Mentor post #1

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the subject of this post.

U2 Album, 'The Unforgettable Fire' ... Release Date: October 1984

A Sort of Homecoming

And you know it's time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance.

And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, 'desire' time
And your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape.

On borderland we run.
I'll be there, I'll be there tonight
A high-road, a high-road out from here.

The city walls are all come down
The dust a smoke screen all around
See faces ploughed like fields that once
Gave no resistance.

And we live by the side of the road
On the side of a hill as the valleys explode
Dislocated, suffocated
The land grows weary of it's own.

O com-away, o com-away, o-com, o com-away, I say I
O com-away, o com-away, o-com, o com-away, I say I

Oh, oh on borderland we run
And still we run, we run and don't look back
I'll be there, I'll be there
Tonight, tonight

I'll be there tonight, I believe
I'll be there so high
I'll be there tonight, tonight.

Oh com-away, I say, o com-away, I say.

The wind will crack in winter time
This bomb-blast lightning waltz.
No spoken words, just a scream
Tonight we'll build a bridge across the sea and land
See the sky, the burning rain
She will die and live again tonight.

And your heart beats so slow
Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance.
Oh, don't sorrow, no don't weep
For tonight at last I am coming home.
I am coming home.

Two days ago I sent an email message via Facebook trying to find some details of a man called Felix Elias. I had worked with Felix during 1988 at a Youth/Psychiatric Outpatient drop-in centre run by the St Vincent de Paul Society in the Canberra suburb of Manuka. This part of Canberra is considered well off but is close to a number of public housing areas and the drop-in was always very busy. I wanted to get in touch with Felix because he was an inspirational person to me when we were work mates and his example of gentle simple living has been a constant sirocco in my consciousness ever since. 

I had known of Felix for some years before I began working with him. He ran the SVdP bookshop and worked with homeless men at a shelter run out of the same building as the bookshop. It was also a meeting place where we left for the children's holiday camps that I volunteered on from 1982 - 1990. Felix had a reputation for being a bit of a grump and not many people wanted much to do with him at the time. However, in 1988 I was employed by Vinnies to work as assistant manager, to Felix's manager, of the drop-in service. Felix did have a gruff way about him to be sure, he was a hard worker and looked to me to be likewise. Unfortunately I didn't poses Felix's energy and I felt my time was better spent talking with the clients and there were many times we didn't see eye to eye about the best way to deal with the clients we worked with. 

This was also a time when my short marriage to the mother of my son was entering its final stages, and despite our glaring energy and generational differences, Felix proved to be a compassionate and understanding friend that helped me through an extremely rocky point in my life. But more than this, the story of his life was one that as time fertilised his seeds of wisdom into bloom in my life his story became a touchstone for the possibilities of simplicity and commitment to community.

I had for almost a year wanted to get in touch with him and tell him how much his care and concern had meant to me, and how much I often thought of him and told his story to people, but unfortunately I received word that Felix died on October 27, 2008 (two and a half weeks ago). I am gutted by the lousy timing ... I am finding a strong desire to be in touch with these important figures from my past but they are dying too quickly and I fear I have missed the boat. So, for Felix, I will tell his story here ...

Felix had been a well off man, he worked as a factory manager and was very comfortable in his life. Travelling home one day he was involved in a terrible car accident that badly injured everyone in the car including his wife and children. This accident caused him to re-evaluate his life and as a consequence he decided to follow a vocation and from that point on he worked for the St Vincent de Paul for the rest of his working life. I don't know when he first started working for Vinnies or even all of the jobs he had for them over time; what I do know is that he also volunteered for Vinnies in his off time and was also a very devout family and religious man. I got to know him during our short working time together and knew one of his sons through the Aussie Rules football team we played for in Canberra. I met his family and saw the way he put his meagre earnings from Vinnies to work to keep his family fed, clothed and housed. 

I have found his example to be more and more inspiring as I get older, his modesty, belief and all the other inspiring things I've described about Felix make me want to emulate him in many ways ... In fact he's one of the reasons (amongst others) that I've always wanted chooks. When I rail against the status anxiety and commodification of our personal worth that seems to be the compulsive thought process of society I often think of Felix, his story becomes the exemplar of another way, a possibility outside of convention. 

I may have romanticized this man and his values but that's my particular reading of Felix and his impact on my life. I am comfortable with that and in the shadow of his life there is hope. I hope his faith gave him solace as he crossed the solitary threshold at the end of his life and I hope he is resting in the peace he believed in. 

Vale Felix.

And your heart beats so slow

Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance.
Oh, don't sorrow, no don't weep
For tonight at last I am coming home.
I am coming home.

This is meant to be a picture of me with a broken leg circa. 2001. But, alas, I was unable to find one so this is a picture of me getting ready to have a hernia repaired in 2006 ... The photo I was looking for had me similarly clad in operating theatre gear. Please, feel free to use your imagination ;-)

A Perfect Circle and their 2003 album: 13th Step

"Vanishing"

Disappear
Disappear
Higher
Higher
Into the air
Slowly disappear
No, no longer here

Disappear
Disappear
Thinner, thinner
Into the air

Never really here
What that never
Like a thought brushing up against a sigh
Floating away
Floating away [repeated]

Vanishing like a cyan sunday
Disappear
Disappear
Vanish, vanish into the air
Slowly disappear
Never really here

Floating away
Floating away [repeated]

This art/life blog is a bit more about the band than the song I've included, however the song is still very important - but, first things first. There are several parts of the story that will need elaboration, which will likely come in future blogs, but for the sake of brevity I will rely on the major focus of the story to carry us through.

In 2003 I went to my first rock concert in many years to see A Perfect Circle at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. The reason for my prolonged absence was because in August of 2001 I broke my leg and dislocated my ankle and that caused a prolonged rehabilitation which took the best part of 12 months before I was walking without the aid of crutches or a cane.

The broken leg: In 2001 I directed and had the lead role in a Luigi Pirandello play called Enrico IV. between the second and third weekends of performance I had planned to attend my annual 'Man camp' at Wee Jasper (located South West of Canberra in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains). I had left on Sunday evening and got to Wee Jasper late Sunday night and enjoyed a few quiet beers with the friends I had been away with, in this fashion, for the 11 previous years. Monday morning came and went and after lunch and our first beer (my first and only beer of the day) we had decided on a game of kick-to-kick. It had been drizzling that morning but the ground wasn't excessively greasy. My runners were also not in their finest condition with smooth patches on the soles. I'm sure the reader's imagination is racing ahead ... but, in a moment of inspiration, so enjoyable was our kick-to-kick, I had decided to try a left footed kick. I am by no stretch a good kick on my left foot, I couldn't even be classed as randomly competent, so it perhaps seems to have been an ill-advised choice given the result, but I do like to practice my ambidextrous-ness at every opportunity and I started my run up to the kick. 

As I placed my right foot to allow my left foot to swing through I felt it begin to slip from underneath me, as I was imagining the laughter that would ensue from the fresh air swing and buttocks bouncing landing my right foot was halted in its motion by a small rut in the ground and before I knew it my ankle had twisted and my entire body weight (a considerable sum) crashed through my ankle joint producing a crack that echoed through the valley about 2 secounds before my anguished cries of pain - Snap! Fuck! Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!

For a short time as I was writhing on the ground I was imagining a severe sprain that might have been overcome in time for the next weekend's performances, but the reaction of my mates - except for the guy with the video camera who shall remain nameless - quickly told me something else was going on. Now, Wee Jasper is about 70km from the nearest town with a hospital so preparations had to be made for the transportation of myself to the hospital in a town called Yass. Fortunately there was plenty of firewood to trim down into some splints (which much impressed the Nurses at Yass Base Hospital) and I was strapped up and fed into the back seat of the biggest car and with reasonable care I was driven to the hospital.

I felt every bump of that trip, as I was to feel every twist and movement of my body until some pain medication was mercifully given to me some 4 hours or so after the accident and after the attending doctor had tossed my broken leg around in his hands as he explained to me what had happened - I knew what had happened intuitively, circumstantially and actually because the Radiographer had broken protocol and described my injuries to me because of their impressive nature: a spiral fracture of the bottom 1/3 of my Tibia and a 10mm separation of my ankle joint (a severe one being considered at 3mm!). And the Doctor saw fit to toss my ankle around in his hands like limp spaghetti! I clung to the bed, colour draining from my face and NOT screaming because of the stunning stupidity displayed by a guy who I thought in that moment was clearly only masquerading as a doctor!! I heard the 'Doctor' then enquire with the Nurses about my pain medication and when he was informed that he hadn't ordered any for me he hastily replied, "well, I think we better give him something." Yikes!

Still, it wasn't the end of my painful journey as I was transferred by Ambulance to Canberra Hospital and had to be put into a back-cast before I could be put into the ward for the night. Even with the extra heavy duty sedation the pain was pretty intense. My sister Nicky, who lives in Canberra was there for moral support and I was glad to be able to squeeze her hand.

I had two operations on my ankle, one to reconstruct the joint with plates and screws and one to remove some of the metalwork so I could begin rehabilitation. I couldn't walk, or even weight bear on my ankle for 6 months. Once I started, the rehab took about three months to graduate from crutches to walking stick to unaided perambulation. 9-11 happened, life under John Howard became more boring and I missed not only the final weekend of Enrico IV but a paid children's theatre tour of Gobsmacked! a show I do with a friend of mine called Bertie ... Needless to say I got a bit depressed for a while and I became the butt of jokes in the theatre scene for a while as everyone giggled and smirked whenever they said 'break a leg' when I got back on stage! Ha ha ha! Funny joke! You know for creative people you're all a bit obvious! But I'm over it ... No, really, I am.

So, I had to wait for quite some time before I felt confident enough to brave the mosh-pit again. It was an amazing experience and I shed tears of joy as I moved and bounced and swirled with the crowd to this fine loud band, A Perfect Circle. I could barely walk afterwards but it was sweet pain as I hobbled back towards Darling Harbour ... I only made it out to Oxford Street before I caved and waved down a Taxi. And now my ankle is always painful or uncomfortable in one way or another but I can live with that and I've been to some great concerts since then.

The reason I have chosen Vanishing to represent this band and moment in my life is for two reasons: the first is that Vanishing is the first song A Perfect Circle played at their Sydney concert and it moved me in the action of their playing but also in the light show and staging that accompanied it. Also, their lead singer Maynard James Keenan has one of the purest voices in that type of hard rock music and the haunting delivery added a welcome ethereal quality. The second reason is because it's one of the three songs I want played at my funeral - the others being Somewhere Over The Rainbow/Beautiful World medley by Brother Iz and the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Each of these songs speaks to a different aspect of my life and appreciation of music and gives the broadest representation of that stuff ... But for now, there'll be no vanishing for me.