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Home as a
tourist destination
I was born this
This way
Everything else
I make up
As I go
(July 1995 Hackham, South Australia)
I do not really have a home. I have a tourist destination. I am a tourist at home. Places I refer to as home are not homes but stops on the way home. And like the people who visit the cities and towns I live in I too am just visiting where I am. Of course I am not really sure what home is. Even more removed from the equation is where home is. If home is where the heart is then I would be remiss to say my home is my heart because that would make me slutty. I would have to say that my heart was a tourist destination and at my age I don’t think that is going to happen. I purchase fridge magnets from where I live and my fridge side are covered with magnets from so many countries so many homes. My home is represented by fridge magnets. When I was going through my divorcee back in 1984 which left me with two children to raise my ex-witch of a thingy submitted a report to the Adelaide Family Court about me from her psychiatrist, a person who never interviewed or met me: “… I noticed in his writing that he talks about disintegration within his personality; and there is evidence of thought disorder such as loose associations and flights of ideas, which together with his general suspicious demeanor suggests psychotic thinking”. At the time I was writing children stories and continuing with poetry that I had been writing for decades and as a side note completing my PhD. Anyone who has done a PhD knows there is little sanity involved during or at the end of the thing which in my case took seven nasty years to do. The fact that my home is a tourist destination somehow syncs with my writing and back in 1984 with my ex-witch-thingy and her psychiatrist. The reason I have lived in your home or you may have lived in mine is because we are all tourists at the same destination. We were in Family Court more than sixty times between 1984 and 1998 – my lawyer said a record. Adelaide Family Court was a tourist destination and I had never planned to set up camp there – it was just a stop along the way.
The last time my home was the only place
and not a place in between places was in 1964 or 1963. I was about 16 when I
left my safe little place in the world, Clifton Park – Saratoga County in upstate
New York. I was having some problems at Shenendehowa Central School ; I think boredom was a deciding
factor. I told some people at a recent
party that I still had my yearbooks from when I was in kindergarten and first
they did not believe me then they all were just about on the floor from
laughing so hard. Damn I thought everyone carried around their yearbooks. I
only have them from 1954 (above) to 1964 when I left to find my fame and
fortune. In the picture above I am in
the top row third from left when my name was Terrell Adsit. I have gone into
how my name became Neuage in past blogs; something about getting an Australian
pregnant and she not liking my name and me not hers and Randy Dandurand said
‘you two think you are such new age people…’ – Really! We had met at an
astrological conference in Sydney, had a passing fling between Baltimore
Maryland and California for a week and ending up in Hawaii the names got
changed then we got divorced and I was a single parent in Australia for twenty
years. But that is not the point of what I want to say this time.
So I got out of Clifton Park: 
and yes that is my mother reading probably not
her email and me siting in the trailer being silly like I was eating raw corn
back in the late 1950s. This next photo
is of when I first tried to leave Clifton Park, New York. I was about six and I
was headed out of town but got as far as the front of the house before getting
stuck in a snow drift. The fact being that I was just a tourist in Clifton Park
but at the time no one would believe me.
None of this is here now, they put in freeways, and a shopping centre and a Home Depot megastore where I attempted to grow up.
On with what I want to say, home as a
tourist destination probably means that of going somewhere and living as a
visitor, most likely because it is a passing through moment. I went in 1963 to
Florida, to New Orleans, New York City, did the San Francisco stop at the end
of the 1960s and lived in a commune across the bay, on to Oregon, to Hawaii –
joining a religious cult for a decade – and living during that time in Kansas,
Wyoming, New York, Baltimore, New Orleans and a few other places too. Then I
ended up in Australia as a single parent with two boys and we moved ten times
in ten years and settled down to live in two places for almost three years
each. Then I got married successfully again, another Australian, and we tromped
off to northern New York and lived in
three places in five years; two of them beautiful Victorians, which we still
own in Round Lake NY. We then moved to New York City for five years and lived
in only two places there, one of which we still own and even managed to live in
South Australia sometimes and yes we own a house there too but we do not live
anywhere that is our home still. When we moved to China we thought we were
settled but now we have moved twice in two years; in the same building but in
different apartments.
Maybe it is because I have Aquarius on my fourth house cusp with the ruler, Uranus conjunct Mars in Gemini in the 8th house – and of course I am married to a Gemini. And Mars rules my 7th house, the house of marriage, so if I believed in astrology that would explain why I have not felt settled in a home since 1963 – not that I felt settled there either because I was adopted and brought to that location kicking and screaming when I was three years old. So it is fortunate that I do not believe in astrology or I would be quite confused.
I like living here in
Campus Village in Northern China. It feels like home but most homes I have had
have been tourists destinations (I am thinking of Maui, Honolulu, San
Francisco, New York City, LA, New Orleans – my favorite, Victor Harbor South
Australia – Victor really is a tourist destination because it is the end of the
road – to go further one drives into the sea, unlike most towns and cities that
one can drive through on the way to someplace else, Victor Harbor – where I raised
my two sons for many years in several homes, is the end of the road. We, my
good wife – the one I have now, and I have lived in Paris, Utrecht, The
Netherlands, her place of birth, Ferrara Italy, Goa,
India, San Pedro La Laguna on the Western shore of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala
with my friend Dell, and Eugene Oregon and just so many places. I do not mean
overnight places but places I, we, called home, though perhaps for only a week in some places.
Mexico City we got settled in as well as in some places in Ecuador, though
after only four days in Quito I had to get out of town because I had such a bad
case of altitude sickness I just was not going to last in our home there so we
got down to the shore and life was good. I thought we were settled in Istanbul but
suddenly it was time to leave.
New York City was a
fair effort of five years. That is a good example of home that others tromp
through all the time. We did too. Every day I felt like I was a tourist except
for paying mortgage and electricity bills and all those other home equations
but still I was just passing through.
We are all just
passing through until we get to where we are now. Home is where we are now. I am
a tourist in my own home. I take the guided tour quite often. There are
paintings my brother did back in the 1960s. He died of AIDS and I am so excited
because his best mates are writing a book about him. There are belongings of my
sons. My son, I spent such a life time
raising him, he was signed by the LA Dodgers, then committed suicide soon after
turning 20; http://neuage.org/leigh.html.
My fantastic still alive son, who even came to visit me here in Northern China
is doing so well after all our moving around. He lives in Melbourne, Australia,
one of the world’s greatest tourist destinations. I tour my life – it is on the
walls, all those places I have lived in; posters, gadgets, my 600 page book “Leaving
Australia” that I made two copies of – one for my son in Australia and the
other I read when I want to be a tourist in my own life.
And that is all that
was on my mind at this time.
contact Myanmar 2014
Blog updated February 15, 2014 K - 12 technology (updated February 04, 2014). Travel Site (2014) updated February 15, 2014. Videos/Blogs on Youtube, Twitter, Wordpress, Photo albums. Updated 15 Second Street, Round Lake, New York and photos from parent's 1943 wedding as well as Leigh's page. Farmville page updated Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:58 PM. neuage.org updated February 11, 2014 10:31 PM neuage.us updated February 05, 2014 7:21 PM. Resume updated February 05, 2014
Technology Coordinator and Computer Teacher at Dalian American International School, 2 Dianchi Road, Golden Pebble Beach, Dealian Development Area 116650 P.R. China
Blog updated / Integrating Technology Blog February 10, 2014. also: terrell.neuage.us and/or neuage.me
Today working on picture poem links starting around "better" (). Picture poems are the digital format of work I did as a street artist in New Orleans in the 1970s, as well as New York City, Honolulu, San Francisco and Adelaide South Australia. Follow @neuage
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