A Beautiful Life

By Peter D'Angelo

A Beautiful Life recollects my life journey as it unfolded from the glorious days of a young boy enchanted by his Grandfathers stories to the present, where the young boy is now a Grandfather himself. Along the way there have been many wrong turns and a lot of personal pain but somehow, through the healing power of writing and those around me at the time who cared, the passion for life survived.

The book includes many poems written at the time of the experiences, which provide insight into my wellbeing and how I dealt with the situation. These poems I now view as Primary sources and the Spiritual Signposts which directed me forward along the way.

Of course, my work as a Teacher of students not born in Australia, features heavily throughout the book. As I provided them with the tools of a new language, they rewarded me with their stories of survival and hope for the future. This interactional process of teaching and learning enriched the lives of everyone involved.

And finally you the reader.

I am certain that you will see yourself somewhere amongst the pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Jul 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452524450

Peter D'Angelo

Peter D’Angelo migrated to Australia from Italy at the age of five. His childhood and adolescent years were difficult as he searched for his identity. Peter went on to become a celebrated teacher and author, drawing inspiration for his work from his own journey and the experiences of the students in his care.

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Copyright © 2014 Peter D’Angelo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-2446-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-2445-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014911882

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/18/2014

Contents

Dedication

For You,The Reader.

The Journey Begins.

Early Childhood

Leaving

Sea Passage To Australia.

Port Melbourne.

19 James Street Huntingdale.

Huntingdale Primary School.

The Summer Holidays Before Our First Year At Clayton West Primary School.

Clayton West Primary School

Yacht

Huntingdale High School

New Adventures

Into The Real World.

The Summer Of Seventy One

Skins Peeling

Social Upheaval In Australia

Menu

College Life

Demo Recording Of Songs.

Jimi

Lizard King

Moving On

The Melbourne Underground Night Club.

Inside Out

Teaching And Beyond.

Changes

Phoenix Rising

Postcard From Noble Park

Deluge

Portsea Muse

Deconstructing Images.

Botton Line

Master Class

"Death.

"Anger

"Love.

Eternity

Return

Pescara Beach – Homecoming

Pescara Cemetary

Adrift

Number 6 Colli Inamoratto, Pescara

Eulogy

Blood Line

A Beautiful Life

Children

War

Peace

Natural Justice

The Balkans

Reconciliation Of Apposing Forces.

Death

Rites Of Passage

Distant Shores, Memories And The Journey’s Valediction.

Mixed Marriage

Torn Apart

Kings Of The Hill

Lost For Words

The Changing Years

The Power Of Family

Birth Of Our First Child, Anthony

Anthony’s Arrival

Shosh

The Birth Of Rosalyn

Angel.

Forming Our First Gang"

First Love - Huntingdale High School 1970

Separation

As It Did In 1991

A Selection Of Poems I Wrote For The Book

Genocide

Galipolli

Revolution

Eternity

So Where Are We All Going?

The Fading Jewel

"We shall not cease from exploration

And at the end of our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time"

T.S Eliot

DEDICATION

For my grandfather who inspired me,

For my parents who gave me a future,

For my children and grandchildren who will carry on the legacy,

And Larry Shwartz,

Who suggested I set sail once more.

FOR YOU,THE READER.

Memory intoxicates.

The past, suddenly present, becomes as always, the first illumination of the future.

The initiation of a child into the world is sacred.

Special people along the way link the innocence of emergence with the natural cycles of the universe and fledgling wings take their first flight towards glory.

And as the passion of discovery soars towards fulfillment, the world is safe once more.

THE JOURNEY BEGINS.

I was born on the eighteenth of March nineteen fifty three in Campo Basso which is in the region of Abruzzi/Molise, Central Italy.

Campo Basso was then a predominately rural town surrounded by a patchwork of subsistence farms, each steeped in generations of history.

Life for the people of the area was extremely harsh.

The ravages of World War two had left physical emotional and mental scars on the collective psyche and it seemed that any attempt to get life back into some workable form was always met with trial and tribulation.

Food was always very scarce but scarcer still, were the dreams and hopes of the people.

It was as if their very essence, like the infrastructure of the area, had dried up and died.

There didn’t seem to be on any level a united purpose to get things moving towards some bearable future.

The Catholic Church, by far the wealthiest institute in the town, promised an eternal after life as compensation for the present misery arguing that its role was to nourish the spirit and not the flesh, thus absolving it from any financial public support.

The socialists on the one hand, promised collective prosperity here and now but denounced the existence of a God or Heaven insisting that these institutions were merely a creation of the ruling class designed to keep the masses in control.

Caught between this crossfire of conflicting dogma, the farmers as always eked out their daily existence and the pressures of survival were enormous.

Italy was and still is a regional country, with each province having its own laws, traditions, dialects and particular way of life.

On a federal level, unemployment benefits, public hospital spending, infrastructure developments and other government initiatives never seemed to filter down to the wastelands of the south and because of this, the family unit and the farm were the only means of survival.

Within this context roles were clearly defined, fathers being the absolute authority to be obeyed without question.

Farming methods were as they had been for generations, daily work carried out with primitive tools which produced little or no result.

But no one ever doubted let alone question, the primitive routines and ways of doing things.

Everything was a ritual passed on from father to son, mother to daughter and if crops failed or if love never surfaced in an arranged marriage, then evil spirits or the mal ochio were to blame.

It was all of this that my father finally found the strength to reject after years of constant conflict with his own father.

Going against the rule of authority, he decided to migrate to Australia leaving behind my mother whowasthreemonthspregnantwithme

and my nine year old twin sisters Ida and Maria.

His plans were to establish himself in Melbourne Victoria by taking on any work available.

From this he would save as much as he could, buy some land and eventually build a house where we would join him to begin our new lives.

This decision to leave Italy and the ones he loved must have been an extremely painful one to make.

So many conflicting thoughts, so much confusion and feelings of guilt must have passed through his mind and soul, the same feelings going through the heads and hearts of millions of Europeans who suddenly found themselves lost in the shattered remains of their countries.

Still, traumatic as it must have been, many packed the remains of their lives into suitcase as my father did, almost a lifetime ago.

EARLY CHILDHOOD

My earliest memories of Campo Basso are its golden fields, the misty blue green mountains all around me, the long green rustling grass, a river flowing through a forest of tall trees and my grandfather who was the most important presence in my life during those early years.

I remember him taking me for walks through the beautiful countryside.

There was always something he would point out to me. A bird I’d never seen. A nest with bright blue eggs, plants with rainbow colored leaves and berries I could eat.

Nonno (the Italian word for grandfather) initiated me into the ways of nature and how all of it’s elements worked together.

Sitting on the banks of a stream, he would tell me how the seasons were in harmony with the people and the animals on the farms.

How the sky, the clouds and the rain were like a huge wheel always turning so that life could go on forever.

He was my inspiration and through him, I came into being, understanding the mysteries of the world as it opened up and shared its secrets with me.

In many ways my Grandfather was a poet.

Although I now know he couldn’t read or write, he was a true navigator of the soul using spoken language to create the images of childhood that still glimmer in my memories today.

I clearly remember him once saying to me,

"Pietro, if something is taken from this world against its will, then in some way we all die a little bit.

This is the sort of spirituality I would later come across in literature yet for Nonno, it was an innate source that he shared with me so freely and magnificently.

But my grandfather was not seen by others the way that I saw him as a child.

My father, after years of pleading with him to be allowed to leave the farm and go to work in the Industrial North of Italy, finally snapped and left Campo Basso in a fury before I was born.

After that, my mother and sisters whom Nonno forced to work in the fields from sunrise to sunset