Slow Start to 2026
I am back to painting as I once did. It has been a slow start this year because I am battling my shellshock caused by all the chaos in the World and Australia. My body is going through stages of more skin cancer surgeries too. Also, I had to rebuild my painting area to escape environmental problems caused by a very humid climate and my horrible stupid neighbours. There seems a relationship with my cancer outcomes and the state of things. Throughout my life I have battled stupid people. My mother who was Schizophrenic could also have periods of Narcissism, she was also an artist. She also had some very stupid ideas. As well, her mental illness made it impossible to talk to her, everything revolved about her in her mind, commonsense could not get in. She successfully pulled stupid people into her sphere who acted as proxies on her internecine battle with me, and they did damage. My father who passed his Aspergers Syndrome onto me was a black and white thinker who thrashed me until I could not scream, he never had a conversation with me. Today, he would be charged for child abuse, however, he died when I was seventeen saving him from my revenge. My mother attacked me over forty years and depleted my wellbeing, my revenge was to ignore her for twenty years till her death. Ghosts in my system.
My sense of trust has been diminished echoing the general worldwide lack of trust created by false media with the same result, who is it good for? Some might suggest my body’s response is Cancer. Some days, it is hard for me to pick up a brush. Much of the surgery I go through is for biopsies meaning I have further surgery down the road, it is endless for me. I am not bitter, just very tired. Stupid people have ruined my art career by destroying the organizations I needed. Often I felt marginalized on the margins. Unfortunately, jealousy destroys many groups particularly in the Arts because everyone is an artist today, but they are not. The same bad attitude is reflected in the wider world. People feel entitled in ways that are damaging to their fellows because unscrupulous politicians have allowed that to simmer for nefarious reasons. Critical thinking is not understood. Stupidity has grown and now has its chance to destroy everything. Trump has destroyed much, and his religion-based hatred is found in Australia, particularly where I live. The regions of Australia are vast, like whole European countries, and one can be lost in them. My Art disappeared into one of them. Political dysfunction operates at a level in the regions misunderstood by the large urban areas; entitled voters with a lack of critical thinking can destroy good intentions. Chaos around the world is the result. How do we survive ourselves?
For decades of my life I kept working determinedly for an impossible dream, flights of fancy which sometimes succeeded, often not so well. I might point out that people on my part of the autism spectrum suffer the most internally and have high levels of cognitive empathy (understanding and knowing how others feel in a given situation). But, I do not feel what others feel in a given situation (affective empathy) meant I was doomed, especially around the stupid. I feel strongly about many things, but I cannot stand immature adults who blubber and use emotion to manipulate. Mind games are manipulation, I reject neurotics. Some suggest, I am Vulcan. However, that is the way I have been made, a mixture of crazy genes, but also a murderous environment and a spirit that just keeps on regardless. If the world was to burn tomorrow and I survived, I would gather the things I needed to carry on and make Art. Autistic Me, a rescued pet or several, a garden, a companion would be nice and maybe for once I could be really me. Autistic people know Magic because they have to keep perfect control of their powers in public; no public—no hiding.
This year I am taking it reasonably slow, well as slow as I can manage. I walked 101 kms for March-On, a charity to raise awareness of Veteran Suicide which I did over three days in early March. This taught me things I should already know: I often do more than I receive and I have a need for sustainable pacing as I ignore my body. I am busy pruning my garden back from the nuisance weed vines my careless right-hand neighbour has allowed to flourish, while I try to escape the sound of my left-hand bigoted and bullying neighbours who created a furore by attacking me physically over their belief I had pissed on their doorway. Really crazy. You are lucky to have good neighbours, I have rarely had them. The problem was sorted with police and other intervention, but it leaves one suspicious and worrying about a future attack. Reflected in our world, who will trust the United States anymore? They have been really terrible neighbours and no different from China, Iran, and Russia. The world feels so unsafe because it grows ever more unpredictable, but we accept the new normal eventually. It is all very well to only work on things one has in their control when prices of everything is rising due to a stupid war declared by a stupid president. It turns one away from anyone who may have religious or conservative views, it turns me off most things. The news broadcasts have something more horrible to say every day because this war is so global; it is affecting us all. Nevertheless, critical thinking can be restored. We can rebuild our society’s cognitive immune system if we prioritise education, platform reform, humility, and media literacy. All important things that have been diminished slowly, wake up people!
Rules of military engagement through the UN have not been submitted because the orange fool has a distain for diplomacy and is now complaining that NATO, Europe, Japan, Korea, and Australia are not going to support him. What a bully. Of course, the Western Alliance will be forced into fixing the mess in the Hormuz Strait eventually and maybe the Red Sea too. I have had bullies in my time and there is only one course of action I could follow and that is to abandon them to their created hells, I never had the support to confront them. Always with bullies, the punishment they deal out never fits the crime supposedly committed. Like my parents their abuse of me was unreasonable, you do not beat a child into submission. Especially an autistic child with developmental challenges. Similarly, you do not bomb countries back to the Stone age because they are recalcitrant, diplomacy is required. One’s life is influenced by social forces you did not choose—for example, economic trends, political decisions, cultural norms, or patterns of inequality. This forms the Sociological Imagination which is an approach to understanding the world that allows a person to see the intersection between personal troubles and public issues, the relationship between an individual’s biography and broader historical and social structures. Bullying happens at all levels in and out of a society. The people who were purloined into proxies by my mentally-ill mother to attack me are no better than the actions of a bully state or institutions in destroying the peace of residents of The Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon or Iran, and many other places. No society is free from prejudice and deserves better intervention than physical destruction. My physicality has been destroyed by factors out of my control, sometimes by people who were jealous of my little successes, sometimes by environmental factors of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; I am not naturally lucky. However, with diplomacy let us suppose abandoning completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation that is, and reversing present confrontational thinking to see that the past always flows back from the present. That now is the creative point of life, consider the present attitudes to the malignant violence of colonialism. It is like the idea of forgiving somebody, it changes the meaning of the past by doing that. Just as in the meaning of a sentence, one waits till later to find out what the sentence means. The present is always changing the past—brave new world indeed.
So, this year has set a bouncy and energetic trot for me through dark places, this new age of monsters. Last year was marked with discomfort and pain with movement. In 2026, hopefully bringing a year that favours stability and careful management rather than major expansion. Trump will learn that eventually, he went out and has made enemies where they should not be, and friends of his enemies will be strengthened. Maybe, one’s destiny may be linked to those one has around them, if they are good and strong then life grows, if not, or nothing, then life is less than it could be, pick your friends wisely. It would suit me to have balanced routines and emotional regulation, with most areas of life to remain steady, though extra attention to health to rebuild my vim and vigour and sustainable routine is sensible. Time to root myself in the day-to-day realities of life I can control. Time to make a Legal Will and plan a cremation if metastatic cancer should return; it is a possibility. I am reminded of my condition with every Pet Scan and Oncology review that patients with my condition usually die, always stated so clearly. I get up and walk regardless. The laws of Nature suggest nothing is wasted, one’s body is returned to the stuff of the Cosmos. Humanity is a work in progress, dysfunction is a part of evolution, now is a time of monsters, let us hope we survive ourselves.