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Almost all of the pictures on these blogs are from my camera phone, but this one is off my mother's computer because we stayed overnight.
When you've come to make a fortune and you haven't made your salt,
And the reason of your failure isn't anybody's fault -
When you haven't got a billet, and the times are very slack,
There is nothing that can spur you like the shame of going back;
Crawling home with empty pockets,
Going back hard-up;
Oh! it's then you learn the meaning of humiliation's cup.
When the place and you are strangers and you struggle all alone,
And you have a mighty longing for the town where you are known;
When your clothes are very shabby and the future's very black,
There is nothing that can hurt you like the shame of going back.
When we've fought the battle bravely and are beaten to the wall,
'Tis the sneers of men, not conscience, that make cowards of us all;
And the while you are returning, oh! your brain is on the rack,
And your heart is in the shadow of the shame of going back.
When a beaten man's discovered with a bullet in his brain,
They POST-MORTEM him, and try him, and they say he was insane;
But it very often happens that he'd lately got the sack,
And his onward move was owing to the shame of going back.
Ah! my friend, you call it nonsense, and your upper lip is curled,
I can see that you have never worked your passage through the world;
But when fortune rounds upon you and the rain is on the track,
You will learn the bitter meaning of the shame of going back;
Going home with empty pockets,
Going home hard-up;
Oh, you'll taste the bitter poison in humiliation's cup.
Henry Lawson.
If on a winter's night. Discordant touches. Times that weren't ours, that had never belonged to us. His was a fragile hold. Equally cruel, you would have to say. Distance, sad memory, escape; all of it coalesced. He found himself at war with mediocrity; but everyone was a private person. Raging against the light got you nowhere. He pounded away on a typewriter in the middle of a vast warehouse; long since demolished. The Darlinghurst block once occupied by the warehouse had, for a long time, as he drove past, been a hole in the ground, collecting water, mud, rubbish. Now it's an inevitable, modern apartment block. So much money has been made in Sydney; fast talking developers, stand-over men, hustlers, sleek black BMWs, obligatory Audis. Flash houses bespoke a world for which he had never aimed. He had assumed it would all come to him naturally, the ravishing success, the wealth. Instead it swept by him like a rushing river, and he was left sitting in the gutter, on the bank, watching the garbage bob by.
How all this came about he would never know. The girls peddled their wares out of the run down terraces on the side of the Darlinghurst hill. He had always thought of this part of town as his own, his territory; marked out by pubs and companions and late night assignations. I've scored on that corner. I've been in love in that building. All of this was his way of owning the world around him, making the landscape part of his story. But now the city burbled by in a torrent; handsome young faces. He breathed deeply, like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, a little sputtering sound as he breathed their pheromones into him, sucked up their life force, added flesh and heart to his ancient bones.
He could see more clearly now, mores the pity. Vicki Vidikis was gone and he was the only one who remembered her; the wild Balmain poet from the 1970s who travelled the junky trail across India and then made hell of herself as she became a junky mole around the Cross. She was sometimes home, when he decided to wander off the path, way back then, way back when, always talking, always happy to see him. A half finished manuscript in her battered typewriter; the computer age never having filtered this far down. Her book was finished, she told me, but she couldn't find a publisher. And things had got a bit crazy, after she shacked up with that bank robber and ended up in jail for a while. She had found her partner in crime. And now he was dead.
And shortly after that, there was no answer when I knocked on her door, late at night in secret; when no one was to know. She, too, was dead, washed away by excess; by her own madness. Rag tag old friends gathered up her chaotic manuscripts and gave them to her family; told them at her funeral that one day Vicki would be seen as one of the country's greatest poets. But even great poets have to submit, be published, peddle their name; and the few flimsy volumes of hers I once owned, published in the early 1970s, always seemed to me to be possessed of bad spirits, and I wasn't sad, one move, to abandon them. I didn't need her luck following after me.
There was a brief period, 20 years ago now, when I slept with three women in succession; and they all got pregnant. Only the mother of my two kids went with it. The first, Cara, was tearful that day, and I couldn't be at the hospital; I didn't want her to go through with it. And then there was Deborah, who I hadn't seen since the late 1980s; who I met in a therapeutic program and spent the night with after a dance, on New Year's Eve from memory. She was good fun and I liked her but there was a lot going on in our respective lives; and the relationship was over before it started. And I only knew she had got pregnant to me because someone told me; years later. And then we met, just the other day, at junior Tropfest, the festival for short films. She had a young son now; he seemed like a nice kid and she was clearly a devoted mom. We talked about the chaos of those days gone by; the things we had belived in so ardently, way back then; the elaborate gossip circles, the naive, self-serving enthusiasms of those around us.
Is the father around? I asked.
I had got rid of so many of them, I decided I was going to go through with this one; I was getting too old, I didn't have any more chances. He was furious with me; I broke his trust; it was just an affair. I told him it didn't matter, I didn't expect anything from him.
Does he see the kid?
Rarely.
I don't know how blokes can do that, I always wanted children, I said.
Well, I had got rid of so many, I just couldn't do it again. One of them was yours, if I recall.
Yes, I heard. You should have told me. I would have been loyal forever. I always wanted children.
She shrugged, sadly, life had served up so much chaos. We were both in our fifties now, and whatever opportunies there might have been, they were long gone.
I was getting so much advice, it was such a fragile time, everyone knew better than me, she said.
We talked for a little while longer about the films just out; American Gangster, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood. And then work called, the sound of the mobile disturbing our reminisce. And we said our goodbyes, and the city swallowed us up, again.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23299649-662,00.html
After throwing out the Howard government, and the furniture, Kevin Rudd sat down to work. Gerard McManus and Michael Harvey report.
ONE of the first actions of Kevin Rudd's prime ministership was to call in the government removalists to do a furniture swap in his private offices in Parliament House.
"The other stuff lasted only three hours," Mr Rudd told the Herald Sun, referring to the chesterfield lounge chairs and Sir Robert Menzies' desk, which John Howard had hand-picked and used for the previous 11 years.
Rather than buy new furniture he brought out of storage old chairs last used by Bob Hawke. As a consequence, when Mr Rudd invites dignitaries and officials into his private realm, they will sit in slightly shabby, peach-coloured fabric matching the Parliament House decor of the late 1980s.
And the style switch was made at no cost to the taxpayer.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/rudd-delivers-progress-report/2008/02/29/1204226991434.html
HONOURING election promises is vital to maintaining trust in politics, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has said in an interview marking 100 days on Monday since winning the election.
Mr Rudd said his Government was serious about delivering its promises and "not just the question of being upfront with the Australian people".
"Trust in politics is core, it's critical, it's the coin of politics," he said. "And unless you are maintaining people's trust … then it undermines your ability to lead the country in the future when hard decisions arise."
Mr Rudd contrasted his determination to fulfil promises with the approach of his predecessor, John Howard, distinguishing between core and non-core commitments.
He said Government agendas in education, health, infrastructure, broadband communications, climate change, water, and federal-state relations were "urgent", both in terms of community expectations and objectivity. On climate change and clean-coal technology "the clock is ticking".
The Prime Minister yesterday released a booklet, First 100 Days, listing what the Government had done and matching commitments against progress.
In his foreword Mr Rudd writes that he and his ministers have had "our sleeves rolled up" in the 100 days.
"We intend to produce regular report cards of the Government's performance — and we will continue holding community cabinet meetings around Australia to ensure the Government is always listening."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23300075-5013946,00.html
KEVIN Rudd has assured mainstream Australia he will avoid radical social and cultural change by resisting calls to broaden his reform agenda and by sticking to his election promises.
The Prime Minister warned that people had "elected the wrong guy" if they believed that once he was in power he would unveil a secret left-wing reform agenda or suddenly yield to pressure from sectional interests.
Calling for people to move beyond "the classical Right-Left divide", Mr Rudd said he had been upfront about his election promises and would focus on delivering them in full.
"There's nothing terribly complicated about me," Mr Rudd said. "If you obtain the people's support, that's what you go ahead and do."
An American artist: attribution coming.
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