5. Leaving Australia - Where is Australia?

Where is Australia ?

Australia. The postcard with a photo of Sydney Harbor lay on a table just inside the front door. It was the first thing to catch my eye as we made our way into – what at the time seemed like just another dream gone wrong. It was 1969 and I was with Carol Ann and her year-old daughter Desiree. Being someplace, sort of out of the blue; here in Hawaii – was already a pattern in my life that would be enacted over and over.

Desiree Eva Hawaii 1970 age 1 - Carol Ann's daughter soon after arriving in Hawaii.

How an entity is where they are (physically, emotionally, psychologically, mentally, virtually or abstractionally) and who they are (either by virtual of whom they think they are or by inference –someone else thinks they are someone else) at any given moment has been a life-long; at times, vacillating between a part-time and a full-time obsessional semi-analytical research project of mine. Are we where we are because of many lifetimes of crossed-paths that culminate in this moment at this place with this person in this place (or alone if we have not been able to capture another entity within our aura – or conversely, they have not captured us into theirs)? Are we random sparks of The One Mind (whatever the hell that may be) fulfilling a disillusioned god’s perversions? Surely, it is not what I was raised and brainwashed with: that God created us for this one lifetime and if we forgot to forgive someone one time or did one thing displeasing to God we would burn for eternity in Hell. Could we be the descendants of aliens who created humans as slaves to mine gold to fix Planet X (Nibiru) as its orbit brought it within spitting distance of Earth a mere 450,000 years ago? (Want to lose sleep? Google ‘Planet Nibiru Facts & Secrets’ or ‘Nibiru / Planet X – The Date of Arrival – an illuminati secret’). Perhaps we are just chance encounters in the place we are in as the person we are within the moment we are witnessing. Do we witness the moment or does the moment witness us?  Did we create God or did god create us? These and millions of other questions and thoughts have plagued not only me but also all of humanity at some level in some degree for a very long time. Perhaps animals, minerals, atoms, and the air all contemplate this on some level – all the time or part-time. The Elements, mountains and vegetation are obsessed by these thoughts – how would we know? We don’t even know ourselves. How could we possibly know anything else?

Even these past 40 years of studying astrology have only given me a series of answers that at times clash with reality or my abstract sense of reality and at other times they blend with the moment enough to look like there is sense and sensibility in it all. Sometimes astrology does not provide/provoke answers at all. After 40-years of in-depth study of many astrological techniques, I am close to saying it is all bullshit. Close but with some reservations because too often it has provided answers that no other way could have. (Now in 2025, age 78, I agree with a former self that it is all bullshit).

One of the proofs of astrology I would think would be that others born on the same day would have similar happenings in life. And twins would have similar experiences or have similar personalities. I have a family member (through marriage) who is a twin and he and his sister not only have little in common, but they rarely communicate with one another decade after decade, and they have totally different life experiences and beliefs. If there was anything to astrological predictions, then we could see similar events happening. For example, the rock singer, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull was born the same day as me; 10 August 1947. Of course, he has a different ascendant sign; 4°53' Virgo (I have 28 Libra) and his moon is a few degrees different (22°07' Taurus and mine is 27 Taurus) but we both have the other stuff the same. We both have Chinese Astrology: Fire Pig as anyone born that month would have. Ian is 5' 9" (1m75) tall whereas I am 6’ 2”. I still have my hair- sucked in Ian. And then on the same day as Ian and me there is Anwar Ibrahim: a former deputy prime minister and finance minister of Malaysia. In 1999, he was sentenced to six years in prison for corruption, and in 2000, to another nine years for alleged homosexual acts. Now that ain’t anywhere near me. Also, there is the Brit cricket player Alan Ward born August 10, 1947, blimey I don’t know anything about cricket. OK I could go on and on about this but the reason I am in a tizzy about all this now (18, March 2015) is that I came across this dude born on the same day and year as me and in Michigan too. Only 31 miles away from where I was born. Surely, we would have something in common. He died last year so that, as far as I know, did not happen to me.

On August 31, 1991, he married Christine L… I was divorced, a single parent, and started a university course after dropping out of tenth grade in 1964 and living in a foreign country in August 1991.
He was a talented welder by trade and a skilled mechanic. Nope, not anything like me just like I am not a famous singer like Ian Anderson or a finance minister like Anwar Ibrahim.
He enjoyed hunting, fishing and driving stock cars and he loved his beer. I would never hunt, being a vegetarian, I don’t like cars, and I have not had any alcohol for more than two-decades. He turned out to be a red-neck and me a hippie. How did that happen?
He has 10 grandchildren, eight great grandchildren; two sisters, two brothers, half-sister: Clairabell of Kalamazoo and many nieces and nephews. Holy Cow! I have a son, a half-sister and half-brother. And my sister ain’t no Clairabell. Is that really a name?
Raymond was proud to have served his country in the U.S. Army during the Viet Nam War earning the rank of E-5. Again. Not me.

However, I was born in a military hospital and delivered by some military induced wanker. During the Viet Nam War I protested and burnt my draft card. I have been to Hanoi heaps though and have a stepson living there so that is something similar in a huge stretch of belief system’s proof.

So, my problem is with good old dead Raymond here and how did he have such a different life than me? The same with the other two famous dudes. The only similarity I have had with Raymond is that I never became famous like Ian, Anwar, or that cricket person.

The bottom line is that you will waste your time and money getting a computer astrological reading. You will waste your time and probably money studying astrology because at the end of the day no two people are the same or have the same experiences. We are formed through all that happens around us. There is no way to predict the future or even the present. Why does Ian have thousands of fans and I have none? Why did Anwar become involved with finance when I am lucky to know what happened to the dollar I had in my pocket yesterday? Why is Raymond dead? I could not find that out. As a matter of fact, I do not even know how I got onto this tangent about astrology this morning. I was searching for information on something and somehow came up with the obituary of animal-killing, diesel-sucking, military-humping, and family loving Raymond. Hey Raymond, your life sucked. I am glad I did not live your life. I bet on your death bed you cried; ‘damn! If only I could have had a life like Terrell Neuage, I would have died so chilled’. Well, sucked in mate you were born under a bad sign. Oops so was I.

I am beginning to write this when transit Jupiter is conjunct my Sun, Venus, Saturn, Pluto in Leo in my tenth house and squaring Jupiter in the first3F, And transit Pluto trine Sun, T. Venus trine Chiron (which I think has a lot to do with starting writing this at this time here in Hamburg) – a good time to write about myself. (Now 12 years after writing this I am rewriting with Jupiter back in mid-Leo: Jupiter takes 12 years to go around the sun so it is now in the same position as when I started this as I just said. Maybe 12 years from now someone will read it other than me.) Of course, to a Leo any time is a good time to create run on sentences and thoughts and fantasies about the significance of one’s self. Now is a particularly good time if there is anything to the art/science/bullshit of astrology and of course those great Chiron aspects I have now. At the same time there is Neptune in opposition to my Venus, Pluto, Saturn, and soon my Sun – illusions are just a creative aspect to reality after all. Verifying what Jesus said on the cross though not exactly in those words, but of course with those sentiments.

But no matter where this trip to Australia began, the fact is that at this moment I am back here again, after making the escape from the Land of Oz on several occasions, which makes me wonder do we ever escape where we are supposed to be: if indeed we are supposed to be somewhere? Moreover, of course with that thought why we are where we are at even though we believe we should be somewhere else. How much input do we get into creating this life we live?

How we got to Hawaii was clearly by design. (Chapter 16 – Hawaii, is how I got to Hawaii) If I could only decipher the design of how I get from one situation to the one before then back again I would be able to be master of my life or at least some portions of it. Hawaii, like Clifton Park, New York and Adelaide, South Australia is part of a triad of city experiences for me – my own little cosmic non-Bermuda triangle of often-repeated experiences in these places. I have plotted charts on the map, done astrological comparisons of these places, meditated on them – but the links have no defined mappings from a rational Western mind perspective. From a metaphysical perspective, it all makes sense but then all metaphysical musings like all religious thought becomes made up as we go and makes sense only to the proclaimer of the metaphysical proclamations and their followers and to claim the unknowable is perceivable and explainable in this moment is as easy to say as:

City-Triad of unusual experiences

1. Hawaii 157 degrees West ~ 21 degrees North

Joined religious cult order 1969
Marriage number one August 1980
First son born January 1981
Met biological brother for the first time August 2002

1. Adelaide, Australia 138 degrees East ~ 35 degrees South

First arrival June 1981
Tofu manufacturer 1981 - 1998
Second son born July 1983
Divorced 1985
Custody of two children 1985 - 2001
Citizen of Australia 1996
Second marriage May 11, 2002
Left Australia July 14, 2002
Life changed forever, August, 2003

1. Clifton Park , New York  73 degrees West ~ 42 degrees North

Adopted 1950
Left Clifton Park 1965
Christmas in Clifton Park with children 1985
1992 Last saw adopted mother and brother (they died soon after)
Met birth-sister for the first time in 1992
Returned to live 2002
Bought house (nearby; Round Lake) June 17, 2003
Wrote most of this story; August – December 2004
Bought second house November 15, 2004
Father still alive – at the end of 2005 at age 100

Long ago – I think it was about the mid-1970s I began to write where I was at Christmas each year since leaving home. I had hoped it would give me a sense of why I was in those places – which so often were different each year. It was not that I chose to have a different Christmas in different cities – I just sort of was in a different place - usually without any prior plan to be there.

When I had children, I decided to spend every Christmas in the same place. It didn’t really happen reminding me once again that what we want and aim to accomplish does not necessarily happen, though I have yet to discover whether that is because I am doing something wrong or whether something beyond my conscious decisional processes are at work and changing the direction I continue to put myself in. Why is it when I say I am going to Tiffany to shop I end up at Walmart? When I said I was going to Australia for a few months I left 22 years later – then came back so I could leave again? I am often faced with the difficult process of spending a lot of effort to create a direction only to have nothing close to what I had planned be the end result. My life has direction – I know it does – I just do not know what that direction is though there is an unfolding that makes sense after the fact. Every January I would plan where I would be for next Christmas and very rarely would I be at that point but when I looked back it made perfect sense to be where I was at when Christmas rolled around.

next The Mental Me

Return to Home Page