"Parce-que je reve, je ne suis pas" (from Leolo)...also

Someone once said to me "I know you don't smoke dacca, but you always seem stoned"...my favourite compliment of all time...

I am a wandering wondering spirit. I am not in chat to be abused, fallen in love with or to fall in love. I am in chat to chat and hopefully enjoy the time with you all.

I don't use a script or a bot, I don't take it that seriously. Even if I won lotto I'd probably still chat, cos I enjoy it. Well most of the time. There have been times when other people's bullshit have made chat hostile and difficult, but it doesn't sour me one jot. I like music, pc games, aircraft, movies, sport, the great outdoors, politics, philosophy, science and literature. I like to write, although I'm no Mark Twain or TS Eliot. I like exotic cultures, and their food.

My great struggle these days is in losing weight. I am a schizophrenic...and I take meds that made me put on more than double my healthy weight. Now for people who do not know what that illness is, it's hereditary, and is a psychotic illness. IT DOES NOT MEAN I have multiple personalities. When I fall ill, my brain chemicals malfunction, and I can sometimes but not always hallucinate, but generally have altered thinking or delusions about the world and even who I am. It is well controlled these days, but I need to be conscientious that I take my medicine, lest it flare up again for it is likely that I will never be cured of it.   I have been on a serious weight loss journey since July 2016, which included an operation to install a laparoscopic band to assist in that endeavour. When I get to my target weight, the battle is not over...I must continue to be vigilant, and stick to a low calorie diet in order that my body doesn't stack on the weight again. As of early August 2017 I have lost 73 KG, with a further 22KG to reach my target.

I am a first generation Australian, A stranger in a strange land that feels somewhat familiar, but never like home. I don't know where my home is...as yet I haven't found it. One day perhaps. I love travel...and get away as much as possible. Usually it's a road trip somewhere within this country. My dream is to just take off one day and travel for months in a pick up truck with a canopy to sleep within...perhaps the occasional motel room... and a tent. I have the pick up truck which we Aussies call a Ute (utility vehicle)...all that remains is to get a tow bar fixed to it for a box trailer and a canopy(one thing at a time). Who  wants to come (you can help pay for the petrol/gasoline)?

I love to read. My passion for books goes way back to when as a child my mother would read me Little Golden Books, and it spread like wildfire to philosophy, science, "classsic" literature, science fiction, fantasy...etc. I am not a genius, but there is nothing I like better than food for thought!

Although I have a serious mental illness, the modern meds are fantastic. I cannot do all that a healthy person may be capable of, but my life is generally a lot better than it was in the past. I work and love my work...I may complain about it sometimes, but that is nothing to my enjoyment of it overall. I am an educator, both for young children, and for adults. I finished my Degree in 1998 after a 9 year journey affected heavily by mental illness, and did my Post Grad Diploma in 2008. I am a qualified child care worker as well...I love study, and do courses "For the hell of it" all the time. The brain truly is elastic...no matter how old you are.

I want to add a footnote: there is nearly nothing a person cannot do if they really want it, and work hard for it. Nothing good comes easily, but that endeavour is well worth the blood sweat and tears in the end.

I wrote the following poem as a reaction or response to living in a country that was pretty much invaded in 1770, by a culture who saw the local indigenous folks as little more than animals, who were not even accorded citizen status until 1975. It didn't stop there however. Aboriginal people were ripped from their families and put into foster homes and group homes for years afterwards, and it was only in the past decade that an apology was offered for these Stolen Generations. They still suffer from poor services, health outcomes and education deficits in many parts of the country, they are over-represented in the prison populations all over the country, and the State and Australian Federal governments that come and go have never got it right as far as they are concerned. It is not all bad...there are communities that have thrived and prospered especially due to self-management of country and investiture in language, art and culture.

I am an interloper, a foreigner, a criminal,
Though I have travelled far, I never belonged here.
This land's scars are there in the eyes of it's first peoples,
If only you know know how to see,
I am a reject from a superficial, narcissistic, Hedonistic culture,
All my days are restless and fraught
And there is no relief from any amelioratory idea.
...
Then shall I leave? I think I must....
Leave these criminals, these interlopers, these foreigners,
Go far away and leave them all behind
To continue to practice their institutionalised bigotry
Their false sense of entitlement,
See them rail when you raise the question,
See them hunt you down and corner you,
See them unable to face the truth.
....
All my days I have believed there was a chance
A chance that I would find some acceptance,
But I now know it was a delusion, a vain hope,
There is no acceptance, because there is no forgiveness,
And i have no place here, none,
Unless I believe I have the god given right
To Steal, Plunder, Despoil and Desecrate....
As so many of my kind believe
No, I do not believe I have that right.
...
One day I hope I will be able to say
I followed my heart, and I listened to my soul,
One day if I work hard enough I will be able
To live in peace with myself.
...

The Old Man Ponders
.
What do we do when all is done?
What language will we utter
When death steals our tongues?
We are the desecrators and destroyers
We are the dreamers and creators,
We are all, and nothing, at once,
And sometimes, we wish we were dead.
...   ...   ...   ...   ...
Yet we live and give willingly of our essence
We drive ourselves to new depths and heights
We focus like laserbeams on our goals
And though we stumble, we continue
We climb and we tumble,
We do not stop, though rest we must,
And at the end of our time
We often ask what merit any of it?
....   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...   
There is no other time than now
The past is a fading and jaundiced memory
and the future will come and go like today
Terrified of loss, we try to cling,
Horrified with our evil, we try to be good,
And lost upon a lonely shore,
We are beaten by unrelenting waves of shame.
...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...
Up sheer rock faces we exert ourselves
To the moon to mars to venus we aim,
We dream of conquest still,
Yet our inner vastness is an untouched frontier;
While this world has many secrets undiscovered,
But we drown ourselves in vice and pleasure
And punish any who cross us with intemperate fever.
...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...
We can kill each other and wreak havoc
Without so much as a pang of conscience,
Incited by false claims of murderous higher being,
Exhorted to murder the innocent and guilty alike,
There are millions of undisciplined uncouth youth
Ready to take up arms, for want of real direction,
Power mongers are a dime a dozen in our broken world,
Do not understate the power of violence
It takes these youths by their very souls
And rips out their hearts.
...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...
And for those of us allowed to grow old,
We sit on our terraces in the afternoons
And sipping our coffees wonder
Was there ever a good time to live
Was there ever a good way to die
All we have is our wits and our luck
And what we make of our lives
Depends on many factors beyond our control
And within our control,
And old men ponder the past and the future
Until they have been forgotten
And nothing they think matters
Except to God, who is always listening.
...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...

The Lumbering Future

He stooped to touch the geranium petal,

saw his past in the shadow he cast,

bright drops of light danced on a windchime

and in the wind he heard his mother calling.

He had not heard her calling for many years,

and it made him morose.

There was a tiny black and gold finch dancing on the fence,

and he saw his future in its dark eyes,

the notion of some long strained relations becoming more sour,

as his body and mind disintegrate.

 The dew on the grass gave respite,

 its fresh scent giving rise to faint

 hopes that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be so.

He placed an orange lozenge on his tongue

and was transported to the orange grove he once walked

picking oranges and dreaming of a much brighter future

than the one he had so clumsily navigated.

You can’t buy back a life, he decided,

Regret will turn you into a curmudgeon,

No good to anyone, or anything.

With a faint smile he listened to the finch

And lumbered less than limberly into the future.

Metaphyzikal 11/09/2021

The Song of The Wanderer

A fringe of trees compels me

Should I shrug off this stench of city

And discover what lays beyond?
I am indecisive, I fret and stutter,

I have begun to regret my stagnation

And still I procrastinate…and linger.

I cannot say what keeps me here,

But I know it amounts to vapours,

Insubstantial yet compelling,

A vial of poison that I slowly sip

Taking me intractably to my doom.

***        ***        ***        ***        ***

Oh those heady days

When I was wild and alone

Going where I pleased

Doing what I wanted…

They are long gone….

And the memories are fading too.

+++        +++        +++        +++

Something somewhere someday

Will grab my entrails

And force change…in fact

I yearn for it, and quietly plot.

What stops me? Invisible strings

Of people and things that seem to matter,

Always intervening at the 11th hour,

And stopping me in my tracks.

$$$         $$$         $$$         $$$         $$$

I keep dreaming strange things

Things that seem to lead somewhere

That is nowhere I’ve ever known,

Things that haunt my mornings,

Things that do not amount to a fistful of pulp.

And yet these things that I dream

Are like little dances in my skull,

Amounting to a list of desires,

Ephemeral and distant,

Making me want.

***        ***        ***        ***        ***

And after all, what do I really want?

Is it the journey? The myriad journeys

That meander and twist going nowhere?

Is it to find somewhere I belong?
Or is there nowhere that is home to me?

I have been wandering all my life….

And I will wander again

I will wander ‘til I die….

And finally go home.

Metaphyzikal 10/10/2022