But beggars and performers make up only a small part of the vagabond population. They are the aristocracy, the elite of the fallen. Far more numerous are those with nothing to do, with nowhere to go. Many are drunks - but that term does not do justice to the devastation they embody. Hulks of despair, clothed in rags, their faces bruised and bleeding, they shuffle through the streets as though in chains. Asleep in doorways, staggering insanely through traffic, collapsing on sidewalks - they seem to be everywhere the moment you look for them. Some will starve to death, others will die of exposure, still others will be beaten or burned or tortured...
Baudelaire. Il me semble que je serais toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas. In other words: It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not. Or, more bluntly: Wherever I am not is the place where I am myself. Or else, taking the bull by the horns: Anywhere out of the world.
Paul Auster.
It was the drugs, she said, and he caught the rapid interplay of condescension meant to pass under his radar, and captured the strange nuances that was his filtered despair, the cringing self apology, the inborn failure. All was not lost, perhaps, he was in these astonishing landscapes, he travelled far and wide, more than most Australians, astonishing things were always happening to him. Capturing carbon, capturing life, he gazed out windows and watched the world pass by. Now it was the Rift valley. He saw a church perched high on the hill. A dirty, scrappy, humble village spread down from it, and he was always captured, here in his own soul, here in the nest of his own mistakes.
He was better. He had been walking around Asmara. He had begun to do his job. He was over the withdrawals, or food poisoning as he told his hosts. He was captured in compromise, even on a good day. Blankets were drying outside one of the mud huts high on the lip of the mountain. These humble villagers had one of the best views imaginable, the Rift valley spreading down below them as far as the eye could see. The blankets no doubt needed airing after the family had slept and mewed and curled around each other in the simple pleasures afforded the poor; their entire world in the shadow of the Italianate church, here in the narrow, inaccessible paths, growing old, dying, falling in love, babies. Everything happened here on the lip of the cliff, the goats climbing the narrow paths, weddings, funerals, ceremonies, births, dying.
He wanted to be there with him, out of the car, out of his western bubble. He wanted to live his entire life in some remote village where no one knew him and no one could criticise him, where shadows didn't stalk his every waking hour and love was simple, where his own slim, athletic form climbed the mountain goat tracks with ease, where his religious duties were simply fulfilled, where his manliness was unquestioned and happiness and love and children descended upon him as his due, the average life of the villager, and people gathered around his camp fire in the evening to enjoy his and his wife's company; while his cute as a button children slept inside the mud hut and they could see the smoke rising and the lights come on in that view without equal, here, high above the world.
Instead he was caught in a convoy with other westerners, their cars blundering through the landscape. They climbed ever higher. Village boys waved rocks of crystal at them as they passed, each of the stones looked like a prize worth having. The scene reminded him of the boys beside the desert roads in Morrocco, selling amethyst stones the size of their tiny fists, Mister, Mister, bargain for you, and he joined laughing in their brown faces and white teeth, life simple and glorious, the sun shining on everything they did. Handsome women walked the roads with water jars balanced on their heads. They passed village after village, and he wanted to get lost in each and everyone of them, he wanted to disappear, he didn't want to return to his life in Australia, he wanted to rescue his family and bring them here.
In colossal screens, colossal screeds, in narrative structures that had barely ballooned in his head before they died again, he began to be friends with his hosts. After all, they were paying for everything, this funny group of Australians a long way from home. They stopped for lunch; a ramshackle hotel and restaurant stuck on the bend of a road, sheltering beneath a large rock, and the narrow pass where the road disappeared between giant boulders, threading on into another world of mystery and adventure he could only hope to return to some other day. They sat and ate food acceptable to Western palettes, although westerners were only a small part of the trickle of travellers who passed through here constantly, here at the point which, a sign informed them, had been a resting place for travellers since 1500 BC.
They were westerners in a different place. See her, someone nudged him, pointing at a particularly tall, dark, extremely handsome Eritrean woman. She killed 28 men in the war. He looked at her. He believed it. Men were always nudging him to look at one woman or the other, gleefully telling him how many men they had killed. They threaded their way back through the mountains to Asmara. They passed by the army camps on the outskirts; made aware once more of how hard Eritrea had fought with Ethiopia to be a country in its own right, they stopped to speak to some soldiers, they made it back into Asmara after dark, in his feverish sickness he had read Thomas Kenneally's book Asmara, hoping to understand everything about the assignment; and soon enough they were gathering for their final meal before the flight back home, sampling the last grand restaurant amongst the slums, catching the last vista of the place he had fantasised about dying in; or hiding in; working at the local paper, doing some good for someone somewhere; and he returned to a life that he already knew had become deeply dysfunctional, swirling down a sinkhole in a way he had no idea how to stop; his own cycle of despair and addiction distorting every move, every story, every action in days which were rapidly turning to hell.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics-news/2008/09/20/us-election-will-be-won-on-the-trading-floor-of-wall-street-91466-21859589/
US election will be won on the trading floor of Wall Street
Sep 20 2008 by David Williamson, Western Mail
The race to the White House has been transformed by the economic hurricane hitting Wall Street and devastating some of the famous names in capitalism. In these testing times, writes David Williamson, it is the presidential candidate who wins the trust of an electorate living in dread of recession who will be handed the keys to the Oval Office
THE destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the spectre of further terrorist attacks defined the 2004 presidential election.
Today, the financial chaos on Wall Street – a short walk from Ground Zero – is the backdrop to the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the White House.
In 2004 President Bush convinced the electorate he was a truer commander-in-chief than Senator John Kerry. Now, Democratic challenger Barack Obama is telling a shell-shocked nation he will prove a stronger guardian of the economy than John McCain.
Obama supporters this week received an e-mail from the man himself.
It read: “The economy hit a new low this week, and in every part of the country, people like you are feeling it.
“The recent financial disasters – from the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the historic drop in the stock market – are not just a string of bad luck. They are the result of years of bad decisions made in favour of big corporate special interests instead of America’s working families...
“John McCain’s campaign is doing everything it can to focus attention on false personal attacks and distractions – but there’s too much at stake for that kind of politics. I need your help to get the conversation back on track.”
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jUKWdNXjDiX0ksGOEXC4crtCqqzwD93A1V5G0
A tumultuous week ends with Wall Street remade
By ELLEN SIMON – 22 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — One of the most tumultuous weeks in the 216-year history of Wall Street closed with a dramatic two-day rally as investors celebrated an unprecedented government plan to cleanse banks of the bad mortgages that touched off a crisis in world finance.
The details of the rescue — not to mention how many hundreds of billions of dollars it will cost — remained a mystery, but investors snapped up stocks anyway in hopes the end of the credit crisis was near.
The Dow Jones industrials shot up about 370 points, giving them a two-day gain of about 780. The week also included a drop of more than 500 points on Monday and nearly 450 points on Wednesday.
You would never have known it from the anxiety that gripped Wall Street and Washington, not to mention dinner tables across the nation, but stocks ended the week virtually unchanged, with the Dow Jones industrial average down 33.55 points for the week, or 0.3 percent. The Dow stood at 11,388.44 after Friday's trading, up more than 3 percent for the day.
As the closing bell sounded at the New York Stock Exchange, traders could finally pause and reflect on a week of operatic reversals of fortune and federal intervention that remade Wall Street itself.
Among the highlights: The Treasury extended an $85 billion loan to insurer American International Group. The government prepared to take over untold billions in toxic mortgage assets and placed a $50 billion safety net under money market funds. Regulators banned some short-selling. Of the five major U.S. investment houses in existence at the start of the year, two remained intact and independent.
"This was like trying to put a wildfire out," said David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities.
On Friday, bond prices tumbled after investors rushed back into stocks from the relative safety of Treasury securities. The increase in the yields of bellwether two-year bonds meant investors think the economy is fundamentally stronger than it seemed Monday and they don't see a rate cut soon.
Still, some were skeptical of the government intervention.
"This is the biggest travesty the federal government has ever gotten involved with," said Jay Brew, chief bank strategist at M. Rae Resources Inc. "This is just going to lead to a much deeper and prolonged recession."
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24375646-5007146,00.html
jetsetter PM is losing points with voters
By Sharri Markson
September 21, 2008 12:01am
Article from: The Sunday Telegraph
Rumblings of discontent can be heard across the nation as grumpy voters begin protesting about the extraordinary amount of time the Prime Minister spends abroad.
In 50 days, Kevin Rudd has travelled around the world.
He was the first Australian prime minister to attend an Olympics on foreign soil since Malcolm Fraser visited Montreal for the 1976 Games.
Today, Rudd flies to New York on a VIP jet to give a 25-minute speech at the UN General Assembly. It will be his 16th trip in 10 months - and counting.
There are four more planned. Locked in Rudd's diary are plans to attend meetings in Peru, Chile and Brazil in November.
That's three times more overseas trips than John Howard took in his first year as prime minister, double the amount of time Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has spent overseas -- and more than most Australians travel in a lifetime.
Political commentators have already begun to describe Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard as the Government's backbone.
She has comfortably handled the nation's affairs without controversy. In fact, the Iguana-gate scandal was the only domestic issue Rudd was forced to comment on while in Japan.
Rudd would argue that meeting world leaders is part of his strategy to re-position Australia as an influential middle power in world affairs, particularly in negotiating the way forward on climate change and the economy.
But to punters, his jet-setting reflects their Prime Minister's self-importance and fondness for meeting celebrities.
For voters struggling with mortgage repayments, petrol prices and the cost of groceries, along with new fears about how the global economic crisis will affect them, the image of their ambitious leader hob-nobbing in countries they've never visited doesn't sit well.
Sydney headlands, Australia.
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