That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
Paul Valery
French critic & poet (1871 - 1945)
Welcome to the apocalypse. Welcome to a world that has changed forever. Welcome to things we never knew were true, to strange planets and dark, underwater landscapes. Seaweed drifts in underwater currents, we can see sunlight piercing through the depths. We can see shapes flittering into the darkness. We can be rewarded for abstinence, for staying strong, for marking pace, standing water, standing still, oh you who doubted, oh you who were blessed.
We weren't prepared for the calamity that was about to overtake us. For all the false alarms, perhaps this one was real. Had he really destroyed himself, for so little purpose? Would the unhealthy lifestyles of hte past come back to haunt them? Would all of those strangers, those odd lurkings, those handsome faces in the nightclub nights, the smell of amyl nitrate and men on mass, of sweat and lust and unwashed socks, of curly pubic hair and faces thrown back in pleasure, of all the extensions of humanity, the bizarre behaviours, the concerted efforts to escape the norms, could it all have been for nothing, an early death, wiped away.
He had held so many hands, grieved silently with the dying. It was not a time of war. These peace time deaths had been entirely self-imposed, caught in darkness and danger and daggers metaphoric, the metaphysical realm a curling waste. Oh how he wished for his remote little house, the sunshine on the flowers, the purple and white sprays, the happiness that could have been there. Oh how he wished there had been more common sense, that everything had been built up, and swords and strangers and uncomfortable, embarrassing positions, toilet squats, all of it made up who they were, flotsam on the froth of time.
Be good do good be clear be brave, said a voice cutting through the thought disordered images that crowded his fuzzy brain, the mornings the worst time as he retrieved all the parts of himself from the stratosphere and beyond, became a normal person, functioned in the real world, the physical plane. Oh forgive me, he said, I did not want to betray you. But the memories he was loyal to, they too were a betrayal. Those friends whose memory he carried forward, they were all gone, either underground or into other relationships, other circles. No one remembered what he remembered. No one remained loyal to their mythical clan.
Oh sailor sailor burning bright, in the darkest of the night, he chanted, that cutest of cute young men, they used to call them boys, cresting the cusp of 20 and with clear shining eyes, the smell of young flesh, of vast enthusiasms. Thjey lay out in the path waiting. He could have gone to the party but didn't make it. Life could have taken an entirely different turn. His own corrupt personality could have slimed all over someone else's innocence. And all could have been lost, as he gave himself up in love, abandoned himself, his cynicism, his distance from others, to make himself vulnerable, to abandon himself in the eyes, the face, the body, the length of jeans and the curves of flesh.
But that was not to be. He followed his own sad destiny and wreaked havoc on the past. So many were gone. So many he had danced with had died in agony, those dismal deaths of the AIDS boys, their social and sexual adventurism rewarded by the hand of death, the mark of the beast, the skin cancers spreading across their once gorgeous features. Oh how glorious they had been, those moments, those milieus, those friendships and intensities, how much they had longed for satisfaction as they drank in the profound beauty of the tiny, the prickling presence of God in the fabric of things, the intimate wonders of their special relationships as they talked and churned and touched each other affectionately. "You'll be right," he said, as he touched his elbow lightly. But sadly, he had never believed that, never.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2371992372220763819
There is something odd about the ferocious amount of energy expended suppressing any dissent from orthodoxy on climate change. After all, the climate cataclysmists have won the war of public opinion - for now, at least - with polls, business, media and Government enthusiastically on board.
So, if their case is so good, why try so fervently to extinguish other points of view? There is a disturbingly religious zeal in the attempts to silence critics and portray them as the moral equivalent of holocaust deniers.
Take the British Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired on the ABC last year with an extraordinary post-show panel of debunkers assembled to denounce it. The one program which actually questioned the consensus on man's contribution to climate change, it has been singled out for condemnation and forensic dissection in a way no other program has, least of all Al Gore's error-riddled An Inconvenient Truth.
This week, the British communications regulator, Ofcom, published a long report dealing with 265 complaints about perceived inaccuracy and unfairness in Swindle.
Despite crowing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the ABC and others, Ofcom does not vindicate Swindle's attackers. In fact, while it declared itself unable to adjudicate on the finer points of climate science, it found the program did not mislead audiences "so as to cause harm or offence".
Further, Ofcom defended the right of Channel 4 and the much-vilified producer Martin Durkin to "continue to explore controversial subject matter. While such programs can polarise opinion, they are essential to our understanding of the world around us and are amongst the most important content that broadcasters produce." Amen...
The fact is that, regardless of the definitive pronouncements made by politicians and economists, the science on global warming is far from finalised.
Dr David Evans, a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office for six years to 2005, is one of many insiders who have reversed earlier positions.
"There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming," he wrote this month in The Australian.
Ultimately, the integrity of the scientific community will triumph, Evans has said. "The cause of global warming is an issue that falls into the realm of science, because it is falsifiable. No amount of human posturing will affect what the cause is. The cause just physically is there, and after sufficient research and time we will know what it is."
Until then, open debate is important. It is also wise to maintain a healthy suspicion of the zealots, who insist they have all the answers - and that Australia, which is responsible for 1 per cent of the world's carbon emissions, ought to wreck its economy to prove a point.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24078373-7583,00.html
THE politics of climate change has entered a new phase with Liberal leader Brendan Nelson's belief that the climate change wheel has turned against the Rudd Government, a judgment that will be decisive for Nelson's future, Coalition policy and an Australian emissions trading regime.
There is no final emissions trading policy from the Rudd Government, no targets for 2015 or 2020, and no bill. In short, there is no decision from the Rudd cabinet about how deep it wants to draw its emissions trajectory and over what timetable. Yet the Coalition is threatening to defeat the Government's emissions trading scheme in the Senate.
The nominal reason given most of this week is that Rudd's scheme starts in 2010 and the Coalition thinks it should start in 2011 or, better still, in 2012. But this is merely a hook for a far bigger political play. The Coalition is working itself into a frenzy over climate change as the reality of higher energy prices for consumers and punitive costs for Australian industry feed into the political system.
The truth is that the Coalition, while divided, is mesmerised by the outline of a new narrative in politics.
It is this new narrative and the imperative of survival that drive Nelson.
The pivotal questions are obvious. Has the politics of climate change moved yet again? Has Kevin Rudd misjudged with his emissions trading plan? Is the Coalition under Nelson about to repeat John Howard's blunder and brand itself again as a climate change sceptic?
Next week Nelson wants to toughen the Coalition's stand against Rudd's emissions trading regime by imposing international benchmarks on any Australian scheme.
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