Demons And Hunchbacks

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Genie

He is affection and the present moment because he has thrown open the house to the snow foam of winter and to the noises of summer—he who purified drinking water and food—who is the enchantment fleeing places and the superhuman delight of resting places.—He is affection and future, the strength and love which we, erect in rage and boredom, see pass by in the sky of storms and the flags of ecstasy.

He is love, perfect and reinvented measure, miraculous, unforeseen reason, and eternity: machine loved for its qualities of fate. We have all known the terror of his concession and ours: delight in our health, power of our faculties, selfish affection and passion for him,—he who loves us because his life is infinity…

And we recall him and he sets forth…And if Adoration moves, rings, his Promise, rings: "Down with these superstitions, these other bodies, these couples and ages. This is the time which has gone under!"

He will not go away, he will not come down again from some heaven, he will not redeem the anger of women, the laughter of men, or all that sin: for it is done now, since he is and since he is loved.

His breathing, his heads, his racings; the terrifying swiftness of form and action when they are perfect.

Fertility of the mind and vastness of the world!

His body! the dreamed-of liberation, the collapse of grace joined with new violence!

All that he sees! all the ancient kneelings and the penalties canceled as he passes by.

His day! the abolition of all noisy and restless suffering within more intense music.

His step! migrations more tremendous than early invasions.

O He and I! pride more benevolent than lost charity.

O world!—and the limpid song of new woe!

He knew us all and loved us, may we, this winter night, from cape to cape, from the noisy pole to the castle, from the crowd to the beach, from vision to vision, our strength and our feelings tired, hail him and see him and send him away, and under tides and on the summit of snow deserts follow his eyes,—his breathing—his body,—his day.

Arthur Rimbaud



They were there, standing in the doorway of old huts, peering out from the ramshackle village that had been his home. He didn't want to leave. His childhood had been so happy, here in this remote place, that he didn't want to face a bigger, more terrifying place, the outside world. Unfortunately, so it seemed some cold mornings, his body kept growing bigger and bigger, and he had already been selected for the warrior class. It was his job, his destiny, to not just defend this place but to go off and join the regional forces, way off in that town several days travel away, and protect them all.

What dark forces circled he did not know, although he had heard many stories. His heart was broken, when the girl of his dreams chose to marry the blacksmith, a plain, homely, untroubled man who would not be out there fighting for their joint survival. Not for her the pensive, wasted life of a wife waiting for her soldier to return. She wanted a clutch of children and a warm hearth, and part of him couldn't blame her. But it still hurt, that she had chosen another. She tried to let him down slowly, but it hadn't worked. His heart snapped, and now he longed to leave, restive and disturbed every time he caught a glimpse of her. How beautiful she was.

It was in the town that he would discover alcohol, and his life would ignite. Such wild, frothy, frolicking times. The tavern knew him well. His quiet life in his home village had allowed him to store up some funds, and now, as he waited assignment in the town corp, he set to burying his bruised, no broken hurt. That these ancestors still lived in the 21st century was an astonishing thing, flickering through his dreams, sometimes offering advice. Do not do as I did. Stay away from the booze. Be strong and true. Do Good.

In the populated reaches of the upper realms - "there are many rooms in the father's house" - they sought him out; tried to warn him that life was short; no matter how long he survived his ailments this physical realm was a mere flicker in the long story of his soul. Advanced creatures, born with high intelligence, many of his ancestors had burnt themselves out in that very same tavern, or very similar. Even here on the other side of the planet, where his European blood clashed strangely with the landscape, vast, primordial, reaching back through time, the tavern had arisen in his early years, had come to mean everything.

I'm so horny I'd f... anything, the teenage boy said loudly, attracting laughter from the surrounding queens. But the client folded his wallet back up, put it back in his pocket. He didn't want trash. Much of the sex was silent. Voices ruined fantasies. I'd just as rather a cigarette, he said, propping himself up on the pillow. So much was given, so much was taken away. He sold his soul, and after the pain of his upbringing, didn't care. The belts weren't landing on his young flesh any more. He wasn't cowering in the corner, as the belts snaked out towards him. He wasn't the victim of daily brutality.

Instead they gave him all the attention any forlorn soul could possibly want. Money, drinks, infamy, their fawning hands. He got so hopelessly drunk he didn't know what was touching him. They gobbled and they gobbled, and he was lost, his head thrown back, lost and careless and too drunk to speak, the bottle of whisky he always insisted on half drained by the bedside table. He murmured things, incoherently, and their lonely spirits drank up every last drop he cared to give them, every last stab at affection, every last slurred word as they got what they were paying for. He didn't care, he really didn't care, at least the belts had stopped snaking out towards him.

There was one simple creed: never do it except for money. He kept that promise, if none other. And his ancestors could only shudder at the dereliction of another soul, the base places they went, the clammy smells of old men and the cutting bite of whisky, the endless string of cigarettes. You will have health problems when you are older, the weird magician come psychic come sicko predicted, his big bulging eyes haunting him for years to come. Given the amount he was drinking and the hundred cigarettes he smoked every day, it was a pretty safe bet.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/16/2337546.htm

Russia tightens grip on Georgia

Russian troops have dug in close to the Georgian capital, showing no sign of preparing to withdraw, as pressure mounts on Moscow to adhere to an French-brokered ceasefire.

Although fighting has halted, Russian forces gave no indication of pulling out more than a week after invading neighbouring Georgia in support of separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russian troops, backed by two tanks and four armoured personnel carriers, were seen by an AFP correspondent digging in at Igoeti, on the main road from South Ossetia to Tbilisi, just 30 kilometres from the Georgian capital.

Troops also remained in control of the main checkpoint into Gori, 60 kilometres north-west of Tbilisi. They blocked journalists from entering the town, which is outside of South Ossetia and was formerly a base for Georgian forces.

Western-backed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Friday signed a six-point ceasefire deal and pressure is mounting on Russia to sign too.

The Russian Foreign Ministry was quoted by Interfax news agency on Saturday saying that it had received a copy of the accord with Mr Saakashvili's signature.

During a visit to Tbilisi on Friday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted Russian forces leave Georgia, a close US ally, as stipulated in the accord.

"With the signing of this accord, all Russian troops, and any paramilitary and irregular troops that entered with them, must leave immediately," Dr Rice said.

She said that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's "verbal assurance" to halt military operations "clearly was not honoured."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/water-issues/outback-sale-could-put-water-in-federal-tank/2008/08/15/1218307227806.html

AT THE junction of the Warrego and Darling rivers, about 60 kilometres down the Darling from Bourke, one of Australia's grandest outback stations is up for sale.

Toorale sprawls over 91,000 hectares and boasts a remarkable history. In December 1892 Henry Lawson slaved away in the 46-stand Toorale shearing shed for a month and the experience forever influenced his writing about the hardship of life in the bush and how important mateship was to survive there.

Lawson's time in the Bourke district also helped turn him into the most passionately poetic advocate of irrigation Australia has known.

As he once moaned of the parched outback: "They talk of settling people on the land! Better settle in it. I'd rather settle on the water; at least, until some gigantic system of irrigation is perfected in the West."

With the Murray-Darling Basin in crisis, it is Toorale's controversial water resources that are making its September 11 auction the subject of intense interest. Between 1880 and 1913, Toorale was owned by Samuel McCaughey, one of the pioneers of Australia's irrigation industry.

He built banks that could stop vast amounts of Warrego water from going into the Darling and redirect it so it flooded thousands of hectares of Toorale to grow pasture for livestock.

This week the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, promised more money to buy back water in the north of the Murray-Darling Basin sooner.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24190931-664,00.html

Terry McCrann

August 17, 2008 12:00am

THE sharp fall in the value of the Aussie dollar is a timely reminder of the unpredictability of investment conditions.

The one question I get asked more than any other is: "I'm going overseas in October or next year; where's our dollar headed?"

Well, there's your answer. Nobody can tell. And I do mean nobody. The only difference between someone who says they don't know and someone who says they do, is that the second one doesn't know they can't tell.

Only a few weeks ago, "everyone" was predicting our dollar was headed for parity with the greenback. Coming up: one Aussie would buy one US dollar. The only uncertainty was when.

To digress, a piece of historical trivia for those who may marvel at that prospect: our dollar has been at parity before.

Indeed, there was a moment in time, back in the 1970s, when one Aussie bought just under $US1.50. And also a lot more pounds, marks, yen and the rest than it buys today.

Well, it never got there. Going agonisingly close, about US99c, only to turn tail and fall rapidly below US90c.

The proximate cause was supposedly the change in the Reserve Bank's policy on interest rates. Not that it has actually cut them yet, but now everyone is predicting it will cut, in two weeks.

Suddenly, purportedly, people would stop pouring money into Australia to get our high interest rates relative to what was available just about everywhere else in the world.