36. Restlessdancer

Narda thought we could easily get teaching jobs in the States. One thing I have learned about her is that from the moment she gets something in her head to do we end up doing it. She refers to it as putting a flea in one’s ear. Of course I know it really means we are going to do this whether the flea has taken up domicile in my ear or not. The flea grows like any idea does and it is best to agree. To ask me why my marriage for the past fifteen years (make it 25-years in 2025) has been successful, it is because of the simple line, yes dear’. Just kidding. Everything makes it possible to stay together.

A year would pass before we got ourselves into a position to leave Australia and start teaching in the States but we spent 2001 working toward that end.

I spent a lot of time at the University of South Australia trying to pull together my research for my thesis. I probably spent less time working on webpages.

Narda liked my poems. Somewhere we or maybe it was me, came up with a brilliant big-time money making idea right up there with all the great money making ideas I had come up with in the past: children’s furniture, tofu manufacturing, picture poems, novels, children stories, children’s radio, and so much more. Poems on pillowcases. We found a local factory that did large production sewing; a sort of Asian sweat factory, and we negotiated making our pillowcases. Narda had her art teacher friend Vanessa write the script and we made a template and took it to them. I do not remember how many we ordered. We had three or four poems and had pillowcases done in five colours. I think we had thousands. We got boxes for them, labels, and Narda's father helped us to package them. We spent several exciting weeks preparing our product making brochures and setting up a business including getting the name restlessdancer registered in South Australia. This was going to get us the money to move to the States. We would have our successful Internet business that I always wanted. My only concern was whether we could keep up with the worldwide demand.

Restlessdancer Pillowcases

pillowcase labels

Holy Cow! We were over the moon. Our market research was a few friends and family members saying they were nice. OK our research left a little to be desired but unlike my many other great schemes to become successful and wealthy where I never consulted with anyone and just went for it here at least we had some feedback.

Narda and I signed an agreement to equally share all aspects of the business on February 25, 2001, about seven weeks after we met. We spent most 2001 manifesting our idea. Whereas most people, normal folk, would keep diaries and notebooks with information about their life-flow, I did astrology charts. I have gone off of astrology for the past twelve years, looking occasionally but not believing, but I have kept my folders of hundreds, maybe thousands of charts. We registered the business name, restlessdancer, on March 21, 2001 and I chose 3:45 pm to give us the perfect chart for our new and successful-to-be business venture.

Note the trine between Jupiter and Neptune for example and of course five degrees Leo rising which is right where my mid-haven degree is and I was really on a winner. I made a composite chart between the restlessdancer and my chart where there was an exact trine between the Moon and Neptune and an exact trine between Venus and Pluto. There are 2 Silver-Links, 5 Golden-Links and 7 – count them, Seven, Grand Trines with my planets. There is even a yod formed with my planets. OK so Neptune can make things a bit more esoteric than we can handle but really what could go wrong? I was an astrologer who made decisions based on astrology and it is possibly true that in 40 years of creating thousands of charts I have tended to give false readings when concerning myself but that was in the past before I grew up.

I cannot find the chart for the first batch of pillowcases or the first sale. Yes there was a first sale. We went to lots of shops including hospital gift shops where we thought they would just fly off of the shelf. We left boxes of pillowcases and our brochures. Eventually a hospital gift shop sold a box. Then there was the one Internet sale. Some person in Queensland who ran sex parties bought a dozen. That was not quite our market but it was a sale.

We gave heaps away too. To friends and families if there was a birthday or holiday they got our pillowcases.
We shipped a large box of maybe a hundred to the States in 2002 when we went there. We gave them away to people for birthdays and holidays.
In 2011 we shipped the remaining quantity we had in the States to China and we gave them away to people for birthdays and holidays.

We still had many in Australia which we gave away to people for birthdays and holidays.
We never sold anymore.

Nevertheless we learned how to work together trying a business. We stuck to teaching for the next twelve years and now in 2015 we are sort of looking at starting a business with me building a video studio. I won’t say anything on our idea and I surely have not done any astrological charts on it.

Christmas  2001 alone

[Narda was in India as a chaperone to students from her school for December 2001 and January 2002. I stayed home dealing with the dreadful feelings of injecting interferon and taking meds for hepatitis C. Ironically or not it is now April 28, 2015 and I am home feeling sick and half-way through an 11-month course on interferon and other meds but this time I have cleared the virus though I still have to stay on the meds for five more months. Narda is at work.]

This photo says the story of Narda and my life; ‘Danger…. Stay on trail’! We never did and I doubt we ever will. Every move was a chance step into the unknown. We both had security; though different. Mine was based on insecurity of a life-long not having support, backup, friends and generally having no idea what the next moment would bring.

Hilo, Hawaii July 2002

I just was a ball of personalities going off a curve;

Balls of me On Curve

Being insecure without structures is a security within itself. I do not expect, look forward, plan, I just am. I dream and wish but I know the end result will be mud. Narda however had the security of friends, family, a home, car, bank account. We had a lot of what the other was low on; she wanted to break free and take chances and risks and live in the moment and I wanted some settlement and structure. We are just beginning to get settled after twelve years and with me almost 68 that is probably OK.  This week in May 2015 we have started planning for a couple of months in Cambodia and Thailand at the start of 2016 and in September 2016 going to the States for three to six months so maybe we won’t slow up after all. It has been quite the journey but we have become a comfortable composite, blend, mix, mashup. There were times, especially toward the start when my looseness threatened to unravel us and her structures made me feel rebellious and looking again for an open road. We combined it all; we find structure and a way to go out on the open road together.

I had a different family experience from the first wife. Whereas they seemed to just not like me and even told me to go back to the States, Narda’s family adopted me. How many times I will get adopted on this planet I am not sure? Narda’s parents were and have always been giving and loving toward me. Her three sisters have taken me in as family. I look a bit different than everyone but that is OK. My three brother-in-laws have very short hair and I look dishevelled and always in need of a haircut. Everyone knows of my drugged out past; especially now as they watch me go through my drug-therapy getting rid of hepatitis C. Narda’s three sons have all accepted me and for the first time in fifty years (since leaving home in 1965 to now 2015) I am part of a family. No one in the family has a past like me. Everyone is well established and what society would refer to as successful. Narda is the only one in the family with a second marriage; three sisters and two sons staying with their originals. I was the first in the family to be non-Dutch. Narda’s first husband and her three sisters all married Dutch. Narda and her next oldest sister came to Australia from Holland in 1958. I broke the Dutch ice with both of Narda’s sons marrying non-Dutch after me. Stu is married to a Brit and Chris is married to a Yank and living in the States and being the head of some mega-church. Quite a different life than I have had.

As a side-not of life’s little synchronicities I have been married twice. Both were Australians, both were born overseas and came to Australia by ship at four years old; one in 1951 and wife number two in 1958. Wife number one was born in a war-camp following World War II in Germany. Wife number two was born in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Both their parents have their horrific World War II stories. They both grew up in Adelaide. Actually they are probably the only two Australians to have ever married someone from Clifton Park, New York. Wow!

Of course, that is where any similarities end. Wife number one and I as I have probably mentioned in this little ditty did not get along well. I felt like a prisoner. Whereas with wife number two I feel like a passenger on a wild ride with an ‘Oh No! Proclaimed quite often.

However, there is one last little synchronicity. Both wife’s father died on the same day within hours of one another. What are the chances? Sacha came over from Melbourne and stayed with his mother. Narda’s sons came from Hanoi (Brendon), Atlanta, Georgia (Chris with his wife) and her local son (Stu) was already here. We all had brunch together at our house in Lochiel Park (http://neuage.info/Lochiel-Park/index.html) in only the second time all our sons were in the same place in the past fourteen years.

We lived in our own homes for 2001 and planned to find jobs in New York and move there by the school year cycle starting in August. I was quite far from finishing my PhD, but Narda was sure I could get a teaching job in the States. We began to send our resumes to schools. As I was teaching; actually doing a couple of adjunct courses a week, at the University of South Australia, Narda thought it would be only natural for me to get a teaching job. In my more than 35-years of work readiness I was not the most gainfully employed person on the planet. From 1965 until I joined the religious Order I had one or two short term full time jobs. One at a furniture store in Florida that lasted for about a month, another at a coffee production place in New York City in 1966 or so but I lost that when I came to work confused and on LSD followed by a couple of short term restaurant jobs. Of course I had my full-on career as poet selling my picture poems but that would not count. I was an astrologer who made no money too. In the Order throughout the 1970s I had a couple of jobs that came and went. My longest job was at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Towson Maryland in 1978 – 1979 and my one year at Queens Medical Centre in Hawaii for 1980.

In Australia I did the single parent career move. I did have my wonderful tofu business for seven years which showed great potential but fizzled in some godless-vegetarian night mare. Here it was now twenty-years later and I was doing a few hours for Family and Community Services and a few hours teaching at university whilst doing my degree. Narda had been teaching for more than twenty-five years. I was all for it; me teaching at university in the States. It would be just like in the movies with the hip professor going around saying cool things and students having nothing but the most respect for my wisdom. No doubt I would write academic articles and publish a few novels and do art shows in New York. As always the future looked bright even though anyone with the slightest degree of proper thinking would question whether my life could produce a well-earned dollar.

We were not quite sure what to do about whether we should get married. I was at a point where I could not say the word and sometimes in hasty abstract discussion mentioned the ‘M’ thing as the ‘M’ thing. It did not matter but there was the issue of getting a Green Card to make our transition to the States easier.

Four sons September 2014 Adelaide

37. Jettyday