Under a Different Star - Biographic 1

I am writing this blog to exorcise some demons and to see if there are any answering spirits out there.

I feel out of time I think, and out of sync with most of the world I inhabit.

Let's just start by saying I had a very bad start! I think I was born morbidly sensitive, and anyone who knows me well would no doubt recognise that trait.

But that was only part of my circumstances. I also was born into a slightly non-conformist English family in super-conformist anti-English country Australia. The Australia of the year I started school (1971) was harsh, blaming and interpersonally violent. It would have been tough for an English child on the score of nationality alone, but one that was also a bit soft and gentle, one that was pretty tenderly sensitive, had no chance. It was a maul-up.

Add to that the fact that my two much older sisters left home that year. Thus I was left alone, with parents who frankly didn't like each other very much at that time. My predominant memory of home at that age is of sour bullish fighting, with raging intense silences between.

That is not to say that there weren't up times. Plenty of memories of time spent alone, fantasising about other worlds, other times, happier things, which engrossed my mind completely; building huge fabrics of fantasy that were not traditionally 'fantastic' - no spaceships, no weird colour, no exotics in the obvious sense. Quite ordinary things which almost seemed to block out their real-time equivalents.

I had my own country. I called it Emerald Valley. We lived on a five-acre property near the natural forest catchment area for a reservoir called Millbrook in the hills above Adelaide in South Australia. I used to escape through the fence on the border of our property high on the ring of hills above it, and descend along the orange-earth fire-tracks deep into the forest, hearing nothing but the wind, the birds, the swaying of the trees and the occasional swishing bounding of a kangaroo down through one of the tight valleys. I mapped it. I placed houses in locations I liked and had my schoolmates live there. I developed reasons why this country could exist separately and no-one other than myself and whoever I invited be allowed in.

I would also go there if I was angry or miserable and let it all blow out. A family dog, a boxer called Cara, would often come with me and provide light relief as she chased kangaroos and never caught them. In a boxer's usual shambolic way, she would breathe heavingly when she'd been exerting herself and be such a force of nature in her absolute delight with a walk that a lot of melancholia was no doubt diffused....she was also a tender and seemingly aware companion when the tears had to flow.

More later.