Euphoric Recall

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"But she (Commissioner member Jamie Gorelick) was astonished by the sheer volume of the warnings. Flood, cascade, tsunami, take your pick of metaphors. She could see that in the spring and summer of 2001, there was a consistent drum beat of warnings, day after day, that al-Qaeda was about to attack the United States or its allies. It was clear to Gorelick that the CIA had gone to Bush virtually every morning for months in 2001 to give him the message that the United States needed to be ready for a catastrophic terrorist strike, and from what she was reading, no one ruled out the possibility of a domestic attack."
The Commission - The Uncensored History. Philip Shenon.

"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion."
Abraham Lincoln


There were changes in the routine. There were frightening moments when he thought he was not long for the world, the aches and pains of growing older. And there were those heightened moments, "a heightened sense of things", the scarring rituals beyond which he would never be the same; and it was these he had come to talk about. They came unexpectedly in life, and fulfilled the old cliches: one door shuts and another opens. It was wild, the way things had happened; the belts snaking out; the room melting into colours at Hair; that glorious night of the Aquarius Festival; and then there was Jenny's balcony at Hunter's Hill, with the view down inner harbour to the Gladesville Bridge, the cascading steps of the expensive apartments on the other side of the water, the expensive yachts that broke up the piercing blue.

It was these times, when we looked at each other in astonishment, and could feel the whole universe creaking in our consciousness; it was these times that represented the pinnacle of our divide. Euphoric recall, that had been what he was trying to say, the term he had been trying to summons. We were there and we were fabulous, despite the torn and depleted nature of our other lives, out here, on this balcony only the rich or the inherited could afford, out here where every soft breath of summer air, every detail in the plants and the palms that clung to the steep slopes, out here where we could hear every lap of the water against the rocks, marvel at every board in the old jetty, hear the doberman pacing outside, still protecting us despite her age, it was here in these glistening moments, with the sky and the harbour swirling above us, that we changed forever.

Various criminals came and went, negotiating the beefed up security since the Le Franchi robbery; before the police threats poisoned everything and Jenny fled into hiding, frightened for her daughter's life. That was the only way they would ever get information out of her; and they knew it. Those glorious moments in time; after Keith had deteriorated into an appalling bully pudgy from the lifestyle and had been tossed out to make his own way without her houses and her inheritance. Essentially he went back to his mother, although for a while he lived in other houses. But no one wanted him, no one could put up with him, no one but his long suffering mother. And so, after all the glory days, he became a sick little gnome living out his final days in a Housing Commission unit, living on the sickness benefit, pilled to the eyeballs with God knows what, sick, sick, sick.

The rest of us, born with greater decency and integrity, able to withstand the lashings we gave our own souls, went on to have our own lives and careers, climbing over the years into relatively senior positions; surprising, considering our origins, our penthouse dereliction on that balcony far far away. We reached out to each other; wave after wave of thickening ecstasy coating the air between us; the groaning of the universe as it shifted and settled; these times, this euphoria, when he was this delighted spirit, the master of the art, when he wasn't a splintered sad little creature assembling himself into a semblance of humanity at dawn, but a fabulous party animal with the cascading wit, the coruscating jokes, the infinite, well read knowledge, the easy good looks which he thought would last forever. For once a single person, not multiples.

But all of that, from these astonishing highs, from the sweeping vistas of the house, down the old stone walls, the gardens decaying after her parent's death, but still grand by our standards. We were just students, poor, barely a cent to rub together. It was a good day when we could get blind drunk in the university bar and not worry about running out of money for other things. When the bourbon flowed freely and he communed with the breadth of things; faces in the packed crowd, when everyone knew who he was, hello, hello, the blue boy. Before it all went to mud. Before reality set in. Before time and common sense and age caught up with him; and life required a job, a profession, a destiny. Before children trapped him into a working life.

Throughout life he would refer back to those moments on that old, unrenovated balcony and that fabulous house; as if this was the pinnacle of everything they could be. Good looking, of course, they were a charismatic crew that others liked to watch, fabulous and fabulously out of it in a way that few could access or understand, the secret life at the core of things; the moments that would provide him with the greatest ecstasy he would ever know, the splattering physicality of sex a mere shadow to greater things; his beauty, the world's beauty, wrapped around them and caught in the glistening air, truly great times we would refer back to decades later, cautiously, not wanting to set our heads off again; or diving in, splashing in astonishing memory, conjuring up peak times, trying to pick up, grasp the intangible, the wonderful, truly wonderful moments we had known, before the piper was paid, a price extorted; before everything fell apart.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/lucky-7-your-number-isnt-up-yet-brendan/2008/03/07/1204780063487.html

An adult Australian, selected at random, is now statistically more likely to be an asthma sufferer than a Brendan Nelson supporter.

It's been that sort of week for the Coalition.

It's a good thing that Brendan Nelson is the world's most lunatically optimistic person.

"I'm firmly locked in underdog status!" he winked on Tuesday, after the Newspoll nailed his "preferred prime minister" rating at 7 per cent, which puts his popularity defiantly ahead of Harbhajan Singh but at dangerous near-parity with toll roads, or light beer.

Oh, Brendan.

You said a mouthful, sister.

The fascinating thing about Dr Nelson is that his degree of personal support among the people immediately surrounding him could not be stronger.

Walk into Parliament House, Canberra, on any parliamentary sitting day, select an adult at random and your chances are about 100 per cent that their answer to the question "Who would you like to see leading the Liberal Party right now?" will be "Brendan John Nelson, thank you very much."

Obviously the 45 trusty souls who voted for him in last November's leadership spill are of that view.

But so are the people who voted for Malcolm Turnbull.

For the present, it absolutely suits them to have Dr Nelson in sole custody of the exploding cigar that we can still - on close inspection - identify as Australia's pre-eminent conservative political party.

The worse things get for Dr Nelson, the better Mr Turnbull is going to look when he finally straightens his tie and saunters forth into contention.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/09/2184251.htm?section=justin

Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has called on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to safeguard an annual payment to carers.

There is speculation the $1,600 payment will be scrapped in the May Budget.

Carers have received the bonus since it was introduced by the former government four years ago.

There is further speculation a $500 senior citizen bonus payment may also be axed.

Dr Nelson has called on Mr Rudd to rule out ending the payment.

"Mr Rudd, please rule out an attack on carers, pensioners, the elderly, the frail in this country, because in the end the measure of a caring society, the measure of a caring prime minister is the extent to which he will reach out to people to make sure their meagre family budgets are secure," he said.

But Mr Rudd says there is no way carers will be left in the lurch.

Speaking in the Solomon Islands, Mr Rudd said a budget process is underway where everything is being debated in a transparent way.

"What I can say to carers and pensioners right across Australia that there is no way on God's earth that I intend to leave them in the lurch," he said.

"We are there to extend a helping hand to those in need.

"They are at the forefront of our attention and that will be the case as we frame this budget and that will be seen on budget night as well."