Flashes Of Mad Anger

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Sydney Harbour.


"In what the locals call Shortwest Knoxville, the city begins to fray around the edges, disintegrating into housing projects before it improves a little, not much, about two miles west of downtown. Sykes parks in front of a small rancher, vinyl siding, the yard a mess, the only house with empty supercans haphazardly parked near the street because Mrs Barber is too lazy to roll them back to the house, it seems. The neighbourhood has very few streetlights and a lot of souped-up gaudy old cars - Cadillacs, a Lincoln painted purple, a Corvette with those stupid spinning hubcaps. The crapmobiles of dirtbags, drug dealers, no-account kids. Sykes is mindful of the Glock .40-caliber pistol in the shoulder holster under her jacket. She follows the sidewalk and rings the bell."
Patricia Cornwell.

Flashes of mad anger, he often felt, a grieving loss for wasted daze, wasted lives, for all the opportunities that had passed him by. Most of all it was anger for the benign neglect, the comfortable beliefs of the middle classes, the complacent faces of people for whom nothing had ever gone wrong. These were the faces that ruled the planet. They were comfortable inside their own belief systems; had no idea how difficult the real world was. He stirred hatred in a pot, danced quietly, pointlessly, a silent jig, baying at the moon, the cold light streaming down the surfaces of the skyscrapers; and nothing, no peace, no understanding, no compassion, no mate with goggle eyes looking through the mist saying: mate, it's great to see you.

All these lost friends would never keep comfort again. Jan was gorgeous, tiny, with the clairvoyant stripe of white in her forelock; and she died, and she died. And we drove around the city in grief stricken circles; unable to come to terms with anything that had happened. It really was true, only the good die young. The ones with talent, compassion, sympathy, empathy, the one's who's eyes really did look through the smokey fog of the bars and commune with heaven, who looked at you and immediately understood: we were nowhere near the planet's surface.

In time, he thought he came to understand, the lone emissary. But he didn't really; he just lasted longer than everybody else. Jan was gone, and Lyn was gone, and they were amongst his best mates ever. He tried to make friends amongst younger generations, but they came and went with lightning speed, speeding up the slippery slope to success, believing, naively, that all you had to do was work hard and success would be yours. He stayed in the same place, doing the same things. The buildings aged around him. His bones creaked. He always thought nirvana was just around the corner, that success and good fortune would bless him with age. How naive he had been.

Now voices spoke to him out of aged faces, warning him of future pain. You've no idea, Joyce, his 83 year old movie buddy, warned him, talking of how she dealt with the pain from arthritis. You're still young. Fifty five ain't young for anyone but her. He grieved for the loss of so many things, tried desperately to reconcile the past with the present. How sweet of you, a kind voice said, but in the strange mix of dimensions, the fabric of things moving in and out, sick to the core and impervious to his own inquiry, these were the moments when he doubted his own destiny; doubted there really was that golden valley beyond the pain and drudgery of work.

Jan had children young, and we were often around there. Students then, ostensibly at university, although our days and our courses often spiralled out of control and our little gang already had a bad reputation at university for being the party crowd; worse, far worse, than your normal party crowd, doomed. The arcs of addiction were not so clear then. Nobody talked to us about parabolic arcs. No one told us there was always a consequence, always a price to pay. No one warned us that the price of a good time was often death; that no one could party the way we partied and survive for long.

We clung to each other. I was studying philosophy and anthropology at a young university, Macquarie, and it seemed, while Lou Reed played in the background, heroin, it's my life and it's my wife, that we were setting a new course, charting new boundaries, that in some strange spiritual sense we were sacrificing ourselves for a greater good, for the broader knowledge of mankind, charting, as we had, new courses through the history of consciousness. Then she died, a young mother, leaving Tim, handsome, gorgeous, hopeless Tim, heartbroken, bringing up the kids on his own, while they drove round the city in circles and his pain knew no bounds. I took my own two children around to see him once, two decades later, and he said, please don't come again, it's hard to say this but I just can't bear it, you remind me of the worst time of my life, the worst time, you with the kids, on your own. I'm sorry. And that in the end was our great partying band; grief stricken, broken, sad beyond anything, our hopes, dreams, lives destroyed by a malignant force we had never understood, the naive desire to party, party, party.


THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7299530.stm

As Tibetans make their most forceful demands for independence in years, their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in exile in Dharamsala, India, outlines his concerns to the BBC's Chris Morris.

Dalai Lama, 16/03/08
The Dalai Lama says he does not control the Tibetan people

"Am I early?" asked the Dalai Lama, as he ambled into the room. He sat down and coughed, and thanked us for coming.

"This is a critical time for us," he said, as he waited for the interview to begin.

He compared it to 1959, an iconic date for many Tibetans, when a huge uprising against Chinese rule was suppressed, and the Dalai Lama himself was forced to flee into exile on horseback.

Eventually, he made his home here, in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, in this small town which is known to some as Little Lhasa.

It is awash with thousands of Tibetan activists-in-exile. As unrest in Tibet itself has escalated, there have been daily protests in Dharamsala throughout the week.

Cars waving Tibetan flags weave through the pedestrian traffic, leaflets are pressed into passing hands, and a hunger strike is taking place outside the entrance to the Dalai Lama's temple.


I'm a spokesman for the Tibetan people, not the controller, not the master
Dalai Lama
And when the sun sinks below the mountain range, marchers - chanting Buddhist prayers for the souls of the dead - walk through the streets carrying candles.

"We have to do our bit," said one of the marchers, who gave his name as Tenzin. "We have to support those who are struggling in Tibet itself, in our homeland."


http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23385657-663,00.html

Agencies

TIBET'S government has declared a "people's war" to erase support for the Dalai Lama and end any independence aspirations of the people there.

The blitz will involve both security and propaganda campaigns to counter the message of the exiled Buddhist spiritual leader, the Tibetan Daily reported.

"We must wage a people's war to beat splittism and expose and condemn the malicious acts of these hostile forces and expose the hideous face of the Dalai Lama group to the light of day," officials said.

There were reports last night that security forces were going door-to-door to arrest people suspected of supporting the Dalai Lama following deadly protests against China's rule.

Olympic officials yesterday were hosing down calls for a boycott of the Beijing Games as China expelled tourists from Tibet.

"We believe that the boycott doesn't solve anything," International Olympic Committee boss Jacques Rogge said on the Caribbean island of St Kitts.

"On the contrary, it is penalising innocent athletes and it is stopping the organisation from something that definitely is worthwhile organising."

The Tibetan capital, Lhasa, remained tense yesterday, as China faced strong international pressure to use restraint in ending an uprising that has left many dead.

The Dalai Lama said he feared more deaths in Tibet unless Beijing changed its policies towards the Chinese-controlled territory.















Scenes from Ian P's 50th birthday party.