Hieronymous the Anonymous

Sjogren's?

I saw a specialist last week about my leg and associated symptoms. He asked me questions as he read through the test results, and then poked around a little. There was no clear diagnosis from the tests he told me. They were an odd set, but it seemed as he spoke that he was leaning towards something called Sjogren's Syndrome.

From my understanding this is not terribly different from Lupus, in that generally it's women who get it, and that it has no known cure - the symptoms, of which their appear a great variety, are treated while the cause is left to be. Like Lupus it is a immunity disorder caused by rogue antibodies. But that's all I know of it.

I had more tests yesterday. I expect I'll be seeing the specialist again soon. I don't think it's Sjogren's Syndrome, but I have no real reason to believe that.

Sliding doors

I went for a coffee yesterday afternoon with a friend. We returned to the building got in the lift and started up. The lift stopped early and as the doors slid open Paige and her boss, the HR Manager, were revealed.

It was so unexpected that we - she and I - locked eyes and stared at each other for what felt like seconds, but was probably only a few moments. It was such an intense experience that I'm still not sure what to make of it. It was like for a moment or two we had forgotten that we were not communicating anymore, but at the same time there was nothing tender or even friendly in our shared gaze. It was pure, direct, stripped of all pretence, it was like we were each gazing into a dark and bottomless pit we could not take our eyes from.

The moment passed. They stepped into the lift and her boss, Sam, made a joke. I responded quite normally, as did my friend, and the three of us laughed. Paige didn't. She stood beside me with her eyes downcast, staring at her feet. She was separate from the rest of us, a cowed presence in the corner unwilling or unable to engage with us, or even to pretend.

The doors opened again and my friend alighted. The doors closed again on the three of us remaining. Sam looked at me. I felt like I should say something but didn't have the words. I was aware of Paige next to a blank. His eyes went from me to her. He knew how close we were, he used to tease Paige about it. Now she stood there withdrawn into her own world, refusing to look at either me or him. And while he might have expected me to say something to her, and for her to respond with a smile or gentle gibe, as in the old days, there was now only an uncomfortable silence. And he knew then.

The doors slid open again, and they were on their way. Soon after I got off on my floor. I felt so sad, for her, for me, for us. I wondered how it must feel to be so submissive that you must stare at the ground, are unable to rouse even a flicker of life. It seemed so wrong and I was sad for her. And I was sad thinking that it was me that was making her so. And once more I thought how unnecessary all of this was, how simple it should have. A whole lot of nothing has happened, yet at the end of it we cannot be in the same room together.

Back in the game

For the last 3 months I may as well have been living under a rock. Now that I'm out from under that rock I'm eager to make the most of it. I guess I took things for granted before, but not now. Just knowing that I'm free again to do pretty much as I like is enough to fill me with an enlivening purpose.

I went out Friday night not necessarily looking to score, as they say, but it was certainly in the back of my mind. There was drinks at work, after which I went to Transport with four girls from the office. We had a few beers and then JV arrived, as the girls slowly drifted away. Nearby us were sitting a couple of girls. One was particularly attractive - tall - about 6 foot - slender, blonde and with with the fresh faced good looks of a beach girl.

Also nearby were a bunch of rowdy blokes from the same footy team looking to have a big time, slopping down the beer and breaking into the club theme song every 10 minutes and calling each other Davo and Gilby and Crackers. Not surprisingly the attractive blonde had caught their attention, and full of bluster and booze they had a fair crack at her, one in particular.

I noticed all this because I also had my eye on her. Came the time I got up from my seat and went over, actting like an old friend to intervene between the blonde and her blokey suitor. It worked. He got the message and she was suitably grateful.

Our groups joined up, we had more beers and then before too long going out to dinner together to Blue Train.

Turns out both women were off duty police women. Big tick there. The blonde was an off-duty policewoman from the mounted division - even bigger tick. We sat down to dinner and while the blonde and I clicked she stirred up poor old JV about his dress sense. She was a confident and sassy woman, the words curling her lips like smoke. I was smart she said, and looked like I didn't care what others thought - but JV was too eager to please, too conventional.

Another time something might have happened, but while we partied on towards midnight this time nothing was going to happen - for all those nice ticks were undone by the one big cross - she was happily married.

Still, it was nice to be back in the game.

Home sweet home

I moved into my new home last Thursday. I was up early and driving the short distance to Hawthorn and ended up behind the long Grace removals truck as it manouevred into my street.

They took a little over 2 hours to unload what had taken about 7 hours to load: they were very professional. After they left I set about unpacking the piles of boxes littering the joint, and have pretty well doing that ever since.

On Thursday night I was buggered after a day of lifting and unpacking. I took a shower and climbed out of it just as someone rapped on the front door. My hair was wet, I put on a robe and answered the door. Waiting there for me was a smiling young couple in their mid-thirties. They introduced themselves as my next door neighbours - we share a common wall - and welcomed me to the neighbourhood. They even gave me a gift of some lemon slice the wife had made the previous day - the kind of sweet gift I thought had gone out with the Waltons. It was nice.

Since I have slowly making the place more liveable. I'll be happy there I think. I have a front courtyard off the main bedroom. The bedroom is light and full of character, a fireplace amid bookshelves all along one wall. The ceilings high and moulded like they used to be always but never are any more - pity. It's pretty light throughout, with another fireplace in the lounge and a newly renovated bathroom. The worst of the place is the kitchen.

There's a back yard as well - very dry at the moment - and a carport with some lock-up storage. A driveway runs the length of the house, secured by an automatic gate. I could probably fit four cars in if I need to.

As it stands now it's a bit messy, but coming together. I'm pleased to have my own space, glad to be exploring a new area, and gratified that I'm no worse than 20 minutes from the CBD. I'm having a housewarming barbecue in about a month, but had people visiting throughout the day yesterday. That's one thing down, more to go.

Happy birthday for Saturday, btw.

Hobbling forward

I see a specialist about my situation on Thursday. By and large I’m a hell of a lot better than I was a month or so ago, but in recent days it has been playing up a little. I’ve been feeling pretty good, outside some inconvenience caused by the medication I’m on. I’ve been travelling pretty well, to the point that I was wondering if I might not be nearly fixed. This last week though I’ve been hobbling a bit. Maybe I’ve pushed it too much, have hurried along and felt the pinch – literally. I’ve said it before, it feels like a shin splint that extends back into my calf. I can be sitting down afterwards and the pain continues.

 

More than anything else it makes me angry. I don’t want to be this way. I have moments when I fear that I’ll always have to deal with something like this. I’ve always had such and active and adventurous life that that would put a severe crimp into it. I’m frustrated too that I can’t do any meaningful exercise. I hold myself back from doing anything too strenuous. At the same time the exercise I crave is put off pending a more definite and positive prognosis. I hate that I have little control over it, which is perhaps why I push it a bit far sometimes.

 

Guess I’ll have some idea Thursday where I’m at. That will be welcome.

Home again

I finally found somewhere to live. I’m more excited about that than those simple words might indicate. Right now there’s a party going on inside of me, born of great relief and the anticipation of being absolutely free again. Yahoo, as they say.

 

Looked at the place Friday, put in my application then and there, and got the thumbs up yesterday. Move on Thursday. Moving very quickly, but very smoothly. Come the weekend I’ll be putting my feet up in my own – very cluttered – home. Excellent stuff.

Tangled up in love

It is often tempting when you fall in love to fight it. The very term - to fall - gives some clue as to why this should be. To love is an act of faith. Sometimes it is difficult to accept that at first. It's my experience of love that it often surprises you. Mostly, I think, you are actually 'in love' some time before you accept it. It's not altogether denial, though that will often play a part. Love is such a big and confusing thing that it can be hard to comprehend - it's like all your receptors are jammed with such a multiplicity of powerful signals that it is impossible to understand.

Once you know it though there is no doubt of it. You may deny it, you may call it something else, but inside where it counts you know it.

As so often seems the case with me I am once more in a situation where it is more convenient to deny it. I'm done denying it myself, I accept what I feel and take it for what it is. My nature is very different in this regard from Paige, and my situation lends itself much easier to such an admission. Still and all, she loves me and finds herself torn in two by it.

It is difficult for her because she is in another relationship. And it is difficult for her because she is suspicious of hope. In theory at least it is easier to accept what is rather than hope for what can be. That's the theory. In reality she now finds herself tied up in knots because of it.

Paige and I are currently not speaking. That understates it - there is a bitter edge to the relationship on her side. Last week I withdrew myself from her. I had wanted to hang in there, I had been patient though often frustrated, my moments of anger cancelled out by desire to be there for her. Over the course of last week much of that changed.

It started on Monday with an email from her telling me how sad it was we had gone from happy and fun times together to this angry state of disrepair. She told of the many happy memories she had, and concluded by saying it had been nice knowing me.

I responded with something similar. I told her I wanted for us to go back to those times. She did not respond. Sometime after that I decided it was time to move on. I've been hanging on in the hope for something turning, but it was all so indeterminate that I knew I could no longer continue to wait in the same way. I had to move on.

I wrote a final email. It was a gentle and considered email I think, and it had the ring of settled truth to it. I wrote it was sad that we could both have the same feelings about the other, but could not manage to get together. I spoke of good memories, and of the difficulty of never knowing if and when things might change, and not knowing why. Now I knew, I told her, it ends now. I finished with few housekeeping items, my best wishes and that was that.

She had blocked me in chat earlier in the week: I now did the same. I hesitated, but finally deleted her as one of my facebook friends. In the morning I got a different train. I wanted to wipe things clean, start anew.

On Monday the fun started. She told at least one person that she was afraid of me - she went so far to embellish a story about how she was home alone and fearful that I would come banging on the door. Needless to say, I would never even begin to think to do that - as my friend knew. My friend was told that Paige could not talk to her anymore - she wanted nothing to do with anyone associated with me. They argued and then Paige blocked her. Then to top it all off she went and deleted her whole facebook profile.

I was angry, as you might expect. Then sort of numbed - it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then I felt concern for her. Her actions spoke of a state of mind in extreme duress. I backed off. When I had anything to do with her - and typically there were a few occasions - I was innoffensively pleasant.

My take on this has been cooking for a while. I know she liked me a lot. I think those months ago she found herself in a position where something had to happen. Before her was a fork in the road. She felt things, but wasn't sure of them, wasn't sure what I felt. I understand the dilemma, it's her response to it that rattled me. She withdrew completely from me, cold turkey, from being very involved friends to non-communicating acquaintances. I guess that's her way of controlling it.

In the weeks since there were times we got closer, times where I thought we would get back. Each time though something failed. One day we were to have lunch when I gt sick instead. And then as I was about to return she reported she was not ready yet. It was not yet under control.

And here we are today. I think I shook her last week with the seeming finality of what I did. She expected me to always be there, and suddenly I told her I could not. On top of that I wiped her from my life. She felt shocked and maybe a little guilty and very much rejected. She lashed out, wildly.

I don't think she believes the things she said. In part I think she was trying to win others to her, irrational as the attempt was. I think also it is easier for her to cope by demonising me. She can justify things that way, the end of the relationship, the guilt she might feel at it, the sense of rejection, and so on. There's a lot of smoke there, and a lot of fire causing it.

I don't know how things will pan out. I suspect she will make some overtures sometime in the next few weeks. She will settle down. No matter how much she tries it will be difficult sustaining that anger when she knows in her heart that it's baseless.

I'm in a different place to her. I've done all I'm going to do, but at the same time I accept what I feel. It's no good fighting love I think. It's like one of those nets, the more you struggle against it the more tangled up you get. That's what happened with Paige. Sometimes it's easier going through it than fighting it, or trying to back out of it. It's like in some of those westerns when someone has a arrow in their arm - it's easier sometimes to push it all the way through to get it out, than to try and take it out the way it came.

I love her. I want to be with  her. It might happen, it might not. I accept that though, all of it - I'm going through with it and it even works or finishes as it should.

The Station

I went to the Station Hotel today for lunch. This is one of the trendiest hotels going around at the moment. I've been reading rave reviews and hearing good things from all over, so it was really only a matter of time before I headed off to Footscray to check it out myself.

Having now eaten there I can report that I had one of my best meals of the year. The Station Hotel is famous for its steaks, so that is what we both had. It was a typical hotel dining room, though maybe a little busier than most. I ordered the Wagyu 'Rostbiff', which I'm told is the cut on the underside of the rump. It came with chunky hand-cut chips, salad and pepper sauce. It was beautifully cooked, and way tender.

Having eaten twice this year at the much vaunted Rockpool, where the steaks can be up to three times more expensive, I can say that this was the best steak I've eaten all year. Can't beat a good steak.

Maybe I should give out awards. Besides this there is the venison at the Builders Arms (honourable mention to the custard there too), and the very humble but delicious beef and guinness pie at the Courthouse. Funnily enough, all pubs.

Worth examining

It's Sunday morning, a little after 9. The sky outside is clouded over and cool after the heat of yesterday. I can hear distant birds tweetering. Soon I will hear the church bells toll on the corner. I am in bed still, the dog lying prone and sleepy near my feet. I will get up soon enough, will shower and dress and enter the world proper - I am out to lunch later. For now I stay in bed though, happily so. As long as I stay here I am in a different realm of feeling and thought. I can lay here and look out over the clouded sky and listen to the birds sing their songs, and let my mind wander. It wanders quite actively, like a tourist in a new town seeking the way, every day.

That is odd perhaps because I find in most of my wanderings I end up in the same place, on familiar turf. I lay here in the growing light, and in the dark when I first go to bed, and let my mind find it's own way. There are times when I am about my mind will go back to those places, but the daylight proper is no time for that really, it is reality, it is doing things and reacting to things, it is action and intent. Here in my bed there is no need for that. That can wait. And so instead I lay here and let down my guard, let the thoughts flow in and out of me like the tide. Like water my thoughts seek equilibrium. They wander and they return. They return ultimately to the things I live for, the things that are most important to me, the things I wrestle with trying to make the daylight hours worth something.

There has been much to consider lately, but much always when I think about it. Though at times I think differently, I would not have it any other way. You want to be in the thick of it, after all, don't you? Want to feel you have lived, and to know it? The examined life, yes, but there must be something worth examining. This is a distinct part of my life, necessary and somehow precious. It is who I am, part of my identity.

There is a serene calm in these moments. My mind searches ahead, unknowing but hopeful. The bells toll melodiously and it seems of the moment, something true that belongs with these deliberations. And my mind circles back again as the clock ticks, nearer the time when reality intrudes again. In the meantime I ponder the meaning of this, and continuing forth, return as ever to what is most important - and wondering how to set things right.

Then and now

I spent most of my childhood years living in an outer north eastern suburb of Melbourne called Lower Plenty - quite a rustic place in those days, but great for a kid. Up the road a bit was Eltham, known for it's mud brick homes and artists communities. I went to a private school a little further out, in Research, right on the frayed edges of what could be called greater Melbourne of that time. Civilisation was sparser here, the quite impressive lay-out of modern buildings set amongst bushland, were we would go cross-country running or orienteering.

A regular part of my childhood routine were Saturday morning visits to Doncaster Shoppingtown, the nearest shopping mall until the complex at Greensborough was built some years later. I don't know if I thought much of it in those days. I would take my meagre pocket money - earned mowing the lawn or washing the cars, or whatever - and buy a book maybe, and wander around the cavernous mall mingling with all the other shoppers. Just as an aside, we would normally get back home, have some hot dogs before heading out to the footy at Windy Hill - but that's an aside.

It's been a long time since I lived out that way, and it's rare I get an excuse to visit. I might pass through occasionally on the way to somewhere else, but it's years since I've seen the old family home. Sometimes I drive by the old school and marvel at all the development since I graduated.

During the week there was news that the redevelopment of the old Doncaster Shoppingtown had finished, and the grand opening had taken place. As always with events of this nature there are all sort of claims made - the biggest, the best, the most expensive, and so on. There was a similar claim about this, but one is so conditioned to this that I didn't take any notice.

We visited it today. I fully expected there would be huge crowds, and though there were plenty there, it was so spacious it was hardly an issue. I wandered the plush, broad thoroughfares thinking that the place was transformed. There was nothing in the space and style, nothing in the light and airy environment that anything to do with the concrete seventies monolith of my childhood. And it was maybe three times bigger.

That's one sign of the times. The other is the variety of stores now available. That's the proof of how much our society has come in those years since. Here we are in outer suburbia, and here is a Jones the Grocer with just great produce and products, of the type that could not have been imagined back then. There are specialty shops and high end butchers and the like which I am quite accustomed to in the inner city, but I see now has spread out, and continues to spread.

I think Melbourne more than most, but Australia in general, is a foodie society, interested in what is good, and interested in knowing more all the time. It counts for more than just food though, it goes for the arts too, for the cultural life that knits us all together and has us - generally - pulling in the same common direction.

What we have now is almost unrecognisable from what we had then, but it's all good.