Looking Forward

This is the view from the airport after dropping off Sam on his way to a fortnight's school excursion in Vietnam. Sounds a fantastic thing to do. Most of the best moments of my life were travelling, and there hasn't been enough of it the past ten years. Before the kids were born, before life took a giant detour forever, I decided to work for a year to save enough money to keep moving and I'm still working all this time later. He alternated between feeling sad sick and lonely and almost loopily happy, optimistic, the stream of good times in the air and the fabric of things.

The city had evolved away from him. Now was not the time for talking. The people he had cared about, the times he had cared about, were long gone. Each day a fresh layer of crystalline ice was coated across the city's social circles; and the bars transformed, and the ones that had died, everyone was too young to remember them. But he had been sent, or left, to watch.

The artistry sometimes failed. Good stories were overlooked. Fear tightened in the corridors. Time scaped out. His skin crawled. There was no way out. But the sun shone on the bells of yellow flowers at the back door, and the light played up across the walls. And he was not in crisis. For that, small mercies.

Down The Track

This is one end of Oxford Street late at night after a storm. I used to live around here and always be stumbling home late. Now there are herds of parading queens dashing up and down late at night. Tough competition. Toned. Perfectly dressed. They were only crazy souls that he knew, out. You know what this is, Peter'd say, rubbing his empty fingers in front of my face, the smallest joint in the world, rolled just for you. And he'd laugh. Nothing was for free, not even now. The success story from London came by, and couldn't believe we were still here in these same old bars, drunk, of course. Years later some of them would show up in meetings looking so stunned. Everything they had ever done was a water course to a different consciousness. And the success story made him feel even smaller and more disconsolate than he had been already, despite a catalogue of minor successes and curious adventures.

It was then that the aching tide of everything he had done, and everything he had thrown away, came home. He was always meant to be the consciouness, the observer, in the stained yellow froth on the stream of things. Corrosive because it never stayed still. The village had been lost. Blair had an English accent now; owned a number of properties around London, was in real estate; had really done very well. SS strained to remember the bars they had drunk in so long ago; the characters that had been around then. He remembered when Blair had been just another boy hanging around the cross, getting drunk as best he could. He'd gone off to England and come back parading an English boyfriend, blonde, cute. Blair talked of his job and his successes and his love for Tony, who really was very good looking. He had stayed at their beautiful house once, in London once, years after that but still a long long time ago. They were both doing very well in the real estate game, wore suits as they went off to work.

But the boyfriend had died and this time back in Australia Blair was on his own. He'd liked Tony, it was all so free, off to the bath house? They always seemed to be having group sex with the most handsome of men, there in that highly renovated refuge. All the sheets were clean, and new. Things like that impressed him as the height of domestic order. You're not coming? No. Eternally shy. One way to escape the plague. Forever Young goes one of the best selling video clip at the moment, a curious rehash of the past. The Rolling Stones have just been through Sydney and Melbourne for one-night stadium shows. I remember going to see them in about 1971. They were a tiny dot in the distance. But it was part of history none the less. Work is eternal. There are many different projects could keep me busy. Random acts of kindness are increasingly isolated.

IRAQ WATCH:

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5a258fae-cc1c-11da-a7bf-0000779e2340.html

Bush battles to save Rumsfeld
By Demetri Sevastopuloin Washington
Published: April 15 2006 03:00 Last updated: April 15 2006 03:00
President George W. Bush yesterday issued a vigorous defence of Donald Rumsfeld, his embattled defence secretary.
The president's statement was in an effort to help overcome a growing insurgency among the ranks of retired generals who have faulted Mr Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq.
"Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period," Mr Bush said. "He has my full support."
Mr Bush was responding to a growing chorus of criticism from retired generals, including field commanders who have served during the war in Iraq, calling for Mr Rumsfeld to step down.
In the past month, six retired generals have taken the rare step of publicly criticising the defence secretary over the Iraq war, which has claimed the lives of 2,364 American troops...

It's A Long Way

It's a long way down the track, here the harbour bridge in the distance from Taronga Park zoo. Snow leopard cubs were making their first outing to the public, the most beautiful of all the cats. I used to go there more regularly when the kids were younger and I was more likely to do animal stories. The trained birds. The snakes. The seals. The pandas. Something rare was always being born, transported or brought back from extinction.

Now: my 15-year-old son is off in Vietnam on a school excursion for 14 days. How exciting. Wish I was going. Landing in Ho Chi Minh City; travelling to Hanoi. Today is day two: "Mekong Delta exploration". How fantastic. They are also spending several days at a home-stay in a regional city, sleeping out on a boat on Halong Bay and departing from Hanoi. My daughter turned 14 yesterday and is up in Moree for a couple of weeks. The house is very quiet without them.

The Iraq war continues in the distance. Now they're talking about bombing Iran. It just seems so impossible. John Howard made his appearance before the Cole inquiry into the Australian Wheat Board kickback scandal. Nothing will stick. Master of the art. He was crept up inside trying to make things homey, catching up. The middle distance was very quiet.


IRAQ WATCH:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/14337216.htm


A look at U.S. military deaths in Iraq
Associated Press
As of Thursday, April 13, 2006, at least 2,368 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 1,853 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
The AP count is four higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT.
The British military has reported 103 deaths; Italy, 27; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Slovakia, Denmark three; El Salvador, Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; and Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, one death each.
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The latest deaths reported by the military:
__ A soldier was killed Thursday when his vehicle was struck by a roadside explosive southwest of Baghdad.
_ A Marine was killed Wednesday near Baghdad.
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The latest identifications reported by the military:
_ Marine Lance Cpl. Eric A. Palmisano, 27, Florence, Wis.; killed April 2 when a truck rolled over in a flash flood in Anbar province; assigned to 1st Transportation Support Battalion, 1st Marine Logistics Group, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
_ Army Spc. Shawn R. Creighton, 21, Windsor, N.C.; killed Saturday when his vehicle hit a roadside explosive in Rawah; assigned to the 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Wainwright, Alaska.
_ Army Spc. Kenneth D. Hess, 26, Asheville, N.C.; killed Tuesday during a suicide bomber attack in Rawah; assigned to the 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Wainwright, Alaska.
_ Army Cpl. Joseph A. Blanco, 25, Bloomington, Calif.; Army Pfc. James F. Costello III, 27, St. Louis; Army Pfc. George R. Roehl Jr., 21, Manchester, N.H.; killed Tuesday by a roadside explosive and small arms fire in Taji; assigned to the 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas:

Looking Forward Looking Back

Looking forward, looking back, it's a long way down the track, went the song, heard everywhere when Slim Dusty died back in 2003. In all the crystaline beauty of the city, the wealth that coated its inner arms, the endless streams of expensive women in their dark silver Audis, the Lexus with a dent, goodness me, even the P-platers driving expensive cars; the refined beauty of the latest BMWs and Mercedes; a $350,000 car swept past; they waited. There was always a wait. He kept crawling and crawling and couldn't wait to escape. The time held itself so very still. The populations gathered in the crystalline spaces.

These were the blues and the greens of the harbour, the endless stream of morning joggers on the foreshores; dogs everywhere in the afternoon after work; the narrow clefts that were public land fully exploited by the locals with health on their mind. The colours just didn't make sense, just didn't synch. The wealth was always there; in the boats, in the size of the houses, in the beauty of the vehicles. Lush, where things hadn't gone wrong in the same way that he knew them. Here, in the midst of everything.

If one could only look forward. If the depth of talent could be harnessed. If things were going the way they should go. He was sardonic, overly so, and cringed in regret as the hours passed. Frank Sartor, former Lord Mayor of Sydney and minister in the Iemma government, got married today in an old stone church in Darling Point. It was a long way down the track, here for the country boy. The endless stream of astonishingly expensive cars flowed on the roads outside. He was 54, she was 35. They looked very happy together. For such a ruthless power player, it was an intimate wedding; no senior politicians at all, no celebrities. "Very proud, very very happy," he said. There hadn't been a single cloud in the sky for days. The air was cold, clear. The sandstone caught the chill of the late autumn. Done and dusted, he said, as they got back into the car. They did, indeed, look very happy together.

In the Wind

These weren't times for being out. Sad, sick and lonely, when the phone didn't ring anymore. There was a party of university students two doors down, they've been up all night, somebody's birthday, and the sun is now bouncing on the balcony as they continue to laugh. Once it had been thus for everything he had been involved in, the party that trailed across the globe. I last saw you in Penang, he said to a drag queen in a Berlin bar, and she pawed all over him like a long lost friend. These things were always happening to him. He was always out.

There's God in the wind, he heard a voice say, he wasn't quite dotty yet. Star Treck videos and warm blankets. The chill of autumn had already come. He didn't know how things fell so quickly, how the veneer rubbed off and his own craven stupidities blighted the dazzling world. So many things burrowed down into the quiet.

There was no alternative but a brave face.