she killed him, they were spot on.

His demise resembled a slow starting, tumbling rock, down a medium-sized suburban hill, into the crevice of a troubled mind. It started rolling when he left school to become an apprentice refrigeration mechanic in his father’s business. He was good at his job, and it provided enough money to marry Susan Fisher, have two children, Jamie and Luke, buy a home and some beer.

By day, he would crawl under the beer-sodden floors of local hotels, running, bending and soldering copper pipe for the refrigerated beer taps above. By night, 5 o’clock, he would rise from his copper tomb, and sodden the floors some more before rambling home in his old ford Ute. Dinner would be waiting for him with his wife. Sometimes, with spontaneous drunken joy, he filled the house with a happy manic party mood, and would not sleep until Mick Jagger rose out of his dirty overalls and stopped channelling songs through him into the cranky neighbourhood.

As with all young men at the time, he started smoking green stuff, instead of drinking brown stuff and this made his ball, the rolling one, speed up. Without it, the ball may never have reached the crevice of his demise.

On one of these wild nights, he was playing chess with his best friend, Duncan and his wife, Barbara, (she was watching the game). She smiled, a deep and motherly smile, of intrigue to him. He instantly lit up inside, and mistakenly imagined she loved him. He thought about her, dreamed about her until his words, for so long safely in his thoughts, escaped from his mouth into his wife’s ears: I love another woman. He was divorced two seconds later and she was screwed, even more, within a week.

She left him alone, where dreams, did not, could not, cook dinner, wash clothes or manage anything of consequence. This is when he met party girl Sarah and he tumbled faster and faster into her money-hungry arms. He was quickly divorced, legally and physically from his wife and children. The house was also sold quickly and the cash was divided—more than enough to feed a hungry blond for three months. They say God can hear our thoughts. If so, that has to be a good thing, as a cavalry can should be, sent before they turn into reality. And alas, arrive she did, but not quite the cavalry Graham needed. He would fight the blond fight alone and lose everything with his life.

Life has to be lived in such a way, that we can stand on our own two feet, and fight every demon that threatens to possess our plain logic and simple wisdom, and that is what Buddha came to earth to teach us. Too late for Graham but for me and the rest of the world, we can learn from Graham’s mistake and sometimes, sit under a tree, because that’s sometimes, where he will be.

The goodbyes to Graham took place in a church he had never been to before this. His older brother Bill spoke eloquently at the service. Mainly about how he loved his family, his music and surfing. What happened to him, at the hands of two tough women, who helped snuff out his sensitive soul, 32 years after he arrived on earth, he didn’t say. For non-Christians participating in funeral service in a church, it feels much the same as celebrating Christmas: a deep emptiness. The ways in and out of the world, governed by the gatekeepers. Life is precious and Graham wanted more to life than being a refrigeration mechanic. 32 is an age when we grow into ourselves and commit to our destiny. If your family traditions are starkly different to it (your destiny) then the transformation is perilous and difficult. For at least two years from the age of 30 to 32, your foundations disappear so you can hopefully build new ones. Leaving you vulnerable, exposed and confused. I knew what changes he had to go through because I had much the same need to radically transform. In hindsight, life is always more difficult than it needs to be. Buddhism can help everyone to understand the cause of suffering and offers a way to avoid it and overcome it: we, obviously had no religion or philosophy at the time to help us.

When the long line of cars arrived at the cemetery his son Jamie in the same cars as me, looked out the window at all the people dotted here and there and said, “he said, he had no friends.”  In a way that pointed at the futility, everyone felt about his unnecessary suicide over a woman.  This self-empowered isolation, an exile from the normal world, because his party castle had turned into paper money, a substance that could not party, play music, dance and play chess: his home. At 32 he had become homeless. Instead of investing the money from the sale of his house into buying another one, he invested it into a faceless blond: a temporary stay in hell.

After Sarah left him, he eventually met a wonderful woman who loved him and took care of him. She was not a glamorous ice witch-like Sarah, more of a kind and loving hobbit. He liked her, but could not love her because her plainness, hid her heart and soul, from his deluded eyes.

Jamie said it all in six words, ‘he said he had no friends’. The Buddhist Ten Commandments, rightly, command you to be a true friend to your friends. Be wary of his demise, because I and millions of others often feel the same way: alone, surrounded by talking voices and heartless hearts: not a true friend in sight. And the opposite situation, when we feel unloved and miserable, yet, surrounded by love and too stupid to see it. If anyone should feel like this remember what happened to Graham. He cut himself off from everyone because he put all his energy into romancing instead of his friends and family.

Some music played on the rusty speakers, as his body squeaked its way to Hades. Everyone felt the hopeless despair of the moment when a transformation fails and the only solution is to go home re-read the instruction book and be born again.

We all went back to Manifold Street for some drinks and a snack. Dave, Doris and I felt shockingly bad as did all his friends. Standing around, chatting on the well-cut lawn out the back. In a typical moment of madness, I drove to a grocery shop in Fairy Street and booked up a box of whiskey to Dave. Everyone guzzled it down, dissolving the pain enveloping their hearts. I had a bit to drink and had to lie down on my old bed and sleep. Ten minutes later Julie Knights, an old friend, crawled into bed beside me, whispering words about it being customary for a woman to make love to a grieving man… Dave wanted to kill me a month later when he got the bill for the whiskey.

The Bush Band

Peter and Su asked me if Pamela and I wanted to join them and Frank O’Donnell in a new bush band: Irish dance music.  So, we decided to move to Warrnambool and have some fun playing bush music. Pamela could sing, it seemed like a great idea. Peter taught Media at the Warrnambool TAFE College. Su studied architecture.  Peter’s father died of a heart attack before he could walk so his mother, Dot, rented out a room in her house to pay the bills. They had no money. They used salt to brush their teeth. He also had an older brother, Oif. Because of Dot’s determination, the two boys became professionals, a teacher and businessman, and eventually made enough money to support their own lives and take good care of their mother.  Because I floated here and there as a teenager, Dot would always greet me with some cynicism: got a job yet? Looking back, I know her hard work made her tough as nails. It had to be that way or starve. Peter loved music and fried cheese and tomato on toast. He met Su somewhere? probably in Melbourne. She had something special about her and I had never seen in Warrnambool before. When they bought a house together in Whitfield, she got out Peter’s hammer and saw and did her first remodelling job on the old weatherboard house.  After building my own house in Castlemaine I had become a dangerous house transformer. One day Su said she wanted a new doorway into the kitchen. I got out my chainsaw and cut a hole in the wall with it.  Then cleaned it up with my wood saw and some wooden fittings.  I did this a couple of times for them.  I never saw Peter teaching in his 20 years at TAFE, I wish I had.

The first night we arrived at their house they had a few friends for dinner. It didn’t go well? I said something negative about Pamela’s parents that made her very upset. I could have because sometimes I said things without thinking.

The next day Pamela auditioned for the singing spot and failed. She wanted to sing folk music and they wanted an Irish singer. The dream of playing music together and travelling around Australia died in a few strained minutes. I stood with my feet over the edge of an abyss, staring at my imminent death in the molten lava 100 meters below: only a matter of time.  The sky, a musty grey, tinged with pink and bemusement at the time, harbingered the fates.

Pamela happily did her own thing. She studied art at the local university which offered her more than playing music could. I studied Irish music, playing chords on my guitar. Irish rhythms are very complex, I couldn’t do it very well. Then I bought a mandolin and studied playing melody, I couldn’t do that either. 

Peter and Su could play extremely well. Peter played electric bass and Su rocked on piano accordion.  She could sing brilliantly too.

After a month of rehearsals, we were good to go. Bush music was insanely popular thanks to the ‘Bushwackers’. 

Su learnt all the dance steps to four of the main dances which she taught at all the events we played at. Francis and I would help demonstrate. Francis and I lacked fortitude, which often irritated the dedicated Lucas family: understandably.  Every week we had a couple of gigs, sometimes a hall full. It was loads of fun playing the Irish Washerwoman and watching 50 people tie themselves in knots. Irish dancing is a lot like tying a fisherman’s knot. Don’t pay attention when you learn it, the boat will sink. Haha, in and out, back and forth, hilarity and gaiety, arms and legs flailing, jumping, sliding and kicking. A lady and gentleman’s pursuit, good clean fun. Participatory, old fashioned like the old high school socials, doing the Pride of Erin and the Foxtrot. Touching a girl for the first time, her gentle waist tight and bony. Dancing with a rose. Perfume from the East, colour from the North and every time the dance finished a round, another tight wasted flower would intoxicate me. My first experience with a girl sent me to the stars and back. Dreaming about them day and night. They were not mortal, never mortal. Dancing in pairs and groups should be mandatory for psychological health and it is a clear antidote to computer games and the Internet.

During all this fun, at first anyway, men looked rigid, moving a limb here and there like a traffic cop. The women in contrast, looked like different coloured balloons squeaking and screeching, when a child has lost their grip. Flying, darting and farting everywhere.  From the elevated stage where I was playing my 1945 Gibson mandolin, and looking down at the mayhem, my mind, repeated over and over, we are doing a good thing, a very good thing.

Steve Gilchrist lived nearby. He used to work for Gruhn Guitars in the US. Before he went to the US to study violin and mandolin making, he had already made some good violins. At Gruhn Guitars he pulled old Gibson Mandolins apart to fix them. He studied how they were made. The framing and bracing, the kinds of glue and where Gibson bought their wood from. He searched and researched and eventually found the very valley where this Stradivarius type of musical wood came from. After a few years, he came home and made copies of the Gibson F5 scroll style mandolins. They sold very well and he is now one of the best guitar and mandolin luthiers in the world.

One day he asked me if I would help him build his new house in exchange for one of his mandolins and I said yes. Pamela and I didn’t have enough money to survive. But I tried to do it. I helped him for a few months until he let me go. He had never built a house before and needed some moral support. Once we got the wall and roof frames up, he took pity on me and let me go. With the promise of a new Gilchrist F5 mandolin after he finished the house. In the meantime, he gave me an old Gibson Mandolin to use in the bush band with Peter and Sue. I loved the feel, the action, the smell and the sound. Unfortunately, I sold it when I needed money and a woman. Something I did again, a mistake, a year later with the incredibly amazing Gilchrist F5. I sold it to marry Angie in Rushworth. I am the unfortunate world traveller, selling things to go another step. The fundamental thought occurring in my brain—I don’t need anything. Then missing the very thing, I said I didn’t need for the rest of my life, like the mint Leica M3 camera with three lenses and a leather case I bought for $50 in a store that didn’t know its value. I loved this camera too. Gone. Now I am a jazz musician without a guitar and a professional photographer without a camera.  My handmade DeGruchy that I used in the bush band is now in Reuben’s deft hands. I bought it from a pawn shop in Russel Street Melbourne. Brian DeGruchy used to sell cars in Portland. Then, one magic day he became a guitar maker. The one I bought, his second, he sold it pretty cheap to a friend, around $2,000, who pawned it for drugs. I got it for around $300. Brian makes amazing guitars, this second one, sounds like a Stradivarius violin in the right hands.

Playing in the band took most of my mind off bills and romance. This life with another which is about the other, all the time, every day alternating between fun and exhausting. At midnight after we packed the gear, I started my old bomb of a car and pointed to Port fairy. Concentrating long enough to turn left at the spuds, and straight down the lane to our wooden house perched by the sea. I have never wanted to be rich. The life of a preacher would do me fine. Jars of apricots filling the pantry. Lentil soup burning on the blackened wood stove. Long hot baths in tubs with legs. Peterson pipes and Erinmore tobacco smokin. All bathed in a loving Moon and sounds of birds getting it on. I can count these lost years, 1-50. I never expected my own dreams to dominate another’s, but a harmony of dreams. A simple life, a pork pie and a good book or pen would fill my day with an uncountable joy because I am grateful.

Pamela enjoyed her studies and I loved playing music. Neither of us had a real job. Too often at night, our hands would search every crack in the car, the same ones as yesterday, looking for 20 cents that escaped my jeans so we could buy a crumpled white bag of chips for dinner. The few years we stayed in the beach house could have been a lifetime, if we let it.

One morning over toast and honey Pamela said we are pregnant.  Looking back, I wish I said wow that is amazing, but I didn’t. I said we can’t have a baby we don’t have any money. I pushed her into an abortion, the evilest thing I have ever done. Monster me had no right to make another commit such a sin. One that I ultimately took a hammering over. I felt the wrath of God for over five years. At night, shadows fell all around me like dirty old linen. Satan came and did God’s bidding. Yes, God is a loving God so he hires Satan to do his dirty work. In my entire life up until then, I felt blessed and lightful. But now the world had changed into a darker, menacing place. I could feel his presence and unbeknown to me he only wanted to scare me because the worst would come a few years later the final sting. When I truly wanted a baby to live, she died a week before she was due: checkmate. Angie had to carry the baby full term, to deliver her naturally according to her doctor. Each of the 14 nights we slept before her final delivery would be time to lay awake for hours and regret, ponder and accept this honorific punishment. Before this, I thought abortions meant freedom for women and after this, I know abortions are punishable. This brought me closer to God.

My life, a witch’s brew. One day up and another down. The only hope I had of surviving relatively unscathed would be repeating my mantra: you are here to help others, be happy and humble, I am blessed etc. If you feel dark and down, wrapped in an old dark blanket of doom, remember my words; coz a princess is not thee but a healer and teacher, a fixer and grower, a giver and shaker you can be.        

God (the collective) is a loving God, Satan is the only one that can balance the books, show you your dark side, a good guy is he, as long as you remember to clear your mind of him, every day, then you will be blissfully free.

Eventually, Pamela went back to Melbourne and I moved to Rushworth and Brother Graham, replaced me, in the Bush Band with his lively banjo and ukulele. 

After I left the band, they played Irish Music for another year then stopped. Peter thought Su’s singing and accordion playing and his bass playing could go another notch up the ladder. So, they formed a new Zydeco band called “Hot Tamale Baby” after visiting the states and getting some lessons on how to play it.  Peter went on to write some awesome songs and became a little bit famous and a Buddhist.

Unfortunately, he had the same heart problems as the whole Lucas family. About four years before we moved to Warrnambool, he had a heart attack. The doctors wanted him to have bypass surgery.  He didn’t like this idea for a few reasons, one of them being it could kill him. He took the natural path, following the advice of a naturopath in Melbourne.  Even with the naturopath, his health went downhill. He got very skinny and his face looked pale and milky. One night in Melbourne, staying in a friend’s unit with Su, and his two daughters Sahr and Paije, he woke up to severe pain in his chest, leapt out of bed to get his pills, took two steps and died. Su called me the next day with a calm sad voice, she knew its inevitability. My salty tears fell like a sad lonely waterfall into a pool of grief. Peter is my one true friend in life. Su asked me to speak at his funeral. It would be a Buddhist funeral because Su and Peter became Buddhists five years before after visiting the Dali lama in Denpasar, India. I loved how they went to India twice to see the Dali Lama and how they decided to be Buddhist. Not long after their conversion from weak Christianity to Buddhism I had been converted to Sramanas.  Unfortunately, it had no structure like Buddhism. I had to meditate and make it up as I went: like now.

I honour Peter now, as my best friend, a visionary. A wonderful father and husband. A brilliant writer and musician. Peter, wherever you are, you made the world a much better place. When I knew you, I didn’t care about such things, but now I know, there is nothing better we can do than make our world and the universe a better place.  Now I am doing something. I tried with my photography and failed miserably. Now, I wield a pen and share my world as it turns, a long time before computers.

Francis Going to Melbourne

The dog stayed at home with Pamela; this was one trip I had to do on my own – something I had a history of not doing. No amount of last-minute pleading from Pamela to come with us would change my determination to face what fate had installed for me when I got to Melbourne. It was hard enough for me to escape my boundaries and to pluck up the courage to leave home for two days let alone have to say no to Pamela. With great relief, Francis’s old Citroen finally pulled away from the curb like an ageing ocean liner leaving the dock for chartered waters but unsure of the weather ahead and Pamela’s yearning for travel faded into the road ahead.

The atmosphere in the car changed quickly as the shackles of Warrnambool’s Western District isolation was replaced with a feeling of excitement and anticipation. Three friends and three totally different destinations: Sally was going to Bali with her old boyfriend David Reyne; a trip they had arranged before she had met Francis and I am sure Francis’s extra weird behaviour (very nervously looking for more dope in the house) was brought on by jealousy. The atmosphere in the car was intimate, all good friends living on an edge, full of happy future consequences, the entree was served and the main course was being conjured in the cosmological kitchen – we were all sensitive beings staring at the droning lights with a childhood reality.

We made a funny threesome because we are so alike when we got stoned and when we are normal: pretty sensitive and quiet and a bit eccentric. Sally and I had waited for ten minutes while Francis searched their flat three times (he came out the door, walked down the steps and would turn around and go back inside for another look and Sally and I would laugh and think OH! MY! GOD! for dope to take with him to Melbourne. Francis always forgot where he had hidden his dope. His house resembled a mouse house, with stored treasures in every conceivable nook and cranny, yet because Francis smoked too much he had to always hide more to find more and he knew he would.

It was hard to disassociate the man from the weed. Sally was in school: an unconventional one where the headmaster (Francis) wanted to convert her from a good-natured, naive, happy and content country girl to weed wisdom, a fleeting grasp of truth, a transiting truth passing through the night and often leaving Sally unconscious in the armchair. Some people appear to handle their dope while others are left in smoking ruin, shipwrecked in never-never land. My ship never left harbour as every joint parked me in neutral. Like religion; I was left asking does this do me any good? Either way, Francis was good fun, being child number 11, he was used to hanging out with people and fitting in.

The car droned on as if self-controlled as the passengers played on uncontrolled, glee was taking over from fear and by the time we got to Colac (halfway), we were pretty happy in this half-lit moving metal French steed. So many indecisive thoughts led to this moment, a lifetime of fearing most things unknown had kept me from taking this journey to sort out my finances. My friends helped me to decide to do it and start afresh new beginnings. Little did they know the chain of events they had helped set into motion. It was all working out; even though I felt guilty leaving Pamela and the dog at home; I knew this was a personal journey, one taken without distraction and compromise.

Geelong appeared as a silent sentinel: the outer gates to the great estate called Melbourne. Once passed we were in the realms of Melbourne city. Not a day passes in the country when in a precious moment, the silent oath of fresh air and peace passes one’s lips. Ode to natural life and wide-open spaces. This knocking of all foul air and freeways helps justify one’s place in the countryside. Do people live in this city wasteland by choice? Nature is a refuge of peaceful celebrations a communion with fellow bark and kindred leaves, a recognition of fellowship and friendly spaces. The forest speaks of love and peace, resting in her bosom to face another crazy city day. I can’t remember a false forest or being ripped off by a Grevillea bush. My body is moving six inches above the asphalt at 100kms an hour but my mind is green.

Sally and Francis are more streetwise than me, they negotiate the transition into this technological mist with ease, beyond my childlike vulnerability and paranoia. The first stop was a Cappuccino machine in the city, a favourite hangout of Francis’s an Italian cafe that sold the best coffee in the CBD. The caffeine did jolt me out of my travelling reverie. We had only travelled 300 km but I had become the world traveller; without a home and resting place. My mind was free to muse and contemplate now I was free of the morning dishes and the ongoing wars over the carpet cleaner. Two more sips and I was back to reality.

I was anticipating walking to the finance joint and giving myself up and receiving the wise advice I needed to manage my affairs. The appointment had been made from Warrnambool so they were waiting for me to come in from the cold and hand in my license to kill businesses. For over three years I held my naivety close to my chest and now I could confess at my utter ineptitude to follow in the steps of the Rockefellers.

I had nearly finished building my brick house in the hills of Castlemaine when I saw an ad for a foam insulation business, the latest technology. I went for it all the way and within a few days, I had a loan from the bank and was up to my knees in soap suds. It went all right for the first 3 – 4 weeks when the foam didn’t melt through the ceiling dripping down into Mrs Jacob’s lounge room. But when the Revivalist Church minister in Bendigo who had baptized me in front of a lot of babbling foreign languages, in a bath on a stage, in a dress (much to my surprise) so I could impress my new girlfriend who had just started speaking funny and when my ex-partner who I had been living within the bush for eight years left me the moment I (lazily) swept the lint (this was the last straw) from the kitchen floor just two feet outside the door started a similar business like mine, things started to go wrong.

To compete with this minister, I started advertising more and more in Bendigo, Ballarat Castlemaine etc. He kept undercutting me all the time and there was no way of competing. The advertising was part of the end. The other end was spending all the money I was making on my new 18-year-old girlfriend, and spending all my body as well. I was bankrupt. The reason I came to Melbourne with Francis.

The man behind the desk suggested I was small fry and it was no big deal that the world was full of deluded business people and it was his job to get us out of a tangle and give us a new start, to patch the guilt and say it’s ok you tried your best. No more businesses for five years and if I make any money give him some, please. When we were finished, he said goodbye, good luck and take this form to another Government department and it will be all over.

Skippidy doo daa down the stairs, I was free and still had both hands, just one more stop and it’s all over. The next building was: old, dusty and musty and showed that the Government is not going to spend a lot of money on making losers feel interior decorated. The people behind the counter were weighed down with earrings, leather jackets and hair. They looked like me in some ways, no ties no fuss; just sign on the end of the line and this page as well and again here and hope to never see you again.

Sally was to meet her friend (David Reyne) at the airport that night and fly to Bali together, adding to Francis’s unlimited jealousy (this undesirable trip was getting too close for comfort). The queues for Bali were long, long enough to hide a Russian spy, creeping along his row. Francis, hiding behind a pillar spotted him first and pointed him out to me and whispered ‘Russian Spy’. Surely Francis was wrong, he looked more like an American tourist going to America for the first time (oh! That is a Russian Spy). But he kept gesturing to me, maybe I need glasses? nowhere did I see KGB on any of his belongings. Francis seemed serious, is he kidding me? I have no idea! am I a big enough fool to believe him or was I controlled by a raging cynic, navigating me around all pregnant experience – ha maybe he was a spy. Surely, he wasn’t serious, no one could be that stoned and drive a car, could they?

We ended up leaving Sally waiting for her travelling companion. For one of us, the journey was well underway, within a few hours Sally and David would be in Bali being faithful to Francis enjoying a happy simple, fun-filled trip: pleasure, fun soaked and Cooter Beached. It was easy to imagine what they were doing; closer to home it was a blank mind and fearful heart. This close friend of mine was becoming more mysterious by the hour. With Sally gone I felt uneasy: she could look at my normal serious countenance and laugh at it with ease; fun face left me with Francis for three days.

So often I go places: on journeys as a bewildered passenger, with little knowledge of the captain and course. All my life I never understood why I was anywhere. My destiny was to trust these collective Captains that the universe was providing me, though with bent notions through characters way too bent to receive. I could never tell if they were aware of their instructions, knowing the plan? Or unconscious recipients of Godly synchronicity dancing an unknown dance, but somehow feeling the tidal rhythms of the cosmos.

Too many coincidences for coincidence, the dance went on for all sensitive enough to feel the vibrations. a fine line between heaven and earth, a thread of light joining the two, one not able to exist without the other but each one ignorant of each other’s identity. One day we will join both heaven and earth and see who we are for the first time; for now, though God’s fool was behind the wheel looking purposeful and full of intent. Our first stop from the airport was one of Francis’s girlfriends. We had the ceremonial smoke at the kitchen table where wave upon wave of consciousness changing paranoia carpeted me to the seat. I couldn’t breathe, my heart was racing my mind, there could be no winner; quick, get outside, get some fresh air, oh no I was losing or gaining consciousness. A large elm found me poorly and rested me in its limbs. This was an escape from confronting strangers stoned and the fresh air helped after a few dizzy minutes. I didn’t know what was happening to me I felt sick and scared vroomp vroomp my heart was pinging. The physical sensation of my racing heart brought me slowly back to reality. My mind was gone and I was unzipped like a coke can all the bubble and froth floating to the upper atmosphere. Francis seemed good-natured about my excursion into nature, but then again, all smokers are good-natured, aren’t they? This trip was one trip I didn’t think I would be taking on this trip. My look was friendly vacant as we bid goodbye to girlfriend two.

I had no idea or explanation of Francis’s behaviour or itinerary; I was left in a helpless bubble like a child; Francis my father? had me for weekend access. Our friendship was a bond that had me in the car with him in the first place, this invisible bond was no comfort now. Girlfriend three didn’t smoke and turned out to be Francis’s sister. We talked on the footpath surrounded by middle-class Melbourne and some trees. Still fresh from Warrnambool, salt spray instead of blood in my veins. Melbourne seemed big and by inference a terrible place. I asked big sister if she had been bush bashing lately? She had a pronounced sense of forgetfulness and amnesia, the country oh, I remember, no I have not been there for years, I must try it again soon. We were talking about two different Gods, mine was mother nature a celebration of God’s work, hers was father technology a celebration of men. This experience more than most had me thinking of peoples’ realities, living in an invisible bubble erected by our constant thoughts orbiting our brain with such wizardry we believe them to be real on one hand yet hardly ever aware of their existence.

One thought could hold power over our lives for a lifetime, we grow into it and become it, yet completely forget what it was. This experience was a prelude to my encounter that was coming up with Nikki and Marshal. A counterpoint of mind versus mindlessness. As we left Francis’s sisters for our destined meeting with a bush band, I realized I had been strengthened by this encounter in some way; because I was the observer and thinking about my encounter with her. I felt better because at least my mind was questioning itself.

The journey to the outer suburbs to meet Nikki was peaceful. I had survived my first 12 hours with Francis in the city. As usual, I had little foreplay by an explanation from Francis and again was to hold his hand and step through what appeared to be a dance hall door, but was a passage into another dimension, another world, one that was completely foreign to me. The room was being pumped full of bush music; the band happily sent out jigs to a meagre audience. I also played in a bush band with Francis: fiddle tunes and polkas felt very familiar and made me feel at ease. By the time we had crossed the dance floor to meet Francis’s true love, Nikki, I was full of happy countenance. Her smile in the introduction went straight to my heart, never had I encountered such an instant loving response, instantly I loved this woman, her inner beauty shined through her body, straight through her clothes and appeared as rays of light, piercing my inner darkness: illuminating my inner cavern for the first time. Joy was overcoming me; my whole being seemed to vibrate with hers. I was lost in time and space, which was to become a common experience, a sort of norm compared to found in space, where my mind still had its bearings.

This feeling of incredible joy, peace and love in the presence of an angel felt better than anything in my life previously. Even though I was falling in love with the woman this was a divine encounter, I had met God: appearing as a fairy-like creature, long black hair, pointy chin and thin. Sitting at a mixing desk, keeping the bush band in harmony. Memories become a little blurry as my mind was lost in this world of hearts, I have no clear recollection of how long it took for her love to fill my tank with high octane, low lead love drops. This was the beginning of what I was searching for all my life, it was Francis and many joints that had led me here to a place where drugs were like matchsticks in a bushfire. This was no momentary escape, I had arrived. It was only natural that I mistook this universal love for personal love and attraction, I was falling in love with the holder of the light, and the light itself. So easy to be attracted to a person who is so joyful and blissed out.

The spell was partly broken when Francis wanted to move on to another destination. He arranged with Nikki and her boyfriend to meet them at his house at Kangaroo Ground after they finished their gig. We both left the hall feeling good; Francis was in love with Nikki too. They had a fling two years ago and have stayed in touch since. When they split, Francis characteristically didn’t agree, he followed her to Mexico and caught her and a friend in skin contact on a beach. Ownership in relationships is a big problem for partners who are sold out. The scene outside the car was unfamiliar, endlessness, like a desert, everything coated with a sameness, corridors crossing more corridors with boxes filling in the spaces. While we were driving down them my mind was in Mexico trying to capture the expression on his face and the surprise at finding he was out to lunch, while Nikki was eating raw flesh.

Both scenes inside and outside the car had a lot in common: they didn’t seem the slightest bit real or possible. Once touched by God, humanity seems a little off-key, missing a few sharps, imperfection, all playing but no-one winning. Life was too absurd to contemplate without a higher force or intelligence to place on a pedestal above and out of the muck. At this moment my mind has a pleasant rambling relaxing feel like it’s me thinking not my mind, somehow, I had become the programmer, not the disc. Could this be heaven, a place where love conquers two million idle thoughts and erases memory with no un-delete. All this free space inside my head was the prelude to bliss. For once in my life, I had faith and didn’t have to rely on my mind planning everything to keep me from all those unforeseen unknowables in life. I’m not sure as usual how we got to Nikki’s and Marshall’s that night, but remember well the reception when we arrived.

The mud-brick house set on the side of a hill outside Eltham in the bush was a beautiful sight. No more endlessness, here the journey through corridors ended, this was nature and I love her dearly. Before moving to Warrnambool, I had lived near Castlemaine in a two-story house I had built out of second-hand bricks and timber. The house was on the edge of a 40′ deep dry creek on one side and surrounded by forest. It was hard leaving this place and moving to Killarney, a potato growing area 20 k’s out of Warrnambool to join a bush band. There were few trees, it was a green desert with a view of the ocean from the house.

Arriving at their house at night was expectant, the beautiful warm red-yellow glow from the windows contrasted with the deep dark bluey-green of the surrounding forest. Like a moth, I was attracted to the light this place was emitting. Pulled closer and closer by the desire for more of what these people had. I wanted some. Here were two people who had received the bounty of the universe: they were living in God’s love they were free of their obvious limitation, their humanity. The warm yellow glow leaking outside on our arrival was to symbolize the radiance of Marshall and Nikki. Marshall built the house out of mud brick and natural timber with large living areas divided by furniture and objects he has collected. This was a real house, not a box but a home made from friendly familiar unpasteurized materials. With this type of house, you think the bank manager had a hard day at the office trying to sell lifetime nooses for your everyday gooses. The Flexi teller machine has no menu for do it yourself. I had come to the city and found the bush, all this reminded me of life before Warrnambool, the Castlemaine days. I felt suddenly that Warrnambool had been more barren than I thought. That I had an affinity with the forest, somehow it represented life to me, a voice calling from the mist.

Michael Roades had changed my perceptions forever. He was an English pig farmer turned aboriginal who could talk about the dreaming in white fella talk. The recognition of nature being alive and intelligent like we are sometimes. Somehow the trees connect to a higher intelligence more capably than us two-legged folk, especially us white ones. The intelligence that is in all that is created and uncreated, must wonder why white skin means thick ears so often.

We seem to excel at cutting our source off at the knees. Once your eyes and heart are opened you are seeing changes. These silent sentinels with Whitely haircuts are speaking to us if you listen. As the forest felt warm and friendly so did Marshall and Nikki, the bush attracts its own kind and here we all were. Francis stayed for a short while and looked as if he was arranging my future, putting me in the hands of his friends. I needed a cure and they held it; with beaming faces like kids who had a very special secret hiding place and were offering to take me there.

Francis left me for the night and arranged to meet me at his brother’s (Ollie) hairdressers in South Yarra the next day. Had he already visited the hiding place before, or was he afraid that this place may hold untold mysteries that once known there would be no turning back? Either way, he left me with Marshall and Nikki to concentrate on solo. The three of us huddled up in the lounge room and bade goodbye to Francis as he was leaving this perfect place and setting forth out of the womb and out again into the faceless corridors, womb hunting. I didn’t mind being left it made me the centre of attention. Nikki and Marshall were happy and stayed happy because I was getting happy, off my face really. The night progressed as if charted by a glow chart.

Seven pm, 4 glows, midnight 85 glows, morning off the glow meter and facing father glow rising above the trees. Marshall was more pushy or conservative than Nikki; she was more a presence, saying you can be me too, Marshall was only recently converted to glowdom and was still pulsing off and on depending on his mind’s travels.

Nikki emitted a steady stream of peace, love, patience, bliss and most of all she was beautiful. By 3 am Marshall went to bed, either he was tired himself or was tired of selling his newfound stuff to me and retired. Nikki and I stayed up all night. She was embroidering a button while continuing to talk about how good it was. I would not know how much I had changed under her spell until I got on the train later in the morning. She told me the button was for a friend of hers and that the pictures she painted in cotton thread were intuitive portraits of people that had blown the glowmeter.

A badge of success and arrival, a joyful colourful symbol of knowing her and her goddess. The badge she was doing had transformed into a blue sky, stars, yellow moon and a silvery path in a dark blue ocean. Because of my readiness to accept what her heart was teaching me; my glow meter went off the end of the scale and she presented me “a Moon ruled Cancerian” with the badge and said that during the night it had become mine. There was no mistaking this as the most important possession I have ever had. Twelve years after it was made it still sits beside my bed in a carved wooden box with 2 or 3 other precious pieces, all reminders of a time in the light.

After 10 hours inside the warm red/yellow womb, it was refreshing when Nikki and I went outside to watch the Sunrise. The rays pierced the blue-green haze of the landscape before us in gentle spear-like rays of love. The early morning sun beamed down and touched me like Nikki had all night. Were these two beacons of light love and warmth related, they seemed to be made out of the same stuff, the essence of life, the ultimate driving force behind everything. Turning from this haze piercing light I looked at how it fell softly on Nikki’s pixie face: a mask of warmth, highlighting her eyes like a photographic spotlight. There was a homage expression, oblivious of my presence. I was witnessing a sacred ritual between my goddess and her source. This experience of worship was far distant from the constant drone of male robes and pulpit.

I had never felt good about the white man’s church all my life and now I knew why. Here the connection with the divine was one to one, no pompous intermediary, stuck acting the part, on a sin-stained aisle, holding back walls of doubt and uncertainty of practice. In a sideways glance I had crossed the border between darkness and light; a simple movement, one we can achieve easily, just turn sideways and there is a view of life hidden. Our fears protect us from experiencing this view too much. Ye old devil Saturn does urge us to construct barriers, preventing us from experiencing the uncertainty of the unknown universe and Saturn, also fears that once you merge with the whole universe you will lose touch with your important material world of identity and possessions. In the western world, Saturn rules comfortably over all the technological city structured environments which contrast greatly with our natural environment, where energies beyond Saturn reign supreme and beckon us to listen to their voice and experience their worlds.

The time had come to catch the train and head back into the city. Marshall had risen all chirpy and was happy to drive me to the station. It was early in the morning, the transition from Marshall and Nikki’s was quick and painless. Somehow during the long night, I learnt how to speak their language and hear their tune. A conversion had taken place in the bush just near Eltham. I had welcomed their teachings and now some 12 hours later I was to leave the womb and go whence I came, with a skip in my step, clarity in my eye and faith in my heart. After lots of hugging and beaming smiles, the train became the symbol of my new journey. The carriage had beautiful pressed metal everywhere and was occupied by me and a young couple. This was my first encounter with the other world and it appeared totally different. The actual volume of space in the carriage had increased fourfold just by looking at it with different perceptions. The young couple were probably only feet away yet appeared meters away, in their own space and their own world yet they sent loving vibes.

The sun shining thru the windows of the train had an extra luminous glow, permeating every corner of the carriage, Nikki’s love was following me in the form of light, a mystical ethereal light. From the moment Marshall had gone to bed and now, on my way into the city from Eltham I had been in a woman’s company, the peace and relaxation of sensitive understanding and mutual feelings were joyous compared to Francis’s mental confusion. I was musing at this loss, as the train of light softly and smoothly flew into the city to make a connection with Francis.

The mere thought of catching up with him was changing how I felt: the spell would weaken and lose its hold, each time I pictured the reunion with brother weed and the trip back to Warrnambool. Arriving at Flinders St. Station my perception of Melbourne had totally changed, no longer was I concentrating on the negative, the light which followed me from Eltham gave a golden yellow wash over everyone and everything, nothing was left untransformed. I could see the light from heaven shining down on everyone, that they did not notice, which made no difference to the beauty of the scene. A remarkable change had taken place in a major way. I felt more confident and together. There is no way I could ever be the same again. With so much talk of personal change, transformation and growth in our daily literature I was now living and breathing these words; feelings had replaced concepts and possible future events, I was in the now, which, was in me and it is a miraculous thing that God can rupture your ways and open your mind through another. It is the way of God to greet you through another just like electricity saturates water infinitely; so does God transmit to the wary.

Uncomplicated feelings and perceptions. By opening myself to the love from Marshall and Nikki a crack appeared in my Saturnian armour and fear quietly slipped out. To rid me of 30 years of community and family behaviour, I was suddenly cured, and able to see the world through fresh eyes, eyes, that led straight to my heart which led to…… This is the greatest turning point for anyone, which is to feel yourself without any encumbrances. To know the freedom of an unpolluted mind, a septic tank, sucked dry to reveal the shining inner chamber. At no stage in my life have I felt more native and connected to all the beautiful natural energies around us, blue sky, shining sun, wafts of air laden oxygen and perfumed molecules floating past the very end of my nostrils. This is it; the meaning of life is none, no ideas, no thoughts, no shit, no fear, no schedule, no money, no walls, no city, nothing. As all internal matter flows out so does the voice of nature and the universe flow in. All living energy is perched, waiting to be received, all we need to do, is to welcome these spirits of natural sources into our internal abode to take residence.

The train to South Yarra was more modern than Eltham’s pressed metal rattler, with more people and more silence. The elevator effect was in full force until I got off at the wrong station with a lady in her 60s, she was travelling to Prahan and got off one too early and I was off one too late, my reverie of past hours mixed with silent elevator atmosphere had taken me to a different destination. This lady and I met on the platform both at Toorak Station and instantly decided to combine both our mistakes into a shared solution. Let’s share a taxi and get to South Yarra? no! we decided that was not the answer, we could wait for the next train together because now we were kindred souls brought together by our untogether. We walked back down into the station from the taxi rank and found a large wooden seat near the edge of the railway line. She looked at me with faraway close to you eyes, and I replied with something similar. The first words spoken were about the embroided broach I was proudly wearing, of the Moon over the sea that Nikki gave me. It was like a boy scout badge saying I had passed bubs in spiritual experiences; look everyone I am a graduate. This friendly lady’s soul disappeared inside my broach into the image of the sea and moon taking her into the past; when she had a house by the sea with the same scene from her bedroom window every moonlit month.

I could see her going back. Somehow the past was more than a distant memory of a past life it was as though she was remembering a dimension of life sliced from her memory by some cataclysmal experience: an experience that somehow I was part of right now. I stared, wondering if the same fate was coming my way. Will I? because of my past, change the future, will my ship change course and lose my bearings. The far distant shore behind me merging into the sea spray. Family and childhood disappearing over the horizon. Funny to think that we are both strangers sitting on a bench at Toorak station, but our minds were taking us somewhere else. The sea and moon beckoned us and we were being pulled into the picture, leaving me to ponder what was the most powerful reality? The physical world or the realm of mental imagination.

The next train to South Yarra arrived; we sat together in a crowded carriage that had an overall blue theme, blue suits, blue seats, blue faces. I was back in a bubble, like before on the way to the city but this time my lady friend was in it with me. We were more yellow. Our conversation became animated as we rocked along. We talked about many forgotten things, and I could not stop thinking about how everyone else in the carriage seemed dead. Blue for dead yellow for alive. The more animated we became the harder it was to detect any life or movement from the other people in the carriage. They were working so hard at being strangers. There was great comfort in being yellow not blue, why couldn’t we all be participating in our reverie and sharing the wonders of life together instead of committing life to the dustbin, maybe the day was already programmed blue; even before getting out of bed and yellow would only come about by accidental interaction with a spontaneous stranger but not before noon thank you.

I was more interested by now in my confident and joyous conversation in the blue train than what we were actually talking about, I think our lips moved? The journey from Toorak to South Yarra was quick because we were enjoying each other and slow because we were in a time warp. We managed to recognize the stop and departed from the train together. Walking towards Toorak road my lady friend asked me if I was coming with her? All hell broke loose in my mind, I felt confronted. My first Libran experience, will I go with her? wherever that was. Did she mean to continue this mental/ spiritual journey to its ultimate end quickly, or home for tea and scones? I freaked out, this question left me rooted to the ground, as if I was being asked to let go of everything, Francis, Warrnambool, Pamela, and take a giant leap of faith. My mind was happy, it was back in total control, indecision was its fuel, panic its slave and fear the engine. No, I am sorry, I said I would meet Francis at 3.30 at Zimmer’s Hair Salon, sorry I can’t meet my destiny right now I have an appointment with Francis instead. My new-found friend I met in the moon shining over the sea, bade me farewell and took off on her way as if she was happily meeting her maker, like me at 3.30: did she have a Francis in her life too? Waving goodbye, no exchanged phone numbers or addresses, just a look to say we will meet again, even if she isn’t herself next time.

Walking happily hurriedly towards my familiar past, I knew I had lost in this parting and would, someday, have to meet the same intersection in life again, but that was okay it wasn’t now, and right now, Familiar Francis, was looking good.

Francis’s brother Michael (Ollie) worked at Zimmers, a rather trendy Toorak hair salon. It was the first time for me and even though I knew Mick, I felt very uncomfortable in body beautiful, especially after a night in the hills of Eltham communing heart to heart. Here I was hairdo to hairdo, with a Goddess inside the door to greet me. I knew I had been enlightened this past night because I managed to squeak out the name Francis before I was completely beauty dumbstruck.

I was early, so Mick with a wave of silver pointed scissors pointed to the back room where reality waited silently in the wings. While beauty born of hope gave birth to temporary youth and the fountain of life was resurrected. Before windswept pillows and restless dreams undid the magic web of spray and gossamer illusions. After some time Mick came out to see me with a friendly greeting to say obviously Francis was not here, and it has been a while since we looked into each other’s eyes with a familiar love.

Francis finally arrived to rescue me from this intense and scary encounter. I was becoming too aware of the craziness of having to match my headspace with the rest of the world. There was so much love and peace in Eltham where had it all gone? These feelings have never left me in all this time. When will someone bring me down and take my soul for a joy ride? I need a cave, somewhere where I can call my feelings my own. There is so much talk about pollution, what about my mind? It has been a receptacle for environmental trash since sliding down that dark and slimy. unknown corridor into life. My mother was not an artist, she created me from her naive palette, a tidy neat attempt at colonial realism, here I am trapped and glazed over and trying to free myself from a forgery and furtively whip this tired canvas into my own infinite creation.

Nikki had scraped through this tired replica and exposed the clean canvas underneath, trying to escape to the surface. For a start I needed much more colour; quickly…. paint over this tired Hollywood realism….. broaden the canvas….. stretch it to breaking point and tip buckets of colour; flowing and merging right off the edge. Movement, release, I can see the picture transforming. No more hard-edged restrictions; letting my nose find its own borderline. I am now my own artist and my life will be my painting. I yell as the last parts of my mother’s image disappear and die under the waterfall of colour.

The car is heading westward over Westgate Bridge to the Western District I am quietly wondering if Francis actually recognizes me anymore, after all, in his absence I had switched paintings. With this thought in mind, I was able to smile again and feel less threatened about my new state of psychological undress and address Francis with the notion of well I had a good time how about you? The relaxed chit chat was a salve to my fragile nerves, I was free of my first real encounter in the world after leaving it and the escape, although it was a partial retreat: unfortunately, I needed lots of time to unlock the puzzle of life in the soul zone.

After getting home my life was entangled again in personal relationships. Pamela was happy to see me but I felt the same confusion about how to love and be loved by another. Oh my God! this will follow me to my grave. How could I tell Pamela what had happened when words couldn’t stand upright in my own thoughts? I settled back into life but would never stop thinking about Nikki…… a dream across the oceans; the same as any woman would feel with their husband in the trenches. A beautiful woman and a God merged into one glowing sphere of longing would carry my thoughts to the sandman every night. One year later we would meet again and have a relationship of moons apart and she took me to Satsang. This Indian spiritual gathering would gather at night and new souls would sit and face everyone and talk about their experiences and they all were like Nikki and they blew my bliss meter off the scale. Their words were not words but some kind of alphabetic drug that could mist from their mouth to my mind. I met a leader of the group this night and she asked me if I was ready and I said yes and then we left.

The next night we went to a party in the city and I was challenged to understand what was happening. I had no idea why I felt like I was the centre of attention and would be amazed at the feelings and impressions I would get from someone’s gaze and would often feel I could hear their thoughts. During the night I felt alright but my mind gave way to fears and worries and confusion which meant I took flight. I ran. I was scared because everyone was the same as Nikki and the energy was too powerful for even my ready heart – like being in a room with 100 Mandela’s. I ended up escaping and was alone and slept in my car and the next day went back to get my shoes but I couldn’t find the house. I spent days in Carlton lost between worlds, caught in a fracture of reality and timelessness.

I would eventually return to Warrnambool completely transformed but never again able to function as me. This quite normal spiritual experience with Nikki and her Indian meditation group had unlocked more than usual and I was unable to control what was happening and they left me to find my feet or drown as there was absolutely nothing they could do. Many Buddhist Monks walk a lonely road in search of or to hang onto enlightenment and the day I left Melbourne after the second round of a spiritual metamorphosis I have been a monk. Walking the road and at the same time driving every woman I meet along the way a bit crazy, coz they never really ever knew who I was and I should never have stopped.

Talk about scizo reading signs; the TV is talking to me. Electronics with a mind of their own. One night I sat and watched the full moon for hours and felt incredibly ‘normal’ then as I slept, I woke up to a chanting ranting world and have felt incredibly alone ever since – will it be like this to the end? Yes! unless I go back to where it all started and ask what really happened to my mind?

Many months later I walked the back roads of Warrnambool through town to an isolated beach surrounded by farms. A place where I had an acid trip years earlier when my mate Peter sent me some LSD from England. It was a necessary escape from the maddening world of people. It is only now in my sixties I have met myself on a page that I call my best friend. A conundrum every day. Someone wants something from you and you feel unable to give it. This whole story is about one and one makes one. Whether I am one with everyone and feel like the world is my home and everyone in it my family — but still alone within the script that keeps writing anew every day until I don’t know what to say anymore.

Like excuse me can you tell me the way to nirvana? Did Plato really have the full handle on everything? Ummm, please, do you know how to be happy? Tell me… how did you manage to manage yourself into this current state of being? Oh shut up keep drinking, have another smoke, go root some Sheila, get a life mate. Not a good idea, sorry I don’t know the way, haha, never did and never will. As a boy, I was blinded by the Sun as I watched my brother Bill kick another speedy goal between the posts.

It was a warm night and the stars were as beautiful as always. I felt wonderful the moment I left the town borders and entered natures gateway. I did meet a farmer as I was walking and I said hello and he motioned to grab me so I ran and ran until I couldn’t see him anymore and that brought me close to the sand dunes and the beach. I walked over the dunes and onto the sandy shore and saw a cathedral of stars and waves. The stars were touchable and my hand played with them like fireflies. The ocean sounds changed from a crashing roaring sound to a haunting chorus of mother nature singing her cosmic song – like the sound of a whale.

The beauty in the cathedral was alive and living and breathing and it became more beautiful just for me like any artistic symphony was meant to impress with its virtuosity: more dazzling, more energy.  Often changing to a Miles Davis Jazz tune when the whole scene undid it itself from reality and came out to play. There was another moment in Melbourne when my thoughts and my eyes were one, but this was so more beautiful and I will never forget this one magical hour when nature and I whoever I am, were happy knowing that our atoms have a soul and matter only prevents their play if the mind is weak and play we did. This is not an exclusive experience as the many religions of the world will speak of the Dreaming, the Dharma, the Christ but it is hard to know how to teach someone to let their atoms go free.

This symphony of atomic bliss cleaved my reality, so, with some fear and confusion I started the 10 km walk back into Warrnambool: following the moonlight in the spent waves gliding up the sand. The Moon pipered me all the way back to Penguin Island which was only meters away from the main surf beach. I crossed over the road and walked to the Surf Club and saw a couple of people walking like me: it was around 11 pm. The same as leaving Nikki’s months earlier I felt the cold transition from spirit to human slowly take over and capture my thoughts. I walked into the main street, passed pubs with drunken ghosts falling and stumbling out of the doors, speaking in tongues and looking like evil spirits. I kept walking and walking and continue to walk like Forest Gump because my heart and soul are fragile and cannot bear to be human again.

Roditch March 2022