24. PhD journey at University of South Australia

“Hi Terrell: Congratulations What you have from the examiners means that you can tell your employers that you have only some corrections to do to gain the PhD: this is a huge stage to have passed, and you have done very well
Well done we are all very very pleased for you Merry Christmas” Jackie Cook PhD, University of South Australia.

PhD  OK
It is interesting seeing all those planets in the sign of higher education, Sagittarius, and Venus, Mercury, Pluto and Sun in the seventh – I could not have it without my supervisor and the wife. Moreover, even the most beginning astrological student would note the exact trine of transit Mercury at 10 degrees and forty-seven minutes Sagittarius to my natal Venus at 10 degrees and forty minutes of Leo. It says it all doesn’t it? Of course, transit Venus forming a trine in my second house of money, self-worth and resources to my Venus in my tenth hopefully will raise my community status a bit now that I am too old and too ill to reap the benefit – isn’t that the shits? I hate those kinds of lives where the person struggles against many adversities and finally at the end they find scant success then they die – lucky me, that is my life.

There is no good to earned wisdom when it is earned too late to enjoy. Hepatitis C, high blood pressure, diabetes, and the full-on aging process plus grief that is almost beyond what I can bare. I can cope with the physical stuff, but the grief is too much. This PhD no longer has meaning. My mental state is the transit Saturn conjunction my Mercury. That absolutely shit of an aspect that occurs every 28 or so years. The last time I had this aspect I was 29 years old – I never imagined back then that I would last long enough on this planet to see it happen again. The last time I had this aspect I went through ‘self-realisation’ in the Holy Order of Mans. A lot of good that has done me.

[How do people get time to write novels? I will pick up a book, finger through it, and wonder just how that person found the time. I write poems of five to ten lines because I never have time to write much more. I wrote children's stories of 2500 word lengths because this is as much time as I could piece together to write. I am writing this by escaping from life for an hour or two every few days to string together these handful of thoughts because if I do not I will realise that life has absolutely no purpose except for one to embrace grief and tragedy. ]

The composite chart shows the relationship. Kris and I had a pretty good relationship chart, and we had good inter-relationship-chart aspects, the aspects between us were good for the most part. What stood out at first glance was her moon at 25 degrees of Taurus, which was close enough to my Moon at 28 degrees of Taurus to make us seemingly compatible on a down-to-earth daily living situation. We should have a lot in common, and we would be able to live together – but wait, we had just met – but it is interesting to write down what a relationship will become at the beginning then compare sometime later. I used to do this in the 1960s and 1970s and up to when I came across Lesia. I would meet a female and do a first meeting chart and if I had her birth information, I would do some comparison charts and write a short prediction of what I thought would happen. I was never right; my clearest example was when I met Lesia. I did a chart of when we first met coupled with my first impressions, and I wrote that we would never see one another again and that would be best. Looking at our charts now it is so clear that we should never have gotten together – and especially we should never have had children together – we had the perfect chart to screw up the parenting thing. Why are we with someone or why do we meet someone at a particular time? I refuse to be so fatalistic to believe that Lesia and I had to get together just so we could destroy one another and our children along with it. Lesia told me once that she had someone do a psychic reading on her who said we had been together several lifetimes; we had destroyed one another or some such thing before, and we were here this time to make amends. Well that is the biggest crock of shit I have ever heard, and I do not want to believe that we were supposed to be together for any reason that has anything to do with spirituality/metaphysics because to believe that is to believe that life is evil.

After spending an hour with me at my dining room table Kris got up and went to the door to go back to work. She gave me a hug and that was all it took. I had not touched a female since my half-hour or so interaction with the girl in France three years earlier. We spent the next half-hour on the couch and a few minutes on the bed without going too far, as Kris had to be back to work a lot earlier.

RUSH
STOP
FONDLE
RUSH
WOW

We arranged to meet the next afternoon and as our children were in school, we had the house to ourselves. We spent three hours making love and it surpassed anything I had ever known. I felt paralysed with love.

The day after
I fell in love with you
I fell in love with me
            but you
as my first love
will always be
            the one
I love the most

I started writing poems to Kris every night and over the next few years I would write several thousand, mostly five to ten line poems to her.

Why is it
that when I dance on your rooftop
at night
that you have dreams
that we are making love
in the rain

I would lay in bed and write dozens of poems to Kris a night – sometimes I would write fifty or sixty before going to sleep.

I laugh in French
Walk in Italian
Dance in Spanish
Kiss in English
Dream in you
FOREIGN WHISPERS
IN THE DAWN

We had been meeting in the afternoon and spending hours in bed for two weeks when we thought we should take the next step in our relationship, spending the night together. Before we could do that, we had to meet one another's children so Kris came to my house with her two children one Saturday afternoon and we had a barbecue in our backyard. We played a game of basketball, Kris and her children against my children and me. But Kris broke a fingernail soon after we started and was quite upset and went off and had a cry. The rest of us continued with our barbecue and Kris joined us. Overall, I think our children approved of one another. I went to Kris' houses with the children the next day. She was more up market and financially together than we were. We rented our house in a scruffy neighbourhood and the house itself was not in very good shape, with cracks in a couple of walls and a crappy kitchen that needed some desperate renovation. Kris owned her house and it was paid for, primarily through a divorce. She had a new car, her father gave her a car every couple of years, and she had good furniture whereas ours was a decade old and most of it we had bought a decade earlier from the Salvation Army, so it was junk to begin with. Our car, the one I bought when my father was with us, was more than a decade old and had dents and made weird noises and had smoke coming out of it and the passenger door did not work.  But neither Kris nor her children seemed to be concerned about our condition in life, and we had a good weekend visiting one another. Kris and I decided it would be best for her to come to my house after midnight a couple of nights a week then go home.

Because you glow
in the dark
I know
your love
for me
is real

The fact that my car made a lot of noise meant it was better for her to come and see me. Kris would coast down her driveway and then start up her car once on her street and come over. Years later her children would tell us that they knew she was trying to sneak off to come and visit me but Kris thought at the time that she was getting away with it.

You
my impatient butterfly
Leaving your cocoon
each day
flying away
with me

We were together in the afternoon and on Wednesday nights. If my children went to Lesia's for the weekend I would go to Kris' for the night, sometimes just Saturday and sometimes for both nights. I had been going to the gym for years and I convinced Kris to join me – she did not like doing the weights but she would sit in the spa with me as long as her hair didn't get wet.

Hackham  guys: Sacha , me, Leigh  1998

Leigh tried out for his second ever chosen team and that was a Year Seven Baseball Camp (45 were chosen from South Australia) from February 27 to March 3 of 1995. There were only four from all Southern Districts and that put Leigh toward the top of his club. The camp was at the Fort Largs Police Academy on Military Road and he was excited about going. At eleven years old, he was being taken note of as someone who worked hard. Our experiment in Victor Harbor of trying to set up a team failed. After about two months, our number of players went from 25 at the start to three or four to finally Leigh and I would go out and throw the ball and no one would join us. Southern Districts was the place for us and we were going there several times a week as well as playing basketball with Sacha until early in 1995 when Leigh stopped playing basketball and we went to Sacha's games around the different venues of Adelaide.

Sacha's basketball playing was suffering. At the end of 1994, before we moved to Hackham, when Sacha was playing well and was the high scorer for his team he had a bit of an accident. He telephoned me one afternoon to come and collect him from the town centre in Victor Harbor. He had been doing jumps with his skateboard and was trying to jump over a milk crate that was too high to jump over and he had broken his ankle. He was in a cast for quite some time and when he got back to playing basketball, he could not manoeuvre as well as he could be previous to his skating. Before he got hurt he and Leigh were chosen to a local all-star team that went to Ballarat in Victoria for a week's championships. It was the first time the two boys went off together to another state to play sports. It was the only all-star team Sacha would get selected for which was too bad because he had the talent and the drive to succeed at basketball but after he broke his ankle he never got to the star level enough to be on a select team. In 1995 whilst we were living in Hackham, Sacha and I played on a social team together which was a mix of adults and youths. Kris came and watched a few games and it was all starting to feel like I had gotten to some level of normalcy.

Having children playing sports and having a girlfriend – it all seemed good. I had a fantasy of parenting; I think it started long before I had children. Back when I lived with Lynn and her daughter, Tracy, in Maryland. I thought that someday I would have children, and even back then, I had wanted to be a single parent. The way I pictured it was that I would have two or three children, one or two would be male and one or two would be female. I would have a station wagon or a van, and I would take my children as well as others' together to their baseball and basketball games. That never quite manifested and here I had a junky old car. But wait, hold the story for a second; it sort of turned out that way because I was taking my children to sports and often when we lived in Victor, I would take other children with us. In some ways my fantasy of parenting did work out though I always thought I would do it in the States and that I would have a beautiful home and life would be a bit easier. Most likely I would be writing and publishing novels and doing art shows and mass marketing my picture-poems but twenty years after living with Tracy and her mother I still had not gotten my picture to become the way I wanted it. I enjoyed my basketball games with Sacha and we played well together though for the most part I was getting the ball and passing it to him to take the shots but then that soon ended.

One night in a rather aggressive and fast game Sacha passed me the ball and I was not quite ready, and my finger got in the way, and I dislocated it. It was extremely painful, and I had to go to the emergency room to have it yanked back into position. That finger never has been the same since and that was my last game, though I had a bit of a game for the first time in almost ten years a few months ago. Sacha came to New York for a visit for Christmas (2003) and we were at the Shenendehowa YMCA shooting baskets and talking about the past when another man and his son asked if we would like to play against them. It was good playing with Sacha again and we were doing well. They wanted to play to 21 but by the time we got to 8 points to their 7 Sacha, and I were exhausted not having done such strenuous activity for a long time. I said to the other two the next basket wins, and Sacha and I stood back and they ran to the hoop and made the basket and were high fiving each other and were all pumped up because they had “beat” us. The fact that we didn't care did not seem to matter. Sacha made all but one of our points and that was that.

And just last year, 2014, teaching and living in Dalian China I was on the local Taiwan Softball Team and we; several teachers from our school, Dalian American International School, and the local Taiwan players, went to Shanghai to play. It was a fantastic thing for me – I was about a decade older than the next youngest player in his 50’s and I even got some hits and on base. I was our catcher and did quite well.

Shanghai  Softball Tournament 2014

Now I have been invited to play at a softball tournament in the Yukon – with a stay in Alaska in July 2016. I will be a few days from 69 years old; sounds like the ripe age to play. Of course, it is now March 2015, and I live in South Australia and what life will be like in July 2016 if it is still in existence will not be known until then.
During the summer of 1994 and 1995 I played my only team baseball of my life (until 2014 when I played in a softball tournament in Shanghai China – as said above). I had played a bit at school; Shenendehowa Central School back in the 1950s, but I do not remember any team in specific but I would think it would have just been part of gym. I played on a social team at night at Southern Districts. I had not wanted to but parents of Leigh's team-mates encouraged me to join so I did. I was not very good though once or twice I got a hit and to me that was a bit of a thrill. Leigh became my coach, and we practiced with him pitching and me hitting. Of course, the adults threw a lot faster than an eleven-year could and I struck out most of the time.

Kris came and watched a few games but she thought sports were a bit boring. Her children played sports, with her daughter playing netball and son playing footy (Aussie Rules football) but Kris had never played sports and did not understand the obsession others had with sports. If I was playing outfield she would come out on the field to talk with me and was upset when I said she wasn't supposed to be standing out in the field with me when I was the outfielder trying to catch a ball if it came to me. I only played that one season as I got hit by a few pitchers and I got struck out by males and females on such a regular basis that I just did not see the point in it though I stayed with my team for the whole season. I was also a bad fielder and my team could never find a good position for me. I tried pitching but I was too slow and everyone, males and females seemed to be able to hit a home run or get walked by me. I was put in the outfield for a while but that was a disaster as I was not good at judging where a ball was going to and often it either rolled between my lets or dropped a couple of inches away from me. The whole experience was quite embarrassing. I was truly impressed at Leigh's ability and no one was impressed by me. Even by the age of eleven, I was finding it difficult to keep up with his progress. Leigh would pitch one hundred pitches every morning before school to me and I would find it hard catching his fastball. I got myself a catcher's mask and put pillows in front of me. I am sure I would have been a strange site if anyone had seen me.

Fortunately for us we had a reserve behind our house. A reserve is a nature strip that the council has in various places of the suburbs. Our reserve had a small valley, and it was filled with trees, and we had a path in the back of our fence that led to the main roads at the ends of our street. We would throw on our path and the next set of houses on the other side of the reserve could not see us so we were free to look as strange throwing the ball as we wanted. One morning Leigh threw a curve ball – he had been trying to throw a curve ball for quite some time and we both were quite excited about the event. At the baseball club the kids were told not to try throwing curve balls until they were fourteen because it could hurt their arm. Leigh's curve was very clear. I watched it all the way and I was ready to catch the ball – it came straight at me and at the last foot it just suddenly dropped and curved to my right. We both jumped up and down and got very excited. Leigh tried to throw another curve but he didn't that day or for quite some time after that but he knew he could, and he had and someday he would be striking people out with his curve ball. He had already been highly successful in Pee Wees with his pitching and he would strike out one player after the next. He was also a power hitter for the team getting the furthest hits of everyone.

I stopped setting up my picture-poems in Glenelg, not by choice. The Glenelg council sent me a letter saying that the owners of the Hotel Grand had complained about my setting up my works of art and therefore I could not do it any longer. Where I had been setting up was directly across the dining area of the hotel and it was impossible to look across the park for their stupid patrons to see the sea because my pictures were hanging there. Of course, I did not see the problem with that, and I pleaded to stay and even offered to set up elsewhere but I had been given the boot and that was that. My days of outdoor art shows had ended for the time being.

In March, the children and I went to Geelong, Victoria for my graduation. Finally, at the age of 47 I was going to graduate from somewhere. We took the bus-train (Adelaide-Ballart-Melbourne-Geelong) combination and the gradusation was OK. My children clapped when I walked across the stage to collect my diploma. Only my children knew who I was and outside of my name being amongst hundreds on the brochure, it was quite a forgettable experience.

I was probably the oldest one there graduating but it did not matter. I had rented the cap and gown and sat through the boring speeches and the hour or so of people accepting their diplomas and thought that was it. I would never do this again but once was good and even a bit of fun. I met the fat little balding man that was in the literature department and who had marked my last year's papers and had written me months before that if he had been in town and on the selection committee he would not have permitted me to go for an honour's degree. I thought what an absolute wanker he was and I ignored him as he stood there in his little important way as I have done to so many other idiots like him.

The children and I ate as much food as we could that was laid out on tables for after the ceremony and I think we made lunch and dinner out of their little party sandwiches and cookies. The children filled their pockets with food. I returned my hat and gown and refused the over inflated priced photos and I refused the expensive frame that was offered at a “special rate” of some fifty or so dollars. I took my rolled up parchment and after we were all full of food took the train to Melbourne where we stayed at a low priced hostel for a couple of days then we took the train-bus back to Adelaide. I felt a bit proud deep inside of myself and hoped that I was a good role model for my children.  The only aspect of the trip that might have been a bit off as role-modeller for my children was a small package that Kris had given to me at the bus station. I opened it as the bus departed Adelaide; some undergarments of hers – and I was as embarrassed as the children were.

I continued to plug away at my studies doing my honour's degree. My focus was on children's literature, and I thought that was the best thing for me to do because it was obviously only a matter of a short time before I would become famous for my writing and it is always good to have what society expects of its writers – a couple of degrees. I had my BA and now I was hoping to get my next degree. My thought was that after 1995, I would have five years of schooling behind me and that was plenty. Terrell the scholar. All I had to do was find someone to convince I had some smarts. Midway through 1995, three-quarters of the way through my Honours I really got carried away with the schooling notion and thought maybe I should apply to do a master’s degree. It was starting to remind me of when I was in boy scouts and how I was going to be satisfied with getting all the way to first class but then I decided to go to the next level and go for my star-scout. I think I continued to the next level before realizing I was not on the same page from a moral and philosophical point as those other losers of the American Boy Scout organization. I had not yet finished my honour's degree when I decided to send in the application for my Masters. The university told me that sometime in the beginning of 1996 I would hear whether I was successful.

It would depend on the result of my honour's degree and what topic I would pursue for a Masters.

Nineteen ninety-four was when the World Wide Web was taking off having been invented in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee and everyone was talking about it. In the beginning of 1995, I went to the library at Flinders University to “log on” to the World Wide Web. Flinders University had an agreement with Deakin that students in South Australia could use their library including the use of the Internet. I went to Flinders often, studied, and spent many hours at the library. My only on-campus experience before my current university studies that I started in 1991 was at Towson State at the end of the 1970s. It was difficult to feel like I was a student in Australia when I was doing my studies at home. However, when I started going to Flinders library I felt more as if I was a part of the academic life. Of course, most of the students there were young enough to be my own children if I had children when the average person does instead of starting my trek into parenting at 33.

25.The WorldWideWeb discovers Terrell Neuage

Terrell Neuage, (dual citizen USA/Australia) is a South Australian/New York poet, writer, and digital artist known for his evocative poetry and extensive research on conversational analysis in on-line communciations (including communication in the AI era; from sharing information to making sense of it). His best-selling autobiographies;Leaving America (Before the After) & Leaving Australia (after) – exploring life as a hippie, brother in a California Cult (Holy Order of MANS) as Brother Terrell Adsit, Astrolger (40-years) to non-believer, and adventures in Australia, single parent, tofu manufacturer/street artist, China, the USA & fifty+ other ountries. From high school drop out, Shenendehowa Central School, Clifton Park, New York at age 16, back to school at age 44 (BA & Masters from Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia) to PhD from the University of South Australia at age 58 to knocking on your door at age 77.