The Planet of Wrong
…Ok I am back now Lily….I have heard on the grapevine that you think I bought or have tickets for or on myself…do you honestly think I contrived all this because I wanted to be a superhero or something?
...Lily!!!...I was running for my life…
When the invaders of ourselves arrived here…there was virtually nothing left of their original selves…they could not move about like the natives of this planet due to the absence of plant and animal totems in their sphere of existence…the fourth dimension. I suppose they were the original zombies…at first they hunted in packs at night like wild dogs…then over time…they took on many different forms…too many to mention here. One faction went onto become technological experts. With permission from the head honcho’s…who did not know the full story…and it is only recently that I found out about it…the ‘visitors’ were given permission to abduct the natives for use in genetic experimentation…the purpose being to create a suitable ‘ka’ for themselves that could be multi-dimensional like the ones the natives had…but… for some reason the ‘ka’s’ that they created began to fold…or rather unfold.
It soon became apparent that their ka’s were unfolding because the spirit essence would not stay attached to the ka bodies…
Oh Lily…you should have been there and not in Bargaloo. You would not have been in stupefied state if you had…perhaps not? Who can tell?
The next phase of experimentation involved atomic tests at Maralinga and in the South Pacific and elsewhere, nuclear fission experiments, gene splicing, particle accelerator experiments, orgasms ect ect…I was not there for a lot of it so I can’t tell you exactly what happened…but I was there for some of the worst of it.
Now I don’t know how they did this, but they found a way to peel a person’s spirit essence off them which made it possible for them to then inhabit their ka bodies. I won’t tell you what they did next because it would give the game away… as it were… to the current influx of ‘invaders of ourselves’.
Before too long…well… a long time ago now…I sussed out their game plan and came up with a plan of my own. I discovered a way to reintegrate the parts of my selves that had ‘gone missing’ and thus was able to hold onto myself…even in the absence of my own ka body…which surprise, surprise…was also missing.
Repeated attacks on my personage necessitated the construction of a dome of light…at first it was only big enough for me…I then found a way to enlarge it to include my family (and later the world )…I could not help Pedro (at the time) or my mother and various other folk…including my father…whoever he is? They were beyond help…I am sorry to say that I gave up on them.
There were times when I felt like the only person in the world or that I had been asleep for a very long time...it was on one of those occasions I found myself alone with a blue tongue lizard…the blue tongues knew that I had a ‘thing’ for them. They knew that I just about burst into floods of tears whenever I saw one squashed on the road.
One time…I was visiting my mother…we were in her garden…when a beautiful blue tongue lizard came over the hill…or rather the raised garden bed that formed a border between my mother’s garden and the vacant area of land behind it. Immediately my mother’s dog…a West Highland Terrier by the name of Connie rushed out and began mauling it. Shaking it violently in her jaws…there was nothing we could do to save it…It happened so fast…I remember screaming in horror…then Connie dropped the lizard…it was badly mangled but still alive… I screamed and started crying and hyperventilating…I could not go to it…I could bear to see it’s suffering…my mother’s husband chopped it’s head off with a shovel to put it out of its misery…I was shaking and shaking.
Anyway…something in me died that day…something in me died the day I saw a man in a truck deliberately drive into two cockatoos flying across Kingsford Smith Drive…way too close to the ground…killing one of them…and the night…Jon Jon hit a kangaroo driving back from Jerangle…and the day a parrot flew into my car as I was driving down Bungle Lane.
I took the parrot home and buried it under my flowering apricot tree.
The story I tell today is different to the story I might have told yesterday…
Yesterday I did not know exactly what I was dealing with…it was only after the ‘white light orb’ episode of 1996…that I even made a connection between my ‘issues’ and those of the ‘aliens’…before that it was just ghosts… or hags that sit on your chest at night and suck the life out of you.
One night…several years ago…cannot remember what date exactly…I was still living in Bungle Lane. I had moved out of my husbands bed for good and basically did my best to avoid him…I had long since given up trying to converse with him in any meaningful way…I was sleeping in a room that my son Nico had slept in and he was sleeping in a room that my other son Danton had slept in and Danton was sleeping in a room that he had once shared with Nico…that would eventually become mine and then the three Indian boys and finally Danton’s again.
So…there I was just lying there…when all of a sudden…the room began to change…just like in my poem…Suzette, Suzette, Wherever you Are?
First the furniture faded out…then the walls…the ceiling…until I was just suspended in a ‘misty space’. I became dimly aware that I was lying in bed…but it could have been a ‘slab’…and that approximately twelve robed figures stood in a circle around me…I could see their faces…they were the lizard men…one of them was a white lizard and another I recognised from one of your photos of a spying hole location Lily…a gun wielding birdman no less.
You have to imagine my mindset at the time….I was sick of being intimidated and bullied and not just by own kind but this lot as well…not to mention the nocturnal visits by the bug eyed oriental lady and her insectoid companion or Victor…for that matter.
If I was to describe my mental state at the time it would be…very calm, kool and collected and pissed off…I said “I am not afraid of you”….the very site of the hooded birdman is enough to turn me into a wild cat…but not that night.
One of them, or was it all of them at once, said… “You’re not from around here are you”.
One time I saw Usurunan ….or was it the birdman or one of the lizards…perhaps an alternative self? …was in a movie about an Arab Sheik and his camel...i thought WOW…he’s really handsome compared to that other lot...i also discovered something interesting…it was the sting of an Asp that killed my brother…he did commit suicide, I am told…and… it was the poison in the sting that drove him to it.
When we were teenagers living in a Forrest in the City of Kanak…we made a suicide pact…
Lily…did you know that when you make a suicide pact with someone…even half-heartedly…it is a suicide pact nevertheless and a pact is a pact. What could we do…we were living in a nightmare…paradise for the reptilians and the retirees but not for us.
I found out that the things that happen to an atom that is split is somewhat similar to the things that happen when an egg is fertilised or a planet is…but…there is a right way and a wrong way…three guesses for which ways lead down one path or another…
I also found out that the shit hits the fan down one of these paths at 86 resolutions leaving only 14 resolutions for the children of tomorrow and that is not enough resolutions.
So Lily…do you understand…that I was running for my life…when I was about three years old…i was living in Africa…I remember seeing you…for the first and last time perhaps…I hope not…and I said to you…just do it...
I erased myself…
…and then I found myself.
And if I changed my mind…would it make any difference?
Monday, November 5, 2012
Poor Little Atom and the Cat Pet Attacks
November 5 2012
Lily have you heard about those ‘cat pet’ attacks…apparently if you have been infected by one of these ‘cat pets’…if you are a female …it makes you quite vain and meticulous about your appearance…but easier to control…and if you’re a male…it makes you quite suspicious, oblivious to danger and other people’s opinions and a very bad dresser. Can you believe it?
Lily….there is an election going on in this town…snooky bear and bristles are both competing for the same job of parade organiser for the black and white badgers ball. About half of the people in this town want snooky bear to win and the other half want bristles to win…but here’s the thing…both want the same thing…shade trees for their munchkins, enough ticket sellers for the tickets and holiday houses for the infirm. But if only one of them wins and it doesn’t matter which one…the other one will get the sack…not only that…but their other selves won’t recognise them…and the end result of all of this is that they won’t be able to even attend the badgers ball let alone organise or preside over it.
A long time ago…I hacked into Usuranan’s computer network…this was before I knew him as ‘that person’…and I found out that the badgers themselves orchestrated this debacle…to divide and conquer…as it were…as they had been divided and conquered themselves into black and white colours…where previously they had been grey?
And I started thinking…well… who is the boss of this town anyway?...the one who drew a line through the circle and broke it…or the one who is trying to fix it….and I know in both of their defences, that they both want to fix it…
So I ask my selves…why can’t they just be on the same side instead of pretending to be on the opposite side…of each other.
For example if one of them gets one more vote than the other…or one less…isn’t it a little…(or a lot)…unfair to all those munchkins whose parent guardians voted for the wrong one…when it’s their parade and their badgers out on a limb…of a tree?
Anyhoos I found out…that a boss is not really a boss in this town…and a shadow is not really a shadow...unless it’s shadowing the boss and knifing him/her/it at every turn. Not only that but the boss can never really truly preside over the parade…as he/she/it…is always trying to run away from his shadow or fix their fuckups.
When I confronted Usurunan with the shonky products and motley mutants of this devious plot and it’s con-sequences… to turn the townsfolk of this town… against eachother…so that they are always fighting instead of hugging…he denied everything…
To prove his point…he showed me moving pictures of his private zoo collection…as well as pictures of his collection of zombies…which he admitted he was having trouble controlling…
For a moment he looked like a little lost japanese boy …tears in his eyes…
“I just want to go home”…he said.
Much…much later and longer than I care to remember…I met up with Usurunan again…in Japan. He was wearing his astro boy disguise.
What happened? He told me it was Atom…Atom had been split.
Atom or Adam?...no just Atom he whispered…
Lily have you heard about those ‘cat pet’ attacks…apparently if you have been infected by one of these ‘cat pets’…if you are a female …it makes you quite vain and meticulous about your appearance…but easier to control…and if you’re a male…it makes you quite suspicious, oblivious to danger and other people’s opinions and a very bad dresser. Can you believe it?
Lily….there is an election going on in this town…snooky bear and bristles are both competing for the same job of parade organiser for the black and white badgers ball. About half of the people in this town want snooky bear to win and the other half want bristles to win…but here’s the thing…both want the same thing…shade trees for their munchkins, enough ticket sellers for the tickets and holiday houses for the infirm. But if only one of them wins and it doesn’t matter which one…the other one will get the sack…not only that…but their other selves won’t recognise them…and the end result of all of this is that they won’t be able to even attend the badgers ball let alone organise or preside over it.
A long time ago…I hacked into Usuranan’s computer network…this was before I knew him as ‘that person’…and I found out that the badgers themselves orchestrated this debacle…to divide and conquer…as it were…as they had been divided and conquered themselves into black and white colours…where previously they had been grey?
And I started thinking…well… who is the boss of this town anyway?...the one who drew a line through the circle and broke it…or the one who is trying to fix it….and I know in both of their defences, that they both want to fix it…
So I ask my selves…why can’t they just be on the same side instead of pretending to be on the opposite side…of each other.
For example if one of them gets one more vote than the other…or one less…isn’t it a little…(or a lot)…unfair to all those munchkins whose parent guardians voted for the wrong one…when it’s their parade and their badgers out on a limb…of a tree?
Anyhoos I found out…that a boss is not really a boss in this town…and a shadow is not really a shadow...unless it’s shadowing the boss and knifing him/her/it at every turn. Not only that but the boss can never really truly preside over the parade…as he/she/it…is always trying to run away from his shadow or fix their fuckups.
When I confronted Usurunan with the shonky products and motley mutants of this devious plot and it’s con-sequences… to turn the townsfolk of this town… against eachother…so that they are always fighting instead of hugging…he denied everything…
To prove his point…he showed me moving pictures of his private zoo collection…as well as pictures of his collection of zombies…which he admitted he was having trouble controlling…
For a moment he looked like a little lost japanese boy …tears in his eyes…
“I just want to go home”…he said.
Much…much later and longer than I care to remember…I met up with Usurunan again…in Japan. He was wearing his astro boy disguise.
What happened? He told me it was Atom…Atom had been split.
Atom or Adam?...no just Atom he whispered…
Thursday, November 1, 2012
More of Sandy's adventures in the Time Tunnel
Anyway re…this other memory….this house was built in the shape of a two or three story square formation with an internal courtyard….that may or may not have had a roof. It was a wooden structure with wooden railings along the balconies that looked out onto this small courtyard…which I think had plants in it. The wood was very dark in colour. The ‘bath’ room had the look and feel of a Finnish sauna…and the bath in that house consisted of a large quite deep rectangular shaped structure that was built up from floor level and out of the same dark ‘aromatic’ wood…I loved that bath and the smell of the wood, the hot steam in the winter…but what was I remembering?….that was not the house that I lived in. I don’t know where that memory comes from ... maybe Usurunan knows…who knows.
This much I know…. the girl who lived there was a much treasured child
Lily about your severely fucked up…. albeit interesting and dangerous early childhood years…..
Lily I have seen those home movies of you and the others in Africa. Each and every time I watch it …the weirder it becomes. Perhaps we can help each other find out what really happened there.
I also want to say that I don’t mean to sound flippant about your tragic life…or mine…over the many years of my in between lives…I have at times been under quite intense pressure to write my memoirs…an activity that would have elicited howls of scorn and derision from my family and most of my friends…because…as one person once said…what makes you think anyone would want to read something that you have written?.
I joined a small writers group when I was newly married…my husband was scathing about it…one day I told him I was thinking about writing a Mills and Boon romance novel…and I did have a go at it but it was not a subject that held much interest for me so I had to abandon it…because the truth being… I am not the romantic type…well Pedro my ex…actually used this throw away thought as ammunition against me…for months he would sneer about my Mills and Boon novels as if to say ‘you are a romantic fool’….which was ridiculous…at first I was surprised by it, then I began to deny it, each time more bewilderingly and vociferously than the last time and then I would find myself being backed into a corner by stupid allegations…one day I lost the plot…I think it was the first time it happened…’where are they?’ I screeched’…’where are they’ i challenged him to find even one such novel or name a time when he had actually observed me either reading or writing one…I was so hurt…you don’t know me at all…do you?... I was crying and shaking….it was true…he did not know me at all…
These kinds of altercations began to occur with more and more frequency….i was being accused of ‘slights’ against him that I could not recall…I sometimes wondered if he was having fake memories implanted in his head…which seemed outlandish at the time…but now I am not so sure……
Pedro is what a psychiatrist would call a passive aggressive…also very cunning…he had no interest in anything I had to say, he would become infuriated over the most inane things like me making him late when we were about to leave on a trip to Sydney or the coast… and time was not an issue… but would do nothing to help speed things along while I dressed the children, packed lunches, closed curtains, locked up ect while he sat their scowling.
One Christmas we went to Dee why in Sydney to visit his father…we left about half an hour after he would have liked…we arrived about 7.30 in the evening as it was…and the night was still young…he had been narky the whole way and I spent most of that trip treading on ice…finally all the hatred came pouring out about me making him late…I was flummoxed…I’m saying “but why didn’t you help”…blah blah…if he was that worried about it for goodness sake…I tried to reason with him…but it was as if he were made of stone…in the end I just became hysterical and started screaming and then crying uncontrollably …something was wrong but I didn’t know what…something was not right…it was pouring with rain…I ran out into the rain and just kept running and running… I refer to these events only because of how his attitude toward me pertains to what happened Dec 22 1996.
I could not sleep that night so I went and lay down on the couch in the living room…the curtains were wide open and my front garden and the street were visible through the floor to ceiling windows….either that night or the night before I had received about three obscene phone calls from a heavy breather wanting me to touch myself…after the third call I took the phone of the hook. I remember looking at my watch as I walked out into the living room.
It was exactly 12 midnight. I lay down on the couch. Almost immediately a very large and very bright orb of light descended from above the roof of the house. As it came into view…a beam of light came out of it and began a sweep of the room. I felt frozen by it and then at one point managed to grab hold of a selenite crystal and held it up to this light…I don’t remember what happened next…
The next day…both Danton and Nico reported strange experiences the previous night or rather early hours of that morning. Nico reported seeing and feeling a red needle go into the side of his head. Danton told me he had seen an orange glow on the lawn outside and that he had also come running out into the living room and seen me lying on the couch and that there was a terrific wind rushing through the house.
Pedro’s reaction to all of this is that we had imagined it somehow…later he concluded it was either Mark or a neighbour…Barry?...shining a flashlight through the window…later when he flatly refused to take ’our’ story ….even a little seriously ..it was because…he reasoned…’why would an alien travel all the way across the galaxy/universe just to see me’…what could I say?…
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know……you tell me!!!… Pedro and others including my mother would become vicious whenever the subject was raised…My father cut me off before I could tell him anything….but here’s the thing… not one of them was curious or prepared to consider the scenario I had described. My parents were both journalists and Pedro worked in media…weren’t they supposed to be curious…isn’t that what journalists do…ask questions?
It took a long time…but in the end their attitude just made me more and more suspicious…I began to avoid them…and somewhat fearful…who were they really? Who am i? …it seem like more and more of my so called friends, family members and acquaintances were under the spell of some kind of mass hypnotic propaganda that created a knee jerk reaction of disbelief and narrow mindedness that was becoming alarmingly more scary by the day. As the conspiracy became ever more manifest…conspiracy theories were subjected to the ridicule basket…. discarded by governments, scientists, soldiers, journalists…and the like…I have heard it described as a ‘conditioned slide response”.
News gathering became another arm of the propaganda machine…multitudinous press releases from industry groups promoting themselves, their agenda or their products would arrive in newsrooms every day and these would be sifted through and relegated to the reporters who would then follow them up with a phone interview or 30 second grab…well this was the situation when I was at the ABC….there was very little real investigation going on in those days…not since the Daily Planet days I suspect… I lost interest in pursuing a career I journalism after that.
PS….About Pedro’s attitude.… the effect on me was that I would become hysterical and I would literally have a complete nervous breakdown…I would scream and scream, not so much because I was hurt and bewildered by his nasty attitude toward me…but because I could not make sense of it…and what had I done to make him hate me so much?…how can I best describe it?…extreme nervous collapse and hopeless despair …why did he look down on me and why did he and everyone else react with scorn and disbelief when I told them about what happened to me and the children…and possibly himself as well…on that fateful night….or about anything at all…in the end I literally could not speak…I would be cut off shouted down or this bullshit…
“we are all so worried about you Sandy…we think you might have bipolar disorder or schizophrenia….after all it does run in your family”….
Anyhoos…after that I just got this sick feeling every time I even thought about writing. I wrote some poems over a period of about a year and never wrote another after that. I gave a book of my poems to my father…but he did not read them…I tried to recite my best poem to my mum on a number of occasions but she would become infuriated with me…I decided to give up on this idea of being a writer…but then later…after a period of intense engagement with off world entities…I started posting my stories on a website called Waking World…where for the most part they were well received…That site closed down after a while and a few years later I found another one…it had been set up by someone I had met at the university here…who wanted to explore the UFO phenomena…in the light of a ‘flying object’ that had been witnessed by a number of school children in Melbourne…I desperately needed feedback on my own situation…I needed Help! and I thought I would find it there…but no…very quickly I was ostracized by the other members of the discussion forum…and basically laughed at…I never went back.
I have never had any desire to publicise my experiences…out of sheer embarrassment more than anything else. I have not spoken of these things for a long time and I don’t like talking about it…the laughter and the sneering and patronising attitude still ring in my ears… my mother talking down to me as if I was some idiot child…the cold hard set of her mouth, the dark glint of evil in her eyes…the horror……in the end I just get angry and upset and more determined than ever to just walk out of all their lives…forever…and I am not being grandiose when I say that….actually that is what I did.
Lily when I decided to resume our old pen pal relationship…I wanted to tell your story and mine…but it was sooo depressing….seriously the only way I can write this story is by taking myself out of it…in a way…and making light of it…after a time you can look back and when there is enough distance there…it is possible to find a funny side… but I had to look for it…not just for my own sanity…and I have asked myself many times am I going insane?...but then I remember…and I know that I did not imagine the things that happened to me…the heart knows what the heart knows.
Ok I will start with my earliest memory…in Africa.
I was a baby when I arrived in Africa…on a ship from England. I was about six months old. There is a picture of me on that ship. I am sitting in a pale yellow pram holding a cup wearing only a nappy as it was very hot. I am looking at a reflection of myself in what appears to be a full length mirror in a doorway. Behind me in the mirror, my mother is leaning over me. She is smiling and I am laughing. In the background of this picture is another person but their image is blurred. I sort of remember that.
My next most vivid memories include. I am in the upstairs bedroom of the house where we lived in Kenya…I am approximately three years old. I share the room with my little brother. Sometime during the night…I woke up…a monkey came in through the windows of my bedroom and stole the clothes that were at the end of bed…the monkey appeared to be on a rope or a lead and it slipped through the bars on the window. The next thing I remember is being in my parents room down the hallway…I am transfixed by the sight of a zebra standing very still and perfectly framed in the window. The curtains are open…as they were in my bedroom…
My next memories are of Afura…a little Kenyan boy the same age as me who was related to my ‘nanny’ Christina…either as a son, grandson or nephew…she was quite old and fat…too old to be his mother…I am not sure…I remember once Afura having a fall and cutting his head open…I was quite upset and horrified…I had never seen anything that shocking before and it sort of freaked me out…another time I remember walking along a wall dividing two parts of a the building….that was my house?...I lived in a house in India that was portioned off in that way….that was the year 1962…I believe.
There were times when it seemed as if there was just Christina, my brother and myself….on a beach in Mombassa or just sitting on a hill somewhere in the African Wilderness…something must have happened to Afura…he wasn’t with us at those times.
One time a monkey came into the garden and my brother and the monkey made a beeline for one another…they just hugged and hugged…I have a photo of it….
To be continued Lillian…. It is twenty to seven in the morning and I have been up all night…
This much I know…. the girl who lived there was a much treasured child
Lily about your severely fucked up…. albeit interesting and dangerous early childhood years…..
Lily I have seen those home movies of you and the others in Africa. Each and every time I watch it …the weirder it becomes. Perhaps we can help each other find out what really happened there.
I also want to say that I don’t mean to sound flippant about your tragic life…or mine…over the many years of my in between lives…I have at times been under quite intense pressure to write my memoirs…an activity that would have elicited howls of scorn and derision from my family and most of my friends…because…as one person once said…what makes you think anyone would want to read something that you have written?.
I joined a small writers group when I was newly married…my husband was scathing about it…one day I told him I was thinking about writing a Mills and Boon romance novel…and I did have a go at it but it was not a subject that held much interest for me so I had to abandon it…because the truth being… I am not the romantic type…well Pedro my ex…actually used this throw away thought as ammunition against me…for months he would sneer about my Mills and Boon novels as if to say ‘you are a romantic fool’….which was ridiculous…at first I was surprised by it, then I began to deny it, each time more bewilderingly and vociferously than the last time and then I would find myself being backed into a corner by stupid allegations…one day I lost the plot…I think it was the first time it happened…’where are they?’ I screeched’…’where are they’ i challenged him to find even one such novel or name a time when he had actually observed me either reading or writing one…I was so hurt…you don’t know me at all…do you?... I was crying and shaking….it was true…he did not know me at all…
These kinds of altercations began to occur with more and more frequency….i was being accused of ‘slights’ against him that I could not recall…I sometimes wondered if he was having fake memories implanted in his head…which seemed outlandish at the time…but now I am not so sure……
Pedro is what a psychiatrist would call a passive aggressive…also very cunning…he had no interest in anything I had to say, he would become infuriated over the most inane things like me making him late when we were about to leave on a trip to Sydney or the coast… and time was not an issue… but would do nothing to help speed things along while I dressed the children, packed lunches, closed curtains, locked up ect while he sat their scowling.
One Christmas we went to Dee why in Sydney to visit his father…we left about half an hour after he would have liked…we arrived about 7.30 in the evening as it was…and the night was still young…he had been narky the whole way and I spent most of that trip treading on ice…finally all the hatred came pouring out about me making him late…I was flummoxed…I’m saying “but why didn’t you help”…blah blah…if he was that worried about it for goodness sake…I tried to reason with him…but it was as if he were made of stone…in the end I just became hysterical and started screaming and then crying uncontrollably …something was wrong but I didn’t know what…something was not right…it was pouring with rain…I ran out into the rain and just kept running and running… I refer to these events only because of how his attitude toward me pertains to what happened Dec 22 1996.
I could not sleep that night so I went and lay down on the couch in the living room…the curtains were wide open and my front garden and the street were visible through the floor to ceiling windows….either that night or the night before I had received about three obscene phone calls from a heavy breather wanting me to touch myself…after the third call I took the phone of the hook. I remember looking at my watch as I walked out into the living room.
It was exactly 12 midnight. I lay down on the couch. Almost immediately a very large and very bright orb of light descended from above the roof of the house. As it came into view…a beam of light came out of it and began a sweep of the room. I felt frozen by it and then at one point managed to grab hold of a selenite crystal and held it up to this light…I don’t remember what happened next…
The next day…both Danton and Nico reported strange experiences the previous night or rather early hours of that morning. Nico reported seeing and feeling a red needle go into the side of his head. Danton told me he had seen an orange glow on the lawn outside and that he had also come running out into the living room and seen me lying on the couch and that there was a terrific wind rushing through the house.
Pedro’s reaction to all of this is that we had imagined it somehow…later he concluded it was either Mark or a neighbour…Barry?...shining a flashlight through the window…later when he flatly refused to take ’our’ story ….even a little seriously ..it was because…he reasoned…’why would an alien travel all the way across the galaxy/universe just to see me’…what could I say?…
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know……you tell me!!!… Pedro and others including my mother would become vicious whenever the subject was raised…My father cut me off before I could tell him anything….but here’s the thing… not one of them was curious or prepared to consider the scenario I had described. My parents were both journalists and Pedro worked in media…weren’t they supposed to be curious…isn’t that what journalists do…ask questions?
It took a long time…but in the end their attitude just made me more and more suspicious…I began to avoid them…and somewhat fearful…who were they really? Who am i? …it seem like more and more of my so called friends, family members and acquaintances were under the spell of some kind of mass hypnotic propaganda that created a knee jerk reaction of disbelief and narrow mindedness that was becoming alarmingly more scary by the day. As the conspiracy became ever more manifest…conspiracy theories were subjected to the ridicule basket…. discarded by governments, scientists, soldiers, journalists…and the like…I have heard it described as a ‘conditioned slide response”.
News gathering became another arm of the propaganda machine…multitudinous press releases from industry groups promoting themselves, their agenda or their products would arrive in newsrooms every day and these would be sifted through and relegated to the reporters who would then follow them up with a phone interview or 30 second grab…well this was the situation when I was at the ABC….there was very little real investigation going on in those days…not since the Daily Planet days I suspect… I lost interest in pursuing a career I journalism after that.
PS….About Pedro’s attitude.… the effect on me was that I would become hysterical and I would literally have a complete nervous breakdown…I would scream and scream, not so much because I was hurt and bewildered by his nasty attitude toward me…but because I could not make sense of it…and what had I done to make him hate me so much?…how can I best describe it?…extreme nervous collapse and hopeless despair …why did he look down on me and why did he and everyone else react with scorn and disbelief when I told them about what happened to me and the children…and possibly himself as well…on that fateful night….or about anything at all…in the end I literally could not speak…I would be cut off shouted down or this bullshit…
“we are all so worried about you Sandy…we think you might have bipolar disorder or schizophrenia….after all it does run in your family”….
Anyhoos…after that I just got this sick feeling every time I even thought about writing. I wrote some poems over a period of about a year and never wrote another after that. I gave a book of my poems to my father…but he did not read them…I tried to recite my best poem to my mum on a number of occasions but she would become infuriated with me…I decided to give up on this idea of being a writer…but then later…after a period of intense engagement with off world entities…I started posting my stories on a website called Waking World…where for the most part they were well received…That site closed down after a while and a few years later I found another one…it had been set up by someone I had met at the university here…who wanted to explore the UFO phenomena…in the light of a ‘flying object’ that had been witnessed by a number of school children in Melbourne…I desperately needed feedback on my own situation…I needed Help! and I thought I would find it there…but no…very quickly I was ostracized by the other members of the discussion forum…and basically laughed at…I never went back.
I have never had any desire to publicise my experiences…out of sheer embarrassment more than anything else. I have not spoken of these things for a long time and I don’t like talking about it…the laughter and the sneering and patronising attitude still ring in my ears… my mother talking down to me as if I was some idiot child…the cold hard set of her mouth, the dark glint of evil in her eyes…the horror……in the end I just get angry and upset and more determined than ever to just walk out of all their lives…forever…and I am not being grandiose when I say that….actually that is what I did.
Lily when I decided to resume our old pen pal relationship…I wanted to tell your story and mine…but it was sooo depressing….seriously the only way I can write this story is by taking myself out of it…in a way…and making light of it…after a time you can look back and when there is enough distance there…it is possible to find a funny side… but I had to look for it…not just for my own sanity…and I have asked myself many times am I going insane?...but then I remember…and I know that I did not imagine the things that happened to me…the heart knows what the heart knows.
Ok I will start with my earliest memory…in Africa.
I was a baby when I arrived in Africa…on a ship from England. I was about six months old. There is a picture of me on that ship. I am sitting in a pale yellow pram holding a cup wearing only a nappy as it was very hot. I am looking at a reflection of myself in what appears to be a full length mirror in a doorway. Behind me in the mirror, my mother is leaning over me. She is smiling and I am laughing. In the background of this picture is another person but their image is blurred. I sort of remember that.
My next most vivid memories include. I am in the upstairs bedroom of the house where we lived in Kenya…I am approximately three years old. I share the room with my little brother. Sometime during the night…I woke up…a monkey came in through the windows of my bedroom and stole the clothes that were at the end of bed…the monkey appeared to be on a rope or a lead and it slipped through the bars on the window. The next thing I remember is being in my parents room down the hallway…I am transfixed by the sight of a zebra standing very still and perfectly framed in the window. The curtains are open…as they were in my bedroom…
My next memories are of Afura…a little Kenyan boy the same age as me who was related to my ‘nanny’ Christina…either as a son, grandson or nephew…she was quite old and fat…too old to be his mother…I am not sure…I remember once Afura having a fall and cutting his head open…I was quite upset and horrified…I had never seen anything that shocking before and it sort of freaked me out…another time I remember walking along a wall dividing two parts of a the building….that was my house?...I lived in a house in India that was portioned off in that way….that was the year 1962…I believe.
There were times when it seemed as if there was just Christina, my brother and myself….on a beach in Mombassa or just sitting on a hill somewhere in the African Wilderness…something must have happened to Afura…he wasn’t with us at those times.
One time a monkey came into the garden and my brother and the monkey made a beeline for one another…they just hugged and hugged…I have a photo of it….
To be continued Lillian…. It is twenty to seven in the morning and I have been up all night…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)