My second awakening, in 1982 when I was 42, was brought about by two remarkable men. It followed my time running poetry workshops in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne.
John
(not the one who was my first love)
I’ve written about those workshops in an earlier memoir, Breaking Into Pentridge Prison, and about falling in love, very much mutually, with a prisoner called John. Readers of that account and then this might find them confusing. That first book was written from the perspective of a social history, addressing very different issues from this one, so I left out details which do belong in this memoir but would have been greatly out of place in the earlier one.
Also, John and I were ourselves highly confused!
First of all, such a thing was utterly unexpected by either of us. Secondly, to act on it would have breached all sorts of rules and taboos (I was married, I was a lot older, I was his teacher, it was a prison ...) and even to acknowledge our feelings (though we eventually did) had to be secretive, in that situation where no conversation or letter was private.
Then, we had all the usual self-doubts: How could someone love ME like that? Am I imagining it? And so on and so forth. (Exacerbated, of course, by the necessity not to be open about it.) Re-reading his poems now, I realise he woke up to what was happening quite some time before I did, and was declaring it in poetry though not identifying me. A fellow-inmate and friend of his, who later (freed) became a lifelong friend of mine, said years later when I finally told him, 'I knew from his poems there was someone, but I didn't know who it was.'
Underneath or alongside our mutual confusion, the most incredible psychic rapport was happening. I described it to myself as having a line into each other’s heads. Somehow we just knew each other, on the level of our innermost thoughts and reactions, and knew that we both knew we did. Now, I think of it less in terms of the mind than the soul: a soul connection, deeper and more intimate than any other I’ve ever experienced. Back then, it was both revelation and shock.
The first such awareness was when he turned up for one workshop a little earlier than the others – not unusual, as he was in a different division of the prison – and on this occasion we were confronted with startling disorder in the room we used: chairs upended all over the place, and in one corner an untidy heap of thick black curly hair on the floor – apparently from a rather drastic haircut.
‘They’ve been scalping someone in here!’ I exclaimed.
We stood side by side a moment in silence, staring at the mess. Suddenly I felt something I still don’t know how to describe (nothing to do with what we were seeing): a strong, instantaneous, almost electrical connection between us, a ‘This it it!’
Although it was unlike any experience or description I knew of falling in love – in fact was passionless, a deep quiet rather than fireworks – I must have recognised at once what it was, because my immediate reaction was:
‘Oh no! THIS wasn’t supposed to happen.’
It wasn't uttered / thought in dramatic tones so much as fatalistic ones. To this day I don’t know if I actually spoke it aloud, very low, or only thought (and heard) it, clear and distinct, inside my own head.
He stood very still a moment beside me. I stood very still beside him. Both of us were frozen in the moment: standing next to each other a hand’s width apart, not touching, not looking at each other but straight ahead at the room. Yet I was acutely aware of him, and felt, intensely, that he was of me too, as if physically connected. (This too in a quiet, fatalistic way; albeit also startling, disconcerting ... all kept inward.) In a strange way, our energies matched exactly. Then, as one, we moved forward without another word or any signal, and began separately straightening the chairs. The others arrived, and the moment passed.
How can I convey it? In that brief instant I was at once shocked, appalled, and filled with a sense of inevitability. Whether or not I spoke aloud, I felt his awareness leap to join mine in exactly the same experience. Yes, it was somewhat as if an electric shock had passed between us – yet in a very still and silent way. At the same time, it WAS a very brief instant, and one which was never outwardly acknowledged between us, then or later.
Nevertheless, from that moment we had ongoing insight into each other’s thoughts and reactions. We just knew each other! This despite the fact that we were outwardly, and even inwardly, very different people: differentiated by circumstances, ages, genders, opinions, beliefs, experiences … in almost every way, it seemed. Yet (oddly, on the face of it) not by our core values. There was huge mental rapport, quite public, in which we delighted; and there was this astounding, private, inner connection too, which felt – simultaneously – too delicate to even breathe on, and also perfectly natural and normal.
None of that was discussed as such. It was revealed over time, via poems and conversations (including letters). Of course, much was NOT revealed: in a prison situation many topics are off-limits: a matter of safety for all concerned.
On one hand was uncertainty: how can any of this be true or real? On the other, a mutual conviction – sometimes even addressed in words, albeit obliquely – that we absolutely KNEW, as well as loved, each other.
I won’t tell you our story in detail all over again. Perhaps you will read, or have read, the previous book. It took me over 40 years to be able to write that one, because it culminated in tragedy. What I am telling you here (apart from minimal necessary background) is what I didn’t address in the earlier book: mainly, the aftermath of that tragedy, for me.
The situation was of course highly stressful. There came a time when I handed the running of the workshops over to someone else, and cut all contact with the prisoners, for the sake of my family and my sanity. Maintaining my willpower for the lack of contact was very hard, with them all (they all felt like friends by then) and particularly with John. And I still felt the connection in thought, felt that I knew something of how he was thinking and feeling, and that I could tell when his thoughts were particularly reaching out to me (especially in the hours after the prisoners were locked in their cells for the night).
[Of course there is no evidence that I was not deluding myself. I am not writing to try and convince anyone; that is beyond possibility. I am simply reporting.]
In those times when I felt his mind and emotions reaching out to me, I felt we could have communicated on that level – but I resisted, believing it was best for all concerned to break the connection completely.
Poster
The fox on my wall
in a field of snow
flakes like flowers
tracks out
away from the little city
closed for the night
on wet black prints under stars
arrives fully composed
eyes and ears and planted feet
stopped at my face
waiting
for love
that he wants me to say
spanning a distance of inches
colder and further
than gaps between planets
the longest
of locked moments
the quietest
head-on collision.
© Rosemary Nissen 1982
from Universe Cat, Pariah Press (Melb.) 1985
and in Secret Leopard, Paris, Alyscamps Press, 2005.
First published Fringe network’s anthology Network
Also in Walking the Dogs (Pariah Press anthology)
24/6/82 – 2/7/82
(We had sometimes likened each other to the fox and the rose from The Little Prince. Also I did at the time have on my wall the poster described.)
Though I am as certain as I can be that he did reach out in thought, as my thoughts yearned for him too, in the world of action it had reached a point where he had pushed me away, warned me off – for both our sakes. Because of the circumstances, things simply could not continue. It must have been obvious to him that nothing less would have had me withdraw.
Not that we could break the connection entirely. The prison workshops gave birth to a collection of poems, compiled, edited and prepared by the prisoners with minimal input from visiting tutors, and published under the Abalone Press label that my husband, Bill and I had recently created. This book was duly launched within the prison (I did not attend) and John sent me a copy with a loving and grateful inscription. I sent back a verbal message about how much that meant to me, which I was glad to learn later he did receive.
It has been suggested since, though only by people who never met him, that he was probably insincere. He signed the book he sent me, 'All my love.' I put that together with everything else I knew about the man I met (who had by then been in prison a long time and gone through all manner of changes and growth). We were over, ties had been cut; there was nothing for him to hope for, nothing for him to gain, from writing such a message. And it was a private message, not flaunted. The love was true.
Ridge
In my memoir about the prison workshops, I mentioned travelling to Geelong, where one prisoner poet had been transferred, to get his input for the anthology. I noted that on the way home, going for a coffee near the station during the long wait in the middle of the day for a train back to Melbourne, I bumped into an old neighbour doing the same thing – a man I had not seen since our respective children were quite small, as both families had moved away from the neighbourhood where we met. The only customers in the cafe, we sat together and had a big catch-up. I’ll call him Ridge, a name he did use (in a specific context, of which more in a minute).
It turned out that his marriage had broken up; also his business had folded due to a partner who defrauded customers, unknown to Ridge, and skipped the country just in time, leaving Ridge holding the baby. He was prosecuted; all but one of fifteen charges were thrown out of court. For that one, he was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment in a low-security facility in the country. He had served this sentence and was free again, determined to raise enough money to get his one conviction overturned as wrongful, but currently unemployed and looking for work (which was what he was doing in Geelong, chasing a potential job opportunity).
He also confided in me the astonishing news that, since I knew him last, he had been studying Hermetic magic. Ridge was the name he liked to be known by in that context, his magician name. This aspect came to be how I knew him best.
By then I didn't discount the possibility of magic. I'd read Colin Wilson's books. I'd had intuitive and other experiences which were largely inexplicable by rational means. And I recalled one of my Balinese friends, when I asked if he believed in magic, telling me that his uncle had been the village sorcerer, and saying,
'I have to believe, because I have seen.'
Just because I didn't understand something didn't necessarily mean it wasn't real.
Ridge told me he had been clairvoyant since early childhood, but usually kept that fact concealed, as it tended to freak people out. Since his release from prison, he had become acquainted with another man who was a powerful clairvoyant, and through him a witch who became Ridge's friend. This man (the witch) introduced Ridge to the idea of pursuing his own magical studies. (No, male witches are not called wizards or warlocks – not by themselves and their fellows. They are called witches.) Ridge decided to focus on ceremonial magic rather than the more earthy witchcraft, and acknowledged the Egyptian deity Thoth as his patron. (The Ancient Greek version of Thoth was Hermes. Hermetic magic is regarded as the product of Thoth’s teachings.)
We discovered that Ridge was now living close to me again, just around the corner in fact. The job-hunting was hard for him; he was no longer young. He claimed to be 56: presumably to make himself more marketable; but I happened to know, from having been friendly with his ex-wife when we were neighbours in the past, that he was really 65 at the time we became re-acquainted. I never let on to him that I knew, and also refrained from remarking whenever the hairs at the back of his neck began showing wisps of grey as the dye he was obviously using grew out.
Between the bouts of job-hunting – one had to be shown to be actively seeking work in order to keep receiving the dole – he began popping in to see me for a morning or afternoon cuppa. This was a period when I wasn’t in 9-5 employment but working from home, voluntarily, for the Melbourne Branch of the Poets Union, as well as in various self-generated paid jobs such as teaching meditation, teaching crochet, modelling for local art classes …
Ridge's visits began after my time working in Pentridge had stopped. At that time, neither of us said much to each other about our respective prison experiences, though we were aware of them.
What he did talk about was his magical work.
He showed me the Tarot deck he used, naturally enough the Thoth deck. It was designed by magician and writer Aleister Crowley, with artwork by Lady Frieda Harris. At that time I found the images rather cold and sinister. Later, it became for a time my favourite deck and the one I used for reading professionally. But that was some distance into the future; at the time I had no idea I would ever be personally involved with Tarot.
I was slightly acquainted with it. A few years previously, Bill and I had billeted a young Adelaide poet called Span Hanna for a national Poets Union event held in Melbourne. He was into both Tarot, using the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, and the I Ching, and travelled with both as a matter of course. The whole family warmed to Span, and we were fascinated by his mystical interests. My little boys begged him for a Tarot reading. He asked Bill's and my permission, then gave them a three-card 'past, present and future' reading, interesting and accurate enough to delight us all, but not so detailed as to freak us out or mess with the kids' heads. Very responsible of him, I realised. He was low-key and matter-of-fact about it; no big 'woo-woo' act or dramatic presentation.
I was far more interested in the I Ching, which seemed to me mysterious indeed, and full of strange wisdom.
Eventually I would explore both oracles deeply, but at the time of my conversations with Ridge over coffee, I was still very much ignorant of such things.
I didn't want Ridge to read for me with his slightly scary Tarot cards. I wanted to hear about his clairvoyance and his magicianship. So he would tell me stories and anecdotes about those things, and how they formed part of his life.
For instance, he wanted to be a professional singer, and said he had asked for guides to come and help him with training when he was in sleep state. (He couldn't afford singing lessons in the everyday world.) He sang some snatches of song to show me, and it was true he had a lovely voice and (as far as I could judge) good technique. He could certainly have entertained people successfully, but when I'd known him before there had been no hint of such a talent. As to where it had come from, I was open-minded but reserved judgment.
However, I reached a point of accepting that the things he told me were true for him, even if I couldn't quite fathom them.
He spoke too of some of the principles behind the magic he was practising, e.g. that magicians seek a balance of 'light' and 'dark,' believing that to be the way of Nature, and therefore what works in the world.
For instance, we need daylight and also night-time; our planet, and the living things on it, require heat and also cold; there is a place in life for the huge and also the tiny ...
A feat of (magical) strength
Prison is a disturbing experience, even for one who only visits briefly. I went through some paranoia after I left. The fact that John and I had had to communicate in a 'reading between the lines' way in our letters, rather than openly, didn't help. I began to be suspicious of all communications. When, after I opted out of the workshops, I received a beautiful big card featuring roses and signed in green ink, telling me my friends in Pentridge were thinking of me, I perceived it as a veiled threat. (I am certain now that it was a genuine expression of gratitude. A prisoner who I was in touch with later, for some time after he was freed, told me none of them had blamed me for opting out; on the contrary they were used to tutors eventually freaking out from exposure to that environment, and needing to leave).
I confided in Ridge. He took my word for it that the card was ill-intentioned. He lived in a magical world where curses could be real, where thoughts carried energy. And he had been in prison, where threats and irrationality can both be real.
'Let's burn it,' he said, meaning to destroy any harmful energy it might carry. He held it over my kitchen sink and set it alight with a cigarette lighter. It was very thick card, and refused to burn. The flame simply fizzled out. Rather than try again with the cigarette lighter, Ridge gathered all his energy into himself, then expelled it with a mighty burst. I saw him do this – I was standing right next to him – and can only describe it thus. It wasn't that he performed any action; only a huge effort of will. The card burst into flames and was rapidly consumed.
'I've seen him call down fire,' I would tell people afterwards who were sceptical of his magic. Over the next few years I witnessed various other examples of his ability to use energy, but that was the first, which I found very dramatic.
Visitations
Then I started getting night-time visitors.
I'm not very clairvoyant. It's a long time since the unfettered perception of my childhood! The subsequent shutting down my have damaged my psychic senses, or perhaps they'd have altered anyway. I've no way to tell. I'm just grateful now for whatever I have.
As an adult, I have sometimes 'seen' immaterial things, occasionally have heard them, but I'm much more inclined to sense things intuitively, to get a kind of inner knowing. It can, however, be very strong.
The visitations didn't happen when I was asleep, when they could have been mistaken afterwards for dreams. I've always been a night owl, and in those days when I was a busy wife and mother and often working outside the home too, or from home, late night was often the only time I could work on my poetry. That was not different from earlier days, when I was a student, and just writing it for me. The night has always been my time for writing – not the only time, but the most comfortable and natural.
(One time in recent years, when my Firstborn, who lives in a different city, was visiting, I said to him as I wished him goodnight,
'I'll probably stay up a while and do some writing.'
'Try to keep the surprises to a minimum,' he said, deadpan. I gaped at him.
'Mum!' he said, 'You've been doing that as long as I've known you.'
He has known me for over 50 years.)
These night visitors were very different from the nasty, nightmarish ones I'd had in childhood. I would be immersed in writing, when I'd get a sense of someone watching me. I could feel their energy very distinctly, but it wasn't at all threatening. On the contrary, it always felt friendly.
I felt there was some purpose to these happenings, but I couldn't figure out what it was. One day I said, impulsively, to Ridge,
'Ridge, who visited me last night?'
'Let me just tune in,' he said.
After a little while he began describing someone, whom I soon recognised as my beloved Nana who died when I was four. I didn't have any photos of her, back then (I have acquired one recently) nor had I ever mentioned her to Ridge, let alone described her. I was ecstatic that she had come to see me.
After that, I kept getting night visitors. Each one felt a little different from the others, and so it turned out to be. I would ask Ridge and he'd start describing what he was getting until I understood who it was. They were always people in my life who had died.
One time I just couldn't figure out from Ridge's description the identity of one particular man. Eventually Ridge said,
'He's got a funny walk. I'll show you.'
He got up and strode forward with quick steps, his chest pushed out in front like a pouter pigeon.
'Oh!' I cried out delightedly, 'That's my stepfather, Jack.'
I became curious.
'Why are all these people coming to see me?' I asked one day. 'Is there some message they're trying to give me?"
He pondered for a while, listening to some hidden source. Then he said,
'No ... I'm not getting anything. Maybe just, "Hello".'
'Why at this time?' I asked. He had no answer.
Then came a profound shock which made it very clear why.