The further adventures of SHELLEY, the Travelling Patchwork Tarot Deck

Day 3.5: Even quieter, and no photos. Shelley has been slumbering in her pretty patchwork sleeping-bag. I haven't left the house, and now it doesn't look as if I will. Tomorrow I'll be going to work with Shelley again, and I plan to pick up groceries afterwards, so perhaps I'll photograph her in interesting places (carparks, fruit and veg stands etc). Who knows what tomorrow could bring? Perhaps I'll even take her out for a coffee and muffin, as I once took out Frankie.

Day 4.5: Well, we had another quiet one. We went to work and Shelley was at the ready, but all the customers seemed to want to be down at the waterside markets rather than up in the bookshop, so she and I did no readings. Eventually Melissa and I got jack of a boring and unprofitable day, so we shut up early, I drove her home, then I went and picked up my groceries as promised.

I suffer from chronic Shopping Centre Rage (I suppose Americans would call that Mall Rage), so I took no photos until right at the very end. I decided to hark back to my daughter's childhood when one of my exes would buy a caramel-malted milkshake, (I should have known I was being psychic at the time - more on that later) so I had once of those which I shared with Shelley (photo 1). The rest of the time she hid from my Shopping Centre Rage in my handbag in the shopping trolley (photo 2).

Day 5.5: Today was much more enjoyable than yesterday. I was always going to go to Pagans in the Park at Budgewoi (I'm a regular), so that's how we started the day. I briefly considered de-hairing the dog-infested carpet before I left - then decided that almost anything was better for the soul than doing housework, and so left the added layer of insulation undisturbed on the carpet <grin>.

I was the first person to arrive at Pagans in the Park this morning - to find that non-Pagans had nicked our usual bench with its handy poles for attaching our Pagan banner. I had my beloved tongue-drum with me, and I was tinkling idly away on it when a delightful person introduced herself: the fabled Kerrie Edwards, co-founder of PitP, whose last attendance before her very personal struggle became outstandingly difficult was my very first attendance.

Of course, I lost no time introducing her to Shelley, and she got stuck in before anyone else turned up (photos 3-6).

Shelley enjoyed the feast - Pagans really know how to do food. I remember there being much more than this - I must have snapped this before everyone turned up (photo 7).

A gaggle of witches: Jenn, Nichole and George (photo 8).

Kerrie and Shelley *really* liked each other! (photo 9) And even Jenn-Jenn could scarcely stand to turn her back for an instant. (photo 10)

Jenn wanted to pose by the banner so that you could all see that witches really do exist (photo 11).

And what's this - Kerrie grabbing Shelley again? (photo 12).

Every so often people bring along interesting finds to show (like Shelley and my tongue-drum) or Paganny things to give away: Nichole had a book on dreams and someone else had a statuette of Kali, an interesting marriage (photo 13).

I ... sorta ... <blush> forgot about my camera for the rest of the time: a number of people handled and loved Shelley, we ate and drank and talked about devotional work in our day-to-day lives, and laughed and had fun. Nichole's little son let me share his Maccas meal-toys, and hammered tunelessly on my tongue-drum, which I didn't discourage.

Just when it was getting interesting (and my bladder was getting full and dreading the festy public toilets there), my daughter texted me and asked me to pick her up from the train station at a certain time. I had to leave soon. So when Bob finished talking about his devotional acts (symbolic self-tattoos), I hogged the stage, and pointed out that when a lapsed-non-smoker goes outside to ... er ... (yes, that's right) *smudge* their lungs, watching the leaves of the trees and the clouds in the daylit wind is an act of devotion, and looking at the night-time Moon and the constellation of Orion (who to me is always the Dark Hunter godform) is also an act of devotion. Thus I elaborately justify my favourite addiction <grin>. Suiting my actions to my words I lit up and fled, got home, rendered my nether regions more tolerable in the comfort of my own bathroom, and was just about to take off for the train station (the same one you came in on, Lutestring) when I received a text from da kid again, telling me not to bother.

And I'd left my much-loved monthly celebration for her! <muttermutter>.

There was a consolation prize, though. I'd just finished smudging my lungs again and hidden the evidence when my daughter's friend's car turned up in the driveway. Flick waved goodbye and left us together. My girl booked me for tomorrow morning to take her to the station to leave town again, and asked me to drive her down to her very best friend's house. I said that I'd do it for a bribe: a coffee with them in a cafe (sadly, Mojo's was closed so we had to resort to Costas, and the coffee was awful until I put suger in it).

This particular buddy of my daughter's is both my second daughter (predicated on the fact that throughout their childhoods, I either had two little girls in the house or none), and my Birthday Sister, as we were both born on the Most Spectacular Day of the Year. Strangely, we never seem to forget each other's birthday. It's kinda odd to be someone's second mother *and* their sister. Odd, but nice.

Kez, my blood-daughter, went in to order our coffees, and I lost no time telling Hayley, my birthday-sister, the story of Shelley and introducing them (photo 14).

Kez came back, and the two of them posed with Shelley. My own daughter is the Eurasian one: my second daughter / birthday sister is the Ditsy Blonde (photo 15).

Shelley took a good spoonful of my soy-capuccino froth, before casting her greedy eyes on the girls' hot chocolates (photo 16).

And *this* is what happens every time I try to get a decent portrait-shot of my daughter! <laughter> (photo 17)

Thereafter, the three girls played happily together (photos 18-21).

 

 

I can only get a decent shot of my daughter by catching her unawares (photo 22), but Hayley is much more compliant and will pose for me (photo 2).

Thereafter, there was more Tarot-play between the three girls (photos 23 & 24).

 

I had no excuse for taking these snaps, aside from the fact that I love the subjects dearly (photos 25 & 26).

At last the girls waved goodbye, and wandered off to Hayley's home where Kez is spending the night before utilising me as a chauffeur tomorrow morning, and I came home. Despite all the caffeine, Shelley was exhausted, and crashed out beside the laptop as I started diarising these last two days (photo 27). She is still in the same position (hasn't even rolled over in her sleep), so I *know* she's tired. The night is offering me a fantastic light-show of distant sheet-lightning, but Shelley simply cannot be roused to enjoy it with me.

And here's how I know Kez has accepted the roof-cleaner as family despite not knowing him nearly as well as I do: she picked up his beanie when she first arrived, and casually hung it on one of the horns of the cow-skull that he hung up on the wall. Looks rather stylish!  (photo 28).

I must have nudged Shelley, because she woke, and sleepily asked if she could be included. So I investigated the skull and hung her, in her sleeping-bag, from the skull's nasal sinuses (photos 29-31).

No bones were harmed in the taking of these snapshots.

Tomorrow: nothing planned during the day, but I will take Shelley to the meditation group in the evening. Expect me to journal more! 

SHELLEY part II - the adventure continues

Day 2.5 of Shelley's time in my household.

Shelley and I had a fairly quiet one. Again I took her to work. Picture 1 is her first reading for a paying client. I said pretty much what you'd expect me to say, given the cards in front of me, and the client was happy. She also loved hearing Shelley's story.

Photo 2 is my tongue-drum, paid-for by that client (thank you very much). I brought home the drum with much excitement, and the dog that had sniffed Shelley was greatly intrigued by this new and different sound in the house.

Day 3.5 has been even quieter, and I took no photos. Shelley has been slumbering in her pretty patchwork sleeping-bag. I haven't left the house, and now it doesn't look as if I will. Tomorrow I'll be going to work with Shelley again, and I plan to pick up groceries afterwards, so perhaps I'll photograph her in interesting places (carparks, fruit and veg stands etc). Who knows what tomorrow could bring? Perhaps I'll even take her out for a coffee and muffin, as I once took out Frankie.

The Travels of Shelley, Bride of Frankendecken - part 1

Some time ago, I hosted a Travelling Tarot deck called the Frankendecken (or Frankie), who was cobbled together, Frankenstein-style, out of spare parts and given a life of his own. Well, he was lonely, so we created another patchwork deck as a bride for him, named Shelley after Mary Shelley.

The story of her stay with me starts here.


Well here we go - Lutestring's last part-day with Shelley and my first part-day.

I met them both at Tuggerah train station, which from Sydney was easiest for everyone, and Shelley sat demurely in Lutestring's luggage as I threw them both into the Incredible Hulk (a rusting car I'm currently driving) and raced off to Mojo's Cafe at The Entrance. Mojos is blessed with delicious coffee, a good menu, and Bianca, my Pet Waitress. The shape of my life has changed in recent months, and now, far from ending up there a couple of times a week as a matter of course, I have to make a real effort to get there. Shelley was the perfect excuse. The Pet Waitress not only remembered me but remembered my subspecies of coffee, and welcomed both of my guests.

Shelley was very hungry after her journey, so I ordered her two meals, the John Dory off the specials board and the Mediterranean salad, a main course in itself, and she scoffed the lot whilst Lutestring and I looked on ravenously and sipped our drinks (Photo 1).

Lutestring had brought along a few decks for me to salivate over, and the Glastonbury flaunted its stuff whilst Shelley knocked back the food (photo 2). I begged Lutestring to pose for the camera, so she showed me her best side (photo 3).

This is a seaside town, and there is a lighthouse that lives on the cafe's windowsill (I have a regular table in one of the windows that is magically vacant for me every time I turn up, and which didn't disappoint this time), and after a few years of sitting with the lighthouse it finally consented to be photographed ... (photo 4) ...

... but Shelley was immediately jealous, and leapt between the lighthouse and the camera (photo 5). Then the Pet Waitress came over and had a look (photo 6), and consented to pose with Shelley (photo 7). Later over lunch, we introduced Shelley to Son-of-Frankie, a clone of the original travelling patchwork deck, and they chatted companionably for a few minutes, but didn't get naked as the original Frankie insisted on doing around the Anna K when he arrived at mine all that time ago (photo 8). Perhaps he is more coy around stepmothers than around buxom female strangers.

Afterwards, when I asked the usual screening question designed to find out if she would run screaming into the street if I let her into the house, it seemed as if Lutestring wouldn't be *too* horrified, so warning her about the many natural hazards in the subdivided shoebox that I am pleased to call home, I dragged her back there. I took no photos as she poked around among my collection and fell in love with the Herbal Tarot and the Whispering Tarot, nor did I take photos as I failed to interest her in my single roof-cleaning flatmate who might just have clambered all over her roof once before (professionally, not as a burglar, I hasten to add). Instead, I made my very first comment on this journal thread as she sat there, salivating.

I *could* have dumped her, later, at the train station, but something made me offer to drive her home, so we piled into the Incredible Hulk again and headed off to what my flatmate (talked-to on the phone) remembered as a "crumbling mansion", a rather romantic description from someone who, like me, loves eccentric things.

To me, Lutestring's house wasn't so much a "crumbling mansion" as a veritable Aladdin's Cave (or perhaps an Aladdin's cave-system). Rooms led romantically into other rooms full of wonderful ancestral and flea-market artifacts. Tarot decks, her handmade Tarot bags (all gorgeous) and fabric for making more bags were everywhere. I was given a cup of the nicest mint-tea that I'd had in ... oh ... ages.

And then I climbed into the Incredible Hulk and drove home again, a happy girl.

Thus endeth day 0.5.

My second day (or perhaps, my one and a halfeth day) with Shelley is ending as I sit here journalling. It started with my taking her to where I read Tarot, after promising myself that I would bring no other decks to read for clients with all week, only Shelley. (I couldn't quite divorce myself from the habit of having the Granny Jones and the SOL riding silently in my handbag, though). Here is Shelley in the morning, on my reading table (Photo 9).

And here she is on my little Altar at work (actually, just a glamorous way of concealing some *very* messy storage shelves) (photo 10). She got comfortable in my space (photo 11).

Then she suddenly realised just *where* she was: the Bookworm Kafe, a second-hand bookshop, and realised *who* was her host for the week (an addicted book-buyer), so she showed her Devil card in front of one of my addictions to indicate that there are financial dangers inherent in letting my addictions run rampant (photo 12).

I told her I was an Earth sign, so she threw a card in amongst my work-collection of stones (photo 13). We had just about exhausted the possibilities of my reading-room without a client, so I brought her out to the front counter (photo 14) and showed her to Melissa and her friend (photo 15). Melissa seemed quite taken with her (photo 16).

The two girls had some up-close-and-personal time together ...

... and Melissa discovered a card-back which she wants as a future tattoo, so I photographed it for her (photo 17). But to give Miss M her due, she liked some of the card-fronts, too (photos 18 & 19).

And despite the glamour of the proper cards, we cannot forget my gift of the title card, shown front-on here (photo 20) courtesy of the MRP people, who sent me a signed one with a replacement card ...

... and its reverse, which the previous hosts of Shelley have been kind enough to sign (photo 21). Sadly, I suspect that a Mary Greer signature trumps a Karen Mahony signature slightly - I was briefly tempted to swap them, but womanfully resisted. Notice the little, demure Nisaba-signature, so typical of my shy, self-effacing persona which Lutestring assures me is common to both AT and the "real world" whatever that is.

Then Lynne from the local library turned up, with a lovely thank-you card for me, for doing a Tarot presentation at the library a few weeks ago. "What's that about?" Shelley asked (photo 22).

"Well," I told her, "Some people are still backward enough not to know about Tarot, and the library was casting about to engage with the community a bit more, so Lynne rocked on down here some time ago and invited me to speak. The story is here, Shelley."

"But I don't have fingers," Shelley whined, "and in any case you're hogging the laptop."

"Later, later," I told her, and changed the subject.

I did this by walking her a few shops down the road to our local new-age shop, "Avalon by Nature", run by the lovely Jo (photo 23). Shelley was impressed by some of her crystals (photo 24) but I refused to listen to her shrill little voice trying to persuade me to buy them.

Jo spent some time with Shelley too (photos 25-27) and pulled a card for herself, the Magician (photo 28).

Jo then shocked me profoundly by holding a rather ... er ... phallic crystal cluster up with the King Pentacles. Really, I didn't know where to look! (photo 29) And Shelley was mortified, too. I coped with that by running away from Jo, to a shop between our two very fine establishments, called the Happiness Hut. They sell colourful, useless things. For over a decade (casually) and a few weeks (seriously) I've been looking for a tongue-drum, and the boys there found me one.

So I photographed Shelley there on a blue chair with an almost Three Swords type cushion, drumming on my tongue-drum with a banana in lieu of drumsticks, but in retrospect, after the previous snap, this too looks a little rude (photo 30).

After I went home, Shelley and I took my roof-cleaning flatmate's dog for a run in the park, and she investigated Shelley as thoroughly as possible without involving saliva (I was growling menacingly) (photos 31 & 32).

It is, of course, Wednesday, and Wednesdays I always go to the local club, to down some chips'n'gravy with my Wednesday Friend, and watch her knocking back the moselle-and-limes. For some reason she was dry for the first time ever tonight, so I couldn't use her as an excuse to give Shelley a sternly maternal lecture about the evils of mixing wine with cordial (photos 33 & 34).

<whispering> I can hear thin, papery snoring from somewhere behind me, so obviously I exhausted her, and she has crashed out after her thrill-filled first full day with me. I should creep off to bed myself, and refresh myself for some more adventures tomorrow.

My tentative schedule with Shelley includes a few things: Pagans in the Park at Budgewoi on Sunday, the meditation group on Monday night, and quite possibly a trip without me in the evil clutches of a certain roof-cleaner to a public ritual on the weekend. But who knows what will happen? <airy wave>. After all, the world - or at least the Central Coast - is the mollusc-of-our-choice!

Sense of Loss

We talk about loss as something we need to grapple with when we lose other people, money, family relationships, a car or home perhaps. But we rarely, if ever, talk about losing a crucial part of ourselves. It seems that collectively, as a society, we only own (and therefore can only lose) things that are external to ourselves. Even our own bodies are somehow external - losing an arm or a leg or a breast is serious, but ultimately we learn to live with it.

But what happens when our loss is internal, is crucial to whom we are on the inside?

I had a neurological incident  a while back. Sorry - that is my best estimate for time. As it is only February I am certain it wasn't this year - it might have been early last year, or any time the year before that or even the previous year. It's hard to tell - as the Australian poet Kenneth Slessor says, time flows like a hundred yachts, and I was never good at keeping count, even before the incident. I have a deep suspicion of time as our society sees it, as a linear phenomenon running in a straight line from the past through the present to the future - I've never found that perception of time to be credible.

I took my daughter out for dinner on the day in question. We went to the local club, a short walk around the corner from home. We ate roast animal and veggies, and talked, and laughed. As I haven't been a big drinker in many years, the strongest drink I would have taken was orange juice, but more likely I was on water that night, I usually am. The plan was to have a coffee and dessert in the club's coffee bar afterwards, as they do wonderful soy capucchinos. We never got there.

With the remnants of our meal scattered all over the table in front of us, I became aware that I couldn't reply to something she said, then almost immediately became aware that I couldn't move at all. Then my hearing faded. I made a huge effort to move, and found I couldn't. I made a huge effort even to move my eyes in my sockets or refocus them, and found I couldn't even manage minor movements like that. By the time my daughter noticed something wrong, probably only a few seconds later, I was already deaf, but I could see her mouth the words "Are you all right" to me. I wasn't, but I couldn't tell her. She came around to my side, and put an arm around me as a sign of her concern - I couldn't respond to even that simple gesture. She said something else - I didn't know what it was.

After what seemed like a long time of us sitting together like that, my hearing gradually faded back in. Then  was able to move enough to be able to move my eyes. Then after a while I could talk again, but I could hear that my voice sounded funny - not slurred, but nothing like it usually sounds. Talking was also very difficult. I let some more time pass, then attempted to stand up. I could manage it - just. We decided to walk home - home was very close - and ring an ambulance when we got there.

Walking was -er- interesting. I stumbled a lot. I was not unaware that I was leaving a venue that featured alcohol, and I felt shamed, I felt as if stumbling all the time and requiring my daughter's support to walk was a bad look, and would make me look like a drunk even though I was stone-sold-sober. On the way home I kept tripping up over my own feet, I stumbled over a kerb and collided with a telegraph pole that I could see perfectly well but somehow couldn't avoid.

Because one of my brothers had not long had a triple bypass at the time, my daughter was terrified  that I was going the same way, having some kind of a heart attack. She pulled out her mobile and rang for an ambulance as we approached the house, and mentioned my brother's heart attack to them, leaving me to open the door.

Automatically, I put my hand in the left pocket of my jeans and pulled out my keyring while she talked. I knew the keyring was how to get into the house, and I knew the little hole in the door was a part of it, too. But what should I do? The string of brown wooden no-worries-beads on the keyring? The leather bookcrossing tab? the Ferryman (St Christopher) medal? the Wombat thingie? One of those funny metal things? Which one? and what to do? I had no idea.

She finished talking and grabbed my keyring off me with an exclamation of frustrated contempt. Somehow, she identified the correct thing, put it in the hole, and worked the difficult magic of getting the door open. I was suddenly terribly thirsty and I begged for water, but she'd had her instructions and told me no water, and I was to lie down. Instead of going to bed I insisted on lying down on the lounge - even ill, my bedroom is too private to bring strangers into. She settled for that.

We waited. I started feeling more normal. The paramedics arrived. They had a box with them, and taped some thingies on my torso to listen to my heart. The box said my heart was fine, but they strongly counselled me to take a ride to hospital anyway, and get properly checked out. As they carried me out I could see my daughter sitting on the front doorstep, waving goodbye to me in the back of the ambulance, and looking remarkably composed. Later I found out that she'd fed the cat, then gone around to a friend's place.

During the fairly long drive I tried to make conversation with the guy riding in the back with me, but it seemed to require a lot of concentration. I told him I had a friend who nursed at the hospital he was taking me to, and told him her name. It didn't mean anything to him. I described her. I'm pretty sure I would have said she was a tall, willowy, pale redhead (because she was), but when we got there he pointed out a short, fat, dark-skinned, dark-haired woman! This was when I started getting a clue that what was coming out of my mouth wasn't what was coming out of my mind.

I was left to wait for a long time, which is fair enough. I asked for my nursing friend by name to one of the other nurses, who checked the roster and told me she'd be starting at seven the coming morning. Good, I thought, a friendly face in amongst a sea of strangers. After a long time a doctor attended, who looked as if she was barely in high school yet. She seemed very nervous and unsure of herself, was didn't exactly inspire me with confidence. She looked at the notes written up by the paramedics and added to by the nurses, and hooked me up to a heart monitor. She refused to listen to my saying I'd had no chest pain or pain of any kind, I'd just lost connection with and control of my body and I thought it might be something else. Nope, someone else had mentioned "heart" on the notes because my teenager had mentioned in the phone call, so they weren't going to look for anything else.


Obviously my teenager is the best disgnostician that was available that night.

The machine counted my nice, strong, heralthy heartbeats for hours, during which time I begged for tea and water, and was denied both. Someone eventually gave me some ice cubes in a cup to suck on to moisten my mouth, and as soon as he wasn't looking, I swallowed them whole. What the hell - they would melt down into liquid, and I needed liquid.

Not long before dawn they decided I was perfectly fine, and told me kindly that "I was probably just a bit stressed", which I believe is Medicalese for being an attention-seeking hypochondriac. I was told I was free to go. I asked if I could stay until seven - I wanted to see my friend badly, now. They grudingly said yes, so I texted her and told her I was there. She came a few minutes before handover, came straight to the bed I was in, and gave me a hug. It was the most healing thing that had happened to me all that night, in that "place of healing".

She also told me one of her daughters was outside with a car, to make sure I got home okay. She then went to the shift handover briefing, and afterwards came back to me. She had time to walk me out to the carpark which was a mercy - the state my head was in I didn't even recognise her daughter's face, let alone the car. The daughter made sure I got home safely. I was a bit worried when there was no answer after I knocked on the door - my own daughter had gone to school and left the place locked securely, and I was still smarting from the embarrassment of being unable to use my keys. I pulled them out and tried, and this time I seemed able to work out which key to use, and what to do with it.

Hooray! I was on the mend!

But ... my usual cup of weak tea with soymilk smelled like a mechanic's workshop. Mandarin segments smelled like a fishmonger's. Urine smelled like hot roast chicken. I couldn't hold a thought in my head. I could drive perfectly well, but I couldn't navigate (and to this day, when I drive, the roads I know look perfectly familiar, but I have no idea whether a stated place is ahead of me or behind me until I see it). Something fundamental in my inside-world was very, very wrong, and still is.

A day or two later I went in to make an appointment with my doctor. Unfortunately her surgery is fairly busy, and I had to wait for a fortnight to see her. I told her everything, and she started thinking immediately in terms of a stroke or something, and wondered aloud why the hospital doctor didn't. She wouldn't have wondered if she'd seen how nervous the girl had been, and how unsure of herself - she was always going to go with whatever was in the notes. She made a phone call to a neurologist who was usually booked out for months, and managed to get me an appointment the following day. She also prescribed an anti-depressant, on the basis that this particular one tended to help people think more clearly - I was complaining that the inside of my head was like a permenant heavy fog on a familiar road: you know where the bends and all the other familiar detail are, you just can't see them at all.

The neurologist did all sorts of things: a CT scan, an MRI scan, another MRI scan slicing the brain up into much thinner slices, a holter monitor, everything she could thing of. She saw nothing. On my last two appointments with her, she also gently and kindly suggested that I might be "just a little bit stressed", too. I felt betrayed. They thought I was making it all up. I was told to come back at a certain time, but with no disgnostic or treatment suggestions offered, I figured it was a waste of time, and making and keeping appointments had since that incident become very, very difficult so I don't even try any more.

The antidepressants were hell on earth. They took me, un-depressed but mentally useless, and left me mentally useless but deeply depressed with a depression I hadn't had before. I spent most of my time in tears, or in bed. She had lent me two books, and when I went back to see her she started chatting about the books as soon as I walked in, and took a moment to notice that there were silent tears rolling down my face. She took me off that antidepressant and put me on another one. The second one made me want to kill myself. I couldn't discuss the books with her - I had read them and enjoyed them, but nothing stuck inside my head. She suggested a third antidepressant. I yelled a lot. She shut up. I had instructions on how to wean myself off them to avoid side-effects, but I ignored the instructions and simply stopped taking them immediately. I stopped wanting to kill myself, and the tears dried up, thank the gods.

My normal life went on. I stopped looking for work - I knew that I would have to ask questions twenty or thirty times before the answers stuck in my head (even simple things, like "where is the ladies' room"), and I'd get fired on my first day. My daughter had chemistry tuition from an ex of mine every Wednesday night, and afterwards we'd usually go to Terrigal for a coffee, then I'd drive him home. And every single time, week after week for months, I'd have to ask him which way to go at every corner and every roundabout. He thought I couldn't possibly be that stupid - he thought I simply hid my dislike of him behind my resistance. He finally figured out that I really needed help with navigation when I asked which way to go and he said "left" expecting I'd know it was "right", and I trusted him and turned left.

I went to my weekly meditation group, where I talked and laughed and meditated, and no one seemed to think anything was wrong. Well, whilst I was there nothing was wrong - it was only when we started going to places other than A's place or mine, and I had to find my way to strange houses, where the same thing would happen. I don't own a GPS, so I'd plan out a route using a street directory, and I'd get there. But none of those new routes are fixed in my mind - I have to use the street directory every single time I drive to those houses, even after years.

As time passed, my daughter stopped being patient with me, and started howling and screaming at me about how stupid I'd been since that night. I never listened to her, apparently. I remembered things wrong. I boiled saucepans of water dry before adding the potatoes, or I'd do the potatoes and forget the rest of the meal. I got really, really good at putting out kitchen fires. The cat, who never begged (preferring instead to sit silently by her bowl), often wouldn't get food or water unless my daughter did it. It got harder and harder to make decisions, harder and harder to make any kind of changes, harder and harder to pick up the phone to make an appointment for anything, easier and easier to find that my last appointment for something-or-other was booked in for - say - two months ago and I had let it slip by, never noticing.

My daugher left school then left home, going interstate for university. I'm willing to bet the next couple of months, when I was alone in the house, were hard for the cat - once I came upon her sitting near her dry, empty bowls, and realised with a pang that I probably hadn't fed her for two days. I started gradually cleaning out my daughter's room and setting it up as a home office for myself.

Before I had the room set up properly, a casual friend of mine moved in and probably saved my life - he certainly saved my lifestyle. His comings and goings gave structure to the week, so that I often had an approximate idea of what day it was (I still have no clue what month or year it is). I stopped starving the cat, and in the first month or two even remembered to have evening meals occasionally, with or without him. I got to know him better as a silent, watching, dark, smiling presence in my life whom I came to really, really enjoy. I established a Wednesday Routine of a regular night out at a specific place, which also helped punctuate and order my days. And time drifted on.

My housemate smokes. I used to smoke very heavily for a five-year period in the early years of this century. Around him I took it up again, and now I smoke heavier than he does, though perhaps only half as much as I used to. The Walking Chimney, me. Smoking is wonderful. Feeling stressed? Have a cigarette. Everything is better after a cigarette. I got addicted to an online game, one that tests both short-term memory and long-term memory. That's my excuse - if it forces to to learn how to remember things again, it's probably good for the chaotic world I've had inside my head since the night that took me to hospital. And I found that really, cigarettes aren't that bad! If I take a break in the game, have a cigarette, then come back, I make very many fewer mistakes in the ten minutes or so after a cigarette. I think clearer, I remember longer, I can find things in the game that usually escape me. Cigarettes are good for my brain-function. Should I give up? - I don't think so.

One day, I mentioned my brain incident to him. He looked at me curiously and said that he hadn't noticed. Really? - hadn't noticed that I was vague all the time, confused all the time? No, mate, I just thought that was you.

Well it probably is now, but it never used to be. I used to have a mind like a steel trap. I coasted through school, university and the other courses I've done based solely on the fact, back then, that if I read something once, or heard it twice, it was stuck in my head forever. Now I read and understand it, but it's gone in a matter of seconds. There is nothing, nothing I can do to nail new information into my brain.

And after all that, is where we get to what I originally wanted to blog about. I wanted to blog about loss of identity, changing identity.

I spent forty-something years classifying myself as intelligent, a thinker, someone who learned quickly, who loved learning. Now I think, but only the familiar old thoughts. Now I don't learn anything new. I've dropped out of the two courses that I've started doing since the incident, and I was enthusiastic about both of them.

In the first few weeks when I was still going to specialists, I was also sent along to some kind of psychologist, who did a battery of tests. It was a three or four hour one-on-one examination, mostly in written form. My language skills and vocabulary were high. My reasoning skills were damaged. My "memory curve" (whatever that is) was pathetic. In particular, he had a set of red-and-white blocks, and tried me to make increasingly difficult patterns with them. I remember my old self - she could have done all of them in second, and would have sneered at anyone who couldn't. The first one was okay. The next one was hard. All the other patterns I had to make were impossible. I got tearful because I was so embarrassed by my lack of ability, and hated having my embarrassment witnessed. He was just going to sit there all day until I figured them all out - we would have been sitting there a year. After an hour or two, I gathered all the blocks up into my left hand, and threw them against the wall behind him. Fortunately I am a good shot, and none of them hit him. He finally realised I had a problem. Oh, really? It took an easy kids' game to tell you that, mister, when I've been trying to tell anyone who would listen for ages?

I was my intelligence. It was all I had that I could truly call my own. Although my language skills are still with me my intelligence isn't, though. I can't learn, and I can't follow any reasoning. I can't think ahead, plan, work out strategies, can't even pick up the phone to make an appointment with a doctor. I can't lodge Centrelink forms, can't even fill them in. I can't pay rent or bills on time - I have no idea how to do these things any more. I'm constantly back-pedalling, making excuses for myself. I get looked after and reminded to do things by a flatmate who really shouldn't have to do anything more than fling me his share of the rent once a week.

All that creates chaos in my outer world, but I'm getting used to it - I have a couple of years' experience in it now. What I can't get used to, is the chaos in my inner world. I'd like to be able to hold a thought again, and follow it when it leads into new territory. I'd like to be able to drive down that foggy road in my mind, and see the fog lift, see the corners before I get to them, see the trees by the side of the road and the red earth beyond the trees. I'd like to have my incisive mind back again, be sharp and quick with my thoughts as I always have been. I'd like to live up to my brother Alan's recent description of me as "a logical person".

But I know I never will again. These days, all I can do is make peace with myself, accept that I am foggy and lost, and find what enjoyment I can in being dislocated in time, dislocated in space, and dislocated in the world.

It was agony, at first. But just so long as I don't remember who I used to be, I'm actually enjoying my life again.  Being lost is not so bad, of you don't look around at the scenery.

Death as a Part of Life

Recently in a forum I take part in, someone raised the question of death, asking why we so "value" human life is highly. I personally value my own life because it is a blessing. Even when I'm in pain, even when I'm miserable, there is always something to look forward to.

They mentioned that we "spend inordinate amounts of time, money, training etc on keeping people alive who would not have lived so long in normal circumstances yet we put animals to sleep." Most of those people have never been consulted, those in deep dementia or people who have been in a coma or speechless since a violent accident.

They added that we send soldiers off to war to kill in the name of the social freedoms, or for political or religious freedom. I have to add to that, that they are also ordered to die, too, not just to kill. And all without asking their permission.

They also said that we cannot agree about the killing of a tiny handful of prisoners who are such dangerous people that they cannot be released again because of the reasonable expectation that they will once again destroy or end other people's lives. I replied by saying:

"I have a stepson who has spent time inside. He took a hammer to the brainstem of a person who will never walk or talk again, and who is fed through tubes. He got one year in a low security prison, working with native animals, making art, and taking trade-courses. He not only had TV and better meals that I could afford to feed him before and after the sentence, but he had air conditioning and pay-TV as well! All at the taxpayer's expense." For my stepson, his life inside gaol was significantly better and more pleasant than it was outside gaol, either before or afterwards. He talked about viewing it as a reward, as a holiday.

It was pointed out that suicide is also frowned upon by our Western society and regarded as a symptom of mental illness, whilst other societies regard it differently. I see it as an honourable reaction to impossible circumstances. I am a Westerner.

If there is an afterlife, why are we so scared of death? Why do we not regard it as a natural and logical conclusion to life? Death is a part of life. It is a graduation, an acknowledgement that you have learnt what you needed to learn, that you have finished what you needed to do. It is a pat on the back, a congratulations card in the mail, the ultimate accolade.

I think we started demonising death in Euro-based society when we came up with the <sarcasm toggled on> brilliant idea <sarcasm toggled off> of separating the generations. Old people are ugly - we cannot sear our children's eyeballs with them. Take them out of the home and out of the community generally, Put them in retirement villages first, where they mix with "their own kind", then in nursing homes. When they die, don't let the family even see the body until it is made up to look "alive" (I've never seen a corpse that ever looked alive), must less, allow people who loved the dead wash down the body and dig the hole themselves as a final act of love. Cultures that still do those things don't have a problem with psychological problems due to death and extended grieving to anywhere near our death-sanitised society's extent.

I have picked out the music I want played at my ceremony (my body is to be scavenged for any reuseable living tissues, so hopefully there won't be much to bury). It is a negro spiritual performed by a defunct Australian a-capella girl group called Blindman's Holiday, the song is "dig my grave". It's a boppy, upbeat, rejoicing type of song. The lyrics are something like

Dig my grave, so deep and so narrow,
Make my coffin so neat and so strong.
Lord, if I do-do, and I do my head
And I do-do, and I do my feet
And I do-do, do it all, whenever I die.
Oh, my little soul's gonna shine like a star
Upon Mount Calvary.

- with lots of repeats. My funeral/cremation/ceremony? A bloody big, happy party! Absolutely!

As to suicide, I am pro-life. We deserve a life. We deserve a good life. And we deserve to be in control of our lives, and the time, place and manner of our death.

About two years ago now, I had a neurological incident. I recovered quickly, although I am still damaged or mentally incapacitated by it, and I've recently seen a slight deterioration. There was, however, a slab of time on that evening when I couldn't speak, couldn't move, couldn't even hear. I couldn't so much as move my eyeballs in their sockets or blink my eyes. If I hadn't spontaneously recovered, I could have spent the rest of my life in that state, locked in a body, thinking like me, but utterly unable to respond to anything.

Now, prior to that incident, I had believed I'd never want to live like that. I believed I'd want the plug pulled. But when it actually happened, if only for a short time, an unholy joy crept over me. I could see and I could think, but no one knew. I'd never be expected to cook or clean or earn money or pay a bill ever again. I wouldn't even have to wipe my own arse ever again! And at that moment, being "locked in my body" suddenly seemed like the greatest freedom that could possibly happen to anyone.

But then my hearing came back, and after it, movement. Immediately afterwards, I thought about that revelation, the ultimate freedom of being locked in an unresponsive body. Yeah, I would love it. Total abdication of responsibility, coupled with time to think - bliss! But what happens after a few weeks or months or even years, when I get bored? How can I then indicate to someone that I've changed my mind, I want the ventilator switched off? Answer: I can't. Which is why I'm a not-for-rescusitation patient, every time. And now that I don't have any economically dependent children, I really don't have to live for anybody else's benefit.

Death is not an issue for me at all. That nasty bit before it, where I could be horribly sick or in agony, definitely is. So yup, bring on the pain relief, bring on the drugs. And the last person out of the room gets to turn off the ventilator, thanks.

Things with Stings

Last night as I arrived home, very late, I casually crushed a cockroach beneath my foot before I entered the house and did my whole evening-routine. This morning I got up at my usual time, did all my usual stuff listening to the gentle sound of rain on the roof, than fairly late in the morning - about eight or so - finally made it outside the front door to look at the world, with no thought of last night's conquest.

It was still there. But not quite where I had put it - it had moved about half a metre west of where it had died, and not under its own volition - it's insides had been smeared everywhere, and it was definitely in no state to move. The culprits? A swarm of small black ants, the very same species that co-pollinate my basil.

I sat down to watch, and to allow my thoughts to drift, a very productive way of thinking that I should indulge a bit more.

None of the smear of innards existed any more. Not only were there streams of ants taking individual bellyfuls of food back home, but there seemed to be a labour gang engaged in dissecting body-parts from the cockroach for easy transport: half-legs and things were wandering off in more or less random directions.

They reminded me, first, of a swarm of military busily at work all over an aircraft carrier. Then I thought no, and staying with the sea I saw them as salvage-divers on a deep-sea wreck somewhere. Then I started thinking of their shared memes, the over-thoughts that seem to inhabit all members of hive-colonies, and on cue my individual honey-bee turned up to pollinate the basil plant directly to the left of where I was sitting, Which took me to bees, and their over-thoughts, and their breeding patterns.

And it occurred to me that while we label their individual hive-matriarch the "queen", like each and every worker in a hive she isn't a queen at all - she is a slave to the oversoul of the hive. Once she starts breeding, she never sees the light of day at all, not unless the beekeeper deliberately opens up the hive. In nature, she is in darkness the rest of her life. Bloated, unable to move much, she even needs to be fed, she cannot feed herself. Hers is a life in chains, based on her productivity.

As long as she keeps pushing out thousands and thousands of eggs, her fellow-slaves will keep on feeding her. Her reproductive organs are subjected to constant over-use and overwork, until they are exhausted and production starts dropping, at which point the workers, her fellow-slaves, designate a few eggs as future queens, and invest some serious effort into nurturing her replacement(s).

No honour is accorded to her, as mother or monarch. She becomes expendable, and as the youngsters take flight in an orgy of sex, the hive pays attention to them, not her. Eventually, the old Queen is ignominiously ejected from the hive, still alive, to die nearby, unable to feed herself or fly. Like her workers' lives, hers is a life of slavery that is brought to an end when her usefulness to the colony runs out. There is no Centrelink to sustain her when she can no longer work, no social security or family or nursing home to feed her until she dies a "natural" death. There is only a brutal rejection at the end of her productive life.

She is not a queen - she is only a slave, a very specialised slave. A sex slave, if you like, certainly a reproductive slave.

So who, amongst ants and bees, is not a slave? As individuals, they are all slaves: slaves to reproduction, to home-building, to food-gathering, to raising young, to defence of the colony, even to air conditioning. There is not a single free ant, there is not a single free bee.

No one ant or bee makes decisions, no one ant or bee thinks, as we know thought. They are all driven by the whip of their community.

So how to bees know to swarm, some of them staying with one queen, the others with another? How do ants work out when and in what direction to move house with rain or animal disturbance threatens their home? Who makes the decisions about directions and distances, about settling down or moving on?

Perhaps each ant or bee is a neurone in a larger brain, linked by chemical or even psychic ties with each other free-standing ant or bee in its colony. Thinking could be done as a group, as an oversoul. This might equate with the sophisticated and co-ordinated flight-thinking done by massed flocks of hundreds of birds, too, or thousands of bats. Why aren't there mid-air collisions? You'd think that some bird somewhere would miss seeing at least someone flying alongside, below or above them; you'd think that some bat somewhere would miss or confuse the echo-traces of fast-moving bats around them. But I have never seen a single collision, even when a flock has been startled in flight by an explosion or a predator and suddenly goes into panic-mode.

Why not?

We are accustomed to thinking as individuals, but we think as groups, too. In Australia, we drive on the left side of the road (which is self-evidently the right side), and consider the right side of the road to be the wrong side. That was decided on by an individual a long time ago in the history of the car, and is followed by concensus, to keep us safe. There is no formal agreement about walking and footpaths, yet if I walk in the right side of a footpath, "oncoming traffic" scowls at me. (Guess who frequently walks in the right side, just to get people to re-evaluate what they do without thinking!)

On those occasions, I am an ant who has gone maverick, not paying attention to the thoughts of the group-mind. I am a bee who is off-course.

In another sense, we can develop lesser, more individual group-minds. I take part in a weekly meditation group. We all know each other, we rarely invite other people in. It happens, but it's occasional. We are all friends: I know I for one have a friendship with the group as a whole, and with each person in the group as individuals. which is somehow separate from our group friendship.

The pattern of the meditation is that one person will talk us all through a guided meditation, then at the end each of us will individually debrief, describing what we experienced and what we did, who we met and where we went. We are all very different people, and we all look at the world differently, but when we spent a few months building a non-physical environment for ourselves, there was a high degree of accord between us as to how it looked, and afterwards, things that hadn't been described by the leader but experienced by us all individually correlated very closely indeed.

So it is possible to develop a group mind. And Things With Stings are far, far better and more practised at doing it than we are.