Henry in a Whole New Year

Source: NLS computer; animal pictures.

"What I have come down to be, since I first saw you... I was on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary, road I have traversed since! Weak indulgence has ruined me. Indulgence in remembrance, and indulgence in forgetfulness. My natural grief for my child's mother turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease. I have infected everything I touched. I have brought misery on what I dearly love...Thus the lessons of my life have been perverted! I have preyed on my own morbid coward heart, and it has preyed on me. Sordid in my grief, sordid in my love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both, oh see the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!"

Mr Wickfield in David Copperfield
Charles Dickens

For years he had pestered me to visit his property on the north coast. We both whinged about Sydney and the disaster it had become, arseholes crawling over each other with no regard, traffic jams and a callow, shallow, vicious, vacuous nastiness that knew no bounds. No one was considerate. No one cared. The cosy past that we had both known, a floating world from a comfier time when friendships meant something despite our dislocated lives; when indeed we built families of acquaintances to make up for the absence of our own; when railing against the status quo and the conservatives passed for original thought.

And now. He'd sued the last company he had worked for after a complex dispute I couldn't follow; and had been overseas for the last couple of years on the proceeds; and even now harboured dreams of suing them again. It was the ultimate capitalist dream; sue the bastards. He had been living in Luamb Prabang in Laos and after a long absence had emailed me. I spent a month there once, sitting in the opium den. It was the end of the Vietnam War and the currency had collapsed. I was just a poor student at home but rich in Asia, and loved it; the glistening acid drenched walls of the caves, the monks leading the way with candles through the labyrinths. Everything about it I loved.

And now he was back in Australia; the money running low. And everything was silence and disturbed; everybody was watching and it was impossible to get the sequence of things. We met up in Lismore and drove through Nimbin on the way to his acreage. That place he had boasted so often about; as the place to hide from the world and build a different future. Thoreau got it right and we all needed to build a different life. But a different life was not what was going to make us now. The beaches are packed, the crowds are celebrating, the fireworks burst over the bridge and for once; the country is saturated with optimism. We have a new Prime Minister; and it is probably all as much an illusion as the past one; who masqueraded as a conservative and expanded the grip of the tax and the welfare systems until there's almost no room to move anymore.

Sam's doing a crossword, Henrietta is watching medical emergency, Nanna is cooking rissoles for dinner and now; the stories begin all over again.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/us/politics/09dems.html

From a Big Boost for Obama to a Sharp Blow


By JEFF ZELENY
Published: January 9, 2008

NASHUA, N.H. — On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Senator Barack Obama delivered a message to supporters: “Do not take this race for granted. I know we had a nice boost over the last couple of days, but elections are a funny business.”

It was a prescient warning.

Mr. Obama, who arrived here five days ago after a commanding triumph in the Iowa caucuses, had planned to leave New Hampshire on a similar high. But a defeat by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton here on Tuesday evening startled Mr. Obama and ensured that the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination remained fully engaged.

“We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change,” Mr. Obama said, speaking at a rally of crestfallen supporters. “We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics that will only grow louder and more dissonant in the days and weeks to come.”

For the last five days here, Mr. Obama made one appeal above all to the legions of voters who turned out at rallies from dawn to dusk to see him: Prove that Iowa was not a fluke. He made that pitch again and again to audiences, which spilled from gymnasiums into side rooms and from opera houses onto snow-covered sidewalks, a tableau of young and old pressed closely together as they cheered his historic candidacy.

In the end, though, it was another historic candidacy — that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — that appealed to more voters in New Hampshire, particularly women who broke with Mr. Obama in significant numbers in the closing hours of an accelerated campaign here.

Mr. Obama was counting on a New Hampshire victory to serve as a permission slip for Democratic leaders across the country to step forward to support his candidacy. He was hoping to trade the title of insurgent candidate for the perilous crown of front-runner. But the race is now a draw between the two rivals — with John Edwards of North Carolina, who came in a distant third, vowing to continue — and a furious scramble lies ahead.

With a confidence buoyed by a series of polls that consistently showed Mr. Obama leading Mrs. Clinton by as many as 10 percentage points, the Obama campaign was shaken by the loss as the final ballots were tabulated from a primary election held on a glorious springlike day where a record number of Democrats turned out.

If Mr. Obama had hoped to leave New Hampshire as a soaring victor, on his way to seizing the air of inevitability that had belonged for months to Mrs. Clinton, his narrow loss underscored the challenges that lie ahead for turning a political movement into an electoral success. As he addressed his supporters in a gymnasium at Nashua High School on Tuesday evening, he showed no signs of relinquishing his fight.

“When we’ve been told we’re not ready or we shouldn’t try or we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people,” Mr. Obama said. “Yes, we can. Yes, we can.” Throughout the evening, the confidence of Mr. Obama’s campaign gradually fell as returns poured in from across the state, which never put him over Mrs. Clinton. Aides said they believe that women rallied behind Mrs. Clinton in the final hours of the race, when news coverage was dominated by accounts of her nearly breaking into tears as she answered a voter’s question.

With Mr. Obama winning in Iowa and Mrs. Clinton winning in New Hampshire, a fresh dose of uncertainty was injected into the race as it moves to Nevada and South Carolina before contests in 22 states take place on Feb. 5. Mr. Obama was still hoping to win a crucial union endorsement in Nevada, where he dispatched his top aides from Iowa to organize the state.