On Turning 70…
On the 5/2/2022, the day that I turn 70 I will have been on Planet Earth in my current form for 25,568 days. In some ways this seems like an eternity, in others it is but a drop in the ocean of eternity.
When I was about 10 years old I started wondering what I might have been up to for all of the time that had preceded my birth. I still haven’t worked it out but I have made peace with that. I’m happy to accept that this current version of me – my name, my body, my mind, my memories and my consciousness, my creative skills plus anything else that is associated with “me” has been on a journey that has given me a great deal of pleasure, adventure, knowledge, happiness, love mixed with smaller portions of pain, suffering and loss. Having said that I am also aware that I need the balance. A small amount of stress and pain can go a long way to forge a more resolute outlook and attitude toward life.
As I approach my 70th year I can honestly say that I am in a place that I am extraordinarily happy with, a place where I know I won’t get any worse and can only get better. A little over a year ago I thought that I might be going to die a lot earlier than I had anticipated. What I learned from this experience was acceptance, I gained the ability to go with the flow, to not fight against the inevitable. I had heard this concept in a song when I was very young … que sera, whatever will be will be. I had finally begun to understand.
I’m not going to kid myself, I would absolutely love to have some sort of certainty that my belief in re-incarnation can be counted on but to be honest this is not the case. Whichever way I look at it, even if I do end up in a new body I’m going to have amnesia. But you know what, I’m OK with that. If this is how it pans out I will still be me and maybe all of the gains I have had throughout my life will give me a bit more of an edge next time.
As it stands my plan is to live in my current form until at least February 2052 which gives me another 30 years to prepare myself for whatever comes next. I’m looking forward to every single minute, hour and day.
I don’t quite know how I pulled it off but I am in a fabulous position where I can simply create whatever I want, whenever I want. It is truly fantastic. The people closest to me are all on a pretty similar page, they are loyal, supportive and nearly always there for me when I need them. I know it sounds a bit whoosy but I’ll say it anyway “My life is full of love, communication and inspiration”.
Looking back on each decade I can get lost in memories, faces, names, experiences .. mostly good memories but I won’t kid you there are also some that were painful and even uncomfortable to recall. Having said that I have now worked out that the best place to spend the majority of my time is in the present as an observer and a participant in the game of life.
I have lived through 7 decades of immense social, political and technological change. It all began in the 1950s.
1950s
1950s – Life was simple. My mother was there to cushion me from the harshness of life. My father was there in the evenings and weekends. I’d say with a fair amount of certainty that my mother had more influence in shaping my future emotionally while my Dad influenced my love of music, adventure and maybe passion. Life rotated around family, relatives and a few friends. Visiting country cousins in Shepparton provided enough adventure, discovery and excitement for a person of my temperament. Being a big brother to my sister also had some sort of influence on who I became although I am not certain how.
1960s
1960s – The world seemed to change from black and white to colour. My second sister was born. I discovered music. I began to wonder about the meaning of life and then we moved from inner city Melbourne to the open spaces of the south eastern suburbs. So much happened during this 10 years. I fell in love with music, I joined a band, I discovered girls but was a bit clunky, I had many friends and went on wild adventures, I had secrets from my parents, I began to go further afield, I joined other bands and hung out with people who were older than me. I got a job, financial independence and I joined another couple of bands. What hectic, ever-changing times these were. Change happening everywhere. Being right in the middle of an explosion.
1970s
1970s – I turned 18, I got a car. I discovered “love” or that’s what I thought was happening .. it was really an obsession. For some reason I began the 70s holding on to a girl, suffocating her with possessiveness. She did me the humane thing and dumped me. I grew my hair long, discovered drugs and gradually drifted into an alternative world of the counter culture. The initial 2 years of this decade were spent shedding all the things that I loved about life and falling into a black hole of teenage love and obsession. By 1972 I had left my parents home and ventured out in to the world on my own. I became obsessed with change, searching for new experiences, new ideas, new influences. I still played music but by now I had lost the foothold that I had created in the 60s. I became a hippy, lived in share houses and moved to the country. I made wooden knitting needles, sold them at markets, took more drugs, fell in love with a young girl, travelled by hitch hiking wherever I needed to go and started to wonder what life was all about. I spent the second part of this decade pursuing philosophical understanding and wanting others to share in my discoveries. I met another young girl who I ended up staying with for 20 years. Toward the end of this decade I got married and became a father and started what would become my career selling artwork.
1980s
1980s – This was the family decade. I started the 80s unhappy with what I was doing. My daughter was born and we moved out of share houses into our own home. We now had 2 kids. This was the time when we really started our business, selling what we made at markets. We impulsively bought our first house after a drive in the Dandenong Ranges and moved into our huge workspace in Hawthorn. We were a family. In 1983 life seemed to overwhelm me, I started drinking to ease my pain. Cracks appeared in my marriage. We visited Bali for the first time, what an amazing eye opening experience that was. In 1986 we bought our second house. Work took over, building a business, struggling, improvising … making life up as it unfolded. Hiring staff, being responsible for others, doing too much. Taking on responsibilities that we should have thought twice about. Trying far too hard to help others and do what we thought was right. Soon after my son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. This changed everything, insulin, injections, hypos, anxiety, fear. The world was a far less informed place back then, we had to listen to the “experts”. We went back to Bali and Indonesia twice, our business got bigger, I drank more. Looking back now I was constantly overwhelmed by the life I had created. Back to 1986, I still had an uncontrollable itch to help people. I convinced Melanie to help me start a Scientology Mission, a small group that ran basic courses and did introductory services. This was a significant part of my life for the next 10 years. We also started our second retail business in Camberwell in 86, I did the Victoria Market every Sunday which in some ways deserves its’ own story.
1990s
1990s – The first few years of the 90s are a bit of a blur. Paul started High School, grunge happened, Melanie wasn’t too happy with our marriage. Looking back now it makes more sense. There were many things that I couldn’t see back then. i functioned but in many ways I was in a uncontrolled whirlpool of my own creation. The business consumed me on one hand while the mission and the responsibilities involved in the running of it consumed another aspect of my life. I wasn’t a bad Dad but wasn’t a great Dad either. By now drinking was serving the purpose of numbing the fact that I was overwhelmed with all of the responsibilities that were spinning around smashing into each other. In 1992-93 I started working on getting fit and began going to the gym and running almost every day but by now, even though I closed my eyes to the truth, my marriage to Melanie was on its’ last legs. I turned 40 in 1992, the same age that A is now. In November 94 my dad turned 70. I had a chance to go to a conference in the Caribbean. He was fine with me going. The USA, my first chance to get on a plane and really go somewhere else. What a trip that was. L.A , Miami, Curacao, San Francisco. I got hooked on travel and experiencing new places and people. Back to the USA in 95, Florida, San Francisco. By this stage I was obsessed with running and good health. Melanie had pretty much decided to bale on me by this stage. She must have felt pretty trapped. She left in March and I was pretty much a single father with a 13 year old daughter and a 15 year old son. We went to Confest in January 96 and then the 3 of us went back to Bali a few weeks later. I met Georgie in 1996 and fell in love. This was amazing in many ways but my responsibilities as a father were alloyed . Georgie joined us in Bali in early 1997 where I celebrated my 45th birthday. Paul went to the USA with Melanie in 1998 and ended up staying in San Francisco for almost a year. I went to Bali with A in January, Georgie in March and Paul in September to celebrate his 19th birthday. This year is fully documented in a diary I kept. In 1999 we went to Paris and “A” and I visited Bangkok for the very first time. The reasons were complex and deserve to be written about as a story on their own. “A” met us in Paris which in many ways changed her life. Later that year I moved out of French St, a move which impacted Paul intensely. What a volatile decade that one was.
2000s
2000s – 2000 started with a business trip to Bangkok with Melanie and Trinidad. This was my third time since I first discovered it in ’98. I was on the way to embarking upon a decade of change, travel, pain and discovery. Lots happened, some good, some bad. In March my son Finn was born. I was 48 years old. I had moved out of French St and moved in with Georgie to a house in Hawthorn. Paul lived with us because by now Melanie had renovated and sold French St. Allissa was living in Europe. When Finn was 1 year old we moved to a house in Kew near the river. My criteria was that Paul could have his own space and we found a house with a small apartment underneath. This was the year that he was turning 21. In September we set of to celebrate with Allissa in Paris. This was Paul’s first time in Bangkok. We stopped for a night or 2 on the way. His love affair was instant. Our first stop was Spain where we met Allissa. Paul continued on to Amsterdam while Allissa and I went to Morocco before meeting up in Paris to celebrate his birthday. By the time that we got back Georgie had decided that Paul shouldn’t live with us. This may have been the beginning of the end. But as I said he did move in to Kew. In 2001 the world went crazy. Allissa moved to Bangkok for a few months and I met her there. Paul also decided to go to Bangkok with a friend and ended up staying there for 2 years. Georgie Finn and I moved above our new business Tusk Gallery in Rathdowne St, North Carlton while we renovated our new warehouse in Clifton Hill. In 2003 Paul had a bad hypo and I went to Bangkok to convince him to come home. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. He did come back and moved in to the warehouse with us which was a disaster. This was around the time that my life became a nightmare and gets almost too hard to even write about. We sold the warehouse after Paul and I went on a road trip to Tasmania and Georgie and Finn moved to Sydney. We almost lost each other. I feel like I am running through a dark forest with dark looming shadows encroaching on me so I’ll try to get this our quickly. Paul lived in a small apartment in Hawthorn, it was horrible. When Georgie went to Sydney it was early 2005. Paul moved in to Rathdowne St and I ended up there as well. In early 2006 Finn was back in Melbourne and about to start school at Carey. I moved into a house in Sackville St Kew with him and Paul stayed at the shop. By the end of this year we moved into another house in Campbell St Kew. Georgie had returned from Sydney and I was a real mess. While this was all happening we started a new Gallery in Chapel St. In some ways the worst and in others the best thing I ever did. At the end of 2006 I ran away from Melbourne at Christmas. We went to Prague, of all places. Why not! Our European trip was a complete escape from the tensions and turmoil in my life. I was drinking heavily to block out the emotional pain and confusion in my life before we went so being away from everything was exactly what I needed. I met Allissa in Hong Kong on the return from this trip and we spent several weeks in Asia .. Vietnam, Bangkok. It was great to spend time together. I hadn’t realized what a nightmare this part of my life was until I started writing about it. It feels dark and grim but there were many moments when the sun shone through. By the end of 2008 we had moved to the Dandenong Ranges to a wonderful house in Sassafras. I had taken Paul to Bangkok in 2007 to meet the artists I had met when Allissa and I were there earlier that year. During this whole period I was also running Graphic Impressions in Camberwell. I had a plan for Paul to move to Bangkok where he could start a new life and get back on some sort of path to happiness and health. Looking back now it was like I was plugging up leaks which just caused more water to pour out somewhere else. I can’t believe that I survived the next few years. Paul came back to Melbourne with a Thai friend. he really was doing better. I visited Bangkok constantly, every couple of months. Sometimes I went for a weekend just to see him. These were my lost years. The years that I got fat and didn’t confront myself. I just stayed alive somehow and pretended to the rest of the world that I was doing OK. I wasn’t. I felt like I was juggling hot coals.
