No One Asked For Pity

*



"The Santa Cruz were beginning to develop a sinister reputation at that time. In East of Eden Steinbeck had found them kindly mountains, compared to the range across the Salinas Valley, which he saw as menacing. The Santa Cruz were certainly beautiful, and magical too. You could pass through vales of fog as thick as woodsmoke and then suddenly come upon sun-dappled mountain meadow to make your heart soar. In spring the wildflowers abounded as they would in the high peaks of the Cascades. The road between Saratoga and La Honda wound like a fair-tale lane through redwoods, fields of rule grass, and live oak. Here and there it would pass through valleys filled with ferns that would haunt your dreams.

"Unfortunately, we were only a few years short of the Summer of Love, which would f... everything. Our garden was too beautiful to ever have been free of serpents. Now things were emerging from beneath the earth that created a phylogeny like that at the bottom of Monterey Bay; big ones or poisonous ones were eating little ones. Unlike that on the sea floor, this was a pathological predation, innocence and delusion attracting and setting free murder. Police parlance adopted a sporting metaphor to describe the method of psychos in search of prey. They called it "trolling". The kids talked about "bad vibes". The Santa Cruz became a sinister lonely place.

Robert Stone. Prime Green: Remembering The Sixties.



In the darkness and chaos of a slippery past, with the body under siege from microbes and dark angels, the rotting earth, he tried to hold his head high despite the enormous weight. Whole universes died in the brief time they had left. He was astonished, as he stroked his sweat laden hair. The whole universe was here, everything he had always wanted, as he had trolled despairingly through all those bars, from the hunted to the hunter, from the chased to the chaser, from young to old. He still couldn't face the savage loss. All that was left were memories.

That was how some of the old people he had interviewed had felt. Perfectly lucid at 100, the old woman told him: the only problem with being this age is there is nothing to look forward to. You can only look backwards. Perhaps the day was enough. The vitamin supplements were clearly failing. Short a steer, short a brick, their moping disabilities were internal, more difficult to see than the normal forms of brain damage. His voice wasn't slurring yet, although the diseases were spreading. He might not live long enough to see the apocalypse he had waited all his life to see.

The suburbs hunkered down into their own cruel ignorance, the squat houses just there, uncomplaining, uncommunicative. On the outside, always on the outside, always having just returned from somewhere else, he gazed in the windows, could see ordinary people going about their ordinary days, the television flickering in the corner. Why these moments so profound? Why did simple things take on such a sense of significance? He counted the hours as the day passed in the office, wishing for the day to be over, wishing, in some terrible way, for life's challenges to be over.

Gone was the sense of adventure and uniqueness. Just another worker in another crowded city, with all the ordinary concerns, the chaotic thoughts and the dreadful angst that had driven him for so long were subsiding. Apart from a sense of circling evil, he was almost sane. Was it decay? Could something be done about the decline? Could one step forward be two steps back? Could their love that had been so strong and so all encompassing in his life all have been for nought? As the world turned on its axis and tiny, tiny, crushed on the bottom of that lead aquarium, unable to move, unable to escape, he buried yet further into the folds of internal derision; and waited.

And wished the day over. How bad could it get. He was wishing his life away because every hour had become an agony; because some days his bosses seemed like bastards, detached from all human concerns; and he knew not where to look. He had joined the toiling masses. He waited at the same bus stops in the morning cold and sweated in the same dark, cloggy factories. He felt their breaths at morning tea time and the grease that streaked their faces as the machines turned eternal. The contempt the bosses had for the workers over rode everything, and he found himself peering from behind cowed eyes, watching the bastardry of their exploits, a silent witness.

He saw them every morning, these cowed and silent workers, shivering at the bus stop in the half light before 6am, their plain faces written large with resignation. He smelt their old, unattractive flesh and tried to find nobility in the passing of their days. Instead, each day seemed to get worse, the bosses rode them harder, their wages bought less and less. The recurring theme in the city now: the money's dried up. Nobody's got any money. Your money goes nowhere. Everything is so expensive. Your wages are worth jack. Their flat, Mongolian faces were etched with the futility of effort. His heart went out, and stopped; no one asked for pity.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jIE0IUn4WIiaMBpjG8SI_6H5RXzgD92LEQIO0

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Leaders of Pakistan's ruling coalition discussed Tuesday how to replace former President Pervez Musharraf and what to do with the man who ruled for nine years, while militant violence underscored the challenges facing the country.

Another potentially divisive issue on the agenda is how to restore judges Musharraf fired in a desperate attempt to cling to power. The meeting ended abruptly and no progress was announced.

The retired army general resigned Monday in the face of impeachment threats from the fragile ruling coalition, which is packed with his foes. He is believed to be in his army-guarded residence near the capital, Islamabad.

How the government deals with his succession — and whether it leads to a power struggle — is a looming question at a critical time.

The militant threat is spreading in Pakistan's northwest — with clashes between the army and insurgents killing at least 29 people since Musharraf's exit — adding to uncertainty about the new government's approach to tackling extremist violence. Unlike Musharraf, who took a hard line against the insurgents, the coalition has sought to negotiate peace treaties with tribal leaders in the restive northwest to curb the violence.

The country is also facing soaring inflation, chronic power shortages and a host of other economic problems.

Law Minister Farooq Naek said Tuesday that the government had not struck an immunity deal with Musharraf, though supporters and foes suggested he had sought guarantees that he would not face criminal prosecution or be forced into exile.

"There is no deal with the president, and he had himself resigned," Naek told reporters.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i8dGftYb0s4XWdUMRdIVs3vh1CKAD92LGKSG0

SUROBI, Afghanistan (AP) — Insurgents ambushed a group of elite French soldiers as they climbed a mountain pass, killing 10 troops in a militant stronghold outside the capital. In a separate coordinated attack, a team of suicide bombers tried unsuccessfully to storm a U.S. base near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

French paratroopers and a Foreign Legion soldier were among the dead Monday — the biggest single combat loss for international forces in Afghanistan in more than three years.

The group was on a reconnaissance mission in the Surobi district, about 30 miles east of the Afghan capital, when they were ambushed Monday afternoon, officials said Tuesday. NATO sent backup and said a "large number" of the attackers were killed in the hourslong gunbattle.

France's top military official, Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin, said most of the French casualties came in the minutes after the team was climbing a mountain pass. The fighting lasted into nightfall, he said.

"In its fight against terrorism, France has just been struck severely," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement.

But he added, "My determination remains intact."

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24207819-5001031,00.html

THERE was a time when politicians treated an opinion poll like a communicable disease.

As with the Spanish flu, it only existed if you believed in it - until millions of people died.

But something strange is now occurring in NSW.

For the first time in as long as anyone in the press gallery can remember, Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell yesterday joyfully indulged discussions about the poll plague being visited upon the Labor Government, to the point of offering his expert medical opinion as to the cause.

Across town, Premier Morris Iemma was acknowledging the same pestilence crippling his Government, admitting that a remedy would not be found any time soon.

The only explanation for this breach of political precedent is that they are polls that can no longer be ignored.

Iemma may be privately buoyed by the fact that Labor's primary vote of 33 per cent is 1 percentage point better than it was in June, despite being worse than just about any other time in the past decade.

He may also be encouraged by his satisfaction rating of 26 per cent, which is no worse than it was two months ago.