He Was Condemned

*



I harboured another, a secret conviction: that authenticity, wherever it was, resided somewhere else, somewhere that I was not. I'd know it when I saw it, I had even glimpsed it from afar in my travels, but it seemed to evaporate at my approach. Authenticity was out there beyond the vast fields of the Republic, eluding me, but I believed in it faithfully, a place, a magical coast, a holy mountain where folk of unsullied unself-consciousness laboured at genuinely valid occupations and justified the race and the nastion, where dwelt the thing itself, the McCoy.

Robert Stone: Prime Green.

Between the desire, And the spasm
Between the potency, And the existence
Between the essence, And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is, Life is, For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" (1925)



As if in all honesty, as if in all modesty, the crowds gathered, restive stirrings, dark grey shapes outside the field of vision, all in comfort, all in despair, there wasn't any way out. His social theories were ill formed. Us and them. Cool and not cool. Those who had suffered and those who had not. Oh take me back, back, to a better time, a younger time, he pleaded with he knew not what. The garbage that rained down upon them, the disordered thoughts, the flying streaks of putrid matter, the dysfunctionality inside himself, all of it swelled up in anger.

As a child the beatings would never stop; and as an adult the self-inflicted wounds were even deeper, more bizarre, gaping flesh wounds. Beneath the casual mask, the easy going bloke, he hated everybody and everything. They had betrayed him. They had turned hostile, even as he turned to embrace, to understand. All was not well. We were cornered. Survival required employment. He wanted to be rewarded just for being brilliant, for creating castles in the sky, the architect of dreams.

He wanted to be rewarded for his fingers flickering across the keyboards, for the strange other worlds he created, for the dank prisons and the chanting queues, for those alien sky worlds which stretched for ever above the blue, inter-dimensional perhaps, but nonetheless very real. The chequered black and white floors which stretched into infinity, the sterile glass on which his feet crunched, the broken syringes, the strange, non-sensical signs. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

He was condemned to an eternity of sterility, in this arid place. It was real to him, if no one else, and this terrible place haunted him day and night. There were no other personalities, unless disembodied fragments. There was certainly no one who could see what he could see, that just up there beyond the clouds, just behind this world, behind the fabric of things, was another, fully realised world. Perhaps this black and white chequered world of massive columns and ethereal spaces owed its origin to the black and white chequered linoleum of his parent's kitchen, that one he would end up cowering on as his father beat him and beat him, the stinging, vicious cruelty, bashing him into submission.

But there was no submission, there was only escape. He did long for authenticity, for the smell of working men, of dirt and grease and hormones and uncomplicated pleasures. But instead he sat on bar stools, always good at scamming money off the endless queue of queens that still gathered even as he entered his early twenties. And he drank and he drank, sometimes so drunk he would tell total strangers about his father and what had happened, how glad he was to escape, how he would never speak to him again, not ever, for his own preservation, for his own dignity.

But he never spoke of the world beyond the world, those vast floating platforms in the sky where all the aridity of modern life came to be visually represented, where strange, anomalous shapes floated above the crushed and broken syringes, where white columns reached into the towering distance, where mankind was more alone than it had ever been in its history, where he became trapped in this ethereal space. Sine qua sine, Sine qua none, the gibberish of ancient languages, priestly rites, a srange vaccuum of feeling, where good intent was lacking.

Just as at school, where he could have sworn the strange dripping dungeons full of steam and semi-naked men really did exist, just behind the swings below the school, so in his twenties he became convinced of this other world, sterile, beautiful, infinitely sad. So, too, he raised his eyes and sought understanding. So, too, he did everything he could to annihilate the feelings inside him. So, too, these magnificent edifices floated between dimensions; and could be accessed at will, just as real as the screaching, fleshy, suffering world in which he lay.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24280350-5016110,00.html

THREE major banks have been accused of trying to rip off customers to the tune of about $2 million a day as official interest rates are poised to fall today.

The Reserve Bank is almost certain to announce this afternoon the first rate cut in seven years at 2.30pm but the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and St George are refusing to guarantee they will pass on the savings in full.

A leading consumer group yesterday attacked the rebel banks, saying they were trying to maximise profits.

"It's time for banks to stop the mortgage greed and pass on any Reserve Bank cut," said Christopher Zinn, of Choice.

Using data from the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority, Choice showed that the Commonwealth, Westpac and St George stood to make $2 million for every day they delayed passing on the expected cut.

Treasurer Wayne Swan also ramped up the heat on the lenders, saying they had no excuses as many families were suffering.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/the-dog-pens-used-for-taliban/2008/09/03/1220121241216.html

THESE are the dog pens used by Australian troops to detain four prisoners in Afghanistan and which the Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, described yesterday as legal and necessary.

The photographs, released by the Defence Force last night, show the enclosures used by Australian troops to hold four suspected Taliban militants overnight in April. A defence inquiry, released last Friday, found the men had not been mistreated.

Mr Fitzgibbon said yesterday he believed it had not involved a breach of international law. "We are at war in Afghanistan with people who will employ any tactic, including the use of children as shields and as a means of propaganda, and it is a tough battle," Mr Fitzgibbon told ABC Radio. "But we always endeavour to comply on all occasions with international law and I am confident that our people have done so.

"Australian soldiers are well known as the best fighters in the world and the fairest fighters in the world, always complying with their rules of engagement and always consistent with international law."

But the use of the dog pens was criticised by Muslim leaders and the Greens. The Greens leader, Bob Brown, said: "For Australia to find itself keeping prisoners in dog kennels, dog pens, even overnight, is a big mistake."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/02/thailand3

Thailand's army chief said today he would refrain from using force to break up anti-government protests, despite the state of emergency declared hours after one demonstrator was killed and dozens injured in violent clashes.

General Anupong Paojinda said he had decided on a softly-softly approach, fearing that hardline measures would create greater problems. It left the prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, in an awkward position shortly after he announced sweeping curbs on civil liberties to maintain calm.

Samak empowered the army to restore order on the streets of Bangkok after fighting between his supporters and those demanding he quit - the worst violence seen since the anti-government campaign began in May.

The dramatic turn came after 400 troops in riot gear were deployed to separate mobs brandishing clubs and sticks as they fought a brief pitched battle on the broad avenue that runs outside the regional headquarters of the United Nations. Shots were fired by several protesters.

In the turmoil of Thai politics, the prime minister is faced with the prospect of his eight-month-old coalition being dissolved after the country's election commission recommended today that the constitutional court disband his ruling People Power party for electoral fraud. The implications will take months to play out.



Sign lying on the pavement, early morning, Redfern shops.