#31for21 Who is #mentalhealthweek for? And Jane Harper's FORCE OF NATURE

Today is the #DisabilityThinking #linkup. Thank you Andrew Pulrang and everyone who contributes.
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Who is Mental Health Week for?

Mental Health Week is for workers. Writers. Artists. Scientists. Landscape designers. Singers. Songwriters. Theatre critics. Logisticians. Musicians. Cleaners. Cooks. Chefs. Food services personnel. Pensioners. Traders. Universal Basic Incomers. Gig economists.

It's for leaders. Managers. Executives. Activists. Advocates. Wise minds.

Mental Health Week is for followers. The people on Twitter. Facebook. WeChat. QChat. ICQ. Blogger. Google Plus. LiveJournal. VKontakt.

Mental Health Week is for psychologists. Psychiatrists. General practitioners. Specialists. Receptionists and administrative personnel.

Mental Health Week is for people in the street. Transient residents. Migrants. Refugees. Asylum seekers. Your street press vendor like The Big Issue.

Mental Health Week is for social workers. Independent living centre people. Peer supporters. Sex educators. Certified. Licensed.

Mental Health Week is for children. Teens. Tweens. Babies. The unborn and those yet to be born.

Mental Health Week is for senior citizens.

Mental Health Week is for survivors. Veterans. Travellers. Backpackers. People who have been through torture. People who have been through terrorism. People who endure through war and through peace.

Mental Health Week is for animals and plants. Service animals. Psychiatric service dogs. Trauma dogs. Hearing dogs. Guide Dogs and Seeing Eye dogs. Birds. Insects. Amoeba.

Mental Health Week is for sportspeople. Footballers. Tennis players. Mind sports people. Archers. Canoeists. Kayakers. Sailors. Rugby players. Wheelchair sports. Golfers.

Mental Health Week is for culturally and linguistically diverse people whether you speak the 800 languages and dialects of Papua New Guinea or a world language like Mandarin or Spanish or Portuguese or Arabic. It's for Africans. Melanesians. Polynesians. Micronesians. North and South Americans. Central Americans. Australians. Europeans. Asians.

Mental Health Week is for all the people who have died in the service of mental health or so that we may have life and lives.

Mental Health Week is for prisoners and criminals and those in the judicial systems.

Mental Health Week is for Freudians; Jungians; Adlerians; behaviourists; cognitivists; humanists; eclectics and those whose practises come under many names and none at all. It's for the agnostics and the gnostics; the intuitives and the sensors and even the censors.

Mental Health Week is for disabled people / people with disabilities.

Mental Health Week is for families. Cousins. Siblings. Great-grand-parents. Chosen families.

Mental Health Week is for friends.

Mental Health Week is for haters.

Mental Health Week is for past; present; future.

Mental Health Week is for people who are silent and people who speak out.

Mental Health Week is for all the feels: grief. shame. excitement. agitation. calmness.

If Mental Health Week can not be for everybody; then it is for nobody.

Mental Health Week is for you. It's for me. It's for us. It's for them. It's for they and she and he and sir and peer and ou.

#31for21 #mentalhealthweek #themmlinky: three quests for belonging, identity, maturity - Esperanza [2017]; Carlson jnr [2017]; Western [2011 video; 2008 blog]

"1956: Budapest is Rising" as sung by Idina Menzel playing Florence Vassy.

Lyrics from Cornelius Esperanza's gospel album of 2002; whose autobiography I will be dealing with in these lines. It is known as Ravings of a lunatic ASD mind; the reason for this is explained in the first chapter or early in the second when we discussed it in early September.

Later during Mental Health Week, Esperanza will be having his birthday on the 14th October. He was born in 1971 in Walnut Creek while the family lived in Alamo, California. The early 1970s were not necessarily a good time for people on the autistic spectrum or who were considered/imputed as such in the USA.

as we learn in chapter one of Ravings of a Lunatic ASD mind.

Richard Carlson is roughly contemporaneous - he grew up in New York and upstate with his father, mother, grandfather and siblings [one of whom is Kevin; the illustrator whose collaborations I would read in the early 2000s].

 In August 2017 I read extracts of his memoir / biography Surviving schizophrenia which he developed at 12 years old. For the better part of the ten years of his adolescence and young adult up until he was 22 his paranoid schizophrenia was florid.

Surviving Schizophrenia by Richard Carlson is a Portable Document File which you can download as you choose

Esperanza and Carlson had a lot in common when it came to co-existing mental conditions like depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In Carlson's very first chapter he tells the reader to Be Honest and shows how this worked and didn't work in his life.

When Carlson was younger he loved woodshop and making things and drawing.

Both Carlson and Esperanza were very sensitive young men and both had passions for young women commensurate with their sexual proclivities.

In Esperanza's case his psychologist recommended that he read Where do I come from and What's happening to me about puberty and both were written by Mayle who was later known for his Provencal adventures in the 1980s and 1990s which became wildly popular.

In chapter two of Esperanza's biography we learn about his passion for television and video production

Here Esperanza developed his identity as a Texan which has been strong and passionate ever since.

And in the early 1980s Esperanza developed a passion for ET and the associated cuddly aliens.

"When the movie E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial had debuted in 1982, I had been deeply touched by it.  At Christmas in that year, I had gotten as a gift my very first of what are now over thirty stuffed dolls of the movie character, which I affectionately call The E.T. Family.  Why I named them that is because I think those other extraterrestrials that were out with him in the forest at the beginning of his movie, all collecting Earth plant specimens for their botanist (plant scientist) work, they HAD to be his relatives, not just colleague botanists.  Some of the stuffed dolls I have given names.  For example, two of them I have named his mother and father; Marilyn-Margaret and Harold respectively.  Others I have named E.T.'s younger brother; Mason, who wears a red hoodie jacket with the family name of E.T. on it.  Another is named E.T.'s uncle; Roy, who wears a blue hoodie jacket with the same family name embroidered on it.  Other relatives include E.T.'s older brother who has my middle name; Merrill, cousins Jonathan and Samuel (The latter has a liking for ice cream and cake!), sister Annabelle, aunt Gladys, grandmother Gertrude, elder uncle Wayne (who is two feet tall), grandson Henry, cousin Timothy.  So most of them are like little babies because of their sizes."

I had to stop with the serial reading of Lunatic ASD mind in mid-September - here are four paragraphs of the 4th chapter:

"Musical instruments had always interested me as previously noted, especially the piano and drums.  In about 1979 or during the early to mid-1980s, I began taking piano lessons from this woman I'll call Mrs. Spencer, who would also teach them to one or both of my older sister's daughters.  We had gotten up to the fourth or fifth book of the book series Peanuts Piano Course by June Edison, before I decided to cease and desist on the piano lessons.  This doesn't mean I am not interested in bettering myself on that instrument.  My getting back to learning it more will come, I just don't know when.  As for the drums, the interest in them had started when I had gotten this toy trap drum set for my birthday in either 1978 or 1979; the Disney Rocktet trap drum set.  By 1984, I would get my first proper drum kit, a Ludwig one that was piano black in color, with silver sparkle inlays on the hoops of its 14" x 22" bass drum.  The snare drum were a Ludwig Supraphonic in the depth by diameter size of 5" x 14", the rack toms were 8" x 12" and 9" x 13", and the floor tom was 16" x 16".  The drum kit had been purchased from a Kingwood doctor who advertised them for sale on cable television or the local newspaper.  I have since graduated from that kit and now own two Ludwig John Bonham/Led Zeppelin-themed drum kits; the Ludwig Classic Maple "Zep Set" in Natural finish, and the Ludwig Limited Edition Stainless Steel John Bonham drum kit, complete with the needed 14" x 26" bass drums, with my eyes on two more such drum kits down the road in the future, before calling the collecting of them quits.  Also happen to be the proud owner of two Ludwig timpani drums, a Paiste (pie-stee) 30" Symphonic Gong, 34" Paiste Round Orchestral Gong Stand, and ten cymbal bags worth of Paiste drum set cymbals from their 2002 and Giant Beat lines!

Just before that first year in junior high school is when I believe I had stopped viewing another favorite PBS series; The Electric Company (1971-1977), the sister series of Sesame Street that taught reading skills.  The last two seasons of 1975-1976 and 1976-1977 that played in reruns up to then were what many others my age and I remember the most.  There is no memory I have of ever having viewed the series while my family and I had been living in northern California, though I certainly know of viewing another PBS series during that time; Zoom (1972-1978), produced by PBS member station WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts, which also played in reruns into the early 1980s. Once I tried submitting a story for their soap opera parody As The World Zooms, after which I had gotten this letter with a postcard and show logo stickers inside it. I think they were telling me gently with what they had sent that Zoom had completed its production run long before my story submission.  

The second year of junior high school; seventh grade (1984-1985), had been an improvement over the first.  Paul Roser had taken over by then as Creekwood Middle School principal.  I was becoming more and more comfortable with attending there. Classes for that year included Texas History, Plastics, Earth Science.  But during that school year, with the onset of puberty, I would experience something which would scar me forever, that being the being exposed to this hardcover illustrated book on the subject; What's Happening To Me? (1975), which my psychologist at the time; William J. Schulman, had been foolish enough to give me to read without consulting my parents about it!  He committed equal foolishness with giving me its companion book published two years before that to read also; Where Did I Come From? (1973).  

Such an exposure to a book like What's Happening To Me? contributed to poisoning my mind then on the issues of love and sex, including and especially with its graphic illustrations, giving me the idea that it's quite all right to discuss the latter issue early on in getting to know a female human being when it's really not.  I just wasn't able to comprehend how that and love are supposed to go together, just couldn't look at them right, which still dogs me now.  It was scary to see more of what I had been exposed to a long time before.  13 had been too early an age to expose me to the book, and I think it would still have been inappropriate to do so even when I had been older!"

Esperanza 2017 - covers  1982-85 

I had been reading meanwhile a standard website about Raising Children Network and the Institute for Family Studies and Welfare.

It was really terrific to read about the Public Broadcasting Service and how it was influencing teenage minds at the time.

And of course Esperanza's love of music.

Chapter 5 shows us the big change Esperanza went through returning to Texas from California and several hospitalisations and psychiatric experiences which followed through from the behaviour modification and importantly for the #31for21 people, Esperanza's sexual experience with Kim who has Trisomy 21 and is his age in the last quoted paragraph

"Back now to 1987, while my parents and I had been living in Kingwood Lakes Apartments, it was then that my interest in video production really began to take form, even though I had done video projects during the two years before that, one of them titled Dave's Comedy And Other Miscellaneous Things in 1985, sort of a nod to a popular NBC series back then; TV's Bloopers And Practical Jokes, which ran on the network from 1984 to 1987, the other video project being during the following year of 1986; my own idea of a Three Stooges short subject film.

The first video project of 1987 happened to be a mock documentary of a British cartoon series produced by Cosgrove-Hall Productions for Thames Television which I came to know via Nickelodeon, the children's cable/satellite television channel, called Danger Mouse, which happened to be a spoof of a live-action spy drama series from that country titled Danger Man. Other video production projects that year included one I did with our cats that Summer titled The Bubba Club Special.  The project's name had partially originated out of what the famed National Football League coach for the Oakland Raiders in the 1970s; John Madden, had going in his free time; this club named The Bubba Club, for wide bodies and so forth.

During this same year, I would complete my repeated eighth grade year at Creekwood Middle School, also take an interest in doing voice-over work for cartoon animation.  As a fun exercise in my attempting to learn that, I had dubbed in my own character voices to replace the audio portion of people interviewed in two television commercials for Puffs Plus Facial Tissue, and put it on a VHS cassette tape as another video project titled David Merrill Gill: The Voice-Over Artist.  That Fall, instead of entering into Kingwood High School, I would enter into the Humble Learning Center in nearby Humble, Texas, run by Rose Marie Patronella. She had a pet chihuahua dog named Bear.  I even did a video project with them the next year, in 1988.

Speaking of 1988, that would turn out to be a watershed year for me in more ways than one.  To begin with, this had been an election year, where I was banging the drum in my own manner for George H.W. Bush.  "Go, George Bush, go!  Dump Dukakis!" (Michael Dukakis, that is.)  If anything is to be blamed on my Conservative Republican political leaning, it might as well be blamed on the factors of my growing up in a conservative home, and mostly during the conservative Reagan 1980s, also my father's influence.  How it fits into this is tied to a memory I have of the election year of 1980. During that year's Democratic Convention going on, or on Election Night, Dad had said something to me along the lines of "Don't cheer for Democrats." Knowing what I know today about politics, I can't say I blame him for saying such a thing to me. Liberal Democrats stand for issues that only Satan could applaud. Left wing, the left hand of Satan, see how it all fits?  For the reason of questionable issues that are stood for by them, there is why I think Liberalism and Satanism go hand in hand.  They are both evil, corrupt.  Only an idiot would go along with them.

My interest in Hanna-Barbera Productions would also show up during this period.  I had always enjoyed their work for television and the movies, including and especially the spinoff series from Wacky Races; The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop and Dastardly And Muttley In Their Flying Machines in syndicated reruns during the early to mid-1980s, but this is when my affinity for their work really took off, going together with the aforementioned interest in cartoon animation voice-over work.  So I wrote the studio a fan letter, gradually arrangements were made with their then-casting director Andrea Romano, to come visit the studio for a tour during the vacation my parents and I took to Los Angeles, California in April 1988.  I had also sent an audition tape to them, which I don't think made the cut.  Earlier in that year, I had done as a video project my own affectionate tribute to their live-action costumed cartoon animal foursome The Banana Splits, in observance of their 20th anniversary at the time. (1968-1988)  

On Monday, September 5, 1988, there occurred what is still a haunting memory to me almost 30 years later.  I visited this Down's Syndrome girl my same age named Kim.  Took a walk to her home that day to pay her a visit, with the goal in mind of our having coitus, sexual intercourse, in other words, which did result.  How it came about went like this; when her parents had been busy with other things, I gently guided her up the stairs to the second floor from behind, she didn't seem to be scared about going through with that.  Her bedroom door never did get checked by me to see if it locked, so we went into the bathroom on that floor, I locked the door, gently took her clothes off, then mine, we lay down on the bathroom floor, I placed my penis in her vagina, and we did the deed so to speak, sometimes hugging each other tightly while we did it.  Again, she never fought me off during all this, it were as if she truly consented to the act.  The year before, on Monday, October 26, 1987, I encountered her for the first time in a long time, since last seeing her during my years at Creekwood Middle School, at her home while I was riding my bike along the neighborhood bike trails.  A little later that same year, I brought her over to my home for a visit.  My sexual, voyeuristic curiosity got the best of me, where I managed to get to see her using the toilet in my parents' bathroom, urinating in it.  Why I had sex with Kim that Labor Day of 29 years ago is because I feared that I would never experience it properly in marriage, and marriage is still a goal I am aiming for at almost 50. It could happen with this Asperger woman my age that I have known for 21 years since 1996 whose name shall remain anonymous.  Stick around, there is more of my life story to come."

Esperanza introduces us to their Special TV show and late-1980s interactions vocationally and educationally after psychiatry

"Now for a few words about animation voice-over actors I have communicated with, especially over the phone, during 1987 and early 1988, I spoke with the voice of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Elroy Jetson, and many other characters; Daws Butler (Birth name: Charles Dawson Butler, born in Ohio in 1916.).  He had also sent me in the mail this signed drawing of him with the characters he voiced, this pamphlet sheet and cassette titled About Acting-Daws Butler.  Mom has told me that he had said I definitely had a skill for doing character voices that should be furthered, as had the thought speech voice of comic strip cat Garfield; Lorenzo Music, in my phone calls with him and his mail responses to my fan mail, including an autographed photo with Garfield standing in front of him!  You couldn't see much of his bearded face, being covered with a cap and sunglasses, though I have since seen other photos of him where his face was not obstructed like that.  He passed away in August 2001, Daws Butler in May 1988.  When my parents and I had vacationed in Los Angeles, California as told about in an earlier chapter, I could have met Daws at the Hanna-Barbera Studios had I called him while staying there, which I regretfully didn't do. Maybe I had been nervous to do so.  I wish also that I had tried to find out to contact Mel Blanc, who would sadly pass away the year after Daws Butler did.

Returning now to my life in 1990, during that Summer, Mom would have this retired school teacher; Ione Ragland, come and sit me during the day.  Further time would also be spent in the Humble Learning Center, until about the Spring of 1991.  By then, I would enter into the University Of Texas' Day Alternatives For The Dually Diagnosed (D.A.D.D.) program, hosted by Lee Kinal and supervised by Dr. Kay R. Lewis.  We went on many outings, I did tasks like collating papers for Lee, went on job training assignments such as for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, working in their office building.  When that mid-Summer arrived, I cracked, and thus psychiatric hospitalization reared its ugly head again, this time around at a then-new facility near Laurelwood Hospital in The Woodlands.  Further rounds of Prozac were employed, I also had my share of restraining incidents.  Once I had even kicked Dr. John Cassidy's foot in one of my meetings with him!  Many times when they had activities, I had really wished that they would leave me alone.  But that wasn't the only time that year I would be hospitalized for psychiatric reasons.  It would happen again just after my 20th birthday, which had been a pleasant day going out to eat at The Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner and having cake afterwards, getting driven to and from that restaurant in a limousine.  That second hospital stay of the year, where I went to HCA Greenbriar Hospital, would continue into January 1992, at which time I would be whisked off to stay in this group home living situation called Behavior Training Research (BTR) in Manvel, Texas outside Houston, and believe me, it was the worst group home situation I have ever lived in! There had been my share of fights with staff where I would get restrained, one of those times they had me on the tile floor of my group home's kitchen for thirteen minutes! Fortunately, my parents and I worked things out and I got to move out of there back to our house.  The only good memory I carry from there is when I had gotten to play this drum set that another group home resident owned.  

Unfortunately, the psychiatric hospital stays would not end with the experience in HCA Greenbriar Hospital.  That Spring and Summer, I would spend time in another HCA hospital; HCA Gulf Pines Hospital on west F.M. 1960.  (F.M. in this case means Farm To Market Road.)  When I entered their day outpatient program after my stay there had ended, I would have another day that stands out in my memory; my first and only grand mal seizure on Monday, June 29th, 1992.  The medical staff had said that it occurred because of sleep deprivation, even though I know I had tried to sleep the night before and just couldn't do it.  It was during my hospital stay there that I would meet who had been the person in charge of the Autistic Treatment Center in San Antonio, Texas at that time; Susan Paige Fuller, which would become my next group home living type situation that Fall, sharing a duplex with two roommates and one houseparent.
One of those houseparents; Jimmy Roan, from California, who had a twin brother, I did not get along so well with, but I fared better with who took over the job full-time sometime later; James Tynes.  Even there, I had my restraining incidents.  But we also had pleasant outings such as going to movies at the shopping mall movie theater, going swimming at the YMCA.

The following year; 1993, had its mix of good and bad occasions. Another psychiatric hospital stay would be experienced, in the facility adjacent to my then-psychiatry doctor; Dr. Kenneth Lee Matthews, in the University Of Texas At San Antonio Health Science Center.  Later that May, my video production interest would become active again with recording our vacation in Orlando, Florida to Walt Disney World and Universal Studios, getting titled Fantastic Florida Fling!  The resort my parents and I stayed in was called Disney Dixie Landings, its lodging looked like it were situated in a swamp bayou, the lodging quarters themselves looked like Southern plantations.   At Universal Studios Florida, I rode the attraction called The E.T. Adventure, lucking out on getting to sit in the front bicycle that contained the basket with E.T. in it!  In the Fall of that year, we would take a vacation in Arkansas, especially because of a documentary video project I would do while we stayed there; A Visit To The Real Evening Shade.  My interest in that small town got piqued after viewing the situation comedy television series; Evening Shade, that Burt Reynolds had for four seasons on CBS (1990-1994). Initially, I didn't like it, but eventually it grew on me.  Then again, it's not a sitcom I would recommend to people.  The creator; Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and her husband Harry, have been partners in crime to Bill and Hillary Clinton, they also came from Arkansas like they did, and they are also looney Liberals like that couple to boot!

In late January 1994, just as it looked like I were about to start living in my own duplex in San Antonio, Dad decided to bring me back home to Kingwood, Texas, thus pulling me out of the Autistic Treatment Center!  At least I had gotten some job training in the San Antonio Credit Union, working in their basement floor mail room during the year before that.  A few months after returning to Kingwood, I would finally graduate from Kingwood High School in the Humble Independent School District in May with a vocational diploma, then in the late Summer, enter into Kingwood Community College, now called Lone Star Community College, taking courses in Desktop Publishing, Keyboarding, and other computer related subjects.  The next chapter will cover 1996 and the first ten years of the 2000s."

Fantastic Florida Fling [1993] - I watched this on Christmas Eve 2015

Like Esperanza; Carlson was very creative as a young boy and as a teenager. Chapter 4 in Surviving schizophrenia is about when he wrote a poem for a Valentine contest:

"The first time I remember being recognized for writing was in the second grade, when I won the Why My Teacher is My Valentine contest. The winners got to have lunch with their teacher at a restaurant, and have their pictures published in the local newspaper. I was even interviewed by a radio station. I figured that I must take after Grandma Carlson, because she liked to write poetry.

I was in Mrs. Daley’s second grade class, just about to leave for lunch, when the announcement was made over the intercom.
“The winners of the Why My Teacher is My Valentine contest have been decided. Thank you to everyone who participated. Two winners were chosen, one from the second grade entries and one from the third grade,” the female announcer said.
I listened intently. My stomach began to feel queasy and I had a tingling sensation inside my chest.
The announcer said the name of the third-grade winner first. I didn’t recognize the name. Then, she said, “The second-grade winner is Richard Carlson, from Mrs. Daley’s class. Congratulations to the both of you. The winners and their teachers are going to get lunch at a McDonald’s restaurant. Thank you.”
I jumped up and down at my desk as an intense, shooting feeling of happiness pulsated in my chest.
“Congratulations, Richard,” Mrs. Daley exclaimed, “and thank you!” She beamed a nice smile at me.
“I won,” I said to Tony, who sat next to me. “I won.”
“Show-off,” he said, and then the class walked to the cafeteria.
All through lunch, I felt such joy inside. Someday, I’ll be a world-famous writer, I thought, and was proud." [Carlson 14-15].

And when he was 15 he wanted to be President of the United States as he wrote in an assignment for his business class. The previous three chapters talk about his work for his father's resin business and his rudeness to his friend Keith's father - then there is some light relief with roaches and how he dealt with peers and authority at this time:

"Years later, my family moved to Tucson, Arizona, which is in the Sonoran Desert. In fifth grade, another boy at my school who was a year younger than me mimicked Rosco, a police officer character in the Dukes of Hazzard television series, which was popular at that time. I began to act like Rosco, too.“You dipstick!” I giddily said to my buddies, Dave, Ron, and Steve, on the playground near the fence that bordered the school grounds. School was almost out and it was summer, and fiercely hot outside. We were dripping sweat like soldiers in a monsoon. The only relief we could hope for was an occasional breeze.
“I’m gonna give you a ticket. I’m going to arrest you,” I said to Megan and her two girlfriends, who were walking up to us, talking among themselves. Then I
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pretended to write out a traffic ticket from my imaginary pad, and handed it to her.
“Chase after Daisy!” Ron said as the girls laughed. Daisy was the name of one of the characters from the show, and Megan was pretty, just like her. “Arrest Daisy,” Ron said, and the girls all giggled at me.
“All right, Cletus. I’m in hot pursuit. Arrest them Duke boys!” I said, and I started running around my friends. I did not want them to keep suggesting that I chase after a girl! What a terrifying thought.
I continued to act like Rosco all through the sixth grade, imitating the character’s unique characteristics and giving my classmates imaginary tickets. Sometimes, I would pretend to be driving a police car and make police siren sounds. A boy brought a CB radio receiver to school one day and let me borrow it. I walked around school, talking into the receiver with the cord wrapped around my belt loop. My classmates could only smile.
“Wew, wew, wew, wew, wew!” I screeched the sounds of a police car siren. “I’m in hot pursuit, you
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dipstick! I’ve got a quiver in my liver. Gew, gew, gew,” I said into the receiver, just like Rosco.
Dave was most likely to go along with my antics. Once, he acted like Boss Hogg, the town mayor and Rosco’s boss.
“I’m your boss!" Dave said, patting his chest, “Arrest Daisy, Rosco!” He laughed.
“Wew, wew, wew! I’m Rosco P. Coltrane.” I sped my squad car past him.
“I’m your deputy,” Steve exclaimed, pointing at his chest and then folding his arms with a big grin that made me laugh.
“All right, Enos,” I replied. Enos was another deputy. “Gew, gew, gew!” “Gew, gew, gew!”
Although it has been over thirty years, I remember feeling even back then that there was something inside my mind that I didn’t quite fit in. But I didn’t think that being different from everyone else meant that I should ask for help.
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Chapter 6
Puberty
During puberty, I began to really like girls. I wanted a girlfriend very much. Already, I knew that I wanted to have a large family, like I’d had growing up, and that I wanted to wait until marriage to have sex. Unfortunately, there was something wrong with me. I literally did not know how to have a girlfriend because I was experiencing prodromal schizophrenia. Not knowing how frustrated me as a teenager. I tried and tried to get a girlfriend, and even asked my buddies to help me.
I didn’t put much thought into wondering whether I might be mentally ill. I had no idea what prodromal schizophrenia and paranoid schizophrenia were. Maybe if there had been more awareness about schizophrenia and other mental disorders in school, I would have figured it out. But instead, my illness continued and I had no idea.
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I asked Steve if he could help me get Dorothy as my girlfriend at junior high. Steve was dating Dorothy’s friend.
"Why don't you chase after Dorothy," Steve said. "Okay." I knew nothing about her and had never spoken to
her, but I really wanted to have a girlfriend. I wasn't sure if I should date her, but was dying to be in love.
He wrote a note that asked Dorothy if she’d be my girlfriend, and I signed it. Together, Steve and I gave the letter to Dorothy while she was confabbing with her friends during lunch at school.
She said yes, just loud enough for us to hear as Steve and I stood nearby. Steve cheered and Steve and I walked away.
Because I didn’t know how to have a girlfriend, however, I never talked or even sat next to her. Plus, I was still shy. I wanted very much to sit next to her during lunch to get to know her better. I continually put off talking with her. Dorothy never attempted to talk
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with me. She broke up with me over the phone, a while later. That was the most we ever talked. Steve and other friends had teased me about kissing Dorothy, however I was confused and didn’t know what to say to a girlfriend, because of how ill I was.
"Kiss Dorothy. Kiss her," Steve tried his best to convince me, "Kiss your first love."
"I will," I promised, hoping I'd figure out how to get to know her better soon, hopefully. I just couldn't figure it out, so I continued to put off talking to her.
My freshman year in high school was when I really fell in love, however. Sandie was pretty and had a good personality. I hung around Sandie and several other of our friends. My friends even helped me try to date her. Early on, a friend of mine suggested to Sandie that she and I would be a good couple. I looked up when he said that, and Sandie gave me a mean face. Looking back, I think there were three possible reasons for that face. The first was that she liked me, but wouldn’t admit to it. The second was that she didn’t like me and didn’t want
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to be associated with me. The third was that she wasn’t certain how she felt about me. She didn’t know much about me, after all. She only did what any young girl might do if a guy was showing interest in dating her.
Of course, at the time, the second reason seemed most likely.
I was not able to figure out how a person might react to situations such as that, so I assumed that I was not attractive enough or good enough for Sandie, which hurt me and especially hurt my self-esteem. At first, I couldn’t believe that she didn’t love me. I was heartbroken, but eventually I got over it. She was a nice girl to be friends with. And, because I was ill, reasons one and three never entered my mind.
I assumed that I did not know how to have a girlfriend because I was shy and such a big nerd. My friends reinforced these ideas. They even tried to help me fit in. Steve suggested that I part my hair in the middle instead of off to the side, which I went along with. Keith and I looked through “cool” clothes in a small
23
department store in a mall, instead of the nerdy ones I usually wore.
One friend mentioned that I should find a girlfriend who was not so pretty. I was too submissive, and so I didn’t say anything to that. I shouldn’t have hung around someone who would say that kind of thing. It’s possible that I didn’t stand up for myself enough as a result of being mentally ill, because I didn’t know whether or not I should speak up, or what I should say.
My sophomore year in high school, getting good grades became very important to me. At some point during that year, I began to sit in the library doing homework or studying during lunch. I earned A’s in English and B’s in Algebra I, and did well in my other classes, too. My freshman year, I had not done well. Now, I was thinking, “I can do this! I can go to college!” I got so much satisfaction from being dedicated to my studies. I would daydream about how dedicated I’d be until I reached my upper division business courses in college, at which time I’d start looking for a girlfriend. I
24
planned to wait until then, because I wanted to find a mate who would help me grow my father’s small resin reproduction casting and mold-making business into a full-time endeavor.
25
Chapter 7
Dad’s Part-Time Business
Dad became interested in resin casting using silicone molds. My father and I ran this business in our kitchen and at times, my brothers and Mom helped. One project was a full-scale model of an experiment that was going to take place on the space shuttle. I helped Dad sand and putty the sheet Plexiglas, and helped with the gluing and spray painting, too. We also cast reproductions of parts for a full-scale mockup of the interior of a passenger airplane being constructed by a firm in town. The final project was received very highly by the business executives who saw it.
Dad and I met Jerry, a nice man in town who designed custom scale model cars. Dad offered to make resin reproductions of his models, and Jerry agreed. Usually, Dad made the molds with thick, liquid silicone, which hardened but remained flexible enough when
26
cured to allow a casting to be removed. Often, Dad or I would cast the molds using a two-part liquid resin that hardened within twenty-four hours. I enjoyed helping with the business, as it was a lot of fun. I just loved the idea of making money while doing something that I actually looked forward to doing. I believed that building my father’s business would be an ideal career for me.
27
Chapter 8
Rude to My Friend’s Dad
My friend Keith is a very nice person and a loyal friend. Keith and I had fun swimming in his pool over the summer with his younger sister and other friends. We also did yard work together at a neighbor’s house. Keith was a true comedian at times, and he could make anyone laugh. He never put me down, unless he was telling a joke. The rest of the time, he was very considerate of me. He was fun to be around, even though he could be mischievous at times. Keith was the epitome of what a best friend should be. If he would have known I was experiencing prodromal paranoid schizophrenia, he would have told my parents so I could get help.
One day when I was in junior high, I was at Keith’s house talking to his father. He invited me inside and said that Keith would be home soon. We were together in
28
their living room, and then his father left the room. When Keith’s father wasn’t there with me, I left and rode my bicycle home without saying a word—I didn’t know if I should say something to Keith’s father and, if I was supposed to, I wasn’t sure what I would say. At the time, I didn’t even realize that was rude. The next time I was at their house, Keith’s father explained to me nicely that he’d been worried about where I had gone. He said that I should tell him if I was going to leave their house. I should have been considerate of my friend’s father. I didn’t always know how to act or what to do in certain situations because of my illness.
It wasn’t obvious to me that I was not well, however. It wasn’t obvious to my friend’s father that there was something very wrong with me, either.
“The other day, you left without telling me,” Keith’s father explained. “I was concerned about you. I went looking for you. Next time, please let me know if you are leaving.”
29
“All right,” I replied. I wondered why I hadn’t told him.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to leave?” he asked.
“I guess ... I’m shy,” I replied. If he knew that it hadn’t even occurred to me to say something, what would he think of me?
This was one of those moments when I thought there was something unusual about me. I still didn’t fit in.
“Richard,” Keith said under his breath, and then he cracked up, shaking his head.
30
Chapter 9
Pet Roaches
My chest chimed as I leaned over and reached into my backpack, pulling out a glass peanut butter jar. As I set it on my desk, Steve—who was sitting next to me—laughed.
“I caught them from the sewer,” I explained, “Gene helped.”
Three roaches scurried about among strips of cardboard and pieces of bread within the jar.
“Keep those away.” Jennifer, whose desk was just past Steve’s, cringed. At the sound of her voice, Mr. Peckney looked over, and his eyes found the jar.
“Don’t let your roaches out,” he said with a smile, and then chuckled.
“I won’t,” I promised. Mr. Peckney’s desk was right next to mine, so I held up the jar and asked, “Don’t you want to see them?”
31
“Oh, no.” He smiled. “Some parents give their child a kitten or a puppy, but Richard prefers a roach.” He laughed at his own joke, and then walked to the front of the class.
“Gene and I caught the roaches by scooping them into the jar with a piece of cardboard. We removed a sewer cap on a street in our neighborhood,” I explained to Steve. “The roaches were right there on the side of the manhole.”
The bell rang. As Mr. Peckney began taking roll call, Jason got up from his seat, snagged the jar, and took it with him to his desk at the back of the room. I watched him all the way, hoping he would not accidentally break the jar.
“Give him back his roaches,” Mr. Peckney commanded. Jason retuned the jar and I smirked, feeling my insides twinge with joy.
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Chapter 10
Me for President!
In my business class in high school, I had to do an oral report. Each student had to describe a possible career choice. I chose being President of the United States. I believe that I chose being president because a vibe told me to; at the time, I thought it was intuition telling me.
That afternoon, after school, I sat next to my good friend Matt on the bus.
“I did an oral report in general business class today,” I explained. “I think it went well.”
“What was it about?” Matt glanced up from the book he had been reading on his lap.
“I did mine on being president. The project had to do with a possible career that we’d like to have. I’m going to become president someday,” I explained.
33
“Are you going to start a revolution and turn the country into a dictatorship, or try to get elected?” he asked, and his seriousness gave me a tingling, fun feeling inside. “I don’t know if the CIA will put up with you overthrowing the government.”
“Oh, I want to be elected, but I won’t turn the country into a dictatorship.”
“What are you going to do before you become President?” he asked. “What will you do to help get there?”
“I am going to turn my father’s business into a full-time career, with employees,” I explained. “And then, maybe I’ll run for Governor, and then President,” I said.
“I’ll vote for you,” he said. “I think you’d make a good president.”
“Thank you,” I replied as Matt went back to his book.
For a moment, I glanced down at the page he was reading. Then I looked out the window, calculating how
34
many years I’d have to wait until I met the age requirement for being president.
Twenty years.It seemed a lifetime away." 

 The last two chapters which are open to us as readers deal with Carlson's first psychotic break after he met Anne - he made a lot of money on the resins to pay for his business education and then transferred to the University of Arizona:

"Chapter 12

College
When I attended Pima Community College, I lived with my parents and siblings. I was a general business major. Being a college student was very exciting for me. College life wasn’t like high school—most people were in college because they wanted to be there. I studied hard, wanting to excel. Everything revolved around my studies and my father’s part-time business. Now, I was an adult.
Early in college, in fact, I designed several of my own scale models, cast reproductions of them, and sold the reproductions via mail-order. One model was of a 1/43 scale 1959 Cadillac sedan. For that model, I had used an existing model made by another manufacturer as a base. Using modeling tools, I converted the two- door coupe to a four-door. I even made a rear window from scratch and cast reproductions in clear resin. I took great pride in designing, casting, painting, and
38

assembling the models. I made enough money to pay for most of my college tuition early on, although I didn’t make nearly enough to cover room and board.
Two of my built scale models were featured on the cover of Model Car Journal, which was a well-known magazine in the model business at the time. These models and others received excellent reviews in the magazine.
I also designed and reproduced a scale model airplane stand with the jet’s Israeli name on a base that held the model (which was made by another company) upright in a flight position. However, I sold very few of the stands, even though they were featured in a scale model airplane magazine.

39

Chapter 13
Anne
While I was sitting in the cafeteria one day my freshman year, a strange girl came by, looking happy to see me.
“How have you been?” Anne asked as she sat next to me in the school cafeteria. “Remember me? I’m Anne.” She was very pretty and had short, curly brown hair.
“No,” I stuttered. A person who wasn’t mentally ill might reply, “Oh, hi. Sorry, I don’t remember you.” But all I said was, “No.”
“We knew each other in fourth grade. We’d play on the monkey bars shaped like a car, remember?” she added.
“No,” I replied again.
“On the car, you’d act like you were stuck in a toilet.”
40

“No ... oh, yeah, I remember,” I replied feeling my chest tingle for a second. It made me happy to remember playing and goofing around with Anne.
“Do you date often?” she asked, showing a nice smile. For a moment, it felt like she had let the morning sunlight into a dark room.
“Oh, no. Not right now,” I said. I could tell that she felt insulted, but she kept a straight face.
“I’ll see you around,” she said, and left.
I was confused, and I didn’t understand why I felt confused about the conversation. I had handled the situation poorly because I just didn’t know what to say. I still regret that. If we had gone out, Anne might have become my girlfriend. If I had gone out on a date with her, perhaps I would have figured out that I was mentally ill. Then again, perhaps going on a date would have been a disaster for me. I wouldn’t have done anything right, and I would have been embarrassed. The whole time, I wouldn’t have had any idea of what to say or do.
41

I held onto my plan to wait until my upper division business classes to find a girlfriend. After two years at Pima Community College, I transferred to the University of Arizona for my upper division courses. I was still ill, but as time went by, it wasn’t as obvious to me that I didn’t fit in.
One day, I saw myself in the bathroom mirror when I stepped out of the shower and saw blood on my face. I thought I had been shot in the mouth. I immediately felt very weak and I struggled to walk to my bedroom, hoping that whatever was happening to me would soon pass. I almost collapsed in the hallway, because of how ill I felt. I lay on my bed face down, waiting for the sickening sensation to pass. Eventually, it did. I stood and dressed.
The next time I saw my mom, I told her about it. I don’t remember what she said, but we decided not to do anything about it. Looking back, I believe that seeing that false reflection in the mirror was my first psychotic experience.
42

My first semester at the university was stressful because I had some trouble with one class in particular, and I wanted to earn good grades. Actually, I had been putting myself under a lot of stress with my studies for years. Still, I enjoyed the university and was pleased to be in the prime of my life. After that first semester, I was ready to begin taking upper division business courses at the university. I was on the path to success, and nothing could stand in my way.
But something dreadful was about to happen— something that would drastically alter the course of my future. It is common for people who get schizophrenia to experience stress before becoming psychotic. Researchers have determined that there is a genetic component to schizophrenia, but a stressful event in a person’s life can trigger the worst symptoms of the illness." [Carlson 2017]

As recently as 10 years ago [2007] Carlson had some significant psychotic episodes and that is when the HugsFeelGood mailing list lost touch.

Chapter books about Karliff by Richard Carlson Junior at rich.center

Coming of age love stories by Richard Carlson

Bilingual children's picture books by Richard Carlson including colouring books

A modern book about childhood schizophrenia is Susan Schofield's Born schizophrenic which is about Jani or January Schofield her daughter and Bodhi, Jani's younger brother. January is now 15 years old.

And a personal book for me or story would be I suffer from schizophrenia which my Uncle Doug Western wrote in 1992 or 1993.

From March to August 2001 I worked on Western's words which in 2007-08 became a blog. Doug also had made some videos like Triumph of Psychotic Chook - a quest for maturity.

A little under two years after he made the video, he died. He was survived by his dog Honey.

You can read TRIUMPH OF PSYCHOTIC CHOOK as it was introduced

Before he died he did a lot of Mental Health Week presentations about the environment and how active involvement in it helped his mental health and sense of belonging and identity.

What a tease Freddie was to Jaheem! Richard Carlson's early reader book

#31for21 - Poetry and Connections

In 1992, I had an iron and gold standard:

Think about how it would be if Princess Dani read it.

That may have saved me from some of my more egregious errors. I was going to make others of them regardless.

Because once you realise people who rock the 21st chromosome can read and write - you have a responsibility.

And once you ask - "Why in the hell don't we read and write their poetry"? - there's a connection.

Five years later - 1997 - Rosemary Crossley wrote a chapter in Speechless called What is the product of 3 times 21?

Because I was a lightning mathematician and had other STEM interests at that time - my heroes included people like Albert Einstein and Henry Cavendish - I would have said, "That's easy. It's 63, like 7 times 9".

And the Nobel Prizes for Physiology and Medicine; Physics and Chemistry are out. And Literature tonight. We have to wait another month for Peace.




In that eighth chapter, there are three young ladies - Jan; Heather and Fiona.

Jan is the one who writes poetry.

Her family come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and their general and academic English did not then extend to poetry.

In fact people with Trisomy 21 have been writing - and publishing - poetry for at least 60 years, even before Lejeune put out his genetic discovery to the world.

It's hard to read a poem to yourself -
You cannot hear the words.
You have to imagine the sound, the rhythm. The sense is there, the feeling lost.
Imagine writing a poem without being able to read it aloud. It's like playing a record in a soundproof room -
It's going round, but no-one on the outside can hear.
If I was deaf, would it be the same or different?

[Jan, Speechless, page 132].

"Pretty; shy; slightly built". So far; so wonderful and even enviable and highly valued.

She studied at a special school for the intellectually impaired - the type that Princess Dani eventually went to in two or three years from the time I studied with her.

[...]Jan was very interested in DEAL's communication equipment. She went to the typewriter of her own accord and began typing quickly without assistance. Like most people with Down syndrome she had low muscle tone, but despite this she appeared to have few problems with her fine motor skills - she looked at what she was doing and she was able to use her hands and fingers well. All that came out, however, was a few words she'd practised typing a lot previously - mum, dad, Jan.
I wanted to see what she would do if she was slowed down, but for a shy girl Jan was surprisingly determined about her independence. I finally got her to accept some help - I held on to one end of a rod, she held the other with her left and best hand and typed with one finger. The resistance I provided slowed her down very substantially, and the quality of her output increased as her speed fell. I gave Jan a picture of a cow and asked her to write me a sentence about it. Instead she typed THIS TYPING IS HARD. I HAVE TO THINK. That was, of course, the aim of the exercise. Previously Jan had simply been repeating some overlearnt motor patterns, virtually without conscious thought.
Jan was one of those unlucky children in whom shyness and fear of failure combine to give the appearance of stubbornness and stupidity. She was so afraid of getting things wrong - afraid with good reason - that she preferred not to try them at all, so afraid of giving the wrong answer that she preferred not to speak at all. This got her in trouble constantly. Unfortunately, Jan had severe word- finding problems which limited her ability to get her meaning across and restricted her to very simple utterances.[...[

Yes. People who look stubborn and stupid are not stubborn and stupid. And Jan showed a lot of determination about her independence and autonomy. The rod might have been helpful. And what did she type about the cow?

"While I was talking to her mother Jan spontaneously and independently typed MUM DAD COW DAD IS COW. We both laughed, and I said "No, dad is a bull.", whereupon Jan spontaneously typed MUM IS COW. She then typed DAD IS and went for the B, stopped short and typed JAN, her most fluent word - the word that was most likely to come out in typing, though not in speech, any time her concentration lapsed or she hesitated. I held out the stick, she took it and typed DAD IS BOOL. It was almost like aphasia of the fingers. Gradually Jan relaxed and became more willing to work with me, and more willing to allow me to hold on to the end of the rod and slow her down.
Five months after her first visit Jan came in carrying a copy of Peacock Pie, a collection of Walter De la Mare's poetry. A number of the poems are old favorites of mine, so I read them aloud to her:
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor; ...
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,’ he said.

Jan's parents were limited in their ability to read to her because they were not native English speakers. Laura said Peacock Pie was Jan's favorite book, she'd bought it herself. Jan wanted to type out a poem from it, and while she was doing this I got some other anthologies out." 

I was discovering a lot of poetry anthologies myself, mostly gifted me from family members. The first one I sought out for myself was in 1990 during August of that year - Fairy tales and nursery crimes by Michael Rosen. Christmas 1991 I was reading The Penguin anthology of children's poems which I had bent the spine by that time.

I also was under the reputation as the form poet [and storyteller and playwright.

In the early 1990s I was the technology pioneer or one of them. With the IT facilitator's son and others.

"By now Jan no longer needed to hold on to the rod to slow down, and could type short messages with just my hand on her shoulder. When she finished copy-typing her favourite poem she typed I LIKE POETRY CAN I WRITE
"A poem?" I hazarded. Yes. And she typed
Better a mother who cannot love 
Better a car that cannot move
Better a boy who cannot walk
Than to have a voice that cannot talk.

Jan's parents were quite pleased with the poem, but I don't think they realized that Jan had written it. "

A voice that cannot talk? Yes, this is a central theme of Speechless, and of Jan's later poetry, as we will see in pages 136-139.

"Jan’s next visit was her last for the year. Again she brought in an anthology, this time one of her brother's old English textbooks, and again I went through several poems at her request. She had some poems she particularly wanted me to read aloud - she showed them to me in the index - and some difficult poems that she wanted me to explicate. One was The Ballad of Patrick Spens which has a lot of dialect words in it:

O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords To wet their cork-heel'd shoon; But lang or a' the play was play'd They wat their hats aboon.
And mony was the feather bed That flatter'd on the faem; And mony was the gude lord's son That never mair cam hame.

I could understand her wanting help!
By this stage Jan could type original sentences without physical contact, but that was sitting next to me with my reminders exerting a brake and Jan using one finger. When she typed by herself she liked to use two hands in imitation of regular typists, and as she found it difficult to control one hand it was impossible for her at this stage to control two.
She wanted to write another poem and again did so on the word processor, a machine which had plainly inspired her at her last visit.

Using a computer to write poetry is like using

Hand-made writing paper for the grocery list -

It is more sophisticated than the message.

SPEECHLESS

137

Whatever happened to pens? No-one will ever be sold a manuscript of my work. Can I ever go back to my first ideas?
Quality presentation may hide poor content. Does the software live up to the hardware In poet as in computer?

She tired quickly, and I held her sleeve for most of the poem.
One of the more creative explanations offered by my critics for the unexpected output of people who type with facilitation is automatic writing. It is suggested that people like Jan type one or two letters at random and then their partners ‘automatically’ make these letters into a word. Having got one or two words by this procedure, the partner then ‘automatically’ completes a sentence. It’s an interesting notion, and may even be correct in some cases, but among the questions it doesn’t answer is the question of individuality. Jan regularly wrote poetry. Of the hundreds of communication aid users I have partnered over the years, perhaps a dozen have written poems while I was their partner. These have all been of varying styles and standards. Anne, required to write a poem for an English assignment, found the task extremely difficult and struggled for days to produce some passable doggerel. (On the other hand, some reviewers of Annie’s Coming Out were unkind enough to point out that Anne’s sections were better written than mine.) Why do my automatic completions produce poetry when I sit next to Jan and not when I sit next to Anne?
Because her parents thought that Jan did not fall into the category of someone who needs to work with a communication aid this was the last time they brought her to DEAL. During the next year I visited Jan twice at her special school. In June she used a communicator well, joining in a discussion involving her teachers. What the teachers said, however, wasn't encouraging. Being her own worst enemy, Jan was said to have rejected any slowing of her typing (as she had initially with me) and because of this her production at special school had been little more than her usual stereotyped utterances. She was doing some original typing, but not very much. Jan just hadn't had enough practice at independent keyboard use, and the self-monitoring techniques that I'd been teaching her hadn't been practised enough to become ingrained. The only positive news was that Jan’s teacher reported that her speech was more fluent in everyday situations

SPEECHLESS

138 When I came back again in November I was shown into a meeting with Jan, her special
school teacher, and her parents. Her parents made it clear that they didn't think Jan should use any form of augmentation for her speech because "She can say everything that she needs to say." Her teacher went along with them. And Jan sat there mute throughout. She wouldn’t or couldn't speak, and we were sitting in such a position that I couldn't just bring out a Communicator and give it to her.
I argued as best I could. I told her parents truthfully that Jan was as talented with language as any child I'd ever taught. I told them that her poetry was exceptional for a student of her age, that she had a real talent that she could use only if we gave her the equipment and the skills she needed. Nobody (Jan aside) believed a word I was saying. Her father, her mother, and her teacher saw the person that they have always seen, the person that the textbooks told them that they should see. They saw a girl who was doing well for someone with Down syndrome. I was saying that Jan was not just doing well for someone with Down syndrome but that her writing was exceptional for any child, and that was not believable. Her parents thought I was sincere, but they didn't think that our "great work” could possibly extend to their own daughter. Their daughter has an extra chromosome.

I hope Jan's story has a 'to be continued', but at the moment there's no sign of it. I haven’t seen her for years. What has happened to her talent? Is her head full of poems that she can't tell anyone, that she can't type because the stereotyped words get in the way? "

Other people have developed their writing skills and identities as authors, like Peter Rowe and the Brotherhood of the Wordless in Queensland. One of their "sisters" is Lucy Blackman, whose Talking of Macbeth and Carrying autism feeling language I have enjoyed in the last five years - and in November 1997 - the correspondence with John Marsden.

 http://peter-rowe.info/content/poetry/

The Bush Christmas poem is wonderful.

And there is Nathan Basha too.

I have seen various works on Quora.com.

Wherever poetry is, people with Down syndrome are.

And I am really bad at dedications, because in 1992 I had written a story called Camping Out which I really did not want to write. I paid more attention to the publicity than the dedications. The story was about two Ladybird characters called Peter and Jane and it was written in four frames.

To Maureen and Danielle, who inspired me.

That word - in the past tense - is like a stopped breath.

The Words are Sticky …they stick to my tongue, they stick to my teeth,
they stick to my voice and it’s hard to speak;
they tangle me up and make me choke,
I so want to speak and that’s no joke.
I try and I try, I push and I push,
but the words come out all jumbled and rushed.
I choke on my tongue and sometimes I spit;
I’m trying a word, but that’s just not it.
They’re cheeky and sticky, they just won’t come out,
but they seem much easier to speak when I shout.
I’ll catch them one day, when they all run by,
and then on that day my speaking will fly.
I want you to know I think, just like you,
but my words are all stuck in my mouth, just like glue.
So where is the way to unstick all these thoughts?
I hope that it’s in the Speech Therapy I bought!

[Rowe 2003] accessed 5 October 2017

THINGS THAT HURT US
There are many things that hurt us,
but most of them come from ourselves
The things that hurt us the most,
usually come from fear.
We can work against the fear,
but most people choose not to.
Most people see it as their companion and they can’t let go.
Nevertheless, it is this idea that stops us from succeeding.
The idea that we have to hold onto stuff that hurts us is crazy.
Getting rid of it is hard, though,
and most people never do in their lives.
This is because most people are afraid of facing their fears:
afraid of life, without the fear.
This includes me.
I have trouble shaking things off too,
and this is because I need to hold on to something …
and I do not yet have a tight enough hold on hope.
Good things will come though.
I am waiting!
That day is coming soon
when I will run with hope
instead of shaking with fear!

[Rowe: http://peter-rowe.info/content/poetry/things-that-hurt-us/]

How A Bush Christmas Should Be
The sun is beating down on the hottest day of the year, the branches breaking and falling from the heat. The flies are buzzing and the dogs are panting in the shade: The Bush Christmas has come again.
We sit on the verandah, under the iron roof, and listen to the cracking and expanding of the roof in the heat. The dry ground is screaming for rain and the little lambs are bouncing around not knowing, and not caring, that it is too hot to play.
The old dog is sitting under the gum tree where he has been since last night, with his tongue hanging out and his breath hot and short. He flicks away the flies with his tail and goes about sleeping and waking and sleeping and waking all morning.
The cat has found a place under the roof and on top of the water tank at the side of the house. He is all curled up and completely unaware of things happening around him.
The children have been helping mum decorate the Christmas tree and get the house ready for the next couple of days. The uncle from out west and the auntie from down south are coming up for Christmas. The house has a bright and cheery feeling about it again.
Dad is sitting on the verandah and he is thinking how good it is to have family to share this day with him.
“I wonder if the rains will come soon?” he mutters, loud enough for mum to hear through the open windows.
“The report says it could be a couple of weeks yet, dear,” mum replies.
Dad mumbles something about the weatherman and pulls his hat down over his face. He rests his feet on the dog at the base of his chair.
A light has been making its way up the dusty road from the highway for about an hour or so. It is uncle with his wife coming to stay. He’s been singing to the country radio station the whole time – much to auntie’s dismay.
The girls have joined mum in the kitchen now and the eldest son has come out to dad on the veranda.
“Dad, do you think the lambs will be okay without water for the next couple of weeks?” the boy asks.
“Son, I think the ewes will drop their lambs under a tree and walk off if we don’t get rain soon,” he replies. “I think we need to pray a bit harder this year.” Together they ask God to send the rains soon.
Aunty has caught the train up to the nearest city and hired a car, with very cold air- conditioning, for the drive up this year. It is going to be the hottest place she’s been to for a while, that’s for sure. The flies at the train station stay well away from her because she smells like perfune and new clothes; a successful lawyer type.
The weatherman’s report didn’t count on the prayers of the bush folk this year. No weatherman could know just how many prayers have gone into this year’s rain.
Auntie’s car has pulled in just behind her brother’s Ute as they fly up the dusty road. Her city life forgotten for the moment, she drives like a real bush kid coming back to the family homestead.
They don’t see the clouds in the background through the haze that they are pushing in front of them. Dad hasn’t seen it from the verandah yet either.
The haze just looks like another heatwave haze. The clouds build and build with great speed and the cars race on toward the house, unaware of the growing shadow behind them.
Dad sees the lightning now and hears the thunder just as a cloud of dust comes up from the road and the bull bar from the Ute comes first around the corner.
“Mum, come quick and bring the girls. Look what uncle and aunty have brought with them.” Mum rushes to the front door just as the cars pull up and the clouds come over. The rain bursts out of them like stuffing from a pillow.
They all step down into the rain, not caring that their clothes are soaked just hugging their family and everyone is laughing and crying at the same time.
“This is the best Christmas present ever,” says Dad.
“Dad, I told God he could have my best slingshot if he brought the rain,” the boy says. “I guess I better go give it to him.”
They all stand there for the longest time laughing. This is how a bush Christmas should be.

[Rowe 2002] 

The Lifetime Work
The people I see are walking through life with eyes closed.
They want to make everything different,
but they do not know where to begin.
How can they change the world and make it a better place,
without changing themselves?
The things in my life are changing all the time:
I am not the same person I was a year ago.
The loves and hates I had a year ago are different to the ones I have now.
There is no other way to go without making changes,
because there have to be changes with everything
for life to get better.
I want to grow into something beautiful
and I have to change for this to happen.
It is the same for everyone:
There is not one person who does not have to change
in order to get stronger, better and smarter
than they already are.
Can we all give each other some patience while each one of us grows?
It is going to take each of us a lifetime to get where we need to go.
© Peter Rowe 2003
Written with Ryan O’Connor, August 2003

[Rowe/O'Connor 2003]

Back to Speechless and Bolt.

There is also Nigel Hunt and his diary. It would be a good one for a young Adrian Mole or Anne Frank fan to read. It is now about 50 years old as it was published first in 1967.

Hunt was 20 years old when The world of Nigel Hunt was published.

Amazon link to THE WORLD OF NIGEL HUNT from 1967

Of course you can read modern-day writings in blogs. Over the past 25 years there has been a lot of lifestory work - some of which I've recommended to Camille de Fleurville who writes at Sketches and vignettes from la Dordogne and Lights and shades.

Nigel Hunt is mentioned in "The Individual and Social Education".

This is chapter 5 of "Humanistic Perspective" by Shunit Raiter from 2008.

We meet Hunt again in Alison C. Carey's chapter in Disability Histories - a good quote from pages 53-57

Finally for #31for21 - in the last academic year [2016-17] Kayla released her poetry collection with her class:

Life Is A Mountain
Life is a mountain
high in the sky
It makes me tired
to climb up the mountain
The mountain is big
with pretty things to see

Haiku
In the sky birds fly
High above the waves they fly
the birds are seeing

A Happy Birthday
Lucas, Happy Birthday!
You're nine years old today
You are a nice brother
I don't want any other
You are sleepy today
But with you I love to play

The Dolphin
The dolphin is swimming in the sea
The dolphin likes singing and dancing in the sea
The dolphin is swimming in the sea
Just like me

This time last year Camille de Fleurville and the Elder Sister had strokes and epilepsy to contend with.

By the end of October 2016 the de Fleurvilles were "in need of a word of comfort".