headfuck

There is too much silence

by frogpondsrock on February 1, 2011

in David,headfuck,Mona,Sadness

I wonder if one of the reasons for the reluctance to talk to our young people about suicide is the mistaken belief that we might give them ideas. As if by starting a conversation about suicide we might inadvertently plant the seed of death in their heads.

On Monday evening I went to bed early as it had been a long week and I was knackered but there is never any true rest in my house whilst my teenager is awake as he bangs doors, clatters dishes and clomps about the house late at night in an eternal quest for food and facebook.

There wasn’t to be any rest for me that evening either as one of David’s friends had put a suicidal status update on his facebook page. I lay awake in bed listening to my son trying to contact his friend, X on the telephone, hearing my sons voice rising in fear as he demanded that X pick up the god damn phone.

After about 15 minutes of distraught phone calls and frantic inboxing with no response from X, I ended up in the car in my nightie driving David down the road to X’s house.

I was so tired I was a bit trippy and the memory of my son frantically ringing and ringing X’s mobile has become less real now. Eventually when we were about half way there X’s brother answered the phone telling Dave he had come home from work and found the boy passed out in his bed covered in blood from multiple slashes to his arm and wrist.

Shit.

Luckily the cuts were only superficial and didn’t require stitches.

David stayed with X that night and the next and on Australia day I picked them up and drove them down to the Mona museum.

I don’t know what I was hoping to achieve by taking the boys to Mona. I know that I was hoping that the museum would work her magic on X. That he would see that there is a whole other world of beauty and art and expression out there.

That there is never only one path.

That it is okay to be different.

That we are all different.

Maybe I was also a little bit starstruck by the sheer amazingness of the Mona museum and I know I wanted the boys to share my joy because in hindsight Mona really isn’t the place to take a confused and sensitive 16 year old. X was totally freaked out by the place. The darkness of the rooms made him jumpy and video art works that my eyes had only skipped over because they weren’t my cup of tea drew the boys in and they were repulsed by them. X was horrified by the wall of  porcelain vaginas and declared Mona to be totally creepy.The boys didn’t even glance at Snake as I took them to see the fat car hoping that the sensual curves of the car and the brightness of the red bodywork would at least  be a positive experience for them and it was.

As we drove away from the museum towards the city park where they like to hang out with their friends, we had a brief discussion about what is art and what isn’t. I had forgotten the black and white certainty of being sixteen, of a sixteen year old perspective that art has to be beautiful in order to be called art and I worried if I had done more harm than good.

On the Thursday morning I took X into a youth counselling place, I had previously spoken to them about X and they had prepared a packet of pamphletts and such for him. I waited in the car whilst Dave and X walked into the building and I knew that I had done all I could for this boy.

It is never easy when it is someone elses child.

Years ago an old woman held my toddlers hands in hers and told me, this boy is going to be a healer. Over a decade and a half  later I watch as my child gathers the broken to him, as the broken are drawn to him and I worry.

It is never easy when it is your own child either.

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A throw away state of mind.

by frogpondsrock on October 19, 2010

in Animal cruelty,arseholiness,headfuck,On my soapbox,real life,social justice

I drove past the local tip the other day and noticed that the flock of roosters foraging in the paddock below it had grown. I had just assumed that some of  the nearby farmer’s chooks had decided that there was better forage at the tip and that last season his girls had hatched out lots of roosters.

I was appalled to discover that people have been dumping the roosters there. I knew that people dumped kittens at the tip but the thought of going to all the trouble of catching a rooster and then just throwing it away shocked me.

There have been a lot of new people move here in the past ten years or so, city people looking for a treechange, mainlanders mostly, attracted to the cheap land and easy commute to the city.

I can wholly appreciate the excitement of finally having a bit of land with space for a few chickens, mmm think of all the lovely fresh eggs. And it seems to be all fine and dandy until the novelty wears off and the bloody chickens scratch your garden to pieces or a hen goes broody and hatches out a clutch of roosters. What do you do then?

Apparently you just throw the fucking roosters away. Aaargh!

It is the waste of all that good meat that does my head in, as well as the casual cruelty.

There are a number of tangents that I could spin off into here, I could pull out my soapbox and have a little rant about ethical treatment of animals and our responsibilities to our livestock.

I could blather on about the environmental damage that wild chickens do to the fragile landscape.

Or I could lead into a discussion about throw away roosters being the least of our problems in this 21st century, when we already have a well established tradition of throwing away the  most vulnerable of all in this society of ours. Our elderly and our disabled, our mentally ill and our useless are all thrown away.

Not to the tip, like the roosters but our broken ones are marginalised and pushed to the very edges of society. Our elderly are packed off to sub standard and under funded nursing homes. Our indigenous are demonised and our leaders shame themselves and us as a nation, by loudly trying to “Stop the Boats”, when that tiny percentage of desperate people is the least of our problems.

Now I have run out of steam and the early morning daylight is filling the sky with interesting colours. I will gather up the camera and see if the play of light through the gum trees chases away these dark thoughts of mine.

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All muddled up.

by frogpondsrock on October 16, 2010

in Amy,Aspergers,ceramics,David,Ehlers Danlos Syndrome,Family,Grief,headfuck,Isaac,Sadness,Veronica

That is what I reckon this post will be, all muddled up without a coherent train of thought running through it to pull it all together. But that is life. Life is messy and muddled and I just make it up as I go along and hope like hell I am doing the right thing.

I started to write this in response to my daughter Veronica’s post, about her grief and her sense of aloneness in all she is facing at the moment.

I had a long talk with Veronica yesterday, as we do nearly everyday. She prepared me for the content of post that she had written knowing that her sadness would make me cry. My parting words to her in her aloneness was the only truth that I could give, that at the end of the day she is “The Mother” and she just has to suck it up and get on with her life as best she can.

The only comment I could leave her after I had read her words was, to just keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

Because that is all we can do, just keep on plodding along.

The Ehlers Danlos Syndrome makes everything doubly hard for my little girl and then you throw a sprinkle of Aspergers into the mix and I don’t see any easy days in my daughter’s future at all.

So there is grief on top of grief.

Grief for all that we have lost with the early death of my Mother. Mum was an energetic whirlwind of a woman. A 5 foot tall bundle of contagious, hands on practical energy. Her catch cry was, “Lets Go!” and go we all did, swept along in the wake of Mum’s enthusiasm for life.

Grief for the loss of easy children, with simple answers for Veronica. We all want our children to be happy and sometimes the despair I hear in Veronica’s voice is enough to bring me undone. Again.

There is also Anger, frustration and  a good serving of stress to top it all off.

I am slow to get angry but when I do my anger is like a flash fire, hot and fierce and all consuming. I am an Aquarian born in the year of the horse and my Chinese element is fire and apparently for those that know these things I am true to my signs.

I can feel my anger building. Anger with those that make my daughter’s life hard. Anger with members of “The Spouses” family who wont believe that EDS is real. And a general delayed anger that my Mother is dead because everything would be a hell of a lot easier with her here to help.

I believe in truth and for those medical professionals and assorted bystanders that don’t want to hear my truth, your denial isnt going to stop me saying the words and fighting for the best outcomes for my family.

Ehlers Danlos Syndrome isnt an easy illness to deal with. Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is pretty much invisible and those with EDS are used to being in pain, or feeling sick all of the time so they don’t make a fuss. But as the mother of two EDSy children and an EDSy spouse it is very hard for me to watch and feel helpless in the face of their illness. So I do the only thing that I know how to do and that is support my immediate family and  try to educate other people about EDS.

I simply do not have any emotional energy to spare for those people who are unwilling to make an effort to understand what my family are going through on a daily basis.

The Spouse can not stand for longer than five minutes at a time without feeling like his hips are going to fall out and his back is on fire. He put up with this pain for a long time and was starting to spend longer and longer in bed because it was the only place he could be pain free. Until I dragged him, unwillingly I might add to our family GP and organised for him to have better pain relief in the form of slow release morphine patches. The Spouse has your typical Aussie blokes attitude to doctors and wont go to the doctor unless I push it. The Spouse’s remedy for his pain is to just drink more beer and hope it goes away enough so that he can sleep.

For a man with a very strong work ethic it is very frustrating for him to be limited in what he can do and that frustration often presents as aggression.I don’t take any notice of the grumpy old bugger when he is having a whinge and his anger whilst loud, is mostly directed at himself.

The parts of your brain that deal with pain are right next to the parts of your brain that deal with anxiety. So pain and anxiety go hand in hand. The Spouse hasn’t been to any of my exhibitions as he doesn’t like crowds. He wont go into the city and the only time he willingly leaves the house is to go fishing.

Both my children have varying levels of anxiety as well, this is all part and parcel of the Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.I am hoping that the psychologists at the pain clinic at the hospital can help Veronica without having medication that turns her into a zombie.

As I wrote earlier when you throw Aspergers syndrome as well as Coeliacs into the mix it makes for a very challenging headpace. I am missing my mother dreadfully and I worry about my grand children a lot. So I throw myself into my work and join another committee, set up ceramic blogs and facebook pages so that I don’t have to think too deeply about the future.

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“Another invasion”— A press release by Mick Dodson, former Australian of the Year

by frogpondsrock on September 9, 2010

in environmental stuff,good causes,headfuck,On my soapbox,politics

This is a press release by Mick Dodson, former Australian of the year, this comes courtesy of the Tasmanian Times Website.

It beggars belief that this is even legal in Australia. Aboriginal land in one of our most fragile ecosystems has just been earmarked for compulsory acquisition by the Western Australian Government.

The reason? Energy giants including BP, Woodside, Chevron and Shell want to build a gas pipeline, and they don’t want to wait for Indigenous consultation. Some traditional owners are in favour of the pipeline, others disagree. But one thing is clear: compulsory acquisition means no genuine consultation, and far less compensation if the project goes ahead.

We need to respond quickly and make sure Premier Barnett’s announcement is met with national outrage. Locals are delivering a petition to the Premier’s office next week. Can you back them up by adding your name today, and asking your friends to do the same? Go to link http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/nocompulsoryacquisition

The nation is talking about hung parliament negotiations in the marble halls of Parliament House. But far away, in the red dirt of James Price Point, 400km from Broome on the Dampier Peninsula, there is another power struggle going on; pitting the profits of BP, Shell, Woodside and Chevron against the rights of Indigenous Australians. You can help shift the balance.

There are numerous registered Aboriginal heritage sites in the vicinity of James Price Point (Walmadan). Locals tell of Indigenous burial sites and ancient rock art; in some areas you can actually see the footprints of prehistoric birds, long extinct. But the Western Australian Premier wants to bypass Aboriginal elders in what’s been called “colonialism all over again” by Wayne Bergmann, Kimberly Land Council CEO. And what’s more, the project hasn’t even received environmental approvals required by State or Federal law.

This is about more than one site, or one gas pipeline. Compulsory acquisition in WA would put the profits of multinationals above the rights of traditional owners—and threatens decades of progress on land rights. Can you stand with traditional owners behind a campaign to stop compulsory acquisition? Colin Barnett’s decision could set back the Indigenous Rights movement by 30 years or more. Together we have the opportunity to ensure this doesn’t happen.

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“Gobsmacked” was the word I was searching for.

by frogpondsrock on July 25, 2010

in addiction,food,headfuck,On my soapbox,real life

Though the words stunned, amazed, horrified and saddened would have worked equally as well.

What am I babbling on about?

I was watching the telly the other night when up popped Jamie Oliver and I found myself being sucked in to the vortex that was, Jamie Oliver’s food revolution. I was totally horrified to see that a whole classroom full of six or seven year old American children couldn’t identify a potato, a tomato, a cauliflower or any other fresh vegetable you cared to mention.

I was sitting there with my mouth wide open, totally gobsmacked.

Now I knew that some children thought that eggs came from the carton and milk came from the supermarket but to be faced with this scale of food ignorance just blew my mind. It is easy as an Australian to dismiss this as just an American thing but as we all know, where America goes the rest of the world follows.

What are we doing to our children?

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